Call For Comments: Narrative Remixes and Intertextuality

From Mav: I saw an interesting movie this weekend, Brightburn. For those who haven’t seen the trailers it’s basically the story of Superman as a horror movie. Actually, not basically. In fact, it’s exactly the story of Superman as a horror movie. A couple finds of spaceship in the woods with a baby in it.…

Call for Comments: Great Expectations for Disappointing Endings to the Game of Thrones

From Hannah: Game of Thrones ends Sunday and, based solely on audience opinion of the last two-to-three seasons (particularly the penultimate episode ever), it’s going to be bad. Depending on who you ask, it may be the worst finale of a television show ever (except maybe Dexter). There are a lot of reasons people are…

e56. Endgame Analysis

So, if you’ve ever listened to our show, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we’re doing an episode about Avengers: Endgame. Honestly, this week, pretty much every podcast is doing an episode on Avengers: Endgame. So, if you haven’t seen it yet… honestly, it’s the most popular movie on the planet… there’s no way you…

e55. PCA-2019 Recap

If you’ve been listening to the show for the last few weeks, you know that all four hosts have been preparing for PCA2019, the national conference of the Popular Culture Association in Washington DC. In fact, episode 52 and episode 53 featured previews of our papers. The conference was from April 10 to April 13,…

Call For Comments: Cinematic Franchise “Endgames”

From Mav: (No worries, no spoilers in this post) Well, it’s finally time… we’re in the endgame now… and all that. In a couple hours, Avengers Endgame opens in theaters, and I assume a large number of our listeners are going to go see it (please, NO SPOILERS in the comments of this post). By…

e54. The Unbearable Whiteness of being Batman

Do you remember all of those great Batman supporting characters of color. You know… Batman’s black, latinx, asian and other ethnic sidekicks and villains like… errr… uh… you know… yeah… ummm…. It’s actually hard to come up with some, isn’t it? Well, there’s probably a reason for that. There are actually several, and have been…

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…

e50. Are You What You Wear?

Somewhere along the line, when they were making the show The Big Bang Theory, someone said “hey, this guy is a geek. Put him in comic book T-shirts, and everyone will know.” And then wardrobe was done with Sheldon. Next they decided to dress Penny and they said “Umm, she’s a hot actress. Make sure…

Call For Comments: The (super)Power of Fashion and Symbols

From Mav: In one of my favorite recent comics, Batman #37 by Tom King, Batman and Superman are discussing the crests on their shirts. Superman tells Batman that S on his isn’t really an S. It’s a Kryptonian symbol and it stands for hope. Batman responds that “the bat stands for a bat.” I love…