Category Archives: Podcasts

Digital Strips Podcast 249 – Review: Gingerbread Girl (You Could Catch Her, But You Probably Don’t Want To)

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Crazy... but that's how it goesI promised myself that I wouldn’t do another of those cheesy intros that I do here, where I say something like “This week on Digital Strips, you’ll actually learn something..” and then proceed to reveal that all you learn is something bad about Jason. And I could totally do that this time too, in the first five minutes we learn that he’s a weiner, an old man and kind of a pervert. But really, we already knew all that and it also comes up that I’m a bit of a creeper, so I’ll just leave it be.

This week we’re talking about Gingerbread Girl by Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover, where we meet Annah Billips and her twin ripped from her own brain, Ginger. It’ll make more sense if you read the comic.

We start out this week with all those discoveries mentioned above, then jump into Google + and social media in general and why I just don’t get it.

We then go off the rails into the first break with a cover of “Crazy Train” by Jason Heath and the Greedy Souls.

Next it’s news, where we cover:

The next break is a version of “Send Me an Angel,” by Emily Zisman and Ryan Avery.

Finally we get into the actual comic. We talk about the spastic storytelling style, why too many narrators is bad, the difference between a story and a set up and how bad navigation can make you hate a comic. We also hit on the art, the portrayal of Portland and the interesting set up contained therein. And we write me into the comic, so I can do some much needed bodily harm to a character or two.

Please, drop us a line about what you think.

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Digital Strips Podcast 248 – Horizons Watch: Free Mars and Oyster Wars (That Should Rhyme, But It Doesn’t)

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Mario NOOOOO!!!It’s a holiday here in America. I really don’t think I need to say that though. We Americans are pretty outspoken about our holidays. I don’t think too many people are caught off guard by any one of them any more (except Mother’s Day, which sneak attacks thousands of men every year). This goes along with the general theme of being American of “non-sublety.” We are not a nation of ninjas, I’ll tell you what.

Anyway, it’s time for another episode of Digital Strips Horizon’s Watch. This month we bring two more quality up and comers to the Brotherhood of Web Comics for your approval. First we do Free Mars by Dave Pauwels and Nicolas R. Giacondino, a grungy, flowing and epic tale of the rock and roll and the revolution of Mars. Next we go back in time to the days of Reconstruction, wood ships and piracy with Oyster War by Ben Towle one of those neo-oldschool comics that I love so much.

We also talk about Mario and video games in general for a bit. I share a little life lesson I learned about eavesdropping on old people and Jason raves about having a Mac.

We then hear the first of our Mario themed songs, “Pipes” by Seventh Epic.

We then go to news. Jason mentions a couple new comics. Bucko and Cochlea and Eustachea (Jason couldn’t say it properly so I can’t find it, if you can translate his babbling into a link, let me know EDIT: Link now present and working. You’re welcome. – MIDNIGHT). Then we talk about Kate Beaton, Meredith Gran and Carly Monardo take on “Strong Female Characters” and about how I apparently don’t know enough dirty words.

We then hit the latest book releases from Scenes from a Multiverse and Imagine This.

The mushroom popping tunes continue with “Monstrous Turtles” by Zircon.

We finally get in to the reviews, giving both comics the what for. We also mention Spacetrawler, Ellie Connelly and Rigby the Barbarian. We talk a lot about scope and how some stories don’t have a good sense of it.

Sorry, I’m wrapping this up. It’s about time for me to celebrate the birth of my nation by eating pancakes in the park. God bless America. And pancakes.

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Digital Strips Podcast 247 – Review: The Ghosts of Pineville (Pick Your Class)

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OK ladies and gents, I’m back in charge of the editing/posting for a month or so, which means that you’re not going to get the luxurious, weak-kneed posts you’ve been getting from that namby-pamby Jason fellow. No, I’m going to hone you into a finely tuned Web comic loving machine with my spartan style of hard love.

We reviewed a Web comic, you can listen to it here.

Done.

Ok, that may not be enough, even for me.

Curse you Jason, curse you and your stupid face.

This week we charge straight into the haunted house armed with nothing but a flash light as we review The Ghosts of Pineville by Sara Turner. It’s a timeless little jaunt into the world of small town kids and fighting small town ghosts in the big city. I actually just found it while desperately searching for something to review and my love for spunky kids and standing up to the undead pulled me straight to it.

We start out this episode talking about one of the greatest things to ever happen to mankind, Team Fortress 2 going free to play. I’ve been playing for years and am beyond thrilled that more people could soon be playing (hit me up on Steam if you ever wanna kill some dirty REDs together. I’m “Fish in a Barrel”). I try to recruit Jason to the good, color-coordinated fight and we get into a discussion about what kind of gamers we are and what kind of game related media we enjoy. A challenge was thrown down to see if Jason’s pick, the folk at Giant Bomb have the same depth (not breadth) of knowledge as Steve’s champion, Mr. Day9. You can join in the fun too.

