Penny Men

💤 Sleepwalker back issues, Bob Budiansky Transformers lore, and Spider-Man team-ups! 🌀 Dr. Fate vs. The Spectre… sorta! 📺 Cloak & Dagger had a TV show?? 🦸‍♂️ Then the big pivot: Ben leads the crew through the eras of X-Men — from the First Class (Cyclops, Jean, Iceman, Beast, Angel, plus Prof X) ➡️ the All-New, All-Different team (Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, etc.) ➡️ the New...

Welcome back to The Pennymen, folks! Your hosts—Ben, Gregory, and Tom—are diving headfirst into the wonderful chaos of comics past, present, and borderline impossible! Episode Three is all about You Can’t Have These Comics! Hold onto your capes, because we’re hitting: Golden Age heroes you didn’t know existed (hello, Golden Age Daredevil aka Death-Defying Devil) Indie oddities like Zen Intergalact...

The Penny Guys react to the cover art from episode 42!

The Penny Men react to the cover art from episode 41!

We start with Sgt. Rock, but quickly form Sgt. Rock’s Lonely Hearts Club Band! Then we wander into: Conan the Barbarian Red Sonja (with a J, not a Y) Robert E. Howard timelines L. Sprague de Camp gap-filling And the Conan–Elric crossover that made Michael Moorcock’s calendar cry! From there: Charlton backups Gravedigger with the X-scar Ice Cream Soldier’s first snow And the Easy Company roster of...

From “I’m a real pirate from me boots up to me hat” to Royal Wedding ’s five-week dance sequences...from prairie dog “Blue Skies” to Looney Tunes music lessons...we drifted (sailed?) straight into a wrestling detour, an X-Men soap opera roll-call, and an unsolicited Slim Jim ad rewrite! Then it’s a hard turn into You Can’t Have These Comics : Generation X romance blooms Jubilee's vampire years...

Bart Simpson starts it off, but then the roster explodes: Gex Bubsy Cool Spot Alex Kidd Adventure Island Joe Dragon Quest Slimes Creepy Crawlers Monsters in My Pocket Bayou Billy Lolo & Lala Whispy Woods Billy Hatcher Monkey Ball Space Channel 5 Parappa Tha Rappa NiGHTS Imakuni? Pikachu vs. Poliwhirl Alfred E. Newman Addams Family oddballs Katamari’s Prince Tingle (and Dave Jr.) Scrooge McDuck...

🎮 The Penny Men dive headfirst into the world of video game mascots — the good, the bad, and the bizarre! From Mario vs. Sonic to Cool Spot’s un-cola climb, from Arrow the Acrobat and Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel to Mr. Nutz (yes, really), we’re talking every character who was supposed to be "the next big thing!" Along the way: Bubsy asks “what could possibly go wrong?” Clay Fighter’s Bad...

Step into the Penny Men’s time machine and prepare to wander the sacred aisles of VHS heaven! Mammoth Video, Video to Go, Blockbuster, Family Video — the smell of popcorn, the hum of fluorescent lights, pinball machines chiming in the corner, and that glorious click when you popped a tape into the VCR! We’re talking: $100 Disney “classics” locked in glass cases Goosebumps spines glowing slime-gree...

OH YEAH! It's time to smash through some walls, drink questionable childhood beverages, and ponder the eternal question: Is the Kool-Aid Man the pitcher… or the liquid inside? In this flavor-packed installment, the Penny Men spiral into a nostalgia-fueled deep dive on the one, the only, the sugar-fueled juggernaut of destruction—The Kool-Aid Man! Was he ever in the WWE? Did he have a rogues&#3...

This week on The Penny Men: we bounce from PBS dogs to MTV lawsuits in record time! Highlights include: Wishbone’s literary deep cuts Ovid Gilgamesh And the world’s oldest joke! A karaoke gauntlet: Hungry Like the Wolf Rio And When Doves Cry! Prince’s glyph era and the Warner Bros. contract escape hatch Band-name drama: John Fogerty sued for sounding like John Fogerty Green Jellö vs. Kraft Jeffers...

The Penny Men are back at the podium for Season Two of the Wishbone Wish Off ! Tom faces the ultimate challenge: is he as well-read as a dog? From The Prince and the Pauper to Treasure Island , David & Goliath to Scandal in Bohemia , the quiz spirals into: Digressions about dogs on TV (RIP Soccer, hello Moose from Frasier ) Animal actors in Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life Lindsay Lohan’...

This week, the Penny Men crack open the PBS vault to revisit Wishbone — the little Jack Russell Terrier who crammed classic literature, sitcom subplots, and dog costumes into 20 minutes of TV magic! Ben, Gregory, and Tom put Tom to the test: Has he read the books behind Wishbone’s punny episode titles like A Tail in Twain , The Slobbery Hound , and Bone of Arc ? More importantly, can Tom guess whi...

