What is pulp fiction for? We look at the first season of Sundance's rural crime noir Hap & Leonard for answers. Does this Joe R. Lansdale adaption bring something new to platonic male friendships? Or is it simply a salad mixer you can throw plot lines into?

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Additional Resources:

• ‘Hap And Leonard’ Renewed For Season 2 At SundanceTV – Update
• 'Hap and Leonard': Inside TV's New Pulp Fiction Buddy-Comedy
• 'Hap and Leonard' EP on Adapting Joe R. Lansdale and Making Brits into Texans
• 'Hap And Leonard' Creator Needed To 'Burn Bridges' To Make It As A Writer
• Darkness on the Edge of Town

It's Inauguration Day for Donald Trump... so is a comic book about the first teenage president essential reading for American citizens now? We look at both the 1973 and 2015 versions of PREZ from DC Comics while discussing the cyclical nature of politics and satire.

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Additional Resources:

• Why DC’s Prez Is the Best Comic You Aren’t Reading
• How a Comic About a Teen Girl President Became the Most Scathing Satire of 2016
• TCJ ARCHIVE The Joe Simon Interview
• Cartoonist Mark Russell on his reboot of Prez, comics’ first teen president
• Why DC Comics' 'Prez' is essential reading for the 2016 election
• DC Comics skewers right-wing politics in this new comic where a teen is made president
• The Teens Who Would Be President: Explaining DC's 'Prez' Comic Books
• Lost in Transition: 2015’s ‘Prez’ And A Robot Named Tina 
• Polygon Explains Everything: Prez, a comic about the first US president elected by Twitter

Last year Peter Thiel secretly funded Hulk Hogan's lawsuit that destroyed Gawker. Should the wealthy be able to ruin a publication if they don't like what it has to say? We discuss the new precedent this case set between privacy and Freedom of Speech, all while tumbling down the rabbit hole of trashy media and big money.

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Additional Resources:

• Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War With Gawker
• Did I Kill Gawker?
• How Univision’s purchase of Gawker could alter the future of online journalism
• A Huge, Huge Deal
• This Is Why Billionaire Peter Thiel Wants to End Gawker
• NICK DENTON, PETER THIEL, AND THE PLOT TO MURDER GAWKER

While Lawless is a flawed film that's not for everyone, it's still one of our favorites. We go through some personal reconciliations while reviewing how John Hillcoat, Nick Cave and others made this true myth.

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Additional Resources:

• How 'Lawless' Nabbed New A-Listers Tom Hardy and Jessica Chastain
• John Hillcoat Talks Sticking With Shia LaBeouf For ‘Lawless,’ How Tom Hardy Embraced His Feminine Side & More
• The Road Director Hillcoat's Next Project Falls Apart
• EXCLUSIVE: Jessica Chastain to Star in 'The Wettest County
• Nick Cave: 'Lawless is not so much a true story as a true myth'
• Nick Cave on Writing the 'Lawless' Screenplay and Compiling and Playing Its Music (Q&A)
• Nick Cave on Lawless, the sentimentality of sadists, and the war on drugs

Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice was embraced by some and puzzled others. But does a movie that's designed to be repeatedly re-watched automatically become a cult film?

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Additional Resources

• Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon - 9781594202247
• What makes a cult film?
• NYFF 2014: 'Inherent Vice' and the contemporary cult hit
• Paul Thomas Anderson Wants to Adapt Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice
• Pynchon’s Cameo, and Other Surrealities
• Paul Thomas Anderson’s Scientology Movie and Inherent Vice Adaptation Close to Finding Financing
• Paul Thomas Anderson On Inherent Vice
• A Director Continues His Quest
• Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘Inherent Vice’ Starting to Boost L.A. Production

In our 2016 holiday episode we look at the forgotten Christmas Eve tradition of telling ghost stories. M.R. James' work from over a hundred years ago best represents this Victorian trend, so in his honor we bring horror to academia and safe spaces.

