Love the Venture Bros cartoon but afraid of missing the myriad of historical references and layers of meaning behind each episode? Join pop culture and history experts Elana Levin and Steven Attewell (whose secret identity is that he's an actual historian) for our Podcast examining each episode of Season 7 of this hit Adult Swim show. This episode is about Season 7 Episode 1: "The Venture Bros & The Curse of the Haunted Problem. The Venture Bros. cartoon on Adult Swim references everything from Hannah-Barbara to Marvel, David Bowie to the Big Bopper, cult cinema to Scorsese, Oscar Wilde to Henry Kissinger. The show's central theme is failure– the reality of life after the promises and optimism of the 60s space age have faded. But also the positive value of failure as a way to learn and grow, of making unpleasant realities better, and ultimately whether you can learn to keep the joyfulness of youth without its illusions. Catch up on our podcasts of Season 6 right here (and on iTunes).

San Diego Comic Con is an economy in itself. This is the US's biggest pop culture convention and it has massive implications not just in nerd friendly TV, Movies and oh yeah, comics -- but also in politics. Get the Graphic Policy Radio style scoop on the convention on our site and also from this week's guest and resident San Diegan: Arturo R. Garcia has worked as a journalist across the media spectrum - newspapers, television news and now as a reporter and fact-checker for Snopes.com. For the past two years he's also been one of two correspondents for Rolling Stone covering San Diego Comic-Con. His work has also appeared at The Raw Story, Racialicious, The Guardian, and Alternet. He has followed a multitude of superhero media fandoms and there is a Rocky Horror Picture Show convention named after him.

Marvel's latest superhero block-buster Ant-Man & The Wasp is a light-hearted heist movie about a crook turned superhero. It's also about found family, the criminal justice system and women in science. Also the Mexican community's profound love of Morrissey. It also features the MCU's 1st Woman of Color villian. Narrative Strategist and life long geek Felicia Perez joins us to talk about the movie. Felicia is the Innovation Director at the Center for Story-based Strategy (one of the organizations behind Black Panther #FanActivistCon). She previously worked at the United Workers Congress, ACLU of Southern California & was a high school social studies for twelve years in the Los Angeles Unified School District where she was also an active union leader and chapter chair for United Teachers of Los Angeles.

Tini Howard is a writer and swamp witch from the Carolina Wilds. Currently, she writes Euthanauts, Assassinistas (with Gilbert Hernandez) for Black Crown Comics (fmr Vertigo editor Shelly Bond's new imprint) and Hack/Slash: Resurrection, with occasional stories for two of her favorite things: Rick and Morty and WWE. Her previous work includes Power Rangers: Pink, The Skeptics (Black Mask Studios), and a contribution to the hit Secret Loves of Geek Girls. She is writing the upcomming Captain America Annual.

Season 2 of Legion on FX, the nominally X-Men based prestige TV show, gave us a lot to talk about from mental health to memes to retro aesthetics. Leonardo was such a great guest talking Legion Season 1 what with his background in mental health we're thrilled to have him back! Leonardo Faierman was born in Buenos Aires, raised in Queens, on the playground was where he planned most of his schemes. Since then he's plowed a jagged path as a writer, editor, podcaster, comic creator, and mostly benevolent malcontent in New York City. Leo's 1/5th of the long-running podcast @BlackComicsChat, 1/2 of horror podcast @TheScreamSquad, staff writer for Screen Rant, film editor for the independent sci-fi monthly newsletter Narazu, and generally has words all over the interwebs, but they're frequently gathered up on Twitter at @LeonardoEff.

Taneka Stotts is a queer little tumbleweed that has found herself back in the home embrace of the desert known as Los Angeles. After spending quite a few years as a spoken word artist, Taneka's focus shifted to comics, a medium full of collaboration and imagination. Taneka writes the webcomics "Full Circle" which was recently nominated for a 2018 Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity, Love Circuits," as well as the Eisner-nominated webcomic, "Déjà Brew". Along the way Taneka has edited and self-published a few award-winning comics anthologies including the Lambda Literary 2016 winner for Best Anthology (Fiction) "Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi & Fantasy Comic Anthology" and the 2017 Ignatz winner for Outstanding Anthology and is now a 2018 Eisner nominee for Best Anthology "ELEMENTS: Fire A Comic Anthology by Creators of Color" (Beyond Press). BEYOND 2: The Queer Post-Apocalyptic & Urban Fantasy Comic Anthology features 26 stories by 39 incredible contributors, celebrating unquestionably queer characters hailing from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality, front and centre as the heroes of their own stories. The softcover edition of the Beyond Anthology is 350 pages of black and white comics from a diverse roster of contributors, with queer stories full of renegade city fae, post-apocalyptic bicycle gangs, reclusive monster boyfriends, mysterious sewer-dwelling mermaids, and more!

The Cardboard Kingdom is a graphic novel about kids, creativity, and cardboard! The book follows a variety of children who all live and play in the same neighborhood -- throughout the many chapters, you'll see each child's story unfold, overlap with other kids' adventures, and finally converge upon an epic final quest before summer's end! The graphic novel is a collaboration between Chad Sell (you've probably seen his Drag Race art) and ten writers from all over the country with a strong representation of LGBTQ voices! Chad is joined by contributing writer Katie Schenkel for a conversation about the book and the importance of LGBTQ comics for all ages.

Christopher Sebela is a two-time Eisner-nominated writer, designer and publisher living and dying in Portland, Oregon. He's co-created books like Crowded, Shanghai Red, House Amok, Evolution, Heartthrob, High Crimes, We(l)come Back, Dead Letters as well as publishing his comics Short Order Crooks and The Death Defying thru his Two Headed Press. He also writes things in other peoples' sandboxes like Ghost Rider, Harley Quinn, Kiss/Vampirella, Detective Comics, Captain Marvel, Injustice: Ground Zero and Demonic. He is catnip for weirdos, a fan of every dog and contains toxic amounts of caffeine. He tweets @Xtop Wishing you a happy Pride Month. Support LGBTQ writers and artists!

So what I really wanted was a Lando Movie. Does a Han Solo prequil have much to offer Star Wars fans? How about with a revolutionary droid by his side!? So what do two life long Star Wars fans and political organizers think of the latest installment in the Star Wars empire? I'm joined by Steven Attewell. Steven writes about the intersection of history, politics, and pop culture in The People's History of the Marvel Universe for Graphic Policy. In his day job, He teaches public policy at CUNY's Murphy Institute for Labor Studies. He is the founder of Race for the Iron Throne.

Deadpool 2 brings the merc with a mouth to the big screen again along with the first canonically queer couple in a major superhero movie. We are Queer Marvel comics fans and we have opinions. Guests: Charles Pulliam Moore is a staff writer atio9where he covers comics and genre culture with a focus on race, representation and queer identity. https://twitter.com/CharlesPulliam When Sarah Rasher is not rewatching comic book movies For Science, trying to make everyone they know watch DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and texting their friends at 1 AM about the queer implications of the Marvel canon, they are writing a blog about competitive figure skating or trying to apply their Ph.D. in Shakespeare to early childhood education research. https://twitter.com/pas_deChat