Call For Comments: A Think Piece on Thought Experiments

From Mav: A few weeks ago, I started one of those conversations we’ve all been a part of on social media. I made a Facebook post where I postulated that Luke Skywalker was a fucking psychopath who just likes doing murder. Of course, this is a variation on a thought experiment that Star Wars fans…

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…

e126. Reconstructing Deconstructed Superheroes

Ever since the mid 1980s and the publication of Watchmen comics, their creators, and their fans, have been obsessed with the idea of “deconstruction.” Director Zack Snyder is extremely fond of the term. He argues that he is “deconstructing superheroes” every time he gets the chance. But what does that really mean? To most fans,…

Call for Comments: How to Reconstruct Deconstructed Superhero Media

From Mav: A couple weeks ago, our good friend Matthew Brake of Pop Culture & Theology, posted about appearing on another podcast about deconstructing comics. Matt was really just pimping his discussion on that show talking about Animal Man (which is a good conversation and you should listen), but it got me to thinking about…

Call For Comments: Mask Theory

From Mav: Back when we started the podcast we made a list of stuff we thought we might want to talk about one day. One of the things that was on both my list and Wayne’s was doing a show on “mask theory.” It’s a topic that we both have an interest in because of……

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…

Call For Comments: The Golden Age of Comics

From Mav: Now that we’re done with all of the end of the year and beginning of the year stuff it’s time to get back to business as usual on VoxPopcast. One of the things that always surprises me about our show is that we do comparatively little with comics given that it is theoretically…

Call For Comments: Joker and Irredeemable Protagonists

From Mav: As I write this, we are about two days away from one of the most highly anticipated comic book movies of all time being released, Todd Phillips’s Joker. I admit that I am very curious about it. Even though I haven’t seen it yet (though I will have by the time we record…

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…

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…