Storied Arcs

Send us Fan Mail "Show me an idea that's not a little bit dangerous, and I'll show you a bad idea." Welcome to Part 1 of our discussion of Breathers from cartoonist Justin Madson! In the first part of this extra-long deep dive, Mike and Alex start by taking a look at Madson's storytelling approach and style, touching on the short story cycle-ness of the mini-stories presen...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to another season of Storied Arc! For this installment, Mike and Alex are going about as indie comic as they can get as they get ready to discuss Breathers by Justin Madson. They guys get you familiar with cartoonist Justin Madson, someone they understand is probably not that well known, if at all, by most comic readers, even the most dedicated ones, as well as some of his...

Send us Fan Mail In a special bonus episode, Mike and Alex jump back one season and revisit their discussion of Eat The Rich and Know Your Station because they had the privilege of chatting with the writer and co-creator of those comics, Sarah Gailey! They start as usual with Sarah's introduction to comics and discuss how they made the move from writing prose to writing comics and what the tr...

Send us Fan Mail "And if I learned anything from Damian Lake's betrayal, it's that every move I make from now on has to be two moves. So I'm not just sneaking back to the U.S.; I'm lighting a signal fire." The adventures of Velvet Templeton come to a close in Velvet Volume 2 The Man Who Stole The World (issues #11-15) and Mike and Alex are here to wrap up the series....

Send us Fan Mail "All these weeks on the run, I've just been angry ... self-righteous. And it's so stupid... I know... but I'd actually forgotten to be afraid." Mike and Alex are back on the hunt for the most dangerous woman in the world as they jump into Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Velvet Volume 2 The Secret Lives of Dead Men (issues #6-10). They start by examinin...

Send us Fan Mail "A group of highly-trained spies and killers. And she'd played each of us... with ease. That was when I realized just how dangerous Velvet Templeton actually was." Welcome to another season of Storied Arcs! Mike and Alex are here to plunge head first into the world of espionage and intrigue as they break down Velvet Volume 1 Before the Living End (issues #1-5) by Ed...

Send us Fan Mail For the next season of Storied Arcs, Mike and Alex are once again revisiting the work of one of their favorite creators. This time, it's writer Ed Brubaker as the guys get ready break down Velvet, the noir spy thriller from Image Comics by Brubaker and comics legend Steve Epting. First, they give an intro to the book and tease a little bit about why they wanted to discuss it...

Send us Fan Mail This week, Mike and Alex are pleased to be joined by artist and illustrator Liana Kangas to chat about their work on Know Your Station and all manner of other things! They start with Liana's origins as an artist and learn how they went from selling comics in an LCS to making them. Then they move to Know Your Station, touching on how they got involved in the book in the first...

Send us Fan Mail "They controlled every aspect of our lived on Earth... and they used that power to make it so being up here, waiting on them hand and foot, was the best future we could reach for. We're not people to them. We're punching bags, scapegoats, and test subjects. We're disposable." Mike and Alex are back and ready to dive right into Boom Studios' Know Your...

Send us Fan Mail "Ever since that first day, I keep trying to be the right kind of girl so you'll approve of me. But I'm not the right kind of girl , am I?" How does the saying go again- when the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich? Seems like a more than appropriate title for Mike and Alex's next discussion, Eat The Rich (issues #1-5) by Sarah Ga...

Send us Fan Mail New year, new season of the Storied Arcs podcast! And to kick things off, Mike and Alex will be covering two books by the same writer, the Hugo Award winning and up-and-coming comic star Sarah Gailey- Eat The Rich (with artist Pius Bak) and Know Your Station (with artist Liana Kangas), both published by Boom Studios. The guys talk about what drew them to these books, another set o...

Send us Fan Mail We've reached the end of another calendar year and once again, Mike and Alex have come up one week short on stories to talk about. But fear not! Earlier this month, Mike, Alex, and great friend of the show Andy took a quick road trip up Interstate 71 to attend GalaxyCon Columbus 2023 and decided that was a perfect opportunity to record a podcast episode. In the car. So with A...

Send us Fan Mail "-I mean, after everything you have seen, it is so hard to believe there may be a design to the universe? -A design? All I see is chaos and death." We've reached the conclusion of Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen's space epic, and Mike and Alex are here to break it all down as they jump into Ascender Volumes 3 and 4, The Digital Mage and Star Seed (issues #11-18)....

