Comic Book Couples Counseling Podcast

When Francis Ford Coppola shoots you an email asking you to transform his new movie into a comic book, you say yes and worry about the details later. Chris Ryall got the email. Once he got over the shock ot it, he immediately knew who to contact next: Comic Book Couples Counseling regular, Jacob Phillips. They couldn’t have possibly understood what an undertaking they were committing to during ...

Not again! Chip Kidd and Michael Cho are the latest comic book creators to find their way, literally, into comics. The Avengers in the Veracity Trap, published as part of the Marvel Arts imprint of Abrams ComicArts, propels the titular superheroes from their dimension into ours, revealing that Kidd and Cho control their free will. The oversized original graphic novel is a stunning-looking comic,...

Every few months, the discourse turns to comics journalism. What is it? What’s its value? Does it even exist anymore? Of course, if you read SKTCHD or listen to Off Panel every week, these questions are easy to answer. For years, David Harper has been our go-to source for what’s happening within the comics industry, and due to recent events in his own life, he’s upped his game and committed to ...

Toward the end of this week’s episode, Jesse Lonergan says, “With Drome, it feels like I’ve done...something.” Since he arrived on the scene, the cartoonist has bashed upon the medium, seeing if he’d be the one to break comics. The art form didn’t shatter; it became stronger under Lonergan’s pressure. Books like Hedra, Faster, Planet Paradise, and Man’s Best electrified readers, showcasing wha...

“Do you see?” We never imagined discussing an Event Horizon comic on the podcast, but the moment the notion was floated, we were enthralled. The original 1997 movie, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, struck a chord back in the day, but it was also a movie that was obviously jumbled about and fumbled in the editing room. And since the story relied on the device of a spaceship lost in a black hole/...

Early on in Tillie Walden’s Clementine: Book Three, which represents the concluding chapter in her The Walking Dead trilogy, an expectant mother grabs our hero’s arm and gasps through the pain, “It’ll never end.” She’s so right, and we should all take those words to heart. Pain is never done with you. Run if you care to, but the worst life has to offer will always find you. The trick is acknowl...

Toward the end of our conversation with Matt Fraction, he mentions how his upcoming Batman book with Jorge Jiménez represents where his Hawkeye series would have gone if he and David Aja had continued. What does that mean, exactly? It’s complicated, and you’ll just have to listen to this week’s podcast to fully understand. And that’s what we call in the biz, a big ol’ tease.

The great thing about the zombie sub-genre is that every time you think it’s played out, a new creative team arrives to inject some fresh life into it. Everything Dead and Dying, the new Image Comics series by Tate Brombal and Jacob Phillips, imagines the last living farmer on the planet, sitting satisfied on his homestead, surrounded by his dead and rotting loved ones. The corpses he once calle...

For the past year, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise has been as exciting and essential as DC’s Absolute Universe or Skybound’s Energon Universe. Writer Jason Aaron and artist Juan Ferreyra have built an unmissable monthly comic, not to forget the numerous other splinter titles and crossover minis. Shortly before San Diego Comic-Con International, The Hollywood Reporter announced Aaron ...

As reported by The Beat, the Eisner-winning comics journalism website (hell yeah), Comic Book Couples Counselingkinda kicked off San Diego Comic-Con International this year with our Live Podcast Recording at Now or Never Comics in Downtown San Diego. On Tuesday, July 22nd, we invited superstar cartoonist Daniel Warren Johnson to chat with us after a signing at the shop. With The Moon Is Followi...

Should Chip Zdarsky’s promotional magazine, Zdarsky Comic News, win an Eisner at this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con International ceremony? We brought the question to him directly, and as you’ll hear, he rejected the whole notion of a nomination extremely quickly. Zdarsky is having a ball working on his free periodical every month. He puts tremendous time, energy, and thought into each issue. S...

You don’t need to be told this: San Diego Comic-Con International is a comic convention unlike any other in the world. As yearly attendees, it’s our favorite time of the year at our favorite place on the planet, but what does such a colossal gathering of geekdoms truly mean for a publisher, and how can a company raise its voice above a million other competing screams? We presented these questio...

If you’ve read comics from the Hivemind, aka Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, then you know their specialty. Everyone goes to therapy! Whether you’re Peter Quill, Bucky Barnes, or Brad and Lisa Gullickson, if you’re in a Hivemind comic, or reading a Hivemind comic, you’re entering some kind of therapeutic discussion. Kelly and Lanzing put their characters on the couch, asking them some tough q...

Today, we begin our mission to bring San Diego Comic-Con International to you. That means four episodes in your podcast feed this week! First up is writer Alex Segura. He’s been handed the keys to the Star Wars kingdom, working on the new Marvel Comics ongoing series alongside artist Phil Noto and letterer Clayton Cowles. The new series fills the gaps between Return of the Jedi and The Force Aw...

If you’re a comic book reader like we are, around the same time you learn about Batman and Robin, you’re introduced to the medium’s scariest boogeyman, Dr. Fredric Wertham. The publication of his Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 thrust Wertham into the popular consciousness, sparking hysteria and moral panic, hindering the medium’s growth, and significantly harming the artists who worked withi...

Not too long ago, the United States Government confirmed the existence of UFOs, but we had too much going on to care at the time. Maybe we needed more concrete evidence. What if ET arrived on our doorstep? But he was already dead? That's the premise of Alienated, the new Comixology Original written, colored, and lettered by Taki Soma, with art by John Broglia and covers by Michael Avon Oeming.

A new phase of Comic Book Couples Counseling begins today with The Stacks, our new YouTube series where we trap comic book creators inside Third Eye Comics in Annapolis, Maryland, and force them to discuss their all-time favorite comic books. Time Watis collaborators and Mangasplaining co-hosts David Brothers and Chip Zdarsky launch the series. As you'll see, they enthusias...

We love a good comic book explosion. The Writer smashes superheroes, comic book history, Jewish Folklore, Indiana Jones, The Princess Bride, Mike Mignola, and a little Looney Tunes existential dread. It's born from a unique sibling collaboration between the Berkowitz Bros., Max and Ben, as well as actor Josh Gad, master illustrator Ariel Olivetti, and letterer Frank Cvetkovic.

Once again, fear and dread shroud the world outside our window. Chris Condon and Jeffrey Alan Love offer assistance with their terrifyingly relatable News from the Fallout, a zombie story that chews on the military-industrial complex, belief in apocalyptic certainty, and humanity's stumbling response. You can read their series as a scary, thrilling, atmospherically rich shock-fest or recognize i...