Issue #014: Amy Reeder

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This podcast was a bit creepy to record as Amy and Chriss sound like each other. And so we started like so…

AMY: This is Issue 14 of Comics Squee. I’m comics artist Amy Reeder.

CHRISS: And I’m your host, Chriss Cornish. To help you tell us apart, I’m the one wearing the hat.

Each podcast our panelists, masked crusaders working overtime fighting crime, assemble to discuss the comics and general sequential art geekery that excites them. Our superpowers are tangents and tentacles.

Joining us are regular squeesters: John Oliver, a dark fantasy author online at JohnWOliver.com ; and April Taie, leader of the Geek Girls Meetup in San Diego.

Taking the revolving 4th chair this issue is our guest, comics artist Amy Reeder. Her credits include work on Batwoman and Madame Xandau. Amy also has a few creator-owned titles with her creative partner Brandon Montclare; Halloween Eve, and the fabulous Rocket Girl – which I backed on Kickstarter and squeed about on issue 5 of the podcast. Jetpack teen girl cop from the future traveling to the ‘80s to save the world. Seriously, pause the show and go check it out – we’ll just wait here patiently.

Back? Excellent.

Thanks for joining us, Amy.

In this issue of Comics Squee we have: fornication and crime ; a great comics anthology ; a silent all-ages girl-and-her-dog comic ; and love for all the #1s coming out lately.

Before we start, a quick reminder that this podcast has chapters and chapter images, so if your player supports that feature… You can also pause the podcast at the start of each topic to do a Google image search for the title of each book if you’d like to look at the art as we squee.

1. Chriss: Korgi by Christian Slade

   This an all-ages, silent, girl-and-her-dog story. It’s a sweet series of graphic novels with no dialog, no caption, no words anywhere in the story – the entire tale is told entirly by pictures. It’s fabulous.

   The characters are the mollies and they live with their korgi partners, who are giant corgi dogs who can breath fire. The artwork is a sort of etching style, cute and easy to follow; it’s detailed but not crowded.

   It’s a nice blend of a picture book and a comic.

2. April: Flight comics anthology

   This series has 8 volumes in total and each averages about 300 pages. There’s a wide range of stories and styles, and each averages 8-12 pages. The anthology series was started by a group of friends, so a lot of the people are the same from volume to volume.

   Are favorite comic is another ‘silent’ story that spans several of the volumes, about a fox creature and his alien tentacle friend as they save the planet from an apocolypse. Like Korgi, it’s cute and sweet and we wish it were collected into a volume of it’s own.

   • 1a) Tangent 1: What does it take to be an artist and have kids?
   • 1b) Tangent 2: Chriss and April’s Library hold bender

3. Amy Reeder: All the great #1 issues coming out lately

   A lot of #1 issues have been coming out lately. Amy came into comics late and never really considered herself a big comic reader and isn’t up on all the sprawling continuity. So it’s great that, with these #1 issues for titles, people can now get in on the ground level. I’s had kind of a crazy effect on Amy since there have been so many good #1 issues that she’s now reading a lot of different comics and now has a community of people that make her a part of the culture as a whole. Something she never really had before.

   Our favorite #1s that have come out so far this year:

   • Ms Marvel #1
   • Moon Knight #1
   • Amala’s Blade #0/#1 (we squeed about in on show 2)
   • Starlight #1
   • Ghost Rider #1
   • Velvet #1
   • Lazerus #1

4. John: Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction (writer) and Chip Zdarsky (artist)

   This has a mature reader advisory. The main characters can stop time when they have sex. So they have sex and stop time.

   The narrator often is talking directly to the reader, breaking the 4th wall, and she often appears next to her younger self or steps out of events to explain them.

   Yes, there’s sex. But the book doesn’t glamorize sex. It’s very grounded and about the realities, uncertainties, as the characters become sexually aware people. And the characters are all ‘real’ looking people. What’s really appealing about Sex Criminals is that it hits on a lot of things people want to read about and experiences they want to see talked about. He’s getting away with things people just assumed they weren’t able to get away with in comics.

   Matt Fraction is a great writer we all enjoy. As April says, he’s skilled at bringing you through what are otherwise very strange stories. And he doesn’t think his readers are stupid, Fraction always addresses his readers as intelligent people.

   Oh, and you’re kind of missing out if you just have the trades and not the floppy monthly issues. The black bar at the bottom of the letters page has jokes and secret messages. There’s even talk about putting those letters in their own volume.

Question Time: Can we name 5 characters with time-control powers?

• Kang the Conquerer
• Mr. Fantastic
• Booster Gold
• Doctor Who
• Phantom Stranger
• Quantum Leap comic
• Hero from Heroes
• The Watch from Voyager
• Q from the Star Trek universe

What We’re Looking Forward to Reading Next

• April:

  Boxers and Saints, one of many things she got during her Library hold bender

• John:

  Later volumes of Sixth Gun

• Chriss:

  STILL trying to finish the Spider-Man omnibus; it’s a foot thick and she’s got two inches left.

• Amy Reeder:

  Been meaning to finish Elektra: Assassin for her podcast, Podcorn, book club.

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