Holy Sidekick Overload, Batman! The Penny Men are putting on the domino masks and diving headfirst into the bird’s nest of Bat-history — from the flying trapeze tragedy that started it all to Nightwing’s infamous disco collar phase, from Jason Todd’s crowbar rendezvous to Tim Drake’s world’s-most-dedicated-fanboy detective work! Along the way, we’ll meet Damian Wayne, the murdery little ninja son...

Four voices enter, one Crisis leaves! We welcome West Coast Pennyman John for his first mic battle and immediately hurl him into the deep end of DC’s wildest continuity tangle: Crisis on Infinite Earths! It’s a conversation that ricochets from manga gateway drugs to the dusty Superman stash in Dad’s basement, from the endless rabbit hole of Who’s Who trivia dumps to sudden debates about whether Ha...

Grab your tray, hold the pickles, and prepare for whiplash — we’re speed-running decades of deep-fried nostalgia and corporate fever dreams! That’s right — this is the episode where the fries are cold, the milkshake machine is broken, and the lore is piping hot! We’re hitting the gas straight into the drive-thru of your subconscious to discover: The secret McDonaldland exile list The BK Kids Club...

The 32X Anniversary Special Welcome to The Penny Men, the only podcast that starts with a Sega 32X reference and somehow ends in a heated debate over Mockingbird’s publishing history! In our 32nd episode (pure coincidence, we swear), we resurrect one of our earliest and most chaotic games: “Do You Want These Comics?”! Ben cracks open his reject bin, Tom and Gregory sift through stacks of Avengers,...

In our epic Saturday morning showdown, the hosts finally reveal their custom-built mystery-solving dream teams — and the claws, tentacles, and laser eyes come out! Four kids, one mascot, one superhero… versus three villains! This week The Penny Men draft their ultimate Meddling Kid teams using the sacred Hanna-Barbera/Ruby-Spears formula: The Hunk The Babe The Loser The Optional undesirable A Scoo...

The Penny Men gas up the Mystery Machine and take the long, winding route through the entire history of Scooby-Doo and his extended cartoon family tree! We’re talking Scooby, Scrappy, Shaggy, and the rest — but also the knockoffs and spin-offs: Jabberjaw’s undersea drum solos Speed Buggy’s vroom-vroom detective work The Funky Phantom’s Revolutionary War ghost nonsense And even that time Josie and...

We fire up part two of our time travel movie talk, and things immediately get weirder—half because of the topic, half because of us! This time we’re diving into 12 Monkeys (Brad Pitt as the patron saint of chaos) Time After Time (H.G. Wells vs. Jack the Ripper, because sure) About Time (time travel but make it romantic and British) Safety Not Guaranteed (classified ad, possible lunatic, actual hea...

Greg accidentally sings us into the episode with some questionable ’80s hits, before we reveal today’s topic: time travel movies! We don’t just dabble—we barrel through The Time Machine , Rip Van Winkle , A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court , Bill & Ted , Back to the Future , Terminator , Planet of the Apes , Timecop , Donnie Darko , Looper , Edge of Tomorrow , Hot Tub Time Machine , P...

Welcome back to The Penny Men, where we’re still lost in the Cousin Oliver Zone and the exits are blocked by secondary mascots! In Part 2 of our deep dive, we move past the classics and start unearthing the weird ones — the tagalongs, tone-shifters, and “Who asked for this?” additions that history forgot! We’re talking: Orbity, the Jetsons’ moon-puppy who brought “season three” energy to a season...

Strap in, folks — we’re heading straight into the Cousin Oliver Zone! You know the place! That strange, shimmering stretch of television history where perfectly fine shows suddenly decided, “Hey, what if we added… one more guy?” This week, Ben, Gregory, and Tom chart the strange history of characters who arrived late to the party and somehow stole the spotlight! In other words, we dig into the gre...

Welcome to The Penny Men, the only podcast that starts with one topic, spins the wheel, and ends up in five different decades of pop culture before the first ad break! Tonight’s coin flip topic? Sidekicks! …Which quickly derailed into NES nostalgia, obscure toy lines, and which jelly bean flavor turns your blob into a ketchup-hating teleport machine! We’re talking: Cousin Olivers Toy tie-ins Crazy...

Welcome to the B-side of Christmas, where the tinsel’s tangled, the canon is questionable, and the Home Alone sequels never stop coming! We start with Tolkien’s elves vs. Santa’s elves (V or no V?), detour into Dudley Moore at the North Pole, hit all six Home Alones (and their continuity crimes), and somehow end up in a cage match between The Grinch, Pee-wee Herman, and Nicolas Cage in Trapped in...