Gobbledygeek

  After spending 2014 weaving their way through the many different stories of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman , Paul and AJ have settled on something which appears much simpler for this year's Four-Color Flashback: Jeff Smith's Bone . Appearances can be deceiving, though. The boys have heard tell that Smith's cartoony magnum opus, taking obvious inspiration from Walt Kelly and Carl Barks' comic strips,...

  For the first Geek Challenge of 2015, Paul and AJ have been challenged by friend of the show/ Smoke Gets in Your Ears co-host Kenn Edwards to do things a little differently: Paul has to challenge AJ to a movie not from the '80s, while AJ has to challenge Paul to one from the '80s that isn't black-and-white or foreign. After some head-scratching, Paul has chosen to force AJ to endure the 1976 cul...

  Mars: it ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, and it ain't the kind of place where Mark Watney wants to die. We track our astronaut's final attempts to leave the Red Planet in the last six chapters of The Martian by Andy Weir, as Paul and AJ are joined by all of this year's Gobbledy-Book Club readers: So Let's Get to the Point host and Smoke Gets in Your Ears: A Mad Men Podcast co-host Ke...

What do cannibalism, Elton John, and pirate-ninjas have in common? They all figure into chapters 13-19 of The Martian by Andy Weir, here discussed by Paul, AJ, and Wanna Cook? co-author Ensley F. Guffey. As Gobbledy-Book Club 2015 nears its end, the gang talks about the book's stylistic and emotional weaknesses, as well as the ways in which Weir effectively builds tension. How will it all end? Ens...

  For the second week of Gobbledy-Book Club 2015, Paul and AJ are joined by longtime friend (but first-time guest) Hallie Prime to discuss chapters 7-12 of The Martian by Andy Weir. As stranded astronaut Mark Watney becomes more and more desperate for human contact, Weir begins to tap into the emotional weight of his premise. The gang debates how effective this is...and continues to have issues wi...

  After tackling the layers hidden beneath the puzzle-filled surface of J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst's S last year, the Gobbledy-Book Club returns to discuss The Martian by Andy Weir...and it's a much simpler read, for better or worse. AJ and Paul are joined by So Let's Get to the Point host (and Smoke Gets in Your Ears co-host) Kenn Edwards to talk the first six chapters of The Martian . The pros:...

  In what has become a Gobbledy-tradition, Wesley "Wezzo" Mead has made his third transatlantic pilgrimage to these great shores, where the mighty Bat-Turkey reigns supreme. This time around, Wezzo has on his mind new releases, from American Sniper to Inherent Vice ; the surprising dearth of Sesame Street in the UK; and his favorite films of the decade so far. Plus, there's talk of the Ghostbuster...

Two boys, lost in the woods. A fearsome beast roaming the forest. A frog with many names. Potatoes...and molasses. What do these things all have in common? They're in Over the Garden Wall , the first-ever animated mini-series on Cartoon Network (and perhaps all of American television). The show, broken up in ten 11-minute installments, is a thing of weird and wild beauty. Paul and AJ discuss the m...

  To kick off Gobbledygeek  season 6, we have for you what we promised at the end of last  season: a (nearly) full audio recording of The Deli Counter of Justice  reading at Rickert & Beagle Books in Pittsburgh, PA on December 13, 2014. Paul, AJ, and Eric Sipple round out the Deli  brain trust, with contributors Thomas Dorton and Alyssa Herron also on hand to read from their stories. In addition,...

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mark the end of our year-long Four-Color Flashback discussion of Neil Gaiman's epic fantasy series The Sandman . On hand to discuss Vol. X: The Wake with Paul and AJ are all of their past Sandman guests: Broken Magic author/ The Deli Counter of Justice cohort Eric Sipple; The Debatable Podcast host Greg Sahadachny; and Wanna Cook? authors K. Dale Koont...

This Christmas season, put a little love in your heart with Paul and AJ as they revisit Richard Donner's 1988 reworking of A Christmas Carol , Scrooged . This year's Twisted Christmas entry stars none other than AJ favorite Bill Murray as soulless TV exec Frank Cross, who is visited by a number of very annoying spirits who try and pummel him into living life to its fullest. The boys discuss Murray...

All good things got to finish some time. Paul and AJ have reached the climax of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman , in its penultimate installment,  Vol X: The Kindly Ones . As Morpheus' strict adherence to rules proves to be a cage of his own making, the Furies come down upon his head, wreaking havoc in the Dreaming and tying together many of this epic series' loose ends. Meanwhile, Lucifer plays piano,...