Keeping with the TF2 theme, our first song break is “Cap My Point” by EnigmaEvocative.

We then get into the news, recapping all the news posts that have magically reappeared on the Digital Strips home page. Strips mentioned include:

Not Invented Here (8:15)
Tiny Cartridge (9:15)
Max Over Acts (9:45)
Eldritch (10:45)

We then hit you with a second TF2 song, Mmph the Way You Mmph by mymapagainstyourcash (I love Internet names).

Finally we get into the review. We talk about the art and some of the cool ways the story could go. We don’t hold back on spoilers but there’s not any major stuff to spoiler. If you only want to read things completely fresh, you’ll want to go ahead and read the comic yourself before coming back. Throughout the discussion, we also mentioned the following comics.

Northworld (21:45)
Hereville (22:15)
Templar AZ (22:15)

Thanks for stopping by, just a reminder we love feedback in all its glorious forms so don’t be shy.

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Digital Strips Podcast 246 – Review: SMASH (Goin’ Down To K-Town)

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It’s funny, Steve and I were just saying before recording this very episode that we appreciate it when podcasts are quick and succinct, not getting lost in useless drivel simply for the sake of lengthening their content. The Bugle is one such podcast: hosts John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman are masters of spinning the news into something much more entertaining and bitingly hilarious. While we’re not quite there yet, we do a decent job of lampooning webcomics news with our Digital Strips News Minute.

… except that we don’t. Not this week, at least. After shuffling about some random game talk in the first segment (and being ethereally glided to our second segment with “Heroes”, a Final Fantasy Legend II remix by Ziwtra [6:06]), we take a few moments to discuss the importance of being able to separate the creator from their respective personas, fictionally-nourished or inspired by their actual deeds and opinions.

Our specific examples include Doug TenNapel of RatFist (8:22), Scott Adams of Dilbert, and even Tracy Morgan of 30 Rock and SNL fame. All of these men have found acclaim in their respective mediums, yet they find themselves with dark clouds hanging overhead due to inflammatory statements made here or there. Can the artist exist wholly excised from their persona? We attempt to come to grips with this issue and welcome your input on the subject! Oh, we also mention PvP (10:37) in the process, but then again, when don’t we mention that comic?

Finally, White Mystery take us to our third segment with “Party” (17:45) and sets up the rollicking fun of our featured strip, SMASH (18:59), quite well. This a great, if not somewhat cliched, child fantasy of superheroism, but, as Steve puts it, cliches are wonderful when they are done well. We might not agree completely on the level of success that brothers/creators Chris and Kyle Bolton achieve with this work, but we can certainly attest to the quality contained in the pages thus far.

Enjoy the show and stick around the site for news summations as well as the first notice of what we’ll be doing for Episode 247!

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Digital Strips Podcast 245 – Book Club – Order of the Stick – 2nd Edition – No One Remembers The News, Only Huey Lewis

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Everyone ready to talk about Back to the Future? How about Halo? Maybe Order of the Stick? Good, because all of these things, and more, are on the menu for this week’s just-under-an-hour edition of the Digital Strips Book Club!

If you hadn’t guessed, the BttF/Halo stuff comes in our first segment, now home to a mix of anything and everything. And leading us from quite a bit of video game chatter is, fittingly, a video game tune, courtesy of Benjamin Briggs titled, “Climb My Mountain, This High” (7:53). His remix of a classic Link’s Awakening tune (out now, on the Nintendo 3DS eShop!) is a wonderful example of how masterful some video game music truly is (if you missed the first ten minutes or so of this year’s Nintendo press event at E3, do yourself a favor and track that down soon).

After this interlude, it’s all business.  Or as business-y as the Digital Strips News Minute can get!

That all pretty much speaks for itself, so why not groove on into our third, slam-bang segment with Stray Dogg’s “Break” (15:54).

It’s hard to say much about this, the 2nd of our 86 part series of Book Clubs on the archivally-engorged Order of the Stick. Possibly because there is still going to be plenty of time to talk about it throughout the remainder of this calendar year. Possibly because things get ugly when the topic of comic strip vs. comic book is broached. Regardless, you should listen and then let us know what your thoughts on this divisive, but incredibly popular series are.

Also mentioned on our ride to insanity:

Finally, after the credits have rolled and the music has sounded, tune in to the after show, where I regale Steve with thoughts about my lunch with a former Digital Stripper (hint: His name rhymes with Brandon J. Carr). Burgers topped with fried egg for everyone!

