Fun Size Episode 26 – A Continuity Gumbo of Nonsense

While Casey has to run upstairs and be a dad, Mike continues his talk with Joe Preti and Tobiah Panshin for a full-throated bitch-sesh about the state of the comic book industry. From Marvel and DC’s refusal to change its accessibility, sales methods and whether its time to give up the ghost of the monthly issue, we wonder if the current superhero output from those two great companies just isn’t for us anymore.

And is DC Comics secretly a doomsday cult trying to provoke Alan Moore into ending the world?

Plus, we talk about cartoon voice actors and try to make heads or tails out of the design of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider.

Fun Size Episode 23 – Whacking Off to the ’80s

In which, we join Matthew Amster-Burton to circle the dead horses of popular culture with clubs and go to town.

We sift through the dirt shoveled over the recently aborted attempt at a Universal monsters cinematic universe. Did it have to be bad? We ponder the question: If we’re inevitably going to revisit established characters and franchises, why not make new and surprising things out of them?

What could the movie industry learn from Image Comics, and where is the line where product placement becomes unbearable?

Episode 29 – Vertigo Comics

“Magic’s just when you trick the universe into believing some incredibly outrageous lie.”

Mike and Casey hop into Chas’ cab for a journey to the realm of Dreams, because it’s time to go on a road trip across America. Our traveling companions, librarian Kit Laika and Joe Preti from the View from the Gutters podcast.

This month we dig into the Vertigo line of mature-readers comics from DC. From its inception with Karen Berger’s editorial work with Alan Moore on Swamp Thing in the 1980s through massive hits like Sandman, Preacher, Fables and 100 Bullets, we dissect some of the most influential, critically acclaimed and popular comic books of the past thirty years.

Is Vertigo dead, even if its spirit for creator innovation and quality live on at other publishers?

Music: 
“Main Theme” from Constantine (2014) by Bear McCreary

Previously titled: “Make Comics Great Again”

Mike Makes an Appearance on the View from the Gutters Podcast!

Mike sits in with the folks from the View from the Gutters comic book podcast to dig into the first two volumes of Image Comics’ latest series by Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, and Jordie Bellaire: Injection.

When a secret think tank made up of two scientists, a detective, a super spy and a wizard-in-denial crunch the numbers and see that imagination, innovation and human advancement is heading toward stagnation, they take a radical step to fix it, and in their hubris, may have irrevocably broken the universe.

It’s got super science, malevolent pixies, ancient folklore, feral artificial intelligences, human ham sandwiches, gun battles and some of the most wonderfully biting and funny dialogue around.

Check it out!

Fun Size Episode 1 – Puppy Vengeance

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As Holiday scheduling conflicts made a full panel episode of the show impossible this month, Mike and Casey are back with what they’re calling a “Fun Size” episode. It’s an unstructured, free form discussion of stuff in pop culture not quite big enough for a full panel episode!

Join us as we dig into the new under-the-radar Keanu Reeves revenge film, John Wick. We explore the idea that perhaps it’s not a great thing to spend a year dissecting every scrap of news and trailer before seeing a movie. Let alone have years of film releases mapped out for us. And finally, we compare how our current lack of enthusiasm for the movie theater experience compares to the present state of the mediums of television and comic books.

We won’t be doing these episodes regularly, but please let us know what you think of Fun Size episodes! Thanks for listening and have a Happy Holiday!