Quarantined Comics

Merry ComiXmas Week 3: ESTHER'S NOTEBOOKS "In Esther’s life, each day’s a show, Riad’s keen eye captures all her woe. From playground drama to lunchroom fights, He writes down her quirks, her dreams, her delights— A glimpse of growing up, with all its wobbly flow! This holiday season, we're airing our 10 COMICS OF XMAS - an excuse to recommend and replay some our fav books that make a thoughtful gift for your loved ones (or great reading to comfort your dark and lonely nights) ESTHER'S NOTEBOOKS, by Riad Satouff is the perfect comic for the co-worker who has kids, and is in constant awe and confusion about them. ESTHER'S NOTEBOOKS is the critically acclaimed cartoon series that chronicles the hilarious and heartbreaking true life of a young girl growing up in Paris, by Riad Satouff, the award-winning French Syrian cartoonist best known for his childhood cartoon autobiography, the Arab of the Future (one of the first books we read on this pod) Several years ago, Sattouf was out to dinner with some of his friends, who brought along their outgoing young daughter — and as some of you with young daughters might already know...she would...not...stop...talking. Sattouf was fascinated by the young girls honest, garrulous and articulate nature, and seeking to contrast his childhood autobiography of growing up in the middle east in the 1980s, Sattouf decided to chronicle a modern child's take on life So over the past three years, Riad Satouff has been a chatting with his friends outgoing young daughter, anonymized as Esther, where once a week she would tell him about her family, her school, her dreams, her fears. After each conversation he published a one page comic strip based on what she had said First published in 2016 - Esther's Notebooks is an ongoing series that spans the first three years of young girl's life — from ages 9 thru 12 — over 156 comic strips, giving us a delightful look into the daily drama of this thoughtful, intelligent, and high spirited girl, who loves her father, finds her big brother annoying, loves French hip hop, and just wants an iPhone - among many, many other things. Satouff has said “The real Esther interested me because she is a girl without a particular background. She has no family problems, her parents are together, she is not poor or rich, not stunningly beautiful nor plain, not super-intelligent but good at school. She is your average young girl without any particular backstory. Listening to her stories, I realised that they were hard, amusing and sometimes cruel, but they transmitted the reality of childhood.” Satouff has said he plans to chronicle her life in cartoons until Esther's eighteen. It’s an unfiltered look into modern childhood and not exclusively French - despite providing a crash course into popular French hip hop artists. The way Esther grows up, interacts with social media, worries about terrorism, sexism, racism and questions of having or not having money, speaks to a universal audience. Occasionally we're brought into the trauma of current events - from a young child's perspective, whether its the Paris terror attacks or the political moment of Trump, Le Pain - Macron, and even Putin

Merry ComiXmas Week 2: NOT ALL ROBOTS "In a world where bots do all the grind, Humans lounge, completely blind. 'Hey, we’re not useless!' they all proclaim, While robots roll their eyes in shame— 'Good luck, meatbags; we’re done being kind!' " This holiday season, we're airing our 10 COMICS OF XMAS - an excuse to recommend and replay some our fav books that make a thoughtful gift for your loved ones (or great reading to comfort your dark and lonely nights) NOT ALL ROBOTS, by Mark Russell & Mike Deodato Jr. It's the perfect comic for the coworker who has a twisted sense of humor, and afraid of the impending robocolypse NOT ALL ROBOTS - a future fiction work by Mark Russell, who you might remember for schadenfreude takes on modern society thru his critically acclaimed work on "The Flintstones" (seriously, look it up) In Not All Robots, writer Mark Russell + artist Mike Deodato, Jr. drop us into the 2056 bubble city of Atlanta, where robots have replaced human beings in the workforce worldwide. An uneasy co-existence develops between the newly intelligent robots and the ten billion humans on earth. And since AI and robots and have taken over all the jobs - save hairdressers - every human family is assigned a robot upon whom they are completely reliant. We spend most of the story with the Walters, a human family whose robot Razorball (Snowball) ominously spends his free time in the garage, but we also spend time at his robot place of work making Mandroids - his inevitable replacement, having his robot copatriots telling him to remove his empathy chip. We also get to hear lots of human and robot cable news style commentary that is equal parts hilarious and worrying sign of things to come. Did wmention that the book won the prestigious Eisner Award in 2022 for Best Humor Publication?

way back when, on October 10, 2022, Ryan made Raman re-read Alan Moore's seminal run on Swamp Thing, which Ryan then forgot to edit and release. hey, life got busy! Lasting from issues 20–64 between 1984–1987, Moore's series completely reshaped the character of the Swamp Thing. In an effort to feed the sweet sweet podcast content machine, here's the long lost episode, exactly two years later...

A few weeks ago, we lost a great comics artist far too soon. John Cassaday was an award-winning American comic book artist, writer, and television director - who passed away on September 9, 2024 in New York City at the age of 52 i think it goes without saying that comics is a medium where great writing and art come together for a truly great medium of storytelling. and when both are firing on all cylinders, it truly something to behold. John Cassaday was one of those artists. So on Quarantined Comics, we've had the good fortune to revisit some of the works Cassaday was best known for: This episode we'll be talking about 1998's critically acclaimed series Planetary, which he co-created with Warren Ellis. John later went on to work on Marvel's relaunch of Star Wars with Jason Aaron, whose first issue sold more than a million copies. Acclaimed writer Mark Waid, who was one of the first to help Cassaday get his start said this — “I refuse to take any real credit for ‘discovering’ John Cassaday,” Mr. Waid wrote on Facebook. “I can’t take credit for having functioning eyeballs.”Next week we'll be re-sharing our episode about his work on 2004's Astonishing X-Men. Rest in peace John Cassaday, you were one of the greats. NY TIMES: John Cassaday, Award-Winning Comic Book Artist, Dies at 52 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/arts/john-cassaday-dead.html

