John Constantine is a badass. He's such a badass that his series is called Hellblazer. He's such a badass that he smokes and gets lung cancer and then tricks demons into cure his lung cancer for him. Wow, what a badass. We've only seen this guy in the pages of Swamp Thing, so we're reading Hellblazer #41-46 from 1991 when Garth Ennis took over writ…

Spooky season is swampy season here at SOMFRC and we're back to Swamp Thing! We're reading volume 5 of Alan Moore's run with issues #51-56. Swamp Thing has no more world-ending catastrophes to worry about, but his girlfriend's being persecuted for being into plants! Nothing to do but take over Gotham, get into a fight with Batman, and then spend a …

It occurs to us that we've never actually read an Iron Man comic, and with the recent dual-casting of Robert Downey Jr. as both Iron Man and Doctor Doom, we decided to take a look at Doomquest from Iron Man #149 & 150. The metal bros travel back in time to (friend of the show) the medieval era! Doctor Doom rides a horse and that's enough reason to …

Whelp, we tried to will a Dazzler movie cameo into existence, but Deadpool & Wolverine was unfortunately Taylor Swift-less. Nevertheless, we still press on to read Dazzler: The Movie, the 12th in Marvel's Graphic Novel line from the 80s, in which Dazzler meets a lot of terrible men who promise her a fast track to stardom. Then we continue our long …

Watch out crooks, there's a new Captain America in town. And he's got a gun! Steve Rogers is dead and Bucky is taking over as we pick back up with Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America in issues #31-36. Then we continue reading the Thunderbolts with an interlude in the Thunderbolts '97 Annual as we learn all about how the team came together. Next Ti…

We haven't read nearly enough Hulk on this show, so we're looking at a couple different stories by Peter David. First up is the wedding of Rick Jones from issues #417-419, in which Captain America gets very bashful about a bachelor party. Then we check out The Incredible Hulk: The End, a one shot about the last days of the Hulk's life. We'll tell y…

We're reading some detective comics this week! No, not the Bat. We're reading a lesser known PI published by Renegade Comics in the 80s: Ms. Tree, written by Max Alan Collins with art by Terry Beatty. We jump into the middle of the book and read issues #18-23 in which Ms. Tree deals with the death of her archnemesis... and kills a ton of people. We…

It's another classic X-Men story! We're reading God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson from 1982, which served as the inspiration for the X-Men 2 film. We get to know the evil reverend, Stryker, who has made some... questionable life choices. But why didn't they make him a reverend in the movie? Then we continue our long read of…

It's time to go back to Fairyland! We loved the first volume of Skottie Young's I Hate Fairyland when we read it back in 2020, so we thought we'd check out volume 2. Will the art still manage to simultaneously be cute and grotesque? You know it! Also, we begin our next long read with Thunderbolts #1 by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, with villains pos…

April Fools! We're doing some weird comics today, because that feels like it makes sense. We wanted to read Peter Porker and we only picked issue #16 because it had Baron Zebro in it. Then we read Avengers #200 because it's said to be one of the worst issues of all time, and it definitely deserves that accolade. And we finally end Earth X in issue …

With the passing of Akira Toriyama, we wanted to take a look at his most famous work, and one of the most popular manga/anime series of all time, the Dragon Ball series. We go back to the first volume from 1986 and it's not what we expected! Then we continue Earth X with #12 in which... uhh... we can't remember anything that happened. Did anything …

It's time for us to visit the late 90s with Kurt Busiek and George Perez's relaunch of The Avengers! Who will be on the new roster? Will we remember any of the history that Busiek digs up? And is it ever a good idea to relaunch a book with an alternate reality story? Then we go onto Earth X #11 where we say farewell to the character with the best o…

Superman's still a fascist and now his best friend, Lex Luthor, is here to help him change the world in the 2nd half of Injustice: Year One. Will Superman kill again? He will; he'll do it a lot. It's true Superdickery. Then we continue to Earth X #10 where the Skull continues to be a major asshole as Captain America and his forces attack. Next Time…

When the Mortal Kombat team makes a video game based on DC comic book characters and you need to write the prequel story, what do you do? You turn Superman into a fascist, of course. We're reading the first half of Injustice: Year One from 2013, where Superman starts killing people, Wonder Woman supports him, and Batman don't like it. Then we move …

We've been building up to the Death of Captain America for a few years now, and it's finally time to read the most memorable moment from Ed Brubaker's run in issues #25-30! Find out if Cap's supporting characters can sustain the book without him! Also learn a lot about how secret psychic activation codes work. Then, we move on to Earth X #8, which …

Let's do some more Spider-Man. Why not? It's The Owl-Octopus War from 1982 in Spectacular Spider-Man #73-79 by Bill Mantlo and Al Milgrom. The Owl gets beat pretty badly, but we also have some great guests in the form of Black Cat, Boomerang, Biff Rifkin, Deb Whitman, Deb's terrible psychiatrist, Peter's weird professor, and Peter's decaying mental…

Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first. We're reading Superior Foes of Spider-Man for this episode, but Spider-Man just isn't in this book. is the star of this short-lived comedy series and he's got a new Sinister Six that he's formed with four other D-list villains (that's right - these five make up the Sinister Six.). Join us as …

