$8.99

John and I discuss various and sundry things we're thankful for in comics from 2013 thus far. I also commit to a series of around 17 future show topics and gimmicks.

This week's interview is with the insanely talented Cary Nord, whom I spoke with at the recent Dallas Comic Con Fan Days. See the show notes page for a laundry list of links, including Matt Fraction's outstanding "Halloween" Twitter name.

I've embedded a couple of mentioned TPBs at left (which I'll update as some more come out). Support your local comic shop by ordering and subscribing to series from them. You'd be surprised how many back issues they can find for you.

While you're in the buying mood, spread the unholy brilliance (except on iBooks) gospel of Sex Criminals. Apple pulled it completely from ComiXology. Even though buying from Image results in no DRM whatsoever, pay for it because you nasty like that. This entire paragraph will make sense if you listen to the show, promise.

<-- Ghosted is a ghost heist series, first mentioned on the show by John on our "Not Saga" episode.

CBR has a great interview with the Valiant guys about their upcoming 8-Bit-style iOS and Android game adaptation of their first big crossover event since re-launching their line, Harbinger Wars:

CBR News: A retro, 8-bit mobile game isn't unheard of, but it's certainly unusual when it comes to comic book-based video games in this era. How exactly did this project begin and where did the idea to deal exclusively in 8-bit come from?

Dinesh Shamdasani: We announced a series of 8-bit covers for our June books, and they got a tremendous response. What happened is we were all sitting around -- we do brainstorming meetings, and we were coming up with creative ideas, marketing ideas, sales ideas -- and Warren Simons had recently seen "Wreck-It Ralph." We were all talking about the proliferation of 8-bit style and how genius that movie was and how much fun it is. He pitched doing Valiant characters in 8-bit. Atom Freeman, our sales manager, knew Matthew White, who did the covers for us. He hooked us up with Matthew, who did a test piece that actually ended up being the "Planet Death" "X-O Manowar" cover. That hasn't changed from the test piece he did with no direction. It was fun, it was cool, we really liked it and we started talking about how we wanted to play that game. I had a chat with Russ and said, "Man, it would be so cool [to play that game]." Russ said he knew the perfect person for that. Russ and Steve Newton knew each other from doing Marvel with DSI. We sat down with the Storm City guys and everybody was on the same page and the 8-bit covers were announced. … We were totally gung-ho about doing the game and that's how we hooked up with Steve Newton and Storm City, and Steve brought in Dan Kitchen, who's been tremendous.

I interviewed Valiant CEO (then CCO) Dinesh Shamdasani on Giant Size back in the show's earliest days.

Giant Size #34: Soft Gooey Center

Valiant Goes 8-Bit with Harbinger Wars