Quarantined Comics

Shintaro Kago comes from a school of manga creation that revels in the absurd and the grotesque, combining elements of body horror, erotica, and a whole bunch of genre elements into an unholy pastiche the likes of which you've probably never consumed before.

His comic series Dementia 21 follows the adventures of plucky young healthcare aid Yuki Sakai as she services one elderly patient after the next. But things never go as planned, and throughout her adventures she finds herself navigating a labyrinth of highways, mediating a war between grandparents and money-hungry grandchildren, trying to keep a demented Santa Claus from initiating a nuclear war, or trying to escape the pages of a comic book.

Dementia 21 is both bitingly satirical and defies any attempt at ascribing a message. And Kago seems as much sympathetic to the plight of Japan's elderly populace as he is weirded out by them.

This is one of the strangest comics we've reviewed so far.

The mythos of HP Lovecraft, with his tentacled elder gods driving men to madness, has a rarified place in modern day horror. In this week's episode, we're going to look at an adaptation of Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness by Eisner-nominated creator Gou Tanabe.

While a lot of horror is Lovecraft-influenced however, how do his actual stories hold up in a modern context?

This week, we dig into Denis Villeneuve's DUNE, the latest film adaption of Frank Herbert's steamy rom com. Like it's 80s predecessor by David Lynch and Sting, this new film spectacle is taking the world by storm! Timothy Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, a down on his luck dreamy man-Prince who's parents - played by the hilarious duo of Oscar Isaac and Rebecca Ferguson - decide to pack up the family and move to a multi-mooned desert planet so they can enrich themselves with the natural resources of the natives (Manifest Destiny, anyone)?

Alongside his wacky companions Thanos + Aquaman (my man!) the gang gets into some kahhhh-razy adventures, with sinking sand crawlers, spooky sand worms, and even a spitting contest with Javier Bardem. But our dear Prince is troubled by his witchy grandma, killer mosquitos and bad dreams about Zendaya...so after an army of super soldiers attempts a casual genocide on House Atreides, Timmy and his mom hope in a rad mechanical dragonfly and escape into the desert for a campout, while his dad gets some dental work done, all leave us waiting for a Part 2 which has just been green lit for 2023.

Joining us to debunk what might just be the above worst description of a sci-fi classic is longtime pal and our friend of the Pod Josh, whose read ALL the Dune books, even the bad one with the sparkly vampires...

This week we are reading Matt Wagner's GRENDEL...or at least the Grendel Omnibus, the first part of a MUCH longer running series of noir comics - which ultimately evolved into a study on the nature of aggression. But for us, Grendel is just an anti-hero that poses the question, what if Batman were a viiglante mob boss with a sweet double pointy stick (don't forget the orphaned little girl and the Native American werewolf arch-nemeisis who uses his violent compulsions for good).

Grendel was an indie comic that launched in the 80s and became all the rage in the grim and gritty 90s. At first, the comic follows Hunter Rose, AKA Grendel, an assassin who ascends to the top of New York City's criminal underworld. Getting silly things like plot out of the way up front, the book dives into a bunch of one shots illustrated by various artists telling micro tales of Grendel's adventures in various styles, illustrated by now superstar artists like Tim Sale, Guy Davis, Mike Allred, Darick Robertson, Michael Avon Oeming, Jill Thompson and many more.

Grendel has had an on again, off-again history, with new series popping up every few years, given his iconic status. In fact, in 2009, his first incarnation from this week's Omnibus read, Hunter Rose was rated by IGN as the 88th-greatest villain of all time. Eventually, Grendel as a series would evolve into something much different, with the character of Grendel becoming a spirit that possesses many different people. More recently, it was announced that Grendel is finally getting his very own Netflix series, with creator Matt Wagner at the helm, and starring Abubakr Ali as Hunter Rose. And if you made it this far into the description, you'll likely want to make it to the end of the episode, where Ryan & Raman have a deep argument about cultural perceptions, spirituality, and the implied meaning of Rosebud from Citizen Kane....

