11 O'clock Comics Podcast

Chris blinks in and out and back in again amidst talk on the Muppets and Fraggle Rock, Jim Rugg, Hi Fructose volume 15 with James Jean and Al Columbia, Grant Morrison and Mukesh Singh's 18 Days OGN from Dynamite, Shadowlands, the Avengers titles, Chris Samnee and Thor: Mighty Avenger, Casanova Max, a reaction to a listener voicemail (I know, right?!?), I, Zombie, Comic Book Artist #15, the Hernandez Brothers, Alex Toth and Spielberg's 1941, convention oversaturation, Alex Ross, Phil Hester and Jonathan Lau's Black Terror #5-9, X-Men: Hope, Fantomex, Brightest Day #1, RASL, Echo, and a whole mess more!

It's our Giant-Size C2E2 (See Dos Eee Dos) wrap-up episode, featuring tales of Doug Mahnke, Jerry "The King" Lawler, Tom Fowler, Mike Perkins, Mike Norton, crazy Chicago cabbies, Phil Hester and Andy Parks, Ryan Stegman (and the Sif one-shot), Hilary Barta, Will Pfeifer, Fred Van Lente, Ryan Dunlavey, and Action Philosophers!, Jim Heffron, Brian Stringer and our tattoos, Larry Marder and Beanworld, Jeremy Haun, Andy Jewett and Jon Kulczar, Lance Kizer and Steve Bryant, con-centric listener email from John Wimmer, Harold's Chicken Shack, Mark Texeira, Vince's DC pick of the week, and a much, much more!

BLACKEST NIGHT, BLACKEST NIGHT, and a little more BLACKEST NIGHT, as Chris and Wood finally step up and talk about the miniseries I've been BEGGING them to cover, with a little bit of time left over for investigations into Ultimate X #2 by Jeph Loeb and Art Adams, the Punisher Max: Butterfly one-shot, Dave Wachter and the Guns of Shadow Valley, Zak Smith's Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated (Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow), Hard-Boiled by Miller and Darrow, Hulked-Out Heroes, and a whole lot more!

Carefully-laid plans go awry and reams of notes are thrown out the window as we change course to discuss Cable #25, S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 by Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver, Hickman vs. Johns, the Apple iPad, art and audience, plus, in the second half, we're joined by sizzlin' Steve Bryant, who drops by to lay down some science on Athena Voltaire and the Kickstart program, William Stout, Dave Stevens, and the aborted Godzilla 3D film, Mark Schultz, C2E2, Guy Davis, and, as usual, a whole mess more!

After Chris renders us both crosseyed and painless by taking about a number of Marvel titles in a positive light, we traipse all over the place, batting it back and forth on the CGS Supershow, Gabriel Hardman, Chris' convention philosophy, Dave Wachter and Andy Jewett, Skottie Young and OZ, Wolverine: Weapon X #11, Love and Rockets: Heartbreak Soup and Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, X-Factor Forever #1, Hercules: Fall of an Avenger, Captain America: Reborn, Eiichiro Oda's One Piece: East Blue, Teenagers from Mars, Wu-Massacre and Chris Bachalo, MoCCA 2010, Fantastic Four #577, ROM, How to Train a Dragon, and a whole lot more!

We return to the stuff that passes for normal 'round these parts, merrily mixing it up on G.I. Joe Origins #11 and #12, Marvel Preview #21 and the Marvel Magazine and Essential formats, Madame Xanadu Volume 2: Exodus Noir from Matt Wagner, Michael Kaluta, and Dave Stewart, Fables, Liberty Comics #1 and #2, Incredible Hercules #141, Agents of Atlas, Gorilla Man and the Avengers, Miracle/Marvelman and the Sentry, Mysterious the Unfathomable TPB, Larry Marder's Beanworld Volume 2: A Gift Comes!, Mesmo Delivery Service and Hard Boiled, comic-themed tattoos, the Marvels Project #7 and Steve Epting, and a whole mess more!

