Darkseid's Couch

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée venture into international waters when they read 1990's Avengers no. 319! After a British submarine is hijacked, Captain America resorts to the "pick-up basketball game" method of team recruitment, since most of the real Avengers couldn't be bothered. Gathering whoever hasn't had their phone disconnected yet, Cap duct-tapes together a supergroup consis...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée go looking for a good spooking when they read 1951's Tales From the Crypt no. 27! While some people may say that nobody's in the mood to read a horror comic right around Valentine's Day, those people fail to realize that this book isn't scary at all. It barely even qualifies as entertainment, actually: A misandrist wants to kill all men but will settle...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée jump into the deep end of bizarre cross-promotional comic books with Swordquest: Waterworld! In the mid-80s, Atari put out a series of video games and corresponding comic books that, together, created a puzzle-solving real world contest. It appealed to everyone from children to tech nerds to that kid in high school who drew swords on all of his folders...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée are inspired to cut abdominal holes in their shirts after reading comic book/70s fashion magazine Black Goliath no. 1! That's right; Black Goliath, the size-altering character you might've heard of once although you were probably just thinking of Giant Man, finally has the solo series someone must've been clamoring for! What a lucky day it was for that...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée head to the Outback for Uncanny X-Men no. 229! The year was 1988. The X-Men were on the run after being presumed dead and America was experiencing a brief yet bizarre obsession with Australian culture, so Marvel went ahead and smashed those things together with all the grace of a direct to VHS Crocodile Dundee sequel. Plus, meet the Reavers, a gang of...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée get an early Christmas present with the Alf Super-Size Holiday Special! By 1988, the fuzzy little alien demon had successfully dominated all of American culture. Alf had a hit tv show, a Saturday morning cartoon, a line of comics, and an adoptive human family with whom he shared a complex psychosexual power dynamic. Maybe it's reading between the lines...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée develop Stockholm Syndrome reading Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth no. 3! Well, maybe not Shée, who starts this episode with prepared remarks in re: primates and how much they suck. For the rest of us, it's Planet of the Apes meets golden-haired twinks when warring apes battle over who gets to make Kamandi their smooth-legged slave. What starts as a goo...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée meet the Jade Giantess herself in 1990's Sensational She-Hulk no. 18! Created as a copyright-protecting security measure, Shulkie outgrew her modest origins to eventually... fight a dentist. It's a canon-irrelevant fill-in issue where She-Hulk has to put up with the whining of Dr. Doom's fifth cousin Bob, a successful dentist who won't be satisfied til...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée read the first issue of 1975's The Cougar live while recording! Sure, it's a confusing reading experience, but this is an industry where radiation exposure gives you superpowers instead of plain old Leukemia, so logical storytelling was already on the backburner. Anyway, stuntman Jeff Rand is a reasonably in-shape guy who mooonlights as the Cougar, an...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée celebrate their 90th episodes with the spookiest Batman of all, as the Dark Knight meets Dracula in 1991's Red Rain graphic novel! It's an era of giant ears and bulbous double-chins as deranged artist Kelley Jones creepifies this tale of two creatures of the night clashing over the best way to not help the homeless of Gotham City! Dracula wants to turn...

This time on the Couch: It's a very special episode of America's only comic book podcast [verification needed] as Mike, James, and Shée spotlight five forgotten pre-Wonder Wonder female superheroes! Meet Amazona, who will systematically ruin your existence if you call her 'babe'! Wildfire, who taught kids everywhere that fire can't hurt you if you're not afraid of it! Mother Hubbard, with the powe...

This time on the Couch: Not a repost! Not a typo! Not an imaginary episode! Mike, James, and Shée are still reading the Inhumans! In 1976's Inhumans no. 3 the group decides to go all Muppets Take Manahattan and head to the big city to beg some real superheroes to help them figure out why their town sucks so bad. Unfortunately for the Inhumans, hot on their trail is Kree supersoldier Shatterstar, w...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée discover the mystery of the Inhumans, the Kree-modified, easily forgettable, incestuous (probably) gang of not-technically-mutant superfreaks! In 1975's Inhumans no. 2, the Kree decide it's finally time to cash out and send goofy mongoloid Blastaar to retrieve the Inhumans. There's only one catch: He has to make his mission as convoluted as possible. T...

