For a while, there have been two comics-focused podcasts on 5by5: Giant Size and The Comic Shack.
We cancelled The Comic Shack last night, and in the same breath, we relaunched Giant Size.
I teased the cancellation/reboot on Twitter and got a pile of dismayed, upset tweets in response. Many moaned "but I liked Comic Shack better than Giant Size!"
I'm an awful person for toying with the emotions of those wonderful human beings.
The good news for those listeners is that Comic Shack is dead...so that its panel discussion format can merge into Giant Size and open each show.
This is the version of Giant Size I've wanted to do since the beginning, and it's how the show was originally developed. With my pal Jim starting 'Shack almost simultaneously to GS (which I wasn't aware of), I didn't want to step on his toes or "flood the market", so to speak.
Equally if not more problematic was that I needed more time and infrastructure to support the more complex, ideal Giant Size show format. This infrastructure included a regular co-host.
Except on rare occasion, that co-host is John Gholson, who has joined me for the final few Comic Shacks while we hammered out a rhythm and feel for the "All-New All-Different" Giant Size.
Last night, we recorded the opening of Giant Size #26, in which we discussed Man of Steel and Superman origin story retellings. The Giant-Size-traditional chat with Brandon from Austin Books and Comics will get wedged in after, and the show will close with the also-regular creator/industry interview.
The logic behind this format is that the tightly-moderated panel/jumping-on-point discussion is the welcome mat, which leads into "what's cool/new/new-to-you this week", and closes with an interview with a creator whom you may or may not be interested in at first. As often as possible, the guest will be directly tied to the panel discussion. This is a dastardly trick designed to turn you into a fan of these people before you even hear their voice(s).
Extra-long interviews will get chopped, with the overage going in the After Dark feed. Each show will be under 90 minutes, ideally hitting around 75 minutes, but this will vary as we break in the new structure.
The goal is for all segments to be open to the widest possible audience of listeners, whether you know how many times and in what issues Jean Grey died, you hate superhero comics, or have never read a single comic book. This is the comics show I've been wanting to do since day one, and it should hopefully appeal to everyone who liked either previous show.
The goal of Giant Size remains the same: we want to bring new and lapsed readers into reading, enjoying, and discussing comics. There are some fun comics-dedicated podcasts out there already, but none of them hit this precise cross-section, nor do many (if any) seem geared toward new or non-readers.
I also think we can achieve three shows worth of content in the time usually taken up by one.
No one needs one more podcast just like six others to listen to each week, especially one that runs two or three hours. This is something All-New and All-Different, and I hope you like it.
I mentioned that Screen Time is getting an overhaul too, right? More soon.
