You Should Read This!

Did you watch The Mandalorian? We did! And the people who made the show very clearly read Lone Wolf and Cub. So we read the first volume of this legendary 50-year-old manga.

We get some of the old X-team back together when old friend Ian Ritch joins Alan and Ryan to talk about Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, and RB Silva’s full reboot of the X-Men comics universe in the interlocking double series House of X/Powers of X.

We got the gang back together to talk about a book we first looked into nearly five years ago: Ghosted, volume 1, by Joshua Williamson, Goran Sudzuka and Miroslav Mrva.

Get ready for spoopy shenanigans with Alan and Ryan and special guests Ian and Chewie!

This time on You Should Read This, Alan and Ryan jump into the Eisner award winning spoopy Dia de los Muertos tale from Ryan’s kids’ favorite cartoonist, Raina Telgemeier.

In this episode of You Should Read This, Alan and Ryan are joined by their pal Adam Ryan Cools to talk Dungeons & Dragons, RPGs with heavy lore, and deep, dark backstories in their discussion of Kieron Gillen & Stephanie Hans’ incredible book, Die.

To start off Season 2 of You Should Read This, Alan and Ryan tackle the first volume of the dense, legendary manga series 20th Century Boys.

In this episode of You Should Read This, we dig into the first two volumes of the big relaunch of Captain Marvel from 2014. Volume one is In Pursuit of Flight, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and with art by Dexter Soy, Richard Elson, Al Barrionuevo, and Emma Rios. Volume two is Down, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Christopher Sebela, with art by Dexter Soy and Filipe Andrade.

This episode also features special guest Jenna Blush! She’s a huge comics fan who is super knowledgeable and happens to be Alan’s better half!

In this episode of You Should Read This, Alan and Ryan discuss the first volume of the legendary cyberpunk manga Battle Angel Alita.

Show Notes:

• Manga and its influence (yes, again. Always)
• Expectations
• Subverted tropes
• 90s comics
• Technopathy
• Panel Backgrounds in Manga
• Technobabble

For this episode we talked about the first two volumes of the Scales & Scoundrels series: Into the Dragon’s Maw and Treasurehearts. Written by Sebastian Girner with art by Galaad and letters by Jeff Powell, it’s a fun fantasy romp that will certainly hook fans of Dungeons & Dragons.

Show Notes:

• D&D having it’s moment
• D&D’s influence on comics
• Manga’s inescapable influence at this point
• Eurocomics as a style
• Race and class for each character
• Webcomics as a style
• Digital-first sequential art
• Nausicaa’s influence on this book
• Cartoony faces and their benefits

In this episode we discuss the two collections of Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite and Dallas, as well as a spoiler-free discussion of the Netflix original show.

Show Notes:

• My Chemical Romance and our histories with emo
• Watching the show/movie vs reading the book
• Don’t read the book for Infinity War, it’s bad
• Elevator pitch
• “Random” as an evolving comic book aesthetic
• The dimension black can bring to a page of comics
• A unique way to draw the reader’s eye
• Whether you should, in fact, read this