Robots From Tomorrow!

Greg had the opportunity to chat with TWO comics legends on stage at this past HeroesCon: Larry Hama & Carl Potts! Here's the panel description to set the mood for today's episode:

HAMA / POTTS: IN CONVERSATION

From GI JOE to ALIEN LEGION, THE 'NAM to THE PUNISHER, CONAN to LAST OF THE DRAGONS - Larry Hama and Carl Potts have a combined count of more guns, swords, bombs, lasers, and explosions per career comics page than anyone else in the field. They also helped launch an entire Hall of Fame of comics creators' careers (Jim Lee, Mike Mignola, etc.). Moderator Greg Matiasevich (MULTIVERSITY COMICS) gets these two legendary editor/creators talking about their careers and how they changed comics forever!

When thinking about today's guest, the word one would keep coming back to is "buzz", like the hum of a amplifier just turned on and waiting for its first power chord. His work refuses to stay in any one medium, be it prose, comics, podcasts, or music. His latest work is the second half of his comic Serious Creatures looking at the life of a teenage special effects wizard. He has all the right cultural touchstones in his work to stand out from the crowd to me, and his art is vibrant, kinetic, and as bursting at the seams as his creative pursuits would indicate. He is Tony McMillen, and on this episode he chats with Greg about his work, the challenges of dealing in analogues, the hirsute Rob Bottin, collaboration with others, the genius of John Carpenter, and a lot more.

Charlton Comics may have been looked at as the fourth-place finisher in a three-person race for much of its publishing life, but the Derby, CT-based publisher gets the all-star treatment this month with Twomorrows Publishing's release of The Charlton Companion by longtime writer/editor/designer Jon B. Cooke. Greg got a chance to talk with Cooke about the book, some of the company's ups and downs, the vast amount of comics talent that showed up in Charlton's books (little-known folks like Steve Ditko, Joe Staton, John Byrne, Dick Giordano. . . ), how context is king for Cooke and Twomorrows as a whole, and much more!

Greg chats with the BFFs of Bound For Failure Studios (Chris Miskiewicz and Ringo-Award-winning cartoonist Vincent Kings) about the Kings crowdfunding campaign for his collection of strips Time Dog and Other Atomic Tales on Zoop, collaborating with Mitski on a soundtrack for their This Is Where We Fall OGN, their favorite on-screen Elvis (Elvii?), how a Southern California kid ended up being paid by the French government to make comics, and much more!

The lads return! Mike and Greg collect their thoughts about the comics and comics-related collections they have. How have they changed over the years? What's migrated to the bookshelves and what's stayed in the longboxes? What gets saved from the house-destroying fire and what goes up in smoke? The answers to these burning questions and more on today's episode!

Artist Hayden Sherman and writer Sean Lewis have gone from hi-tech to low-tech with their new Image miniseries Above Snakes, and Greg gets a chance to chat with them about it.

A fantasy western with vengeance, blood, electric colors, surprise lettering, and a guy named Dirt, Above Snakes is their third collaboration, after The Few and Thumbs. Find out how they came together as this modern-day Jean Giraud, the difference between writing to be read versus heard, why Facebook isn't a COMPLETE blight on the world, directing plays versus writing Spawn, whether Sean even likes westerns, and more on today's episode!

The second half of Greg's chat with RushCon creative director and "Rush Fan in Chief" Jillian Maryonovich is finally here! Having covered so much ground about Jillian's background and connection to the band (as well as her time as White House Creative Director during President Obama's second term), the stage is set for some full-on Rush geekery!

Find out what Rush-related comic Greg absolutely hated, which Rush songs and albums Jillian would erase from existence for charity (and which ones she would do for free), how the band told off the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the most Canadian way possible, why you should learn to stop listening to the naysayers and give this band a chance, and so much more!

In preparation for the second half of this interview later this week, we present Part 1, originally broadcast on July 29, 2021.

Robots is a show built on being a fan of something. While the fandom in question is usually comics, today's episode deviates from the norm a bit as Greg kicks off a 2-part chat with Jillian Maryonovich about fandom in general and their shared passion for the Canadian rock trio Rush. in particular.

Jillian was not only in the front row for Rush's final show ever, but has appeared in two documentaries about the band. In her capacity as Creative Director for RushCon, she has spent years helping fans make memories and new connections over a shared love of the group and its music. She is also not a stranger to tours of a different sort, having been on staff for the political campaigns of Pete Buttigeig and one Barack Hussein Obama, including four years as the White House Creative Director during President Obama's second term. She may not have come up with the title "Rush Fan in Chief" but we think it's as apt a description as any.

Robots From Tomorrow is a twice-weekly comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunes or through the RSS feed at RobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also follow Mike and Greg on Twitter. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Another great interview lined up for you folks today, because Greg got the opportunity to sit down with the 6 Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton team of writer Kyle Starks and artist Chris Schweizer. They are both Eisner-nominated cartoonists in their own right, and have individually brought you such works as Sexcastle and Old Head in Kyle's case, and The Crogan Adventures and The Roanoke Colony: America's First Mystery in Chris's. But these virtual studiomates have also started combining their talents on books like Rock Candy Mountain and Mars Attacks, and Trigger Keaton, now out in trade paperback from Image Comics, continues that trend.

Greg talks to them about their particular working dynamic over several projects, how COVID has changed the importance and avenues of social media and creator outreach, selling motion in a static medium, balancing comedy and drama without shortchanging either, which Keaton TV show would make the jump to the real world if they had their way, Kyle's upcoming Fuck This Place ongoing series (starting May 18), just what the hell a 'tiger truck' is, and much more!

To paraphrase a marketing line from the 80's - adventure has a new name, and that name is Shahidah El-Amin. The lead character in the recent Image Comics mini-series Compass, Shahidah is a 13th Century scholar from Baghdad's House of Wisdom who has traveled to the British Isles to investigate claims of a tribe that has found the secret to eternal life. Along the way to discovering the truth, Shahidah encounters different mysteries, cultures, surprises, allies, enemies, and those who would be both. Now collected in trade paperback as Compass: The Cauldron of Eternal Life, the series was drawn by Justin Greenwood, colored by Daniela Miwa, lettered by Simon Bowland, and written by our guests today: the Australian writing duo of Dave Walker and Robert Mackenzie.

The conversation covers the meaning of adventure in today's world, the Venn diagram of role-playing games, comics, and improv theatre, the price of comics Down Under, doing your creative homework, ranking Indiana Jones's exploits, and much more!