Episode 0: Origins & “The Sword is Drawn”

Excalibur Special Edition #1 “The Sword is Drawn” Writer: Chris Claremont Penciler: Alan Davis Inker: Paul Neary and Mark Farmer Colourist: Glynis Oliver Letterer: Tom Orzechowski Editor: Ann Nocenti Original publication date: April 1988 In this mega-sized debut, the regular team—Anna, Mav, and Andrew—explore the origins of Excalibur in Marvel UK, the X-Men franchise, and Excalibur:…

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: Sexy Cartoons and the Kid Gaze?

From Mav: As we approach Valentines Day this year I started thinking about our Valentine’s special from last year about “fictional celebrity crushes.” One of the things we drifted into talking about on that episode was characters like Lola Bunny and Harley Quinn — characters that despite originating in children’s cartoons, were clearly created explicitly…

e148. Sex, Love, & Bridgerton

Surprisingly, Netflix’s latest original programming sensation is Bridgerton, a regency period romance chronicling the sexual exploits, politics and scandals of 19th century London. Or perhaps this isn’t surprising at all. After all, romance has been a primary genre of fiction since… before the time period depicted in the show. Of course, people have often derided…

e147. Big Fun with Charts, Data, and Analytics!

Charts Rock! Charts are Big Fun! Seriously! Don’t you just love a good chart? Ok, maybe you don’t think you do. In fact, you might even be thinking to yourself, why is a pop culture podcast talking about charts? Well, that’s because charts are incredibly popular in modern culture. We rely on them. We see…

e146. TV in the time of COVID-19

It’s been weird doing a show based around pop culture for the last year. A lot of that weirdness, of course, is because pop culture largely stopped for a bit. Then, it came back staggered as people released what remaining content they had sort of haphazardly. Now we’re getting to a new phase… we’re seeing…

Call for Comments: Why Do We ƒµ¢&ing Love Charts?

From Mav: I love charts. I fucking love charts! Am I alone here? I’m a nerd, when I was a kid, I used to play with this computer program called Harvard Graphics, just for fun. All it did was make charts. Last week, working on the final chapter of my dissertation, I got to a…

e145. 2021 Fantasy Box Office Draft

It’s a new year and that means we get to do one of our most exciting shows. It’s the fantasy box office draft! Every year we play a game (shamelessly stolen form the Protagonist Podcast… credit where credit is due) where we take turns predicting what will be the most successful movies in the next…

e144. So, It’s Been a Week! (1/3/21 – 1/9/21)

We totally didn’t want to talk politics this week. And we certainly didn’t want to talk about the world being on fire. 2020 had enough of that. All we wanted to do this week was play our fun little box office game. Unfortunately, that went out the window the moment there was an attempted coup…

e143. Thirty Great Things You Missed In 2020

The year 2020 is over. You’re probably as relieved as we are. Of course the problems with 2020 are largely still with us, but at least getting here feels like SOMETHING has happened. Last year on VoxPopcast, we decided that rather than doing a “best of the year” episode with the greatest movies or books…