Quarantined Comics

So this is the second episode paying tribute to the late great John Cassaday, the award winning comics artist, best known for his co-creation of Planetary, which we revisited last week John Cassaday passed away far too soon at the age of 52 on September 9, 2024 in New York City. Be sure to check out last week's replay of our episode of his work on Planetary - and of course, go pick up a copy - you will be blown away. This week we're revisiting one of our earliest episodes from our inaugural X-Month, where we read Cassaday's work on 2004's Astonishing X-Men  - another solid read. We hope you'll make the time to revisit the work with us, to see the work of comics truly great artists.  Mr. Cassaday received an Eisner Award, the comic book industry equivalent of the Oscar, for best penciler/inker in 2004. He tied for the award with Frank Quitely in 2005 and won it again in 2006, for Planetary with writer Warren Ellis and Astonishing X-Men with writer Joss Whedon, “There are basically three people that I would count as the easiest collaborations, the most natural, the best I've ever worked with,” Mr. Whedon said in an interview. “One is an actor, one is an editor and one is Johnny. He knew so much of what I was trying to convey that my scripts just got shorter and shorter.” “The best page I ever wrote in comics has no words,” Mr. Whedon said. The page, which also has no sound effects, depicts Kitty Pryde, Colossus's lover, gazing at him with a stunned expression as she places a hand over her heart. “He didn't swagger, he didn't yell,” Mr. Whedon said of Mr. Cassaday, but “he was very exacting” about his art — an approach that included giving notes on the colors and lettering of his pages. Laura J. Martin, the colorist on Astonishing X-Men, said that one of her favorite collaborations with Mr. Cassaday was the cover of No. 6 in the series, on which he depicted Kitty and Colossus caressing. The cover required extensive color work to convey texture and the silver sheen of Colossus's metallic body. Mr. Cassaday gave Ms. Martin that cover as a wedding present. Rest in peace John Cassaday.NY TIMES: John Cassaday, Award-Winning Comic Book Artist, Dies at 52https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/arts/john-cassaday-dead.html

A few weeks ago, we lost a great comics artist far too soon. John Cassaday was an award-winning American comic book artist, writer, and television director - who passed away on September 9, 2024 in New York City at the age of 52 i think it goes without saying that comics is a medium where great writing and art come together for a truly great medium of storytelling. and when both are firing on all cylinders, it truly something to behold. John Cassaday was one of those artists.  So on Quarantined Comics, we've had the good fortune to revisit some of the works Cassaday was best known for: This episode we'll be talking about 1998's critically acclaimed series Planetary, which he co-created with Warren Ellis.  John later went on to work on Marvel's relaunch of Star Wars with Jason Aaron, whose first issue sold more than a million copies. Acclaimed writer Mark Waid, who was one of the first to help Cassaday get his start said this — “I refuse to take any real credit for ‘discovering' John Cassaday,” Mr. Waid wrote on Facebook. “I can't take credit for having functioning eyeballs.”Next week we'll be re-sharing our episode about his work on 2004's Astonishing X-Men.  Rest in peace John Cassaday, you were one of the greats.  NY TIMES: John Cassaday, Award-Winning Comic Book Artist, Dies at 52 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/arts/john-cassaday-dead.html

BURMA CHRONICLES is the 2007 graphic travelogue by French-Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle — which presents a personal and distinctively humorous glimpse into a political hotspot on the other side of the world, where the Delisle balances his ex-pat home-husbandry, the spinning politics a quasi-authoritarian state, and finding a way as a foreign cartoonist amidst a South Asian junta (gesuhndeit). joining in Ryan's absence for our ongoing series of "international comics" is longtime friend of the pod Drew Tarvin, Humor Engineer, who much like the author of this week's comic, happens to be a dude who's a funny-jobbed, home-husbanding ex-pat dad in a foreign land. learn more @ AndrewTarvin.com

"The idea that a person can't relate to something because it's not directly about them is a misunderstanding of who's been reading books this whole time." Mariko Tamaki is an award-winning Canadian comics creator and writer — known for works like Skim and This One Summer (with her cousin Jillian Tamaki). Her latest novel is Cold, a haunting YA novel about four students who knew too much and said too little. AND Mariko's also the Co-founder & Editor of Surely Books - a comics imprint of LGBTQIA+ creators. Mariko's ALSO known for comics like Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, Emiko Superstar, and several prose works of fiction and nonfiction. AND since 2016, Mariko's been writing for Marvel & DC comics - on powerful books like I Am Not Stafire, and Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass. Mariko's also only the second woman to write Detective Comics - the 1000+ issue flagship DC series about the Dark Knight. If you can't tell by now, one of us has been a BIG Mariko Tamaki fan for awhile, and after hearing her approach to writing and sharing personal stories, you soon will be too. This is a replay of an earlier chat from 2022 - we're airing it in honor of Marikos' winning of the Eisner Award (among comics most prestigious honors) - for the 2023 graphic novel ROAMING - which she co-created with her cousin Jillian. BOOK: Roaming: goodreads.com/book/show/62207006-roaming NEWS: comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards/ LEARN ABOUT MARIKO TAMAKI & HER WORK: * twitter.com/marikotamaki * instagram.com/marikotamaki * goodreads.com/author/show/483588.Mariko_Tamaki * Surely Books: abramsbooks.com/imprints/surely * This One Summer: goodreads.com/book/show/18465566-this-one-summer * Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me: goodreads.com/book/show/40864841-laura-dean-keeps-breaking-up-with-me * Skim: goodreads.com/book/show/2418888.Skim * MENTIONS * Heather Gold: heathergold.com/about-heather-gold * Jillian Tamaki: jilliantamaki.com * Lauren Tamaki: laurentamaki.com * Gene Luen Yang: geneyang.com * BOOK: Stone Fruit (Lee Lai): goodreads.com/en/book/show/55678434 * BOOK: Shadow Life (Hiromi Goto, Ann Xu): goodreads.com/en/book/show/51591596 * Alice Munro: wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro * Timothy Findley: wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Findley *

