Deconstructing Comics
Deconstructing Comics is a podcast about the craft of comics. Tim, Kumar, Emmet, and guest reviewers discuss a variety of comics (both recent work and classics) and present interviews with a variety of comics creators -- mainstream, indy, and even international! And in our occasional "Critiquing Comics" episodes, We'll even critique YOUR comic!
Whether you’ve got a comic going and you’re trying to promote it, or you haven’t even started yet and need some help getting rolling, we hope you’ll come here for inspiration and tips. And there’s plenty of interest for the casual comic book or graphic novel fan, as well!
"Tim is probably the hardest working podcaster in the community. He's an insightful and articulate comic reviewer and somebody I always enjoy talking to." -- Jason McNamara, writer, "The Rattler"
“Some of the best interviews I’ve ever heard! You guys review the type of comics I love and that’s really hard to find. So thanks for unique and knowledgeable.” -- Jack Wallace, Disposable Fiction Comics
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 62 minutes
- Episodes
- 111
- Years Active
- 2023 - 2025
Critiquing Comics #241: “The Shapes” #4: El Puro
Samuel Edme’s comic The Shapes is… a bit hard to pin down. It looks like notebook scribblings, it has its faults, but it seems to have found an audience, which is all a comics creator can ask for. B…
00:19:44 |
Sat 14 Dec 2024
#823 Jack Kirby’s “Eternals,” #17-19: Lots o’ Ikaris (or Ikarus?)
We’ve reached the end of Jack Kirby‘s Eternals series. Sure, it was a weird series, but introducing a Hulk robot apparently did little for the sales numbers. How did Kirby wrap things up? For a seri…
01:06:44 |
Wed 11 Dec 2024
#822 The Fantastic Four on Film: “The Fantastic Four” (1994) (part two) Why wasn’t the film released?
The 1994 film The Fantastic Four seems to have been made with the expectation, at least from producer Roger Corman on down, that it would be released. While some interested parties have claimed that…
01:14:55 |
Wed 04 Dec 2024
#821 The Fantastic Four on Film: “The Fantastic Four” (1994), a Roger Corman production (part one)
By the early ’90s, Superman and Batman were blockbuster movie franchises, but Marvel had yet to find a way to get a big-budget film made based on their characters, let alone succeed at the box offic…
01:17:55 |
Wed 27 Nov 2024
#820 Jack Kirby’s “Eternals,” #14-16: The Coming of…. The Editor!
Jack Kirby‘s The Eternals was not a conventional superhero book. It didn’t even seem to take place in the Marvel Universe. By issue 14, it appears that Marvel editorial must have been pressuring him…
01:18:50 |
Wed 20 Nov 2024
#819 We catch up with “The Re-up” and “Amazing Tales”
This week we catch up with the work of two DCP favorites, Chad Bilyeu and David Dye! Chad’s series The Re-up, about his time as a pot dealer 20 years ago, continues and has overcome the skepticism T…
00:57:32 |
Wed 13 Nov 2024
#818 Requiems: “Ghost Band” and “Grimm’s Assistant”
If you’ve ever felt like your city left you before you left your city, Jason McNamara’s Ghost Band is for you. Tim and Emmet discuss this post-apocalyptic look at San Francisco. Jason then taps in t…
00:48:48 |
Wed 06 Nov 2024
“Avengers: Endgame” (2019)
Tim gets ever closer to catching up with the MCU! Tim and Mulele discuss Avengers: Endgame‘s time-travel explanation (and problems), Captain Marvel’s relative irrelevance to the film, how this movie…
01:03:51 |
Wed 30 Oct 2024
#437 “Real” is a slam dunk
FLASHBACK! Sports have rarely been subject matter for comics in the US; perhaps comics’ inherent static-ness has seemed antithetical to an activity with so much movement. But Japan has seen comics a…
01:00:19 |
Wed 23 Oct 2024
Critiquing Comics #240: “The Night Brigade” and “Joe Mallard”
Most Americans know little about the Crimean War (1853-1856). Adam McGovern and Bruno Letizia’s The Night Brigade may go some way toward filling us in on that conflict, and it does give us several h…
00:34:32 |
Wed 16 Oct 2024
#817 Jack Kirby’s “Eternals”, 1977 Annual + #13: Fun “Eternals” stories with few Eternals
We left the Eternals joined together in the Unimind. The 1977 Annual doesn’t clearly fit into continuity, but features only one Eternal, Thena, together with Deviants Karkas and the Reject against a…
01:18:26 |
Wed 09 Oct 2024
#816 Chester Brown interview: “Paying for It,” the movie
Chester Brown’s work has come up on this show a number of times over the years. We’ve discussed Ed the Happy Clown, Louis Riel, and Paying for It. He’s actually published 10 graphic novels since 198…
01:33:18 |
Wed 02 Oct 2024
#593 “Reading ‘Nancy’”, plus “Cat and Mouse”!
FLASHBACK! A comic strip gag can be a deceptively simple thing. Once you take it apart — “deconstruct” it, one might say — you find that it actually has many moving parts.
Paul Karasik and Mark Newg…
01:33:34 |
Wed 25 Sep 2024
Critiquing Comics #239: “Let’s Go, Coco” and “Digital Bardos”
What does an 11-year-old do when her “only friend” moves away? In Coco Fox’s “sorta” memoir Let’s Go, Coco, she joins the basketball team. But when you’re a pre-teen, everything’s fraught with chall…
00:40:49 |
Wed 18 Sep 2024
#338 Everything’s Archie!
FLASHBACK! It’s been more than 70 years now since the debut of Archie comics, featuring (though not quite from the beginning) America’s favorite love triangle of Archie, Veronica, and Betty. Along w…
00:52:11 |
Wed 11 Sep 2024
#815 Jack Kirby’s “Eternals”, #9-12: Judging books by their covers
Eternals are only human, I guess! In Eternals issues 9-12, many of the Eternals exhibit a segregationist attitude toward the Deviants, and just about everybody assumes Karkas is going to kick the Re…
01:28:39 |
Wed 04 Sep 2024
#134 “The R. Crumb Handbook”
FLASHBACK! A then-recent R. Crumb compilation is reviewed by a Crumb connoisseur (Kumar) and a Crumb newbie (Tim). The book features Crumb at his sweetest and his most shocking. But can this (or any …
00:46:23 |
Wed 28 Aug 2024
Critiquing Comics #238: “Jane Jet” and “The Fog Within”
Once again we take a look at some comics submitted by their creators; we talk about what we liked about them and what could have been better.
Jane Jet book 1: Nuclear Shadows, by writer Amal Desai a…
Jane Jet book 1: Nuclear Shadows, by writer Amal Desai a…
00:54:03 |
Wed 21 Aug 2024
#591 “Promethea”: A mind-bending, life-changing comic
FLASHBACK! While Alan Moore and J.H. Williams’ Promethea, published from 1999 to 2005, is not one of Moore’s most remembered works, it’s not because the author wasn’t at the top of his game. Kumar an…
01:21:00 |
Wed 14 Aug 2024
#296 “Little Orphan Annie”
FLASHBACK! Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie debuted in 1924 and was a big success. FDR having not yet turned him against organized labor, Gray shows hardworking Annie going on strike in one of her …
00:56:21 |
Wed 07 Aug 2024
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