Quarantined Comics

BERLIN... this is how your country ends

November 6th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  38 mins 52 secs

berlin, comics, graphic novel

This week, we take a look at Jason Lutes' masterpiece "Berlin," which follows the lives of the city's artists, socialites, and workers as they struggle to put their lives together post WWI. Vibrant and harrowing, it's an examination of how quickly and easily a country can slide into fascism. Which is to say: REMEMBER TO VOTE NOVEMBER 8.

COMICS ...Industry Evolution by Meteor Strike

October 21st, 2022  |  Season 4  |  11 mins 55 secs

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 the fragmenting media industry. If you like what you here and want to hear weekly big ideas, cool stories, and what it all means subscribe @ BradBerens.substack.com. And we'll be soon to talk about one nation's descent into fascim. You know, happy stuff.

ESSEX COUNTY... it's cold in Canada when you're all alone

September 25th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  34 mins 28 secs

comics, graphic novels, jeff lemire

Writer Jeff Lemire has taken the world of comics by storm, but it all began with his trilogy from the mid-aughts "Essex County." This week on Quarantined Comics, we'll take a look at the book that made the comics world take notice.

PAPER GIRLS ...uneasy conversations with our younger selves

September 9th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  45 mins 40 secs

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 Halloween and quickly find a creepy basement time machine, and quickly find themselves in a millennia spanning temporal civil war between factions of human order and chaos. Along the way they encounter ancient cave people, future hipsters, and their older selves. ALSO, dinosaurs, microscopic-turned-gargantuan monsters, and giant-sized rock-em-sock-em robots

ULTRASOUND ...also a journey within

August 27th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  34 mins 58 secs

comics, conor stechschulte, gaslighting, graphic novels, horror, ultrasound

This week, we're reading Conor Stechschulte strange, disturbing, nightmarish graphic novel Ultrasound. It begins with a man getting a flat tire on a dark and stormy night, and takes a detour into the land of weird.

KRISHNA: A JOURNEY WITHIN ...explaining blue gods to Ryan

August 18th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  41 mins 16 secs

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. In an almost poetic, sweeping series of paintings Singh takes us through key moments of Krishna's life - from a little boy stealing ghee, to defeating his evil uncle, to his courtship with Radha, and to key moments from the epic feudal war that makes up both the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita - two of Hinduisms most sacred texts.
Soooo, basically it's a pretty, poetic cliff notes from some of Hinduism's greatest hits.

SUPERGIRL WOMAN OF TOMORROW ...space horses, space racism, and true grit

July 15th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  42 mins 7 secs

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. As we tag along for a girls trip for justice - basically True Grit in space - we are brought to face the best and worst humanity has to offer. There's a rocket ship, a space bus depot, space drugs. a space dragon, space pirates...and space racism! With moral quandaries that are often hopeless - which hurt a bit more given the times we are in - along with good humor, beautiful art, and a lovely script, you can't help but find something to love about this book. Except Ryan...

GENDER QUEER ...banned books, awkward adolescence, and pronouns.

July 8th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  31 mins 52 secs

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 means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere. And then it became the most banned book in the country

MEGG, MOGG, & OWL ...coping with the bad times

June 30th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  35 mins 23 secs

comics, graphic novel, lgbtq, simon hanselmann

Times are bleak so let's get intoxicated and stare at a wall. In this week's episode, we review Simon Hanselmann's druggy epic about a witch, her black cat boyfriend, her owl roommate, their misanthropic werewolf friend, and whole lot of chemicals.

BATMAN WHITE KNIGHT ...social commentary with action figures

June 24th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  47 mins 58 secs

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 own hands. What starts out as an Elseworld's like plot becomes a not so subtle commentary to the limits of law enforcement. But hey, it's also got TWO Harley Quinns, a Batgirl, a Nightwing, a Duke, Mr. freeze, and a whole lotta Batmobiles!

Joining us to talk about White Knight is my old friend and favorite digital nerd from the future, making his long overdue quarantined Comics appearance Brad Berens - whose nerdy takes you can read on his eponymous weekly dispatch - bradberens.substack.com

MARIKO TAMAKI ...Surely chats on Modern Minorities

June 17th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  53 mins 38 secs

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 is powerful and transcends identity.

MS. MARVEL ...fighting for truth, justice, and time management?

June 10th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  58 mins 57 secs

This week, we're REPLAYING our reading of MS. MARVEL - written by G. Willow Wilson. MS. MARVEL might've been Marvel's most important "all new, all different" character of the past decade. Kamala Khan is a Pakistani-American teenage girl - just trying to get her homework done, write fan-fic, play MMORPGs, figure out her relationship with her religious brother, come to terms with her best friends, and meet the expectations of her immigrant parents. Joining us to talk about our new favorite Pakistani American superhero, is our new favorite Pakistani American geek Lena Shareef, co-host of the podcast GROUNDED GEEKS

HOLY BI-ROBIN ...exploring modern sexuality in comics

June 4th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  1 hr 3 mins

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. We feature minority voices for all of our majority years. So we decided to have a conversation about Robin's queer identity over the years in pop culture, with a little help from our friends.

THE KILLER... an assassin in a crisis

May 30th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  41 mins

comics, graphic novels, killer, matz

This week, we're taking a look at the French crime epic The Killer (soon to be a Netflix movie directed by David Fincher). It's at times a psychological portrait of a killer, a meditation on violence, a tale of corporate intrigue, and a straight-up action thriller. But do all of these pieces come together?

GENE LUEN YANG ...chats on Modern Minorities

May 20th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  45 mins 4 secs

Gene Luen Yang is an award-winning cartoonist, storyteller, and teacher - whose been creating comics since the fifth grade. His 2006 graph_ic novel American Born Chinese will be a 2022 Disney+ TV series by Shang Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton. Two of Gene’s other two books - Dragon Hoops + Superman Smashes the Klan - won the 2020 Eisner (the Oscars for comics), and Raman’s reviewed them on his other podcast Quarantined Comics. Gene’s a former CS + Math teacher - who’s since gone on to work on some of the biggest name in pop culture and comics - including Avatar the Last AirBender, rebooting Shang Chi over @ Marvel Comics (before the hit movie), and having more than a few unique takes on DC’s Superman. Gene was named the Library of Congress’ fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, and has also received a MacArthur Genius Grant. Gene advocates for the importance of reading diversely - and makes his kids finish all of their projects. Raman tried really hard not to fanboy over one of his personal heroes...

PALESTINE ...cartoon journalism that's required reading

May 13th, 2022  |  Season 4  |  46 mins 20 secs

PALESTINE is Joe Sacco's seminal work of cartoon journalism

First published in 1993, PALESTINE covers Sacco's travels thru occupied Palestine territory - and Israel - to embed himself with the Palestinian people - hearing their stories first-hand to understand how they lived their every day lives. Sacco wanted to get around the sanitized story the Western Media was potraying — to emphasizes the history and plight of the Palestinian people, as a group and as individuals. In Palesteine Sacco positions himself as the westerner confronting a reality unfamiliar to most Americans at the time - concentrating on his personal experience and perspective, as well as the stories of the people he encounters, with some light history thrown in for good measure. Conversations are documented over tea, roadblocks, police action, taxis and checkpoints - which become all too familiar set pieces in Sacco's narrative journey..