Episode 53 - Welcome to Pride Month

Happy Pride Month All, slightly new format this week. We're talking about more than one book! Gasp! We got some review copies from DSTLRY and I couldn't pass this up. We also chat briefly about James Tynion's The Closet, which I really recommend reading. 

Another Comic Podcast, Escape the Mojoverse is running a Fund Raiser for Transgender Law Center.  Check it out below, and check out their podcast! If they raise a $1,000.00 for this great cause, they'll also do an episode on Wicked and the Divine!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DZBQKJdkU8N/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==


Hosted by Vic, Kadiah and Garnett, I used to use my middle name, Adam. 

Please Send Questions and Feedback to Any of the following: Vote for the Junji book or story you want to hear us chat about all through May!

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Check us out on Youtube as well!

Comic Books Beyond would like to thank:  The Crew of the Talking Comics Podcast, Brandon McNulty, Lisa and Brad from Comic Book Couples Counseling, Alex Jaffe, Jeremy Whitley, Jimmy Gaspero and John Klein III of Shadow and Flame with Magik Podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well guys, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get a hold of me through email, I'm at comicbooksbeyond at gmail.com, and I'm at ComicBooks Beyond on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, and we're also on YouTube. Some of the podcasts are going to go there, but we're also working on some extra content for YouTube as well. I'd like to give a thank you to the crew of the Talking Comic Books podcast, Brad and Lise of Comic Book Couples Counseling, Alex Jaffe, Jeremy Whitley, Bran McNulty, Jimmy Gasparo and the crew of Comic Book Yeti, and John Klein III of Shadowflame with Magic. Most importantly, I'd like to thank all of our listeners and supporters. Be good to each other out there and take care of your people. We'll see you next time. Hey everybody, welcome to the Comic Books Beyond Podcast. I'm your host, Vic. So if you're new here, this show is about analyzing comic books and trying to help readers find new books. We try to demystify the weird stuff, because gatekeeping is dumb, and everybody should be able to read. We try to avoid spoilers past concept level. Like, I really can't talk about Batman without telling you that spoiler, Bruce Wayne is Batman, and he's a dude that dresses up as a bat. Sometimes we have to go a little bit deeper than that, but we do our best not to spoil too much unless we give you heavy warning. Alright, so before we get into today's episode, uh first want to wish everyone happy Pride Month. Um my wife and I this morning, uh Katia, my wife Katia and I this morning went to uh our area's local um pride waving or pride pride flag raising ceremony that was the first time we ever did this. So I say my area because uh, and sorry if you just heard a little bit of a noise in the background. I'll try to cut that out. Um my area, uh we live in a sort of a city, but it's more of just a general area that we all kind of call Binghamton. And uh it's just one of the subsidies that we were out visiting at. Um, and it's coincidentally where my local comic shops, uh, that what specific town that's in. So we did that today, and that was a good time. Um, more importantly, uh, I wanted to talk about something I just found out right before recording this. Uh, another podcast uh called Escape the Mojo Verse. Uh, they are doing a fundraiser for the Transgender Law Center. Uh, I just want to read this really quick. Uh, this is what they put out their words, not mine. Uh, since 2002, they've been organizing, assisting, informing, and empowering thousands of individual community members towards long-term national trans-led movement for liberation. This June for Pride, we are raising funds for Transgendered Law Center. The fundraiser is not about incentives. However, this fundraiser is not about incentives. However, should they meet their goals of $1,000 raised, we will record and release an bonus episode of The Wicked and the Divine by uh Kieran Gillian and Jamie McKelvey. Uh, Wicked and Divine is actually one of my favorite comic books of all time. And I really look forward to that episode. I hope they meet their goals. Uh, my team did make a small donation. I only mentioned that because it's important to practice what I preach. Uh, I'll put a link to the show notes on uh or link to the fundraiser in the show notes. And it should take you to their Instagram page where you'll also hear True Trans Soul Rebel by Against Me, which is one of my favorite bands. I absolutely love Laura Gene Grace and everything they do. And I wish Escape the Moji Verse the absolute best in their efforts because I really want to hear an episode on uh Wicked and the Divine. Uh so it is just me tonight. Um, fun Wicked and the Divine story that I