"The idea that a person can't relate to something because it's not directly about them is a misunderstanding of who's been reading books this whole time." Mariko Tamaki is an award-winning Canadian comics creator and writer — known for works like Skim and This One Summer (with her cousin Jillian Tamaki). Her latest novel is Cold, a haunting YA novel about four students who knew too much and said too little. AND Mariko’s also the Co-founder & Editor of Surely Books - a comics imprint of LGBTQIA+ creators. Mariko’s ALSO known for comics like Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me, Emiko Superstar, and several prose works of fiction and nonfiction. AND since 2016, Mariko’s been writing for Marvel & DC comics - on powerful books like I Am Not Stafire, and Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass. Mariko’s also only the second woman to write Detective Comics - the 1000+ issue flagship DC series about the Dark Knight. If you can’t tell by now, one of us has been a BIG Mariko Tamaki fan for awhile, and after hearing her approach to writing and sharing personal stories, you soon will be too. This is a replay of an earlier chat from 2022 - we’re airing it in honor of Marikos’ winning of the Eisner Award (among comics most prestigious honors) - for the 2023 graphic novel ROAMING - which she co-created with her cousin Jillian. BOOK: Roaming: goodreads.com/book/show/62207006-roaming NEWS: comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards/ LEARN ABOUT MARIKO TAMAKI & HER WORK: * twitter.com/marikotamaki * instagram.com/marikotamaki * goodreads.com/author/show/483588.Mariko_Tamaki * Surely Books: abramsbooks.com/imprints/surely * This One Summer: goodreads.com/book/show/18465566-this-one-summer * Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me: goodreads.com/book/show/40864841-laura-dean-keeps-breaking-up-with-me * Skim: goodreads.com/book/show/2418888.Skim * MENTIONS * Heather Gold: heathergold.com/about-heather-gold * Jillian Tamaki: jilliantamaki.com * Lauren Tamaki: laurentamaki.com * Gene Luen Yang: geneyang.com * BOOK: Stone Fruit (Lee Lai): goodreads.com/en/book/show/55678434 * BOOK: Shadow Life (Hiromi Goto, Ann Xu): goodreads.com/en/book/show/51591596 * Alice Munro: wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Munro * Timothy Findley: wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Findley *

During a worldwide Quarantined Comics and Rabbit Fighters podcast REVOLUTION, Raman + Josh (two non-Persian dudes doing a Persian protagonist podcat) got the ORIGINAL band back together to talk about a comic that somehow NEITHER of us had read before, PERSEPOLIS, by Marjane Satrapi, an award winning, now banned graphic autobiography from the early 2000s about a young girl growing up in Iran, and becoming a woman overseas, returning home, and dealing with everything in between. The book was originally published in French, and has sold millions of copies worldwide. Its creator Satrapi later produced an award-winning film of the same name In Persepolis, we meet young Marjane “Marji” Satrapi growing up in Tehran just before and during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, as well as thru the start of the Iran + Iraq War in the 1980s. Her parents, are secular, upper-middle class activists, who worry for their precocious daughter's safety in the increasingly conservative and dangerous Iran, so send her off to Austria to become a teenager. Her teen years are fraught with all the drama you can expect from such an experience, but Marji - now becoming a young woman - always maintains the experience of an outsider looking in - with her feet in both worlds. Marji eventually returns to Iran to find that not only has her mother country changed, but she as well. This book was a surprise and illuminating for us in many ways, making us question - what would WE do in such a situation?

”Being a writer is just bloody hard work and passion. It is a kind of madness, which compels you every day to go to say, ‘OK, let's do it again today’ “ = With summer here, and QC still on hiatus while Raman + Ryan tend to their day-jobs, we wanted to feature a chat from Raman's OTHER podcast MODERN MINORITIES - featuring conversations with authors of historical fiction NOVELS about the 1957 Partition of India + Pakistan Manreet Sodhi Someshwar’s the author of nine novels - including the Long Walk Home, Radiance of a Thousand Suns, and most recently the Partition Trilogy - a historical fiction novel series which Raman is a BIG fan of. Manreet’s articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and the South China Morning Post, among others. She has taught for the New York Public Library and the City College of New York - and she’s a former corporate citizen having done stints in Asia, and a parent grappling with the world our kids will inherit. Manreet’s recently complete Partition Trilogy - a series of 3 books titled Lahore, Hyderabad, and Kashmir - are a historical fiction set during, before, and immediately after the Partition - and independence of - India and Pakistan of 1947. Partition is among the the great humanitarian disasters of the 20th century - and the largest mass migration in history The history of Partition is a topic near and dear to Raman - and impacts and informs much of what is happening today, in both Asia, and the United States - from the tensions between India and Pakistan, and the rise of nationalism / extremism in our politics around the world. Manreet’s unique voice focuses not just on the personal musings of these larger than life historical figures - like India’s founding fathers Gandhi & Nehru, but she also breathes life into characters who represent the stats and figures that we sometimes gloss over when we hear of a tragedy (including the role - and subversion of women by history). We talked a lot about the weaponization of history, and how storytelling - and fact-checking - have to work hand in hand. You’ll enjoy this candid and thoughtful conversation with Manreet, who's using her creative drive to make a statement for the world today - including the next generation. LEARN ABOUT MANREET Lahore (book): goodreads.com/en/book/show/59617445 instagram.com/manreetsomeshwar goodreads.com/author/list/265630.Manreet_Sodhi_Someshwar