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Digital Strips Podcast 244 – Weiner’s Weenies (Horizons Watch feat. Cucumber Quest and The Abaddon)

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When it comes to finding new, exciting, promising webcomics, Digital Strips has always been right in the thick of it, reviewing the big ones before they got big, and skimming the shallowest of archives in search of the best and brightest that the world of digital comics has to offer. Horizons Watch carries on that grand tradition and we’ve got two great contenders on tap for this show.

But first, the silliness we like to bottle up and deliver via our first segment! Hope you like movies and/or movie clips, because we’ve got a plethora of them. And yes, I can say we have a plethora, because I know what a plethora is (bonus film reference!).


If you recognize the first music break (10:02), then you’ve obviously played one of the best games of 2011: Portal 2. And the best news of all, this song, and all the others on the Portal 2 Official Soundtrack Vol. 1, can be yours for free. Valve (creator of Portal and other fine video games) is cool like that.

Our second segment contains our first bit of actual webcomics talk with the Digital Strips News Minute! On the docket this go ’round:

Not a great deal of news to talk about, but what’s there is juicy. Does anyone who follows webcomics in the more focused sense even care about either Comics.com or GoComics.com (which Steve freely admits to thinking were one and the same)? How about another go at it for the Least I Could Do animated show? And PC Weenies is undoubtedly worth pouring one out for, if not two or even three, given its twelve year run. Here’s hoping we hear more from Krishna in the future.

We also mentioned (12:16) David Malki ! of Wondermark in our discussions, an incredibly hilarious and wonderfully old-fashioned romp of a comic in its own right.

Before we launch into our 20th Horizons Watch, take a listen to (16:58) Rocketship Park’s “Swan”, a perfect companion piece to our latest episode of Put Up or Shut Up.

Our two comics speak for themselves in terms of their quality and content:

Cucumber Quest, in particular, begs a brief mention of (22:16) Tiny Kitten Teeth, and The Abaddon… well, lets just say that LOST is mentioned and the rest is just a furious haze. I’m pretty sure I may have done something to Steve’s outro, though. Might take a listen to that.

All in all a great discussion, a spirited bout, a perfect way to cap off the 20th Horizons Watch. Here’s to twenty or so more!

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Digital Strips Podcast 243 – Say Man One More Time And I Will Gut You (Review – Manly Guys Doing Manly Things)

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Listening to this, the manliest episode of Digital Strips ever, is guaranteed to put hair on your palms. Or is it, if you listen to this while… you know what, just trust that this episode has more testosterone that fifty of Tim Allen’s grunts and we’ll be good.

For the foreseeable future, consider the first segment to be a a free-for-all session, not unlike… well, not unlike another mini-podcast we’re doing weekly on the Audioboo network called Put Up or Shut Up. Our topic this time around, if you can call it that, is the so-called Rapture that was scheduled for Saturday the 21st. We also delve a bit into the joys of CSI memes and random sound effects that Steve has always pined for.

We’ve also got recommendations for a couple other podcasts we think you’d like:

And we can’t talk movies and webcomics without mentioning my favorite movie-centered comic:

Taking us into the second segment is an Overclocked Remix courtesy of Sixto Sounds from the butchest of video game series, Double Dragon, titled, “The Streets of Sosetsuken” (8:38). And in that second segment, as always, is the Digital Strips News Minute!

In particular, I must speak to the shortest of short clips that we used to represent the new Scott and Kris show. I mentioned in the show that their brand of comedy is very hit-or-miss for me, but after seeing the entire clip they have posted at the Kickstarter site (basically a pilot for the coming series), I can safely say that this is something I’m greatly looking forward to.

Marching with manliness, we join Kill Me Tomorrow with their rhythmic groove, “Attendance” (17:20) as they carry us into the third segment, where we are pumped and primed to review the macho video game comic…

I admit upfront my bias towards video game webcomics, but with at least a few criticisms about this one, I think I found enough different tweaks to the formula to call this one worthy of our attention. Steve would certainly agree with that theory. Plus, a dude beats Pokemon to death with another Pokemon, thus leveling it up. After all the gaming comics I’ve read, that is one joke I’ve not seen before.

As always, this comic made us think of several others:

Not tired of us yet? Stick around after the close for some outtakes, featuring, among other things, eye boogers, Batman vs. The Sore Throat, and The Race Of The Centurrryyyyyyyyyyyy!

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Digital Strips Podcast 242 – Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I’ll Maim You Tomorrow (Review – Spacetrawler)

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If there is one thing that makes for good broadcasting, it’s heated debate. Disagreements, hotly-contested opinions, fact vs. fiction, this kind of stuff is what we, as primal beings, crave in our entertainment. How else could the reality TV genre survive, nay, flourish, for all these years? Well, we’ve got just that for you in our third (that’s right, third) segment when we review Spacetrawler by Christopher Baldwin.

