Play Comics

Play Comics

@playcomics.bsky.social

A podcast (playcomics.com) looking at video games based on comics and how well those games represent the comic source material. Always looking for guests, see if there's a game for you! https://playcomics.com/be-a-guest/ LGTBQIA+ Ally

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The Incredible Hulk (2008) with Russell Moran (Kaiju ComiCast) 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…

playcomics.comThe Incredible Hulk (2008) with Russell Moran (Kaiju ComiCast)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 ComiCast. 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.
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Guys, I can't even get close to telling you how helpful @daybreakgames.bsky.social was for this one. Jumping into an MMORPG was intimidating for me. I just don't play those usually. And now I've got to jump into one that's been going for 15 years?

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IT LIVES @davidgallaher.bsky.social and I had a thought. What if we looked at a DC game that just gets to look at whatever it wants. And gets to change it up and do it all over again. That's right, DC Universe Online! Promos from @acrosswhoniverse.bsky.social and @glitterjaw.bsky.social 🎧🔗👇

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The Dirt Beneath The Devil #2 Review We already know that this horse is scary. Even compared to horses in the real world. So maybe everyone should stop trying to be evil because the evil people are the ones dying. Just a thought.

playcomics.comThe Dirt Beneath The Devil #2 ReviewWe already know that this horse is scary. Even compared to horses in the real world. So maybe everyone should stop trying to be evil because the evil people are the ones dying. Just a thought.
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DC Universe Online with David Gallaher 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.…

playcomics.comDC Universe Online with David GallaherCongratulations! 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.
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Big shout out to the people who have turned me down for coming on the show, but are also willing to see if they know anyone else who would be a good guest for me. I still say you're wrong and you'd be a good guest, but at least you ended the ambiguity that comes with not answering.

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X-Men Origins Wolverine with Grant Stoye 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…

playcomics.comX-Men Origins Wolverine with Grant StoyeWolverine 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.
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I have a big name and, for lack of a better way of saying it, little guy (they'd probably agree with that) that I'm going after to come one the show. They share a first name. My nightmare: I send the big name an email meant for the little guy saying that I'm writing off having him on the show.

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I sent some guest pitches to a few people today, and then hours later saw that my site was down because of some back end settings. Please excuse me while I go crawl into a hole and cry.

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Replying to @maggietokudahall.bsky.social

Ironically, folks keep banning Banned Book Club, the true story of my wife Kim Hyun Sook reading banned books under a dictator. Why? Hard to say. I asked every time, and every book banner says "oh, I haven't read it." #BannedBooksWeek

bookshop.orgBanned Book Club: Color EditionA Junior Library Guild Selection "Highly recommended for readers passionate about activism." -- SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, Starred Review "Sure to inspire today's youthful generation of tenacious change...
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Garfield a Tail of Two Kitties with Chris Maynard (Following Films) Garfield has spent decades perfecting one skill: refusing to leave the couch. So of course Hollywood sent him to England, handed him a royal lookalike, and made him the most reluctant cat in the history of the monarchy. Garfield:…

playcomics.comGarfield a Tail of Two Kitties with Chris Maynard (Following Films)Garfield has spent decades perfecting one skill: refusing to leave the couch. So of course Hollywood sent him to England, handed him a royal lookalike, and made him the most reluctant cat in the history of the monarchy. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties is a movie about mistaken identity, a very large castle, and a cat whose idea of a crown jewel is anything left unattended on a buffet table. Naturally, a video game was in order. The Nintendo DS got its own version, and so did the PlayStation 2, which means this cat managed to be a tiny royal on your lap and a tiny royal on your TV. Not many orange cartoon cats can say they've been in two different living rooms at once without moving. Joining us to sort through the royal mess is Chris Maynard from Following Films. Chris knows his way around a movie, which makes him ideal for the question at the heart of this episode: when you turn a movie about a cat pretending to be a prince into a game, does the cat get to keep pretending, or does he just end up running down hallways? Chris is here to tell us whether this is a proper adaptation or a very loud costume party. So polish your crown, put the snacks within reach, and let's find out whether A Tail of Two Kitties is a game fit for a king or one that should have stayed incognito.
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One of my favorite things about the podcast is that there's always some random ass direction that we go that I never could have planned for. @chels725.bsky.social didn't disappoint at all here. For this one, it was the way in which the controller of what we watched helped to shape us.

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IT LIVES! @chels725.bsky.social from @qdivisionpod.bsky.social and @acrosswhoniverse.bsky.social gets sucked back into the game. Which works perfectly thematically because we're looking at Digimon World 3. Promos from @infiniteearthsguide.com and @gimmickspod.bsky.social 🎧🔗👇

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That's the power of listening to engage vs listening to talk. But also the power of local programming directors and family members in deciding what we'd be exposed to. In today's streaming world that's hard to come by.

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Today someone who writes things saw a thing that I wrote and told me that I did a great job. I can't share it because it was an email for something you'll see later. But I do want everyone to know that when this happens on the podcast is going to be amazing.

