So with Asian American Heritage Month, we decided that G should be for Gene Luen Yang ...mostly as an excuse to read AMERICAN BORN CHINESE, Yang's Eisner Award-winning, seminal graphic novel soon to be released as a Disney+ streaming show with a bevvy of Oscar winners.

American Born Chinese is Gene Luen Yang's was first released in 2006 - written and illustrated by Yang, and also colored by cartoonist Lark Pien. American Born Chinese consists of three seemingly disparate tales...

First, the legendary Chinese Monkey King from the classic 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West. However, blink and you might miss it, but Yang replaces the Buddha with a Christian influenced deity.The second storyline is the all-too-familiar Asian American coming of age story of a young American Born Chinese man Jin Wang, who befriends a new arrival from Taiwan, Wei Chen. As with any story of teen drama, romance is afoot with Jin's American crush Amelia Harris. And the third story depicts an American TV sitcom with All American boy Danny and his cousin visting from Chin-kee, who if you couldn't tell from the name alone, is meant to be an amalgam of racist stereotype, from the outlandish costume, heavy accent, buck teeth, and yes, predilection for putting pee pee in your coke. Eventually these three tales become come together into a poignant lesson of culture and self acceptance.

In Michael DeForge's Familiar Face, the world is always changing, commutes are being altered, and peoples' bodies are constantly being transformed, or "optimized." The citizens of this world exist in an environment that they cannot control or even begin to understand. Sound familiar?

As we continue reading our way thru the alphabet — E is for Esther's Notebooks, the critically acclaimed cartoon series that chronicles the hilarious and heartbreaking true life of a young girl growing up in Paris, by Riad Satouff, the award-winning French Syrian cartoonist best known for his childhood cartoon autobiography, the Arab of the Future (one of the first books we read on this pod)

Several years ago, Sattouf was out to dinner with some of his friends, who brought along their outgoing young daughter — and as some of you with young daughters might already know...she would...not...stop...talking. Sattouf was fascinated by the young girls honest, garrulous and articulate nature, and seeking to contrast his childhood autobiography of growing up in the middle east in the 1980s, Sattouf decided to chronicle a modern child's take on life

So over the past three years, Riad Satouff has been a chatting with his friends outgoing young daughter, anonymized as Esther, where once a week she would tell him about her family, her school, her dreams, her fears. After each conversation he published a one page comic strip based on what she had said

First published in 2016 - Esther's Notebooks is an ongoing series that spans the first three years of young girl's life — from ages 9 thru 12 — over 156 comic strips, giving us a delightful look into the daily drama of this thoughtful, intelligent, and high spirited girl, who loves her father, finds her big brother annoying, loves French hip hop, and just wants an iPhone - among many, many other things.

Satouff has said “The real Esther interested me because she is a girl without a particular background. She has no family problems, her parents are together, she is not poor or rich, not stunningly beautiful nor plain, not super-intelligent but good at school. She is your average young girl without any particular backstory. Listening to her stories, I realised that they were hard, amusing and sometimes cruel, but they transmitted the reality of childhood.”

Satouff has said he plans to chronicle her life in cartoons until Esther's eighteen. It’s an unfiltered look into modern childhood and not exclusively French - despite providing a crash course into popular French hip hop artists. The way Esther grows up, interacts with social media, worries about terrorism, sexism, racism and questions of having or not having money, speaks to a universal audience. Occasionally we're brought into the trauma of current events - from a young child's perspective, whether its the Paris terror attacks or the political moment of Trump, Le Pain - Macron, and even Putin

The Doom Patrol debuted in 1963, just a few months before the X-Men. The two titles had a lot in common: a group of superpowered misfits led by a man in a wheelchair. But while the X-Men soon found their way into the pop cultural canon, the Doom Patrol could only muster a cult following — and only recently started rising into the mainstream due to the eponymous HBO TV series.

But Doom Patrol still had a succession of heavy hitting talent inventing consistently weird challenges for the team to fight through, from John Byrne to Gerard Way to Grant Morrison. This week on Quarantined Comics, Raman and Ryan will review half of Morrison's 45-issue run, which started in 1989.

Morrison established themselves as one of the hottest writers during the 80s, bringing his odd sensibility from the pages of the British sci-fi series 2000AD to DC superhero stories, including a long run writing the series Animal Man and the one-shot Batman: Arkham Asylum.

But with his their run on Doom Patrol... well, maybe it was just a little too much Morrison for Ryan and Raman to handle...

C is for...CATWOMAN!

Catwoman is much more than a feline-themed criminal in a cat-suit. Despite sexy portrayals by Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, Anne Hathaway, Camren Bicondova, or Zoë Kravitz would have you believe, Selina Kyle, AKA Catwoman has the potential to be a much more nuanced character in modern comics.

Way back back in 2002, now acclaimed crime-fiction writer Ed Brubaker attempted to do just that - redefine a sexual icon into a feminist one - in his seminal run and reboot of Catwoman. Brubaker created a more low-key, street level portrayal of the character, returning to the East End of Gotham, a forgotten, working class part of the city. Paired with a # of artists - including the late Darwyn Cooke, Cameron Stewart, and Mike Allred - ironically also all dudes - who masterfully create a less sexualized version of Selina. She's joined by her best friend Holly, private eye Slam Bradley, and Dr. Leslie Thompkinz to confront the demons of her past and present.

