Back To Pop

Send us Fan Mail Every generation has a movie that finds them at exactly the right age. For a lot of us, that movie was The Last Starfighter — and at the center of it was Lance Guest, who turned Alex Rogan into one of the most quietly beloved heroes of ’80s sci-fi. This week, Lance joins Back to Pop for a candid conversation spanning his career — from playing Jimmy opposite Jamie Lee Curtis in Hal...

Send us Fan Mail Fred Kennedy — writer, broadcaster, and professional chaos agent known to most of the world as Fearless Fred- sits down with Back to Pop to talk about making comics that absolutely refuse to stay in one genre. Fred is the writer behind Dead Romans , a six-issue historical epic from Image Comics' Shadowline that follows Arminius, a Germanic prince raised as a Roman hostage who...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Back to Pop , we sit down with Adam Cahoon — artist, designer, and Senior Designer & former Production Lead at Vault Comics. Adam stepped into The Nasty, Vault’s horror-comedy about VHS culture and the “video nasties” moral panic in 1990s Scotland, taking over as sole interior artist from issue #3.  He’s also the designer behind the premium hardcover edition of He...

Send us Fan Mail Some covers don’t ask you to pick them up — they grab you by the collar. That’s exactly what happened with Honor and Curse from Mad Cave Studios. One look at the cover and the search was on: who made this? This week on Back to Pop, we sit down with the artist behind that image — Nick Marinkovich, Canadian comic artist, illustrator, concept artist, and co-creator of Dead Romans (Im...

Send us Fan Mail Writer Doug Wagner returns to Back to Pop  and this time, he brings his artistic partner in crime with him. Daniel Hillyard joins the conversation for a wide-ranging discussion on what it looks like when a creative partnership builds its own corner of the comics world, strange, violent, funny, and more emotionally honest than it has any right to be. Together, they’ve made Plastic,...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Back to Pop, Marc is joined by cover and variant artist Suspiria Vilchez — a Barcelona-born, Toronto-based painter whose hand-crafted acrylic technique sets her apart in today’s comics industry. Her work has appeared across Vault Comics,  BOOM Studios, IDW, Image, Penthouse Comics, and Sumerian Comics, with credits including Nectar,  Buffy: The Last Vampire Slayer, Fi...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the dream doesn’t die — it just waits? Michael Tove spent decades in North Carolina as a regional actor, film extra, and financial adviser. His first screen credit goes back to 1990, when he worked as an extra on the theatrical adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale — shot right in his home state. He carried a screenplay called Hot Ice for nearly thirty years. He neve...

Send us Fan Mail George Vega grew up in Newark, New Jersey watching Voltron and filling sketchbooks with Jim Lee panels. Today he’s doing G.I. Joe cover work through Skybound and his art has appeared across Marvel, DC, Alien, Firefly, and Rick and Morty. In this conversation, George talks about the artists who shaped him — Jim Lee, Brom, Todd McFarlane, Larry Elmore — and what he actually took fro...

Send us Fan Mail JP Mavinga has spent over twenty-five years building one of the most distinctive careers in illustration and comics — born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, trained at SCAD, and forged across three continents before landing as a senior concept designer and art director at Sideshow Collectibles, where his work on the Thanos on Throne maquette set sales records. In this episode,...

Send us Fan Mail If you grew up reading The Batman Adventures, Batman: Gotham Adventures, or Superman Adventures, Rick Burchett’s work shaped how you see those characters.  His pages don’t just look good — they move, they breathe, they act. In this episode, we sit down with Rick to talk about how a commercial art background at a St. Louis ad agency quietly became one of the best training grounds f...

Send us Fan Mail He’s covered the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and decades of Hollywood from the red carpet out. Now Nelson Aspen is turning the lens on himself. Nelson joins Back to Pop to talk about Dancing Between the Raindrops: Happily Ever After? — the final chapter in his trilogy blending romance, identity, and the unfiltered realities behind the spotlight.  It’s a book that feels lived-in, be...

Send us Fan Mail He named 200 characters like Megatron, Starscream, Grimlock, Bumblebee, Prowl, and more . He wrote the character bibles that turned a line of Japanese toys into one of the most beloved franchises in pop culture history — and most people have never heard his name. Bob Budiansky spent 20 years at Marvel Comics as an editor, writer, and penciller. He drew Ghost Rider covers for five...

