Comic Books Are Burning in Hell Episode 6

This week, Joe McCulloch, Chris Mautner and Tucker Stone (Matt Seneca is still on vacation) zero in on manga, first opening with Tucker's bizarrely out of proportion complaints regarding mega popular manga Gantz, and then leading into Chris and Joe discussing Bakuman. Bakuman? Oh yeah, you read that correctly: and of course, that leads into the conversation of art versus commerce, which is when the crew touches on Joe Kubert, who had passed away only a few hours to recording. Then, they get into Kickstarter, wherein things get difficult: becuase Joe decides to go funny, Tucker decides to go completely off the rails, and Chris keeps trying to make everything comprehensible.  (Joe ended up winning.)

 

Download Comic Books Are Burning In Hell Episode Six

 

And here's your weekly update:

Joe GOES INTO DETAIL ABOUT JOE KUBERT

Tucker HUNG OUT WHILE EVERYBODY FAILED TO REALIZE WHEN TIM O'NEIL IS JOKING

Matt IS STILL ALL OVER SOLO WITH SEAN WITZKE

Chris HAS MORE TO SAY ABOUT THE COMICS JOURNAL

Howard Chaykin THINKS ALL OF YOU ARE WEAK AS SHIT

Michel FIffe IS JUST TEASING YOU

The new Universal Soldier trailer LOOKS COMPETENT

I own but do not like THIS KITCHEN TIMER

Comments

[Christopher M]

Man, there's just something really satisfying about hearing Tucker yell at something for like two or three minutes at a time, and then just going back to being Tucker.

I really appreciated this podcast - this is becoming one of those forms of procrastination I really look forward to.

[Chris Mautner]

That's an awesome kitchen timer. How could you not like it??

[Frank]

I'm a bit of bakuman apoligist, not for the sexism stuff which is weird as hell and inexcusable, so I tend to think of it as like marvel bullpen columns if they were written by kirby rather than lee. Obsessed with not shitting where it eats but filled with digs and gripes. I mean it's a comic which has as its initiating plot point a comic book artist dying from overwork which everyone just assumes is a suicide. There's also the consistent portrayal of junior editors as basically a secret police, undermining privacy and mental health in their quest for content.

[tucker stone]

You've got to look past its adorable appearance and embrace the fact that it only works 50% of the time.

[Chris Mautner]

But it looks like a pig!

[Jeet Heer]

The Eisner/Kubert comparison is worth drawing out a bit more since they had remarkably similar trajectories in some ways. Kubert stayed in commercial comics a bit longer than Eisner. Both tried periodically to break out of the ghetto with various entrepreneurial efforts. Both ran studios and trained people to draw like them. Both were interested in codifying their ideas into a pedagogy. Eisner taught at SVA and wrote his instructional books; Kubert started his school. Both ran studios for the army. Both did highly problematic "personal" books late in life on Jewish history & war. I'm pretty sure Kubert all along was modeling himself after Eisner or looking to Eisner as an inspiration. In the end, I think that both left a mixed legacy of journeyman work filled with storytelling lessons but also hampered by a fundamentally pulp sensibility. Perhaps cruel, but them's the breaks.

[tucker]

Thanks Jeet. As soon as we were done recording, I started wishing we had gone into more detail about those two. As you point out, there's a lot more to talk about.

[be breezy]

Thanks for linking the Chaykin interview Tucker.

I'll listen to the podcast later.

[Blorg Fleebo]

Well now I feel mildly shitty for recommending further reading of Gantz. It really is tits and violence, the reason I recommended continuing it is because I remember there's a whole series of volumes where they fight VAMPIRE DUDES IN GANTZ OUTFITS that goes a polite shade of nowhere and then after that is one gigantic dude that NO WEAPON CAN KILL but they kill him somehow, I don't even remember how.

The only reason I recommended continuing to read Gantz is because after that is the literal holocaust. Like the part in Schindler's List where everyone's running a track naked, it's like that, but with aliens and Japanese civilians. It's not as good as Schindler's List, it's just somewhat reminiscent. I'm only hoping it's drawing to a close soon, otherwise I really am a sucker motherfucker full of wack jam. The thing is I'm reading from fan scans instead of the official releases, so I don't know how far up that goes.

[nrh]

Man if you think GANTZ is bad try HEN...

[Jog]

I have a lingering curiosity about Hen... just, how would the Gantz dude tackle that kind of subject matter? I think the call word can only be "sensitivity"...

[Dave Morris]

HELP!

How on Earth do I download all of these episodes to iTunes?! I subscribed through iTunes but that only downloaded the most recent podcast.

This shit is too good to not hear the rest of them.

Thanks a ton.

[Spoilers Below]

The key to getting the pig timer to work is to make sure you always crank it back a complete 360 to wind the bell spring, and then turn it back down to the time you actually want to time. I've owned this exact same pig timer for years, and it's never given me any trouble when I do that.

[Dave Morris]

Ok thanks I'll try again. My biggest mistake is over cranking it to the point where it makes a sickening sound similar to when you grind your teeth over a hand full of sand.