We go through a bad stretch: issues 9 through 24. Villains with ultimate power dispatched by... ignoring them! And also... calling their parents? Time travel only when you need it! Sue tries on wigs! COMMUNIST SUPER APES! Eeesh. -- SHOW INFORMATION Twitter: @ScrewItComics Instagram: @ScrewItComics Email: ScrewItSpidey@gmail.com Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Subscribe: Spotify...
Kevin and Will go segment crazy as they analyze the characters, themes and significance of the first eight issues of The Fantastic Four. Plus a deep dive on the team's brilliant, bossy, maybe emotionally bullying leader Mr. Fantastic! -- SHOW INFORMATION Twitter: @ScrewItComics Instagram: @ScrewItComics Email: ScrewItSpidey@gmail.com Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Subscribe: Spotify...
Kevin and Will recap the first eight issues of the Fantastic Four. The Origin! The Skrulls! Doctor Doom! And Sub-Mariner! These are great! -- SHOW INFORMATION Twitter: @ScrewItComics Instagram: @ScrewItComics Email: ScrewItSpidey@gmail.com Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Subscribe: Spotify...
Hosts Will and Kevin talk about the original run of The Fantastic Four! This was the comics series that launched all of Marvel Comics. We get into the partnership of artist/writer Jack Kirby and editor/writer Stan Lee! The weird characters of Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben! The awesome visual design! The sometimes unhinged plots! And the awe-inspiring density of ideas! -- SHOW INFORMATION Twitter: @ScrewItComics Instagram: @ScrewItComics Email: ScrewItSpidey@gmail.com Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Subscr...
Season two of Screw It, We're Just Gonna Talk About Comics is coming soon. Subscribe now!
A special episode! After swearing they would never play the PS4 Spider-Man game, both Kevin and Will bought PS4 systems and games and got completely obsessed with it! They loved every bit of it, and in this episode get into why! The characters, the mechanics, the rendering of Manhattan, the surprises in the story!
We re-activate this podcast to discuss the awesome new movie: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” Your co-hosts Kevin and Will LOVED it, but of course we also have enough thoughts that we talk for over an hour about. Which version of Miles Morales do we get? What do we think of our two different Peter Parkers? How about the crazily good and varied art styles? Isn’t it so funny and also moving? Holy crap we loved it!
Stan Lee, the co-creator of Spider-Man, as well as the architect of the Marvel Universe, passed away this weekend. Kevin and Will give a eulogy. They talk about Stan’s personality, his salesmanship, his focus on the reader, his love of words, his respect for good stories. They get into a bit of the darker stuff too -- issues of giving credit, bad business deals, and the poorly written female characters. But overall, we loved and revered Stan, and we miss him already.
This is the end of Season One of the podcast! Thanks to everyone who listened! We go over what we learned, and then read a whole bunch of emails we got in the last few weeks! Thank you all from your hosts Kevin and Will Hines!
A look at what the Spidey-world looks like without Steve Ditko: your co-hosts Kevin and Will look at the first two issues with a new artist/co-plotter. And what it looks like: people are friendlier, backgrounds are filled in, everyone’s hunkier.. And Stan Lee gives a crap about his dialogue again!
Spider-Man’s original artist and co-writer Steve Ditko departs the series not with a bang but with a whimper. “Just A Guy Named Joe” has a pretty good start (in the opinion of your podcast co-hosts, at least) but falls apart. Maybe editor/scripter Stan Lee was ready to move on, maybe Steve Ditko didn’t bother thinking it through!
In his second to last issue, artist Steve Ditko turns in a good story! There’s subplots and great drawing and two weird-looking robots and the introduction of one of the greatest villains in the Spider-verse -- Norman Osborn! Corrupt businessman, terrible father and murderer! A not-great dude, but he makes for yes-great stories!
He got his powers from a meteor. He’s obsessed with meteors. This is the story of…. THE LOOTER! (?) Continuing this run of “guy who punches hard” villains, it’s clear that artist Steve Ditko is mentally checked out. But seeing a great artist phone it in is still interesting, IF You are insane fans like Kevin and Will! YOU CAN’T MISS THIS ONE (you could).
In what Will deems the “worst issue so far of the Ditko run” we see the Molten Man return and Stan Lee turn in his strangest bunch of dialogue yet! BUT the issue does venture into “so bad it’s really weird” territory so CHECK IT OUT!
Kraven is back to hunt the ultimate prey: Spider-Man! Betty Brant has a trippy Spidey-themed dream! And Gwen Stacy is falling for Peter! All great stuff! So… why is this issue kinda… eh?
Once again, Kevin and Will talk about some of their favorite non-Ditko stories! This episode, we go into the 1982 classic “Nothing Can Stop The Juggernaut” and the 2008 modern classic “Unscheduled Stop!” Plus a longish discussion about the lack of female creators who have been given the helm of Spidey stories (more stuff like Sara Pichelli drawing Miles Morales, please!)