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Digimon World 3 with Chels Eichholz (The Q Division, Across the Whoniverse) By the time Digimon World 3 rolled around in 2002, a franchise that started as an egg-shaped virtual pet and spun off into a manga and an anime around the same time had picked up enough separate games and separate…

playcomics.comDigimon World 3 with Chels Eichholz (The Q Division, Across the Whoniverse)By the time Digimon World 3 rolled around in 2002, a franchise that started as an egg-shaped virtual pet and spun off into a manga and an anime around the same time had picked up enough separate games and separate continuities that keeping any of it straight had apparently stopped being a priority. At least one reviewer we found says flat-out that the game gets its own canon wrong in places, which at this point feels less like a flaw and more like a house style. You play a kid named Junior, no last name, no further explanation, who gets pulled into a server with three Digimon partners, though only one is allowed to actually fight at a time while the other two wait their turn. Enemies show up completely at random now too, so unlike earlier games in the series, you can't just spot trouble on the map and calmly walk the other way. Take enough hits and your blast meter fills up, letting a Digimon go Blast Digivolve and get meaner for a while, or you can combine two Digimon with DNA Digivolve to create something new that fires off one big attack and then immediately splits back apart. There's also a full card battle game built right into the RPG, all 314 cards of it, so between fetch quests you'll have plenty of downtime to build a deck. Joining us to help sort through all of it is Chels Eichholz, who co-hosts The Q Division, a James Bond rewatch podcast, and Across the Whoniverse, a Doctor Who marathon show that "kidnaps" a new companion every episode to explore a different corner of sixty-plus years of continuity. Between those two franchises, Chels has plenty of practice diving into a huge tangle of lore and coming out the other side having a genuinely great time, which makes them the perfect person to take on a game that's basically nothing but tangled lore. So dig up an old memory card, pick which one of your three Digimon gets to have a personality this round, and let's find out whether Digimon World 3 earned its spot in Digimon history, or whether it should've DNA Digivolved into something else entirely.
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Even @oscarthegrouch.bsky.social loves this

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Sesame Workshop has extended its Sesame Street deal with Netflix. The series has been renewed for four additional seasons, with Season 57 premiering this November on Netflix and PBS Kids. A feature film is also officially in development at Netflix.

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Anyone want to come in the podcast that's interested in......[checks notes].....military industrial sorcery.....? Dog, please don't send me a bunch of weirdos.

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Comic creators of all size and stages of the process (including press/review), I'm looking to get a quick few answers from you about AI use. For context this is in relation to a set of AI generated issues I was sent to review.

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Latest episode dropped yesterday, which means it's time to start working on the next one. The wonderful life of podcasting, having to think about so many episodes at a time because I'm doing all of the behind the scenes stuff by myself. Not complaining, I love it. And I'm a bit of a control freak.

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Link to the Past with Josh Garvey Most podcast guests call in from a spare bedroom, a closet lined with winter coats, or a parked car outside a grocery store. Josh Garvey is joining us from the middle of a black hole. On the bright side, the room tone is fantastic. Nothing echoes when nothing,…

playcomics.comLink to the Past with Josh GarveyMost podcast guests call in from a spare bedroom, a closet lined with winter coats, or a parked car outside a grocery store. Josh Garvey is joining us from the middle of a black hole. On the bright side, the room tone is fantastic. Nothing echoes when nothing, light included, is allowed to leave. It's also a fitting backdrop, because this episode is all about taking an adventure you used to play and asking it to sit still on a page. Somebody looked at a whole quest built on mashing buttons and said, "What if the only button left was 'turn the page'?" The bravest thing you can do is lick your thumb. That's a bold leap from the action genre to the paper-cut genre, and we're going to take a hard look at The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in comic form. Josh has agreed to walk us through it from beyond the event horizon, where time runs a bit slow, so by the time you hear this he's technically still on his first sentence. That also makes him the only guest we've ever had who can offer a genuine link to the past, a pun I've been sitting on since the moment he said yes. We had to be careful with the mic placement, since anything left within Josh's reach gets stretched into a very long strand of spaghetti. Lesson learned about the pop filter. So please keep your arms, legs, and any nearby light inside the episode at all times, and don't panic if the audio shows up a few billion years late. Nobody has ever returned from a black hole to leave a bad review, which honestly might be the best business model in podcasting.
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The Dirt Beneath The Devil #1 Review When the going gets tough and everybody is trying to keep you from getting what you deserve, someone has to have your back. You just might not like what they're doing to make sure you're safe.