In honor of ROAMING sweeping this year's EISNER's, we're revisiting this previous episode about a GREAT work ROAMING is the graphic novel winner of three 2024 EISNER awards for best graphic novel, best writer, and best penciller/inker - by cousins Mariko + Jillian Tamaki. It's a book about three young women touring New York City in the late aughts, and it's both a love letter to New York City and a nostalgic look at the relationship between three friends who are about to follow very different paths in life. You can't read this book and not see yourself in it at a younger, more awkward phase of your life - whether or not you've even spent any time in NYC. We've actually covered some of Mariko's other award-winning work like Skim, This One Summer, and morein this feed. So be sure to check out those episodes, ALL of Mariko Tamaki's work wherever you get your favorite books LEARN MORE BOOK: Roaming: goodreads.com/book/show/62207006-roaming NEWS: comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards/ MARIKO: instagram.com/marikotamaki AUTHOR: goodreads.com/author/show/483588.Mariko_Tamaki BOOK: This One Summer: goodreads.com/book/show/18465566-this-one-summer

During a worldwide Quarantined Comics and Rabbit Fighters podcast REVOLUTION, Raman + Josh (two non-Persian dudes doing a Persian protagonist podcat) got the ORIGINAL band back together to talk about a comic that somehow NEITHER of us had read before, PERSEPOLIS, by Marjane Satrapi, an award winning, now banned graphic autobiography from the early 2000s about a young girl growing up in Iran, and becoming a woman overseas, returning home, and dealing with everything in between. The book was originally published in French, and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Its creator Satrapi later produced an award-winning film of the same name In Persepolis, we meet young Marjane “Marji” Satrapi growing up in Tehran just before and during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, as well as thru the start of the Iran + Iraq War in the 1980s. Her parents, are secular, upper-middle class activists, who worry for their precocious daughter's safety in the increasingly conservative and dangerous Iran, so send her off to Austria to become a teenager. Her teen years are fraught with all the drama you can expect from such an experience, but Marji - now becoming a young woman - always maintains the experience of an outsider looking in - with her feet in both worlds. Marji eventually returns to Iran to find that not only has her mother country changed, but she as well. This book was a surprise and illuminating for us in many ways, making us question - what would WE do in such a situation? 

“What happens after we've survived? What's our responsibility to somebody suffering more than I am? For kids it's like, ‘Let's just go over and help them — like, why wouldn't we?' “ = With summer here, and QC still on hiatus while Raman + Ryan tend to their day-jobs, we wanted to feature a chat from Raman's OTHER podcast MODERN MINORITIES - featuring conversations with authors of historical fiction NOVELS about the 1957 Partition of India + Pakistan Veera Hiranandani is an award-winning author of several books for young people - one of the most recent of which is THE NIGHT DIARY - a must read. While the novel is a historical fiction geared for adolescents and young adults, it's a a heart-warming read that will pull you into a singular story through the eyes of a young girl experiencing one of history's greatest traumas.. Veera went on to win the prestigious Newbery Award for the book, as well as the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, the 2018 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature, and several other honors and state reading list awards. Veera's work speaks to the power of stories to spark conversations. Veera's written a number of other award-winning books - including “How to Find What You're Not Looking For,” and “The Whole Story of Half a Girl. ”Her latest novel - AMIL & THE AFTER, is a follow-up to The Night Diary and it does what not many other books do - it examines the immediate AFTERMATH of a generational - and historical trauma. Again, through the eyes of a child. Veera's journey - and story is a one that crosses cultures and generations - and it's interesting to see how she pulls at the threads of her life to inform her work, and ask lots of hard whys - and why nots. LEARN MORE veerahiranandani.com instagram.com/veerawrites BOOK: The Night Diary (2018): goodreads.com/book/show/35464020-the-night-diary BOOK: How to Find What You're Not Looking For (2021) goodreads.com/book/show/56912931-how-to-find-what-you-re-not-looking-for BOOK The Whole Story of Half a Girl (2012) goodreads.com/book/show/11164727-the-whole-story-of-half-a-girl BOOK: Amil & the After (2024): goodreads.com/book/show/139400607-amil-and-the-after

”Being a writer is just bloody hard work and passion. It is a kind of madness, which compels you every day to go to say, ‘OK, let's do it again today' “ = With summer here, and QC still on hiatus while Raman + Ryan tend to their day-jobs, we wanted to feature a chat from Raman's OTHER podcast MODERN MINORITIES - featuring conversations with authors of historical fiction NOVELS about the 1957 Partition of India + Pakistan Manreet Sodhi Someshwar's the author of nine novels - including the Long Walk Home, Radiance of a Thousand Suns, and most recently the Partition Trilogy - a historical fiction novel series which Raman is a BIG fan of. Manreet's  articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and the South China Morning Post, among others. She has taught for the New York Public Library and the City College of New York - and she's a former corporate citizen having done stints in Asia, and a parent grappling with the world our kids will inherit. Manreet's recently complete Partition Trilogy - a series of 3 books titled Lahore, Hyderabad, and Kashmir - are a historical fiction set during, before, and immediately after the Partition - and independence of - India and Pakistan of 1947. Partition is among the the great humanitarian disasters of the 20th century - and the largest mass migration in history The history of Partition is a topic near and dear to Raman - and impacts and informs much of what is happening today, in both Asia, and the United States - from the tensions between India and Pakistan, and the rise of nationalism / extremism in our politics around the world. Manreet's unique voice focuses not just on the personal musings of these larger than life historical figures - like India's founding fathers Gandhi & Nehru, but she also breathes life into characters who represent the stats and figures that we sometimes gloss over when we hear of a tragedy (including the role - and subversion of women by history). We talked a lot about the weaponization of history, and how storytelling - and fact-checking - have to work hand in hand. You'll enjoy this candid and thoughtful conversation with Manreet, who's using her creative drive to make a statement for the world today - including the next generation. LEARN ABOUT MANREET Lahore (book): goodreads.com/en/book/show/59617445 instagram.com/manreetsomeshwar goodreads.com/author/list/265630.Manreet_Sodhi_Someshwar

