Gobbledygeek

Panthers… IN SPAAAAACE ! For their first Four-Color Flashback of 2022, Paul and Arlo look to the stars, where they find Black Panther: The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda . The second half of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Black Panther run, these 25 issues--with art by Daniel Acuña, Kev Walker, and Ryan Bodenheim, among others--concern T'Challa's rise from slave to legend in an alien empire that bears his kin...

Clint Barton, draw back your bow and let your arrow go straight to Disney+. Hollywood big shot Michael Holland joins Paul and Arlo for another season of MCUTV. This time, Jeremy Renner returns as the titular Hawkeye for six episodes of street-level crimefighting. He's joined by Hailee Steinfeld as that other titular Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, to do battle with tracksuit bros, LARPers, and showtunes. Th...

You're in luck--season 13 of Gobbledygeek is here. Everyone's favorite more or less (emphasis on less) weekly podcast returns with a look at the horrors 2022 has in store. How are Paul and Arlo feeling, two years into a pandemic? How dissatisfied are they with the goons running this whole show? Would they survive the apocalypse? At a certain point, the boys remember they're supposed to be doing a...

It's only one more Gobbledygeek 'til Christmas! This year, instead of discussing the weird or cynical sides of the holidays, Paul and Arlo are embracing sincerity with a look at 1992's The Muppet Christmas Carol . The first Muppets feature film following the death of Jim Henson is a faithful adaptation of the classic novella, with Gonzo as Charles Dickens himself and none other than Michael Caine...

What if…you listened to a podcast about What If…? In a universe of infinite possibilities, Michael Holland (currently post-production supervisor on The Peripheral for Amazon) finds himself once again teaming up with Paul and Arlo for a discussion of MCUTV. This time, it's the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first animated series, the multiversal What If…? Ostensibly an anthology series, the show ponde...

"And cast ye the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." So says Matthew 25:30, and in John Layman and Afu Chan's Outer Darkness , there is plenty of weeping–and so, so much gnashing of teeth. For their last Four-Color Flashback of the year, Paul and Arlo discuss Layman and Chan's 2018-19 Image/Skybound series, which imagines a far-flung future...

The best show on TV is on FX--well, FX on Hulu, that is. It's called Reservation Dogs , it was created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, and it is about four Indigenous kids from Oklahoma dreaming of escape to California. To discuss this funny, heartbreaking show, Paul and Arlo are joined by pop culture writer extraordinaire Nikki Stafford. The gang discusses the show's subtle storytelling, its...

Gobbledyween has come to a close for another year--and we're going out with a fang! To round out our month of frightening films, we've chosen a movie most people have probably never heard of: Rockula , a vampiric musical from 1990 starring Dean Cameron as the bloodsucking Ralph, cursed to try and win back the love of his immortal life every 22 years. We have also chosen to torture none other than...

Have you ever heard of insect podcasts? Neither have we. Paul and Arlo continue Gobbledyween 2021 with a deep penetrating dive into the plasma pool, as Alex Jonestown Massacre guitarist Kenn Edwards teleports on over to discuss David Cronenberg's 1986 classic The Fly . The gang places the film in the context of the AIDS epidemic, marvels at just how charming it is, raves about Jeff Goldblum and Ge...

Listen to them, the children of the night. What movies they make! For the second installment of Gobbledyween 2021, A/V writer-director Joseph Lewis joins Paul and Arlo for a discussion of Clive Barker's 1990 film Nightbreed . Butchered by the studio on initial release and restored to its full grotesquerie decades later, Nightbreed is a bizarre fusion of epic fantasy, slasher, and supernatural horr...

Leaves are on the ground. Blood is on the screen. It's time for Gobbledyween . Our beloved, bloody tradition returns for another fiendish film fest featuring only the finest (?) of the horror genre. Greg Sahadachny, once and future host of The Debatable Podcast , helps Paul and Arlo kick off Gobbledyween 2021 by giving them a ride to The House of the Devil . Ti West's 2009 breakthrough was a semin...

For their latest Four-Color Flashback , Paul and Arlo are exploring the world of Si Spurrier and Jeff Stokely's 2015 mini-series The Spire . Our location is a massive, tiered city surrounded by a desolate wasteland; our cast of characters include privileged aristocrats and the undesired "Sculpted," hybridized from human and animal DNA; and our story is one of noir sleuthing, extreme violence, raci...

