Today on the Comics Syllabus podcast, we discuss “4 Kids Walk into a Bank” by Tyler Boss (art/design), Clare Dezutti (flatting), Thomas Mauer (lettering), Courtney Menard (wallpaper design), and Matthew Rosenberg (writing) from Black Mask Studios, along with “Secret Warriors” by Rosenberg (writer), Javier Garrón (artist), Israel Silva (color artist), VC’s Clayton Cowles (letterer) from Marvel Comics. We talk about team books and the radical difference of a collective narrative.
[audio: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/327813212-twoplai-002-4-kids-walk-into-a-bank-rosenberg-boss-black-mask-and-secret-warriors-rosenberg-garron-marvel.mp3]I’m Paul, and I’m inviting you to join us for another episode of The Comics Syllabus, a comics analysis podcast. Our mantra is, we read widely and we dig deep. Each week, I choose one work from a wide breadth of current and classic comics, including superhero fare, comics from independent publishers and small presses, global comics, newspaper strip archives, and various collected editions. We spend time digging deep into the work from various perspectives, sometimes in actual live conversation with others, sometimes with just me on a mic surrounded by a pile of comics studies and academic books. It’s like a comics seminar, where the only prerequisite is that you love comics.
This week’s Comics Syllabus podcast digs deep into the two comics written by Matthew Rosenberg, joined by artist Tyler Boss on “4 Kids Walk into a Bank” and by artist Javier Garrón on ‘”Secret Warriors.” I quote at length from Ramzi Fawaz’s The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (2015, New York University Press) to frame how team comics in the superhero genre present opportunities for different narratives, ones that involve containing multiple perspectives and personalities into one big mix.
SPOILER WARNING: In the beginning of the episode, we discuss these two comics in non-spoilery general terms. But after the second break at ( 38:00 ), we start diving into close-readings of the chosen work. So if you don’t want to be spoiled on the events and details of this work, please go and read it first, and come back to finish the episode with us and enjoy it with us. Consider it homework, but more fun.
Download the podcast episode here.
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Thanks for listening!
IMAGES DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
The Things that Make us Weirdos are the Things That Give Us Power
Chronological Narrative Sequence vs Motivational Narrative Sequence
Anti-authority as Leadership
