From 1985 to 1995, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes challenged newspaper readers with imaginative stories, beautiful art, philosophical discussions, and ROTFL gags. Watterson famously eschewed commercialism, not only in the strip, but in real life, approving no C&H tie-in products other than books of strips and a calendar or two. Tim and Kumar discuss this […]

EC Comics are primarily remembered as gruesome horror stories, but the company published in other genres as well. One EC staple was war comics, which enjoyed great popularity during the Korean War. One such title was Frontline Combat, the comic that dared to admit that “Marines retreat!” The now-huge names behind the series — Harvey […]

Oglaf appears on the Web uncredited, with no merch store, and with plenty of well-written, well-drawn raunchy comedy. Very, very raunchy. Tim, Mulele, and Kumar dig on this comic (platonically). The trailer for the upcoming “Thor” movie, though, does not impress. What were we expecting? Is Marvel starting to make their movies as inaccessible to […]

Though the highly influential manga series, and resulting TV show, are known for non-stop action and fighting, Dragon Ball started out as a comedy strip reminiscent of Akira Toriyama’s early work, Dr. Slump! Viz’s English versions have gone through various levels of censorship over time to adjust to the low level of sexuality that most […]

Comixology.com, which first appeared as a comics information site with pull lists, surprised a lot of people when it branched into selling major-publisher comics for the iPhone. Says CEO David Steinberger: “A lot of people see this as transforming; we see it as following our business plan.” This week Steinberger talks to Tim about formatting […]

In 1957, the Russians were winning the space race. After the successful launch of Sputnik, the Russian space program was under pressure to further embarrass the U.S. by launching a living thing — a dog — into orbit. This is the story of Laika, who made a historical splash big enough to get a vague […]

Our new flyer can be downloaded here as a PDF file. Pass this on to your comics-literate friends, and help us get more listeners!

At last the time has come! As we promised a few weeks back, this week Tim, Kumar, and Mulele critique comics by listeners: James Stanley (“Part Time Shuffle”) Elan Trinidad (“God TM”) Mike Luoma (“Everybody Lies“, “Vatican Assassin“)

Tim takes a week off (mostly) while Kumar and Mulele take over! They’ve been hard at work making, publishing, and promoting their Web comic, Weird Crime Theater. What all does that entail? Glad you asked! The guys fill us in. Also: Farewell to Al Williamson.

Iron Man 2 finally opened here in Japan a month after it did in the States. Having just gotten around to watching the first Iron Man movie at home (hey! He’s been busy!), Tim joins Mulele for a theater viewing of IM2. Also, an early ’70s issue of The Invincible Iron Man drawn by Herb […]