Warren Ellis’ Black Summer, No Hero, and Supergod are three separate stories, but if you put them together you’ve kinda got all the elements of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. But was Ellis really writing these books in response to Marvel’s Civil War? Kumar and newcomer Jordan evaluate all three books.
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Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke is a favorite of many, but also a tough read more many others. And perhaps there’s some overlap.
In this episode we meet two who both spoke on this book at recent Batman in Popular Culture conference in Bowling Green, Ohio:
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A man is being stalked by a child who wants to kill him. Who is the child? Or perhaps the question is, what does the child symbolize? Could this book be an autobiography in disguise? Koom and Mike discuss Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate’s underappreciated 1991 work A Small Killing— as well as Moore’s prose novel Jerusalem and simply the nature of Alan Moore.
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After, well, a slight delay, Deconstructing Comics continues its look at Alan Moore’s 1980s run on Swamp Thing— a run in which the title character met werewolves and vampires (as Moore and co. found a new way to use these old tropes), as well as new character John Constantine. Moore was aided by artists Stephen Bissette, John Totleben, and Alfredo Acala, among others. Koom and newcomer Darrell Epp discuss.
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A few months back, Kumar and Emmet discussed Alan Moore and JH Williams‘ Promethea on the show, which led to a Twitter contact with Williams. In this episode, Emmet talks with Williams about the process of making Promethea with Moore in the early 2000s and the definition of “the end of the world”, as well as getting Williams’ thoughts on how DC has brought back the Promethea character.
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Strap in for one of the wildest stories in comics – on the creator and publisher side of things! Miracleman, originally known as Marvelman, has been through two hiatuses of 20+ years each and a battle over rights to the character, plus the previously-mentioned name change. And that’s not to mention the dark, dark turn his fictional world took when Alan Moore got ahold of it. Now new stories from Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham still lie ahead. Kumar and Koom try to piece it all together.
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In town for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, comics power couple Eddie Campbell and Audrey Niffenegger talk to Koom in this episode about their new collaboration, called Bizarre Romance. We also get some tidbits about Audrey’s work on the sequel to her novel The Time Traveler’s Wife, and Eddie talks about coloring From Hell and his recent book The Goat-Getters.
More from TCAF this Thursday!
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While Alan Moore and J.H. Williams’ Promethea, published from 1999 to 2005, is not one of Moore’s most remembered works, it’s not because the author wasn’t at the top of his game. Kumar and Emmet find it to be entrancing, even if you don’t buy into the various magical and spiritual elements that Moore built into it.
Also, inevitably, the incorporation of Promethea and other Moore creations into the DC Universe comes up; is it really just a business decision, or is the publisher singling out Moore’s work out of spite?
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This week we wrap up both Tim’s visit to Heliscope Studio in Portland, and the whole three-month string of episodes from Tim’s trip around the US this past summer.
We’ll hear from Fred Chao about the double-edged sword of living in New York and how it informed his book Johnny Hiro: Half Asian, All Hero
Then, veteran comics artist Ron Randall on the right and wrong ways to use photo reference, his experience pencilling from an Alan Moore Swamp Thing script; his creator-owned project from the ‘80s, Trekker, and why he’s reviving it now; attending the nerd Mardi Gras; and why we’re living in a golden age of comics!
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For the past several decades there have been a lot of comics, movies, and other fiction involving “bad futures”, with lots of poverty, violence, environmental destruction, and the like. Why has this genre been so appealing to so many?
In this episode, Emmet O’Cuana talks with Mark Hobby about why this genre endures and how Mark has approached it in his own comic, Job Dun: Fat Assassin. They also discuss why British writers have led the pack on bad future stories, how Watchmen and the X-Men fit into the discussion, why sex in media seems to upset some people more than violence, and more.
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