RiYL

I’d known Alex Segura for a few years, before I found out about his not so secret passion. We’d work together in the comics world, we as a journalist and him as a PR rep, first for DC and then for Archie. We were drinking together at some comics after party, when he casually mentioned that he was about to head down to Florida for a crime writers convention – and not just as a casual observer. This year Segura released his second novel, Down the Darkest Street, the second installment of his Pete Fernandez Mystery series set in his hometown of Miami. In this casual chat at a coffee shop in Astoria, Segura takes me through the world of mystery writing of which I know very little, while discussing side passions as his continued work as a writing on various comics titles, like the newly released Archie meets the Ramones. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I was excited when I first saw Pepe popping up on strange corners of the internet. After years of spotting Matt Furie’s work at indie comics shows like SPX and MoCCA, the online community was starting to take notice of his work, albeit in that idiosyncratic internetty way. But after years of bizarre and benign appearances on body building forums and Kim Kardashian’s Twitter feed, the stoned frog character seemingly, suddenly took a strange turn, embraced by some of the internet’s darkest recesses. Over the past several weeks, Pepe was reference by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, highlighted on the Rachel Maddow Show and, as of yesterday, designated as a symbol of hate by the Anti-Defamation League. Suddenly, the artist’s phone start ringing off the hook with dozens of calls from journalists asking Furie to defend his benign cartoon creation. Sure most artists would kill for a moment in the national spotlight, but practically overnight the cartoonist was in the incredibly unenviable position of having his name and creation linked with online hate groups. Furie kindly jumped on the phone for a quick chat while driving from his home in Los Angeles to an art showing in San Francisco. We talked about his unexpected and unfortunate fame, the power of simple symbols and his on-going efforts to steal Pepe back for the forces of good. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This one took a while to get out, unfortunately. Long story, but it dates back April, around the release of Faith Erin Hicks’ most recent book, The Nameless City. Thankfully, the new title is just the tip of the iceberg for the Canadian cartoonist, as the first of a three-book series for First Second, a period piece exploring an unlikely friendship set against the backdrop of an ancient city inspired by Central Asian architecture. It marks something of a departure for an artist whose work more often deals with a school setting, though Hicks has proven to be both diverse and prolific in the eight or nine years since she officially hit the comics scene with the undead adventure, Zombies Calling. Hicks currently has nearly a dozen works under her belt, as either a collaborator are sole creator, with topics ranging from Bigfoot to Buffy to the 2013 Dark Horse title, The Last of Us: American Dreams, a four issue miniseries inspired by the video game of the same name.The next book in The Nameless City trilogy has already been announced for next year, along with an upcoming collaboration with kids author, Rainbow Rowell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Frank Portman sends me his new record a few hours before we’re set to meet up at a coffee shop on Market Street. The whole thing came together at the last minute at the tail end of a three week long work road trip, and I only have time to listen to three or four songs before checking out of the hotel and meeting him down the street. But it’s enough. It’s new and familiar. It’s self-deprecating and funny, bouncing sugary pop-punk with a humorously cynical bit. The second song is called “Sadistic Masochism.” It goes, “Sadistic masochism, that’s how its gonna be / Sadistic masochism, baby you and it.” After a dozen years, the Mr. T Experience is back.It’s a perfect sort of return to music for Dr. Frank, a soundtrack for the sequel to his hit YA book, King Dork. The album, (like the book) titled King Dork, Approximately, finds Portman inhabiting the voice of his protagonist, high school rock musician, Tom Henderson, on 12 songs that are unmistakably the work of the MTX starship.  Portman’s time away from the microphone was largely unintentional, the result of a changing record industry, the implosion of the beloved East Bay record label that had served as their longtime home, and a somewhat accidental career as an author. In this extra long edition of RiYL, the artist discusses motel laundry, the publishing industry and not being Green day. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re back after an unexpected bye-week (sorry, I’ve been traveling a lot) posting up a fascinating interview with Laura “LP” Pergolizzi. The LA singer-songwriter has released a string of critically acclaimed albums, including, most recently, Death Valley, a five song EP released on Vagrant in June. In spite of such acclaim, the singer has struggled to maintain the commitment of major labels in a time when the music industry seems in the constant state of death rattle. While other artists are forced to look outside their own creative medium in order to make ends meet, LP has built a fascinating side career writing songs for some of musics big names like Cher and Rihanna. During a recent stopover in New York during a string of shows opening for Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry, the singer sat down for a long conversation about creativity, making ends meet in the music industry and pop song bootcamp. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up to now, Miss Lasko-Gross and Kevin Colden had never professionally collaborated in any official capacity — not out of any conscious decision, the pair had just never found the proper vehicle. After all, there hasn’t been a tremendous amount of overlap between the married couple’s respective output. Lasko-Gross’ best known work is the autobiographical Fantagraphics series, Escape from Special and the fantasy series Henni, while Colden’s 2007 rue-crime Fishtown was followed by flirtations with the superhero side of comics. Penned by Lasko-Gross and pencilled by Colden, The Sweetness fittingly marks a departure for both, a grotesquely comic sci-fi work about intergalactic drug smugglers. The pair joined sat down to discuss their first collaboration and the ups and downs of trying to make a living as New York City cartoonists.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Somewhere between the first LP and last year’s self-titled EP, things really started getting serious, so Potty Mouth did what any self-respecting rock and roll group would, packing up things in their small Massachusetts scene and moved to Los Angeles. New York, it turns out, just wasn’t in the cards for reasons they were happy to explain on the hot summer day we sat down in the band’s midtown publicity office. The band started in earnest in 2011, a casual side project from a pair of Smith College students, neither of whom had ever actually played guitar. The duo recruited an experienced drummer and rounded out the quartet with a front woman who was still enrolled in high school. A perfect punk rock original story, really. Later that same year, the band recorded a demo, followed by a debut EP the following year and a full length, Hell Bent, in 2013. Last year’s EP found the band working with producer John Goodmanson, whose resume is a who’s who of music acts from the past two decades, from Sleater-Kinney to the Wu-Tang Clan. The trio joined me during a whirlwind trip through the city to discuss Hollywood, touring and Pokemon Go. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back in 2008, two funny guys saying funny things into microphones with an optional third funny friend was the concept a podcast needed. But we’re living in the age of Serial, a time when show need a central idea to set themselves apart from millions of like-minded shows. Eight years after launching Stop Podcasting Yourself, comedian comic duo Dave Shumka and Graham Clark are giving their loyal audience even more bang for their podcasting bucks with Our Debut Album, a monthly podcast in which the pair force themselves to write and record a song in an hour. At the end of the twelve-part mini-series, the pair will have produced a full album, downloadable independent of the show.It’s as engaging as it is ambitious, both in term of content and monetization, a strategy that looks to generate income without a single mail order mattress ad. On this bonus episode recorded over Skype, the comedians join us to talk songwriting, supplemental income and what podcasting’s legacy will mean for future generations of Shumkas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ruben Bolling should have been a lawyer. He graduated from Harvard Law School, he married a lawyer, and he even does some work in the field. But after seeing an ad in a school paper, the artist’s fate was sealed, creating the first installment of Tom the Dancing Bug in a flash of creative inspiration. This week, the comic celebrates its 1,300th installment. Thirty-years after its Harvard Law School Record debut, the the strip has become a staple in alt-weekly paper across the US, along with various online outlets, including, most notably, Boing Boing, where’s it’s syndicated weekly. Tom showcases a wide range of styles, satirizing politics, celebrity culture and his fellow cartoonists, as is the case with both the reoccurring feature God-Man: The Superhero With Omnipotent Powers! and Super-Fun-Pak Comix, which jams a page of Sunday strip-style work in a single comic. After a year or so of scheduling conflicts, we finally managed to sit down and discuss Bolling’s beloved strip, just in time to get real about the role of comic strip satire in one of the scariest political years in recent memory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I feel obligated to say that I was very tired when we record this. I had just gotten off a plane from New York to LA, and Carrie Poppy was kind enough to let me crash on her couch for the night. We turned on the mics and started podcasting almost immediately, because hey, why not? We sat at the dining room table, which was littered with all manner of herbs and over the counter remedies. Research for the latest episode of Oh No, Ross and Carrie, the Max Fun podcast Poppy hosts with fellow skeptic Ross Blocher, which features a broad range of investigations, from organized religion to oxygen bars. The episode the pair were currently preparing for on the topic of nootropic smart drugs was a relative walk in the park after a multi-part series in which the pair infiltrated the Hollywood wing of the Church of Scientology, an act that garnered the attention of a number of best of podcasting lists -- and the church itself.  Naturally, we start the conversation with talk of plane crashes.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.