Podcast Episode 34: Smut

Or pornographic comics, if you're nasty. We take a broad overview of smutty books, try not to say anything too awful about Sonic The Hedgehog fan art, and rate various pornoglyphs on "wankability". Or Roger does. He's very forward. Goes without saying that there are some bad swears in this one.

We read (in case you're slow, just don't click these at work):

• Starfighter - Hamletmachine
• Sensitive Pornograph - Ashika Sakura
• Smut Peddler - Various
• The Wicked and the Divine - Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson
• Resident Alien - Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse
• Valentines/Fawn - Jess Fink
• Chester 5000 XYV - Jess Fink
• Oh Joy Sex Toy - Erika Moen
• Co-Eds, Snow Sluts - “Man”
• Sing No Evil - JP Ahonen and KP Alare
• Hawkeye - Matt Fraction and David Aja

We also ate a lot of Starburst, and retained our youthful appearance by never referring to them as Opal Fruits.

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 22 - Englishness, National Character and S.J. Harris

Who better to talk about national character in comics with than S.J. Harris, author of the extremely English Eustace, one of our favourite books of last year? And where better to record that than Rules, ludicrous cocktail bar and oldest restaurant in London? No one and nowhere, that's who/what.

There's a fair bit of noise in this one - it was recorded in a bar, there was another bar outside, a hen party within, a perpetually-circling police helicopter overhead (Roger recently threatened the king of Spain in an elaborate and unsavoury fashion), and to be brutally honest we were just eating bar snacks the whole time with no regard for decorum or your delicate ears. We can only apologise.

We mentioned:

• Eustace - S.J. Harris
• The Ballad of Halo Jones - Alan Moore and Ian Gibson
• When the Wind Blows - Raymond Briggs
• Fungus the Bogeyman - Raymond Briggs
• The Tin-Pot General and the Old Iron Woman - Raymond Briggs
• The Bojeffries Saga - Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse
• 2000 AD
• The Beano
• Krent Able
• Mr Mamoulian - Brian Bolland
• Adamtine - Hannah Berry