EPISODE 7: In Which we discuss Star Wars comics, both old and new. The evolution of the visual medium from “funny pages” to cinematic comic books is also touched upon.

Episode 7 – LISTEN NOW!

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CORRECTION: The Un-Man made me upload this (he’s a slave driver). The earliest STAR WARS comic was NOT infact the sunday newspaper strip. The first Star Wars comic ever made was by MARVEL Comics in 1977, as a direct promotional tie in with the movie.

“THE” Star Wars!

Episode 6 – LISTEN NOW!

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THOR, THE MIGHTY! THOR, THE BRAVE!

(SHOW NOTES COMING SOON)

Tumblr Links:

– Blackbolt vs Thanos

– Impossible Man meets Stan Lee

2012 was an interesting, if short, year for Your Brain On Comics.

We started strong, but a combination of being unprepared for NYCC 2012 (and unforeseen real life crap) forced us to go on hiatus right at the beginning of our first year run. We’ve been working hard to get those old episodes out that we had recorded, and all that’s left is a 2 hour special of NYCC 2012.

This year, we plan on coming back strong.

WHAT ARE OUT PLANS?

• Consistant weekly content
• Indie creator spotlights
• Convention reports
• Interviews with professional writers and artists in the industry
• Video content?
• Comic Book Movie riff-tracks with The Sandpaper?

We’re really looking at a complete upgrade in the overall quality of the show. Expect new episodes starting before February.

Now, GO READ SOME COMICS!

-The BenT One

Episode 5 – LISTEN NOW!

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THE WEEKLY PAGE COUNT

The BenT One

• SAGA
• X-O Manowar
• America’s Got Powers #3

The Unman

• The Fantastic Four (#45?)
• Thor (early Kirby, mid 90’s, Civil War & Siege)

UPCOMING COMICS SPOTLIGHT

• ZOO
  Story: James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge
  Art: Andy MacDonald

James Patterson’s ZOO

REVIEW

• KICK-ASS
  Story: Mark Millar
  Art: John Romita Jr.

Mark Millar’s KICK-ASS

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

• Miguel Mendonça
  DeviantArt Gallery
  Blog

Miguel has one of the most intriguing concepts for a Superman story I’ve heard of so far, but DC would never go for it: THE DAY SUPERMAN GOES MAD.
Check out the 4 page teaser he did for it.

THE DAY SUPERMAN GOES MAD

Episode 4 – LISTEN NOW!

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THE WEEKLY PAGE COUNT

The BenT One

The Pro

Alec

Green Lantern: The Longbow Hunters

MARVEL MOVIE TALK

• Amazing Spiderman
• The Wolverine
• Iron Man 3
• Captian America: The Winter Soldier
• Thor: The Dark World
• Guardians Of The Galaxy
• What’s happening after Phase 2?

REVIEWS

• Buttlord GT
• Episode 1 of ARROW (The CW)
• Green Arrow: Year One
• Hell Yeah!: The Last Generation Of Heroes #1
• Luna Park

VOID Artists #1 – LISTEN NOW!

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Check out the the comics Heather is currently coloring:

Peter Panzerfaust

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Micro Series

Godzilla Half Century War

Her comics on VOID can be found here on VOID: Click Here

Heather’s character, Angie

Episode 3.5 – LISTEN NOW!

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Hot Bonnie’s Reviews

(Webcomics)

• NIMONA
  Noel Stevenson
• PLUME
  K. Lynn Smith
• HARK! A VAGRANT
  Kate Beaton
• QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
  Jeph Jaques
• DIESEL
  Tyson Hesse

(Comics)

• BATMAN: DEATH BY DESIGN
  Story: Chip Kid
  Art: Dave Taylor

Batman: Death By Design

The BenT One’s Reviews

• DOCTOR WHO Vol.3, Issue #1
  Story: Andy Diggle
  Art: Mark Buckingham

SHOUT-OUTS

• PLB Comics – Prepare for the Extreme!
• EnterVOID Comix Battles – Impact Is Imminent!

Catch us next time when The BenT One sits down with guest host Alec “Beardmaster” Davis from The Sandpaper podcast for a crazy 2 part episode on Green Arrow!
Go read some comics!

Episode 3 – LISTEN NOW!

DIRECT DOWNLOAD

WEEKLY PAGE COUNT

• BAND
  Kristin & Erin Humiston
  http://www.bandcomic.com/
• BOOBAGE
  Monica Gallagher
  http://eatyourlipstick.com/
• DIESEL
  Tyson Hesse
  http://dieselcomic.com/
• DR. HORRIBLE (Graphic Novel)
  Zack Whedon
  http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=DH17223#.UOh4KbYh2dc
• CHARISMAGIC
  Vince Hernandez
  http://aspencomics.com/books/charismagic-comic.html
• Doctor Who, Vol. 3, #1
• America’s Got Powers #2
• Godzilla: Half Century War #2
• Edison Rex #1
• Magic The Gathering: Antiquities War #1
• Infinity War #1

As pomised, here are the 4 images mentioned in the Superman X Wonder Woman rant.