Raman joins longtime friend of the pod Josh (whose past episodes include Dune, Black Science, and Red Son) on HIS podcast RABBIT FIGHTERS. The topic? their long, complicated relationship with the band WEEZER - alongside fellow Rabbit fighters Greg and Brian. Rabbit Fighters is a show where three friends revisit the movies and music that shaped their past - but one of them has never explored it. sound familiar? Subscribe to RABBIT FIGHTERS wherever you get your favorite podcasts - for weekly shenagins while you wait for Ryan and Raman to get their act back together. RabbitFighters.com - It's like the world has turned and left me here.

Edel Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist, activist and author who's created more than 200 magazine covers for the likes of Time, The New Yorker, Newsweek and Der Spiegel - which are singular and striking given our current political climate. Edel's latest work is the graphic memoir "Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey" - telling the story of his childhood in Cuba and his family's decision in 1980 to join a hazardous flotilla of refugees, the Mariel boatlift. This may be one of the best (comic) books Raman read in 2023, so on his other podcast MODERN MINORITIES, he reached out for a chat. In WORM - which is a term Castro used for Cubans who chose to leave the country - Edel uses his own life to capture what it's like to grow up under an authoritarian government and to sound a caution - from the runup to the 2016 US election to January 6, 2020 — to the future we are facing THIS election year. In our conversation we go deep into - and beyond Edel's personal story - to get at the why for his activism and storytelling approach... BOOK: Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey - goodreads.com/en/book/show/57771211 COVERS: https://illoz.com/edel/portfolios/Magazine-Covers/ AUTHOR: edelr.com

to close out 2023's alphabetic soup of comics, we're closing the year with a cheat and reading “XYZ Comics,” by cartoonist legend R. Crumb. “XYZ Comics,” published in 1972, is more of a 28 page pamphlet that reflects Crumb's rather interesting state of mind at the time. Crumb was a few years out from doing a massive, year-long LSD trip that began in 1965. It greatly impacted his work. He was already known at the time for strips like Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural and Angelfood McSpade - much of which is quite problematic. Starting in the mid-1960s, Crumb's work really started to reflect what he described as the seamy side of America's self-conscious, and drawing these strips almost as stream-of-consciousness. As he said in his eponymous documentary "it didn't have to make sense, it could be stupid, it didn't make any difference” — and “XYZ Comics” really magnified all this because it was created literally while Crumb was on a road trip, which is, “partly why it's such a jumble of disconnected images.” So close out the year with us with an LSD trip of a comic, and bring your toothpaste.

No one was more influential in pushing what sequential storytelling can be than Will Eisner, the so-called godfather of the graphic novel. His legendary body of work started when he was just a young buck in the 1940s trying to capture the superhero craze with "The Spirit," through the early 2000s when he was exploding the comics form, all while telling rich, nuanced stories of people messily colliding in New York City. In this episode, we'll take a look at the impact of some of Eisner's most powerful graphic novels and comics.

V is for... VISION, 2016's Eisner award winning series by writer Tom King and artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta. King should be a familiar name to you by now, as we've read more than a few of his works on this podcast, including Mister Miracle and the Human Target, two stories about troubled superheroes. And this book is no different. The Vision actually debuted in the Avengers way back when in 1968, when he was first designed to kill Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but soon became one of them...falling in love with the Scarlet Witch along the way. This same story arc also played out on the big screen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where the Vision was played by Tom Bettany...and pretty much had his girlfriend rip his brain out of his head... But this isn't really a story about WandaVision, in THIS comic Vision just wants an ordinary life ― with a wife and two children, a home in the suburbs, perhaps even a dog. So he built them. Sound familiar? Only this time Vision literally built his wife, kids, and dog. As in they are sentient robots. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

do you want to hear a scary story? well have we got a Halloween treat for you! U is for...Uzumaki. Uzumaki is manga legend's Junji Ito's seminal horror series from 1998. The entire populace of a small seaside town becomes obsessed with spirals. If you're into bodily, psychological, and cosmic horror, then step into the fog-shrouded streets of Kurozu-cho and see how long you can hold your mind - and your body - together. this is an oldie but a goodie — a replay of one of our very FIRST episodes from the beginning of the 2020 pandemic. what's even scarier? how new we were to podcasting about comics we love — before i knew better than to trust Ryan to NOT freak me out. but this would be the first of many comics we'd come to love from Junji Ito. and boy is this a creepy one. make sure you read - and listen - with the lights turned on...

T...is for Tomine! that is Adrian Tomine, one of our all time favorite graphic novelists, who we've covered on this podcast before (The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, etc). We recently had the privilege of sitting down with Adrian Tomine on Raman's OTHER podcast, Modern Minorities, where superfan Ryan tagged along for a chat...

In today's world, solving a crime often isn't the end. Everyone has their own version of events and the means to amplify that version, whether true or not. Nick Drnaso's eerie graphic novel "Sabrina" takes place in mundane environments: offices, homes, restaurants, but beneath it all is this feeling of incredible insecruity and of a world in upheaval. "Sabrina" is perhaps one of the most unconventional murder mysteries ever written.