Whether you prefer your heroes fluffy and cuddly or coated with a layer of Depression-era dust--not that we're suggesting those things have to be mutually exclusive, of course--you'll find what you're looking for on the new episode of Gobbledygeek . Paul and AJ set their sights on two of the biggest movies of the fall: Big Hero 6 , the Disney/Marvel animated film about a boy, his huggable robot, a...

For the first Geek Challenge in many months, Paul has challenged AJ to John Carpenter's 1986 fantasy/martial arts/neo-Western cult classic Big Trouble in Little China . In turn, AJ has challenged Paul to Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 "anti-everything" thriller The Wages of Fear . What, pray tell, is the common denominator? They're, uh, they're both about truckers. Tenuous connections are what Geek...

The day is here! After a year-and-a-half of hard work and months of hoopla, the superhero short story anthology  The Deli Counter of Justice is finally available for purchase on Amazon, Smashwords, and elsewhere. The Deli braintrust--Arlo J. Wiley, Paul Smith, and Eric Sipple--take you behind the curtain to talk a little about what led us here, what the process of putting the book together was, an...

Some call it All Hallows' Eve. Others, All Saints' Eve. Most know it as Halloween. Here at Gobbledygeek , October 31 always has been and always will be observed as Gobbledyween. Fan favorite Greg Sahadachny, of The Debatable Podcast  and All the Pieces Matter , joins Paul and AJ to round out this year's celebration of all things horror with a discussion of the 1988 cult (?) classic (?) Killer Klow...

The Deli Counter of Justice drops in less than a week, on Wednesday, November 5, and thus we have reached our final author interview. Paul Smith, part of the collection's braintrust alongside AJ and Eric, talks about his story "...A Hero Only One," which concerns Piecemaker's former sidekick Crashtest. Paul discusses the fact that this is the first piece of writing he's finished, which he claims l...

Alyssa Herron doesn't have a lot of experience with superheroes, which is exactly why The Deli Counter of Justice crew tapped her to contribute to the anthology. Paul and Eric talk to Alyssa about her story "Delilah by Proxy," which she describes as a superhero story for people who would never read superhero stories. They discuss how Alyssa's love affair with writing started with a poetry contest,...

Smoke Gets in Your Ears: A Mad Men Podcast  co-hosts Kenn Edwards and Joseph Lewis check in to Gobbledyween 2014 to talk The Shining  with Paul and AJ. A large part of the conversation revolves around a question you may not have asked about Stanley Kubrick's 1980 Stephen King adaptation: is it supposed to be funny? AJ's not sure and has mixed feelings on the overbearing synth score and lack of sub...

As our author interviews for The Deli Counter of Justice continue, editor-in-chief Arlo J. Wiley (or AJ when he's not being pretentious) finds himself in the hot seat. AJ discusses his short story "Innovation," about a D-list supervillain who starts frequenting the deli he doesn't realize is owned by his former archnemesis. Other points of discussion are AJ's history with screenwriting, how he lea...

Superheroes aren't all fisticuffs and laser vision. They're also poetry in motion, something C. Gayle Seaman hits upon with her contribution to The Deli Counter of Justice , the poem "Spring Memories," in which a young man reflects on a childhood encounter with his idol Piecemaker. Paul and AJ talk to Gayle about her family's history in the newspaper business, the romance novel she wrote a few yea...

Mad scientist (and The Deli Counter of Justice co-editor) Eric Sipple joins Paul and AJ for the second feature attraction of Gobbledyween 2014: Stuart Gordon's 1985 cult classic Re-Animator . The two biggest surprises about Gordon's loose Lovecraft adaptation are 1) that it's a genuinely well-made film and 2) that Jeffrey Combs' batshit crazy Dr. Herbert West isn't actually the main character. The...

Superheroes don't always slap on shiny spandex to soar the friendly skies. They also "lurk in the shadows and skulk in darkness," as Kitty Chandler puts it. Rashida, the young woman at the center of Kitty's The Deli Counter of Justice  story "Calculated Risk," is one of those. She spends hours in her basement doing off-the-grid surveillance, dispatching nearby heroes to deal with crimes no one els...

AJ and Eric sit down with the esteemed Karen Wellenkamp (@QuoterGal), who served as cover designer for The Deli Counter of Justice . Working with Blair J. Campbell's terrific artwork, Karen decided where all the words on the book's front and back covers should go, and how they should look. She talks about her decades-long career as a designer, her preference for detective novels over superheroes,...

Close the shower curtain, it's time for Gobbledyween! Our fifth annual month-long celebration of all things bump in the night gets off to a slashing start with a discussion of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic Psycho . Often imitated (once quite literally) but never duplicated, Paul and AJ dissect the film's shifting points of view, the many taboos it broke, how its lengthy silences speak volumes, a...