Quarantined Comics

a comic-book book-club discussing (some of) the medium's great works.

About the show

Comics aren't just about superheroes in capes. Each week we'll discuss, debate, and nerd out on some of the medium's greatest, latest, and strangest works. From Alan Moore to Uzumaki, to everything in-between, we aim to smash, and talk for far too long on the books we love.

Hosted by reporter/podcaster Ryan Joe and recovering marketer Raman Sehgal. We're setting phasers to...fun?

Quarantined Comics on social media

Episodes

  • RABBIT FIGHTERS ...unfrozen caveman Weezer?!?

    February 29th, 2024  |  Season 6  |  55 mins 3 secs

    Raman joins longtime friend of the pod Josh (whose past episodes include Dune, Black Science, and Red Son) on HIS podcast RABBIT FIGHTERS. The topic? their long, complicated relationship with the band WEEZER - alongside fellow Rabbit fighters Greg and Brian. Rabbit Fighters is a show where three friends revisit the movies and music that shaped their past - but one of them has never explored it. sound familiar? Subscribe to RABBIT FIGHTERS wherever you get your favorite podcasts - for weekly shenagins while you wait for Ryan and Raman to get their act back together.
    RabbitFighters.com - It's like the world has turned and left me here.

  • WORM ...Edel Rodriguez' Cuban American's Odyssey

    January 11th, 2024  |  Season 4  |  49 mins 47 secs
  • XYZ Comics ...cheating the alphabet with R.Crumb

    December 30th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  29 mins 28 secs

    to close out 2023's alphabetic soup of comics, we're closing the year with a cheat and reading “XYZ Comics,” by cartoonist legend R. Crumb. “XYZ Comics,” published in 1972, is more of a 28 page pamphlet that reflects Crumb’s rather interesting state of mind at the time - literally created as a stream of conscious on a road trip between LSD trips.

  • WILL EISNER... reviewing the godfather of the graphic novel

    December 23rd, 2023  |  Season 4  |  41 mins 14 secs
    comics, graphic novels, will eisner

    Will Eisner is such an influential cartoonist, the comics industry's most prestigious award is named after him. In this episode, we'll finally talk about some of his most notable works, including "The Spirit" and "A Contract With God."

  • VISION ...a synthezoid tragedy, or just poor decision-making?

    November 15th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  1 hr 42 secs

    V is for... VISION, 2016's Eisner award winning series by writer Tom King and artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta. in THIS comic Vision just wants an ordinary life ― with a wife and two children, a home in the suburbs, perhaps even a dog. So he built them. Sound familiar? Only this time Vision literally built his wife, kids, and even a cute green dog (don't ask how). As in they are all sentient robots. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

  • UZUMAKI (revisited) ...Junji Ito's still scary manga treat

    October 31st, 2023  |  Season 4  |  40 mins 57 secs

    do you want to hear a scary story? well have we got a Halloween treat for you! U is for...Uzumaki. Uzumaki is manga legend's Junji Ito's seminal horror series from 1998. The entire populace of a small seaside town becomes obsessed with spirals. If you're into bodily, psychological, and cosmic horror, then step into the fog-shrouded streets of Kurozu-cho and see how long you can hold your mind - and your body - together.

    this is an oldie but a goodie — a replay of one of our very FIRST episodes from the beginning of the 2020 pandemic. what's even scarier? how new we were to podcasting about comics we love — before i knew better than to trust Ryan to NOT freak me out. but this would be the first of many comics we'd come to love from Junji Ito. and boy is this a creepy one. make sure you read - and listen - with the lights turned on...

  • TOMINE ...the Modern Minorities conversation

    October 29th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  1 hr 1 min

    T...is for Tomine! that is Adrian Tomine, one of our all time favorite graphic novelists, who we've covered on this podcast before (The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, etc). We recently had the privilege of sitting down with Adrian Tomine on Raman's OTHER podcast, Modern Minorities, where superfan Ryan tagged along for a chat...

  • SABRINA... murder in a post-truth world

    October 27th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  27 mins 12 secs
    comics, graphic novels, nick drnaso, sabrina

    This week, we take a look at Nick Drnaso's 2018 graphic novel "Sabrina," a murder mystery where the aftermath of a murder is almost as disturbing as the crime itself.