playcomics.comThe Dirt Beneath The Devil #1 ReviewWhen the going gets tough and everybody is trying to keep you from getting what you deserve, someone has to have your back. You just might not like what they're doing to make sure you're safe.
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Hellboy The Science of Evil with George Marston (Spawnography) Every generation needs a reminder that games-based-on-movies-based-on-comics are their own strange little ecosystem, and Hellboy: The Science of Evil is a proud, slightly confused citizen of it. It doesn't adapt either del Toro movie…

playcomics.comHellboy The Science of Evil with George Marston (Spawnography)Every generation needs a reminder that games-based-on-movies-based-on-comics are their own strange little ecosystem, and Hellboy: The Science of Evil is a proud, slightly confused citizen of it. It doesn't adapt either del Toro movie directly. Instead it just borrows the general vibe, invents its own plot, and trusts you to recognize a giant stone fist and a wisecracking demon without needing either film's actual story. It's the video game equivalent of a cover band that only plays originals. And that giant stone fist deserves a moment, because it's doing some real character-design heavy lifting. Hellboy is built around exactly one absurdly oversized body part, and that's basically the whole design manual for a certain flavor of comic book tough guy: pick one appendage, blow it up past the point of reason, let the silhouette do the talking. Todd McFarlane ran the identical play with Spawn, except he went south instead of north, handing us a hero who could probably punt a sedan but might struggle to tie his own laces. One big fist, one big boot. Same weird design instinct, opposite ends of the body. Which is a good excuse to bring in George Marston of Spawnography, the podcast where Pierce Lydon joins in to spend their time in the giant-boot corner of that exact design philosophy. George is flying solo this round to see how a giant fist holds up against a their usual task of studying a giant boot. So pick your favorite oversized body part, brace for a beat-em-up that seems mildly allergic to its own source material, and let's find out whether The Science of Evil earns a place next to del Toro's films, or whether it belongs exactly where most tie-in games end up: forgotten. And don't forget about the Nazi occultism.
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Marvel Trading Card Game with Gen Moonen (“Fun” & Games) Let's just say it up front: turning a trading card game into a video game is a magic trick where the "trading" and the "card" both quietly slip out the back door, leaving you with a menu that goes "ding" when you win. And Marvel decided this…

playcomics.comMarvel Trading Card Game with Gen Moonen (“Fun” & Games)Let's just say it up front: turning a trading card game into a video game is a magic trick where the "trading" and the "card" both quietly slip out the back door, leaving you with a menu that goes "ding" when you win. And Marvel decided this was worth doing not once, but on two separate handhelds that weren't even talking to each other, like a superhero team-up where nobody checked who else was showing up. Somewhere, someone looked at the specific joy of slapping a foil Spider-Man card down on a table hard enough to rattle the juice boxes, and said: what if we replaced that with a stylus tap? What if deck-building, the sacred art of jamming eighty cards into a rubber band and hoping for the best, became a scroll menu instead? Visionary. Extremely quiet. Nobody's little brother has ever stormed off in a rage over a scroll menu. Dealing me in for this one is Gen Moonen, co-host of the "Fun" & Games Podcast alongside Matt Storm, a show built entirely around two people who genuinely, unapologetically love games, which honestly should be a requirement for every gaming podcast and somehow still isn't. So grab a deck, or a controller, or whatever the modern version of "shuffle and pray" is, and let's find out if Marvel Trading Card Game is a genuinely good time, or a lesson in why some hobbies were never meant to leave the kitchen table.
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I got an email asking me to have someone on as a guest to talk about their comic. Along with 10 issues of the comic. And it's not like this is up to Part 10 of a running series. They haven't released anything. I'll bet you can NEVER guess how they got 10 issues of the comic made.....

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So here's the question. Do I make something inspired by this interaction? Note that I didn't say do I have them on the show. That's a whole different thing. I should probably add, if I make something talking about it it's not going to be positive. Because using AI to make comics is gross.

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Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship with William Morgan (The Geek Gauntlet Podcast) Every kid who ever begged a parent for money to hit GameStop on release day understands the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship series in their bones: it's the same card game, sold back to you once a year, wearing a slightly…

playcomics.comYu-Gi-Oh World Championship with William Morgan (The Geek Gauntlet Podcast)Every kid who ever begged a parent for money to hit GameStop on release day understands the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship series in their bones: it's the same card game, sold back to you once a year, wearing a slightly fancier hat each time. Konami ran this bit from 2003 to 2006 with the discipline of a Swiss watchmaker and the restraint of absolutely nobody when it came to naming the things. Four games! Four years! Somehow four completely different amounts of the word "World Championship" crammed into each title! And somewhere in that run, things got weird. By the last entry, Konami had apparently decided Yugi, Kaiba, and the rest of the cast had done enough work, and quietly let you duel the actual monster cards instead, like the whole show got replaced by its own trading cards in some kind of legal dispute. There's also a tiny RPG town nobody asked for, a cartridge somehow refereeing six languages at once, and just enough real cardboard cards taped inside the box that there's a real argument the packaging outsold the game. Grabbing a seat at the table to help me sort genuine dueling nostalgia from pure cardboard-fueled compulsion is William Morgan, host of The Geek Gauntlet Podcast, self-billed as the fastest hour in podcasting, a claim that tracks given how fast he and the crew burn through a week's worth of comics, movies, anime, and gaming news. So keep an eye on your Life Points, don't forget your face-downs, and let's find out if the World Championship series was Konami's finest run of Game Boy dueling, or just years of very well-packaged déjà vu.