Comic Books Are Burning In Hell

Welcome to Episode 2 of Batman Books are Burning in Hell, in which regular hosts Tucker Stone and Matt Seneca are joined by Benjamin Marra for a discussion of Batman: Venom! If Marra needs an introduction you're living wrong - the cartoonist behind Night Business, Terror Assaulter O.M.W.O.T., American Blood and What We Mean By Yesterday is one of the most accomplished artists currently making comics, full stop. Marra's works are vital entries in the category of American pulp, embracing his medium's history of disrepute while avoiding nostalgia with their purity of execution and commitment to extremity. Venom, published in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #16-20 (1991), is Denny O'Neil, Trevor Von Eeden, Russ Braun, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's epic saga of a Batman whose commitment to workout gains ends in tragedy, madness, and punching a great white shark in the face. LISTEN UP!

We start off with a random survey of each other's memories to determine who has that diesel, then it's time to go to church and mourn the passing of an O.G. killer, TAKAO SAITŌ. After that, we put Chris in the hot seat to figure out why he needed to read every single issue of 52 to decide whether or not he should keep the issues or take them outside to his nearest dumpster, which resulted in evern more memorializing. Where's Matt Seneca? He's busy! 

Get ready to dive straight towards your nearest 90s longbox! Matt and Tucker are taking the reins and talking Batman. In this installment of a Very Special Takeover Cast, the tale on offer is "Prey", from Paul Gulacy & Doug Moench. Over at The Factual Opinion, you'll find extensive show notes and images from the work in question from Matt Seneca. Keep your ears peeled, right down to the blood splattered bone, for more BatCasts To Come.

Rumor control? Here are the facts! 1) Chris read every single issue of Rom, The Space Knight...but nobody asked him too! 2) Tucker read all of the Eternals...but Joe doesn't believe him! 3) This podcast is actually all about what Jack Kirby and Steve Dikto really wanted to do...and more! Get in where you fit in, and if you can't find that place, make that place! Make it your own! We're there, and our arms are outstretched. Podcast!

While most of the comics we talk about on this one are new, this is as classic an episode of Comic Books Are Burning In Hell as it gets: there's Garth Ennis comics, a recap of Peter Milligan's decisions, Joe checking in on some up-to-the-minute new manga from Tatsuki Fujimoto, huge technical problems, Tucker losing his temper with Chris, Matt talking about the Punisher, and then they still find time to talk about the 80s DC supercreeps of Hawkworld. Get it on!

It's time to dive into some of the most politically prescient manga now available in English to the discerning reader: Masumura Jūshichi's Children of Mu-Town, published by Glacier Bay. What will the onslaught of takes result in: consensus, or all out war? There's only one way to find out, and if you haven't figured that part out yet, then I think we all know why you're still reading this description. Suit up!

It's time to talk about Monsters, the newest brick of Barry Windsor-Smith comics since...geez buddy. I don't know. A long time! Consider this a prelude to our Rune-cast, part of a Malibu Monday series we have planned for the tenth of In Your Dreams. Time to get some teeth gnashing on!

It's time to return to the subject of old: Jimbo, from Gary Panter. We've been jawing on the subject of Gary Panter for as long as we've been jawing at each other on anything, podcast or no podcast. NYRC's reissue gave us yet another chance to return to the subject, as did Fanta's publication of the big orange Crashpad. But none of us expected this episode's shocking discovery! You can take a look at a lot of the books we talk about on this show on our Bookshop page. If you purchase any of the books, the podcast will receive an affiliate fee, which will go towards paying the monthly hosting fee for the podcast, and, because it is Bookshop, will also go to support indie booksellers. On Twitter, you can keep up with the boys at @factualopinion, @snubpollard, @mattseneca and @cmautner. We also set up an instagram for the show if you want to bet money on future hot takes!

This week, the boys are playing with fire by talking about Alan Moore: will this be the end of our fair podcast? Probably not, because he refuses to even acknowledge the existence of the comics in question: it's the all new In Pictopia (from FU Press!) and the never-gonna-be-new-again 1963 (from Image's cool kid days!). Don Simpson, Steve Bissette, Chester Brown & Dave Gibbons: get ready to be name checked, boys!

