Issue #53: Pharoah Bolding

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Welcome, lovely listeners and Precious Patrons of Pulp Pamphlet Parlay, to Issue 53 of Comics Squee. Each podcast our panelists, rude but cool party dudes, discuss the comic books, graphic novels, and general sequential art geekery that excites them.

Our superpowers are tangents and tentacles.

Guest is the (self-pronounced) world’s greatest comics-drawing HR professional, Pharaoh Bolding.

In this issue of Comics Squee we have: weird science fiction comedy; math adventures ; a high school student goes from nerd to killer ; and a girls with guns thriller.

1. Dave: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou (starts at 00:02:31.667)

   So Dave made good on his “What I’m looking forward to next” from last show and read Logicomix.

   This graphic novel is about Bertrand Russel and his journey through what they describe as his quest for the foundations of mathematics. Largely because he was unhappy with some of the axioms of math that at his time (turn of the 1900s) people took for granted as mathematical givens.

   The comic is really really cool. The art is more a cartooning style than an illustrative one. And the narrative is interesting. You’re actually introduced to the comic by the authors and you ‘watch’ as they build it.

2. Chriss: Madlax anime by Bee Train (starts at 00:13:19.333)

   Madlax a weird thriller, mystical kind of thing. It’s a girls with guns cartoon series about madness and war, from the creator behind Noir – another guns-girls-conspiracy anime. You’ve got a pair of young women with a mysterious connection, one is a wistful assassin in a Civil War torn country. The other a vague and disconnected teenager in a France analogue.

   There’s a sinister organization that drives people mad. A ‘picture book’ covered in blood. And each episode’s theme is introduced, before the title screen, by a dead eyed little girl in a war-torn landscape who’s talking to a silent little boy next to her who’s somehow standing in a grassy paradise. And there’s a picture book covered in blood.

   If you like weird stuff that makes you go, “What was all that even about?” then Madlax is your jam.

   • 2a) Tangent 1: Naruto and anime that go on and on (starts at 00:18:42.500)

3. April: My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf (starts at 00:19:34.006)

   This is a sort of memoir by a highschool classmate, and the closest thing Jeffery Dahmer had to a friend, of growing up in the late ’70s and explores the “how did we get to this point” and “would anything have been different if even one adult had stepped up and noticed what was going on with Dahmer”. It pretty much ends with Derf (who uses a pen name) discovering that guy he hung out with way back in school is now a cannibalistic serial killer.

   My Friend Dahmer has an indie tinged political cartooning style. It’s a well told story, and one the creator spent a lot of time researching and writing to fill in the gaps and tell just right. It’s tragic, but it’s also partly an emotional narrative of Derf’s life connected in with this other person’s. That and the research makes this a great comic.

4. Pharoah Bolding: God Hates Astronauts by Ryan Browne (starts at 00:30:24.715)

   This comic is random in the best way. The main characters are part of the Power Persons Five, superheros recruited by NASA to stop farmers and other civilians from building space rockets. For messed up reasons one of them ends up with a horse head, and their nemesis is John Sullivan, the world champion boxer from the 1880s – who is somehow still alive and a super villain trying to conquer the world with an army of bears he’s trained to box.

   God Hates Astronauts has no qualms about being fun for the sake of being fun. And what makes it great, too, is Ryan Browne’s art style – it’s somewhere between a superhero book and Evan Dorkin. At time’s it’s supremely cartooney in it’s feel. But then it’s supremely detailed at the same time.

   • 4a) Tangent 2: To the Moon!!! (starts at 00:39:58.500)

Question Time: What are your favorite comics with ghosts? (starts at 00:41:40.000)

• Dave:

  Saga and Wormwoode: Gentleman Corpse

• April:

  Anya’s Ghost and Beasts of Burden

• Chriss:

  Drumheller (veleociwranglgeist)

• Pharoah Bolding:

  Brody’s Ghost

What We’re Looking Forward to Reading Next (starts at 00:46:10.167)

• Chriss:

  Horizon Zero Dawn video game

• April:

  Still looking forward to rewatching The Tick

• Pharoah Bolding:

  Mezco’s One:12 figures for Punisher and Daredevil

• Dave:

  Continuing the science theme, Feinman

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