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Tag: Comic Books

Posts related to actual comic books and webcomics.

L’Art d’Podcast

L’Art d’Podcast

WEEK IN GEEK: It’s all about television this week as Andrew finds a lot of great Fallout vibes in the AppleTV+ show, Silo, while D. Bethel finds it sad that the great Amazon Prime adaptation of the hit Image Comics series, Paper Girls, will never get a second season.

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Con Artists #08 – The Madness of Marketing

Con Artists #08 – The Madness of Marketing

It’s been over a year since D. Bethel sat down with Taurus Comics’ Kyrun Silva to talk about reading, making, and selling comics. Since both hosts recently released new books, they spend some time to focus on what is probably (for some) the least fun part of the comics creation process: marketing.

RELEVANT INFORMATION:

OTHER EPISODES:

Disco McCoy

Disco McCoy

FIRST CONTACT DAY: April 5 is celebrated by Star Trek fans as “First Contact Day.” While the day is fictional, the celebration is real as Paramount releases a bunch of Star Trek news, sneak peeks, and trailers. Our hosts dive into all the news that’s fit to beam up.

RELEVANT LINKS:

CrockerCon 2022 poster. Art by Nooligan

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Memory of a Landline

Memory of a Landline

WEEK IN GEEK: It’s a week of superhero adaptations with Andrew watching the recent slate of DC/CW tv shows and D. Bethel playing the opening hours of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy by Eidos-Montréal.

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • Business Exempt” (19 Oct. 2018): Where our hosts last discussed TellTale Games…when they laid off a bunch of employees.
  • #SaveGrifter” (14 Feb. 2020): Where our hosts plus the DC-on-the-ground reporter, Taylor, talk about the last big DC/CW crossover event, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
  • All Those Words” (19 March 2021): Where Andrew talked about the most recent addition to the DC/CW catalogue, Superman & Lois.

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Panic Then Escape

Panic Then Escape

WHAT A NERD WANTS: With the Disney + original, Loki, coming to a close this week, it got our hosts thinking about nerd media universes, and the works that push those meta narratives forward. What’s better––a standalone series showcasing the nuances of a single character? or a show that pushes that cinematic universe into the next stage of its overall narrative? Andrew and D. Bethel put on their thinking caps and engage with these surprisingly nuanced questions.

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RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • Of Underwear Models and Wayward Sons” (11 September 2014): Where Andrew and D. Bethel first discuss the differences between episodic and serialized television.
  • American Puppy Story” (17 February 2017): Where D. Bethel and Andrew discuss the tension between serialized television narratives versus episodic shows.
  • The Nature of the Gutter” (12 March 2021): Where Andrew and D. Bethel talk with Taylor about the Disney + show, WandaVision.

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Magic Rock Machina

Magic Rock Machina

WAIT, WHAT 1984: Wonder Woman 1984, the hotly anticipated sequel to 2017’s good DC movie (one of a few), Wonder Woman, was released to theaters and HBO Max on Christmas Day to a lot of…discourse.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • Episode 137 – Atomic Karate” (09 June 2017): When Andrew & D. talked with Mary Traverse about the original Wonder Woman.
  • The Unnaturals” (20 November 2020): D. Bethel & Andrew discuss the news that Wonder Woman 1984 will debut for no extra cost on HBO Max simultaneously with its theatrical release.

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Bouncing Waveforms

Bouncing Waveforms

NEWS BLAST (COVID-19 EDITION): A lot of stuff is going on amid the global pandemic, and Andrew and D. Bethel are here to talk about it (if Dan actually was able to record his audio this time). They talk about the AMC theater chain shunning Universal Pictures amid Trolls World Tour‘s success, Civilization VI‘s bold new plan for a year’s worth of DLC and expansions, Marvel and DC Comics are shipping books again, The Flash has an abbreviated season (ending on somewhat of a downbeat), and New Mutants gets a theatrical release date…again.

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A Light Monopoly

A Light Monopoly

SHELTER AT HOME: With both hosts hometowns under a “shelter at home” quarantine, they discuss how they’ve had to adjust their behavior to continue their normal nerdy procedures. To that end, Andrew discusses playing tabletop RPGs online using the Roll20 website and the teleconferencing program, Zoom. D. Bethel, on the other hand, talks about comic book distribution and how the major (only?) comics distributor, Diamond Comics, decreed that it will cease ordering (and shipping) new comics immediately; Dan talks about how this affects him and, more importantly, how it affects local comic shops.

