Sorting through The Best Comics of 2021 was no easy task. In an utterly bugnuts year, the medium produced numerous brilliant works. Putting our heads together, we created thirteen categories (that are very CBCC) and split them over two EPIC episodes. Welcome to Part One, the Thunderdome. With 2021 being a banger year for comic books, we invited some friends onto the show to name their favorites. You will hear some familiar titles, but we believe you'll also encounter several discoveries. And whi...
Jan 11, 2022•55 min•Ep. 124
We say goodbye to 2021 with our final conversation on The Second Life of Doctor Mirage. Carmen and Hwen are GOALS; they're a high-functioning power couple that work best when they rely on each other's exceptional skills. We need more comic book couples like this one, friends. We have more to learn from them than they do from us. And we can certainly learn more from them than we can this week's "Love Ecccchhhhhspert." Lisa is still raging against the machine in this episode. Just sit back and enj...
Dec 31, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 123
The Second Life of Doctor Mirage presents a rare commodity in comics, a functioning romantic couple. Carmen and Hwen are two butt-kicking parapsychologists with unique abilities that complement each other. They've experienced a lot of weirdness in their relationship, and it has prepared them for the ultimate paranormal trip - when Hwen becomes an incorporeal specter! In this week's episode, we examine one of the most underrated couples in comics and discover heaps of inspiration for ourselves. Y...
Dec 13, 2021•1 hr 39 min•Ep. 122
Worlds collide as Image Comics and Valiant Comics smash their ugly bits and produce DEATHMATE, the most epic crossover event in comics? Perhaps! This week, we join the Ten Cent Takes podcast to discuss this mondo bizarro mini-series that dared to shake the industry in the early nineties. And the best bit? At the center of Deathmate is a catastrophic love affair between WildC.A.T.S.' Void and Solar: Man of the Atom. This means we get to throw The Five Love Langues into the mix in an effort to mak...
Dec 04, 2021•2 hr 9 min•Ep. 121
We welcome Scott Snyder onto the show to discuss his EPIC collaboration with ComiXology as well as numerous other projects and philosophies. And, yes, we talk Batman. Snyder has written some of our all-time favorite comic books, from The Court of Owls to American Vampire to Nocterra. If he writes a book, we buy that book. We would be thrilled to chat with him about any number of those titles, but we've caught him at an incredible turning point in his career, and dammit, we were super lucky to do...
Nov 25, 2021•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 120
Till Death Do They Part! When it comes to Green Arrow and Black Canary - that's been there, done that. They don't let a corpse get in the way of their romance. After years of hot, steaming action and betrayal, Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance finally tie the knot. In response, every hero and villain turn out for the festivities, and a terrible and most upsetting tragedy occurs when the smoke clears. We close out our conversation on DC Comics' sexiest couple by covering their nuptials and the 14-issu...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 119
Let's talk science fiction. And let's talk about it with Mark Waid. Wait, what? Oh yes, this episode is a very special and wild Creator Corner conversation. We sit down with the Humanoids Publisher (and writer behind Kingdom Come, Justice League: The Tower of Babel, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Black Widow - AHHHHHHH! So Many!) to discuss their new graphic novel adventure, The History of Science Fiction. Waid considers this comic by Xavier Dollo and Djibril Morissette-Phan "the crown jewel" produc...
Nov 11, 2021•44 min•Ep. 118
Author Douglas Wolk is no mere mortal. He's done what few, if any, have dared to do. Wolk read every Marvel superhero comic, all 27,000+, and compiled what he learned from this massive endeavor into his own epic tome, All of the Marvels. His book is a must-read for all comic book maniacs, and it was an absolute honor to chat with him about this grand experiment and discuss the life lessons he's learned as a result. For many, comics appear as an impenetrable mountain. Where do you begin? Who's th...
Oct 31, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 117
After two years, we returned to the Baltimore Comic-Con and it was everything we needed it to be. We saw some friends, we met new friends. We bought some old comics, we bought some new comics. And, yeah, we stood in some lines, but as you should know, we love lines! Not only that, we were able to meet up with comic book creators Kat Calamia and Phil Falco and talk to them in person, having just spoken to them via Zencastr, about their new Kickstarter project, Slice of Life! In this week's episod...
Oct 27, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 116
With Green Arrow: Quiver, Kevin Smith and Phil Hester resurrect the Emerald Archer in a fantastical fashion, forcing Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance to stare directly into the abyss that is their relationship. This epic comic book series goes a long way in celebrating everything we love and love-to-loathe about these two characters, and it makes for one of our best couple sessions so far. Helping us sort through the romantic turmoil is love expert Megan Lundgren and her self-help guide Relationship...