To paraphrase Philip and Elizabeth Jennings' new/old handler Gabriel, "Podcasting and timeliness in many ways are antithetical." After a series of delays, Paul and Arlo are back with guest of honor Wesley "Wezzo" Mead to continue their discussion of Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields' modern classic spy drama The Americans . This time, they're taking a look at season 3, a masterclass in thematic cohesio...

What happens when a regularly scheduled episode gets regularly postponed? A freestyle, that's what! In lieu of talking about The Americans season 3, Paul and Arlo talk about...well, whatever the fuck they want to talk about. Paul's angry, Arlo's drunk, it's an angry drunken ramble! "Topics" of "discussion" include dumb reality shows like Clash of Cones , the intrinsic value (or lack thereof) in a...

That Sipple you like is going to come back in style. It's been a long while--we're talking pre-pandemic here--but Eric Sipple is finally making their return to this humble little podcast. Author of Broken Magic and one-third of the Deli Counter of Justice braintrust, Eric tells Paul and Arlo all about their new YA fantasy novel Mimesis --including the loaded, sometimes confusing connotations infer...

You can't go home again. But you can return to the creator-owned post-apocalyptic fantasy saga that captivated comics readers for 40 twisted, beautiful issues. That's exactly what Jeff Lemire did last year with Sweet Tooth: The Return , a sequel miniseries that takes place three whole centuries after the original Vertigo series' ending. Considering that ending was perfect, does The Return need to...

After a two-year absence--thanks, global pandemic!--the Marvel Cinematic Universe makes its return to the big screen with the long-awaited Black Widow . And we do mean long-awaited: it's been 11 years since Scarlett Johansson made her debut as Natasha Romanoff, and only now, after we've seen Nat die in Avengers: Endgame , does Black Widow get a solo movie. Paul and Arlo are joined by pop culture f...

Gobbledygeek 's very own MCU TV brain trust reconvenes somewhere in the multiverse, as post-production supervisor to the stars Michael Holland joins Paul and Arlo to discuss Michael Waldron and Kate Herron's Loki . The gang untangles the kooky timeline shenanigans, falls in love with the incestuous narcissism at the heart of the Loki/Sylvie relationship, find themselves wowed by Owen Wilson, and p...

Nature is healing. For this month's Four-Color Flashback , Paul and Arlo conclude the post-apocalyptic journeys of  The Boy and the Big Man with Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth: Deluxe Edition - Books Two and Three . The remnants of humanity fight tooth and nail for survival against the paws and claws of the human/animal hybrid children, who only seem to be increasing in number. Which begs the question,...

For Norma Desmond, the pictures got small when words stole her mystique; for Alan Swann, it was when his drunken antics got him downgraded to the boob tube. They're both stand-ins for larger-than-life stars past their prime, Norma in Billy Wilder's scathing Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Alan in Richard Benjamin's cozy My Favorite Year (1982). In our latest Geek Challenge , Paul and Arlo discuss these fa...

You know what they say: Parenting is hard, especially when you're undercover KGB operatives masquerading as a suburban American couple. As Paul, Arlo, and special guest Wesley "Wezzo" Mead dive into season 2 of Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields' modern classic The Americans , they discover all the ways child-rearing is difficult for Philip and Elizabeth Jennings. This includes concealing your secret id...

Imagine a world where a global pandemic killed millions and changed society forever. Spooky stuff, huh? Well, take a break from reality with this month's Four-Color Flashback : Sweet Tooth: The Deluxe Edition - Book One , comprising the first 12 issues of Jeff Lemire's offbeat breakthrough about a little deer boy and the post-apocalyptic hell that awaits him in the wilds of Nebraska. Along the way...

On a new freestyle episode, Paul and Arlo spend the whole podcast telling you about other podcasts you should be listening to instead (and one you should not). You see, Paul has descended into true crime madness, his paranoia reaching heretofore unseen levels as he falls asleep to the sounds of violence. There are also serial killers following him. Elsewhere, Arlo's vestigial nose twin stalks the...

The Four-Color Flashback , that most venerated non-Gobbledyween tradition, has been around in some form for nearly all of this podcast's 11 years. And yet--we've never discussed manga, the world's most popular comics format. Paul and Arlo have decided to rectify that with the first volume of Inio Asano's Goodnight Punpun , the surreal exploration of one young boy's troubled adolescence. Punpun Pun...

Paul, Arlo, and returning guest Michael Holland aren't in Westview anymore. For its second TV series, the Marvel Cinematic Universe returns to more conventional superheroics. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the Captain America sequel we've been waiting for, filled with stellar action sequences, resonant character work, and a twisty-turny plot. The gang debates how well that last element works...