Here is a look at the virtual tabletop Andrew created for his game of Spectaculars:

Also, here is the video made by Sacramento comic shop proprietor, Ben Schwartz––owner of Empire’s Comics Vault––laying out the dilemma of comic shop owners in the time of the quarantine (especially before Diamond stopped shipping):

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES

  • Shortcast 72 – Little Paper People (02 Nov. 2018): Where Andrew talked about buying, printing, and assembling papercraft figures for tabletop role-play.
  • Makes a Taste (13 March 2020): Where Andrew discussed his first play-through of Spectaculars.

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Tummy Drums

Tummy Drums

NOT FAR FROM HOME: It was announced that Sony and Disney/Marvel had once again struck a deal that will keep Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, much to the joy of fans and to the benefit of both companies’ bank accounts. Having discussed the initial breakup back when it happened in August, Andrew and D. Bethel have a surprisingly heated discussion of this generally happy news.

THE STRANGEST HANDSHAKE: British tabletop company, Games Workshop, announced that it will be licensing one of its beloved properties––Warhammer 40,000––to American comic book giant, Marvel Comics, to make a line of comic books. This is interesting because both of Games Workshop’s original Warhammer line and especially its Warhammer 40,000 line have deep lore and continuities that has our hosts wondering how well it will translate to a comic book series.

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RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • Ghost Highway (23 August 2019): Where Andrew and D. Bethel talk about the great Sony-Marvel contract dissolution of 2019.
  • New Dangers (20 September 2019): Where, briefly, D. Bethel and Andrew display their light wrestling knowledge in the light of AEW’s strange storyline built around a jock heel wrestler insults his opponent for liking Dungeons & Dragons.

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Con Artists #04 – StocktonCon Winter 2019

Con Artists #04 – StocktonCon Winter 2019

The lauded limited podcast series returns with a new episode as well as a fan-favorite co-host, Kyrun Silva of Taurus Comics as he and D. Bethel (check out his webcomic, Long John, and his podcast, A Podcast [ , ] For All Intents and Purposes) pair up to take on the first StocktonCon Winter show. This episode focuses on the strange space that indie creators inhabit, that realm between fan and professional and how those waters can get muddied, especially when it comes to reading and respecting creators from your childhood (there is a lot of Rob Liefeld talk in these conversations) to meeting your heroes as a creator in your own right.

CORRECTION: D. Bethel said that one of the Uncanny X-Men issues he had Jim Lee sign was #249; he meant to say it was #248. All apologies.

OTHER EPISODES:

  • Con Artists #01 – StocktonCon, pt. 1 : The drive home from the first day of the show. Kyrun and D. discuss making sales, confidence, and the comics they grew up reading and enjoying.
  • Con Artists #02 – StocktonCon, pt. 2 : The drive to StocktonCon to start Day 2 of the show. They discuss the importance of continuity, the level of fan engagement and ownership over continuity, and Dan’s strange reading habits growing up.
  • Con Artists #03 – StocktonCon, pt. 3 : Where Kyrun and D. talk about the breadth of indie comics, writing comics, and dive headfirst into personal nostalgia.

REFERENCES:

Art by Kyrun Silva.

  • The panel from Frank Miller’s Rōnin that Rob Liefeld homaged in New Mutants #100:

Top: Frank Miller’s Ronin (source: DC Comics)/ Bottom: Rob Liefeld’s New Mutants #100 (source: Marvel Comics)

  • And, for what it’s worth, here is a photograph of a 13 year-old D. Bethel at 1994’s San Diego Comic Con showing Jim Lee the mysterious foil card in its snug plastic case:

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Special thanks to Kyrun Silva for agreeing to being recorded and for driving us to and from the convention.

FEATURED GUEST:

-Kyrun Silva of Taurus Comics

FEATURED RECORDING EQUIPMENT:

-Tascam DR-40

FEATURED EXISTENTIAL WESTERN WEBCOMIC:

Long John

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Road Music” by D. Bethel
-“Bounce” by D. Bethel