get to tell now since it's relevant. Uh recently, uh one of our co-hosts, uh Mike, who is also our channel uh artist, he uh visited about two weeks ago. I was actually just visiting him yesterday. Uh, since the weather's been good, we get to see each other more. It's great. Uh, he uh brought back a few comics, and coincidentally, one of them was Wicked and the Divine. And I was privy to a great conversation. So Mike couldn't get into Wicked and the Divine, which, you know, that's totally fine. Uh, and he slammed the books down and said, Hey, just wanted to bring these back to you. And Katya, my wife, goes, Oh my god, Wicked and the Divine, the art, and that's amazing. And he goes, Well, that's actually what I didn't couldn't get past. There was just too many empty panels. And I'm like, Huh. Isn't this one of the fun parts of comics where we can all have just such differing opinions and they can all just be and they were very respectful to each other. It's just that's what the difference of opinion is, and that's what a good difference of opinion is. Uh, and and I just I thought that was a fun little conversation that I got to be part of. Well, more like a fly on the wall of. All right, so I uh let's get into the show proper today. But again, though those that's gonna be in the uh show notes, and uh we wish them the best. Uh so we're gonna do a slight change in format today. Uh normally in this show we're talking about like one book and we try to go moderately deep on it, but I want to try to just expand a little bit more. I have too many things I want to talk about and too many ideas for this show. And I don't know. You guys probably have heard that I've been not super in the best of mood the past couple weeks. I know that's come out, and I I I apologize for that. I've been trying different things, and you know, we're gonna have good weeks and bad weeks, and I I everybody goes through that. My mental health is not great right now, and uh it it's just important for me to you know keep doing this even when I don't want to. Like, I I I've had feelings where like, oh god, I don't know if I can do this anymore. Uh I just have a lot of uh stuff going on. Personally, nothing too terrible, like no one's dying or nothing. It's just life stress happens. Sorry if you heard a little fizz there. Need a drink. Wow, the cars are really whipping by my house tonight. I try really hard to like edit this stuff out and like make sure it doesn't happen. I don't think they're I don't think the mic's picking it up. So um, but you know, uh, we just found out that we need to probably put multiple grand into our house for various reasons, which isn't great. Like our our we we we're able to cover it. Like the one of the nice things about not having kids is you can take care of stuff like that when it happens. So we're okay. It's just that's stressing me out, plus you know, all the other stuff of living in this shit hellscape that we live in, and you know, just uh all that other stuff. And I've been trying to do some life positive stuff. Like uh I'm you know, I not drinking alcohol. I'm uh you know, I haven't been drinking a lot the past couple uh like month or last couple of like months to years, honestly, it's just been down and like I'm just not drinking at all right now and trying to focus on physical health with exercise. Like I had to drop out of a strongman comp just because I wasn't willing to do the things to my body that uh would have gotten me to that level. It was just getting like dangerous, unfortunately. And I'm really trying to focus on sleep. And I don't know if I've told you guys, I'm a major insomniac. Major. Like I generally get like four to six hours most nights, and I'm just not adjusting well to like the more more sleep that I'm getting. All right, but we uh we had some good stuff happen in addition to you know all the the other stuff. Uh someone, uh a gentleman named uh Chip Mosher from Distillery Publishing reached out to me last week. Um now I I don't have a ton of exposure in Distillery, it was more of a blast email, to be honest. It was just review copies, but you know, we we're getting review copies, and I want people to be able to find new books. I want to, and you know, I'm I'm privileged to get these copies, so I think it's in our best interest of our show and you know to give them a fair chance, and we're gonna talk about the two we got. Uh now, Distillery is um they they publish primarily in like three to six issue mini-series, I think. I don't actually think they do ongoings, and uh most of their issues are they're like $8.99 a piece, but they're oversized uh issues. They I believe they go to like 50 pages, give or take. And um they're larger. Uh, I have a copy of Somna that um Cotty and I did an episode on a long time ago when we were uh under the name of a different show that we can't say anymore. Uh and that episode's lost to time and space. But uh Somna is a great book, and that