The 11 O'Clock Chat Room is ablaze with activity as forum members help us celebrate 100 episodes of insanity, flinging questions at us while we talk about Siege #3, Powers #3, curses vs. prayers, Deadwood, Northwest Passage from ONI, Tom Fowler (buy the Mysterious the Unfathomable TPB), Survivors, Dick Tracy, the Longbox beta, Incredible Hulk #208 and Hulk #21, Jeff Loeb, Marvel vs. DC continuity, our 2nd favorite writers, Alan Moore vs. Grant Morrison, Christopher Priest, C2E2, Steve Gerber, Stan Lee, First Wave #1, Batman, The Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe, TMNT, Newave: The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s from Fantagraphics, our obsession with collectibles, the price of comics, podcast regrets, 100 and Stray Bullets, JMS and Babylon 5, listener email, and much, much more!

Lawd have mercy! David A. Price is far more chatty than usual this time around, drivin' the 11 O'Clock bus hard and fast through subjects like Jim Rugg, the Challengers/Chicago Comics Strange Tales event (featuring Michael Kupperman, Becky Cloonan, Jeffrey Brown, and Paul Hornschemeier), Web of Spider-Man #6 and the awesomeness that is Xurxo G. "Laseraw" Penalta, Lucas Testro and the Street Angel short film, Jack of Fables and the Great Fables Crossover, Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, Stumptown, The Brave and the Bold: Milestone, buying titles out of habit, Black Dynamite, more Crisis on Two Earths, Emerald City and tips for first-time conventioneers, Dark Horse's Scatterbrain anthology, Adam Warren's Empowered, and much more good stuff!

This episode: Chris reads Pluto! Plus, we find time to talk about Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Sweet Tooth, Afrodisiac and Street Angel, Matt Fraction and Invincible Iron Man #24, The 198, Marvel Masterworks: X-Men Volume Six, the Sam Kieth Sketchbook Vol. 1 from IDW, Highbrow Vs. Lowbrow art, Winter World, dystopian films, more Doctor Who, Douglas Adams, Osamu Tezuka's Apollo's Song, Catwoman: Selina's Big Score by Darwyn Cooke, First Wave, Blackest Night #7 and Alex Sinclair, Loeb and Cho's Ultimates and the Ultimate universe, Dynamite's Green Hornet and the Kato miniseries, Deadpool, and a whole mess more!

I AM THE DRAGON PUNCHER! We are more scattershot than usual in our discussion on Eaglesham and Hickman's Fantastic Four #576, Nimrod, X-Factor, Hank Pym (the Scientist Supreme, just ask him) Cable, Iron Fist, Larry Marder's Beanworld, James Kochalka's Monkey Vs. Robot from Top Shelf, ultra-detailed versus economical graphic styles and their impact on the perception of the viewer, Scud the Disposable Assassin and Julian Lytle's Antz, Regina piles, School: A Ghost Story by Brian Defferding, The Storm in the Barn, James Stokoe's Orc Stain #1 for Image, Mark Waid's Irredeemable and Incorruptible, Siege sales and event books, and much more!

By Odin's one good eye, we are all over the place this episode, twisting and turning through tangents on Cadence Comic Art, Pluto from Naoki Urasawa, Takashi Nagasaki, and Macoto Tezka (inspired by the Astro Boy work of the great god Osamu Tezuka) from Viz, 100 Bullets, when classics fail to click (by way of Box Office Poison, Local, Blankets, Starman, Walking Dead, Y the Last Man, Strangers in Paradise, and others), McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #33, Human Target, Doctor Who, Night Business and Gangsta Rap Posse from American Traditional Comics, Kick-Ass, John Romita Jr, LOST, curling (?), and much, much more!

iFanboy's Ron Richards joins the fray, coaxing us through conversation on X-Men and X-Factor Forever, Chris Claremont, Alan Moore and his Neonomicon Hornbook with Jacen Burrows, Nazi Knife Volume Six and PictureBox, Brubaker's Secret Avengers, Jonathan Hickman, Witzend #3 and Wally Wood, Steve Ditko's Mr. A, IDW's Torpedo by Jordi Bernet, Twitter, The Definitive Queen and Country Volume 1, Dash Shaw's The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century AD from Fantagraphics, Loeb and Adams' Ultimate X and the Ultimate universe, Pixie Strikes Back, Top Cow's Pilot Season series and Robert Kirkman, Kenneth Rocafort, and much more!