This time: Mike, James, and Shée make room on the casting couch for Big Barda with 1987's Action Comics no. 593! Barda and Mister Miracle's marriage is put to the test when they receive a mysterious VHS tape from stone-faced God demon/podcast inspiration Darkseid. Turns out the morally despicable villain Sleez has hypnotized Barda and is forcing her to act in pornos that her husband may or may not...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée just barely tolerate 1952's Journey Into Mystery no. 1! It's another low-effort anthology of horror tales that prove kids in the 50s were embarrassingly easy to scare. An unsuccessful florist pays hobos to steal flowers from graves for him! A dumbass farmer opts for a voodoo curse instead of admitting he's just not very good at agriculture! A mediocre...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée head into the toiletverse with 1983's The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl no. 3! There's no other way to say this so let's just get right to it: Supergirl has to fight a poo monster. Where did he come from? Can he talk? What does he think of Supergirl's weird 80s costume redesign? We may never find out, but one thing's for certain: He must smell god...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée once again visit the terrifying imagination of Jack "King" Kirby with 1967's The Mighty Thor no. 140! Returning to Asgard after killing a bunch of trolls, Thor asks his dad to turn him back into enfeebled doctor Donald Blake and let him go protect the morons of Earth again, because someone has to be the dumbest Avenger. It's a good thing Odin agrees, b...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée sit around a table, just like on the cover of All-Star Comics no. 3! It's the first meeting of the first ever superhero team, the Justice Society of America, and only one thing could bring all of their dazzling abilities together for this historic moment: Lunch. That's right, it's 60 pages of a bunch of gods among men going into drunk uncle mode to bra...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée head to the mythical comic book land of Russia for 1989's Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja no. 1! Set against a landscape of sultry accents and soldiers who match their socks to their underwear just in case, World War III is ravaging the globe. Unfortunately Nth Man wouldn't know anything about that because he's been locked up in an underground cell working...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée celebrate their 80th episode AND Batman's 80th anniversary with Batman no. 80! The 1950s were a more innocent time, when the Joker could call up the Gotham Gazette and advertise his crimes like he's selling a used Honda, kid sidekicks could bounce between staying at multiple eccentric millionaires' homes without arousing suspicion, and scientists easil...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée check out the early adventures of streaming's newest niche IP, The Doom Patrol! Robotman! Negative Man! Elasti-Girl! The Chief! What they lack in clever codenames they make up for in torturous existential ennui! In 1964's Doom Patrol no. 90, the team have to figure out who's the spy among their ranks, begging the question: What kind of psychopath volun...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée visit yet another goddamn dystopian future when they read 1976's Starfire no. 1! Don't get too excited, though; It's not the Starfire you've heard of, but instead some lady you've never seen before who's trapped in a confusing world of lizard monsters, child brides, and "unfamiliar rods"! Her only friend is eternal good-guy Dagan, to whom Starfire is u...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée wage war on fun with 1981's Star Wars no. 48! Somewhere in the loose, foggy continuity that comes with cheap tie-ins, Princess Leia has to travel to a distant planet to acquire an exciting weapon that could bring the Empire to its knees! Just kidding, she actually needs a bank loan. Some dumb kids in the '80s ponied up $.50 expecting a grand space adve...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée accept their 37-minute mission to explore 1980's Star Trek no. 7! Kirk, Spock, and the gang discover a race of freakish french fry people who are about to die from radiation poisoning and decide to stick their phasers where they don't belong by ignoring the Prime Directive and rescuing the adorable schmucks. And schmucks they do indeed be, as they refu...

This time on the Couch: Mike, James, and Shée pretty much fix every problem with relationships when they read 1971's My Love no. 10! Marvel's reprint cash-in delivers a mixed bag of mixed messages about feminism as poorly-developed female characters try to figure out which is more important: Giving up your personal agency to have a man in your life or giving up your self-respect to have a man in y...