Send us Fan Mail "There is no magic in the galaxy that I do not oversee. No power I do not control. I am Mother and the universe is mine ." The cover may say "Ascender" but these collections might as well just be Descender Volumes 7 and 8, and Mike and Alex are here to break it all down, starting with Ascender Volumes 1 and 2, The Haunted Galaxy and The Dead Sea (issues #1-10)....

Send us Fan Mail "But  do you know the irony of that, Doctor? Robots never lied before you created the Tim series... before you gave robotkind the upgrades that made us more human and more like you ." In this finale that's not really a finale, Mike and Alex are here to discuss the last chapters of Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen's Descender in Volumes 5 and 6, Rise of the Robots...

Send us Fan Mail "What does it look like, Creator ? I'm doing that you programmed me to do. I'm eliminating waste... just like a human. " Mike and Alex are here to jump right back into Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen's Descender as they dive deep into Volumes 3 and 4, Singularities and Orbital Mechanics. The guys debate and discuss the choice Lemire and Nguyen made with Volu...

Send us Fan Mail "Because they fear us, Tim-21. Because they were hurt and they wanted to hurt something back. Because they are human." We've arrived at a brand new season of Storied Arcs and Mike and Alex are diving right into Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen's space opera epic Descender Volumes 1 and 2, Tin Stars and Machine Moon (issues #1-11). The guys discuss how this book to...

Send us Fan Mail For the next season of Storied Arcs, Mike and Alex are revisiting the works of Jeff Lemire (aka Mike's literal favorite creator in comics) as they plan to dive head first into a pair of books by Lemire and superstar artist Dustin Nguyen, Descender and Ascender from Image Comics! The guys give a quick tease of this epic, two-part space opera and give you some insight on why lo...

Send us Fan Mail "And what if I could make it so race would never be a part of the equation again? That the way the world views us would never rely on how much melanin our ancestors needed to protect themselves from the sun? I could make us all the same. I could make us better." The final installment of the James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan's Apocalyptic Trilogy, Eugenic (issues #1-3...

Send us Fan Mail "You were always selfish. You rallied us together to stop him all those years ago because you were afraid of losing one life you treasured more than the whole. You convinced us that life was all about those little glories. The little loves. And we believed you . And here, you've done it again." The end of the world, take two! Humanity meets its demise yet again as M...

Send us Fan Mail "So the fate of the world rests in the hands of the maniac who decided to end it with a weird picture of a sloth." Storied Arcs is back with another great season as Mike and Alex get ready to talk about the end of the world three times over. First up is part one of James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan's Apocalyptic Trilogy from Boom Studios, Memetic (issues #1-3). The g...

Send us Fan Mail "No matter where we hide, we die. But, even if they know they will die... even if they know they will die no matter what they do, they do not abandon hope. That's what it means to be a human." At last, we have arrived at the epic conclusion of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto and of the Storied Arcs/Tankobon Podcast crossover event! Mike, Alex, and Cole are here one last...

Send us Fan Mail For the next season of Storied Arcs, Mike and Alex invite you to join them at the end of the world as they get ready to dive into the Apocalyptic Trilogy, a spiritual and thematic trilogy of comics from Boom Studios by James Tynion IV and Eryk Donovan consisting of the books Memetic, Cognetic, and Eugenic. As usual with these zero episodes, the guys will give a preview of the comi...

Send us Fan Mail "If the stronger man wins, someone even stronger will just take him out. That's all there is to it." The Storied Arcs/Tankobon Podcast crossover continues! In this penultimate episode, Mike, Alex, and Cole examine Pluto Volumes 5 and 6 (chapters 32-47) and discuss how Naoki Urasawa is able to masterfully juggle a murder mystery detective story-turned-global conspira...

Send us Fan Mail This week, Mike and Alex sit down and chat with the creator of Plume, K. Lynn Smith! They discuss her artistic and storytelling influences and look back at her origins posting her first work to the webcomic community. Then they dive into Plume, looking at why the Western genre was an appealing setting for her. They also examine how the immediate feedback from readers as the comic...