DECIDE FOR YOUR SELF HOW MUCH INSPIRATION WAS DRAWN AND FROM WHERE…

Justice League #12

Superman & Lois, Superman #212

The Kiss in Times Square

Gustav Klimt – The Kiss

The Reviews segment is split into a second episode, “Episode 3.5 – (Oct 6, 2012) ALL THE WEBCOMICS & Batman” which can be downloaded from this feed or iTunes.

Catch us next time when The BenT One sits down with guest host Alec “Beardmaster” Davis from The Sandpaper podcast for a crazy 2 part episode on Green Arrow!

Go read some comics!

The comic itself, apart from its content, is pleasant to look at — the sort of modest, cartoony style that most of us, with a little patience and TLC, can produce.  Graphically, it’s a bit too static or repetitive for my taste — people standing about, talking, holding a mirror.   I wonder if the content could have been staged with more graphic punch — as was done in an earlier strip in the series (art by Nicole Boyett).

In any case: worth a look, and worth a ponder.

Great comics titles, like the whole E.C. line of SF and horror books, had to shut down.  Artists starved.  The industry deflated.  Comics became mediocre.  But then, in the 1980s, the yoke of the Code was thrown off by brave artists and comics bloomed again, free to depict castration, blood, copulation in alleyways, and other joys.  A new Golden Age was upon us and continues to this day.

The foregoing story is, I take it, more or less common doctrine among comics fans today.  And apart from the value judgements conveyed by words like “weird” and “absurdly,” it is mostly factual.  But I’ve come to question the gist of its narrative: Golden Age, siege by puritanical idiots, restoration of Golden Age by total removal of limits.

The other day I was in a household containing two boys, ages 4 and 6.   Comics culture was all over: the 4-year-old wore the Green Lantern symbol on a shirt, a Captain America lunchbox featuring art by Jack Kirby and Gil Kane was on the dining table, a pull-back-and-release rolling Iron Man figurine was extensively played with, and so forth.  Only one thing was missing: comics.  It was puzzling to me that in a home riddled with comics references, there should be no actual comics.  Why?

Simple, perhaps.  There are very few superhero titles out there now, maybe none, which it would be suitable to put routinely into the hands of a 4- or 6-year-old child — not unless you are a childrearing nihilist who really truly thinks it is OK to flood the imagination at that age with images of — well, all the things the Comics Code once banned.  I am considering buying these boys a reprint volume of the first dozen or two issues of Spider-Man, from the 1960s—from, in fact, the heyday of the Comics Code.  One must go that far back to find a comic that can be handed over in bulk runs to really young children.

Which leads me to think that after all the snickering and haven’t-we-evolved superiority are done with, the Comics Code actually did comics good.  How many fans who think Wertham a buffoon have actually tried reading the comics of the Golden Age?  How golden were they, really?  Although many of the hero comics of that age were brilliant, others were amost unreadably dull.  Both the brilliance and dullness were occasionally interrupted by bizarre images that only a very creepy person would today think suitable for a small child.  How many of us would really think it OK to hand a 5-year-old pictures of heads screaming on spikes forever in Hell, a man stretched on a torture rack, a half-stripped woman being flogged?  Yet all of these, and far more, appeared in popular comics before the era of the Code — the latter two (rack and flogging) in Sunday papers (!) of the 1930s.

My inexpert impression is that especially in the jungle and horror comics of the pre-Code 1950s, comics writers were often reaching for titty, titillation, and torture to make their comics go.  The various formulae had worn thin, and Wertham was not entirely making it up: there were excesses, there were unsuitabilities, there was a dead-endedness and uncreativity in the field — and then came the Code.  The Code was too sweeping; it made no allowance for comics-for-kids versus comics-for-teens-and-adults; it did harm the industry; it did harm artists.  But its overall effect was, I think, to strengthen the art.  Under the crushing limitations of the Code, it became necessary to reinvent comic book horror in a psychological key rather than a stomach-turning key.  And I believe, though I cannot prove, that the restrictions of the Code, no doubt in combination with the whole cultural ferment of the era, triggered the comic industry’s move from Phase I of hero history, what I think of as the Naïve Hero, to Phase II, the Troubled Hero, à la Spider-Man and most of the other Marvel heroes of the 1960s — which were and remain far more interesting, as well as presentable to small kids, than most of what had gone before.

Since the death of the Code we have moved almost entirely into Phase III of the hero genre, the Dirty Hero — not entirely a gain, in my opinion. But that is a rant for another day.

I don’t think that the Code should be brought back.  No duh.  But the creation of a sub-genre of comics deliberately Code-like in its self-restraint, yet as bouyantly, exuberantly creative as the Code-heeding hero comics of the 1960s, would be a good thing.  I could then send a subscription to my youngest friends, instead of a used volume of half-century-old reprints.   And wouldn’t that be good for the industry?