Quarantined Comics

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.