Quarantined Comics

This week we are reading 1983's RONIN by comics superstar Frank Miller and longtime colorist and collaborator Lynn Varley. This 6 issue mini-series was ground-breaking in many ways, as Miller, and then relative newecomer and rockstar hot off the heels of Daredevil, was recruited by DC to do...pretty much whatever he wanted - paving the way for creator-centric works like the Dark Knight Returns...

They're the world's most fearsome fighting team Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles They're heroes in the half-shell and they're green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles When the evil Shredder attacks These Turtle boys cut off his effin head. They also shoot the shit out of everybody. This week, we welcome back friend of the pod Penn Genthner to talk about our childhoods. By which we mean, of c...

Words cannot even describe the moment that we're living through. Russia invaded Ukraine, impacting millions. Day by day, the situation continues to get worse, because there are no winners in war. Please do your part for the Ukrainian people and donate to ANY / ALL of the following SupportUkraineNow.org // novaukraine.org // razomforukraine.org // wck.org (World Central Kitchen) // globalgiving...

This week, we invite back friend of the pod and Bat-fanatic Paresh to share his thoughts on "The Batman." This latest movie adds an article to the title and subtracts all sunlight from the world. Director Matt Reeves' version of the Dark Knight detective is failing in his mission to rescue Gotham City from itself. If Tim Burton's Batman was grim and Christopher Nolan's was gr...

Sex, clubbing, unionization, and street fights. All part of the life of a 50-something woman in South Korea struggling to find meaning in the latter half of her life. "Moms" was inspired by creator Ma Yeong-shin's own mother. Soon after moving out, the cartoonist Ma was surprised by how exhausting maintaining a household could be. He asked his mother to jot down details about her own...

Our journey to China continues...this time, for the kid...friendly? Namely 2 kids comics: "My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder" by Nie Jun, and "Little White Duck: a Childhood in China" by Na Liu and her husband Andrés Vera Martínez. Both books weave tales of a childhood in China. One idyllic and magical, and one full of innocently lived, yet harsh realities. "My B...

In "Night Bus," Zuo Ma is dreaming of the past and invites us along for the ride. Just as Chris Reynold's "The New World" was a surrealist romp through the English countryside, "Night Bus" presents an alternate reality version of China. Though don't take it too literally. "Night Bus" is deeply personal, and though the narrative tends to warp and bend...

This week, in honor of the Chinese New Year (恭喜發財) we revisit favorite cartoonist Gene Luen Yang for his 2013 two-volume epic BOXERS & SAINTS - which tells the story of the late 19th Century Boxer Rebellion, from two sides, injecting magical realism injected into the complexity of historical events. It's got everything - bald dudes with pony tails swinging ancient Chinese swords channe...

Raman & guest-host Ryan have a chat with award-winning comics creator JEN WANG on Raman's other podcast Modern Minorities (modmypod.com) - where each week we have conversations on race and gender, through the eyes of our guests from all sorts of backgrounds . Jen Wang's works include “Stargazing,” “The Prince & the Dressmaker”, “In Real Life” and “Koko Be Good”. Her books are not-q...

This week, we dig into the first three episodes of Vagabond, by the legendary manga creator Takehiko Inoue. Admittedly, that's not a whole lot of Vagabond considering the epic is currently at 37 volumes... and counting. Vagabond has been on hiatus since 2015. We'll talk about what we feel works and what doesn't, as well as the incredible fluidity with which manga artists tell a story,...

In honor of MLK day, we're reading KING - Ho Che Anderson's critically acclaimed unauthorized graphic biography of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. But we ALSO decided to read GODHEAD, another book by Anderson, which tells a near future capitalist tale that juxtaposes the white corporate and black urban experience against a sci-fi backdrop of...finding God? Ho Che Anderson is a London Bo...

Hello. Happy New Year. This year, we resolve to exercise more so we can outrun our greasy, sodium-packed diets. Fortunately, we've got Alison Bechdel's guidance with her 2021 graphic memoir (Which you probably saw on everyone's best-of lists) "The Secret to Superhuman Strength." "The Secret to Superhuman Strength" though is more than just Bechdel's "exercis...

