FLASHBACK! The Wachowski Brothers’ Doc Frankenstein #2 and further discussion of burning questions such as: Can single-panel cartoons be considered “comics”? Are comics “drawn” or “illustrated”? How does society — American and Japanese — perceive comics creators or comics readers? Tim and Brandon ponder. Originally published October 23, 2006.

In the course of doing this podcast, we often find comics that we’d like to read more of, but seldom can because we have to move on to the next podcast topic, and there are only so many hours in a day. This week, Mulele & Tim thought they would revisit some previously reviewed Web […]

Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk is easily mistaken for a serious sports manga. Pick it up, though, and you’ll find instead a hilarious ensemble comedy that just happens to involve basketball. Still, the series is credited with basketball’s 90s popularity in Japan, and led Inoue to create several other basketball-related series. But is oeuvre isn’t all […]

The Israeli/Palestinian situation has been in the news for as long as any of us can remember, but how much do we really understand about it? Sarah Glidden, a secular Jew, went on a “Birthright Tour” expecting confirmation of all the negative things she believed about Israel, only to find that the reality was much […]

Comedy and tragedy, the macabre and the mundane, dwell together comfortably in the pages of “SF” #1, from Ryan Cecil Smith! Tim, Mulele, and Kumar try to figure out what makes it tick.

What do writing cool Heavy Metal songs and writing comics have in common? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Put down that pen, and go back to your guitar where you belong, headbanger! Rob Zombie, Scott Ian, and Glenn Danzig all share a mutual passion for comics, and had brilliant artists at their disposal, so what went wrong? […]

FLASHBACK! Discussion of Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story and Tim’s character design process for the Boogie Knights! (Originally published October 16, 2006) Boogie Knights sketches The finished page

If you’ve paid two seconds of attention to American comics recently, you probably know that DC “soft rebooted” its entire line, shipping fifty-two #1 issues last September. Since hyping the latest DC/Marvel news is not really our thing, we’ve been leaving that to other podcasts. But since Marvel zombie Tim, of his own free will, […]

Tim and Mulele are back with two comics, submitted for critique by their creators: Michael Balestreri & Alex Siquig have several comics at blacksnowcomic.com, all of them centering around a group of superheroes. We tap our feet on the non-existent floor, and invoke Chris Schweizer’s “Guide to Spotting Tangents.” (Chris appeared in Deconstructing Comics Episode […]

Crossover events have become ubiquitous fare from Marvel and DC, with smaller publishers recently jumping on the bandwagon. Lots of us complain about them, and yet, buying ironically is still buying. Tim is joined by John Roberson to discuss why the past year’s main events, Fear Itself and Flashpoint, were particularly unsatisfying, what makes a […]