This week, Raman and I look at "Roaming," the latest graphic novel from our favorite comic creator cousins: Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. We previously reviewed their coming-of-age collaborations "Skim" and "This One Summer." "Roaming" is in fact three coming-of-age stories in one. Three young women take a trip together to New York City in 2009 (we say 2005 in the podcast. We are wrong). Two of these women, Danny and Zoe, are old friends who have planned this trip for a long time. The third, Fiona, is Danny's mercurial friend whose presence soon disrupts the entire trip.

Q is also for QUEENIE, GODMOTHER OF HARLEM, Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy's historical graphic novel inspired by the life of Harlem's legendary mobster, Stephanie Saint-Clair. Queenie follows the life of Stephanie Saint-Clair—the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in Harlem in the 1930s. Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem's mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community. A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents. With meticulous details—in both story and art Saint-Clair's story is brought to life in a tense narrative, against a sometimes bloody backdrop of jazz and voodoo. The story tackles the themes of colonization, corruption, police violence, and racial identity, but above all, Queenie celebrates the genius of a woman forgotten by history...

In our last episode, we looked at "On a Sunbeam," about an intense love through space. This week, we look at "Patience," about an intense love through time. Part romance, part mystery, and all sci-fi trippiness, "Patience" came out in 2016 and marks one of Dan Clowes's most ambitious graphic novels yet. Jack and Patience are young, very much in love, with a baby on the way. But one day, Jack comes home from "work" -- you can read the graphic novel to figure out why that's in scare quotes -- to find his wife murdered on the floor. For the next 17 years, he tries to track down her killer and, when that fails, robs some guy of his time machine and travels back in time to prevent the murder from happening. Of course, everything goes as planned. You may think you know what happens, and who the murderer is, but you're probably wrong.

Have you ever thought about enrolling in an space-Hogwarts, falling in love, only for your high school sweetheart to get wisked away by her space-homesteader aristocrat sisters, and deciding to join a space-cathedral reconstruction crew living and working on a space salamander eating chili and playing board games while making your way to your lost love? If so, then have we got a book for you: "O" is for ON A SUNBEAM, Tillie Walden's star crossed lovers' tale of Mia, Grace, and all their rad friends - sure to make you marvel at the simple things in life, but in space...

N is for NOT ALL ROBOTS - a future fiction work by Mark Russell, who you might remember for schadenfreude takes on modern society thru his critically acclaimed work on "The Flintstones" (seriously, look it up) In Not All Robots, writer Mark Russell + artist Mike Deodato, Jr. drop us into the 2056 bubble city of Atlanta, where robots have replaced human beings in the workforce worldwide. An uneasy co-existence develops between the newly intelligent robots and the ten billion humans on earth. And since AI and robots and have taken over all the jobs - save hairdressers - every human family is assigned a robot upon whom they are completely reliant. We spend most of the story with the Walters, a human family whose robot Razorball (Snowball) ominously spends his free time in the garage, but we also spend time at his robot place of work making Mandroids - his inevitable replacement, having his robot copatriots telling him to remove his empathy chip. We also get to hear lots of human and robot cable news style commentary that is equal parts hilarious and worrying sign of things to come. Did wmention that the book won the prestigious Eisner Award in 2022 for Best Humor Publication?

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman began serializing the tale of his father's Holocaust surival in 1980, famously depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. The strip ran from 1980 to 1991, and was eventually collected in two volumes. In 1992, it became the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer. Even today, the book has a rare power, providing a visceral and incisive look on the daily and often hourly struggle to survive as the Nazis invaded Poland and continued their systematic extermination of the Jews. Perhaps because of that continued power, Maus is constantly in the crosshairs of political censors, anxious to pull the book from libraries, an action that ironically often fuels the book's popularity and sales. In this episode, Raman and Ryan will talk about Maus and its legacy. They'll be joined by Emily Mintz, an oil painter and sculptor who builds exhibits for the Bronx Zoo. Maus holds a special place in Mintz's life, a descendent of Jewish refugees who grew up hearing the stories of relatives who survived, and many who didn't.

Have you ever wondered what its like to be a asian teenage artist coming of age in the suburbs of the big city, with an unpredictable and often unbearable mother, while also saddled with a sense of regret and enui? this week we're reading IN LIMBO, the debut graphic memoir by Deb JJ Lee. Our story introduces us to Deb, a young Korean American teenager, trapped in a inescapable feeling of otherness. For a while, their English wasn't perfect. Their teachers can't pronounce her Korean name. Their face and her eyes―especially their eyes―feel wrong. Things only get harder once high school starts - shifting sands of arts and academics, escalating tensions at home, friendships made and frayed, and mental health struggles that are all too real to anyone who's ever felt like an outsider. With stunning art and a tale that feels like you're slipping in and out of an all too familiar dream, this is a story that you can't leave easily. Everybody hurts...sometimes.

K is for KARI, the 2008 debut by Indian graphic novelist Amruta Patil, who's since gone on to become a leading voice in the Indians comic scene, illustrating a number of projects - including a reimagining of the Hindu epic the Mahabharata. In Kari, we meet the eponymous protagonist upon her surviving a heartbroken suicide attempt, and we follow her to at work and at and home in the hustle and bustle of smog city. A marketing and advertising exec who turns her creative eye on the world, she lives a semi-closeted queer life, living with many single women, befriending or romantically rebounding with a business colleague with weeks left to live, and just surviving in a monsoon drenched city. In deeply drawn black and white chapters we journey thru Kari's crowded loneliness, sleeper success, and death - all in the shadow of her departed partner. The book is a sensuous yet wry commentary on life and love and unlike anything we'd ever seen. One of the rare episodes where Ryan and Raman agree on (almost) everything.

Canadian cartoonist Julie Doucet is most famous for her indie strip from the 90s "Dirty Plotte," about her struggle being a young woman in the indie comics scene. More than 20 years later, Doucet has returned with "Time Zone J," where Doucet, now middle-aged, recalls a torrid romance she had with a fan during her youth, when she was still churning out her indie strips. "Time Zone J" isn't just about her memories, it's also about how memories work, and their tangled unreliability. As such, Doucet's work takes on a really weird form — although its collected in a book, it's meant to be read as one long scrolling piece of art. Tedious and gimmicky? Innovative and feroicous? Or maybe both at different stages... We'll have a go of it in the latest episode of Quarantined Comics.

