Call For Comments: Inertia and Media Addiction

From Mav: There’s something I’ve noticed about fans of the TV show The Walking Dead. They hate it. Seriously… most people I know who watch the show pretty much acknowledge that they’re not really enjoying it anymore, they’re just watching it because… they do. They have been watching it and they continue to. I’m not a fan…

e35. SPOILERS! (and Mystery Boxes)

Ever since the rise of the Internet we have all lived in constant fear of all of our favorite movies, books, TV shows and every other media being spoiled by some jerk who just wants to be the first to ruin everything for everyone else… or maybe he’s just an idiot. It doesn’t matter… once…

e32. Reboots, Remakes, Revivals

Albert Einstein once said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Well, honestly he probably never said that… or at least didn’t say it first, but the internet says over and over that he said it, so it must be true. Anyway, if this is something…

Call for Comments: Mystery Boxes, Spoilers, and Fandoms

From Hannah: Before I was on the show, we received a suggestion for a show topic on how popular culture fandoms react to spoilers from listener Jessi Bencloski. Spoilers are tricky, especially in big fandoms such as Harry Potter, Lost, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones. Part of what drives (or drove) those fandoms, especially once fan communities emerged online,…

e31. Heroes, Villains & Antiheroes

The antihero… just like the hero… except he can kill. Wait… heroes kill too now. In fact they always have. Well maybe it’s that the antihero swears… Actually, heroes swear now too. Is it that the antihero operates outside of the law? Nope, that’s true of heroes too. Well what is it then, and why…

Call For Comments: MAC LIVE show and the antihero?

From Mav: Even though we haven’t recorded this next week’s show just yet (we’re doing it tonight, so you still have a chance to throw in some comment on Monsters, so check that Call for Comments) we’re already planning another one. This Saturday, I will be appearing at MAC Charity Con in Mt. Aloysius, PA.…

Call For Comments: The Death of the Author and the Birth of the Critic

From Mav: In the last couple weeks, we’ve done a couple shows that have dealt with interpreting the non obvious sexual subtext in children’s media (Disney Princesses and Sesame Street Muppets). Obviously, we don’t think that those things are front and center. That’s why we said subtext. But that leads us to an obvious question:…

Episode 25: Sex and the Disney Princess

Just about any parent in American who has a five year old girl knows about the Disney Princesses. Between Frozen, Tangled, Moana, and the others, the “House of Mouse” has stumbled upon  a multi-billion dollar industry from films and toy sales alone, and far more when adding in other merchandising sales. However, there may be…

Call For Comments: Sex and the Disney Princess

From Mav: There’s an article that appears in the textbook I use when teaching Freshman Composition 101 that I find quite fascinating. It’s called “Little girls or little women? The Disney princess effect” and was written by a woman named Stephanie Hanes in 2011 and is reprinted from the Christian Science Monitor. I use it to…

Episode 23: Comic Studies-301: Course Syllabus

When everyone knows that you are a comics geek, it turns out people ask you quite often “so what should I be reading?” When your job is literally “be a comics geek” or moreover “teach other people to be a comics geek” then you get this question pretty much constantly. Since Wayne and Mav are…