Zero Issues Comic Podcast

The New Year has arrived, and it may already be doomed, but there are still comics, movies, and shows we can enjoy as the world burns around us! Superman and Spider-Man cross over for the third time, care of Mark Waid, Jorge Jimenez, and many other friends! Jimmy Olsen meets Carnage! And the classic ’70s crossovers are getting new facsimile reprints to complete the collection! “Ultimat...

 So, what did we learn this year? More importantly, what do we read? Merk finally learns what happens to the Justice League re: Despero in a 40-year old comic, Kyle learns the he likes his reimagined universes to be finite, damnit, and Bry learns about sweet monkey love. Context within the episode! Direct Download: MP3

 Happy Holidays, ya filthy animals! It’s Christmas Eve and we’ve got a short, but fun dramatic reading for your holidays! “Santa will feed you to his reindeer”. That is straight from this Dell Comic from 1948. Nimble ‘Nick’ Needle, Santa’s tailor, who he threatens to kill, is up to no good this year. Santa puts up with it only as long as he can …....

 Comic book movies are dead! Now what? This week, we talk about how we got here, what comes next, and what are we worried that we’re going to miss out on. How elegantly can we glue comic books onto other hot genres (elevated horror, anybody)? Are we getting into the deconstruction era already? Are we seeing the real-ass return of practical effects, or smaller theatres, or giving up and st...

 CALVIN & HOBBES. Yea, that’s probably all we need to say right? The amazing strip by Bill Watterson that ran for only a decade but changed the face of comics and comic strips is STILL revered to this day. And we’re gonna talk the $%#& out of it. It’s philosophical origins, the newspaper strip business, Watterson’s fights with the syndicate (not the mob), contempor...

It’s episode number 501, so you know what that means: AN ALL JEANS EPISODE! The result is a 40-minute trip into madness that’s at least tangentially connected to denim. We begin with a look back at the famous and/or infamous button-fly Levi’s jeans commercial featuring Rob Liefeld and directed by Spike Lee, a real thing that happened. We debate button-fly vs. zipper, compare our...

 500 episodes! Like, 500 complete episodes. Way more than Seinfeld has, I’m pretty sure. For this centennial celebration, this time? We’re just gonna sort of take it easy, with a chill-as-heck lava lamp of an episode, which are the kind of episodes that I think we like to do, now that we’ve discovered that after over a decade of getting together and recording, we’re actual...

 It’s time for the FIFTH installment of the CELERY STALK SLAM!! That time between Halloween & Christmas, where we choose characters from each to square off…. and battle to end! Which holiday wins? Which characters will we pick this year? Pumpkins might be involved. Maybe even a Frankenstein inspired comic character. Maybe a Skeletor lookalike.  Some undead. And…. some guy&#8...

CONTENT WARNING: This episodes includes a discussion on human trafficking, which some may find upsetting or triggering. This topic begins at 13 minutes into the episode. This week we interview a man who should need no introduction: TYLER MANE! From Saskatooner to globe-trotting professional wrestler to movie and television actor to comic creator, our guest has done it all! We dig into his wild and...

In 1982, a young Wes Craven set out to make the ultimate horror character. He failed, and made a Swamp Thing movie, instead! To wrap up this year’s HowLenWein festivities, this week, we sit down and watch this thing. Do we watch the unrated version? Not all of us! And some of us are steamed about that. Mostly Kyle, because he watched it on YouTube like a chuuuuuuuuuump. Direct Download: MP3

Howl-Len-Wein, our October celebration of all things Len Wein, continues with an ALL-WEIN LIGHTNING ROUND! Merk tests Kyle and Bry at three rounds of LEN WEIN TRIVIA, in which the Wein-owledge of both quizboys and quizmaster is tested! Mega-Producer Kyle has a list of Len Wein-created characters for us to cast in the movies, from Brother Voodoo to Krakoa to Jigsaw! Bry takes his opportunity to dis...

 We continue HOWL-LEN-WEIN with dramatic read from one of Len Wein’s weirdest comics, Batman: A word to the wise, a one shot Batman comic that takes place in it’s entirety in Canada, really pushing literacy  and has STRONG and STRANGE ties to Zellers! Yes. Zellers. The Joker is on the hunt for a rare geography book and travels from nearly coast to coast to find it, unknowingly getting...