Zoe Thorogood is just about to turn 25 and she's already an artistic force. She burst onto the comics scene with "The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott," published in 2020, about a young artist doomed to go blind. She followed that up with her brilliant memoir "It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth," about her struggles with depression. If "Billie Scott" was an announcement of an intriguing young talent, "Centre of the Earth" all but solidified it. But one of the most intriguing things about "Centre of the Earth" is how it changes the reading of "Billie Scott." In this episode, we'll take a look at Thorogood's two works, how they interact with each other, and how Thorogood uses comics to face her demons.

This month to celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage Month in Asian hosted podcast, we're bringing you an episode from Good Pop Culture Club, one of our sister podcasts from the Potluck Podcast Collective. Good Pop Culture Club is a regular discussion about the good pop that gets us through our days. Each episode hosts Marvin, Jess and Han discuss what they've been watching their opinions on recent media news and discuss a featured pop culture topic with an emphasis on diversity and representation. Learn more about, Good Pop Culture Club @ podcastpotluck.com On this episode of Good Pop we put on our finest butt kicking shoes as we check out Polite Society, the new film from Nida Manzoor that follows a young teenage girl who dreams of becoming a stuntwoman, as she takes on an evil auntie trying to take her sister away in a sinister arranged marriage. And in What's Popping? — The Met Gala, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, and Top Chef

This month to celebrate AAPI heritage we're featuring an episode from Books & Boba, one of our sister podcasts from the Potluck Podcast Collective - a podcast group we're part of that features unique Asian American voices and stories. Books & Boba is a book club dedicated to books written by Asian and Asian American authors. You can find more eps at booksnadboba.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. On this episode -Books & Boba hosts Marvin + Reera chat with HUNGRY GHOST creator Victoria Ying. Hungry Ghost, is a coming of age story about a Chinese American girl dealing with adolescence, parental expectation, and eating disorders. You'll also hear Victoria talk her background in animation as well as her semi-autobiographical inspirations behind the story of Hungry Ghost.

This week, we're reading the 2022 Human Target limited series by Tom King and Greg Smallwood. You'll remember how much we love Tom King from multiple previous episodes like Mr. Miracle and Superman Woman of Tomorrow. In this latest series, Christopher Chance, aka the Human Target, is on his latest cases protecting Lex Luthor when things go sideways. An assassination attempt Chance didn't see coming leaves him vulnerable and left trying to solve his own murder, as he has 12 days to discover just who in the DC Universe hated Luthor enough to want him dead by slow-acting poison. And the prime suspects happen to be…the Justice League International? In this hard-boiled, seemingly detective noir story Chance find himself interrogating the cast of characters from the famed 1987 series by Keith Giffen. We're talking Ice, Fire, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Guy Gardner, G'Nort, Martian Manhunter, Rocket Red, and even...the shadow of the Batman. There are twists and turns, a little bit of love-making, and a whole lot of drinking.

So with Asian American Heritage Month, we decided that G should be for Gene Luen Yang ...mostly as an excuse to read AMERICAN BORN CHINESE, Yang's Eisner Award-winning, seminal graphic novel soon to be released as a Disney+ streaming show with a bevvy of Oscar winners. American Born Chinese is Gene Luen Yang's was first released in 2006 - written and illustrated by Yang, and also colored by cartoonist Lark Pien. American Born Chinese consists of three seemingly disparate tales... First, the legendary Chinese Monkey King from the classic 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West. However, blink and you might miss it, but Yang replaces the Buddha with a Christian influenced deity.The second storyline is the all-too-familiar Asian American coming of age story of a young American Born Chinese man Jin Wang, who befriends a new arrival from Taiwan, Wei Chen. As with any story of teen drama, romance is afoot with Jin's American crush Amelia Harris. And the third story depicts an American TV sitcom with All American boy Danny and his cousin visting from Chin-kee, who if you couldn't tell from the name alone, is meant to be an amalgam of racist stereotype, from the outlandish costume, heavy accent, buck teeth, and yes, predilection for putting pee pee in your coke. Eventually these three tales become come together into a poignant lesson of culture and self acceptance.

In Michael DeForge's Familiar Face, the world is always changing, commutes are being altered, and peoples' bodies are constantly being transformed, or "optimized." The citizens of this world exist in an environment that they cannot control or even begin to understand. Sound familiar?

As we continue reading our way thru the alphabet — E is for Esther's Notebooks, the critically acclaimed cartoon series that chronicles the hilarious and heartbreaking true life of a young girl growing up in Paris, by Riad Satouff, the award-winning French Syrian cartoonist best known for his childhood cartoon autobiography, the Arab of the Future (one of the first books we read on this pod) Several years ago, Sattouf was out to dinner with some of his friends, who brought along their outgoing young daughter — and as some of you with young daughters might already know...she would...not...stop...talking. Sattouf was fascinated by the young girls honest, garrulous and articulate nature, and seeking to contrast his childhood autobiography of growing up in the middle east in the 1980s, Sattouf decided to chronicle a modern child's take on life So over the past three years, Riad Satouff has been a chatting with his friends outgoing young daughter, anonymized as Esther, where once a week she would tell him about her family, her school, her dreams, her fears. After each conversation he published a one page comic strip based on what she had said First published in 2016 - Esther's Notebooks is an ongoing series that spans the first three years of young girl's life — from ages 9 thru 12 — over 156 comic strips, giving us a delightful look into the daily drama of this thoughtful, intelligent, and high spirited girl, who loves her father, finds her big brother annoying, loves French hip hop, and just wants an iPhone - among many, many other things. Satouff has said “The real Esther interested me because she is a girl without a particular background. She has no family problems, her parents are together, she is not poor or rich, not stunningly beautiful nor plain, not super-intelligent but good at school. She is your average young girl without any particular backstory. Listening to her stories, I realised that they were hard, amusing and sometimes cruel, but they transmitted the reality of childhood.” Satouff has said he plans to chronicle her life in cartoons until Esther's eighteen. It's an unfiltered look into modern childhood and not exclusively French - despite providing a crash course into popular French hip hop artists. The way Esther grows up, interacts with social media, worries about terrorism, sexism, racism and questions of having or not having money, speaks to a universal audience. Occasionally we're brought into the trauma of current events - from a young child's perspective, whether its the Paris terror attacks or the political moment of Trump, Le Pain - Macron, and even Putin

