Comic Relief Podcast

A very special note – the beginning music in this podcast was done by Taylor Davis. Please check out her video right over here. She has an amazing assortment of musical pieces she’s done – so it’s probably a good idea to subscribe to her Youtube channel. And if you need more Taylor Davis – please, by all means check out her website or check out her online store! Her manager had given us permission to use the music. And I am so thankful for it.

All right – with that said and done, let me tell you – this was the funnest podcast I have had the pleasure of being a part of and editing! I had a lot of fun with this one! Throughout the podcast you will hear various Star Wars sound effects, thanks to the official Star Wars Dot Com – Soundboard (They have since gotten rid of the site). For example, normally I simply “beep” out any cuss words; this time I used the droid from Cloud City that 3PO calls “Rude.” There’s also mention, at times of when we’re talking about various ships, where you will hear them fly by in the background of the podcast! Seriously. This one was so much fun.

In this one, our good friend, Chad Cavanaugh. And he was so fun to have on here.

Things had not gone as well as we’d hoped.

Still very fun.

Free Comic Book Day at SoCal was always one of my favorite events to do because we got to actually set up a booth, which made us feel all super official…

But more importantly, because we had a booth we had all kinds of guests come onto the show and do some Q&A about their comics, what they enjoy and all of that…

Some of my favorites though were when kids agreed to come onto the podcast… because I think back to when I was a kid, before I was shy, before crowds gave me anxiety, you would not have been able to shut me up about my passion for comics (primarily the X-Books and Avengers related stuff). So being able to provide that avenue for kids was a way of me being able to step back in time for what I wish I could have done.

For 2015 we were right by the door for SoCalComics, so we caught a lot of traffic – and both Chad (who I mentioned previously) and Colleen were there (Colleen’s both was actually positioned right next to ours).

What was cool for 2015, we were also raffling off stuff – but folks had to come onto the show to enter the drawing.

… hanging out with Colleen of Wyng’d Lyon Creations and her booth.

In this episode it was really cool to talk to Greg Weisman (Gargoyles, Young Justice, Star Wars Rebels, Rain of Ghosts), but we also ended up interviewing a few others – Joy Decapua (Blackjack Comics), Jason Beckwith (Taking Eden), Ray Chou (Skies of Fire), and Tanya Bjork (Havenhurst)!

I think once we interviewed Neal Adams, we felt like we could interview anyone. Interviewing a legend like Neal Adams who had such a wide span across his career in comics was crazy intimidating, because it’s difficult to narrow down just what to talk about.

Adding interviews to the podcast was also fun because it was adding a new element where it wasn’t just Maico and I coming up with content for each episode – we were getting folks (like Neal Adams and Greg Weisman) to talk about their career – and then we had aspiring people trying to make their way into the comic book world in our podcast as well. And that felt great, to help get their word out about their work.

Going through the photos, found where the wife and I had flown to New York, for work for her… but there happened to be an Avengers Station event there that we went to as well…

Neal Adams contributed so much to comics, especially to Batman. So back in April 29th, 2022, I was sad to hear that Neal had passed away. But he left such a long lasting impact and legacy throughout comics – that no one is ever going to forget him. So he will always be immortal. And he would go on to be the first really big artist/writer who has been published in major comics (in his case, Marvel and DC).

Maico and I discussed some of our favorite and least favorite heroes and villains… and I made a cover based off of an Avengers cover for this episode…

The cover I was spoofing was Avengers #221 for anyone who was insanely curious… no one? Well fine, there it is to the left so you get an idea of what I was trying to do.

Anyway, it was a fun episode – because it was all very unscripted and unplanned as we just blabbed about the various characters, giving opinions about each thing someone suggested.

… due to a fan being right next to the mic when we recorded, and I thought it’d be funny to call it The Problem With Fans, making it sound like we were going to talk about Comic Book Fans. What we had ended up doing, however – is we were lucky enough to get sneak previews to the original Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

Not only did we get to see a preview of it, but it also happened to be in 3D – as well as lang on my birthday! So it was wins all the way around.

After walking out of Guardians of the Galaxy, I was convinced Marvel had made the perfect movie. Guardians of the Galaxy went down as my favorite Marvel MCU movie (and probably, still is) – because not only was it a huge surprise on how well it was done (it was based off the Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning version, which I was collecting comic wise, and not the futuristic Guardians of the Galaxy which is an entirely different roster of people)… Anyway, it also had an amazing soundtrack to go along with it.

Long Beach Comic Expo and hang out in Colleen’s booth (who owns and runs Wyng’d Lyon Creations – but, as fate would have it, and illness would strike Tawmis down for nearly two and a half weeks, so that he was unable to attend. Instead, Colleen, who was just going to be a special guest on the podcast, ended up filling Tawmis’ seat and being the co-pilot to the episode! It turned out to be an amazing, fun, episode! We also managed to interview Joy of Black Jack Comics. You can check out their website, Facebook page, as well as their twitter.

It was a lot of fun being at the Convention and hanging out with Colleen there. It was also pretty cool that the Long Beach Comix Expo Twitter account retweeted our tweet about being there (see there to the left!)

There were a lot of wonderful people in costume there – but one of the cool moments was once again, getting the opportunity to meet a lot of cool people…

This wasn’t the first time I’d met Stan Sakai – I think the first time was a few years back at San Diego Comic Con where I was getting a book autographed for my friend Adam, and I got to talking to Stan Sakai. And the guy is so… freaking… humble… and amazing… that, I walked away from that signing a fan of Stan forever. Each year since, I’ve either picked up a book (or a trade), just to speak with him and have him sign in.

He’s another one, like Whilce from WonderCon, that I wished, at some point, to ask if he had any free time in his day to do a 15 minute interview for our podcast – because just hearing him speak is absolutely amazing.

… was digging through some pictures and found these…

This had inspired me, for WonderCon 2014 to make our own badges…

I certainly do miss this fun, creativity the podcast often inspired in me.