Episode 140 - Beings Animalculous

The Psycho Pirate tried to undo Crisis. From Animal Man 23. (C) 2025 DC Comics.

Just in time for the pod’s 10th birthday, a bucket list guest for the show. We welcome, after two years of trying to line up schedules, Grant Morrison.

When we started discussing doing the pod with Grant, it was Animal Man’s 35th anniversary. It’s now the 37th anniversary, but all that matters is finally having the chat. We talk about the book’s creation back in 1988 during the first wave of the British Comics Invasion, when Grant, Gaiman, Milligan and McKean followed Alan Moore in working for DC. This leads to discussing the story that changed the book, issue 5’s “The Coyote Gospel.” From there, it’s talk about everything from B’Wanna Beast to The Red Bee, Captain Cold to The Inferior Five. That’s all leading up to the Psycho Pirate, his trying to undo Crisis and the debut of characters like Overman and Sunshine Superman. And that culminates with looking at the end of Grant’s time on the book, when Buddy travels through Limbo to meet … well, a fictionalized version of Grant, when gets to confront his creator about the death of his family and all the other bad stuff that has happened in these stories.

There’s lots of other stuff in our conversation including Swamp Thing, Sargon the Sorcerer, Doom Patrol, Batman, continuity, metafiction and of course Hypertime, where Grant explains the math behind the idea that most people didn’t understand.

As you may be able to tell during our chat, Animal Man was a very important book for me, it starting at the same time I was beginning college and being exposed to new ideas and writers like Borges. I’m so happy we were finally able to get this done and thanks to Grant’s wife Kristan for all her help over the years trying to balance Trans-Atlantic schedules, natural disasters and various medical issues over that time. But we never gave up, so we hope you like probably one of my favorite episodes of the podcast’s lifespan.

Episode 113 - Fat Pigeons

Morpheus meets Hector Hall. (c) 2022 DC Comics.

Much like the comic itself, our podcast on the first season of the Sandman TV show is finally here. To do so, we’re happy to welcome back AP reporter Ashraf Khalil (@ashrafkhalil) to talk about it. It’s only fitting since Ash read many of those issues by borrowing them off me or reading them in our dorm in college, when the series was being originally published back in the 1990s. We’ll talk about reading the series in real time, the pain of publishing delays, favorite stories and such. Then, we’ll discuss the TV show, what we liked and didn’t like, being faithful to the source material, casting choices in 2022 vs how the characters were written or created 30 years ago, future seasons and more. We also discuss some of Neil Gaiman’s other work adapted to TV, like American Gods and Good Omens.

(1:43:00) We also managed to sneak in some wrestling chat. Ash talked about what he is liking about the two big promotions currently and I mention some of the other stuff I’ve been watching. We also talk about the recent death of Antonio Inoki, some of his matches and his out-of-the-ring notoriety.

At the end, there’s some brief futbol chat, about Egypt not making the upcoming World Cup and the rivalries between African futbol powers.

A shout out to Vintage Phoenix Comics in Bloomington, Indiana, where many issues of Sandman were bought in the 1990s and our friend Victoria who was often along for the comic shop trips back then. Hope you are well, Vic.