When I first heard about the concept behind the comics adjacent Superfan Podcast, it immediately reminded me of an idea we kicked around at Boing Boing back in our print days. We thought it'd be fun to do a feature where we hung out with some well-known fringe culture personalities and talked to them about anything other than the thing they were known for. The working example we came up with (for some reason) was cooking with Sonic Youth. (Or maybe record shopping with Matt Groening or doing home appliance repair with Mark Pauline of Survival Research Labs. Weed tasting with Robert Anton Wilson? You get the idea.)
That slightly perverse angle, sidestepping the belabored and the obvious, that was the appeal.
The Superfan Podcast, co-hosted by Kristen Simon, artist Christian Gossett, and David Hyde, feels like a perfect realization of such an idea. The premise is simple: talk to comics creators about the things they love that aren't comics. (BTW: David also runs Superfan Promotions and I've worked with him and his team for years in bringing comics coverage to Boing Boing.)
What David, Kristen, and Christian are circling around is something you don't often hear creators directly articulate (maybe because no one bothers to ask them). Instead of the usual questions of influences, origin stories, and art styles, you get people talking about the stuff that truly feeds their souls and fires their imaginations. There were six episodes of Season 1, with guests/topics that included Patrick McDonnell on Frank Zapa, Marjorie M. Lui on gardening, and Rodney Barnes on Stephen King.
Season Two of the podcast is premiering today, with Jim Rugg going deep on professional wrestling and its whole bizarre, performative ecosystem.
From there we find Gender Queer cartoonist Maia Kobabe extolling K-pop and fan culture. Johnnie Christmas talking about Mike Flanagan's singular horror series, Midnight Mass. Paul Pope going long on post-punk guitarist Rowland S. Howard. Erica Henderson diving into Discworld. And Elsa Charretier talking about dog training as a kind of system and language.
There are also funky and playful aspects to the show. For instance, each episode comes with a dessert recipe and a cocktail or mocktail tied to the conversation, which might feel like a gimmick elsewhere, but works here, given the passion and authenticity of the entire enterprise.