came out of Distillery, and I always wanted to read more. Um, I I saw a few other books and some other people involved in it when I did a little more um research into their company this week. Uh the uh the names attached. There's some there's some top-tier talent on Distillery right now. So I was given two books, and we are gonna talk about both of them. We're not really gonna spoil anything past the concept as as best we can, hopefully not much deeper than the tagline. So I was given now, I was not paid for this. This was just a here's a here's some PDFs, please review. If you can, great. And I said I would absolutely review. Uh I'm gonna try to do a more condensed version on like TikToks or for reels or shorters or whatever the other formats are. Uh so I was given Galactic uh one and two and galactic number two by Kurt Pyers in uh Amicare Pina. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, uh has a final order cutoff of June 8th, so that's coming up quick. And the in the on-sale date is July 29th, uh, 2026, which is right after my birthday. Uh the concept for Galactic is this is an ultraviolet interstellar romance, uh, and is this um follows a roguish bounty hunter and a princess on a uh deathbender caught in the crossfire of an intergalactic war, uh, pitched as True Romance Meets the Incal. Uh now I um I've not seen either of those two films. Uh I am a horror film person. I don't actually watch a ton outside of horror, so I'm just bad. Uh, but now this kind of reminds me uh of a uh more adult Star Wars, uh, or maybe closer to Mass Effect if you've played that series of video games. Uh this follows a rogue and his humanoid dog doing in their escapades. While he's a uh you know, overall very roguish type, his intentions are really good. Uh, this is uh heavily homaging Star Wars, in my opinion. Like, I think it's self-aware that it's homaging Star Wars. Like, I don't mean that reductively at all. Uh Star Wars is gold standard writing, and honestly, it's the model that most space operas are going to pull from. Now there's a bit of an edgy narration here, which adds to the tone, like some more fun, but it does step a little bit close to immaturity. Uh, overall, I do like the main characters, but I feel like the female lead um needs just a little bit more screen time so far. Uh, there's the essence of good characters here. We just we're the first issue focuses a lot more on world building. Um, but I I wasn't fully overwhelmed. I think I've said a few times, um, overwhelming world building is a turnoff to me. I just it it's too much information for me to take in and I will not process it. Uh thematically, this is a story about doing the right thing, even when the world's against you and you're being paid to not do the right thing. Um I I actually enjoyed issue two a lot more than issue one. Issue one was not bad, but issue one was very much an issue one. Uh, as far as character introductions go, I think we did a solid job. Uh, and the art is actually pretty distinct, and it reminds me of you know Frank Quietly in a way. Uh there's a ton of characters, and you get the motivations by the end of the second issue. Now, as far as new readership goes, I think you'll be fine to pick this up and go. Uh, now there's a lot of sci-fi, a little bit to a lot of sci-fi world building, and you know, like I again could be overwhelming, but it might not be. Uh, there were a few things I did need to reread. As far as as quality goes, I want to get away from the numerical scale, but I'm gonna call this like slightly above average because I do have a few criticisms, but there's a lot of good ideas here, and there's some stuff you don't see very often. Uh, you do get uh some uh sexual scenes. I'm gonna be honest there, uh, I think that's just important to mention. Uh, I'm a fan of sexual storytelling. Uh, there was one scene that just did seem like it, I don't know if it served the plot that much. And you know, that's fine. Uh, there was um there's some violence, obviously. So this one, I think uh if if you're 18 enough, you can maybe go for this one. You want just like a little more of an edgier Star Wars. That's what I would I how I would view this as. Uh so uh I liked that book. Uh this one did just did not blow me away. Um, but I do actually want to check out more of uh Kurt Pyres. I just want to make sure I'm saying yeah, Kurt Pyers. I haven't read anything else by him, but I did uh I did see him on uh friend of the show's uh show, uh In the Stacks, uh with Lisa and Brad uh on as one of their international visitors or one of their international in the stacks people. Uh he did an episode up in Canada and I I liked what he had to see. I might link that in the show notes as well. Uh it was a good time. So I do want to see what else. I I think he has a book called Power Fantasy, if I'm remembering that correctly. I have not read that, uh, but the that that's an image book. So I do I'm willing to try almost