But first up, there’s news in the second segment!

Ok, so there really is no news to speak of, but we chat briefly about Mortal Kombat (if it’s not spelled with a kapital K, you’re just doing it wrong) in the first segment and then use one news morsel to springboard into a possible topic after the first break, provided by the fine folks at Overclocked Remix.

Are regular, planned breaks in an online-distributed comic cool so long as they come at a natural, bookended stopping point? Or should the online work continue flowing, never ceasing? Let your voices be known, via email, the comments (below), Twitter, or Facebook! We value all thoughts, social media-driven or no. During this discussion, we mention some key players with this thought in mind:

Leading us into the middle of the fracas is a delightful, inappropriately mellow tune from yet another talented artist found at FreeMusicArchive.org.

Alright, here it is, the brawl-to-end-it-all, the knockdown-dragout fight that ensues when two men don’t quite see eye-to-eye on a matter. That matter is the awesomeness that is Spacetrawler. Are its characters underdeveloped and suffering from a lack of investment, as Steve claims? Or are they the best ensemble put together since Danny Ocean first said, “Hey, guys, lets steal something huge to piss off a rich douche who’s doing my wife”, as Jason posits? Regardless, the end result proves we’re both lovers, not fighters (not like that).

Helping us out are a few comics that inspire and influence Spacetrawler, as well as a variety of other works, in various ways:

Join in the conversation and let us know where your allegiance lies! Is Spacetrawler a great comic? Or, is Spacetrawler the greatest comic?

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Digital Strips Podcast Episode 241 – Book of the Month Club Feat. Order of the Stick, Part 1

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When we decided to start another show format with Book Club, we were hopeful that it would force us to either catch up and discover for the first time a multitude of webcomics that every fan should have on their virtual (or real, as the case may be) bookshelves. It’s Steve’s turn to pick again and his decision to delve into the deep catalog of Rich Burlew’s Order of the Stick is one that I’m already approving of.

But before we enjoy that, what good news is there on offer? Find out with the Digital Strips News Minute!

Mentioned but not featured in the News Minute are:

Whew! After that bloated first segment, why not let the light, bouncy techno sounds of Hot Fire’s, “Them Never Love No Bans – DnB Mix (Germany)” cut the load and prepare you for the morsel that is our Book of the Month Club pick, likely for the foreseeable future (and possibly the year after that).

As mentioned, we’re taking a good, hard, long look at the deep archives of Order of the Stick (18:45) for our third edition of Book Club. It’s great fun and takes on the genre comedy challenge in a unique and unexpected way, one that forces the reader to bring a little something extra to the experience. The subject matter at hand brings us to another webcomics that is both unsurprising in terms of its similarities and striking in its differences.

Steve also mentions an older show, the first-ever DS Livecast (short-lived but maybe returning someday?) which featured Order of the Stick, which neither of us had anything to do with.

Listen in for our thoughts on this long-running classic fantasy webcomic and let us know where you stand! Hunker in, because this Book Club is likely to carry us right into the holiday season! Good thing I’m already wearing my +9 Scaled Undergarments of Uncomfortable Warmth.

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Digital Strips Episode 240 – Eisner Awards Nominees Specialtravaganza 2011!

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It’s that time of year again! The trees are blooming, allergies are irritating, and it’s time once again for me to take over putting this show together!

Oh, and it’s also time for the Eisners. Kind of a big deal too, I suppose.

This year’s nominees represent one of the strongest bunch since the category for Best Digital Comic was formed in 2005 (thanks, WikiPedia!). But before we break down that list, there’s another list to talk about: The Digital Strips News Minute!

Before we roll into the matter that brought us all here today, why not have a little fun with Higgins and their track, “There He Is”. As always, make sure to check out the entire track and possibly even a whole album, if you feel so inclined.

Without laying out our favorites, I’ll say now that there is very little criticism to be had in the second segment. These five comics represent some of the best talent that the world of digitally-presented comics has to offer.

In our discussion, we wouldn’t want to leave out two other comics who are nominated in other categories:

  • (29:37) Hereville (Best Publication for Teens, Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword)
  • (29:50) Sheldon (Best Humor Publication, Literature: Unsuccessfully Competing Against TV Since 1953)

Of course, we always mention numerous other comics in our journey to making a point, so here are those we utilized to that end.

Finally, it’s easy to forget that Digital Strips was the first webcomics podcast because we don’t tell you nearly enough. As a result, we have an extensive library of podcasts to draw from in our research (I finally stopped laughing enough that I could write that). So here are some of the shows that link with this one in one way or the other. Listen in and enjoy the rich history that webcomics have enjoyed so far!

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