The Miami Review of Comics

Wake up, get dressed! It's the Big Roman Muradov Episode! This one is guest-edited and guest-produced by the guest himself and filled with aural wonders.

Roman is a brilliant and accomplished illustrator and cartoonist, author of (In a Sense) Lost and Found (Nobrow), Jacob Bladders and the State of the Art (Uncivilized), Resident Lover (Kuš) Vanishing Act (Fantagraphics), On Doing Nothing (Chronicle), and many other works.

Roman's new and in-progress comics -- Terrible Father, Foghorn, and All the Living (Fantagraphics) -- provide the vehicle for our doomed quest for truth across the corpses of legions of writers, artists, musicians and thinkers.

Innocence and cruelty! Artifice and sincerity! Free indirect style for comics! Repetition! Repetition! Repetition!

This episode is not titled "Pretty, Ugly, Stupid, Smart."

The Horse Scene Theme Song is performed by the apparently ingenious Dory Bavarsky. Additional soundy stuff by Roman Muradov as noted, and occasional xylophone by past guest and great person Tana Oshima. Thank you as always to the show's beloved regular producer Jason Butler.

Links

Roman's website

Roman's substack

Roman's instagram

Two Librans podcast

Dory Bavarsky's website

Miami Review of Comics's instagram

Jason Butler's instagram

Today I am joined by the great Kevin Huizenga, author of graphic novels such as The River at Night, Curses, The Wild Kingdom and Gloriana (all published by Drawn & Quarterly), the ongoing series Fielder, and many other comics and zines.

Kevin's work often tackles zones of human experience rarely touched in comics, such as consciousness, the nature of time, and other Big Questions of Philosophy. (One of Kevin's most affecting stories is about a theologian writing an essay.) We get into the impulse and process behind this kind of work. We also discuss the trouble with interviews, the uses of a cartoon avatar, and much more.

Grateful to Kevin for his thoughtful answers. 

And grateful as always for Jason Butler for producing the episode.

Links

Kevin's website

Kevin's patreon

Kevin's instagram

Miami Review of Comics on instagram

Drew's patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

Today my guest is New York cartoonist Elizabeth Bethea, whose comics include Book of Daze and Francis Bacon (Domino Books), All Killer No Filler, and Forlorn Toreador. She's also appeared in anthologies like Peep and Crease. 

Elizabeth is one of the great comics poets, and I loved learning about how she composes her work over time through daily writing. We also get into Elizabeth's hometown of New Orleans, her recent forays into digital cartooning, the love life of Susan Sontag, the dreaminess of still lifes, pictureless poems, and more!

Thank you to Jason Butler for producing the episode!

Links

E.A. Bethea's website

EA Bethea on instagram

Miami Review of Comics on instagram

Drew's patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

Buckle up, gentle listener, for a whirlwind tour of the comic art (and life & times) of Lummi Island's Golden Boy, Brooklyn's Hottest Dad, and Art Comics' Secret Weapon, Matthew Thurber!

Matthew is the author of 1-800-MICE, Infomaniacs (Picturebox), Art Comic, Mr. Colostomy (Drawn and Quarterly), Vector Hugo, Pirates of the Condominium -- and most recently Looking for the Cat, an ongoing series published by Neoglyphic Media.

We begin with Looking for the Cat, set in Matthew's childhood home of Lummi Island, and then travel back in time to the twilight of the George W. Bush era, when 1-800-MICE was being conceived. From there we move through two decades of Matthew's oeuvre, and recirculate, Finnegans-Wake-like, to his latest work.

Along the way we get into life as a young NYC art handler, the heady days of Picturebox, the writing of Thomas Pynchon and Raymond Roussel, Children of Men, stories with and without endings, making comics in quarantine, and making comics when your baby was just born and you've lost your cat.

Grateful to Matthew for spending so much time with me revisiting all this work! It was a lot of fun.

Thanks to Jason Butler for producing the episode!

Links

Matthew's website

Matthew's instagram

Miami Review of Comics on instagram

Drew's patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

I am joined today by the brilliant and hilarious Sam Szabo, author of Momix Presents: DADIX (Cram Books), Enlightened Transsexual Comics (Silver Sprocket), Girl Hell and lots more.

Sam and I talk about the intersection of memoir and gags in her work, being a briefcase kid exposed to boomer esoterica in Mad Magazine, the crutch and the ecstacy of fourth-wall breaking, the sublime banality of cousins, and so on. I had a ton of fun chatting with Sam, and look forward to all the new stuff she's cooking up.

Thank you to our beloved producer Jason Butler!