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Additional Resources:

• How Did Antiquarians Become Action Story Heroes?
• Ghost stories: why the Victorians were so spookily good at them
• Christmas Ghost Stories: The Ghost of Christmas Past Goes Further Back Than You Might Realize
• M. R. James' Ghost Stories Work Eerily Well in This Graphic Fiction Form
• Telling ghost stories is a lost tradition on Christmas Eve

Marvel's latest Netflix series Luke Cage incorporates ideas about diversity into the comic adaptation formula so more kids have heroes to look up to. We look at how its inclusivity and symbolism strive to achieve this forward thinking mission.

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Additional Resources:

• Luke Cage Comics And Race-Based Unethical Medical Experiments
• The Making of Luke Cage: A Hero For This Moment
• The Biggest Problem With Netflix's Comic-Book Shows
• CREATING “LUKE CAGE,” THE FIRST WOKE BLACK-SUPERHERO SHOW
• Luke Cage producer compares Netflix's new Marvel series to The Wire
• Luke Cage, Mike Colter, and the "Wu-Tang-ification" of the Marvel Universe
• Here's how many people are watching 'Luke Cage' compared to other Netflix shows
• Why Netflix’s Luke Cage Is the Superhero We Really Need Now
• Inside the making of ‘Luke Cage,’ Marvel’s first black superhero show
• Why the Creator of Luke Cage Wanted to Make a “Hip-Hop Western”

In his new serialized novella Normal, Warren Ellis shows us how too much futurism can lead to "abyss gaze." Christian went to one of Ellis' few U.S. readings from the book and reports to Charlie on how social media is the new cosmic horror. And what's the difference between a foresight strategist and a strategic forecaster?

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Addition Resources:

• Warren Ellis’ Normal Brings Readers a Serialized Digital Dystopia
• Warren Ellis' 'Normal' is a fast-paced dystopia about a burned-out futurist
• Warren Ellis Is Here to Talk About His New Book Normal, Gazing into the Abyss, and the Flaw in All Things
• ‘Internet Jesus’ Warren Ellis talks about the compulsion to write
• Detoxing with Warren Ellis, Whose Near-Future Vision of Digital Exhaustion is Probably Already Here
• In Warren Ellis' New Thriller Normal, Preparing For Humanity's Downfall Has A Price: Your Sanity
• Fiction and Anthropology: Interviewing Warren Ellis About Normal
• Can Serialized Fiction Convert Binge Watchers Into Binge Readers?

Regarded as one of the best graphic novels of our time, David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp is a story we all know in a way we’ve never seen before. We discuss Mazzucchelli’s decision to stop doing “assembly line comics” and take control of his works’ symbolism, formalism and experimentation. 

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Additional Resources:

• David Mazzucchelli at MoCCA
• Shades of Meaning Book Review | ‘Asterios Polyp,’ Written and Illustrated by David Mazzucchelli
• TCJ 300 Conversations: David Mazzucchelli & Dash Shaw
• Some Thoughts on Asterios Polyp
• Mazzuchelli’s Asterios Polyp and the Fine Line
• Annotations for Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli

Why do we miss the "simplicity" of the 1980s? Stranger Things effortlessly weaves our nostalgia into its narrative. But is too much nostalgia a good thing?

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Additional Resources:

• Durham’s Duffer Brothers land on Netflix
• NETFLIX’S “STRANGER THINGS” IS A FLAWED BUT ENTERTAINING POP CULTURE LOVE LETTER
• The 5 Most Feminist Moments in Netflix’s Hit Summer Show Stranger Things
• ‘Stranger Things’ Ratings: Where Series Ranks Among Netflix’s Most Watched
• Netflix’s sci-fi throwback Stranger Things is yesterday’s summer blockbuster today
• Review: Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ basks in ’80s nostalgia, doesn’t drown in it
• ‘Stranger Things’: Shawn Levy on Directing Winona Ryder, Netflix’s Viral Model
• Nostalgic nightmares: how Netflix made Stranger Things a watercooler smash