Robots From Tomorrow!

Today's episode presents a chat Greg had towards the end of last year with editor/author Robert Greenberger. The list of Bob's credits is both long and distinguished, including almost 20 years as an editor at DC Comics overseeing such titles as Doom Patrol, Suicide Squad, Who's Who, Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Atlantis Chronicles, and guiding the comics voyages of the Starship Enterprise during its DC publishing stint. He was also the founding editor of Comics Scene, a Starlog sister magazine of comics fandom from the 80s that provided a pre-Internet audience access to comics news and interviews. And when he's not teaching high school English or moderating convention panels, Bob is a prolific prose writer & editor in his own right.

Bob graciously let Greg pepper him with questions about most of his comics career, expounding on such topics as the secret origin of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run, how comics collections are put together, balancing creativity versus productivity in comics, the best freelancer lateness excuse he ever heard, the nuts & bolts of how comics are published at the Big Two level, and much more!

Now you can hear the second half of the two-part chat Greg had with letterers extraordinaire Aditya Bidikar and John Workman!

The shop talk continues, as well as thoughts on more recent work like John's take on the HBOMax Doom Patrol series (after lettering almost the entire Morrison run back in the day) and Aditya's review of Barry Windsor-Smith's Monsters!

Back from hiatus, Greg invited two of the best letterers in comics on to the show for a two-part chat about their craft: Multiversity's 2021 Favorite Letterer winner Aditya Bidikar and legendary letterer/cartoonist John Workman!

The generation gap evaporates immediately as the two fellows start talking about digital vs analog approaches, collaboration amongst a creative team, visible vs invisible lettering, being the responsible one in the group, artist integration, and much more!

Just what it says in the title, folks! What could it be? Listen and find out!

Today's episode is beyond good, beyond evil, beyond your wildest imagination ... because it looks at the seminal 1980's animation classic Transformers: The Movie! Like Pennywise luring so many children to their unsuspecting doom, this beautiful & enticing film shattered the innocence of so many childhoods. But unlike that hellish clown, this film does have many virtues that Greg has brought Chad Bowers and Tom Scioli on board to celebrate for the film's 35th anniversary.

Does the movie still hold up? What made it look so different than the cartoon that spawned it? Which soundtrack hit almost ended up in another 80's film? How could the filmmakers misjudge their audience's attachment to these toys so badly? Answers to questions like this and more, plus a broader discussion of seminal deaths & resurrections in genre franchises: who are we glad came back, and who should have stayed in the grave?

Today's episode presents two looks at Tom Scioli's Transformers vs GI Joe comic in lead-up to his appearance on the upcoming Transformers: The Movie 35th anniversary episode later this week. First up is a segment from the March 22, 2017 Pull List episode covering his Transformers vs GI Joe: The Official Movie Adaptation oneshot, and then the bulk of the episode is Mike's conversation with the cartoonist shortly after the series was announced at NYCC 2013 almost 8 years ago.

After two years of quarantine, Greg finally attended a live show this past month: the Baltimore Comicon! And as luck would have it, Wordballoon's John Siuntres (aka podcasting's cool uncle) was there as well. What better way to celebrate the chance to get back to in-person interviewing and yakkin' about various things than with the man who helped so many of us do that very thing? While some of the conversation was lost due to technical snafu, what survived ran the gamut from podcasting in the time of the pandemic, the golden age of television, the merits and personal ranking of Stallone's Rocky ouvre, Lou Grant: Crossover Icon, and more!

Graphic novels may be all the rage, but the art of turning prose into comix is one many publishers are finding just slightly easier than turning lead into gold. From the early days of Classics Illustrated right up until today, Mike & Greg take a look at five novel-to-comics adaptations to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn't when it comes to adding pictures to all those words:

A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn (adapted by Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle)

Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (adapted by Tony Parker)

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair (adapted by Kristina Gehrmann)

The Giver, by Lois Lowry (adapted by P. Craig Russell)

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death by Kurt Vonnegut (adapted by Ryan North & Albert Monteys)

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.

JohnnyEcholands #3 Hawkeye by Fraction & Aja: The Saga of Barton & Bishop TPB

GregAnt #1 Catwoman: Lonely City #1 (of 4)

This episode was originally broadcast on October 6, 2016.

This week Mike welcomes cartoonist Matthew Allison to the show! Matthew's kicking off a new four-issue series of his self-published series "Cankor," so we certainly wanted to have the man himself swing by to talk about it. There are some new elements to the new issue that really caught Mike's attention: one anyone can see, and another that you'll need to get a little navel-gazey for. There's plenty of "Cankor" discussion as well as some gereral comics talk and a bit of shared love for the Artists' Edition format. 

"Cankor" is now available from Matthew's website, as well as at a number of shops around the country. 

Robots From Tomorrow is a 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.