It's been a while since we read something from the Marvel Graphic Novel series, so we're going back to read Emperor Doom, a story where Dr. Doom steals Purple Man's powers and takes over the world. Doom actually does a pretty good job, until the Avengers screw everything up. It's really all Wonder Man's fault that world hunger is still a thing. The…

We love our Spider-Comics here at SOMFRC, but we've somehow never covered Spider-Girl at all, so today we took a look at the birth of Marvel's alternate future MC2 universe to see what it's all about. Little did we know, we would become Spider-Girl Mayday Parker ourselves, and we would truly feel the relationship between her and her parents, MJ & P…

It's only been about 10 years, but the Captain Marvel redesign of Carol Danvers has already become the most iconic version of the character. With a new movie on the way, we're looking at the first volume of Kelly Sue DeConnick's run where the new image was introduced, titled In Pursuit of Flight. It's not what we expected. At all! Then we continue …

Spooks! Haints! Evil twins! Shrek! They're all here (except Shrek) in the second volume of Harrow County. We all enjoyed the first volume when we read it a few years ago, so we decided to jump back in to continue the story and see more of the excellently horrific art. Then we continue Earth X with issue #2. Are we on board with this series yet? Wil…

It's manga time! Until now, we've only covered manga adaptations of video games, but we're jumping into our first long-form manga with the wildly popular One Piece by Eichiro Oda. We read the first volume to figure out just who this straw hat kid is and why this book has spawned a whole media empire. Then we get into the meat of Earth X with issue …

Swamp Thing! Do you still make our heart sing? We return to Alan Moore's classic series with Volume 4: A Murder of Crows, which collects issues #43-50 where we get some nice redesigns of Swamp Thing's flora. We also tie into the Crisis and meet lots of other heroes, plus we get some more insight into what John Constantine is like. Then we move onto…

It's a time travel story! This week on the show, we're reading some Fantastic Four from the early 90s in issues #350 & 352, written and drawn by the great Walt Simonson (don't worry about issue #351). We dip our toe into the FF status quo from this era to see a new Thing? And then another new Thing?!?! Then we move onto the finale of Knightfall in …

The Eisner Awards have come again, so we thought we'd dip our toe into some modern comics with the winner of the best ongoing series, Nightwing by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo. They're a few arcs into the book at this point, so we're starting with their first volume, Leaping into the Light, when the new creative team took over with issues #78-83. I…

Bongo Comics has been publishing Simpsons and Futurama comics for decades. With the release of the new season of Futurama, we take our first look at this corner of the comic book universe with the Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis collection, compiling two different 2-issue crossover events from 2002 and 2005. But how do these gag comics compare w…

It's been a long time, but we're finally getting back to some of Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America. We've been building up to the big death scene... it's gonna happen soon! We swear! Just not in this episode. We read issues #18-24 where Cap takes a trip to the UK and fights a giant robot with Bucky, and then the Civil War event breaks out and we…

It's time to enter the Spider-Verse once again, as we revisit a world where Gwen Stacy became Spider-Woman. It's Spider-Gwen! We already read the introductory issue back when we covered Edge of Spider-Verse, but now we dive into the first 5 issues of the ongoing series from 2015 (before it got relaunched with a new #1 later in 2015). Then, we get b…

This show's been going for over 200 episodes and somehow we've never covered Days of Future Past? It's only two issues too, a nice little self-contained story by Chris Claremont and John Byrne in Uncanny X-Men #141-142 (but we talked about the whole trade which contains #138-143). Then we continue our long read of Knightfall with Chapter 14 in Show…

It's noir time again as we revisit some Ed Brubaker! This time, we're covering his Catwoman run with artists Darwyn Cooke and Mike Allred which starts in The Dark End of the Street, a collection that contains two whole stories! The first is Slam Bradley on the hunt for Catwoman which originally ran as backups in Detective Comics 759-762, and then w…

Aliens! Predators! Robots! Androids! Monkeys! Asshole Businessmen! Nerds! Marines! They're all here as we revisit Dark Horse's AvP crossover universe with 1995's Aliens vs Predator: War by Randy Stradley. We check in with Michiko again now that she's lived with the Predators for a year, and apparently she doesn't like it! Then we see the fallout of…

Ok so Frank Castle (The Punisher) is imbued with the Spirit of Vengeance (Ghost Rider) and he goes back in time to kill Baby Thanos, but instead decides to kidnap and adopt him. Also, Frank was the herald of Galactus for a bit, and THEY FIGHT SPACE SHARKS. Hell of a premise in 2018's Cosmic Ghost Rider by Donny Cates and Dylan Burnett. After that, …

It's time. Time to revisit one of the worst comics we've ever read on the show... Frank Miller's All Star Batman & Robin, the famously crass and unfinished alternate universe version of "The Goddamn Batman." Our friend Nick (from the Your Stupid Minds podcast) joined us back when we read the first 6 issues, so of course we had to invite him back to…

