Considering how much Mulele talked up Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira back in the early days of the podcast, it’s strange that it’s taken us more than 14 years to actually discuss it here. Perhaps because the story sounded heavy and off-putting to Tim — but is that a fair assessment? On the other hand, as great as it is, is it Otomo’s best work? This week Tim, Mulele, Chris, and Oscar discuss this classic manga.
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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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A happy couple’s date is interrupted by a superhero’s fight with a purple monster. The boy is critically injured, and taken by the superhero to lab where he’ll be (painfully, of course) transformed into, presumably, another superhero. Wait, where’s the girl? And, beyond that, where’s the hook? Tim and Mulele critique Zener: Master of the Mind.
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David F. Sandberg’s 2019 movie Shazam!, starring Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, and Mark Strong, was a a break from the relentless grimness of many recent DC movies, and yet, it did have horroresque scenes. Of course, Sandberg has a lot of horror on his resume, but is there any comics precedent for horror in Shazam!? Emmet is joined once again by Shazam! expert Brian Cremins to discuss the film, and why Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson should play Captain Marvel… if he hasn’t already.
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This week, Emmet, Patrick, Tim, and Chuck Coletta talk about their favorite comics of the past decade! If you’re looking for good comics that you might have missed from the 2010s — from superhero to comedy, historical to horror — we’ll give you plenty of titles to look up!
(All titles below are linked to Amazon – to help support the show, pick up any titles you’re interested in through these links!)
EMMET
Finder: Talisman HC
Love In Vain: Robert Johnson 1911-1938, The Graphic Novel
I Love This Part: Hardcover Edition
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
Delicious in Dungeon
Gast
Giant Days
Providence
Immortal Hulk
Julio’s Day
Orc Stain Volume 1
Sally Heathcote, Suffragette
The Abaddon
The Experts
Surface Tension
Special Exits
SNARKED: Forks and Hope
Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt
Henni
PATRICK
Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga
Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics Of The 1950s
Rover Red Charlie
Dungeon Quest: Book One
The Bulletproof Coffin
My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris
Fatale
Southern Bastards
Richard Stark’s Parker
Hawkeye
Moon Knight
Madman In Your Face 3D Special
Hark! A Vagrant
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories
Providence by Alan Moore & Jacen Burrows
Rachel Rising
Afterlife with Archie
Harrow County
Frontier
TIM AND CHUCK
Gotham Academy by Becky Cloonan and Karl Kerschl
Daredevil
Scooby-Doo Team-Up
Saga
Life With Archie: The Married Life
Paper Girls
Seconds
The Superior Spider-Man
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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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In Second Coming, Mark Russell explores how Christianity has gone wrong, and that way of thinking where violence is the answer to everything. It certainly wasn’t what Jesus taught, and yet Russell’s disillusioned Jesus starts to think violence might be all there is. Will Weaver joins Tim to discuss this controversial series, and why it’s worth reading.
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In our December 25 episode, we reviewed two more comics from David Dye. While we’ve generally been very positive about his work, there was one bit that Mulele called “Racist AF” and Tim was also uncomfortable with (see below). David’s email in response to the episode made clear to us that the intent wasn’t racist… but then, what was it?
To find out, we invited David on our show, and he joins us from his home in Australia to discuss where his portrayal of space-terrorists went sideways, and to talk about his comics career so far.
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Tom Spurgeon, a comics advocate, historian, and journalist, passed away on November 13, 2019. Tom was a frequent guest on this podcast, and had a huge impact on comics in general. In this episode, Tim and Kumar discuss his effect on the comics industry and his appearances on DCP. Then, Tim talks to three people who knew him well:
New York memorial for Tom on January 24
Sequential Tart‘s interview with Tom and Dan from 2001
Tom’s appearances on our show:
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