Between the Gutters Podcast

Whattup, fam! It's time for another one of our patented movie autopsies as we dissect Thor: Love and Thunder, the latest MCU flick to be released! It seems like a lot of people online and elsewhere have been expressing feelings of superhero fatigue. As longtime comic book readers who have read way more than our fair share of cape comics (including tons of bad event comics), we've got way more stam...

It's a Bird... by Steven T. Seagle, Teddy Kristiansen, and Todd Klein is a DC book we've wanted to discuss on the podcast for quite some time now. Originally published by Vertigo during that imprint's 2000s heyday, It's a Bird... is a personal and powerful semi-autobiographical original graphic novel about the struggle of the act of writing, the pain of living with a family secret, and the difficu...

This week, we're taking a look at a couple of Ms. Marvel comics. First up is her origin story in Ms. Marvel volume 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona. The other story we look at is The Magnificent Ms. Marvel Volume 1: Destined by Saladin Ahmed and Minkyu Jung. By the time this episode goes live, the Ms. Marvel Disney+ series will be about halfway through its run, but we're still d...

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin Volume 6: To War continues the flashback/prequel material unique to this version of the First Gundam story. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko adds his thoughtful personal flourishes to the lore and legend of the Universal Century, and he spends an extensive amount of time in this volume covering key formative years of Char Aznable and the Zabi family. This political potboiler makes...

After a week off, we're back with another long episode! This time around, we're examining the category of shonen manga. It's one of (if not THE) best-selling forms of comics in the world, and obviously there's a lot of super popular anime based on shonen manga. Truth be told, though we read plenty of manga, neither of us tends to read much popular shonen, so we felt we needed to step out of our pr...

The Moon Knight show on Disney+ recently finished its run, and we got around to watching it. Now we're gonna talk about it. We begin the episode with some general spoiler-free impressions. Spoilers begin at around the 21:15 mark. We've both read a good amount of Moon Knight comics, and if you're interested in hearing what we had to say about various Moon Knight comic book stories, check out episod...

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin volume 5 is a significant turning point in this epic saga. This volume, titled Char & Sayla, is Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's original material; these stories were not present in the First Gundam anime. There's a lot of political intrigue at play here as we witness the formation of the Principality of Zeon as well as the backstories of Char Aznable and Sayla Mass. It's a long...

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we're talking about one of our favorite Asian American comics creators, Adrian Tomine! Specifically, we're discussing three of his stories: Hawaiian Getaway, Amber Sweet, and Killing and Dying. These are stories that were originally published in his comic book series Optic Nerve, and can now be found in the book collections Summer Blonde (for Hawa...

It's time for a Between the Gutters-style Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness autopsy! We tried to stay away from inane fanboy theories here, though, and we definitely don't whine about all the cameos we didn't see. We tried to keep the conversation about the film by looking at it on its own merits. (Maybe there was a tangent when we got on a soapbox to talk about how Disney and these corpora...

Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics by Tom Scioli is a fitting biography of the King in comics form. Last week, we discussed the Stan Lee biography written by Abraham Riesman, and it's only fitting that we dedicate an episode to Jack Kirby, the man whose boundless imagination continues to captivate our minds. Tom Scioli's book provides an excellent overview of Kirby's life, and we defi...

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, a heavily researched and all-encompassing biography written by Abraham Riesman, is an elucidating examination of one of the most significant figures in modern pop culture. Originally released a little over a year ago, the recent release of the paperback edition precipitated our discussion of the book. It's a book we think that anyone who's remotely int...

Finally, White Base arrives at Jaburo, but at what cost? In this episode, we continue our exploration and analysis of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. We take examine volume four chapter by chapter and discuss the craftsmanship behind the storytelling, and we also talk about the character development and various plot developments. It's another exciting installment of this saga...

Darryl Cunningham's recent biocomic, Putin's Russia: The Rise of a Dictator, is a particularly relevant piece of work, especially in light of current events. It's a comic published by Drawn & Quarterly in North America, and it was released earlier this year, just before Russia invaded Ukraine. In presenting a heavily researched laundry list of numerous transgressions against his rivals, detractors...

