Contest Of Challengers

Live from Seattle, RJ Casey joins Patrick to talk about self-publishing, small press, and working at Fantagraphics. You may recognize RJ’s name from several Yeti Press events at Challengers, so hear what took him from the Windy City to the City of Destiny. We go back to the beginning of RJ’s comic fandom roots and follow his reading trends away from mainstream comics. Also, Patrick tries unsuccessfully to get RJ to read “The Vision.”

Fridays are down, man, and we don’t know why. Jesse Hedman from Minneapolis stopped by the shop. Marking up open order variant covers. Five Stars loyalty program. The Cap Statue gets dusted in (human) ashes. Black Panther. Deathstroke.

Emails! We’re sending lots of emails! Crowd-funding to save stores (not ours). Thank you, Dal’s Mom. No Comic Hub. Flashback to 7 years ago. Tilting at Windmills. Hardcover Watchmen. Lady Killer 2 and Animosity reviews. Hurrah!

The upcoming week is a big one for us behind the scenes, as we install a brand new point of sale system, ComicHub. Patrick and Dal each got to experience the store as customers do. Have you heard of Boulet? He’s très magnifique. And there is way too much time spent discussing Batman The Killing Joke.

We Want EVERY Award! We Won an International Award but Lost a Local One. An alternative bookstore is NOT a comic shop!! Ebay interactions are ridiculous. Comic-Con International San Diego is happening as we record! Image announces 2 fun-sounding books. And… new action figures are a-coming!

Holy cats are there a ton of new Marvel Comics scheduled for this fall! There are also many more pre-SDCC announcements. So! Many! And we kind of dump all over Civil War II #3.

What is Dal’s fascination with Kate McKinnon? It’s a cornucopia of pre-San Diego Comic-Con news this week! The Great Lakes Avengers are back!

My least favorite part of every episode is writing this description. Also, this episode’s title was supposed to be LAST week’s title, but I forgot and just took the name of the song that was playing at the time I posted it.  

Patrick is joined by a very special guest and they talk about Brexit, Roman Reigns’ suspension, Ikea, a non-Challengers comic shop, the first month of DC Rebirth titles, Civil War II and plenty more.

It’s total role-reversal this episode as Patrick chats with David Harper of SKTCHD.com and the Off Panel Podcast.

Lots more Rebirth talk, about this week’s Rebirth titles.

This episode was only 9 minutes… but then Patrick added to it. You’re welcome.

Patrick goes solo this week and is sorry for the terrible audio quality of this episode. Even more sorry for the passing of Darwyn Cooke.

What a week of events we’ve had! Jill Thompson, Lucy Knisley and Free Comic Book Day are all discussed here. Wheee!

A bonus episode! This is a rundown of the free comicsChallengers is offering on Free Comic Book Day!

DC presented retailers with a Rebirth Roadshow and we were there! Here’s a recap!

We’ve made an addition to our already awesome Free Comic Book Day line-up, and that addition is the delightful Andrea Bell! The creator of FAIR VOYAGE joins Patrick this week to talk art and comics, to drink beer, and to say “EpiPen” many times. And she doesn’t belch at all. Also, there are many (many) tangents.

Dal gives us a pre and post show rundown/recap for BotCon 2016, with a brief interlude from Patrick about picking up the free comic book day comics. So you still get BOTH CoC hosts, just separately.

Lots of news coming out of the weekend’s Emerald City Comicon.

Faith Erin Hicks will be @ Challengers this Wednesday! We also talk about lots of other stuff. Lots, I say!