We’re fighting for our lives in the present when we’re not flashing back to our uncanny pasts in Excalibur #116, “Death in Venice”! Our guest, comics scholar and art historian Josh Rose, guides us through the gooey catacombs, surveying the sticky surrealism of Kurt Wagner’s shocking showdown with his longtime archnemesis (who is definitely exactly who you think it is!) with some detours through the relationship between art & comics—and art history and comics studies.

We’re on a mission to understand Moira’s off-panel decision to finally confront the dangling plot thread of the Legacy Virus in Excalibur #115, “Missionaries.” Thankfully, we’ve got comics writer & scholar Dr. A. David Lewis in tow to help us tangle with the graphic medicine of it all, with a few detours into Moira’s turbulent love life and Brian’s shockingly juvenile penmanship. Also—Emma Frost is there!

Content warning: this episode discusses self harm.

Pete Wisdom is a right bastard in Excalibur #114, “For the One I Love.” But that’s good news for returning guest Dr. Keith Friedlander, current president of the Pete Wisdom Haters Society! We talk gendered violence and representations of BDSM in and around a sequence that made some of us angrier than we’ve been in a while. Also! We see the painting! And coin a new trope about the very real thing every woman actually wants.

Content warning: this episode discusses gendered/sexualized violence. 

This week, we’re definitely not making Bove/Bova puns as returning guest, comics scholar Bryan Bove, joins us to wonder why we’re in Wundagore in Excalibur #113, “Faith.” Also! Boybots get kisses and Pete Wisdom needs stitches and Lockheed needs better friends because he’s been missing for weeks and apparently nobody noticed…? All of that plus ruminations on the challenge of staying creative when your hobbies become your job.

This week, Pete and Kurt get clubby and Colossus and Meggan get chilly as we all try to survive Excalibur #112, “Survival,” in which Meggan forgets she can fly and pays the horrible price of becoming an unwilling participant in Piotr Rasputin’s hurt/comfort holodeck fantasy. Thankfully, a fresh-faced new guest, games and comics scholar Matthew Poulter, is here to help save us from dying from exposure to tropes! Plus—digressions on bear attacks and… public transit?

This week, we’re still in Hong Kong, doing dinner and drinking in between crying in the rain and throwing emotional and physical knives at our friends in Excalibur #111, “Broken Vows.” Actor and aspiring comics scholar Chapman Blake is here to help us understand all the dramatic choices and wow us all into speechlessness with his reparative reading of Brian and Meggan’s relationship. Also featuring the hotly anticipated return of Ogun and the almost certainly equally hotly anticipated return of famous ladies man and shopping enthusiast Rory Campbell!

We’re back spending probably too much time and effort unpacking Salvador Larocca’s choices which are sometimes weird but definitely choices in Excalibur #110, “Hearts Bled Crimson,” with the help of the eagle eyed superstar comics scholar Dr. Barbara Postema! Plus, our supersex addled brains have lots to say about that scene where everyone watches with shock and awe—and, in Kitty Pryde’s case disappointment—as Meggan and Brian’s “deep impassioned love” explodes to save the world.

Welcome, to the “Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow! Podcast,” the podcast where we talk about the Marvel comics series Excalibur, and nothing but Excalibur, every week for 126+ weeks. And this is one of those “plus” weeks, except it’s also a minus week? That’s right—returning guest Dr. Dru Jeffries guides us through Excalibur minus 1, “A True and Terrible Sacrifice,” a Stan Lee hosted flashback to Kurt and Amanda’s circus days in which Kurt kisses Amanda so pretty, Anna had to make a painting for her wall. Talking romance, freaks, and Stan’s legacy!

In the beginning, there were no scholarly books about superhero comics. And then there was Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology, written by none other than this week’s guest, Richard Reynolds! We discuss Brian Braddock’s epic battle against the Crimson Dawn in Excalibur #109, “Dragon Moon Rising,” alongside the equally epic battle to convince the academy to take comics seriously while reckoning with a seriously contagious case of imposter syndrome.

The streets are getting punchy and Kitty and Rahne are getting pretty in Excalibur #108, “The Old Ways,” co-starring Spiral and the Dragons of the Crimson Dawn and also Shamrock is there! Molly Fitzgerald is too good for this comic and so is our guest, award-winning comics scholar Dr. Susan Kirtley, who comes bearing tales of rebellious reading and secrets from the serial adventures of Cathy and the transformative talent of Lynda Barry. Plus! Fabulous female friendships in comics and why they matter.