Robots From Tomorrow!

Returning to the show today after a nearly eight-year absence is comics writer Samuel Teer. His new book, Brownstone, about a teenage girl connecting with her Latin heritage and her estranged father without speaking a word of each other’s language as they renovate the title structure, hits shelves on June 11th. The road from his last OGN, 2015’s Veda: Assembly Required and this one is the topic for today’s conversation. Samuel & Greg talk about collaboration, the differences between the two different markets for this thing we call comix, the importance of context, breakout panels, ominous texts, and a detailed look into the relationship between a comics creative and the agent (or agents) they pair up with to help bring their ideas to market.

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Robots From Tomorrow is a comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunes or through the RSS feed at RobotsFromTomorrow.libsyn.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel at this link. You can also follow Greg and the show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Having finished with the Man of Steel, today’s episode is the first of three looking at the best Caped Crusader stories of the Seventies to the mid-Eighties with the DC3Cast’s very own Vince Ostrowski! Come for the Neal Adams, stay to find out more about double-threat Frank Robbins, the mad genius of Bob Haney, Ra’s Al Ghul, Bruce Wayne and Sgt. Rock teaming up to fight Nazis, Batman’s Congressional career, and much more. All that, and just what the hell a hellgrammite is!

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SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Comics referred to in this episode are:

• The Brave and the Bold#79-86, 93, 94
• Batman#217, 232, 234, 237, 242-244, 250, 251
• Detective Comics#400, 402, 404, 407, 420, 421, 429
• Swamp Thing#7

All comics are available as individual issues on DC Universe Infinite except forBatman#242 and 250.

Batman#242 is collected in theBatman: Tales of the Demoncollection, andBatman#250 is collected in the first volume ofThe Greatest Batman Stories Ever Toldcollection series.

Robots From Tomorrowis a comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it viaiTunesor through theRSS feedatRobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channelat this link. You can also followGregandthe show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Today’s show is not a joke, not a hoax, not an imaginary story. Greg gives his take on the upcoming Marvel & DC crossover omnibi coming later this year, and then dives into the larger waters of comic book team-ups that absolutely totally happened . . .and with the help of Ross Pearsall’s website, he has the covers to prove it! Find out all kinds of things about the crossovers you know about and the crossovers you had no idea actually existed!

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Robots From Tomorrow is a comix podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunesor through theRSS feedatRobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channelat this link. Follow Gregandthe show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Today’s show has not one, not two, but THREE Canadian cartoonists on the mics ready to chat with Greg.

• Luc Bossé, cartoonist ofGary, King of the Pick-Up Artists and publisher of Pow Pow Press,
  
  
• Thom, cartoonist of such Pow Pow works as VII, Casa Rodeo, and the upcoming Botanica Drama, and
  
  
• returning guest François Vigneault, a cartoonist whose Pow Pow work includes the French language edition of his sci-fi classicTitan, but is here today in his capacity as Pow Pow’s Marketing Manager.

As you can probably guess, the running theme here is Pow Pow. More specifically, Editions Pow Pow, a Montreal-based publisher with the goal of spreading the work of Quebec cartoonists to bookshelves of French- or English-speaking readers across the globe.

Pow Pow came to our attention thru François, but it KEPT out attention with books like the ones previously mentioned, but also Cathon’s The Pineapples of Wrath, Sophie Bedard’s Lonely Boys, and Éloïse Marseille’s Naked: The Confessions of a Normal Woman.

The goal of today’s chat is to be nothing less than the best English-language primer on Pow Pow – how it came to be, what it is, and where it’s going.

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Robots From Tomorrow is a comix podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunesor through theRSS feedatRobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channelat this link. Follow Gregandthe show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Today’s episode is the third of three looking at the best Superman stories of the Seventies to the mid-Eighties with the DC3Cast’s very own Vince Ostrowski! Vince & Greg dive into what makes the Superman of this era different than his more modern incarnation and give you gem after gem of Super-Tales of the post-Silver Age / pre-Crisis Man of Steel. Crises! Birthday presents! Planets exploding! Planets not exploding! Team-ups great and small! All that plus one last imaginary tale on today’s episode!

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SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Comics referred to in this episode are:

• Action Comics #544-546, 554, 583
• Superman #385-386, 400, 412-414, 423
• Superman Annual #11
• DC Comics Presents #61, 82, 85, 87
• Crisis on Infinite Earths#7, 11-12 (of 12)

All comics are available as individual issues on DC Universe Infinite except forSuperman#385-386 and 400, andAction Comics#544-546.

Action Comics#544-546 and 400 are collected, either in full or excerpts, in theAdventures of Superman: Gil KaneorSuperman: A Celebration of 75 Years collections.

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Robots From Tomorrow is a comix podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunesor through theRSS feedatRobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channelat this link. Follow Gregandthe show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Having just talked about the early days of2000AD, we thought it would be fun to chat with someone with a strip running in the Progs right now. Starting with Prog 2367 was Book Two of the strip “Full Tilt Boogie”, the continuing adventures of teen bounty hunter Tee, her grandmother, and their cat as they criss-cross the galaxy. Drawn by Eduardo Ocana, colored by Eva de la Cruz, lettered by Annie Parkhouse, and written by today’s guest.

