e272. Why Are So Many Superhero Adaptations So Very, Very, Bad?

There certainly are a lot of superheroes adaptations. In fact, some people would say there’s too many. And yet, they just keep coming and coming. In fact, one of them, The Flash, is bombing at the box office right now, all while Across Spider-verse is getting constant acclaim? What makes a superhero adaptation good and…

e194. Dr. Golden Spies From V.O.X.P.O.P with Love

Spies may be one of the longest standing genres in pop culture. From James Bond to Maxwell Smart to Jason Bourne, spies have been ever present on the screen for as long as there has been motion picture cinema. They also have a steady presence in books and comics and other literature. And yet, the…

e149. Let’s Talk About SuperSex

Happy Valentine’s Day! If you had a podcast devoted to pop culture with a penchant for discussing comics with some bit of regularity and a holiday came up that was devoted to beauty of love and dating and you wanted to do something nice and sweet to commemorate the holiday, what would you do? Obviously…

Call For Comments: Supersex in the Gotham City!

From Wayne: Superheroes are sexy, right? Skin tight costumes, rippling muscles, big boobs, and a near total lack of genitalia… what’s not to like? But for all of the suggestiveness of their idealized physiques, actual sexuality was a taboo topic in comics for a very long time. Some of this was due to a generally…

e110. Comic Studies-350: X-Men Course Syllabus

Way back on episode 23 we did our first syllabus episode. We got a bunch of comic scholars together and asked the question “if we wanted to teach a class about comics and graphic novels, from scratch, what would be on it?” One of the ideas we had back then was “what if we wanted…

e97. Fictional & Celebrity Crushes

Happy (Belated) Valentines Day! You know what that means? It means time to do a “very special episode” where we somehow try to tie in the holiday concept to the kinds of stuff we normally do. Academic cultural analysis of popular culture… but with beer! Last year we talked about the “shipping” and the secret…

e93. Golden Age of Comics

If you’re at least a casual comic book fan you probably know the terms Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age and Modern Age. If you’re a massive comic geek, you probably even know when those ages are. But why do they exist? What’s the relevance of splitting things up like that? What the cultural relevance…