Some Of My Friends Read Comics

Iron Fist is finally getting his own TV show and we’re not entirely sure who’s excited about that. We went back to the mid-70’s to read his first solo series in hopes of finding out where his appeal came from… and we came up short. The good news is that literally every other character is way more interesting than Danny Rand himself, so there’s still plenty of fun stuff to talk about. Join us for our 50th Episode Super Kung-Fu Podstravagaza Special which is secretly hosted by skeletons wearing our clothes.

Old Man Hawkeye. I mean… wait… Old Man Logan, a comic book about Venom-Dinos, Dumb Hulks, and the Red Skull doing creepy Captain America cosplay. And Wolverine was kind of in it too. It’s a goofball buddy comedy road trip for the ages!  

For being one of DC's most important heroes, we sure haven't given the Flash much attention. We tried to remedy that by reading a classic Mark Waid story from the early 90s called The Return of Barry Allen, a story that manages to encompass every generation of the Flash. You'll get the modern Flash, Wally West. You’ll get the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick. And, of course, you'll get the return of the titular Silver Age Flash… unless there's a plot twist of some sort… but don't worry, I'm sure that won't happen…  

Can you believe the Black Panther is getting his own movie? Twenty years ago, most people had never even heard of him and now everyone’s going crazy for him! To see where his rise began, we're reading the late 90s reboot that put him on the map, written by Christopher Priest with beautiful painted art by Mark Texeira who is NOT the 1st baseman for the Texas Rangers. Join us as we check out the first five issues!

Ducks! Ducks! Ducks! If you ever loved Duck Tales as a kid, then you owe it all to Carl Barks, creator of Scrooge McDuck and the city of Duckburg in the pages of his comics in the 1940s. We look back at his most well loved story, Lost in the Andes, starring Donald Duck with his nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. (Warning: We may or may not solve mysteries / rewrite histories.)  

It’s been way too long since we read some Alan Moore, so it’s time to remedy that with his run on Swamp Thing from the early 80’s. It’s dark, twisted stuff that turned the concept of Swamp Thing on its head and reinvigorated the franchise and influenced to many other comics to this day. And that terrific horrific art by Steven Bissette…. treat yourself.

It’s the mid-2000’s revival that nobody asked for! But hot damn was it amazing. It’s Squirrel Girl! And she joined the Great Lakes Avengers in a little miniseries called GLA: Misassembled. But then they became the GLX (because X-Men, duh) and so then there was a GLX-Mas one-shot special and we just went ahead and read the whole damn thing. There’s a death in every single issue, surely that will put you in the holiday spirit!

Batman's not the only hero to get a Year One. This time around, the gang reads Robin: Year One to see how it compares to the Frank Miller classic. We'll discuss how easy it is to mix up all the Robins, the merits of attacking random little boys on the street, and whether or not Two-Face has a law degree.

Nextwave! A little Marvel series you’ve maybe never heard of that’s generated quite a bit of a cult following. Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen take us on a wild ride that manages to both celebrate and parody everything we love about superhero comics. We read the first 6 issues, join us to find out if we exploded!

What happens when a bunch of Avengers villains band together to form The Masters of Evil? They take over Avengers Mansion of course! We take a look at a classic storyline by Roger Stern and John Buscema from the mid 80’s called Under Siege that ran in issues 270-277 (with a little underwater break in 272). We’ll meet a bunch of our favorite B, C, and D-list villains and see if ol’ sock-head Baron Zemo can lead them to victory!

Doctor Strange is almost here! If the trailers are to be believed, Marvel’s next movie is going to have us unwrapping our minds, opening them up to new possibilities. We figured we’d better get some practice with that, so we read a Doctor Strange miniseries from 2007 called The Oath written by frenemy of the show, Brian K. Vaughan, and drawn by Marcos Martin. Join us to find out which otherworldly horror we’re getting tattoos of!

This week we read another fairly recent comic, All-New Ghost Rider 1-5 from 2014, because it introduced a new version of the Ghost Rider character that they've been using for the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show this season. No more flaming skeleton on a bike, now he’s a flaming skeleton in a hot rod! Cooooool. So what's so great about this new Robbie Rodriguez Ghost Rider? Join us as we try to figure it out!

Sweet Christmas!  Luke Cage is coming to Netflix! We're pretty familiar with his modern adventures, but hadn't read any of his older stuff like Power Man.  We thought it'd be fun to check out the first time he met his BFF Iron Fist in Power Man 48-50, and then Power Man & Iron Fist 59-60. Join us if you want to learn what a samovar is!

This week, we go back to the late 1980s -- a time when most comics were trying to imitate that Frank Miller & Alan Moore were bringing with Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.  Cue JUSTICE LEAGE INTERNATIONAL! Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis attempt to re-form DC's flagship book as a humorous, light-hearted funny book.  Is it successful?  Help us decide as we read JLI 7-13!  

It's about time we did another non-superhero book. This time we jump to the Crossgen universe (yes, they had a universe!) to read Ruse by one of our favorites writers, Mark Waid. It's a Sherlock Holmes story, but if it focused more on a female Watson who uses time-stop magic that Sherlock doesn't know about. Don’t worry, it'll all make sense. Join us for Ruse 1-5!

Nobody ever thinks about the little guys, the ones who have to clean up after all the superheroes. Nobody but Dwayne McDuffie, that is! He wrote a few miniseries for Marvel called Damage Control with artist Ernie Colon and together they tackled the comedic world of work orders and bureaucracy. Join us as we read the 2nd Damage Control miniseries "Acts of Vengeance" from 1989!

And the Eisner for Best New Series goes to… PAPER GIRLS by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang! We took a look at the first story arc in issues 1-5 and tried to piece together what we could from this bizarre time travel story. The room was pretty split as we tried to make the case for and against their Eisner win. #SquirrelGirlForever #NotMyEisners

It’s our 2016 Eisner Pre-Show Spectacular! As we gear up for the awards, we take a look at three past winners of the “Best Single Issue” award. Astro City #4 from 1996, Tom Strong #1 from 2000, and Hawkeye #11 from 2014. We also read one of this year’s nominees, Silver Surfer #11, and we would have read them all but indie comics can be hard to find sometimes! We talk about all four of these very different stories and decide if they were indeed worthy of the coveted Eisner award. And we don’t agree!

Dogs and cats! Cats and dogs! Ghosts and zombies and witches and frogs! Instead of our typical superhero fare, today we stray away from the pack (get it?) and read the first volume of Beasts of Burden, a collection of eight short stories about pets encountering the supernatural. Evan Dorkin’s scary and sentimental writing combined with Jill Thompson’s beautiful artwork makes this a series that’s not to be missed!  

Doom Patrol! A name some of us have heard far too often, but do we really know what it means? To find out, we travel back to the late ‘80s to read the start of one of Grant Morrison’s first runs with DC comics in Doom Patrol 19-22. We’ve got Surrealism, Dadaism, and the straight up bizarre in spades as we deal with a humans trapped in a robot body, multiple personality (and multiple super-power!) disorder, and a wheelchair bound asshole.