The Doom Patrol debuted in 1963, just a few months before the X-Men. The two titles had a lot in common: a group of superpowered misfits led by a man in a wheelchair. But while the X-Men soon found their way into the pop cultural canon, the Doom Patrol could only muster a cult following — and only recently started rising into the mainstream due to the eponymous HBO TV series. But Doom Patrol still had a succession of heavy hitting talent inventing consistently weird challenges for the team to fight through, from John Byrne to Gerard Way to Grant Morrison. This week on Quarantined Comics, Raman and Ryan will review half of Morrison's 45-issue run, which started in 1989. Morrison established themselves as one of the hottest writers during the 80s, bringing his odd sensibility from the pages of the British sci-fi series 2000AD to DC superhero stories, including a long run writing the series Animal Man and the one-shot Batman: Arkham Asylum. But with his their run on Doom Patrol... well, maybe it was just a little too much Morrison for Ryan and Raman to handle...

C is for...CATWOMAN! Catwoman is much more than a feline-themed criminal in a cat-suit. Despite sexy portrayals by Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, Anne Hathaway, Camren Bicondova, or Zoë Kravitz would have you believe, Selina Kyle, AKA Catwoman has the potential to be a much more nuanced character in modern comics. Way back back in 2002, now acclaimed crime-fiction writer Ed Brubaker attempted to do just that - redefine a sexual icon into a feminist one - in his seminal run and reboot of Catwoman. Brubaker created a more low-key, street level portrayal of the character, returning to the East End of Gotham, a forgotten, working class part of the city. Paired with a # of artists - including the late Darwyn Cooke, Cameron Stewart, and Mike Allred - ironically also all dudes - who masterfully create a less sexualized version of Selina. She's joined by her best friend Holly, private eye Slam Bradley, and Dr. Leslie Thompkinz to confront the demons of her past and present. But we ALSO decided to read 2022's Catwoman Lonely City - the acclaimed miniseries by Cliff Chiang - which ventures into the not-too-distant future to follow a middle-aged Selina Kyle, as she investigates a conspiracy related to the death of Batman some 10 years prior. Almost all of the Bat-family is gone, and she's left with her wits, and a handful of super-criminal friends and foes, some of whom have infiltrated city hall. both series ask us to re-examine not just how our society defines crime, but who are the people who define what crime is, and what are the circumstances that drive those we deem criminals to choose the life they do. but also, just a romping good time with a lady in a cat suit.

On the surface, the samurai epic Blade of the Immortal is all about the violence, with its gorgeous splash pages of kaleidoscopic dismemberment. Created by Hiroaki Samura, a manga artist about whom very little is known, Blade of the Immortal follows a familiar outline: a young girl named Rin seeks to kill the group of swordsmen responsible for the murder of her family. But Samura's ambitions are greater, and as Rin and her hired hitman Manji make headway into her quest, her feelings about her vengeance grow more complicated. Blade of the Immortal is a 31-volume epic that ran from 1993-2012. In this episode, we'll scratch the surface and take a look at the first six volumes.

A is for...AKIRA. For 2023 we're reading our way through the alphabet! AKIRA, the seminal Japanese cyberpunk post-apocalyptic manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo. This revolutionary Japanese comic ran from 1982 to 1990, serialized biweekly in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Young Magazine, with its 120 chapters collected into six tankōbon volumes. The work had an outsized influence on not just comics east and west, but its landmark anime film adaptation from 1988 shaped a generation of storytellers. Almost across between Blade Runner meets Mad Max — with a little bit of 2001 A Space Odyssey thrown in, the FILM Akira was listed as one of the 10 essential animations. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that Dark Horse finally adapted the original manga for western audiences like us to READ. Akira takes place some 30 years after the 1988 Japanese government atomic bombing of Tokyo after ESP experiments on children go awry. . Kaneda, the leader of a Japanese youth biker gang — and his pal Tetsuo are cruising the border of OLD Tokyo, where they have an strange encounter, which leaves Tetsuo hospitalized. Tetsuo is whiskey-a-go-go'ed away to a secret government project and Kaneda finds himself subsequently battling anti-government activists, greedy politicians, irresponsible scientists and a powerful military leader. Ultimately, Tetsuo's supernatural powers manifest, and all hell breaks loose. The action culminates at the site of the modern day Tokyo Olympiad exposing the experiment's secrets. Otomo has stated that Akira reflects the essence of his views toward life and death, and the world which surrounds us. And joining us to help us make sense of the world which surrounds us (or at least this comic), is the very man who introduced Ryan & Raman oh so long ago, the one and only Bob Arnold, who apparantly named his cat after the lead character in Akira, who is really Canadian.