Come with us to the mean streets of Wilkesborough as we sing some sweet, baadasssss songs about Steve Ditko, Watchmen 2 and the possibilities of new stories set in Moore and Gibbons' universe, Parade with Fireworks from Shadowline, Jim Valentino, Siege #2 and the Sentry, Avengers (the forthcoming Avengers #1 by Bendis and John Romita JR, Dan Slott, and more), the Planet Hulk DVD and Fox's Human Target, Back Issue magazine, Ed Hannigan: Covered, Gene Colan, and Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca's phenomenal AFRODISIAC from Adhouse Books!

Hoo, boy... The 11 O'Clock Comic train started off down the right track -- we chugged through topics like Top Shelf, the Apple iPad and our hopes and fears for the device and its impact on the comic book industry, more on Jon O's Mera and the emotional quotient to mark making, Fantastic Four #575, Remender's Punisher, The Chill and Area 10 from Vertigo Crime, Phil Hester's The Darkness from Top Cow, more Fables and Jack of Fables, Captain America, Fall of the Hulks (Alpha, Gamma, Incredible, Hulk, and Red, with a little Hulk: Winter Guard and What If? World War Hulk thrown in for good measure) -- but it all quickly runs off the rails as we begin our goodbyes when someone mentions the Deadpool variant for Siege #3, resulting in an additional twenty-some minutes of flat-out drunken CHAOS!

As the dust settles on the 11 O'Closcars, we return to our usual streamlined, no-frills comics reportage (That's a joke, son.), throwing down hot 'n' heavy on Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth #7, listener email, The Escapist(s), Neil Gaiman, Joe the Barbarian #1 by Grant Morrison and the disgustingly talented Sean Murphy, Siege #1 and Siege: Embedded #1, Captain America #602, Avengers Vs. Agents of Atlas #1, the mysteries of the Spider-Man 2010 promo image, Walking Dead (no spoilers), Fables, Ex Machina, LOST, Jerks in Space by John_K, Mera from Jon O., JMS' The Brave and the Bold, Superman: Secret Origin, and much, much more!

Jason leads the charge in this giant-size, 3.5-hour monster episode tallying the winners of the 11 O'Closcars, the comic industry's best of 2009 according to the members of the 11 O'Clock Comics forum and the four fools behind the microphones.

Crawling through the wreckage of the backlog of 11 O'Clock Comics Hotline messages!

Second verse, same as the first: we ramble, rumble, tickle, and tumble over topics such as Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, Jason and Chris' Collectible Capers (by way of Eaglemoss and HeroClix), more holiday gifts, Emperor Doom and other Marvel Graphic Novels, Comics Journal #300, Batman Confidential #40 by Sam Kieth, reading versus looking, Jacques Tardi's West Coast Blues from Fantagraphics, Ellis and Jimenez's Astonishing X-Men, a stinkeroo called Siege #1, S.W.O.R.D., and a whole mess more!

We end the year in extra-length style, passing around hot potatoes on Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini's Last Days of American Crime from Radical, Eaglemoss, Ultimate Alliance 2, more holiday gifts, the Fantastic Four, our comic book resolutions for 2010, the price of comics (by way of Gary Panter, no less!), The More Than Complete Action Philosophers, The Waiting Place, Taiyo Matsumoto's Gogo Monster, Mike Norton's The Curse, Skottie Young and Oz, Sherlock Holmes, an episode 52 question, the audience's influence on art, and much more!

Happy holidays! Color artist supreme, Val Staples, drops down the 11 O'Clock chimney to talk to us about X-Men: First Class and Jeff Parker, Criminal and Incognito, X-Men: Deadly Genesis, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Bruce Timm, Mark Texeira, The Four Horsemen, Tim Seeley, Mike Norton, CrossGen, Greg Land, Mike Wieringo, Robert Kirkman, Transformers, and COLOR, of course! BONUS! Xmas presents REVEALED!