Send us Fan Mail Jeremy Robinson has written nearly 100 novels. He’s a #1 Audible and New York Times bestselling author published in 14 languages. His kaiju series Project Nemesis is in development at Sony Pictures Television with John Wick director Chad Stahelski. And now he’s back where he started — in comics. But he’s not adapting his novels.  He’s creating something new. Nectar, the debut titl...

Send us Fan Mail William Harms has spent thirty years building worlds — and the dead ones are his best work yet. From small press comics in the early ‘90s to writing Captain America and Wolverine for Marvel, to crafting the entire story of inFAMOUS for PlayStation 3 (IGN’s Best Story of the Year, 2009), to serving as Narrative Director on Mafia III — a BAFTA-nominated game that ended up in a Victo...

Send us Fan Mail Before streaming. Before shared universes. Before fandom went mainstream — there were heroes who meant it. This week on Back to Pop, we give Marc Singer’s career the full treatment it deserves. He was a classically trained stage actor before any of this happened on a screen — playing Petruchio in A.C.T.’s landmark 1976 Taming of the Shrew for PBS, Christian in Cyrano de Bergerac o...

Send us Fan Mail Today, on Back To Pop we dive into the pages of comics, with acclaimed writer Doug Wagner    Doug Wagner writes serial killers in love, cannibal furries, fashion designers with a taste for human flesh, and Viking curses — and somehow, every single one lands with genuine heart. This week, Marc sits down with the creator of Plastic, Vinyl, Plush, I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Watkins (CEO/Editor-in-Chief, Highburn Studios) is back — and this time he brought the whole crew. Joining him are Lyle Pollard, creator of the slice-of-life series Tribulations, and Mike “Mez” Phillips, freelance artist and creator behind No More and the upcoming Hemlock. Over the course of an hour, we get into what Highburn actually looks like from the inside in 2026, th...

Send us Fan Mail He covered the O.J. Simpson trial, the Rodney King riots, the Northridge earthquake, Columbine, the Las Vegas mass shooting, and Michael Jackson’s death. For 58 years, Hal Eisner was there — camera rolling, microphone in hand — for the moments that defined Los Angeles and shook the nation. But here’s what makes his story different: he never planned any of it. In this episode, the...

Send us Fan Mail People know the kicks. The costumes. The Christmas magic. But they don’t always know what it cost to stand on that line — and what it takes to stay whole after you do. This week on Back to Pop, we sit down with Jennifer Jones — history-maker, dancer, author, and survivor — who became the first Black Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in 1987. What followed wasn’t just applause. It...

Send us Fan Mail Comic Creator  Caitlin Yarsky joins us to discuss her journey from early creative impulses to becoming one of comics’ most distinctive visual storytellers. Known for her work on Coyotes, Bliss, Black Hammer, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Yarsky shares insights into her creative process and evolution. We explore how Coyotes became a breakthrough moment, the intentiona...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a lifelong comic book fan decides to build the convention he always wanted to attend? You get TerrifiCon – Connecticut’s largest comic book convention and a love letter to creators and fans alike. In this episode, we sit down with Mitch Hallock, the visionary behind TerrifiCon, to explore his journey from discovering Marvel Team-Up #12 as a kid to producing one o...

Send us Fan Mail The most unbelievable three-act story in pop culture. Ron Fazio suited up for the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles. Then he became the man inside the costume in The Toxic Avenger Part II and Part III. Today, he saves lives as a cardiothoracic surgery professional. In this episode, Ron shares: ∙Life in the NFL and the injury that ended his football career ∙Taking over the rol...

Send us Fan Mail Join us for an in-depth conversation with talented comics artist Patrick Piazzalunga as he shares his journey from Bergamo, Italy to the international comics scene. Patrick opens up about his early days studying at the Scuola Internazionale di Comics in Florence, working as an inker on series like Dampyr, and developing his distinctive style that blends dynamic action, horror elem...

Send us Fan Mail Every line in a comic tells a story. Some shout. Others whisper. Today on Back to Pop, we’re sitting down with Keith Williams — an inker who’s defined the look of Superman, The Phantom, and so many heroes we grew up with. This isn’t just a career retrospective. It’s a conversation about craft, rhythm, and what it means to tell stories one line at a time. From a childhood moment wi...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when a classically trained flutist who beatboxed with Parliament-Funkadelic picks up a pen and starts drawing worlds? You get Afua Richardson — musician, illustrator, mythmaker, and cultural architect whose work refuses to stay inside the lines. In this soul-stirring 60-minute conversation, we trace Afua’s journey from Carnegie Hall at eleven to the panels of Marvel’s...