George Wylesol’s 2120 is a choose-your-own-adventure horror graphic novel that blocks your progress and punishes the reader for cheating. Kumar and Emmet found it disturbing and fascinating. This week, they present their review.
Wylesol interview from The Migratory
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Patrick Ijima-Washburn (a.k.a. “Patrick W.”) has been doing some deep research on certain themes used in manga. Last year, he told us about scary cats in manga; this time it’s (mostly scary) mermaids — or, to be gender neutral, “merfolk.” Thinking it would be a topic easily covered, he was soon caught in a tsunami of manga fish-people, from adaptations of “The Little Mermaid,” to creepy human-like creatures that live in the water, Creature of the Black Lagoon style. He shares his findings here, focusing on merfolk in the works of (clockwise from left) Kazuo Umezu, Rumiko Takahashi, and Osamu Tezuka.
Patrick’s video about mermaids in manga
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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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Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft understood that it was more upsetting to let the reader imagine the horrific thing, than to actually show it. So, can one really do Lovecraft in comics effectively?
In volume 1 of his comics adaptation of Lovecraft’s H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness Volume 1 (Manga)
Plugs
Kumar’s novel: Tanuja Ramachandran: Hunter-Seeker
Emmet’s short comics story: Something Wicked 2019
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In this episode, Tim and Mulele discuss these comics, submitted by their creators:
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Old Man of the Mountain issue 1, by Tom Rapka and Ariez Hernandez, includes an execution-style murder and three teens getting brutally, graphically cut to pieces. And yet, somehow it feels like it’s not meant to be a horror series. What is this comic trying to do?
That question goes double for On Syntaphore, by Lion’s Lips, because, while the art is attractive, the story is hard to discern — and even the reason for that isn’t quite clear.
Tim and Mulele discuss both, and also some listener mail, and Mulele’s upcoming trip to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival!
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FLASHBACK! A creepy, rainy night. Mysterious red scars appearing on animals and people. Vicious wild pigs roam the streets. Justin Randall’s “Changing Ways” Book 1, published by Gestalt, reviewed by Tim and Brandon. |
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Heroic: A Womanthology, an anthology of comics created by women (some famous, others not yet) is currently in development and expected later this year from IDW. Tim talks to Athens-based participant Eugenia Koumaki, and IDW editor Mariah Huehner, about the background of and expectations for this project.
This episode was originally published August 1, 2011. |
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Critiquing Comics retur
ns! Along with it, the work of Guy LeMay (“Z-Blade XX”) also returns, as he gives us a look at his more recent work. Listen to find out how Tim and Mulele evaluate “War Within” (written by Marcus Jones) and “Zombie Headhunter” (written by Guy and Tamey LeMay), both released under Guy’s Strong Guy Comics imprint!
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A society infested and defined by smokelike spirits, and high school factionalized by the issue, make up L.S. Zwarenstein’s “Geist”. Tim and Mulele critique.
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