As the year comes to a close, we reflect on more than a few new adaptations of comic book stories in the Cinematic Universes, multiplexes, and streaming services of our hearts — like the dutiful corporate citizens of the republic we are. longtime friend of the pod and frequent guest Paresh joins us for our shenanagins of hot takes and reflections of the years nerd/pop culture adaptations, including (listed in order of 2022 release): Hawkeye Spider-Man: No Way Home Book of Boba Fett Peacemaker Freakangels the Batman DMZ HALO Moon Knight Young Justice Phantoms Morbius Paris, 13th District Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Obi Wan The Boys (S3) Ms. Marvel Lightyear Thor: Love and Thunder Harley Quinn S3 DC League of Super-Pets Paper Girls Batgirl (sigh) Sandman She-Hulk House of Dragon Rings of Power ANDOR Grendel (phew) Black Adam Tales of the Jedi Titans S4 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special Special Guest: Paresh Jha.

Last week, we discussed how awesome FABLES is. And it's still a rip roarin' good time, but also... how does it hold up in a modern context, almost fifteen years after the first volume was published? Its debut was just a few short years after 9/11, so it has a certain political and Euro-centric sensibility that was more fashionable at the time. How does that read today?

FABLES, by Bill Willingham, is a multi-Eisner award-winning comic telling THE modern-day story of the legends of folk and fairy tales - living in our modern, mundane — or mundy — world. We're talking Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Rose Red, Prince Charming, Cinderella, Jack, Goldilocks, the 3 little Pigs, Santa Clause, Beauty & the Beast, Pinnochio, and many more. And while Fables definitely sounds like some weird shit - don't worry it is - Fables combines the narratives of many characters from popular literay legend and smooshes them into a multi-versal tale with stakes and consequences, unlike a lot of modern superhero comics. This is a 2-part episode reading, where this weeek we cover FABLES Vols 1-6 - setting up almost all of the major characters - living in exile from their countless Homelands, after a mysterious villain known only as “The Adversary” appeared with an unstoppable army and began conquering Fable worlds one after another. Hundreds of our years ago, the main Fables of our story came up with a desperate plan: to hide in a world The Adversary would never even want—a world so boring and utterly mundane that magic doesn't even exist there: our own. New York City, to be more specific. Fables finds itself mostly set in the oft-overlooked, and soon-to-gentrified neighborhood known only as "Fabletown" - but spans the centuries and worlds, to weave a long tale. While the first couple of volumes get off to a slow start world-building and setting up the main characters, it soon starts to speed up the stakes and drama for an entertaining romp. The first 2 volumes are a slog, but then shit gets real...really good.

The cartoonist Kate Beaton is known for her incisively funny and parodic takes on everything from Aquaman to Hamlet in her series "Hark! A Vagrant!" But earlier this year, she released her memoir "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," a harrowing account of the isolating, infuriating, and at times terrifying job that Beaton took after graduating in order to pay off the $40,000 debt from her arts degree. Even as a young woman in her early 20s, Beaton is tough and confronts each conflict with wit and biting sarcasm — but when you're in an environment where men outnumber women 50 to one, that only goes so far.

If you're like us, you've not taken your Birthright Israel tour. But you know who did The cartoonist Sarah Glidden. And you know what else she did? She chronicled it in her 2007 memoir “How To Understand Israel in 60 Days.” Glidden is Jewish and progressive, living in New York City, when she departs on her tour. She goes in with some preconceived notions and by the end she's far less definitive in her point of view. Using rich water colors, Glidden details the day-to-day aspects of her tour where she learns about Israel's history, but also can't help questioning what she's learning, or the way in which that history is communicated. This may just be the episode that gets us cancelled.

Post WWI Berlin was both a place of great creative energy and a city about to tear itself apart. In a 700 page opus 20 years in the making, the artist Jason Lutes chronicled Germany's embrace of the Nazi party through the lens of then men and women working and toiling, celebrating and politicking, throughout Berlin. It's a book both exhilarating to read and frightening, given how closely the society that Lutes chronicles mirrors our own troubled world of America in the 2020s.

Since Ryan's stuck in a well saving puppies while battling conniving co-op boards, and Raman's buried in the demands of fatherhood and an international life of crime, we enlisted friend-of-the-pod BRAD BERENS to fill the gap (and your earholes). Like us, Brad's a sophisticated nerd with a way with the words. In Brad's latest "weekly dispatch" e-newsletter, Brad dropped some interesting thoughts about the state of the modern comic book industry, and how it tracks against the broader trends in the fragmenting media industry. If you like what you here and want to hear weekly big ideas, cool stories, and what it all means subscribe @ BradBerens.substack.com. And we'll be soon to talk about one nation's descent into fascim. You know, happy stuff.

Jeff Lemire's "Essex County Trilogy" is one of those rare books that's quiet, with very little happening from a narrative standpoint, but that leaves a tremendous emotional punch. At the time, Lemire was working as a line cook from 4pm to midnight, and he'd work on his comics from the morning to afternoons. "I had been struggling with my work, it was all very derivative and lacking," he said in a previous interview. "And I just stripped it all down and decided to work on a story that was much more personal and autobiographical, and it felt like a real breakthrough." And it was a breakthrough, both artistically and in terms of Lemire's career. This week, we'll talk about what makes Essex County so special.

This week, we read PAPER GIRLS, the multi-Eisner award winning series written by Brian K Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang, recently adapted as a streaming TV series starring Ali Wong on Amazon (and unfairly called a rip off of Stranger Things, bc as with most things, the comic came first!) Paper Girls starts way back when in 1988, in a suburb of Cleveland, where four twelve year old...you guessed it...Paper Girls - Erin, Tiffany, Mac, and KJ - befriend each other the morning after Halloween and quickly find a creepy basement time machine, and quickly find themselves in a millennia spanning temporal civil war between factions of human order and chaos. Along the way they encounter ancient cave people, future hipsters, and their older selves. ALSO, dinosaurs, microscopic-turned-gargantuan monsters, and giant-sized rock-em-sock-em robots You may remember the writer Brian K. Vaughan, who's a former writer on the TV series LOST, and written many sci Fi series - some of which we've read on this pod - like Saga + Y: The Last Man. And the artist Cliff Chiang actually won an Eisner for his work on Paper Girls, and has created some other great works - most notably Wonder Woman, the Human Target, and Catwoman Lonely City. Anyhow, this is one that Ryan + Raman don't see eye to eye on, and we interrogate that further, as we are known to do....