Oct 18, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 115
Neil Gaiman's Sandman is one of the most highly regarded epics in comics. It seems like everyone's already read it, but nope! Not us! Over on our Patreon, we've decided to finally tackle the DC Comics masterpiece one issue at a time. That's right, 75 issues, 75 episodes! And we want to make sure that all of our listeners get a chance to jump on board this massive adventure. This week mark's the one-year anniversary of our Patreon feed. We're extremely proud of the community we've built around Co...
Oct 06, 2021•48 min•Ep. 114
Martian Manhunter! The glue that holds the Justice League together! But before that can ever happen, the last Martian known as J'onn J'onzz must come to terms with his own shameful history and the horrendous loss of his beloved M'yri'ah and daughter K'hym. Helping us confront such tremendous sorrow is Dr. Katherine Shear and The Center for Complicated Grief and their article, " H.E.A.L.I.N.G. Milestones: What To Expect from Grief ." We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to partake in an e...
Sep 29, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 113
When discussing Green Arrow and Black Canary, sooner or later, you must come to The Longbow Hunters. The 1987 three-issue prestige format series from DC Comics and Mike Grell attempted to pull Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance from the fanciful world of spandex and capes and drop them into the gritty reality of Seattle Washington. No more trick arrows, no more maniacal superpowered maniacs. It's time for "unspeakable violence" from all parties. The Longbow Hunters finds Oliver Queen facing a midlife ...
Sep 17, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 112
Some couples have bumpy starts, but Dinah Drake Lance and Oliver Queen put anyone's awkward first encounters to shame. Hailing from two separate universes and with one dead husband lying between them, Black Canary and Green Arrow require some serious me-time before securing their romantic solidarity, but that doesn't stop Ollie from making his move while poor Larry Lance is barely cold in the ground. We begin our four-episode series investigating the Black Canary/Green Arrow romance by exploring...
Sep 05, 2021•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 111
August 8th, 2021, The Fantastic Four celebrated their 60th Anniversary, and we're pulling out the red carpet and setting a birthday cake ablaze in their honor. And we're not partying alone; we've invited some of our bestest comic book creator friends over to the Love Nest to help champion Marvel's First Family. On this week's show, we have Fantastic Four: Grand Design cartoonist Tom Scioli (back on the show), Marvel's Executive Editor and Senior Vice President, Tom Brevoort, Stan and Jack comic ...
Aug 24, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 110
Are Scott Summers and Jean Grey of the Uncanny X-Men meant to be? Are any of us? Is true love possible? We return to the comic book couple that started it all for us, Cyclops and Marvel Girl/Phoenix as experienced in "A What If Wedding Album." Oh, and is that Wolverine waiting in the wings? You're damn right. Snikt Snikt, Bang Bang. And if we're returning to Scott and Jean that means we must also return to Gary Chapman and The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts. We consider the L...
Aug 16, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 109
Are we capable of change? Kid Loki sure hopes so as Asgard explodes into flames in the climactic Journey Into Mystery storyline, "Everything Burns." While his past self literally infects his brain, taking the shape of the devilish magpie Ikol, Loki attempts to rectify his sins by making a few new ones. And in the telling, we come face to face with everything we love and hate about comics. Helping us unpack Loki's deceptive self-loathing strategy, we're using Ellen Michaud's "Twelve Ways to Forgi...
Aug 07, 2021•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 108
Beta Ray Bill’s Final Fight with the fire demon Surtr is a knockdown, dragout brawl, but it’s those brutally contemplative final pages that really left us aching. On this week’s show, we’re calling an Emergency Podcast into session, so that we can discuss Daniel Warren Johnson’s final chapter in his Beta Ray Bill mini-series. It is everything we wanted it to be, despite it not at all being what we thought it would be. No spoilers here, but there will be plenty of spoilers found within the episod...
Jul 29, 2021•51 min•Ep. 107
We're casting off Thor's shadow this week as we chat with Daniel Warren Johnson about Beta Ray Bill, the five-issue mini-series from Marvel Comics that reaches its epic conclusion this Wednesday. As is already well documented on this podcast, we're obsessive maniacs regarding Johnson's comics. We think Beta Ray Bill might be his finest achievement yet, which is crazy to say considering the obvious genius that is Murder Falcon and Wonder Woman: Dead Earth. We asked Johnson to help us wade through...
Jul 23, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 106
Richard Donner is gone, but his films and their impact on the culture remain. We could not let his passing occur without taking a moment to celebrate the director who gave us so many incredible stories, including the film that ushered in a new era of "serious" comic book entertainment and kickstarted our current cinematic landscape, Superman: The Movie. To help us properly honor this utterly iconic adventure, we're joined by Clark Kent obsessive Shawn Eastridge of the Missing Frames podcast. Sha...
Jul 17, 2021•1 hr 42 min•Ep. 105