She is a multi-hyphenate creator whose CV would take the entire show to lay out in detail, so with her indulgence I will paraphrase. A writer of prose, comics, poetry, film and television, she is also a director and collaborator and obviously a multi-tasker of the highest order. She has mashed up the Archie gang with the Predator, worked with Duncan Jones, and edited an anthology of soldiers autobiographical stories about their deployments. While not afraid to roll up her sleeves and do all manner of creative jobs herself, her eye for collaboration has led her to working with such talents as Carla Speed McNeil (onNo Mercy) and Erica Henderson (on the pulp horrorDracula Motherf**kerand the more recentParasocial), as well as the aforementioned Ocana even prior to “Full Tilt Boogie”.

Greg tried to keep this episode’s conversation coherent but because today’s guest is Alex de Campi, with so many avenues for questions and straight-shooting answers, it was no mean feat. Find out how he did and more on today’s chat!

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Robots From Tomorrow is a comix podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunesor through theRSS feedatRobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channelat this link. Follow Gregandthe show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Today’s episode is the second of three looking at the best Superman stories of the Seventies to the mid-Eighties with the DC3Cast’s very own Vince Ostrowski! Vince & Greg dive into what makes the Superman of this era different than his more modern incarnation and start giving you gem after gem of Super-Tales of the post-Silver Age / pre-Crisis Man of Steel. Intercompany crossovers! Intracompany crossovers! History lessons! Horror on a superhero scale! All that plus a REALLY big missile and more on today’s episode!

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Comics referred to in this episode are:

• Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man
• Superman and Spider-Man
• World of Krypton#1-3 (of 3)
• DC Comics Presents#1-4, 26-29, 36
• DC Comics Presents Annual#1
• Superman Annual#9
• The Phantom Zone#1-4 (of 4)

ThePhantom ZoneandWorld of Kryptonminis, as well as theDC Comics Presentsissues, are available as individual issues on DC Universe Infinite.

Superman Annual #9 is not available digitally or collected in any English-language reprint.

The two DC/Marvel crossovers are also unavailable digitally, though they were reprinted at standard comic book size in both theCrossover Classicsvol. 1 collection from 1992 and as individual reprints in 1996. They will both be included in the upcomingDC Versus Marvel Omnibus, and presumably available digitally at some point afterwards.

As part of his Someday Reading Project, Greg takes a look at the first dozen programmes of The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic:2000AD! Do those early installments still hold up? Was Dredd the leader of the pack… or the runt of the litter? What controversial boys’ adventure comic paved the way for Tharg and all that Thrill-Power? All that and more on today’s bite-sized episode!

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Rebellion/2000AD’s First Stories Digital Bundle

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Robots From Tomorrowis a twice-weekly comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it viaiTunesor through theRSS feedatRobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channelat this link. You can also followGregandthe show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Today’s episode is the first of three looking at the best Superman stories of the Seventies to the mid-Eighties with the DC3Cast’s very own Vince Ostrowski! Vince & Greg dive into what makes the Superman of this era different than his more modern incarnation and start giving you gem after gem of Super-Tales of the post-Silver Age / pre-Crisis Man of Steel.

Kryptonite No More! Must There Be A Superman! The Great One and the Greatest of All Time! Whiz Wagons! Clones! The Sweet Science! The Wedding of the Century! Hippie Bikers! More quotemarks than you can shake a stick at! All that and more on today’s episode!

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SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Comics referred to in this episode are:

• Superman#232
• Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen#133-141
• Forever People#1
• Superman#233-242
• Superman#247
• Action Comics#404
• Superman vs Muhammad Ali

Superman#232, 247, andAction Comics#484 are not available digitally as individual issues.Action Comics#484 is available digitally in theLois Lane: A Celebration of 75 YearsandAction Comics: 80 Years of Superman: The Deluxe Editioncollections.Superman#247 and the main story from #232 (originally fromSuperman#141) are available digitally in theSuperman: A Celebration of 75 Yearscollection.

Superman vs Muhammad Aliis available digitally but not through DC Universe Infinite.

The rest of the comics are available as individual issues or in theKryptonite No More,Jack Kirby’s Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, orJack Kirby’s The Forever People collections on DC Universe Infinite.

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Robots From Tomorrowis a twice-weekly comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it viaiTunesor through theRSS feedatRobotsFromTomorrow.com. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channelat this link. You can also followGregandthe show on Bluesky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.

Greg kicks off The Someday Project looking at one of his early comics influences: a magazine-sized mind-bender (at least for someone of his age to read it) unlike anything else on the stands. HEAVY METAL? Nope. 2000 AD? Negative. Those are coming soon enough, but today Greg talks about the impact of David A. Trampier's "Wormy" fromDRAGON magazine. Does it still hold up? How can you get a hold of it today? All that and more in today's episode!

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

The start of "WORMY" on the Internet Archive

"Wormy" ran in DRAGON issues:

• 9-20
• 29-34
• 36, 39, 42-44
• 47-52
• 54-58
• 60-128
• 130-132

Wormy: The Dragon's Dragon

Correspondence with Dave Trampier and A History of His 1985 Attempt to Crowdfund a "Wormy" Anthology

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Robots From Tomorrow is a comics podcast recorded deep beneath the Earth’s surface. You can subscribe to it via iTunes,through the RSS feed at RobotsFromTomorrow.com, or on the show's YouTube channel. You can also followGreg and the show on BlueSky. Stay safe and enjoy your funny books.