e174. The Arthurian Roundtable Roundtable

We live in an era of constant reboots and updates to well known IP franchises. People (including us) like to complain about it, but honestly, well known franchises do very well at the box office… otherwise people wouldn’t keep doing it. But of all the superheroes, transformers, terminators and star wars that keep coming back…

e126. Reconstructing Deconstructed Superheroes

Ever since the mid 1980s and the publication of Watchmen comics, their creators, and their fans, have been obsessed with the idea of “deconstruction.” Director Zack Snyder is extremely fond of the term. He argues that he is “deconstructing superheroes” every time he gets the chance. But what does that really mean? To most fans,…

Call for Comments: How to Reconstruct Deconstructed Superhero Media

From Mav: A couple weeks ago, our good friend Matthew Brake of Pop Culture & Theology, posted about appearing on another podcast about deconstructing comics. Matt was really just pimping his discussion on that show talking about Animal Man (which is a good conversation and you should listen), but it got me to thinking about…

e53. PCA/ACA 2019 Preview: Comic Studies

On last week’s episode, Katya and Hannah shared the topics of their papers for this year’s upcoming PCA/ACA. Now it’s Wayne and Mav’s turn to do the same. As we prepare to head off to the conference this week, Wayne shares the basics of his topic, a Jungian psychological evaluation of the Kevin Matchstick, the…

Call For Comments: The PCA/ACA Preview Special

From Mav: We’re doing something a little different on the next show. One of the reasons we started VoxPop was because as academics we end up doing a lot of academic conferences… and we had the idea that the kinds of discussion we have at them would make for an interesting show, especially since my…

Episode 13: Mythic Reboots

Some stories are timeless: Homer’s Odyssey, the legends of Hercules and King Arthur, the fairy tale of Snow White. These are stories that have been repeated so often that everyone knows them. They are part of the cultural consciousness. So, if that is the case, why do we feel the need to keep repeating them?…