Root and Branch is a comic that flirts with the fantasy genre, but is more concerned about a clash of cultures: a traveling elf meeting humans for the first time. This is a web comic, created by Pink Pitcher, that’s still going strong in its seventh year, and currently has a Kickstarter going. Tim and Adam critique.
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Shonen manga are known for putting their protagonists in systems that they must work their way up through in a series of competitions. In Air Gear, by Ito Ougure under the name Oh! Great, the competitions are races on gravity-defying inline skates. While this manga also includes some aspects that could be judged age-inappropriate, there is fun to be had here, too. DCP Patreon supporter Coleton joins Tim to discuss this manga, focusing on the first three volumes.
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Is Matt Canning‘s Honeymoon in the Afterlife about dying? Is it about life? Unlike some inscrutable comics we’ve discussed recently, this one isn’t frustrating; it’s intriguing, layered, and nuanced, and stands up to — no, demands — repeat readings. Tim and Ryan C. (who wrote a review of the book last fall) discuss.
The In Common review of Honeymoon
Order from Birdcage Bottom Books
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Cathy Guisewite‘s longrunning comic strip Cathy is still a topic of discussion, 11 years after it ended. While it may sometimes seem as if topics like sexual harassment and body image are new fields discovered in the last five or ten years, Cathy was bringing them up in the ’80s and ’90s.
Comedian Jamie Loftus wanted to dig in and have a discussion about this classic strip, so she started a podcast miniseries, Aack Cast, in which she talks with Cathy readers, other cartoonists, and even Guisewite herself about many of the issues raised in the strip. Emmet talks with Jamie in this episode.
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Purgatory, by Don Juan Mancha III, anubisazp, and nikokosi, is an unusual comic in that most of the character in it claim to be dead. But in most cases, it’s unclear if they really are. Or is it a way of talking about schizophrenia? Unclear. What’s the plot of this comic? Also unclear. At least, to Tim and Graeme it is. In this episode, they try to put the pieces together.
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After fifteen years of cartooning for The New Yorker, Joe Dator has a deep catalog of published work – and a pretty deep catalog of UNpublished work as well (it’s a competitive business!). So in his new book Inked: Cartoons, Confessions, Rejected Ideas and Secret Sketches from the New Yorker’s Joe Dator, Joe includes not only some of his best New Yorker work, and why he seems to get stuck on certain topics (birds, anteaters, arguably nightmarish faces made of bacon and fruit on top of a pancake) but his favorites of the work that hasn’t seen print before. Joe returns to the podcast this week to chat with Tim about the book.
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Prolific manga creator Taiyo Matsumoto’s Ping Pong is, nominally, a sports manga, but it doesn’t stick to the tropes. It presents table tennis matches that take place in a small town, not at a major tournament in Tokyo; often it doesn’t even show the end of a match! In some ways it functions as a parody of the genre. Kumar and Dana discuss this fun and unpredictable manga.
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Midnight Highway is a horror comic on which all the creators are firing on all cylinders. Well, most of them. Tim and Jason discuss the first issue of this comic by Mike Tener, Alex Maday, Dave Lentz, Alexander Malyshev, Hedwin Zaldivar, and Alex Monik!
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This week, from our archive of Patreon podcasts, Tim and Mulele discuss the movie Thor: The Dark World in another edition of “Tim Catches Up with the MCU”! It’s one of the lowest-rated MCU movies on Rotten Tomatoes. How do our opinions track with the RT users?
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Neil Gibson is back! Tim and Mulele have discussed his Twisted Dark anthology series more than once, and Koom once interviewed him for DCP at a London con. His new two-part graphic novel Theatrics, with art by Leonardo Gonzalez, is the best work we’ve seen from him to date. Tim and Adam critique.
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