Season 6, Episode 3: Comic Books: Not Just for Kids!

July 10, 2026

In this episode, podcast hosts Daniel Pewewardy and Jenny Durham are joined by their colleague and special guest host Ian Bailey to talk about comic books, the history of the format and why they aren't just for kids.

This transcript was generated using Adobe Premiere Pro and was reviewed for accuracy by a member of the Library's Digital Services team before publishing. If you find a transcription error, please contact us with any corrections and we will make those corrections as quickly as possible.

[music]

Daniel, voiceover All righty. Hey, everybody. How's it going? Welcome to Read Return Repeat. I'm your co-host, Daniel Pewewardy, and I'm with the lovely—

Jenny, voiceover Jenny Durham, Adult Enrichment Librarian.

Daniel, voiceover And the ever amazing and also lovely...

Ian, voiceover You can also call me lovely. It's fine.

Daniel, voiceover Lovely. You know, everyone's lovely. All the people on the podcast are lovely.

Ian, voiceover I'm Ian Bailey, I'm also with Adult Literacies.

Daniel, voiceover Awesome. And I am Daniel Pewewardy. I said that already, but I'm the Inspiration Librarian, also with Adult Literacies. And we're talking about a very adult literary art form today. Comic books and graphic novels.

Jenny, voiceover And they are not just for kids.

Daniel, voiceover No, no.

Jenny, voiceover Some of them are very much not for kids.

Daniel, voiceover I'm thinking of Maus immediately.

Ian, voiceover Yeah, we should dive right into Maus.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, just jump right into Maus.

Ian, voiceover Real quick.

Daniel, voiceover I've been reading Absolute Superman. It's by Jason Aaron who's from like, Overland Park. And he's very true to Kansas. And like, he didn't, he kept putting Smallville in, like, like, north of the Flint Hills, which should, but like, closer to Topeka. But then in the Battle of Kansas, he kind of figured out it's Hutchinson. [laughter]

Support your local comic book store. Support all local bookstores. We've, like, we've done a couple things. We've had some donations from Wizards Asylum downtown. That's a good one. And there's also Prairie Dog.

Jenny, voiceover I was going to say I used to live really close to Prairie Dog Comics. They're really cool, too.

Daniel, voiceover Yeah, and it's really cool because I kind of got back into comics and all the comic shop guys, there's no rivalry. Like, there's not that... it's very like, because it's like, you know, like not every comic is going to get, every store is going to get everything. So like when you have three stores... the only one that everyone kind of like doesn't tend to like is the, the chain, the mall, Vintage Stock. But they're not local, so I don't feel bad about it.

Jenny, voiceover Yeah.

Daniel, voiceover It's hit or miss there.

Jenny, voiceover I kind of go there for, like, films and stuff, but like, old years' DVDs, but not... yeah, I kind of prefer to go to comic book shops.

Daniel, voiceover Honestly, I think I'm cool with throwing smoke at Vintage Stock I thought because they, I think they did blind date with a book.

Ian, voiceover Yeah.

Jenny, voiceover How dare they?

Daniel, voiceover Yeah.

Ian, voiceover That's our thing!

Daniel, voiceover They got into, like, because of the romantasy thing, they did get into, like, selling books now, and it's like they have the, like, book... I was like, no, no.

Jenny, voiceover It's small, though. It's, they really, I was there a while back. They don't have that many books. And they're, it's like when you go to Target.

Daniel, voiceover I mean, like, I'm not complaining about more people having books, but I do go like, all right, let me get a katana and, and a copy of War and Peace.

Ian, voiceover I will swing by Third Planet after this. [Daniel laughs]

Daniel, voiceover A place where you can buy swords and novels. Maybe that's, that's actually the bookstore that needs to exist. Anyway, we're talking about comic books. So do we want to just—

Jenny, voiceover Yeah.

Daniel, voiceover Jump into it.

Jenny, voiceover Let's just jump in.

Daniel, voiceover What is a comic book?

Daniel Hey! And we're off to the races. We're talking, we got Ian here and Ian's normally not like, do you want to, like, should we talk up to Ian? Ian's been on the show before.

Jenny Ian's been on the show before.

Ian Yeah, I've been on the show, but I usually do sort of behind the scenes stuff. I was on the roundtable that we did about mental health.

Daniel Yes.

Ian Two seasons ago?

Jenny Couple years ago.

Ian And then before that, when we used to have short story submissions—

Daniel You were the voice.

Ian I would, I would narrate those. Those were really fun.

Daniel Keep submitting those. I haven't gotten any in a while.

Ian It's been a minute since we've got some good submissions.

Daniel Yeah. So, yeah, keep submitting those. So have anything new going on in your world? You read me, like where, like, what's changes since you last been on the podcast?

Ian Oh, so up to about two years ago?

Daniel Yeah. Yeah.

Ian Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been interesting. Interesting times.

Daniel Interesting times? Yeah.

Ian Interesting times. Yeah, I just sort of... yeah.

Daniel And you've been doing a lot of learning circles and community writing stuff, too.

Ian Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of events. Learning circles. I, I just finished one up on poetry as part of our poetry month.

Daniel Yeah. Shout out to everyone involved in poetry month. That was a great April, because, yeah, like, I did a cat poetry program and people loved it.

Ian Yeah. We always get really, really good turnouts for poetry programs. Which is really cool. I think partially just because normally all the poetry is hidden in the eight hundreds and just nobody knows where it is.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel Yeah. We've, yeah, that would be, yeah, it is kind of funny that you can, it's funny when you hit it because you'll see just like these tiny—

Jenny A bunch of like tiny little books.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel Also poetry books have the best covers.

Ian They do. Yeah. All the displays I do, I mostly just pull back by the covers.

Jenny I know, like, ooh,. this is pretty.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel Oh, speaking of cool covers. I have a stack of comic books here that I will bring out to talk about. And, for example, here is maybe it's '98. These are all reprints. They're not as valuable as the originals. But for reference, I got some of these I want to talk.

Jenny I love the ones with the neat little foil like—

Daniel Yeah, they got the foil. Yeah. I need more foil covers in my life. I love it. So I don't know how that shows up on camera.

Jenny We wanted to just start off with some fun facts.

Daniel Fun facts about comic books. Yeah.

Jenny Because I thought some of them were kind of cool.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny Well, actually, let's first start with the first time the term comic book was used was in 1897.

Daniel Wow. I didn't know it went that far back.

Jenny Yeah, yeah. Though they kind of existed before then. But as far as the actual term comic book in the way that we would think about it now.

Daniel Yeah. And I know that early comic books were just kind of like, collected editions of comic strips and comic strips used to be like, a big part of the newspaper. And it was kind of like, now they're mostly just comic, funny little three square panels. But before they would tell serialized stuff.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel Flash Gordon and stuff like that.

Jenny And when they did the books they would like collect a lot of those news strips into like a book.

Daniel Yeah. And they were huge also like they were like, yeah, like magazines, like Time-Life. Magazines used to be that big and yeah. And we could talk about, like, the different comic book sizes and everything.

Jenny Yeah. Another thing that's kind of interesting. I actually knew this one already. Superman did not always fly.

Daniel No, he didn't. No, actually, actually, I don't have it here. But—

Jenny Like one of the original Supermans, he would just leap between buildings, and I thought it was interesting. I did not know the reason why they made him fly. It was because, for the illustrators, the comic book artists, when they... I don't know if it was, I think it was when they started animating him. It was too much work to have to constantly, like, draw all these separate panels, to have him jump. And it was easier and less work on them to have him fly.

Ian Yeah, just one pose.

Jenny Which I thought was really, really interesting.

Daniel This is like a, I didn't know that about the comic that—I love the Max Fleischer animated, some of the best animation Max Fleischer was doing and Disney stole it. But, I mean, we can go into that some other time, but yeah. So this is actually they reprinted, this Is Superman #1, which came out in 1939, I believe.

And it's, they reprint the origin as it was in Action Comics #1 and I will read it. So this is kind of like how limited Superman's powers are. "As the lad grew older, he learned to his delight that he could hurdle skyscrapers, leap an eighth of a mile, raise tremendous weights, run faster than a a steamline train, and nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin." And then there's a little panel, and it's like, the doctor's like, what is this? This is the sixth hypodermic needle.

Jenny He was actually, like, leaping onto a building there.

Daniel Yeah, he's not flying. And the thing too I notice is that they said, like, nothing less than a bursting shell, which I think is like that means like, heavier arms, like a drone would just take out—

[laughter]

Daniel Like an atom bomb would probably, like, destroy him. Oppenheimer.

Ian Lex Luthor's new secret weapon is just a cannon—[laughter]—that shoots Superman.

Jenny Cannon arms.

Daniel Armor piercing bullets. Anyway.

Jenny Another fun fact. Bill Finger, who co-created Batman with Bob Kane, was not officially recognized for his contributions until 2015, and he died in poverty in 1974, despite having created many of Batman's most iconic elements, including the Batmobile, Gotham City, and numerous villains.

Daniel Yeah, Bob Kane was like, notorious for taking all the credit. And the way I have heard it, like listening, like History of Batman, it was kind of like Batman was like a committee. There's like a, like a group of people in a boardroom. And they were like, coming up—it was him, Bill Finger, and a couple other people that got no credit. But it was like Batman kind of like, they came up with the idea. It wasn't just one guy who kind of took all the credit.

Jenny I'm glad he eventually got recognition. It's just kind of sad that it was like, what, like 40 years?

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny After his death.

Daniel There's actually continuing legal battles with, the rights to Superman and Superboy because of the Bill Finger family and stuff that can... the last judgment, I looked this up for a patron recently. The last judgment on that case was like 2014. So it's like, still going on, like.

Ian Yeah, I never heard of this guy. I always had, you know, heard Bob Kane. Yeah, yeah, the Batman guy. Okay. It's like Stan Lee, Spider-Man guy, you know? Yeah.

Daniel Correction, I was thinking of the Simon and—Simon and Schuster lawsuit, not the Bill Finger one. I'm not sure. [Editor's note: Daniel may be referring to one or several lawsuits brought by Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster or their estates.]

Jenny Oh.

Daniel The Simon and Schuster, the suit—Superman also had some credit issues and that, those families have been arguing since.

Jenny Yeah. There's a lot of drama within the comic book company, especially. Like what, the superhero comic.

Daniel Yeah. We should talk about Alan Moore at some point. He loves a big to-do.

Jenny This fun fact I thought was really interesting. During World War Two, the US military used comic style technical manuals to teach soldiers about equipment, maintenance and safety procedures. Will Eisner, we know that name? Creator of The Spirit, was instrumental in developing these educational comics.

Daniel Yeah. He also the first, the first, like some have said that he's like the first graphic novel author because he, he was the first person, but... yeah, that's, that's interesting to think that, like, comic book artists were like teaching people how to use, like, claymore mines and stuff.

Ian Yeah.

Jenny Yeah, I thought that was interesting. And if you've read a lot of those, like, '40s era comics, there's so much like, propaganda in them, for lack of a better term and very like a lot of talk about war and World War Two and anti-Nazi, which I'm not saying that that's a bad thing.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny But it's just really interesting. It tells you a lot about what was going on in the world.

Daniel I, I've been trying to read '40s era comics and I will say you have to like approach them like you've not read or heard anything before. I read the first like appearance of Batman recently and it ends like you don't know who Batman is the whole time. And I want a movie like this. I want someone to make a movie where it's like, you follow Bruce Wayne around and there's all, like, Batman around, but you don't say like, because it's a teaser at the end. You were like at the end of, I think it's Action Comics 27 or whatever, or Detective Comics 27. Like Batman opens up his little—or Bruce Wayne opens up his little closet. You see the bat outfit, you're like—

Jenny Oh my God!

Daniel Bruce Wayne is Batman? I didn't know that.

And I'm like, if I like, made a Batman movie, I would just pretend... like, if you made, can you imagine that? Like, you go to see the new Batman movie and they never acknowledge that Bruce Wayne is Batman until the very end. It's like people would be so mad. It's like, but I, you do have to like when you read like, Superman and you're like, oh my God, that guy can jump a ten story building. What? And he can leap an eighth of a mile.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel Which I don't know. I feel like that's not that far.

Ian An eighth of a mile?

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny I mean—

Ian Yeah, I mean, I couldn't jump it, that's for sure.

Daniel I feel like leaping an eighth of a mile, I feel like Usain Bolt can still beat him. [Editor's note: One-eighth of a mile is 660 feet. Let's be real.]

Jenny How tall of a building is that?

Daniel I don't know, I'm not a scientist.

Jenny Last fun fact: the underground comix movement—and that's C-O-M-I-X—the underground comix movement of the '60s and '70s, led by artists like Robert Crumb, revolutionized the medium. They tackled adult themes and controversial subjects.

Daniel Yeah. You have—

Jenny Which pretty much was like the predecessor of a lot of our modern graphic novels.

Ian And, like, zines in general.

Daniel Yeah.

Ian A lot of it was—

Daniel There was—

Ian Yeah, it was, it was like politically motivated or, you know, you know, trying to, you know, comment on some aspect of society, a lot of text a lot of times too.

Daniel Good documentary about that era. Is there's a couple on Kanopy. I know, I think, I don't, I'm not sure if the Crumb documentary's on Kanopy, about Robert Crumb.

Ian I think it is. I think I saw it there.

Daniel I know Comics Confidential, which is like a documentary that was made in the '80s about the underground comix scene going on at the time, that one is on Kanopy. So they interview like, the Love and Rockets guy and Robert Crumb and stuff.

Jenny Yeah. Like, I think that's just kind of interesting to, kind of note that because a lot of people think superhero when they think comics, which does make up a big part of the landscape. But there's so much more, which we were going to kind of talk about.

Daniel I think it's interesting how the comic format is like well received in other countries like Japan and like it like certain parts of Europe. And it's just kind of like a, it's another passive form of media where we've kind of juvenile-ized it now where it's like a kids thing, or just like adults with arrested development thing or whatever. But like, yeah, it's kind of just it's just another media format. It's like, I don't know, I find like a level of, there's a level of purity in reading a comic book that I enjoy.

Ian My, my kind of personal theory about why it's not taken as seriously, I think it's really just because we're used to growing up with, you know, Sunday comics and they're all, for the most part, not that great.

Daniel Yeah. I mean—

Ian I mean, you can't, you know, look me in the eye and tell me Family Circus is funny. Sorry.

Daniel I'm coming around. I'm coming around. And that's the thing. I feel like there was kind of, like a lot of Garfield hate in the, like, 2000s and then, like—

Jenny Garfield was great.

Ian I was a Garfield kid. I was a Garfield kid.

Daniel Yeah, I feel like Garfield became like Garfield... like, honestly, people make fun of Garfield, but, like, look who he's surrounded by. He's got, like, Family Circus, which is corny. And then it's like...

Jenny That was one of the few, like, Sunday comics that I really enjoyed was the Garfield ones.

Daniel Dennis the Menace, local hero is, Dennis the Menace is based out of Wichita.

Ian Yeah, yeah.

Jenny I didn't know. I don't think I knew that.

Daniel I haven't seen a comic sheet in forever. I have no idea what it looks like now. But I can actually go look at the newspaper downstairs, yeah.

Jenny I feel like with a lot of the comics being kind of not taken seriously is also very much like an American cultural thing, because I also see that when you compare animation, like, because there'll be this, like Japanese animated series or movie.

And then you had parents getting upset that their kids watched it, and it was so obviously not intended for children. Because they're seeing things like, oh, well, it's cartoons, like, it's for kids. And we kind of saw that a little bit too when you first started seeing those very adult-centric cartoons in the '90s, like Ren and Stimpy is a really great example where people were like, why would you do this? This is not a kid's show. Well, it's not supposed to be.

Daniel I think, yeah, I think, who knows? I'm sure there's like... a big reason comic books, a big reason comic books kind of did become juvenile-ized in America was because of the Red Scare. There was a book published in the early 1950s called Seduction of the Innocent by Peter Wertham. [Editor's note: Fredric Wertham.] I can't, maybe because Dr. Wertham was a psychologist and he, like, linked like, he basically kind of linked comic books to juvenile delinquency and at the time, actually, hold on real quick. Keep talking.

Jenny There was a whole, like, decency thing, too, around that time where comic book creators like Stan Lee and I don't know if Jack Kirby was involved in it, where they were having to prove in court like their, you know, whether their comics were leading to delinquency.

Daniel Yeah, I have it!

Jenny And I think they, they were trying to sanitize a lot of what was going on in the comics.

Daniel So I grabbed a visual. But so 1950s, EC comics, who we know mostly from Mad comics, they were making a lot of, like, horror and like, you had, like, comic titles like weird fantasy and shock suspense stories. You guys could take a look. Feel free. These are just old reprints. But the crime books actually were like, notorious for, like, I kind of, we have a copy of Seduction of the Innocent in our, like, special collections. I was looking at it, and they kind of have excerpts. And the guy basically says that, like, kids are using these to learn how to do crimes, which is the whole, like, argument about video games and everything that we've kind of seen in the '90s going forward.

But like, so like, because, because like, of the, like increased pressure coming from Congress and like courts, the comic book publishers, the big two, which we're supposed to talk about, next develop the Comic Code Authority.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel Which and then so going forward for almost like 50 years, you would see like a little stamp on the comic and it says approved by the Comics Code Authority, which was a non-governmental censorship agency.

Jenny There's a whole documentary about that—

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny —that goes into those, you know, court challenges and stuff.

Daniel It's, it's very interesting. And there's like, still court challenges. Someone recently got obscenity charges because they, like, handed out comic books at trick or treat. And this is like last year in, like, Pennsylvania and like, they did not check to see what was in the comics. And some of them were like... because they bought a random box of comics not knowing some of them did have nudity in them, and I guess, like they're now facing obscenity charges because they're just giving them to children, which I don't know about Pennsylvania, but there's like definitely illegal. That's why like Playboys had to have like plastic covers—

Ian Yeah.

Daniel —was because of like child... like, there's obscenity and then there's like exposing children to obscenity. They're like two separate laws, but that's actually like part of the censorship. And that's why if you're in a grocery store and you're selling a book with some objective content, you put in a plastic bag.

Jenny I wonder if that's what—we're kind of getting into manga, but there's certain types of manga, that, like, are a little racier.

Daniel There's racier manga, you say?

Jenny Racier manga!

Ian Would not have—

Daniel I never would have thought of that.

Jenny One that think so, it's called yaoi, I think. And it's two, two men. And those ones, when you, when they were in the store, they usually had to have them packaged like sealed. And then I think you couldn't even see the cover, like they would put, like, I don't know, a piece of cardboard or something on the cover. That's how you knew that there was stuff in there that was not appropriate.

Daniel And speaking of manga, I know that, I guess what's happening with American comic publishers, let's talk about... yeah, let's talk about—

Jenny Talk about the major publishers.

Daniel Let's talk about the major publishers. But I want to talk about how comic books are kind of like, talk about the, like, formats, various formats. But let's talk about the big publishers because we're talking about censorship. And so for the longest time, it kind of got narrowed down through monopolies because there were several comic book publishers, but like through various monopoly, like when DC absorbed like Charleston Comics [Editor's note: Charlton Comics], they absorbed like, I forgot the name of, like, Captain Marvel, but they have absorbed that. They even absorbed EC Comics, which did Mad magazine. And then Marvel absorbed Timely and some other ones, and they kind of just like... so like the movie Watchmen is based off of the Charleston characters, which, like originally like Alan Moore was going to reinvent, but then they decided not to let him use it. So Peacemaker is actually supposed to be the Comedian.

Ian Oh, okay. That makes sense.

Daniel Yeah. And the Captain Atom is supposed to be Dr. Manhattan. It's like, there's like, so he like basically had to redraw them.

Jenny Yeah. The DC and Marvel, but particularly DC, how they kind of evolved as a company gets so confusing because yeah, there were all these like mini companies in like the '30s and '40s.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny But I actually did not realize that DC actually was like the initials of Detective Comics.

Daniel Detective Comics.

Jenny And I felt incredibly stupid, like, oh my gosh. How could I—

Ian Don't feel stupid. I did that, too.

Jenny —how did I not know that?

Daniel It's really funny on early Detective Comics, on early, like, they put, they remind people it's funny because ago, like Detective Comics, a Superman book, and it's kind of weird because it's like they started like a shared universe, which is very important in comic books, like all that, like, yeah, you have a shared universe because people were like, they wanted to make sure it was like kind of like an authenticity thing. Like, if you want to read the real Superman and and Whiz Comics was the ones that did Captain Marvel and like, so it was like—

Ian Whiz Comics?

Daniel —all these like, knock offs came out after Superman. And like, we can get into, like the archetypes of superheroes and how there's all different ones is like the detective, there's a science hero and stuff like—

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel Very Alan Moore-esque, but I'll save you guys the details.

Jenny But like right now we have like the two big comic book ones are obviously DC and Marvel, but we have a lot of others too, like—

Daniel Image.

Jenny Image.

Daniel Image is a big indie producer.

Ian Dark Horse.

Daniel Dark Horse as well. We start getting tricky. And the other ones, I know that Image is creator-owned, so like it's important to notice if you work on a Marvel or DC book and you create stuff for it, like you get paid and there's contracts and stuff, but you don't own it. But like, I know with like Image and to a lesser extent, other of the indie companies, they're creator-owned, meaning like we're just publishing your story for right now, but like—

Jenny But you own the intellectual property or whatever.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny A couple other ones that I ran across that are big is IDW.

Daniel I don't know what it stands for.

Jenny I have no idea what it stands for either. They've done the Star Trek comics and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Daniel Yes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is currently being published by IDW.

Jenny Boom Studios is another one, that has done Adventure Time. They did the Power Rangers—yeah, they did Power Rangers.

Daniel A lot of—yeah, so like a lot of the smaller ones, licensing is kind of how they make their bread and butter. And so they'll still do, like, creative-owned. Like Boom created Something is Killing the Children. James Tynion's kind of like a hot horror writer right now. And they're publishing that. And then Image is, Image is actually doing like, is a lot different stuff. Robert Kirkman is the head of creative now who created The Walking Dead.

Ian Yeah.

Jenny Yeah, a lot of the ones I really enjoy were done by Image Comics, because I was actually looking through some of my favorites earlier to figure out who did each of them. And, like, I really like The Wicked + The Divine.

Daniel Yes. I love, that's really good.

Jenny So good, so good. That one's done by Image. And also Rat Queens, which they don't do anymore. They, there was like some type of weird legal thing, so they stopped making that one. But that was also under Image.

Daniel I liked the first volume of that.

Jenny Rat Queens was really good.

Daniel Rat Queens, if you like Dungeons and Dragons and like roleplaying, fantasy roleplaying.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel You got any indie books you like?

Ian Indie? Yeah. I mean, back in the day, I was Dark Horse was what I was sort of most familiar with most because, at least, you know, '90s, early 2000, that's who were publishing all the Star Wars comics.

Daniel Yeah.

Ian Was big into those as a kid. But yeah, I just found, like, weird stuff from them. I recently read the, the comic that was adapted into Snowpiercer, the movie Snowpiercer, which is fantastic.

Daniel Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That's a manga, right? A Korean manga. [Editor's note: The Korean term for comics and print cartoons is manhwa.]

Ian Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Yeah.

Ian That, yeah, that one's really good. You know, I think one of my first like indie comics that I read was that, it was a series called Teenagers from Mars, and I actually found it here at the library when I was a kid.

Daniel Oh, that's cool.

Ian And it kind of... it kind of snuck up on me because I thought it was going to be like... I was probably like 13 or 14. I was like, oh, so you know, cool, like it's about aliens. But it's not. It's a, it's about a guy who, is a comic book artist, struggling comic book artist who lives in a small town and basically everybody in town gets very upset with his art and tries to ban comic books. And it's like—

Daniel Oh, that's wild.

Ian —it's a whole it's really more of a story about censorship and, and banning comics. And they end up starting kind of as a joke a, a paramilitary group, the, the Comic Book Liberation Army.

Jenny Oh my gosh.

Ian It starts as a joke. And, and they're like, oh, we could also maybe do, do a little, we could do a little bit of crime as well, you know?

Daniel Yeah. Comic titles sometimes are misleading, like Black Hole has nothing to do with space. [Ian laughs] It's all about teenagers in the '70s. They all get like, I, I forgot the guy's name that did Black Hole, but it's like, it's just a story about teenagers in the '70s. And there is a sci-fi element. There's an STD that turns you into a mutant that they all pass around.

Ian Oh, of course.

Daniel Yeah, but nothing to do with space or traveling through wormholes and time dilation. But...

Jenny So those are, like, the big...

Daniel Companies.

Jenny We want to talk a little bit about how they're organized.

Daniel Yeah. So, American comic books generally are written from left to right. So you start left, you go right and then top to the bottom, and then... how detailed do we need to get in?

Jenny We don't have to, like, get super detailed, like, because you'll either see, like, your single issues, or you'll have them collected and then we're talking about graphic novels—

Daniel Yeah. Oh, yeah. Collected. So there's like graphic novels—

Jenny These have like this was the DC Bombshells. And I want to say they'll usually tell you which issues.

Daniel It's 4 to 6 issues.

Jenny Yeah. It'll say like collecting issues one through six or whatever, I just can't see on here which one it says. But you'll see a lot of these which you could get the single issues, but...

Daniel Yeah, single issues. It's kind of interesting. Yeah. So I think I got back into—I used to do graphic novels only, and I got back in a single issue collecting. The other type—so we have single issues, we have graphic novels, and the other type is omnibuses, which I'm not a fan of these because they're kind of hard to read.

Ian They are. They are.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel And someone told me I need to get a reading desk and, yeah. So, but yeah, they're typically anywhere between like 20 to 40 comics in one book, and they're, like, heavy. But if you want everything, it's like they're good for reference.

Ian Oh yeah.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny Yeah. And if you want like, more of a shelf trophy, I guess.

Daniel One more thing though, before we go to break, I will say is that American comic book companies are getting into the smaller digest format now because of manga.

Ian Really?

Daniel And, like, people are eating them up and they're cheaper.

Jenny I have noticed that!

Daniel So like, a graphic novel used to be about 20 bucks. That's how much like a paperback graphic novel is. And now they sell $10 graphic novels that are condensed and printed on, like, cheaper paper. And, I guess, like people, it's, it's starting to pick up, like to the level of like more people are getting into comic books because of it.

Jenny Well and you have the whole digital ones too because you can—

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny I've not gotten as much into reading them digitally. I do still like the tactile.

Ian Yeah. It's tough to do it like that.

Jenny Even though I have done it in the past. It certainly saves space on your shelves.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny And I used to really like Comixology, but then they got purchased by Amazon.

Daniel There's a—

Jenny So then I don't want to use them anymore.

Daniel There's finally like a decent competitor. I, I loved Comixology before the Amazon buyout and Global Comics is what I've been using and they have a lot of free stuff if you pay like $6 a month and then you can buy them. But, let's take a break.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel We're going to take a break and then we'll get back and we'll talk about diversity in comics and also comic book conventions. So thank you. You're listening to Read Return Repeat.

Daniel How's it going? And we're back and we're talking about comic books.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel So we're going to talk about our favorites.

Jenny Yeah. Let's talk about our favorites. Do you want to start?

Daniel I mean...

Ian I'll start, I can start. I'll really start, I brought this one...

Daniel Zut alors!

Ian Yes. French. [Daniel laughs] No, but yeah, the, the Tintin comics. I, I read these at a very, very early age. It was really, I would say, like the first comic that I read that wasn't, you know...

Jenny Superhero types?

Ian Yeah, or like a comic strip or whatever. Super, super good. Very like... I mean, they are aimed more towards kids, but I'll re-read them every once in a while. I think they still hold up. Yeah. They were, from a, a Belgian cartoonist.

Daniel [mispronounced] Hergé.

Ian [mispronounced] Hergé. I'm not sure quite sure how you pronounce that, but "hurge" is the best I can do.

Daniel Oh my God, European comic artists have the coolest names like Moebius. "Hurge."

Ian Plus, he had the one, the one, the single name.

Daniel Yeah, yeah.

Ian But it's basically it's about a teenage reporter and his dog who sort of do sort of, you know, almost like Indiana Jones style—

Daniel Yeah.

Ian —globetrotting mysteries. And they're....

Daniel They're like functional alcoholic best friend.

Ian Yes, they're functional alcoholic best friends. [Daniel laughs] It was, it was written in the '30s and '40s. So things have not aged super great.

Jenny Wasn't they, weren't they originally French?

Daniel Belgium and France? Same thing! I mean, like—

Jenny Well, I meant like in French.

Ian Yeah, yeah, they were.

Jenny Because they speak French in Belgium, parts of Belgium.

Daniel My favorite part of that movie, it's—okay, so they did a movie, a Tintin movie. And I actually like, it's funny because it's the guy that did like Polar Express and like everyone talks about the dead eyes and stuff, so like, well, he made this. Like Tintin already has dead eyes so it kind of worked. But Daniel Craig, James Bond actually plays I forgot the name of Otto or something. The guy, the captain.

Ian Captain Haddock.

Daniel Captain Haddock, and he's like a drunk sailor. But there's, like, their plane's going down and they're out of gas, so he like, burps into the gas tank.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel And it, like, has enough alcohol in it for the engine to take off, like that's great. That's good. Totally like inappropriate for the times. But that's a...

Ian Lot, yeah, a lot of jokes that would not fly today. A lot of like cultural stuff that would not fly today.

Daniel No, no.

Ian Definitely, definitely a product of its time. But, you know, it's good. It's fun. I also, I found him here at the library when I was a kid, in the children's room.

Daniel I feel Tintin was always one of those, like, school appropriate ones. Because you can learn about the world through it. Like all school libraries had Tintin.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel And this is Obilex and Asterix. Asterix, which was—

Ian Yeah, those are also French, known French comics.

Jenny Oh, yeah.

Ian Yeah. That was sort of like kind of what my, my introduction into comics as a kid. And then and moving completely in the opposite direction as far as content goes, just recently I started reading Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, which this was actually your copy that you loaned to me.

Daniel Yeah. So you want to talk about it?

Ian No, yeah, it's fantastic. It's...

Daniel Okay. So if you like, so we talked about Maus. And for those that don't, I mean, I'm assuming people that listen to this know about Maus—

Ian I think people are aware of Maus.

Daniel —is a story about the Holocaust told through animals.

Ian Yes.

Daniel And so it's kind of like a Disney-ification for something very terrible, which honestly kind of works sometimes because you're like, okay, I'm looking at a like gross human violence, but it's mice so I can stomach it better.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel And it actually is a very cool convention for telling a story by using, like, animal, like furry characters.

Jenny And it's really interesting because how they have it is, I want to say the Nazis were cats.

Ian Nazis were cats, yeah.

Jenny The Jewish people were—

Daniel Mice.

Jenny Were mice. But then they had a specific like another race for like, Polish people or something.

Daniel I think they were pigs.

Jenny Like pigs.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny Like, yeah. It's really interesting to kind of put it in that perspective by having that distance between humans and...

Daniel I don't, yeah, I know, yeah, I think yeah, Beneath the Trees I don't think they, I don't, I don't think that in that world there's like a racialized component to animals.

Ian No. It's just, it's definitely not. I mean, it's fairly violent. But it's not is like heavy in themes as Maus. It's really... it's a, it's a world where, you know, everyone's an animal and, you know, kind of living together in harmony and everything. And the main character is a bear who is also sort of a Dexter style vigilante serial killer.

Daniel Yeah.

Ian Who kind of is, you know, living her life very, very safely, you know, not, you know, not killing anybody where she lives. But, then suddenly, all of a sudden, this other serial killer sort of pops up and sort of threatens her whole way of life. And so she has to figure out who it is. And it's... yeah, it's violent. It's cute. It's a very weird comic. But, yeah, it's fun. It's a lot more fun than Maus, I will say.

Jenny That honestly sounds like something I'd want to read.

Ian And the other ones I just grabbed, I grabbed Uber, which is, it's sort of more steampunk, diesel punk. But it kind of, it's sort of like the inverse of Watchmen, instead of us having, developing superheroes, to fight wars, it's what if the Nazis had a had a super soldier, superhero program, and all the horrible things that comes from that. Fairly dark as well, but it's, you know, it's very steampunk, very diesel punk. And then, I know this, a lot of people have read this. I read this fairly recently. I was late to the party. But Y: The Last Man.

Daniel Yeah. That's classic. It's like a new classic. Brian K. Vaughan, who wrote it, that's a, that's his, like, first big break. And I like it a lot.

Ian Yeah, if you like, you know, Walking Dead or any of the sort of probably like, post-apocalyptic comics, I think you'll like Y.

Daniel And if you like, Wicked + Divine, Jenny, you should check out Saga, which is—

Jenny Yeah.

Ian Saga's good.

Daniel Saga is, like, I hope they turn that into a movie or something. Saga's actually really good.

Jenny Yeah, yeah, that's definitely one I'm surprised I haven't read yet because it's, it's on my radar.

Daniel Yeah. That's cool. Thanks for sharing, Ian. What was the one on the bottom again? Oh, Harleen?

Ian Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is also you mentioned that, but this is a more recent one. This came out a few years ago. But it's kind of a reboot of Harley Quinn's character.

Daniel Oh, that's cool.

Ian It's called Harleen. It's very good. It also sort of... one of the very frustrating things for me about the Harley Quinn character is how tied to the Joker she is a lot of the time, and it's sort of just, you know, oh, you know, Joker's girlfriend. The character I think has gotten better over time.

Daniel They have moved... it's really funny because DC like, saw the pushback about...

Jenny Trying to romanticize the abusive relationships.

Daniel The toxic relationships.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel And so they kind of let, they kind of gave like other writers to kind of like develop the Harley Quinn character and move her away from the Joker thing. And they're like, the Joker still needs a girlfriend. And so they created a character called Punch Line, who is the Joker's new girlfriend.

Jenny Oh my gosh.

Daniel And she has healthier boundaries.

Ian That's good.

Jenny I kind of like the newer Harley Quinn, like they did a newer Harley Quinn series and then they turned it into an animated series. But there's been a thing with her and Poison Ivy.

Ian Yep.

Jenny And I'm here for it because Poison Ivy is one of my favorite characters.

Daniel This is like one of the first Harley Quinn comics. It's Batman Adventures, Mad Love Special. Mad Love, you find out about how mad of in love she is with a complete sociopath.

Ian Yeah. The Harley Quinn show I really liked. I think it was on for a couple seasons.

Jenny Yeah, yeah, it's really good.

Daniel And I love the spinoff, Kite Man. [laughter]

Jenny Bane on the Harley Quinn show is so funny.

Daniel, as Bane Yeeees!

Daniel I do Bane.

Jenny It's so different from every other, like, iteration of Bane I've ever seen.

Daniel Oh my god.

Jenny And was it like Shark Man?

Ian King Shark.

Jenny King Shark. I couldn't remember his name. He's hilarious too.

Daniel I can't think of name of the comedian, but he was on this show that was only one season and it had like one of the girls from, like... it was called, it was about a company that existed in the DC universe, and it was the guy that plays Resident Alien and he's like Bruce Wayne's cousin, and he has this company. Powerless.

Ian Powerless.

Daniel It was like an NBC sitcom. And the guy that does King Shark, I can't think of the comedian's name, but he's a character, you know, on the show. He's from Atlantis. He's like half Atlantean and stuff, and they're like, there's this whole office of cultural sensitivity with Atlanteans and stuff. It's called Powerless. I don't know if it's streaming anywhere, but it's really good.

Ian Is it live action or animated?

Daniel Live action. It kind of, I wouldn't be surprised if the people that worked on Powerless ended up starting Harley Quinn, but Alan Tudyk is like the main character. And he's like Bruce Wayne's cousin, who, like, is very, like, trying to impress his richer cousin and stuff. And this is like a part of Wayne, but I, that was like one of my favorite, like, comic book TV shows for a second. Yeah. And, what have we got for... yeah, yeah.

Jenny My recommendations, a few of them I don't have here. So I'll talk. I'll talk about these first since I physically have them. Obviously Wicked + Divine that I mentioned already and Rat Queens are like my two favorites. I don't want, we kind of went over Rat Queens. It's kind of like D&D, but like, with just mostly these 3 or 4 women. But Wicked + Divine is like these deities come back every night—

Daniel The Pantheon.

Jenny Yeah. The Pantheon. Like it has all these different like, I want to say Aphrodite is like a pop star.

Daniel And they're all kind of based off of actual pop stars. Like one looks like Rihanna and one like David Bowie. There's like a David Bowie.

Jenny Yeah. But every 90 years, they take on, like, a mortal form, but they're only alive for two years. So—

Daniel And then—

Jenny There's this, it's hard to describe, but it's so great. So I want to mention that, but I'll mention a few more after I go over these. I have DC Bombshells. So this was just the DC ladies done in a very kind of retro.

Daniel Does it take place in, like, the '40s?

Jenny I believe so. It's actually been a minute since I've read these, so I haven't, I don't remember a lot of the story lines from them. I do remember that I went to Planet Comicon when these were huge. So I have a whole shot glass collection of DC Bombshells.

Daniel Oh, that's so cool.

Jenny Yeah, I didn't think to bring them in here.

Another one. I actually mentioned this in the last episode. Lore Olympus, and it was a webcomic. This is obviously the collected issues, but they basically collected them into actual graphic novel volumes. But this is basically a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth.. But I don't remember if they modernized it or not. I think they kind of do, because I think he has like a nightclub or something, if I remember correctly.

Daniel Speaking of webcomics, Perry Bible Fellowship is probably my favorite webcomic And like, I got very lucky because, like, they did one hardcover and like, our copy, like, went to the bookstore because the, the binding was kind of loose and like, I got it and I was like so happy because I love that webcomic. But shout out to the Friends of the Library bookstore for hooking it up.

Ian Yeah.

Jenny The last one I have here is actually a true graphic novel because it is a novel in graphic form, and it's called Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith. Who was, if anybody is not familiar with Patricia Highsmith, she was a well known writer, largely from the '50s and '60s. She's probably most well known for The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Ian Hmm, yeah.

Daniel Okay.

Jenny She also wrote The Price of Salt, which was turned into the movie Carol. So very, like out lesbian writer as well. So this was kind of like a kind of loosely based off of her life as a writer, but it's kind of a reimagining, even though the character is Patricia in here. So it's set during, I think, the '50s and '60s and kind of just go, goes over her experiences trying to get published.

Daniel Is it an adaptation of a book or is it just a—

Jenny No, it's, it's like an original work. It was just inspired by her.

Daniel I think we're getting to like, this interesting territory with this, which, there are like these graphic novels like that feel more like books, but illustrated. But also what I'm noticing now is like graphic novel adaptations and not like adapting public domain stuff like Treasure Island or whatever. But like there is now this, like direct... like it's like, it's kind of, I think it's kind of how like Japanese publishers do it too, like it's like, all right, you know, when you get a movie, like, it's like a writing deal and—

Jenny Let's make a—

Daniel The book's great. Let's do a graphic novel adaptation. And I love that because I can't read a physical book. I have to do audiobook, an audiobook takes me two weeks, but I can knock out a, like a graphic novel in like an hour.

Jenny There are a lot of them. Some of them are really good. The Kindred one's really good.

Daniel Yeah. I was going to say the Parable of the Sower lady. Yeah, Kindred.

Jenny Yeah, that one was really good. There's a lot of different ones. But also there's some where I'm like, I don't know how that would really, work as a graphic novel, like when it's, like, this big and the book was much bigger. There's two more I want to give a shout out to. One of them is called Once and Future, and it was written by Kieron Gillen.

Daniel Kieron Gillen.

Jenny Who also does a lot of other stuff. He's one of my favorite comic book creators, and that one was kind of like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, like come back to life or something.

Daniel Yeah, they, yeah, it's a very interesting concept.

Jenny It's very unique.

Daniel Well, I, James Tynion, it's kind of the same thing in like Department of Truth, where it's like, because enough people believe it, it becomes true and stuff, and like, the fiction becomes a reality, which is very like meta. I love stories like that.

Jenny Yeah. And there's like zombies or something in it. That's another one that I read like a few years ago. And so I don't remember a lot of the details in it to reread it.

Daniel Kieron Gillen did this one. I just finished it called Die, and it's about these kids that play this like role playing game and get transported to a magical world that exists. And like, they leave one of their friends back there and then, they, they live their lives or whatever, and then like, they kind of find out that the game exists—it's a weird time parallel thing that like, basically the Bronte sisters get involved and Tolkien, show up as characters.

Jenny That sounds really interesting.

Daniel Yeah, it's called Die, and I think they're doing like a sequel to it. But the first Die by Kieron Gillen is... Kieron Gillen is kind of the modern equivalent of like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison as like a weird occult author.

Jenny Yeah, I noticed that a lot of the comics and graphic novels that I read are done by him. So I definitely have have a pattern of types that I like to read. The last one's actually a manga, but I want to note it because it's so funny. And it is called Saint Young Men by Hikaru Nakamura. And it's a reimagining if Jesus and the Buddha were roommates in Tokyo and it's so good.

Daniel That's really cool, yeah.

Jenny And it's done like, I feel like in a... well, okay, this is me speaking as someone who is not super religious, so I wasn't offended by it, but I feel like objectively, it wasn't done in an offensive manner to either Buddhism or Christianity like, but they do bring in like concepts from both religions. But it's just is wholesome but funny. And apparently it was this big, like cult classic in Japan and was finally released in English like a couple of years ago. And oh, so fast I checked that one out. It's so good. I love it.

Ian So of the two, who is the worst roommate?

Jenny Honestly, if I remember correctly, I think it might have been Jesus.

Daniel He didn't take the trash out or anything. [Jenny guffaws]

Jenny But they, they are just, I don't know. It's so funny but in like a wholesome kind of way. And there definitely is like some, they're very innocent. Like they wind up in these situations that where they're so innocent and clueless and you're sitting there going, oh my gosh. Like, oh, they don't get it but it's so funny. Like I would say, you know—

Daniel What was that one called again?

Jenny Saint Young Man.

Daniel Saint Young Man. That's a good, that's a really cool name.

Jenny Even the name is so funny. But yeah, it's hilarious. I would check it out. That's great.

Daniel I guess I'll talk about some of the books I like and—

Ian Yeah. Did you bring enough? [Editor's note: Daniel's pile is larger than Jenny's and Ian's combined.]

Daniel Shut up.

Ian Want to grab some more?

Daniel I grabbed some recent stuff that I've been reading. I'm a big fan. I'll try to, I'll break it down by, like, artist or writers, because I'm a big fan of writers and ignore the Ollie's sticker. But did you guys see the new Superman movie?

Ian Yeah.

Daniel Tom King is actually kind of my favorite DC author right now. And he's... little backstory. He's formerly like a CIA agent and he got into comics and Strange Adventures is about Adam Strange. He's like, it's like a Flash Gordon knockoff, and he basically writes his, like, war stories because... he basically gets magically transported to this planet where he has to fight and adventures and stuff, kind of like Flash Gordon and like, so he, like, helps save a war. He stops the war, and then he comes back and he writes memoirs, and people are like, saying it's all false and stuff.

So, like Mr. Terrific from the Superman movies is really awesome, like, this is more his book than actually that guy. And his job is like, he's been tasked to investigate the authenticity of his war accounts. And it just goes from there, and it's very like, Tom King also did, like a Rorschach book, but it's very like it starts, the premise starts, and then just kind of goes from there and develops and stuff. I love Tom King.

Another good Tom King book is Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. I will say, like, this is kind of a spoiler, but Krypto doesn't die. He's never injured. They do mislead you for the whole thing that Krypto is going to die. But, so I like I, I started reading it—That's not a bad spoiler. You can tell people the dog lives, right?

Ian No, I think that is an important thing for some people to know is if the dog dies or not.

Jenny Yeah, there's a whole website devoted to that.

Daniel And I'm really worried because there's a movie coming out. I was like, I hope they just got rid of that. No one wants to see Krypto almost dying.

Jenny Yeah, no.

Daniel But this is a really cool story. And it's kind of about she's basically following a warlord, and she's trying to stop this warlord because he can like... and she has, like, a victim of the warlord with her that's kind of witnessing, they're witnessing the violence. Again, it starts off like a simple, like quest. And then the book starts talking about like, life and death and war and stuff and like, coming from a guy that was, like, heavily involved in the Iraq war, you can kind of like tell that a lot of what he's writing about is his own experiences, which is, I think, pretty cool. And I'll, I'll be short, but, so that's Tom King, and I'm just going to break it down by different authors.

So like, Dennis Camp, this is a new book by him, and it's called Bleeding Hearts. And it's about a zombie whose heart starts beating and he starts not wanting to eat humans anymore, and he finds two humans that he is trying to keep from the other zombies. And it's pretty good. And Dennis Camp is a newer DC author. And then he also did Absolute Martian Manhunter, which the absolute universe, if you don't know, is this Absolute Batman, Absolute Superman. They all take place in the universe that Darkseid is basically God and so he's basically created this universe where the story's like Superman in this one isn't rich. Only his dad died, so he was raised by a single mother in like, a working class neighborhood. Or that's Batman, sorry, Batman.

Superman actually doesn't get to Earth until he's like an adult in this one. So he's already kind of has like, opinions about humanity and like... and so you find out, like all the characters, Wonder Woman, your favorite was raised in Hell by Circe instead of Themyscira, got raised. Like so like and this one Martian Manhunter is just like guiding John and like, the more his Martian identity has been suppressed to being basically like mental illness to him, he doesn't like... and so, like, you see, like through it, like this giant alien follows around that's like a figment of his imagination. Basically, all his alien identity has become like a, like a, like an alternate personality, and that he's not aware that he's actually Martian. It's very actually, honestly, I don't know if... I don't pay that much attention, obviously, Martian Manhunter is kind of heady.

Sometimes these comics get really heavy, like, they're hard to follow, but, but that's the start. And then, if you like... this, Robert Kirkman who created Walking Dead has two books out right now, and, Skinbreaker is like a weird alien fantasy. And it's about these, like, tribes on this foreign planet, and it's kind of like this, there's, it's like one guy in the tribe is, he, like, basically they're all about the old ways versus the new ways. Like, the new tribal leaders want to develop, like, traps to catch the animals that try to hunt them. And then it's like, no, brute force or whatever. But this is, the artwork for this is, like, really cool because it's done by David Finch.

Jenny Oh, yeah.

Daniel Who is like, notoriously like really detailed for like, pencil work and so, like, this one's really good. And then if you like Invincible and you watch the show, there's a Battle Beast series now and it's about Battle Beast. And he's just basically on a quest to get killed because you find out through Battle Beast's origin, that Battle Beast basically like united his planet in peace.

But the Battle Beast, the Battle Beast motivation's kind of silly but like Battle Beast basically united this planet in peace. But because of all the wars he fought, he has like an addiction to bloodlust. And he didn't want to torment his planet anymore. So he exiled himself from his planet, and now he's seeking someone to fight him to the death. He's just looking for a worthy opponent. It's very simple. It reminds me of Conan the Barbarian. It's very like space Conan.

Ian See, that needs to be the next—You know how they're constantly doing crossovers with, like, Predator? Yeah, that's next Predator crossover.

Daniel Dude, I think that Battle Beast would like rip into Predator. I don't see that happening. I don't see that ending well for him. So yeah, Battle Beast goes hard. Actually there's a lot of Predator crossovers. I could talk about the Predator for a while. They did a Spider-Man versus Predator and I didn't really... I don't, I feel like Spider-Man is going to win because he's Spider-Man, but I don't think you could actually win. I don't think anyone would actually win against the Predator.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel Or do you have a, you want to weigh in on that fight, Kyle? [Daniel and Ian laugh]

Jenny I feel like maybe he'd win, but he'd be really messed up.

Daniel Yeah, Kraven the Hunter is like more of a guy. But this is turning into a weird podcast that we're talking about power rankings, like can Superman beat Goku?

Jenny That could be its own episode. We want to talk a little bit about—

Daniel I don't think Superman would beat Goku. I think they would just be friends.

Jenny Did we want to talk a little bit about, like, some of the criticisms?

Daniel Yeah, we can talk about the lack of diversity in comics, I think if that's... yeah. I mean, I think when I'm looking at all these comics, it's a lot of white guys.

Jenny Yeah. I think the big thing, because it does seem to be slowly getting better, but I think we need more writers of comics that, you know, come from different groups and are more than just white men. Like, yeah, there's some great white men that are comic book creators and artists. But like, I think when you have more diverse, they're going to be telling more diverse stories. In recent years, one that I really enjoyed was and I don't remember who wrote it, but I'm pretty sure it was written by a woman. Maybe, I don't know if it was Gail Simone or not. But it was Miss Marvel, that was a—

Daniel The Kamala Khan? Yeah.

Jenny Yes. So it's not... it's not, the other Marvel or whatever. The older one, which I think was Miss Marvel, I can't remember.

Ian Because it was Captain Marvel.

Jenny Captain Marvel's what I think. Yeah, yeah. Carol Danvers.

Daniel I can break this down, all right? So there's Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, also known as Shazam. That's DC, that's over here. Captain Marvel in Marvel universe is, is like the commander of the Kree, captain of the empire.

Jenny Carol Danvers—

Daniel Carol Danvers is, Captain Marvel, was Captain Marvel's girlfriend. And then she became Miss Marvel, and then she became Captain Marvel. And now she's Captain Marvel. And the original Captain Marvel actually died of cancer. I'm not kidding.

Jenny Yeah, that's why I, I get that she was confused because there was a DC element, but I was more familiar with the Marvel universe one. But yeah, Miss Marvel is younger. It was Kamala Khan. Yes, I wanted to say she was Pakistani-American, but, I mean, she's one of the first comic book characters that was, like, openly Muslim. And, you know, Middle Eastern.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny And they made a TV show out of it.

Daniel We did a comic book reader's theater of that. We used actually volunteers from the Islamic Center and had, it was a lot of fun. We did that, like, ten years ago.

Jenny Yeah, that was really good. And there is a little less of the wildly impractical clothing that you would see on some of the women, though I will admit, I really love Red Sonja, and she was probably like the best example of, like, classic misogyny.

Ian Jenny, you hypocrite.

Jenny Because she has, like, little like bikini like—

Ian Wasn't it like metal, too? It was like a metal—

Jenny Dragon scale red bikini. But she also like, kicked butt big time and so I ignored the fact that she was wearing wildly impractical clothing to be fighting.

Daniel I will say if, I mean, like, you can put practical armor on, but if I see Conan in anything, if I ever see Conan the Barbarian in pants, I'm going to be mad. Unless it's—

Ian Not right.

Daniel —really cool.

Jenny That's true.

Daniel Yeah, no, Conan doesn't. Yeah, just leave, that dude needs a pair of Underoos or whatever.

Jenny Honestly, maybe that's why I give Red Sonja a pass, because, like, she was in Conan and Conan was also just as skimpily clad.

Daniel It just doesn't seem practical. Especially when there's no antibiotics. Like, you get one cut, you're done.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel I will say one of my favorite women artists right now is Hannah Rose May. She's working at IDW and she's doing a lot of horror. The movie Smile? She, she wrote this. This is The Exorcism at 1600 Penn. And they're currently, this is out. You can get the graphic novel of this. And it's basically about the president whose daughter becomes possessed by a demon because, like, there was an artifact that was kind of left at the White House as a gift that was like, possessed. And it possesses her.

And now they're doing the exorcism. They're doing The Exorcism at Buckingham, which is about kind of the same thing. And it also shared universe because like the prime minister calls the president from the previous volume for advice and stuff. And so that's called, and so Hannah Rose May and the movie Smile, the horror film, she's also writing the graphic novel, the comic book adaptation of that.

Ian That could be a good one. I think I watched part of Smile and wasn't that into it, but I could see that as like a graphic novel being really interesting.

Daniel Yeah, it's, it kind of reminds me of Junji Ito.

Ian Yeah.

Daniel Kind of like Junji Ito style.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel Yeah. Which honestly, if we're gonna get Junji—

Ian That's a whole rabbit hole. I love Junji Ito.

Daniel Yeah, yeah. Junji Ito is, I mean, we can't really talk about him as diverse because everyone in Japan is Japanese. [laughter]

Jenny I mean, from an American—

Daniel From an American's perspective.

Jenny Maybe. Do we want to kind of close out by talking a little bit about, like, comic book conventions? I feel like we can't, like, have a comic book episode without mentioning comic con.

Daniel Have you guys been a comic, have you been to a comic book convention?

Ian I have not. I would love to go at some point, but I haven't had the opportunity to.

Jenny I've been to Planet Comicon in Kansas City. I, I've technically been to there's like a mini one out here, too.

Ian Emerald City.

Jenny The Emerald City Comic-Con. But it's not, like, comparable to, like, a bit and not, not to throw shade. It's just like, not really like what a comic—

Daniel Planet Comicon is massive. It's one of the largest in the country now, I think.

Jenny Yeah, that one was, huge. And—

Daniel I like a tiny comic con.

Jenny Yeah, I don't remember what I went. I think I've gone to. I've been to like two of them. But the cool thing about, like, the last time I was at Planet Comicon was like shortly before Stan Lee passed, and he was, he did a panel and I went and saw Stan Lee in person. So I did not, like, wait in line to meet him or anything. I didn't care. I'm like, I am standing in the same room as Stan Lee. I am happy. That is, yeah, everything is complete. It was great.

Daniel I would say, like, I like all comic cons. I, I've been going to like comic cons since I was a teenager, and, like, it's really cool. I don't really care for the celebrities as much anymore. I like to do creators. I always take a sketchbook. I have a sketchbook I've been working on—I should have brought it—since like 2012, and I just basically like get comic book artists to sketch in. Some of them like to do that. Did Long Halloween, he died, the artist died, I think Tim Sale and I have a sketch from him in there and like, it's been cool.

It's been like a thing I can... I kind of stopped doing it for like ten years, but I picked it up recently. And I love it. There's all kinds of smaller comic cons. Hutchinson has, Salina, all these places.

One thing I did realize recently, I was like parking in Delano. I won't say where at, but there's, like, close to work I was parking to eat my lunch. I saw, like, all these guys I knew from comic book collecting, walking up. And then I see, like, a table that's like parked in driveway. And there's all these, like, it's like a garage sale. And I guess it was called garage con and all these, like, local comic book guys basically set up like, it was like, like a, like a swap meet, kind of for comic books I didn't even know about. I was like, what is this? I saw, like a little like yard sign, this is garage con. And I went and it was like someone had a comic book convention at their house that they like basically was open like a garage sale. It was like a garage sale, but it was a comic book convention.

Jenny You should totally do that here.

Ian I was just thinking that.

Daniel That would be like, totally, yeah, I would love to do something like that.

Jenny That would be so much fun. No, the best part of going to comic book conventions, actually, is getting a chance to talk with the artists. And that's actually when I like to purchase art, too, because you're getting to purchase the art from the person that made it, like, directly. And it's just really cool. And like, you totally make their year by just being like, I love your stuff. You're amazing. Like, it's really cool.

Daniel It's funny because I know, like, sometimes like even like you'll ask for a sketch from a writer and they'll do a sketch, and I have a couple from writers, and they're not good.

Jenny Well, that's why they're writers.

[Daniel laughs]

Ian They just jot a quick paragraph for you.

Daniel But some of them are actually they, they do like because they have the storyboard and stuff. So it's like they still know how to do a little bit, but it's like it's fun. It's cool. I think Andy Parks is more a notorious writer than an artist, but he has like a picture of Captain America that he drew that was pretty good.

Jenny Just totally make sure when you go to wear good shoes.

Daniel Yeah. And stay hydrated.

Jenny Yeah.

Daniel I think that's it. I think we're at the end of the show. And this was a fun episode of talking about comics.

Jenny Now I have, like, way more comics to add to my read, my to-read list.

Ian Yeah.

Jenny And we'll have all of, the stuff that was mentioned today, we will have on our show notes.

Ian Yep.

Daniel Yes.

Jenny So that like, if you missed something, just check those out. And a lot of those we have at the Library.

Ian Oh yeah.

Daniel And you could also recommend an item and stuff if there's something you want to read. Yeah. And, yeah, this was a fun episode. So, thank you for being on here, Ian. We'll definitely have you back.

Ian Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Daniel And I think this is—Make sure you listen, check us out, follow us on social media. We're on YouTube. You, you can listen to us on Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.

Jenny Apple Podcasts.

Daniel Apple Podcasts.

Jenny If you go to, you can also listen to it straight from our website. If you go to WichitaLibrary.org.

Daniel Slash.

Jenny Podcast.

Daniel Podcast.

Jenny And if you want to drop us a line, yeah, just send us a message.

Daniel And still, like, we're still looking into the shirt thing. I do not have an update on that yet, but I will keep you posted. And check out WichitaLibrary.org for events and and look up books there and, yeah, come check us out. Just come say hey.

Jenny Social media too.

Daniel Yeah.

Jenny We have Facebook and Instagram.

Daniel Yeah. So thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Read.

Jenny Return.

Ian Repeat.

Jenny Thank you. Bye.

Daniel Thank you. Bye.