Happy HowLenWein, everyone! For this indeterminate amount of time (there may be a slight dip in the middle, not unlike a fancy ballroom dance), we are covering all things Len Wein. This week, we start it off by really talking about the man himself: a writer and editor of many comics for the Big Two, the co-creator of Swamp Thing, Wolverine, and about a hundred more characters that you’ve pro...

Health and technical malfunctions abound this week, so we’re digging out a classic episode from the extensive Zero Archives for you to enjoy… today! The Spooky Month continues, and this week it’s our spookiest trick yet – fixing a character! Namely, good ol’ living vampire Michael “Morbius” Morbius! Now Morbius is a perfectly fine science vampire, but for some reason we just can’t sink...

This week was supposed to be a Lightning Round, but we had so much fun playing a couple of games that we decided to just make that the episode. Yeah, Two Games!! This is a fun one, so we hope you enjoy! GAME ONE: It’s another round of games based around Merk’s collection of Impel 1991 Marvel Universe trading cards! In the game we’re apparently still calling “Battle Holes&#8...

 Could someone be a REAL Batman? Would they? How? Why? Do you think a billionaire has already dressed up and played Batman on their sprawling estate somewhere? Do you think Mark Zuckerberg has made Zuckerangs? Or would a Budget Batman be more likely? We get serious about this, folks. Except for when we’re recording a podcast. All that AND a comic book movie actors quiz! Put us in your ears...

AI is coming for all of the coolest, most creative jobs. For a lot of folks, it’s already here, and that includes people working in the comic industry. This week, we try to take AI seriously, and discuss just what is going on in the industry with AI use in comics. Everything from the response of comic cons to the artists who use it (and have a variety of responses to being called out for it)...

Hey folks, we are taking a week off due to scheduling/plague-related issues. But! Wait! Where are you going?! We have a Classic Zero Issues to make up for it, because we hate the idea of anyone being without us for any length of time. This time, it’s Episode 273: Kraven the Deli Owner, from January of 2021! Here’s the original post: QUITTERS!! The lot of ’em!!! That’s what superheroes...

We’re talkin’ comics ’bout real people! Whether they be classy graphic novel biographies, tacky celebrity cash-in issues, wacky cameo appearances, bizarre “parody” comics from the ’80s, and almost too much more. We dig into graphic novel biographies about André the Giant, Harry Houdini, and uh… Hitler (don’t worry, it sure ain’t complimentary!)...

 Ka-zar! Y’know… Ka-zar! That Marvel Tarzan guy from the Savage Land? We’re fixin’ him this week! Each of us takes a stab at pitching a story or approach to take him from a B or C lister to an A lister! Cannibalism may occur. And there’s dinosaurs. Plus we talk about that goofball, Dean Cain. It’s super…. weird. Direct Download: MP3

We sincerely hope you’ve brought your popsicles this week, because it’s about to get scalding hot in the sun chamber! It’s August Audness, which means we’ve picked a bunch of comic book characters, and are making them fight for our collective amusement. This go around, they’ve all got heat-and-light-and-whatnot powers, in order to answer the question that Andre 3000 w...

It’s official: The X-Men are coming to the MCU, and they’re looking at a young cast to kick things off! And that means it’s time for a ZERO ISSUES CASTING CALL! (which used to be a thing in Wizard Magazine, but that was cancelled years ago, so tough rocks!) We’ve got a list of 22 prospective cinematic mutants and we all have an actor and/or actress or two chosen for each ro...

 It’s FANTASTIQUE FOUR – ZEE BABY’S FIRST STEPS! Film Reactions! Spoilers! Twilight! Rodney Dangerfield! Spinning Restaurants! Jive Bunny & the Master Mixers! Everything you expect from us and less! Direct Download: MP3

 It’s LAVA LAMP episode time! Which means…. the boys just talk about a bunch of different things. A meandering episode where they discuss things like the Toxic Avenger teaming up with Jesus Christ, or whether they can recall a superhero flying economy at any point? Other topics that come up?…. -Julian McMahon Dr Doom -Ranking all the Batmobiles -What’s your Mount Rushmo...

Superman is out, and we have seen it, so now we spoil it in an episode-long review/debate! Some of use loved it, some of us opposite-of-loved it, some of us are undecided and need to watch a video essay so that we can make that our opinion of the movie. Come, won’t you, to listen to three nerds argue about a comic book movie? At the end of the day, at least, there’s one thing that we c...