April is nearly upon us, and that means we're about to hit our favorite holiday, April Fools Day, when the world famously decides to all read bad comics together. For our first bad comic this season, we're reading Secret Invasion, the 2008 Marvel event by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu. Which heroes are really Skrulls? Does it matter? I…

It's been a long time since we read any Alex Ross but today we decided to take a look at his newest book, Fantastic Four: Full Circle, a story exploring some of the FF's past with the Negative Zone. Alex Ross abandons his painterly for something a little different, and he also wrote this book too! Then we continue our long read of Batman: Knightfal…

It's our 200th episode! And we're celebrating by reading an unfinished comic that can't be purchased anywhere, Alan Moore's 1963 -- A 6-issue Image comic from 1993 that is one big homage to the silver age of comics, with art from frequent Moore collaborators Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, and Dave Gibbons. We meet a bunch of brand new heroes who miii…

It's time for the 2nd half of our Young Avengers two-parter! We dive into issues #7-12 and learn more about Teddy's birthright while also speed-running the secret of Billy's speedster twin brother (because they gotta wrap this series up ASAP). Then we continue Batman: Knightfall with Chapter 6 in Detective Comics #661, where we learn to NEVER mess …

We're jumping back to mid-2000s Marvel with a 2-part look at Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung's Young Avengers, a brand new teen superhero team starring Kate Bishop, Cassie Lang, and some other friends from the MCU! We also get to spend plenty of time with Jessica Jones, Captain America, and Iron Man as they try to figure out just who the Young Avenge…

Can Wolverine run a school? That's the premise of Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo's "Wolverine and the X-Men" from 2011. There's more to it than that: A new Hellfire Club is attacking. The Department of Education is inspecting. One of the students should probably be in jail. We read the first 4 issues to see how Wolverine survives. Then we continue K…

As one of Japan's most popular characters, of course Mario would have his own manga. It's been running for 30 years but somehow it just got its first English translation in 2020 with a greatest hits compilation called Super Mario Manga Mania. And you can't get a digital copy anywhere. This is the comic that finally broke the show. Nevertheless we p…

Ho ho ho ho, it's time for another holiday special! This year we take a look at the DCU Infinite Holiday Special from 2006 featuring stories about Green Lantern, Supergirl, Batwoman, Shadowpact, Flash, Superman, and... Shazam? Let's just say the card is subject to change. Then we continue the Knightfall storyline in Detective Comics #659 where the …

Instead of reading comics, we thought we'd put a focus on watching cartoons for this episode so that we could look back at some of Kevin Conroy's best work as the voice of Batman in some of his favorite episodes. First, we cover an episode titled "Perchance to Dream" from Batman the Animated Series where Bruce Wayne dreams of a life with his parent…

It's been a while but we finally revisit the Age of Apocalypse with the next miniseries on our list, X-Calibre, which is basically the Nightcrawler and Mystique show. It's got pirates and senseless murder and piles and piles of dead bodies. Cool. Then we start our longread of Batman: Knightfall with a special Vengeance of Bane one-shot that tells u…

With Namor appearing in the movies soon for the first time in Black Panther, we go waaaaay back in the past to 1939 to read the first appearance of the Sub-Mariner in Marvel Comics #1, published back when they were called Timely Comics. Then we read the Namor stories from Marvel Mystery Comics #7-10 to see him attack New York and fight the Human To…

As the spooky season nears its end, we take a look at some various scarious one-offs. First up is Spider-Man: The Short Halloween, a comedy one-shot by SNL's Bill Hader & Seth Meyers. Then we go back to some classic 80's X-Men when Storm turned into a vampire in issue #159, and then again when Dracula returns in X-Men Annual #6. Then we continue ou…

The spooky season creepiness continues as we revisit Locke and Key with Volume 3: Crown of Shadows. We've got ghosts, dead bodies, and weird teenagers trying to go to a Muse concert. Scary stuff! Then we continue our trip through Earth-2 with Adventure Comics #462 where we see the death of Earth-2 Batman to one of the most infamous villains of all …

The spookiest of seasons is upon us, so we decide to take a look at one of Marvel's spookiest comics: Tomb of Dracula! We know this character's not very well known, so we read issues #10-15 which include the first appearance of Blade, a much more popular character. Plus we get Dracula doing all of his trademark moves like steering a boat and callin…

She-Hulk has her own show! And it seems to take a lot of inspiration from the Dan Slott run that we visited a while back. We dive back into it with Volume 3: Time Trials, which collects #1-5 from the 2005 She-Hulk series. There's cowboys, jealousy, and time cops: the three perfect ingredients in any story. Then we read our next Earth-2 book with a …

We haven't quite hit spooky season yet but we really wanted to get back into some Swamp Thing, so we're diving back into Alan Moore's run from the 80's with the 3rd collected volume which covers issues #35-42. The series takes on a bit of a different form with the first appearance of Constantine as he sends Swamp Thing on freak-of-the-week adventur…

With the recent passing of Alan Grant, we take a look back at some of the 80's Batman he wrote alongside John Wagner in Detective Comics #583-586, which feature the first appearances of Scarface & The Ventriloquist in the first story and then The Ratcatcher in the next. They're two quick, fun Batman stories that go down smooth, with nice art by Nor…