Comics commentary from our podcast regulars.
If you’re looking for over-the-top — way, way over — action and violence, then Fist of the North Star, by Buronson and Tetsuo Hara, is the comic for you! Kumar and Jordan breathlessly recount their experience reading the comic, which — despite the ridiculousness of the story — is done sincerely, not cynically.
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This week, a Critiquing Comics double feature:
During the U.S. Civil War, a confederate soldier is changed into a dangerous creature by a mysterious woman. His comrade, now a marshal, tracks him after the war as he takes more innocent victims. But is everything as it appears? Tim and Jason enjoy the twist in Rougarou, by Giles Clark and Jose Rondon.
Our second entry takes us further back in history, to 1790, when poet-painter William Blake claims to have met a horrific lizardlike creature, the Ghost of a Flea. GE Gallas’ The Poet and the Flea presents a take on Blake’s work and experiences. Emmet joins Tim to school all of us in Blake. What kind of image does it give us of Blake, and is it accurate? And, is this comic of interest to non-Blake fans?
Everyone is Tulip got an Eisner nomination! Hear our review and creator interview here.
Noel Fielding: Ghost of a Flea’s birthday song
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David Lapham’s Stray Bullets “humanist crime” series began in 1995 and shows a number of characters interacting between the 1970s and 1990s, with the stories told nonsequentially. Kumar and Matt dodge the bullets to turn in this review.
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Crisis on Infinite Earths was an attempt by Marv Wolfman and George Perez to clean up DC Comics continuity and make the publisher’s line more reader-friendly. The story showed the Anti-Monitor trying to eliminate all of the many versions of Earth that had appeared in DC stories, and the few surviving Earths ended up merged into one. Numerous characters didn’t make it through the story alive; characters whose original, defunct publishers had been absorbed by DC now found themselves to be native to Earth-1. Tim, on a drive to understand more about the DC Comics he passed by in his youth, is joined by longtime DC reader Professor Alan to look at why this event happened, why it still matters, and what it reveals about the difference between DC and Marvel.
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This time, Jason introduces us to his former student Dan Tappan‘s first Kickstarter project, a nautical horror anthology with the appropriately horrifying title A Lungful of Brine. Tim joins him for a review.
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Strangehaven is a series started by Gary Spencer Millidge in 1995. As he does everything himself (including publishing, for the first 18 issues), it has come out on an irregular schedule, but the content has been compelling. Kumar talks with him about how far he might be from completing the series, his process, his life-Strangehaven balance, and more.
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A man in Portland, Oregon, finds himself turning into some kind of neck-biting monster (a blue vampire who doesn’t mind sunlight?), but he can’t remember anything about who he is. What’s causing this? Past drug use? Psychiatric issues? Tim and Jason discuss Tatu Heikkinen‘s Scion of Night #1: “The City of Roses.”
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Jack Kirby’s final Fourth World story is the 1984 graphic novel The Hunger Dogs, which continues some of the themes we saw in Even Gods Must Die, such as the encroachment of technology. Tim and Emmet complete their reading of the Fourth World and ponder how aware George Lucas may have been of the New Gods.
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One of our favorite indie creators has long been Amsterdam-based Chad Bilyeu, who’s back with the start of a new series, The Re-Up. Chad tends to deal in nonfiction and memoir, and this time is no different: he reminisces here about the time he took over a marijuana retail business in Washington, DC. Of course, a new book from Chad brings Mulele temporarily out of podcast retirement, and he joins Tim this time to discuss Chad’s new offering.
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Longtime web cartoonist Don Ahé has asked us to look at his new story Bran Bionic: The Sable Peril, about a boy with some bionic body parts who’s stranded on an island. Tim and Adam looked around on the rest of his site and found both gag-a-day and serialized work in his Road Apples Almanac strip, and some nice art and good comic timing.
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