This week, Kumar and Emmet review Locke and Key, by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. There are a lot of murders in it, but is it a horror comic? They also discuss the series’ missteps in dealing with race and sexuality. Plus, in the second half of the show: Have you read this book but ended up with lots of questions? Emmet is here to help.
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Jason Lutes’ Berlin shows us scenes from the lives of many characters in Berlin as the Weimar Republic disintegrated and the Nazis rose to power. Historical events (including the fallout of World War I) affect the characters while the characters continue trying to control their own lives, or each other’s, and they cross paths in ways that are sometimes easy to miss. And the art is detailed and spellbinding. Tim and Kumar dig into this 542-page masterwork, more than twenty years in the making.
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The Incal, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’ classic ’80s series (originally published in French magazine Métal Hurlant), was very influential on movies as well as comics. In fact, it contains a number of the elements Jodorowsky had intended to put in a Dune film “adaptation” (which bore little resemblance to Frank Herbert’s novel) that never got made. Tim and Kumar discuss this insane, unconventional story.
Louie Hlad review on ComicsBeat
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Dragon Age has been a successful video game series for over a decade, and the title has moved into a number of other media — including comics, most recently from Dark Horse. Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir have written a number of these, including the current series Dragon Age: Blue Wraith. In this episode, Emmet talks to them about pitching Dragon Age ideas, watching their Academy X students get missiled out of existence, and more.
Also in this episode, Tim and Kumar appear as two oldsters reviewing a book aimed at college students who love Harry Potter, Sophie Goldstein and and Jenn Jordan’s An Embarrassment of Witches. OK, Gen Xers.
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Uzumaki is a 1998 horror manga by Junji Ito, unique in its capacity to make the reader simultaneously laugh out loud at its audacity and feel profoundly disturbed. In this episode, Kumar and Dana recount some of the more bizarre stories in this book, and answer the question, “Is it a compelling read?”
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Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods (2014) collects a number of her horror web comics. Kumar and Emmet review the book in this episode, and now they believe: a comic can be scary. And they wonder: Is the task of making a comic scary better suited to women?
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FLASHBACK! In light of the recent announcement that MAD will be ceasing publication, we re-present this episode from October 5, 2015:
While early 1950s anti-comics hysteria eventually resulted in the cancellation of nearly all their books, EC Comics still had one thing going for them: MAD! Written by Harvey Kurtzman and drawn by some of the best comics artists of the age, this parody comic set the template for much that came after it. But can the humor still be appreciated today? What are we to think of some of the attitudes on display toward, say, women or certain ethnic groups? Tim and Kumar discuss.
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One of the most acclaimed Marvel runs of the 1980s was by Walt Simonson on The Mighty Thor. He began writing and drawing it with #337, continued through to #367 (with a quick break in the middle), then gave up art duties but continued writing through #382. This run set aside Dr. Don Blake, focused on mythical threats rather than earthly ones, and injected some humor into what had sometimes been a fairly dry, dour book. Tim and Kumar look back to assess this important run.
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Chris Onstad made webcomic Achewood from 2001 to 2016, a strange, offbeat strip that may not be for everyone, but seems to be for Kumar and Dana, who have spent some time catching up with the strip. They give us their thoughts on the humor, the change in social mores since 2001 that becomes obvious when reading the early strips, the strip’s keen observations about aging and depression, and more.
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My Favorite Thing is Monsters is a horror-movie-influenced graphic novel set against the tumult of the U.S. in the 1960s. What’s stunning is that it’s the first published work for Emil Ferris, but it’s very accomplished. Kumar and Emmet review.
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