Editor’s Note: It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s New Comic Book Day and another edition of Amazing Journey!
The Amazing Journey column will touch on a comics-related topic, such as writing the first issue of a series, what it’s like to run a comic book store, working with artists, and how writing comics is different from writing prose.
Amazing Journey back issues
True believers unite (#1) | My comics origin story (#2) | Comic event series (#3) | The comics of Kickstarter (#4) | Single issues or trades? (#5) | From prose to comics (#6) | Adapting a celebrated fantasy series into a comic (#7) | Charting a career in comics (#8) | Comic book spoilers (#9) | Lessons from Kieron Gillen’s masterclass (#10) | Comics marketing 101 (#11) Designing memorable characters (#12)
A great thing about DC and Marvel comics is that while the current issue you are reading is (usually) a self-contained story vehicle, there are decades of stories and continuity supporting (and sometimes contradicting) that comic. This offers a new context through which to enjoy your reading experience, or perhaps makes you curious about what has happened in the past to your favorite characters.
On the writing end, the volume of continuity provides a great pool of ideas to tweak, re-tell, or re-stage, while at the same time offering the complex problem oof how to fit your new story idea into this existing rubric without “breaking continuity.”
It’s a dizzying world, and thankfully, there are tons of secondary sources and communities devoted to unpacking it all. This week I wanted to share some of my favorite comics podcasts help me make sense of everything, from both a reader and a writer.
Off Panel: a weekly interview show about all things comics
I’ve mentioned SKTCHD as a comics site you need to be reading, but in addition to pumping out 3-4 pieces each week on that site (and having a day job) proprietor David Harper also hosts a weekly interview podcast that is 400+ episodes strong and shows no signs of slowing down. Featuring a mix of interviews with writers, artists, comics retailers, and comics journalists, it’s always an interesting listen.
Decompressed: an irregular comics podcast which interviews creators with an eye on the question of craft
Comics writer Kieron Gillen’s podcast has been around for more than 10 years, and after a 5-year hiatus returned with a set of episodes in which he interviewed his X-Office colleagues about their X-books, and then moved on to interviews with writers doing double duty as artists on their creator-owned books.
The X-Wife Podcast: There are a number of X-Men-specific podcasts (including Cerebro and Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men) which are worth your listen, but I wanted to highlight the unique premise of this podcast, in which huge comics reader Justin tries to get his wife Alicia, who had never read a comic before interested in the X-Men. Four years later and Justin’s crazy plan has worked! The couple break down each X-issue every week and do a deep-dive into the story page-by-page and how it relates to X-stories of future past.
House to Astonish: In a similar vein to X-Wife, HtA annotates and breaks down each weekly X-issue and also hosts a long-running podcast. Come for the annotations and stay for the lively comics discussion in the comments section!
The ComixLaunch Podcast: if you are interested in crowdfunding your own comic, then this show with 400+ episodes to date is a great resource, and one that I used to help launch my fiction Kickstarters.
Bonus: Audio dramas!
Wolverine: The Long Night: government agents arrive in a remote Alaska town to investigate a series of murders, and end up crossing paths with Logan, who is the prime suspect. A follow-on season, Wolverine: The Lost Trail, takes place in New Orleans.
Marvels: a retelling of the fallout from Galactus’s first attack on Earth and how the Fantastic Four stopped him (or didn’t they?) from the point of view of seminal Marvel journalist Ben Ulrich
Marvel’s Wastelanders: set in a version of the “Old Man Logan” universe, these six interconnected series tell stories about the last survivors of V Day (the day that the villains all teamed up to kill heroes) 30 years later. Featuring Star-Lord, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Wolverine, and Dr. Doom!
Batman: Unburied: the series opens with a serial killer on the loose and a Bruce Wayne who is a mortician that never became Batman.
That brings me to the Question of the Week and your first chance to enter the August giveaway. To enter, simply leave a comment with your answer to any of the Questions of the Week from any August Amazing Journey post.
What comics podcasts do you listen to?
What I’m reading this week / Variant Watch
X-Men #25: Last week’s Hellfire Gala was pure insanity and pushed us into the next era of X-Men books, the Fall of X, which kicks off in earnest this week with the return of Shadowcat! This issue also features another awesome magazine variant cover by David Nakayama featuring my favorite mutant chimera from the future, Rasputin IV!
Scarlet Witch #7: This magic-focused series continues to dazzle with its mixture of case-of-the-wee, gorgeous Russell Dauterman covers, and a simmering longer story about Magneto’s return from the dead (or is it?).
The Sacrificers #1: I have been meaning to read Rick Remender’s Black Science series for the past 3 years, but it has not made its way to the top of my TBR pile yet. Thankfully today sees the premiere of Remender’s latest sci-fi/fantasy series, about gods who benevolently rule a planet at the cost of a sacrifice of one child per family. If the series is half as good as Jenny Frison’s variant cover above, then we’re in for a treat.
What are you picking up this week?
Backlist Recommendation
Bro, if you haven’t read this comic, bro, what are you even doing, bro?
Matt Fraction and David Aja’s seminal Hawkeye run (with great contributions from Annie Wu and others) is a must-read. Putting aside that it provided the skeleton for the underrated Disney+ Hawkeye show,1 it is a street-level story with amazing character work and art about the least super-powered Avenger. A new omnibus is coming out in the fall that collects all 22 issues, or you can scrounge around on eBay for older editions.
I understand why the show did not hew to the story of this run, which is essentially “Clint Barton, with help from Kate Bishop, protects a building and its residents from thugs,” and I like the Christmas-time setting, but the show would have been better served if it either had 2-3 more episodes or jettisoned one of its side plots. It simply tried to do way too much in six episodes and came very close to pulling it off.
I'm on Sacrificers too. Good call. As for comic podcasts, I don't really listen to any - yet but maybe I'll give yours a try and see but my podcast list is pretty full right now already! ;-)
Thanks for these podcast tips - will add them to my list!
I love the Hawkeye comic and also really enjoyed the Disney+ show. In particular, I like that the show's primary mission was "get Clint home for Christmas". While it was a different angle to the small-scale protect-the-block angle of the comic, it had a similar vibe.