Robots From Tomorrow!

The topic of today's episode is BROWNSTONE, the new YA graphic novel from writer Samuel Teer and artist Mar Julia, about a 14-year-old girl spending the summer with a father she's never known as they fix up the titular dilapidated brownstone. If that name sounds familiar, it's because Samuel was just on the show last episode talking about the trials and tribulations of bringing this story  from his head to our bookshelves. 

Now we get to hear from the other side of the BROWNSTONE creation equation. Mar's work is absolutely in the wheelhouse of the type of comicbooking we love to see here on Robots. When we read BROWNSTONE, we saw Tillie Walden, we saw Carla Speed McNeil, we saw grounded situations portrayed with enough exaggeration to make this comic an engaging story being told rather than a mere rendition of plot points. Greg was thrilled to get the opportunity to talk to them about their process for this book and their work in general. And maybe ask the writer a question or two, if there was still time...

Returning to the show today after a nearly eight-year absence is comics writer Samuel Teer. His new book, Brownstone, about a teenage girl connecting with her Latin heritage and her estranged father without speaking a word of each other’s language as they renovate the title structure, hits shelves on June 11th. The road from his last OGN, 2015’s Veda: Assembly Required and this one is the topic for today’s conversation.

Samuel & Greg talk about collaboration, the differences between the two different markets for this thing we call comix, the importance of context, breakout panels, ominous texts, and a detailed look into the relationship between a comics creative and the agent (or agents) they pair up with to help bring their ideas to market.  

Having finished with the Man of Steel, today’s episode is the first of three looking at the best Caped Crusader stories of the Seventies to the mid-Eighties with the DC3Cast’s very own Vince Ostrowski! Come for the Neal Adams, stay to find out more about double-threat Frank Robbins, the mad genius of Bob Haney, Ra’s Al Ghul, Bruce Wayne and Sgt. Rock teaming up to fight Nazis, Batman’s Congressional career, and much more. All that, and just what the hell a hellgrammite is!

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The specific comics referred to in this episode are:

• The Brave and the Bold #79-86, 93, 94
• Batman #217, 232, 234, 237, 242-244, 250, 251
• Detective Comics #400, 402, 404, 407, 420, 421, 429
• Swamp Thing #7

All these are available as individual issues on the DC Universe Infinite service, except for Batman #242 and 250.

Batman #242 is reprinted in the Batman: Tales of the Demon collection, and Batman #250 is reprinted in the first volume of The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told collection series.

Today’s show is not a joke, not a hoax, not an imaginary story!

Greg gives his take on the upcoming Marvel & DC crossover omnibi coming later this year, and then dives into the larger waters of comic book team-ups that absolutely totally happened . . . and with the help of Ross Pearsall’s website, he has the covers to prove it! Find out all kinds of things about the crossovers you know about and the crossovers you had no idea actually existed!

Today’s show has not one, not two, but THREE Canadian cartoonists on the mics ready to chat with Greg.

• Luc Bossé, cartoonist of Gary, King of the Pick-Up Artists and publisher of Pow Pow Press,
• Thom, cartoonist of such Pow Pow works as VII, Casa Rodeo, and the upcoming Botanica Drama, and
• returning guest François Vigneault, a cartoonist whose Pow Pow work includes the French language edition of his sci-fi classic Titan, but is here today in his capacity as Pow Pow’s Marketing Manager.

As you can probably guess, the connection here is Pow Pow. More specifically, Editions Pow Pow, a Montreal-based publisher with the goal of spreading the work of Quebec cartoonists to bookshelves of French- or English-speaking readers across the globe. Pow Pow came to our attention thru François, but it KEPT out attention with books like the ones previously mentioned, but also Cathon’s The Pineapples of Wrath, Sophie Bedard’s Lonely Boys, and Éloïse Marseille’s Naked: The Confessions of a Normal Woman.

The goal of today’s chat is to be nothing less than the best English-language primer on Pow Pow – how it came to be, what it is, and where it’s going.

Today’s episode is the third of three looking at the best Superman stories of the Seventies to the mid-Eighties with the DC3Cast’s very own Vince Ostrowski! Vince & Greg dive into what makes the Superman of this era different than his more modern incarnation and give you gem after gem of Super-Tales of the post-Silver Age / pre-Crisis Man of Steel. Crises! Birthday presents! Planets exploding! Planets not exploding! Team-ups great and small! All that plus one last imaginary tale on today’s episode! 

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SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL 

Comics referred to in this episode are:

• Action Comics #544-546, 554, 583
• Superman #385-386, 400, 412-414, 423
• Superman Annual #11
• DC Comics Presents #61, 82, 85, 87
• Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, 11-12 (of 12)

All comics are available as individual issues on DC Universe Infinite except for Superman #385-386 and 400, and Action Comics #544-546.

Action Comics #544-546 and 400 are collected, either in full or excerpts, in the Adventures of Superman: Gil Kane or Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years collections.

Having just talked about the early days of 2000AD, we thought it would be fun to chat with someone with a strip running in the Progs right now. Starting with Prog 2367 was Book Two of the strip “Full Tilt Boogie”, the continuing adventures of teen bounty hunter Tee, her grandmother, and their cat as they criss-cross the galaxy. Drawn by Eduardo Ocana, colored by Eva de la Cruz, lettered by Annie Parkhouse, and written by today’s guest.

She is a multi-hyphenate creator whose CV would take the entire show to lay out in detail, so with her indulgence I will paraphrase. A writer of prose, comics, poetry, film and television, she is also a director and collaborator and obviously a multi-tasker of the highest order. She has mashed up the Archie gang with the Predator, worked with Duncan Jones, and edited an anthology of soldiers autobiographical stories about their deployments. While not afraid to roll up her sleeves and do all manner of creative jobs herself, her eye for collaboration has led her to working with such talents as Carla Speed McNeil (on No Mercy) and Erica Henderson (on the pulp horror Dracula Motherf**ker and the more recent Parasocial), as well as the aforementioned Ocana even prior to “Full Tilt Boogie”.

Greg tried to keep this episode’s conversation coherent but because today’s guest is Alex de Campi, with so many avenues for questions and straight-shooting answers, it was no mean feat. Find out how he did and more on today’s chat!

Today’s episode is the second of three looking at the best Superman stories of the Seventies to the mid-Eighties with the DC3Cast’s very own Vince Ostrowski! Vince & Greg dive into what makes the Superman of this era different than his more modern incarnation and start giving you gem after gem of Super-Tales of the post-Silver Age / pre-Crisis Man of Steel. Intercompany crossovers! Intracompany crossovers! History lessons! Horror on a superhero scale! All that plus a REALLY big missile and more on today’s episode!

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SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL 

Comics referred to in this episode are:

• Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man
• Superman and Spider-Man
• World of Krypton #1-3 (of 3)
• DC Comics Presents #1-4, 26-29, 36
• DC Comics Presents Annual #1
• Superman Annual #9
• The Phantom Zone #1-4 (of 4)

The Phantom Zone and World of Krypton minis, as well as the DC Comics Presents issues, are available as individual issues on DC Universe Infinite.

Superman Annual #9 is not available digitally or collected in any English-language reprint.

The two DC/Marvel crossovers are also unavailable digitally, though they were reprinted at standard comic book size in both the Crossover Classics vol. 1 collection from 1992 and as individual reprints in 1996. They will both be included in the upcoming DC Versus Marvel Omnibus, and presumably available digitally at some point afterwards.