Comic Book Bears Podcast

The final Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode of the year finds us providing our picks for the best of comics for 2025! Hit play and discover what each of the CBB boys - Caleb, Bill Z and Steve - selected for our favorites in a number of categories: Best Series, Best Single Issue, Best Graphic Novel, Best Writer and Best Artist! We also chime in on what our other favorites were for 2025 in music, film, television, Happy Meals toy promotions (!), video games and more! Thank you again for your continued support for our podcast throughout 2025 and we look forward to joining you again soon in 2026!!! Hoping that you all had an awesome holiday season and wishing you all safety and success in ringing in the new year!!

Join us for the penultimate audio episode of the Comic Book Bears Podcast for 2025! Unfortunately Caleb was unable to join us so in his seat we welcome back to the show longtime friend Jon Runyan of Comics By Night and A Comic Book Look! Listen in as Steve, Billy Z and Jon roundtable a bunch of recent comics including Strange Tales (Marvel), Nightwing Annual 2025 (DC), Matt Kindt's Space Scouts (Dark Horse), Doomed 2099 (Marvel), the Over Easy graphic novel from Mimi Pond (Drawn and Quarterly) and the dollar bin discovery of Nocturnal Emissions by Fiona Smyth from 1991. All this plus our Woofs of the Week and Geek Gets segments and some speculation about a Marvel Comics reboot potentially being on the horizon.

One more new Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode for November! Recorded on a livestream before Thanksgiving 2025 but hitting your ear buds after, Bill Z, Steve and Caleb discuss some of the comics they were thankful to have read recently - the origin expanding Mr. Terrific: Year One (DC), the spicy sci-fi romance of Maria Llovet's Artificial (Image), the action packed Skinbreaker from Robert Kirkman and David Finch (Image), the kick-off of a mini-series based on TV's Gargoyles mini-series focused on Demona (Dynamite), the tarot inspired fantasy of Arcana: The Lost Heirs graphic novel (Feiwel and Friends) and the first issue Mark Russell's new sci-fi horror anthology series Terrorbytes (Mad Cave!!!) GOBBLE GOBBLE!!!

Time for another Comic Book Bears audio episode from one of our recent livestreams! And this time Steve, Caleb and Billy Z have a whole bunch of cool books in this comic roundtable! And it kicks off with Deadpool/Batman #1, the first new Marvel/DC crossover in 21 years! We have more Marvel books on the docket with Avengers #s 29 and 30 as well as the premiere issue of Amazing Spider-Man: Torn #1! DC is also represented with the return of Gotham Academy! Lastly, we chat about the collected edition of Oni's Out of Alcatraz and the western themed Outlaw Showdown from the relaunched EC Comics line! We hope you had a great Thanksgiving and hope you give this a listen after your Tryptophan injection!!

We are almost at Halloween and the CBB boys are back with another new audio episode! Since the last episode was horror themed, we opted to travel down our familiar round table route for this one. Join us to hear Caleb, Bill Z and Steve talk about a host of new comics! Both DC and Marvel have new crossover events starting up so we first discuss DC K.O. #1 (and the prologue issues associated with it - Justice League Unlimited #11 and Justice League: The Omega Act Special #1) and X-Men of Apocalypse: Alpha #1! Two Image books are on our spinner rack in the form of the first issues of Good as Dead and News from the Fallout. We also check out the new body-swap book Flip by Ngozi Ukazu and published by First Second. Lastly, we are thrilled to discuss the espionage-based graphic novel Shaken and Stirred written by good friend of the show Steve Bryant with art by Rob Jones! So hit play - we promise no tricks and all treats!

It's spooky season and to pay tribute to that, on this new Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode Steve and Bill Z head to the movies to talk about films based on horror comic from the past six decades! Among the many films discussed on the episode are Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), Swamp Thing (1982), The Crow (1994), Spawn (1997), Blade (1998), Virus (1999), From Hell (2001), Blade II (2002), Alien vs. Predator (2004), Blade: Trinity (2004), Hellboy (2004), Constantine (2005), Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), Ghost Rider (2007), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011) and the Hellboy (2019) and The Crow (2024) reboots! And that's not even the full list! Halloween is only a few days away and if you wanted to get in the spirit and watch a horror movie, hit play and we will definitely give you some ideas for one, albeit with a funnybook bent!

It's another roundtable of recent comics with your hairy heavy funnybook reading homos as we say goodbye to September! Hit play to hear Steve, Caleb and Bill Z opine on new series like Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League (DC), All-New Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider (Marvel) and Speed Racer (Mad Cave!) We also discuss the touching done-in-one Incredible Hulk #27 (Marvel), the immensely consequential Transformers #24 (Image) and we touch base on the latest developments in the long running Something is Killing the Children (Boom Studios!)

We have reached the end of another month and that means more Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episodes! This time around the principal focus is on the new Batman #1, the relaunch of the title from writer Matt Fraction with superstar artist Jorge Jiménez! Establishing a new status quo for the Caped Crusader and his home city of Gotham, Batman #1 from DC hits the ground running including a supporting cast shakeup and a much more high tech Batman. But that isn't the only new title discussed this time around. Hit play to hear CBB boys Bill Z, Steve and Caleb also discuss The Adventures of Lumen N (Dark Horse), No Saints Nor Poets (Tightrope Press), Hellboy in Love: The Art of Fire (Dark Horse), Everything Dead and Dying (Image) and Jeff Lemire's memoir 10,000 Ink Stains (again, Dark Horse.)

We have reached the symbolic end of Summer 2025 and the CBB Boys are back with a new audio episode. Caleb, Bill Z and Steve reconvene to discuss a set of new comics and graphic novels as we close out August. We have the Big Two represented by this year's Titans Annual from DC with Donna Troy in the spotlight with a story written and drawn by Phil Jimenez and by a new Captain America #1 from Marvel from the team of Chip Zdarsky and Valerio Schiti. We have Oni's EC Comics revival represented by Catacomb of Torment #1 and Cruel Universe #1. We also have the manga body horror of Brain Damage by Shintaro Kago and the-coming-of-gay-age of Mike Curatoro's Gaysians graphic novel. So hit play and enjoy two hours of funnybook chatter as this summer sunsets.

The CBB Boys head back to the movies, this time for for The Fantastic Four: First Steps!!! TFF:FS is the 37th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franschise and the second reboot of the Fantastic Four for the cinema. The film was directed by Matt Shakman and features an ensemble cast including Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn as the family-based super-hero foursome, alongside Julia Garner, Sarah Niles, Mark Gatiss, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser and others. Set in the early 1960s of a retro-futuristic world, the film finds the Fantastic Four desperate to protect Earth from the planet-devouring cosmic force known as Galactus! Steve, Caleb and Bill Z are all on hand to discuss what they thought of the movie and, as is our custom with our movie centered episodes, spend the back half of the show discussing collected editions featuring the Fantastic Four in comic form whuch you might enjoy! So, hit play and Flame On with this group of hairy heavy homos!