This week we are reading IN WAVES, by AJ Dungo. An equally informative and heartbreaking sober work of a young man's love, along with a history lesson. This book is NOT just about the history of surfing, tracing the tales of Duke Kahanamoku and Thomas Blake,...it's also a heartfelt recollection of young love and loss, as the author recounts his time with his girlfriend Kristen, who succumbed to cancer. A beautifully heavy book that caught me off guard a couple of years ago, and continues to sit with you on every re-reading.

As a high schooler, the cartoonist Derf Backderf was part of a fan club that formed around one of his more eccentric friends: Jeffrey Dahmer, who eventually grew up to be one of America's most infamous serial killers. In "My Friend Dahmer," Backderf recounts what it was like growing up with Dahmer in that particular milieu, and tries to unravel the sequence of events that made Dahmer the monster he ultimately became.

More recently, Backderf leant his storytellilng powers to unraveling the events that led to the shooting deaths of four students. In "Kent State: Four Dead In Ohio," Backderf traces the lives of the victims, and the political situation that eventually boiled over into violence.

We'll take a look at both comics in this week's episode of Quarantined Comics.

はるか昔、はるか遠くの銀河で... (a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...)

These ARE droids you're looking for my dear Padawans! This week we're veering BACK veering off course - this time to a galaxy far far away for STAR WARS VISIONS - the new Disney+ series of nine anime shorts where the Japanese have their way with some sweet sweet Lucasfilm IP.

Featuring fanime tropes like extreme destruction, long fight scenes, ridiculously reimagined lightsabers, super cute anthroporphized robots, and/or romanticized takes on the Samurai legends...the show takes us to the hyperspace limit of all that all that Kuroswan stuff that originally "inspired" George Lucas.

The much hyped anime series featured reimaginings by acclaimed anime creators like Kamikaze Douga, Geno Studio, Studio Colorido, Trigger, Kinema Citrus, Production I.G., and Masaaki Yuasa's Science SARU...AND the an all-star cast of voice talent like Lucy Liu, Henry Goldig, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Alison Brie, Simu Liu, Neil Patrick Harris, Kyle Chandler, Bobby Moynihan, David Harbour, Jamie Chung, George Takei, Lorraine Toussaint, and many more (sadly no Ben Kingsley and/or Tony Leung...that we know of)

A man returns home to his empty childhood home and calls an old friend. A woman gets an office job. A boy is inspired by his mother's old friend.

The stories of Chris Reynolds seem steeped in the mundane... and then they go way off the rails, hinting at such strange phenomena as time travel, a secret cult, and alien invasions. But his stories just hint at such extraordinary activities. If you're the type who wants answers from your comics, Chris Reynolds is not the sort of cartoonist who will provide it.

On this week's episode, we'll pick through his collection of black-and-white strips, curated by legendary cartoonist Seth.

This week we masked up and hit some empty-off-hour theaters, so we could talk about Shang Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings, the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Based on the 1972 comics of the same name based on a VERY different context / pretense, Marvel's Shang Chi is a completely new story, carrying over only a some surface level elements of the source material.

The latest comic book film to strike our fancy, Shang Chi was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, and features ALL the Asians -Simu Liu, Akwafina, Tony Leung, Michelle Yeoh, Meng’er Zhang, Ying Nan, Ronny Chiang, and even SIR Ben Kingsley (HALF INDIAN!), the movie tells the story of an exiled assassin martial artists moonlighting as valet parkers in the Bay Area to avoid their dark mysterious past. You know, the typical Asian American story. It’s basically Asian Black Panther, or is it?

This week we are FINALLY reading DRAGON HOOPS, written and illustrated by Gene Luen Yang. DRAGON HOOPS won a 2020 Eisner Award (the Oscars for comics, and not Yang's first). The book is a nonfiction account of the high school basketball team - Oakland's Bishop O'Dowd Dragons - where Yang was a teacher before we went full time into comics. Yang's not a fan of the sportsballs - which is what makes it such a great book about sports, and taking big steps.