With the advent of the Moon Knight streaming series on Disney+, we figured it was time to do one of our signature deep dives into an MCU character to coincide with his onscreen debut. In this episode, we share about the first Moon Knight comics we ever read, we discuss the fundamental core elements of the character, and we talk about what we like in Moon Knight stories. The bulk of this lengthy ep...

It's time for our continuing readthrough of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. In volume 3, we meet Ramba Ral, one of First Gundam's more honorable antagonists. We also get some more layered character development, a look at the rest of the Zabi family, and at least one major plot twist that recontextualizes what we've experienced so far. Yas delivers incredibly exciting and thou...

In recognition of Women's History Month, we read a pair of short comic book biographies. In this episode, the two works we discuss are Marie Curie: A Quest for Light (written by Frances Andreasen Østerfelt and Anja Cetti Andersen, and art by Anna Blaszczyk) and Seen: True Stories of Marginalized Trailblazers: Rachel Carson (written by Birdie Willis, line art by Rii Abrego, colored by Kieran Quigle...

Last week, The Batman, directed by Matt Reeves, was released in theaters. We watched it and then dissected it. So here is our autopsy report. Here is our Bat-topsy. This is THEEEE Bat-topsy. We discuss the film from the standpoint of a pair of longtime comic book readers who are big Batman fans, and take into account the comic book stories that Reeves stated served as inspiration. We also talk abo...

Maus by Art Spiegelman is universally recognized as one of the best and most significant comics of all time. It absolutely deserves the acclaim. With Maus having been in the news recently, it returned to the forefront of our minds, so we decided to reread it and discuss it. Our friend, ally, comic book comrade, and recurring guest Alexander Sheynis joins us. Before we dive in the comic and celebra...

We're continuing our readthrough of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. Things get even more interesting in volume 2 as we start to see even more world building and characterization. We really get to see how Gundam is a story that's about more than giant robots fighting. The human drama is compelling, and that's what makes the story pop. Join us as we discuss and dissect the vario...

This week, out of respect for Black History Month, we're discussing the March trilogy by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. This is an autobiographical work about the late John Lewis, specifically covering the period of his life as a young man, and his role as one of the "Big Six" in the American Civil Rights Movement. March contains important lessons for us all. It's both educational and...

Shuzo Oshimi's Blood on the Tracks is an unusually paced psychological suspense about a young teenage boy and his overprotective mother. To say much more would probably spoil the surprise of discovery, but we recommend this story to mature readers who don't mind experiencing uncomfortable thoughts and emotions through fiction. We've read the first seven volumes that are currently available in Engl...

Enigma by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo is an exceptional piece of work that was ahead of its time. Originally published by Vertigo, it's recently been reprinted under Dark Horse's Berger Books imprint in a dignified hardcover edition that befits its status as a bona fide classic. In this episode, we give Enigma its due and try to dissect, analyze, and interpret the concepts and ideas within t...

This year, we're going to be reading through the entirety of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. It's twelve hardcover volumes, so we'll be reading and discussing one volume a month, just as we did for Invincible last year. In this episode, we shed some basic information and historical context about First Gundam (the original 1979 anime TV series) and the Gundam franchise as a wh...

Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Hush are two of the most prominent, acclaimed, and beloved Batman comics of the past 25 years or so. We acknowledge that, and we reread them recently as we continue our preparations for our DC Top 25 Comics of All Time list. The Long Halloween and Hush don't crack our list of honorable mentions, but they both make our dishonorable mentions. As we revisited bo...

Last month, we did a little dive into various Hawkeye comics. Now that it's been a couple of weeks since the Hawkeye series on Disney+ has concluded, it's time to dissect the show itself. Join us for our Hawkeye autopsy, where we attempt to think critically about something that probably was created primarily to entertain the masses. Thinking and talking about entertainment is our entertainment, so...