Quarantined Comics

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, Ti...

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 s...

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 gre...

When you ask people what the Greatest TV show of all time is, folks say things like "the Wire," or "the Sopranos." When people ask what the greatest movie of all time is, folks say things like "Citizen Kane" or "the Godfather."

And when it comes to comics, most will say this week' book, Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman." So for the next two weeks, it's all sandman, all the time (well,...

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 ...

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...

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: "...

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 s...

"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 &am...

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 tr...

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...

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 k...

while Raman & Ryan are off saving the multi-verse, here's Raman's Modern Minorities conversation with award-winning comics creator Gene Luen Yang...

Gene Luen Yang’s (comic book) American dream
“Being an immigrant kid - your experience and your parents’ and your grandparents’ experiences are in three completely different worlds.”
_**
Gene Luen Yang is an award-winning cartoonist, storyteller, and teacher - whose been c...

PALESTINE is Joe Sacco's seminal work of cartoon journalism - which we're reading to commemorate Al Nakba*

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 potray...

Did you know Dr. Doom had a mom? He did! She made a pact with Mephisto (Marvel's version of the Devil) and now she's in hell. And Doom needs Dr. Strange's help to free her.

In celebration of Mother's Day and the release of "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," we'll check out "Triumph and Torment" by the writer Roger Stern and the illustrator -- a very young Mike Mignola, before he went o...

This week for Ramadan (~kinda?) we are reading SQUIRE by Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas - a comic set in an alternate history Middle East and North Africa. Squire follows Aiza, a 14 year old girl training to become a knight for a war-torn empire while hiding her true background as a girl from conquered lands...which could be any major world civilization. Born Ornu - a second-class citizen of the once-great Bayt-Sajji Empire, Aiza ...

The Drifting Classroom is part Lord of the Flies, part Lost in Space, and wholly weird and unexpected. At once funny, absurd, and horrific, Kazuo Umezu's epic will transport you to a seriously odd place, where children are crucified or turned into bugs, janitors lurk the hallways like monsters out of a slasher movie, and grieving mothers smuggle bubonic plague medicine across space and time via mummified bodies.

Yes. All that ...

This week marks the 100th episode of Quarantined Comics — so we wanted something SO epic, but instead we just picked TWO comics with the number 100 in the titles: 100% + Batman Year 100 - by Eisner-award-winning wunderkind Paul Pope

In 2006 - DC decided to tell yet another tale of Batman in a far off dystopian feature - with Batman Year 100. The year is 2039 in Gotham City, but NOT the Gotham we know and love from the mainst...