Play Comics

Read transcript Today’s forecast for Manhattan: scattered goo, strong winds of questionable decision-making, and a one hundred percent chance that Spider-Man’s week gets worse. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is what happens when your friendly neighborhood hero wanders into the moodiest chapter of his career. The quips go quiet, the skies go dark, and Peter Parker learns that an alien goo outbreak is not something you can shake off with a witty one-liner. Even the city looks like it needs a nap, which is saying something for a place that’s been knocked flat in more video games than anyone can count. Chris is joined by Matt Turner of Pikaslash Plays, who bravely volunteered to talk through every dramatic stare, gloomy monologue, and crossover cameo. It’s two friends, one very gloomy version of New York, and a sincere attempt to figure out when Spider-Man stopped being the funny one. Pull up a chair, keep the lights on, and whatever you do, don’t adopt anything that moves on its own. Learn such things as: Is everything making fun of Spider-Man 3 now? Does every game really need an epic story to make it worth playing? How come the villains always come back after you beat them up? And so much more! You can find Matt as Pikaslash Plays on YouTube and Twitch. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. Play Comics is also part of Art Comedy Pop-Culture Network, which is a long-standing creative organization spawning from a love of Adult Swim. Be sure to check them out for all sorts of entertainment news, commentary, and just plain fun stuff. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Byrds Eye View Comics and Batman Knightcast for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who set up a swing set on the roof so we can swing and then jump off and swing some more. Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcript I get it, movie tie ins are hard. You’ve got a development timeline dictated by by an unobservable force. Expectations that are already lower than a kid who gets all of their candy stolen before they get a chance to eat any of it. The only thing you can do sometimes is get your friends and family and hope that they can help you through these tortuous times. And then a new kid shows up, going on and on about how someone bigger and badder is going to come around and eat your whole planet. And the new kid is cooler than you because he has a surfboard. And he’s shiney and possibly made of metal? Yeah things are getting weird. Helping me wrangle all of this insanity is Gary Jones from Divergent Comics. Which is a good thing too because I definitely needed a second opinion about some things here and Gary brought a nice calm perspective to counteract my annoyance that until very recently we just couldn’t get a good Fantastic Four movie no matter how hard we tried. And I really needed him to help keep my thoughts about the movie from staining my thoughts on the game. Get those forks ready, pitch or otherwise, because I know this one is going to leave a few people hungry for more. Learn such things as: Why can’t anyone just let Sue have the cool powers that she deserves? Is Reed stretched too thin trying to bridge the gap between super scientist and action star? Is any villain safe when they’re caught between a rock and a hot place? And so much more! You can find Gary @gmtj2k on Instagram and Threads, and catch Divergent Comics on Youtube or wherever you find great podcasts. Here’s the Apple link because why not. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. Play Comics is also part of Art Comedy Pop-Culture Network, which is a long-standing creative organization spawning from a love of Adult Swim. Be sure to check them out for all sorts of entertainment news, commentary, and just plain fun stuff. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to The Last Comic Shop and Tales From the Fandom for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who promised to always be my friend. And if anyone says I threatened to eat a planet to get that answer it’s a lie. Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcript Bruce Banner has the worst anger management plan in recorded history. Step one: don’t get angry. There is no step two, because the world is full of slow Wi-Fi, hold music, and a military that answers “please stop chasing me” by chasing him harder. It always ends the same way: one enormous green man, one miraculously intact pair of purple pants, and a repair bill the city will still be paying off in 2060. This episode is about The Incredible Hulk, the video game spun out of the 2008 film. It’s a story about a man who just wants a quiet life, a decent cup of coffee, and a cure, and who keeps getting interrupted by helicopters. His entire personality is a mood swing with a gym membership, and he is somehow still the most reasonable person in any room that contains Ross. Returning to the show to take the green wheel is Russell Moran of Kaiju ComicCast. Russell spends his days with some of the biggest monsters ever to flatten a skyline, which makes him the one guest who won’t flinch when a city block gets treated like a chew toy. That gives us the big question: is the Hulk a superhero, or a kaiju with a great publicist and a gamma-radiation origin story? Russell is here to rule on it. Keep a spare pair of stretchy pants handy, don’t make us angry in the comments, and let’s find out whether this one leaves you roaring or just leaves a very large hole in the wall. Learn such things as: How do you mess up a game about smashing things when you have basically the perfect example of that as a blueprint? Is Rick Jones the most prominent character who hasn’t gotten to be in a game yet? Why can’t Hulk just live a peaceful life in the middle of the rain forest doing his science stuff? And so much more! You can find Russell talking about Hulk on Gamma Charge for a blast from the past, and his current podcast Kaiju ComicCast. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. Play Comics is also part of Art Comedy Pop-Culture Network, which is a long-standing creative organization spawning from a love of Adult Swim. Be sure to check them out for all sorts of entertainment news, commentary, and just plain fun stuff. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Death Between the Stars written by Nico Vincenty and Saved as Draft for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who looks just smashing in purple pants. Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcript Congratulations! You’ve been hired by the Justice League. Your title is “Hero,” your qualifications are “showed up,” and your first assignment is standing in Metropolis next to Superman while a stranger in a very small cape asks you where the good loot is. Welcome to DC Universe Online, the game where you can create your own superhero and then spend the entire first hour in the character creator, agonizing over the exact shade of your cape and a name that isn’t already taken by eleven thousand other guys who thought “Night-something” was original. The premise is gloriously simple: you get to live in the same world as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of DC’s heavy hitters, and the heavy hitters are weirdly cool about it. Nobody asks for a résumé. Nobody questions why a hero named “SteelGhostFlash7” is suddenly on the Watchtower. The Joker is out there being the Joker, Lex Luthor is out there being smug, and you are out there trying to figure out whether you’re a legend in the making or just a guy in tights who’s very good at following the glowing arrow on the map. Leaping into the DC playground with us is David Gallaher, writer of some of your favorite video games and comics, which means he’s spent years inventing heroes and villains on purpose, a luxury the rest of us only get in a character creator. David has been on both sides of the page, so he’s perfect for the question at the heart of this episode: when you drop yourself into a universe where the icons were already established decades ago, do you feel like a hero, or a very enthusiastic extra with a better costume? So grab your most dramatic cape, practice your brooding stare in the mirror, and settle in. Somewhere out there a hero is saving the city, and he’s definitely using a username he regrets. Also be sure to check out the full post so you can see some of the stuff that Daybreak sent over for me to share. It doesn’t play nicely with RSS feeds. Learn such things as: How weird do character names get when you can’t have repeats even after 15+ years of a game existing? Is it really that important to pick a good mentor? What happens if there’s a big giant threat and they need everyone to come help defeat it and you just… don’t? And so much more! You can find David on BlueSky @DavidGallaher or on LinkedIn @dgallaher. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. Play Comics is also part of Art Comedy Pop-Culture Network, which is a long-standing creative organization spawning from a love of Adult Swim. Be sure to check them out for all sorts of entertainment news, commentary, and just plain fun stuff. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Across the Whoniverse and The Glitterjaw Queer Podcast Collective for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who is already a hero in my eyes. Support Play Comics by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/playcomics Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.

Read transcript Wolverine is the best there is at what he does, and what he does is get stabbed, shot, and set on fire before shrugging it off and asking where the nearest bar is. His healing factor makes him the only character in comics who can have a terrible day, a worse day, and a questionable haircut, and still be back to normal by Tuesday. It’s easily the most relatable power in the Marvel universe, provided you’ve ever tried to recover from a long weekend. This episode is about X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a game built on the idea that a man with an indestructible skeleton has somehow misplaced his own backstory. He’s got amnesia, a grudge, and a tank top collection that suggests he’s never once been cold. It’s a story about a guy trying to remember who he is, told in a medium where the answer is usually “the one who’s yelling and tearing through everything within reach.” Helping us sort through the rage and the sideburns is Grant Stoye, the comic writer behind some of your favorite independently released comics and one of the minds behind the currently running Kickstarter for Yule Volume 2. Grant knows a thing or two about Wolverine-level resilience. Independent creators bounce back from deadlines, printer quotes, and shipping costs that would flatten lesser mutants, and their healing factor runs on coffee and optimism. If anyone can tell us whether a hero who survives everything can still keep a story interesting, it’s a guy who makes comics happen with no safety net and a lot of heart. Bring a bandage you won’t need, hide anything made of paper, and let’s find out whether this one earns its snikt or just growls a lot and leaves. Learn such things as: Is this the movie tie in game that most improves over the movie that its tied to? Who else was waiting for Deadpool to appear in the game for some commentary? How do you handle gameplay damage when the character can heal themselves just by existing? And so much more! You can find Grant on BlueSky @therealgstoye and of course his website NounAndVerb. And definitely check out the Kickstarter campaign for Yule Volume 2. If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in. If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store. Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix. Play Comics is also part of Art Comedy Pop-Culture Network, which is a long-standing creative organization spawning from a love of Adult Swim. Be sure to check them out for all sorts of entertainment news, commentary, and just plain fun stuff. You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website. If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out. A big thanks to Escape the Mojoverse and D’ohmance Dawn for the promos today. Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who also has things growing out from between his fingers. But it’s licorice. Check out our podcast host, Pinecast. Start your own podcast for free with no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-89f00a for 40% off for 4 months, and support Play Comics.