“The Final Chapter” -- part 3 of the stunning Master Planner trilogy and co-hosts Kevin and Will are so excited they don’t quite know what to do with themselves. They read the first five pages out loud, then gush, then gush some more! They make the very fair declaration that if you don’t’ like this story more than any other story in any medium then you have a problem!
Part 2 of the artist Steve Ditko’s climactic Spider-Man triology - “Man on a Rampage.” All the setup of last issue comes bursting forth in an issue-long explosion of anger and fighting from Spidey! The previous 31 issues are in a way ALL part of a build-up to this story! Kevin and Will, as usual, get into it TOO MUCH!
This is it: One of the best stories in the history of Marvel Comics -- maybe ALL comics. It’s a three part story we call “The Master Planner Saga” and it starts here with issue 31 - “If This Be My Destiny.” We get fully into it: what made this trilogy so moving as a story, how it was right before writer/illustrator Steve Ditko left Marvel comics and started to fully enter obscurity and how writer/editor Stan Lee still nails it despite being almost totally left out by his collaborator.
A decent issue with a huge continuity error: the gang of uniformed thieves that show up periodically are ACTUALLY a foreshadowing of next issue! DO YOU FIND THIS FASCINATING? Co hosts Will and Kevin do! Plus: Ned Leeds PROPOSES to Betty Brant!
Kevin and Will welcome guests Kait Thompson and Mark David Christenson, the co-hosts of “Aw Crap, A Hellboy Podcast!” We get into: how Ditko makes a great action story out of a not-that-great villain! How JJJ’s cowardice is ratcheted up to farcial levels, and how Peter’s got sexy new duds!
Spidey teams up with Doctor Strange, who happens to be the other big co-creation of Spidey artist Steve Ditko. There’s very little Peter Parker as the two Ditko superheroes battle a pleasantly very evil wizard named Xandu! Ah, HERE’S the great Ditko art we were missing a bit in the last regular issue!
Sure there’s a golden man who can punch like a wrecking ball but also: PETER PARKER GRADUATES HIGH SCHOOL! Kevin and Will get into this momentous event. We also talk about how Ditko’s plotting seems to focus way more on Peter’s civilian life than his super-hero exploits as Spidey and how that’s cool. Also this issue features some very rare bad Ditko art! Relatively speaking since, no surprise, we still love it.
We are well into the era where artist Steve Ditko had stopped talking to writer/editor Stan Lee, and it’s making for stories with very unique structures! For example, in this issue -- the battle is over at the halfway point, and then there’s about 10 pages of wrapping everything up! It’s… not bad! But it feels different than most super-hero books! Listen to hosts Kevin and Will talk about it forever!
Spidey fights not ONE but TWO villains with secret identities: The Green Goblin and also -- THE CRIME MASTER! It’s yet another guy who’s plan is to unite all the crime syndicates in NYC! Will the fact that Spidey-Man has to use a cheap rented costume slow him down! Hint: yes! Kevin and Will like this issue as they realize that they had underestimated this particular era of the Ditko-Lee partnership.
Steve Ditko passed away this week at the age of 90. We recorded this episode the morning after the news broke. As listeners know, he is the artist and co-creator of Spider-Man. Hosts Kevin and Will give him a special eulogy episode where we talk about what made Ditko so special, about how big his impact was on Marvel in particular and comics in general. We get into this feud with Marvel, his eccentric reclusivity, his non-Marvel comics. RIP Steve Ditko, one of the giants of comics!
We interrupt our flow of doing the Ditko issues to talk about two brand-new issues of Spider-Man, because they are so good! Instant Classics. One is Dan Slott’s final issue -- Amazing Spider-Man #801. And the other, Chip Szdarsky’s Spectacular Spider-Man Annual with a JJJ story. They both broke our hearts and we had to talk about it!
First appearance of the Spider-Slayer robot, back when it was just the Spider-capturing robot! Also, Kevin and Will realize every teenager on Peter Parker’s block is a nephew/niece with no parents in sight. Weird, right? And we catch up reader mail, which leads to Will pitching an impressively detailed vision for an Enforcers television show.
Kevin and Will break from the format of the podcast to talk about Spidey stories from after the original Steve Ditko era! They talk about two in this episode: The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man and Kraven’s Last Hunt! Both are so cool!
The current penciller (Joe Quinones) and colorist (Jordan Gibson) for “Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man” join Kevin and Will to talk about the psychological drama that is issue 24 -- Spider-Man Goes Mad! We get into: Ditko hands! Gangster Faces! European Therapists! And how a villain really gives away his guilt when he instantly tries to run away at the first accusation! We also talk about Joe and Jordan’s recent issues, which had modern Spidey meet Ditko Spidey! This is a CAN’T MISS ep!...