This week, you'll get hot, ripped-from-the-bedsheets coverage of the manga all the kids were reading a few years ago that has finally made its way through the various nerd channels and achieved "make Tucker and Chris read it" status. How will they react? Will Joe quit the show in a huff? At one point did Matt join the conversation? Who performs the new closing theme song? This episode is as full of twists and turns as a chapter of....CHAINSAW MAN!

Joe, Matt and Tucker get together to talk about filmmaker Zack Snyder, his Man of Steel, his Batman V Superman, and how that informs all of their lives and life experiences. It's time for a comic book movie podcast! wait where's Chris

It's time to take a page from the baby book: a 1980s DC Comic that is! It's Frank Miller's Ronin, and yes, everybody is wearing tight shoes and really awake this time, with interruptions and "I don't agree with you sir" ringing out like a turn of the century switchboard. We also cover Chris Claremont's X-men as much as we probably ever will. Bring it on home, Frank!

This week, the crew is looking at the career output of Al Columbia, a cartoonist we all love tenderly and wildly. You want to get there? Cross the Syndercut river, you cowards! The Biologic Show awaits!  

How many jokes about the Judge Dredd movie featuring Sylvester Stallone will we will allow Chris Mautner to make? How many assumptions regarding British comics will be made? How often will Tucker get hyperbolic about John Wagner? Will Matt do an accent? Guys, the answers to these questions are yes, 1, a lot, many times, and sure. You'll have to listen to find out the order? You can take a look at a lot of the books we talk about on this show on our Bookshop page. If you purchase any of the books, the podcast will receive an affiliate fee, which will go towards paying the monthly hosting fee for the podcast, and, because it is Bookshop, will also go to support indie booksellers. On Twitter, you can keep up with the boys at @factualopinion, @snubpollard, @mattseneca and @cmautner.  

It's that time again: back issue time, when the boys go digging into the boxes of old. This time, it's to take a look at a comic that Matt Seneca has been making a case for as of late: the last ten issues of DC's Tomahawk, drawn by Frank Thorne. We're all in on this one, even when things get contentious, and even more so when things get really saucy...hey, we're talking about Frank Thorne, of course that kind of stuff is going to happen! Who knew Chris would choose this episode to explain his personal fetishes!

This week, we're spotlighting the late Richard Corben, the great Richard Corben. We don't all walk in with the same take, but by the close, we reach the kind of war torn climax a Corben character often finds: a grudging, earned moment of quiet spent looking across a blasted landscape. Except here, the landscape is of the listeners mind. Dare you join us, brother? Shalt we see you, sister? Rise! Rise and FIGHT!

Happy New Year, you dirty scumbags, you shiny bottleneckers, you comic book naildrivers: it's time to look back at the comics that came out in the last year where you might have been able to keep from getting your hands dirty. We've got ten comics to yank our entrails about, and the whole gang is in the building. It's list talking time!

Joe McCulloch, Chris Mautner, Matt Seneca and Tucker Stone get together to take a look at Vertigo Visions: Phantom Stranger, Rachel Pollack and Chris Weston's Time Breakers and the legal problem-causing Spectre comics by Jim Aparo and Michael Fleisher.

This week, we're down a man and the sass is upped: Tucker, Joe & Chris are talking about the latest Michel Rabgliati book, Paul At Home, then they're talking Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's Grass, and a brief tour of M.S. Harkness' Desperate Pleasures is made as well.  You can take a look at a lot of the books we talk about on this show on our Bookshop page. If you purchase any of the books, the podcast will receive an affiliate fee, which will go towards paying the monthly hosting fee for the podcast, and, because it is Bookshop, will also go to support indie booksellers. On Twitter, you can keep up with the boys at @factualopinion, @snubpollard, @mattseneca and @cmautner.

On this special background and feelings episode, we get Joe to open up even more than he already did in a 10,000 word interview, specifically about the conclusion of one of his major works of comics criticism, "This Week In Comics", then we discuss the merits and debits of comics advocacy as a general program, talk about our favorite types of writing, and say nice and mean things to one another in equal measure. If you stick around at the end, there's a nice little conversation about Batman and jeans.