Conor Stechchulte's "Ultrasound," which was made into a 2021 movie, is about memory, gaslighting, and psychological terror. It's hard for comics to convey a sense of interiority, but Stechchulte has some graphical tricks that really create the same sense of unease and discombobulaton in readers that his characters are going through. Whether that's a good thing or not. "Ultrasound" begins on a dark and stormy night, as these things often begin, when a man gets a flat tire and is invited into a house owned by a couple to take refuge. And that's when the games begin. Did we like it? Did we not like it? Or maybe we only thought we liked it, but didn't? Or vice versa?

this week we're reading KRISHNA: A JOURNEY WITHIN - by Abhishek Singh. Singh is Indian graphic novelist acclaimed for his unique interpretations of myths and ancient philosophies - who first made his mark for the acclaimed series Ramayana 3392. AND he was first Indian comics artist published in mainstream American comics. Singh's 2012 comics interpretation of the Lord Krishna was a searing, human portrayal of one of the great Hindi deities. To many in the west he became a popular god in the 60s, but to most folks from the subcontinent, he is but one of many reincarnations of the God Vishnu the creator. In an almost poetic, sweeping series of paintings Singh takes us through key moments of Krishna's life - from a little boy stealing ghee, to defeating his evil uncle, to his courtship with Radha, and to key moments from the epic feudal war that makes up both the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita - two of Hinduisms most sacred texts. Soooo, basically it's a pretty, poetic cliff notes from some of Hinduism's greatest hits. SHOWNOTES * Ramayana: The Divine Loophole (kids book): goodreads.com/en/book/show/7456105-ramayana * Sanjay's Super Team (Pixar Short): youtube.com/watch?v=3PaPtCzKh1U * Amra Chitra Katha (classic indian comics): wikipedia.org/wiki/AmarChitraKatha * Mahabarata (classic TV show): youtube.com/watch?v=bJ2Qik2fkX8

This week we are reading SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW, by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. The 2021 limited series from DC's Black Label - which is basically DCs new mature / Elseworld's imprint. Most just assume that Kara Zor El is simply Superman's girly cousin - which is probably how she was created years ago. But in this cosmic adventure, she is anything but. Yes there is girl power, but as we tag along for a girls trip for justice - basically True Grit in space - we are brought to face the best and worst humanity has to offer. There's a rocket ship, a space bus depot, space drugs. a space dragon, space pirates...and space racism! And let's not forget Supergirl's super dog Krypto and Super horse Comet. And the story's true protagonist, Ruthye, a young lass from a rural backwater planet whose on an Eniga Montoya styled revenge quest, where she enlists a reluctant Supergirl after Krypto gets shot with an arrow by Krem, the murderous villain who killed Ruthye's poor yet noble father. On their journey we see the best and worst we have to offer on full sci-fi display. With moral quandaries that are often hopeless - which hurt a bit more given the times we are in - along with good humor, beautiful art, and a lovely script, you can't help but find something to love about this book. Well, except Ryan...

This week we're reading Maia Kobaba's GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR. Created in 2014 - by Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns - created a cathartic autobiography of Eir's experience with gender identity — from crushes to fan fic, from coming out to making out. What started as a series of Instagram posts to explain to the author's family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer becomes so much more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere. And then it became the most banned book in the country https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/01/books/maia-kobabe-gender-queer-book-ban.html what started as a simple, moving, explanation of gender identity - with the potential to create so much greater empathy and understanding for all of us got picked up by a parent on the wrong side of history, and a social media firestorm resulted, snowballing into headlines aroundthe country - with dozense of schools pulling it from library shelves around the country - from the Carolinas to Texas to Virginia - with many officials labeling it “pornographic.” but we're not here to talk about the controversy surrounding the book (we do, inevitably) — we're here to talk about the work itself. in light of all the other not so positive change happening in our society, it felt really important to read Gender Queer, and can't recommend this book enough. Warning, this is one of the rare episodes where Raman & Ryan agree on almost everything =)

It's hard to find optimism with the end of Roe, yet another curtailing of the civil liberties that once defined America. While the Megg, Mogg, and Owl series by Simon Hanselmann won't exactly restore any sense of optimism, it will at least make you feel less alone by plunging you into the misadventures of others who are also flailing through life. In this episode, we'll review two collected works from the series: "Megahex" from 2014, and "Bad Gateway," published in 2019. While "Megahex" very much feels like a series of loosely-connected strips, Hanselmann has matured greatly as a storyteller and artist, as he delves into the depths of his characters' dispair and the strange, disgusting, and often hilarious ways they try to cope.

This week we're talking about BATMAN: WHITE KNIGHT - Sean Murphy's 2017 alternate universe mini-series that flips the status quo for Batman - and asks some hard questions along the way. In the book, the Joker cures himself of his psychosis, and reverts to Jack Napier - upon which he begins a campaign to interrogate WTF the city of Gotham has been doing all these years, with law enforcement allowing a masked vigilante and some teenagers with military grade equipment take the law into their own hands. What starts out as an Elseworld's like plot becomes a not so subtle commentary to the limits of law enforcement. But hey, it's also got TWO Harley Quinns, a Batgirl, a Nightwing, a Duke, Mr. freeze, and a whole lotta Batmobiles! joining us to talk about White Knight is my old friend and favorite digital nerd from the future, making his long overdue quarantined Comics appearance Brad Berens - whose nerdy takes you can read on his eponymous weekly dispatch - bradberens.substack.com