Podcast 72 - Gods

Don't call it a GodCast.

Actually don't, that sounded far better in my head. We're talking gods and mythology in comics, with drive-by reviewing of Hamish Steele's Pantheon, a revisit of The Wicked and the Divine, and a bunch of other stuff along the way because we're good to ya.

Benevolent, even.

We covered:

• Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway - Mike Carey, Scott Hampton, Chris Weston and James Hodgkins
• The Wicked and the Divine - Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson
• Thor: God Butcher / Godbomb - Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic
• Pantheon - Hamish Steele
• Black Monday Murders - Jonathan Hickman, Tomm Coker
• Injection - Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvie, Jordie Bellaire
• Godshaper - Si Spurier and Jonas Goonface
• All-Star Superman - Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
• Sandman - Neil Gaiman and Many Others
• New Gods - Jack Kirby

You can also check out our deep dives into the gods and mythos of The Wicked and the Divine here:

• Part 1 (issues 1-7)
• Part 2 (issues 7-28)

That other show of ours was We Will Fix You, and it's a treat for all ages (don't play it to children it's a literal crime to do that).

Podcast 67 - Best Comics 0f 2016

Hot dang folks, it's the end of the year, and that means Best Of lists. We're no exception to this cheap and easy content format, but we will at least give some lucky scamp a prize of each of our picks for the best comics this year.

Our spoilery results way below, hidden beneath this very professional advert for  affordable bookkeeping:

Problem Chimp Will Count For You

(Not an official Problem Chimp Enterprises advert, but I do work in marketing, so, y'know. Sorry.)

Each of Our Top Three Books:

• AD: After Death #1 - Scott Snyder and  Jeff lemire
• For The Love Of God, Marie - Jade Sarson
• The Nameless City - Faith Erin Hicks and Jordie Bellaire
• Rolling Blackouts - Sarah Glidden
• Unsounded - Ashley Cope
• March #3 - John Lewis, Nate Powell, Andrew Aydin
• Vision - Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Jordie Bellaire
• Plutona - Jeff Lemire, Emi Lennox, Jordie Bellaire
• 5000 KM Per Second - Manuele Fior

Still Good:

• Saga - Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
• Paper Girls - Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson
• Trees - Warren Ellis and Jason Howard
• Southern Bastards - Jason Aaron and Jason Latour
• Empty Zone - Jason Shawn Alexander
• Doctor Fate - Paul Levitz and Sonny Liew
• Giant Days - John Allison, Lissa Treiman, Max Sarin
• Harrow County - Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook
• Sixth Gun - Cullen Bunn and Bryan Hurtt
• Squirrel Girl - Ryan North and Erica Henderson
• Doctor Strange - Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo
• Injection - Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, Jordie Bellaire
• Monstress - Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
• Check Please - Ngozi Ukazu

And also:

• Broken Frontier Anthology - Various
• The Spire - Simon Spurrier, Jeff Stokely, André May
• The Can Opener’s Daughter - Rob Williams

Podcast 60 - The Eisner Awards

This episode we look at the Eisner Awards, looking at recent winners and asking: "Awards, huh? What are they good for?" Stick with us to find out.

Sixty episodes! Where does the time go? I'm serious, where is it. ANSWER ME, PHYSICS.

We read:

• Deadpool v Gambit - Ben Blacker, Benjamin Acker, Danilo Beyruth
• Empty Zone - Jason Shawn Alexander, Darragh Savage, Luis Nct
• Mechanism - Raffaele Ienco
• Bad Machinery - John Allison
• Gunnerkrigg Court - Tom Siddell
• Giant Days - John Allison  and Lissa Tremain
• Doctor Strange - Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo
• Vision - Tom King and Gabriel Hernandez Walta

Eisner:

• March - John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell
• Showa: A History of Japan 1953-1989 - Shigeru Mizuki
• Southern Bastards - Jason Aaron and Jason Latour
• Paper Girls - Brian K Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson
• Descender - Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen

You can find a full list of the Eisner Winners here.

John Barrowman as Squirrel Girl

Photo credit: John Barrowman MBE

MBE

Podcast 59 - Manga

This week we try to correct for our utter ignorance about manga, reading as much as we can in two weeks and then spouting opinions all over the place.

A theme emerges in Roger's reading. Not a good theme.

We covered:

• Bad Machinery - John Allison
• The Goddamned - Jason Aaron, R.M. Guera, Giulia Brusco
• Saga - Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
• The Sixth Gun - Cullen Bunn, Tyler Crook, Brian Hurtt, Bill Crabtree
• Filmish - Edward Ross
• A City Inside - Tillie Walden

Hey Kids! Manga!