But we ALSO decided to read 2022's Catwoman Lonely City - the acclaimed miniseries by Cliff Chiang - which ventures into the not-too-distant future to follow a middle-aged Selina Kyle, as she investigates a conspiracy related to the death of Batman some 10 years prior. Almost all of the Bat-family is gone, and she's left with her wits, and a handful of super-criminal friends and foes, some of whom have infiltrated city hall.

both series ask us to re-examine not just how our society defines crime, but who are the people who define what crime is, and what are the circumstances that drive those we deem criminals to choose the life they do. but also, just a romping good time with a lady in a cat suit.

On the surface, the samurai epic Blade of the Immortal is all about the violence, with its gorgeous splash pages of kaleidoscopic dismemberment. Created by Hiroaki Samura, a manga artist about whom very little is known, Blade of the Immortal follows a familiar outline: a young girl named Rin seeks to kill the group of swordsmen responsible for the murder of her family. But Samura's ambitions are greater, and as Rin and her hired hitman Manji make headway into her quest, her feelings about her vengeance grow more complicated.

Blade of the Immortal is a 31-volume epic that ran from 1993-2012. In this episode, we'll scratch the surface and take a look at the first six volumes.

A is for...AKIRA. For 2023 we're reading our way through the alphabet!

AKIRA, the seminal Japanese cyberpunk post-apocalyptic manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo. This revolutionary Japanese comic ran from 1982 to 1990, serialized biweekly in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine Young Magazine, with its 120 chapters collected into six tankōbon volumes. The work had an outsized influence on not just comics east and west, but its landmark anime film adaptation from 1988 shaped a generation of storytellers. Almost across between Blade Runner meets Mad Max — with a little bit of 2001 A Space Odyssey thrown in, the FILM Akira was listed as one of the 10 essential animations. And it wasn't until the early 2000s that Dark Horse finally adapted the original manga for western audiences like us to READ.

Akira takes place some 30 years after the 1988 Japanese government atomic bombing of Tokyo after ESP experiments on children go awry. . Kaneda, the leader of a Japanese youth biker gang — and his pal Tetsuo are cruising the border of OLD Tokyo, where they have an strange encounter, which leaves Tetsuo hospitalized. Tetsuo is whiskey-a-go-go'ed away to a secret government project and Kaneda finds himself subsequently battling anti-government activists, greedy politicians, irresponsible scientists and a powerful military leader. Ultimately, Tetsuo's supernatural powers manifest, and all hell breaks loose. The action culminates at the site of the modern day Tokyo Olympiad exposing the experiment's secrets.

Otomo has stated that Akira reflects the essence of his views toward life and death, and the world which surrounds us. And joining us to help us make sense of the world which surrounds us (or at least this comic), is the very man who introduced Ryan & Raman oh so long ago, the one and only Bob Arnold, who apparantly named his cat after the lead character in Akira, who is really Canadian.

As the year comes to a close, we reflect on more than a few new adaptations of comic book stories in the Cinematic Universes, multiplexes, and streaming services of our hearts — like the dutiful corporate citizens of the republic we are.

longtime friend of the pod and frequent guest Paresh joins us for our shenanagins of hot takes and reflections of the years nerd/pop culture adaptations, including (listed in order of 2022 release):

Hawkeye Spider-Man: No Way Home Book of Boba Fett Peacemaker Freakangels the Batman DMZ HALO Moon Knight Young Justice Phantoms Morbius Paris, 13th District Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Obi Wan The Boys (S3) Ms. Marvel Lightyear Thor: Love and Thunder Harley Quinn S3 DC League of Super-Pets Paper Girls Batgirl (sigh) Sandman She-Hulk House of Dragon Rings of Power ANDOR Grendel (phew) Black Adam Tales of the Jedi Titans S4 Black Panther: Wakanda Forever The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

Special Guest: Paresh Jha.

Last week, we discussed how awesome FABLES is. And it's still a rip roarin' good time, but also... how does it hold up in a modern context, almost fifteen years after the first volume was published? Its debut was just a few short years after 9/11, so it has a certain political and Euro-centric sensibility that was more fashionable at the time. How does that read today?

FABLES, by Bill Willingham, is a multi-Eisner award-winning comic telling THE modern-day story of the legends of folk and fairy tales - living in our modern, mundane — or mundy — world. We're talking Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Rose Red, Prince Charming, Cinderella, Jack, Goldilocks, the 3 little Pigs, Santa Clause, Beauty & the Beast, Pinnochio, and many more. And while Fables definitely sounds like some weird shit - don't worry it is - Fables combines the narratives of many characters from popular literay legend and smooshes them into a multi-versal tale with stakes and consequences, unlike a lot of modern superhero comics.

This is a 2-part episode reading, where this weeek we cover FABLES Vols 1-6 - setting up almost all of the major characters - living in exile from their countless Homelands, after a mysterious villain known only as “The Adversary” appeared with an unstoppable army and began conquering Fable worlds one after another. Hundreds of our years ago, the main Fables of our story came up with a desperate plan: to hide in a world The Adversary would never even want—a world so boring and utterly mundane that magic doesn’t even exist there: our own. New York City, to be more specific.

Fables finds itself mostly set in the oft-overlooked, and soon-to-gentrified neighborhood known only as "Fabletown" - but spans the centuries and worlds, to weave a long tale. While the first couple of volumes get off to a slow start world-building and setting up the main characters, it soon starts to speed up the stakes and drama for an entertaining romp. The first 2 volumes are a slog, but then shit gets real...really good.