anything from Image, to be honest with you. All right. So let's talk about Endeavor. Endeavor number three has a uh final order cutoff of 615 and an on-sale date of August 5th. This was written by Stephanie Phillips with art by Mark Lemming. Uh now, this is uh their tagline says this is a uh basically a brutal brutalist survival story, a la Lord of the Flies set adrift in the open sea. Uh now, this is my preferred of the two. I'm a big Stephanie Phillips fan. I'm getting to the point where if I see Stephanie Phillips' name on something, I'm going to check it out. Uh, I love her work on Daredevil. Her work on Grim absolutely blew me away. Uh, I am really excited to finish that. The last trade should be here soon, I hope. Uh now, this is about a cruise ship that has gone horribly wrong with a bunch of rich folk on it. Uh, I really don't want to go too much past the tagline, but basically the concept is people are going on a cruise ship. Something bad happens where everyone is stuck at sea. Uh, this is clearly inspired by some stuff. Uh, like I know that's happened a few times where uh, and coincidentally, the timing of this, like with the Hantavirus thing, is um I think that's more serendipitous than anything. I I don't know if there was a delay due to that or anything. I I absolutely don't think there could have been. That's just all coincidental. Uh, but this is this is a horror story. Uh, I found this terrifying. This looks just like kind of a drama from the way it's set up because you don't get much horrific imagery. You are following children primarily who were more or less stuck at sea with not really a lot of chance to escape from what it seems. Uh, this is a pretty terrifying scenario. I don't know if you guys have ever been on a cruise, but I was on a cruise for my honeymoon. We should not have done it because we were just broke. And I will tell you a few terrifying things that happen just when cruise cruises go well. One, you get bored really quick. Like, uh, we don't gamble, we weren't in the mood to get drunk, and uh eventually you need a break from meritable bliss. Uh, and you can only watch the same three Marvel movies over and over again. Uh there is not a ton to do on cruise ships if you don't like to gamble. Uh and the other thing that happens on cruise ships, if you ever get sick on a cruise ship, it sucks. You are really sick. You were only gonna get the nastiest, nastiest stuff out there. And it kind of ruins the whole trip for everyone. And that's how I mildly ruined my honeymoon. Uh, but my wife forgave me, and she uh more so thought it was funny, and I it really didn't impact her fun. We got to read a lot. Now, that's when a cruise ship goes well. When a cruise ship doesn't go super well, and maybe hypothetically you run out of food and you know your buddy look next to you looks pretty pretty tasty. That's when things get a little bit different. Uh, I think we've all seen those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where people are marooned at sea and the guy starts like putting buns around his arm and eating it like a hot dog. Um that's where I feel like some of this stuff is going. And I will say the end of this, um, the end of this issue ended with an oh shit moment where I just I I really need to know how this is going to be resolved at issue four. This was really, really, really dark at the end of this one. Uh, I I do want to caution you that you know, we are dealing with a primarily children-based cast, and this uses the literary device of a flash forward where we kind of have to learn and fill in what happened between the incident and the current present day of like a week and a half, two weeks later. Uh that cruise ships hold a lot of people, even specialized cruise ships. Just think about how much staff you have, how much um parents there are, and I'll say the cast is pretty small when we're dealing with them. Uh, so I would recommend picking this one up if you are interested in an interpersonal relationship story that deals with how willing people are, how far people are willing to push each other. Uh, I would avoid this one if you're uncomfortable with a horror story involving preteens, as this is a horror story, some pretty bad stuff's gonna happen. So, guys, tell me, are either of these something you're interested in picking up? Uh, which story sounds more appealing? Uh, if you're already reading these, do either of these sound really good? Uh, can you recommend something else by the other writers? Uh now, uh also for uh distribution publishing PR people, if you have more things you'd like me or my team to look at, uh, we're happy to do so as best we can. We can't promise everything, obviously. I have actually a couple other review copies that I've been, you know, more or less blessed with that I think we're gonna try to focus on them as we can. I do have one other book that I want to talk about a little bit this week. Since this is Pride Month, I