  • ROAMING... helping us feel both very old and very young

    October 23rd, 2023  |  Season 4  |  31 mins 19 secs

    We talk about "Roaming," the latest graphic novel collaboration between the cousins Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. It's a book about three young women touring New York City in the late aughts, and it's both a love letter to New York City and a nostalgic look at the relationship between three friends who are about to follow very different paths in life.

  • QUEENIE ...Harlem mobsters of questionable character

    October 1st, 2023  |  Season 4  |  34 mins 33 secs

    Q is also for QUEENIE, GODMOTHER OF HARLEM, Elizabeth Colomba and Aurelie Levy's historical graphic novel inspired by the life of Harlem's legendary mobster, Stephanie Saint-Clair. Queenie follows the life of Stephanie Saint-Clair—the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in Harlem in the 1930s. Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community. A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents. With meticulous details—in both story and art Saint-Clair’s story is brought to life in a tense narrative, against a sometimes bloody backdrop of jazz and voodoo. The story tackles the themes of colonization, corruption, police violence, and racial identity, but above all, Queenie celebrates the genius of a woman forgotten by history...

  • PATIENCE... a blast into the past

    September 24th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  41 mins 21 secs
    comics, dan clowes, graphic novel, patience

    In this episode, we'll take a look at legendary cartoonist's longest and trippiest graphic novel, 2016's "Patience" -- a murder mystery that takes place in the present, future, past, distant past, and present, though not necessarily in that order.

  • ON A SUNBEAM ...get in your goddamn goldfish spaceship

    September 2nd, 2023  |  Season 4  |  41 mins 54 secs

    Have you ever thought about enrolling in an space-Hogwarts, falling in love, only for your high school sweetheart to get wisked away by her space-homesteader aristocrat sisters, and deciding to join a space-cathedral reconstruction crew living and working on a space salamander eating chili and playing board games while making your way to your lost love? If so, then have we got a book for you: "O" is for ON A SUNBEAM, Tillie Walden's star crossed lovers' tale of Mia, Grace, and all their rad friends - sure to make you marvel at the simple things in life, but in space...

  • NOT ALL ROBOTS ...what AI can teach us about toxic masculinity

    August 18th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  45 mins 41 secs

    NOT ALL ROBOTS is the critically acclaimed future fiction work by Mark Russell + Mike Deodato, Jr. - in a not-too-distant future, where robots have replaced human beings in the workforce worldwide. An uneasy co-existence develops between the newly intelligent robots and the ten billion humans on earth. And since AI and robots and have taken over all the jobs - save hairdressers - every human family is assigned a robot upon whom they are completely reliant. We spend most of the story with the human Walters and their assigned house-robot Razorball (Snowball). What could go wrong?

  • MAUS ...keeping the stories alive

    August 6th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  38 mins 43 secs
    art spiegelman, cartoonist, comic, graphic novel, holocaust, maus, nazi

    In this episode, we look at Art Spiegelman's groundbreaking graphic novel Maus.

  • IN LIMBO ...reliving our teen trauma, one eyelid at a time

    July 9th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  36 mins 47 secs

    Have you ever wondered what its like to be a asian teenage artist coming of age in the suburbs of the big city, with an unpredictable and often unbearable mother, while also saddled with a sense of regret and enui? this week we're reading IN LIMBO, the debut graphic memoir by Deb JJ Lee. Our story introduces us to Deb, a young Korean American teenager, trapped in a inescapable feeling of otherness. For a while, their English wasn’t perfect. Their teachers can’t pronounce her Korean name. Their face and her eyes―especially their eyes―feel wrong. Things only get harder once high school starts - shifting sands of arts and academics, escalating tensions at home, friendships made and frayed, and mental health struggles that are all too real to anyone who's ever felt like an outsider. With stunning art and a tale that feels like you're slipping in and out of an all too familiar dream, this is a story that you can't leave easily. Everybody hurts...sometimes.

  • KARI ...melancholy and the infinite, indian sadness

    June 30th, 2023  |  Season 4  |  48 mins 49 secs

    Ever wondered what it's like to be a female South Asian advertising writer working on women's hair care products living in a big and bustling smog city, cramped into an apartment with several single women, while also queer and saddled with a sense of regret and ennui? Well either way, you should read KARI, the 2008 Indian graphic novel by Amruta Patil