Call For Comments: On Bouncing Off the Fourth Wall

From Mav: A couple weeks back, my friend Mikey Wood made a Facebook post about writing a superhero story and that in said story he had characters use the colloquial phrase “dynamic duo” NOT to refer to Batman and Robin. He then questioned whether that reference made sense in that world. Because would the phrase…

e330. The Immortal Legacy: Aging Actors and Endless Franchises

If you’re a fan of geek media, you likely noticed two important things from Marvel Studios last week. One was the long-awaited release of Deadpool & Wolverine. The second was the San Diego Comicon surprise that Robert Downey Jr. would be returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to take on the role of Dr. Doom.…

e322. 4 Killer Out-of-the-Box X-men Movie Pitches for the MCU

It’s somehow been five years since Disney’s acquisition of Fox and the impending promise therein of having the X-men added into the MCU. While we have … let’s just say feelings… about the idea of a single global megacorportation essentially owning the movie landscape in the US, that is perhaps a show for another day.…

e319. X-men ’97 Revisited: Superheroes, Sacrifices, & Saturday Mornings

There’s an argument that the current wave of superhero dominated content that pervades popular media doesn’t begin with the MCU but with X-men the Animated Series, a cartoon that ran from 1992-1997 and is a formative touchstone for many millennial viewers who have come of age today. This argument may be somewhat backed up by…

e313. PCA2024: Adapting X-Men

On this week’s special epsiode we take one last look at this year’s Popular Culture Association conference in Chicago with a look at papers from one of the panels in the Comics Studies group. Mav is joined by Joseph and John Darowski who will be appearing with him in the upcoming book Adapting X-men from…

e312. PCA2024: The AfterParty

Six years ago, this show was birthed out of the aftermath of PCA2018, the annual conference for the Popular Culture Association. As is tradition, we’ve once again returned there. PCA2024 was last week in Chicago, IL and Mav attended. On this episode, he is joined by fellow conference attendees and friends of the show Nicole…

e307. Madame Web, Morbius, and Movies of Obligation

It seems silly to ask if you’ve seen Madame Web. We can see the box office returns and we know that you probably didn’t. BUT, if you’re listening to our show you almost certainly have heard of Madame Web. And we’re absolutely sure that you’ve heard of Morbius. And you probably didn’t watch that either.…

e305. Dark Academia: a Deep Dive into Murder, Mystery & Midterms

Have you seen that new Dark Academia show about the mysterious elite school for special kids where there’s the one kid who doesn’t seem to belong even amongst the other weirdos at the weird school and there’s some sinister plot going on that no one is talking about but it’s probably people being murdered and…

e303. Our Lives in Pop Culture

It could be argued that the pop culture that you absorb makes you who you are. That’s certainly true of the hosts of this show. After all, it’s a show about pop culture hosted by pop culture nerds. So obviously we got this way… somehow! But how? On today’s show Mav takes Hannah and Wayne…

Call for Comments: Kaiju A-Go-Go

From Wayne: If you’re a regular listener to our show you know that we talk about monsters. A lot. Somehow we have never done a show about giant monsters, or as they are known in fandom, from the Japanese, Kaiju(怪獣). This was prompted by seeing Godzilla: Minus 1 in the theaters last month. It was…