Links

Sam's shop

Sam's instagram

Sam's patreon

Miami Review of Comics on instagram

Drew's patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

Today we are joined by brilliant cartoonists and confirmed Luddites Sophie Franz and Daria Tessler to talk about the joys and sorrows of analog artmaking!

Through the magic of technology we fear and abhor, Soph and Daria were able to zap in from Portland, Oregon and join me on a grand tour of the world of analog tools, from pencil and ballpoint pen to gouache, collage, silkscreen, and more.

Thank you for listening and hope you enjoy this last episode of 2025! 

Thanks as always to producer & sound engineer Jason Butler for helping us get TWO episodes out this month, holy cow, look at us go, love you all.

Links

Soph's website

Soph's instagram

Daria's website

Daria's instagram

Miami Review of Comics on instagram

Drew's patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

In his ongoing comic, Reel Politik, Nathan Gelgud harnesses the daily gag strip to explore cinema through the lens of radical politics (or radical politics through the lens of cinema??). The strip is peopled with a goofy but determined cast of characters hell-bent on fomenting Marxist-Leninist revolution by whatever means are available to them, having turned a small-town theater into a radical cell. The first collection of the strip has recently been released by Drawn & Quarterly.

In this episode, Nathan and I talk about his relationship to film and politics, and how these became the main focus of his comics-making. We also dive into essay-comics, Godard, sci-fi, the joys of a daily comic practice, and Nathan's revulsion at the word "practice."

Thanks as ever to Jason Butler, our heroic producer & sound engineer!

Links

Nathan's website

Nathan's instagram

Reel Politik at D&Q

Miami Review of Comics on instagram

Drew's free patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

This past spring, cartoonist Katie Lane had two books come out right at the same time: Single Camera Sitcom (Comics Blogger Books) and Girls Gone Wild #1 (2DCloud). In both works, Katie explores the struggles at the heart of our most intimate relationships and choices, with wit and sensitivity and candor. But the first thing the reader is likely to notice is the extreme visual shift from one book to the next.

Single Camera Sitcom, composed between 2019 and 2022, relies on bright digital collage and a variety of textual levels to tell a post-college picaresque. Girls Gone Wild #1, composed in 2025, unspools its more claustrophobic stories in spidery text and inky figure drawings.

It was a pleasure to have Katie on to chat about both of these works, how they were made, and what inspired such a radical change in her approach to cartooning.

Thanks as always to Jason Butler for producing the episode!

And thanks to Katie's friend Walter for providing the theme from Single Camera Sitcom, which you can hear at the end of the episode. 

Links

Single Camera Sitcom at Comics Blogger

Girls Gone Wild #1 at 2DCloud

Katie's instagram

Katie's shop

Piece ft. Katie and Angela Fanche at TCJ

Miami Review of Comics instagram

Drew's instagram

Drew's free patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

What's the relationship between comics and folk tales? Are cartoon characters and folkloric figures made of the same eternal shape-shifting goop? And what happens when they show up at different historical moments ... in the English Midlands, say?

Today's guest, Michael Kennedy, is the author of Milk White Steed, a grandly ambitious collection of comics that explores history and narrative genre with equal fervor, making it the perfect springboard to have a good ol' think on all these questions and more.

Thank you to Jason Butler, as always, for producing this episode.

Xylophone outro by Roman Muradov X Tana Oshima -- thx frens! (Our wholesome intro music lives to fight another day.)

Links

Michael Kennedy website

Michael Kennedy instagram

Milk White Steed at D+Q

Miami Review of Comics instagram

Drew's instagram

Drew's free patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram

It's Sammy Harkham Day at the Miami Review of Comics!

In this marathon episode, Sammy and I dive deep into long form vs. short form comic-making -- epic graphic novels, standalone one-pagers, and everything in between. 

We talk Kramers Ergot, Blood of the Virgin, and the past and future of Crickets! Will the next issue of Crickets be 48 one-pagers?! Listen to find out!

A few apologies:

First, despite my note early in the episode that we would be switching up the intro music, we have not, in fact, found or created a replacement track, so, despite Roman Muradov's best efforts to the contrary, we are all stuck with this "wholesome jingle" redolent of a "millennial retirement home" for at least one more month. It seems my millennial laziness has conquered my millennial fear of not pleasing all the people all the time (not to mention, of being twee). C'est la guerre!

I also royally fucked up my recounting of Steven Weissman's Obama gag. Obama does not say "Charlie Brown is Jewish"; he says "Charlie Brown is a Jew." Which makes all the difference in the world, of course. So much for being lodged in my mind!

OK, enough self-flagellation.

Thank you, Sammy, thank you, Jason!

Enjoy!

Links

Sammy's online shop

Sammy's instagram

Miami Review of Comics instagram

Drew's instagram

Drew's free patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram