Quarantined Comics

A is for...AKIRA. For 2023 we're reading our way through the alphabet! AKIRA, the seminal Japanese cyberpunk post-apocalyptic manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo. This revolutionary Japanese comic ran from 1982 to 1990, serialized biweekly in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Young Magazine, with its 120 chapters collected into six tankōbon volumes. The work had an outsized influence on not just comics east and west, but its landmark anime film adaptation from 1988 shaped...

As the year comes to a close, we reflect on more than a few new adaptations of comic book stories in the Cinematic Universes, multiplexes, and streaming services of our hearts — like the dutiful corporate citizens of the republic we are. longtime friend of the pod and frequent guest Paresh joins us for our shenanagins of hot takes and reflections of the years nerd/pop culture adaptations, including (listed in order of 2022 release): Hawkeye Spider-Man: No Way Home Book of Boba Fett...

Last week, we discussed how awesome FABLES is. And it's still a rip roarin' good time, but also... how does it hold up in a modern context, almost fifteen years after the first volume was published? Its debut was just a few short years after 9/11, so it has a certain political and Euro-centric sensibility that was more fashionable at the time. How does that read today?

FABLES, by Bill Willingham, is a multi-Eisner award-winning comic telling THE modern-day story of the legends of folk and fairy tales - living in our modern, mundane — or mundy — world. We're talking Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Rose Red, Prince Charming, Cinderella, Jack, Goldilocks, the 3 little Pigs, Santa Clause, Beauty & the Beast, Pinnochio, and many more. And while Fables definitely sounds like some weird shit - don't worry it is - Fables combines the narratives of many characters...

The cartoonist Kate Beaton is known for her incisively funny and parodic takes on everything from Aquaman to Hamlet in her series "Hark! A Vagrant!" But earlier this year, she released her memoir "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," a harrowing account of the isolating, infuriating, and at times terrifying job that Beaton took after graduating in order to pay off the $40,000 debt from her arts degree. Even as a young woman in her early 20s, Beaton is tough and confronts each conflict with...

If you're like us, you've not taken your Birthright Israel tour. But you know who did The cartoonist Sarah Glidden. And you know what else she did? She chronicled it in her 2007 memoir “How To Understand Israel in 60 Days.” Glidden is Jewish and progressive, living in New York City, when she departs on her tour. She goes in with some preconceived notions and by the end she’s far less definitive in her point of view. Using rich water colors, Glidden details the day-to-day aspects of her tour...

Post WWI Berlin was both a place of great creative energy and a city about to tear itself apart. In a 700 page opus 20 years in the making, the artist Jason Lutes chronicled Germany's embrace of the Nazi party through the lens of then men and women working and toiling, celebrating and politicking, throughout Berlin. It's a book both exhilarating to read and frightening, given how closely the society that Lutes chronicles mirrors our own troubled world of America in the 2020s.

Since Ryan's stuck in a well saving puppies while battling conniving co-op boards, and Raman's buried in the demands of fatherhood and an international life of crime, we enlisted friend-of-the-pod BRAD BERENS to fill the gap (and your earholes). Like us, Brad's a sophisticated nerd with a way with the words. In Brad's latest "weekly dispatch" e-newsletter, Brad dropped some interesting thoughts about the state of the modern comic book industry, and how it tracks against the broader trends in...

Jeff Lemire's "Essex County Trilogy" is one of those rare books that's quiet, with very little happening from a narrative standpoint, but that leaves a tremendous emotional punch. At the time, Lemire was working as a line cook from 4pm to midnight, and he'd work on his comics from the morning to afternoons. "I had been struggling with my work, it was all very derivative and lacking," he said in a previous interview. "And I just stripped it all down and decided to work on a story that was...

This week, we read PAPER GIRLS, the multi-Eisner award winning series written by Brian K Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang, recently adapted as a streaming TV series starring Ali Wong on Amazon (and unfairly called a rip off of Stranger Things, bc as with most things, the comic came first!) Paper Girls starts way back when in 1988, in a suburb of Cleveland, where four twelve year old...you guessed it...Paper Girls - Erin, Tiffany, Mac, and KJ - befriend each other the morning after...

Conor Stechchulte's "Ultrasound," which was made into a 2021 movie, is about memory, gaslighting, and psychological terror. It's hard for comics to convey a sense of interiority, but Stechchulte has some graphical tricks that really create the same sense of unease and discombobulaton in readers that his characters are going through. Whether that's a good thing or not. "Ultrasound" begins on a dark and stormy night, as these things often begin, when a man gets a flat tire and is invited into...

this week we're reading KRISHNA: A JOURNEY WITHIN - by Abhishek Singh. Singh is Indian graphic novelist acclaimed for his unique interpretations of myths and ancient philosophies - who first made his mark for the acclaimed series Ramayana 3392. AND he was first Indian comics artist published in mainstream American comics. Singh's 2012 comics interpretation of the Lord Krishna was a searing, human portrayal of one of the great Hindi deities. To many in the west he became a popular god in the...

This week we are reading SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW, by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. The 2021 limited series from DC's Black Label - which is basically DCs new mature / Elseworld's imprint. Most just assume that Kara Zor El is simply Superman's girly cousin - which is probably how she was created years ago. But in this cosmic adventure, she is anything but. Yes there is girl power, but as we tag along for a girls trip for justice - basically True Grit in space - we are brought to face the...

This week we're reading Maia Kobaba's GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR. Created in 2014 - by Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns - created a cathartic autobiography of Eir's experience with gender identity — from crushes to fan fic, from coming out to making out. What started as a series of Instagram posts to explain to the author's family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer becomes so much more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it...

It's hard to find optimism with the end of Roe, yet another curtailing of the civil liberties that once defined America. While the Megg, Mogg, and Owl series by Simon Hanselmann won't exactly restore any sense of optimism, it will at least make you feel less alone by plunging you into the misadventures of others who are also flailing through life. In this episode, we'll review two collected works from the series: "Megahex" from 2014, and "Bad Gateway," published in 2019. While "Megahex" very...

This week we're talking about BATMAN: WHITE KNIGHT - Sean Murphy's 2017 alternate universe mini-series that flips the status quo for Batman - and asks some hard questions along the way. In the book, the Joker cures himself of his psychosis, and reverts to Jack Napier - upon which he begins a campaign to interrogate WTF the city of Gotham has been doing all these years, with law enforcement allowing a masked vigilante and some teenagers with military grade equipment take the law into their...

"The idea that a person can't relate to something because it's not directly about them is a misunderstanding of who's been reading books this whole time." Since June is Pride Month and we're cos-playing in our favorite rainbows spandex, we decided to share our Modern Minorities chat with award winning comics creator Mariko Tamaki - who's work we've covered a LOT on Quarantined Comics - from Skim & This One Summer, to I Am Not Starfire, to Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me - Mariko's work...

This week, we're REPLAYING our re-read MS. MARVEL - written by award winning novelist, and Muslim American G. Willow Wilson. Some would argue that MS. MARVEL was one of the most important books - and new characters Marvel comics has released in a decade. While her name might be familiar, everything else is "all new, all different" - because we're introduced to Kamala Khan, a Pakistani-American teenage girl - just trying to get her homework done, write fan-fic, play MMORPGs, figure out her...

Holy (Bi)Robin! Tim Drake Comes Out _“Why change Robin? It was a no brainer. It happens to a lot of bisexual people, it seemed like natural character development.” Since it's Pride Month and we're taking a week off to paint ourselves in rainbows, we figured we'd feature a super easy conversation about sexual identity in mainstream comics (from Raman's OTHER podcast Modern Minorities). Recently, Batman's partner, Robin discovered his own queer identity on my other podcast, modern minorities....

From 1998 to 2013, the French writer Matz and the illustrator Luc Jacamon told an epic story of an unassuming man who kills people for money. But as he does so, he begins to question what he's doing and why he's doing it. In this week's episode, we'll take a look at the entire saga of "The Killer." Overwhelming in scope and ambition, Matz and Jacamon aren't content with just detailing their eponymous killer's inner workings. In fact, it seems as if they quickly bore of what seemingly starts...