We are thrilled to welcome to the show for the first time queer comic book creator and educator Justin Hall! Justin is an Associate Professor of Comics at the California College of the Arts and a Fulbright Scholar. He's a pioneer historian of LGBTQ comics and in 2012 he curated the anthology No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, which featured milestone contributions by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer comics creators. Now, Justin's Lambda Literary Award-winning and Eisner-nominated collection is the inspiration for a documentary film directed by Peabody Award-winning and national Emmy-nominated filmmaker Vivian Kleiman. This feature-length film will bring stories from the comics off the page and give you a personal introduction to the dynamic artists and writers who paved the way! Justin discusses the Kickstarter campaign for the film, which runs until May 23rd, as well as his own comic work and much, much more! Links are below!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1077551457/no-straight-lines-four-decades-of-queer-comics

https://www.facebook.com/justinhall.comics

https://www.cca.edu/academics/faculty/jhall

https://twitter.com/justincomics

Comic Books Bears Billy Z and Steve offer up a very special episode about a very special episode this time around! To talk about the recent "Carrie The Musical" episode of The CW's Riverdale the CBB boys are thrilled to bring back to the show geek culture writer and Archie Comics expert Chris Cummins! Not only is there a discussion regarding the episode, the history of Carrie The Musical itself (which was a legendary Broadway flop) is also covered in all its blood stained glory!

DISCLAIMER 1: There were some recording glitches which Billy Z did his best to cure in the mixing process.

DISCLAIMER 2: This is our gayest episode yet! Hands down!

Bryan, Bill Z and Steve are back on the mic to offer up to you a solid hour and a half of comic book and comic related talk.  We cover recent comic culture news such as the concerns for Stan Lee after his appearance at the Silicon Valley Comic Con and the controversies over the recent 99 cents Marvel sales on Comixology.  We then turn on the tube and talk about what is happening with Legion, Legends of Tomorrow, SHIELD and Krypton. Finally we lope on over to the spinner rack and talk about Dark Knights: Metal, Brilliant Trash, Snagglepuss, The Terrifics, Lockjaw and more!

Though we were unhappy that Bryan could not join us for our latest episode due to his work travels, we are thrilled to bring back to the show special guest Wendi Freeman of the Double Page Spread Podcast! Instead of testing out Steve and Bill's chairs, beds and porridge Wendi joins the boys at the spinner rack as they discuss Milk Wars, Super Sons, Armstrong and The Vault of Spirits, Young Monsters in Love, the Black Hammer-verse and much, much more.  And in celebration of International Women's Month, we also spotlight women artists we really dig and our recommendations for kick ass female led comics. And we celebrate the face that we got through over an hour without going too far off on tangents ... by going off on tangents.  Listen in as and you will find out about the recent importance of bananas in Wendi's life, what Bill thinks of 1970's Hanna-Barbera cartoons and just why the cover girl for our episode is Stevie Nicks!

The Comic Book Bears boys head to the movies this time around! Put those earbuds in and enjoy an hour of discussion about Black Panther! Based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, it is the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and stars Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis! Bill, Bryan and Steve offer up their (SPOILER FILLED) opinions about the film that is breaking box office records all over the place! And since it is a comic book based podcast, the CBBears have comic book runs starring Black Panther to recommend! In this episode you will also hear Bryan super excited about his favorite sport now that the Winter Olympics are happening, Bill revealing a film he thinks is better than Superman III, Batman and Robin, Catwoman AND Howard the Duck, and you won't believe the verbal mileage Steve gets out of a 10 page back up story from 1980!

WAKANDA FOREVER!

We are finally back to having all of the CBBears on the mic with Steve, Bryan and Bill convening to talk about current comics! And what is on this episode's pull list? Mister Miracle #6! The Phoenix Resurrection #s 1-5, Superman #39, Dark Nights: Metal #5, The Silencer #1, Doomsday Clock #3, Detective Comics Annual #1, The Flash Annual #1, Sex Criminals #21, Ninjak vs. The Valiant Universe #1 and more! All that and naturally The Woofs of the Week!

Bill and Steve offer up an hour plus of retro comics talk as they look back on the very early days of Image Comics. What Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino and Rob Liefeld did in the early 90's was nothing short of revolutionary for the comic book industry.  Join us as the CBB spinner rack becomes a time machine and we discuss Spawn, Youngblood, WildC.A.T.S., Savage Dragon, Shadowhawk, Cyberforce and more. We also delve into titles that the big two released in the wake of the aforementioned that were very, very Image-y in certain ways.

The Comic Book Bears are finally back!! After too long a wait Steve Mowry and Bill Zanowitz make their return to your earbuds and for the first episode of 2018 a bunch of fairly recent books are discussed! Doomsday Clock #s 1 & 2! Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1! Batman Annual #2! Phoenix Resurrection: The Return Of Jean Grey! Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man! Plus The Woofs of the Week and more!

In the first part of this new episode, Bill Zanowitz interviews Andy Mangels! Andy is a man of many pop culture credits including authoring novels, comic books, and magazine articles and producing DVD collections. Andy is here to discuss the recent Wonder Woman 77 Meets The Bionic Woman from Dynamite and DC which he wrote and which has recently been released in a collected edition. Apart from taking us through this historic first meeting between Princess Diana and Jaime Sommers, Andy also discusses his long standing role in fandom, his work with Gay Comix, his moderating of the first Gays in Comics panel ever and his work producing DVD documentary materials for many TV seasons sets! And if that's not enough we also get to hear about with his performing with the Broadway Bears singing group and about his creating the first prominent LGBT character in the Star Trek universe!

After the interview, Bryan and Steve join up with Bill to discuss a couple of movies that you may have heard were recently released - Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League!

We did things a little different on this episode.  We turn on the tube instead of heading over to the spinner rack as Bill, Bryan and Steve are all on the mic in this ep to talk about the first few weeks of comic book based TV of the 2017-2018 season. Plus we throw alcohol into the mix. We flip the channels to talk about Lucifer, Supergirl, The Gifted, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Riverdale, Gotham, Arrow and Inhumans. Listen to this barely edited episode with some bits of snark, excessive appearances of "um"s and "like"s, Bill forgetting Steve's name and all of us forgetting Lou Diamond Phillips' name.