Put on your tuxedo and and get ready for some snark and spoilers! To close the year out we decided to recap ALL of the comic book movies + TV shows we coped with in 2021...basically the blatant cash grab that was every major DC + Marvel property we risked life-and-lung for: WW84 Black Widow Justice League: The Snyder Cut Falcon & Winter Soldier WandaVision Loki What If? THE Suicide Squad Shang...

While the 1970s stop motion classic "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" answered some questions about Santa's origin, it left so much unsaid. For instance: How did Santa get the idea to send gifts to children down chimneys? Where did his hearty "Ho Ho Ho" come from? How did he get his magic sleigh? And the magic white wolves to pull it? How did he help quell the civil war o...

The EXPLOSIVE finale of our epic read-through of ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley. I don't know about you, dear listener, but our brains feel all webbed up by this excessive spider-exposure. Still, Ultimate Spider-Man is a tremendous achievement — an 11-year run on a beloved character with a distinct beginning, middle, and end. In the second half of Ultimate Spider-M...

In this episode, we'll look at Charles Burns' seminal graphic novel Black Hole, a haunting and creepy graphic novel about loneliness, longing, and body horror. The 12 issue series began in 1995 and concluded ten years later, and is about a group of teenagers afflicted with a veneral disease that creates awful bodily mutations, forcing them out of society. While it's impossible to overl...

Since Ryan's still MIA, and the new HAWKEYE TV show just dropped on Disney+, we thought we'd revisit an oldie but a goodie - our 2020 episode covering Matt Fraction & David Aha's HAWKEYE run from 2015 is a fun - often funny - character-driven romp, with beautiful, minimalist sepia art - and features more than just a LOT of Eastern European gangsters saying BRO. It features not one,...

This week, we are reading Grafity's Wall, the 2018 graphic novel written by acclaimed creator Ram V, illustrated by Anand Radhakrishnan and colored by Aditya Bidikar. The book follows the follies of aspiring street artist Suresh, aka Grafity... as he watches the transformation of his Mumbai tenements, alongside his hustle-and-flowing pal Jay, portly writer/waiter Chasma, and aspiring actress S...

Shintaro Kago comes from a school of manga creation that revels in the absurd and the grotesque, combining elements of body horror, erotica, and a whole bunch of genre elements into an unholy pastiche the likes of which you've probably never consumed before. His comic series Dementia 21 follows the adventures of plucky young healthcare aid Yuki Sakai as she services one elderly patient after t...

The mythos of HP Lovecraft, with his tentacled elder gods driving men to madness, has a rarified place in modern day horror. In this week's episode, we're going to look at an adaptation of Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness by Eisner-nominated creator Gou Tanabe. While a lot of horror is Lovecraft-influenced however, how do his actual stories hold up in a modern context?

This week, we dig into Denis Villeneuve's DUNE, the latest film adaption of Frank Herbert's steamy rom com. Like it's 80s predecessor by David Lynch and Sting, this new film spectacle is taking the world by storm! Timothy Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, a down on his luck dreamy man-Prince who's parents - played by the hilarious duo of Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson - decide to...

This week we are reading IN WAVES, by AJ Dungo. An equally informative and heartbreaking sober work of a young man's love, along with a history lesson. This book is NOT just about the history of surfing, tracing the tales of Duke Kahanamoku and Thomas Blake,...it's also a heartfelt recollection of young love and loss, as the author recounts his time with his girlfriend Kristen, who succumb...

As a high schooler, the cartoonist Derf Backderf was part of a fan club that formed around one of his more eccentric friends: Jeffrey Dahmer, who eventually grew up to be one of America's most infamous serial killers. In "My Friend Dahmer," Backderf recounts what it was like growing up with Dahmer in that particular milieu, and tries to unravel the sequence of events that made Dahmer...

はるか昔、はるか遠くの銀河で... (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...) These ARE droids you're looking for my dear Padawans! This week we're veering BACK veering off course - this time to a galaxy far far away for STAR WARS VISIONS - the new Disney+ series of nine anime shorts where the Japanese have their way with some sweet sweet Lucasfilm IP. Featuring fanime tropes like extreme...

A man returns home to his empty childhood home and calls an old friend. A woman gets an office job. A boy is inspired by his mother's old friend. The stories of Chris Reynolds seem steeped in the mundane... and then they go way off the rails, hinting at such strange phenomena as time travel, a secret cult, and alien invasions. But his stories just hint at such extraordinary activities. If you&...