• Abandon the Old in Tokyo - Yoshihiro Tatsumi
• Oishinbo: A la Carte - Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki
• Ode to Kirihito - Osamu Tezuka
• Angel Heart - Udou Shinohara
• Amakusa 1637 - Michiyo Akaishi (this isn't anywhere legit, sorry)
• Barefoot Gen - Keiji Kakazawa
• One-Punch Man - “One” and Yusuke Murata
• Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service - Eiji Otsuka
• Tekkon Kinkreet - Taiyo Matsumoto
• Project X Cup Noodle - Tadashi Katoh and Akira Imai

You might also like:

• Manga database - http://hidamari.moe/
• UK Anime Network

Podcast 47 - Halloween

It's Halloween (hypothetically), and that means time for spooky comics. We'll lure you into a false sense of security with dazzling insight into a range of comics before shitting you right up with the jump scare that is our horror roundup. So this week we talk about:

• Wet Moon - Sophie Campbell
• Shadoweyes (and hey, there's a Kickstarter for a new printing) - Sophie Campbell
• I Hate Fairyland - Skottie Young & Jean-Francois Beaulieu
• Super Giant Battle Gecko - Naniiebim
• Rumble - John Arcudi & James Harren
• The City - James Herbert & Ian Miller
• The Fox Sister - Christina Strain & Jayd Aït-Kaci
• Space Dumplins - Craig Thompson & Dave Stewart
• The Twilight Children - Gilbert Hernandez, Darwyn Cooke, Dave Stewart
• Doctor Strange - Jason Aaron & Chris Bachalo
• Two Brothers - Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, adapted from Milton Hatoum

And here's some horror for ya:

• When the Darkness Presses - Emily Carroll
• The Hole the Fox Did Make - Emily Carroll
• His Face All Red - Emily Carroll
• Out of Skin - Emily Carroll
• The Groom - Emily Carroll
• The Prince and the Sea - Emily Carroll
• All Along the Wall - Emily Carroll
• Through the Woods (print collection) - Emily Carroll
• Gunnerkrigg Court - Tom Siddell
• Cradlegrave - John Smith & Edmund Bagwell
• Shadows of Salamanca - Christophe Bec & Stefano Raffaele
• Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath - I.N.J. Culbard, adapted from H.P. Lovecraft
• Wytches - Scott Snyder, Jock, Matt Hollingsworth
• Rat God - Richard Corben
• Delphine - Richard Sala
• Adamtine - Hannah Berry
• Anya’s Ghost - Vera Brosgol
• Mercury - Hope Larson
• Kate Beaton's Family Halloween
• Uzumaki - Junjo Ito
• Bongcheon-Dong Ghost (really scary if you switch adblock off, we think) - Ho Rang
• Ghost in Masung Tunnel - Ho Rang
• This extremely spoopy comic - Kris Straub

• Complete Lovecraft eBook

Did you sign up to our newsletter? We have so many brilliant things in it that we never put on the site. For Halloween we made spooky masks of Stan Lee and our own Roger Hart, so when all of your friends are dressed as nonagenarian comic creators and rancorous food and comics bloggers, you don't need to feel left out. Like what you see? There's a signup at the top of the page. Need help making your mask? Have a handy instructional video!

Podcast Episode 27 - Violence (For Real This Time)

Comics have always been violent, and while early comics broadly focussed on Hitler getting punched on the jaw or lovesick cats being pelted with bricks, extreme violence has gone through peaks and troughs and sparked the odd moral panic along the way. We look at how violence is portrayed in comics, and where it works and doesn't.

This week we talked about:

• Southern Bastards - Jason Aaron & Jason Latour
• Wytches: Issue 0 (free) | Issue 1 - Scott Snyder & Jock
• The Motherless Oven - Rob Davis
• Essex County - Jeff Lemire
• Blacksad: Amarillo - Juan Díaz Canales & Juanjo Guarnido
• Resident Alien - Paul Hogan & Steve Parkhouse
• Exit Wounds - Rutu Modan
• Kate Beaton's Beat Poets
• Batman: Odyssey | AKA Neal Adams' crazy Batman | Brilliant coverage of that insane comic
• We3 - Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
• Flex Mentallo - Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
• V for Vendetta - Alan Moore & David Lloyd
• Punisher - Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon
• Crossed - Garth Ennis & Jacen Burrows
• Preacher - Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon
• The Boys - Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson
• 300 - Frank Miller & Lynn Varley
• Three - Kieron Gillen & Ryan Kelly

It's a bra, yeah, but like it's also crabs

This is a bra made of crabs, so now you've seen it too. [wwm_survey id="1"]

Podcast Episode 9 - Kickstarter

It's a bumper episode this week. More comics! More jokes! More interviews! More inexplicable digressions about cauliflower. These people got mad brassica love, yo. This week we look at Kickstarter, and all the good and bad that comes out of it, as well as interviewing cartoonist Lucy Bellwood with her experiences with 2 Kickstarter campaigns. Mentioned in this week's show:

• True Believer
• Cartozia Tales
• The Black Beetle: No Way Out
• Supermag
• The Encyclopedia of Early Earth
• Thor: Godbomb
• Marshall Law
• Mind MGMT
• Molly Danger
• Reich
• Jezebel
• Blue is the Warmest Colour
• Anything That Loves
• Sex Criminals
• Afterlife Inc.
• Oh Joy Sex Toy
• Dresden Codak
• The Authority
• Beyond (queer sci-fi anthology)
• Smut Peddler