wanted to try to talk about in LGBTQIA plus writer. Uh, and this might not be a surprise to longtime listener of the podcast. Uh, I'm a big fan of James Tynon IV. So specifically, let's talk about his story in the closet. This is art by Gavin Fullerton and colors by Chris O'Halloran of the Ice Cream Man Fame, and letters by Tom Batalho uh Balitano. I will correct that in the uh in the show notes. I am so bad. Uh James Tynan the fourth is one of my favorite authors. He's uh, you know, LGBTQ or otherwise. Uh I really want to talk about one of his most impactful stories. Uh, this is called The Closet. Now I don't remember when this one was actually published. I forgot to write that down. Uh now this doesn't directly deal with LGBTQIA plus themes. This is a story that really sticks with you. Uh, this is one where the limits of horror, of my version of like horror, really get tested. There's very little dark, scary blood stuff in this. This is an interpersonal relationship type of horror. And that's exactly what I what I love. Uh, so this is about a family that is moving across country uh from the East Coast to Portland. Um, now the father in this story, much like my own, is a total piece of shit. And uh the child in this story, much like myself, was utterly terrified of the monster in the closet. And his father, he assures him that, you know, that monster is not gonna follow us across the country. There's no way he's gonna follow follow us. And well, um, you know, what do you think the story's about? What do you what do you guys think is gonna happen here? Uh, I I don't have kids, and I never will. Um, I paid a doctor good money to make sure, you know, that'll never happen. And stories like this are remind me of exactly why that was a good choice. Like, I don't ever want to make a child's life worse like this. Uh, I'm not gonna spoil the ending of this story for you, but this was a huge down story. This was dark. Uh I it didn't really have any blood, death, or killing, and it just has that kind of an impact. This is a very empty book where you don't have a ton of dialogue. I flipped through this, but I I really didn't really didn't need to reread this before because I remembered almost beat for beat everything that happened. I just wanted to make sure I didn't, you know, miss anything major. So this one, uh, the colors in this are really vibrant. You get a lot of darks and yellows, and uh you get a lot of like woodland scenes. Um, there's a scene that just kind of reminds me of strolling through Aprilatchia, where I grew up, and there's a weird inverse of it. Like you don't get a lot of time from the child's perspective, but the scenes you do get, they're pretty darn dark. Uh, as far as new readership friendly goes on this one, I think you're gonna be fine to pick this one up. Uh, this is only three issues. Like you're gonna have absolutely it, it's there's no backstory. And in a strange way, this feels like this could have been like set in the same universe as something is killing the children, which we haven't talked about on this show. Uh, I would love to, and that's just something I definitely have to wait for Mike for because I know he's gonna want to be on the show for that. Yeah, so this this one was it it's it's got a very impactful ending, and this is a terrifying story without any blood. So I and I respect that. Well, guys, this uh takes us to the end of this week's episode. Um next week, I'm not entirely sure what the plan is, but we're not going to need any spoilers. Uh, we're not, we're uh I do want to try to check out the new DC Pride book this week this month. Uh I have one book hopefully planned out for this month that we can go a little bit deep on that I'll try to give you a heads up on. Uh, not exactly sure when or if that's gonna happen. We're just kind of taking things as we go right now. Just uh, you know, gotta be gotta keep pace myself right now. Just got a little bit going on, and I want to make sure we get out episodes. If we have to skip a week, we will. But everybody, be good to each other out there and stick around if you'd like to hear from friends of the show. Have a great week, everyone. Take care. Well, guys, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get a hold of me through email, I'm at comicbooksbeyond at gmail.com, and I'm at comic books beyond on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, and we're also on YouTube. Some of the podcasts are going to go there, but we're also working on some extra content for YouTube as well. I'd like to give a thank you to the crew of the Talking Comic Books Podcast, Brad and Leese of Comic Book Couples Counseling, Alex Jaffe, Jeremy Whitley, Bran McNulty, Jimmy Gasparo and the crew of Comic Book Yeti, and John Klein III of Shadowflame with Magic. Most importantly, I'd like to thank all of our listeners and supporters. Be good to each other out there and take care of your people. We'll see you next time.