Last year, at Heroes Con ’10, Craig Fischer and I did one of our (in)famous “mega-presentations” in which we discussed offbeat and oddball superhero comics. One portion of that presentation was a panel discussion featuring Colleen Coover, Jeff Parker, Chris Pitzer and Evan Dorkin–and, at long last, the recorded audio from that panel is now available. You needn’t be dissuaded by the terrible audio quality of my mic because (a) what I’m saying really isn’t important, and (b) the mics of the actual panel participants sound great. While there’s a lot of actual interesting stuff going on in this discussion, it’s also really, really funny. Pop on over to The Dollar Bin podcast and check it out.

It’s occurred to me lately that there aren’t a lot of great comics podcasts–or to put it more fairly: there aren’t many comics podcasts covering the sorts of comics I’m interested in in a way that I find appealing. I’m a loyal and frequent listener to the Canadian radio show/podcast Inkstuds (a weekly alt comix interview show), but beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be much up my alley on the internet “dial.”

Reflecting on things, I think the problem is with me, not with the podcasts themselves. The DIY trappings of most podcasts (comics or otherwise) just kinda bug me–the rambling unfocused chatting, the interminable and inconsistent lengths of the shows, the ambient background sounds of babies crying or hosts snacking into the mic. I think among poscast aficionados this rough-around-the-edges stuff is part of the appeal. And I can see that to some extent; when Indie Spinner Rack was up and running I came to really enjoy the show despite its being guilty of a lot of the afore-mentioned sins. Generally, though, this stuff just irritates me.

I’ve got about a bazillion time-consuming, non-paying things going on now, but–just for fun–if I were going to remedy this situation and get a comics podcast going, here’s what I’d do:

Generally

What to talk about: Indie comics, art comics, offbeat Manga, European comics, non-U.S. comics of any (interesting) variety, superhero comics doing new or innovative stuff.

What not to talk about: Anything other than the above.

When to talk about it: Once a month. Yeah, that’s not very frequent, but the idea’d be quality over quantity. I’d really want a monthly schedule to provide for time to research each show, record it, and then edit it.

How long to talk about it: An hour or less. Period.

Specifically

While there are a number of non-comics podcasts that I enjoy, I think the one I’d take as my model for my Imaginary Comics Podcast is The Dinner Party Download. What do I like about it? First, it has a definite focus: it’s designed to help you “win” your weekend social gatherings by supplying you with interesting things to talk about. More than that, though, I like the fact that the show has a regular format of themed segments. They start with a joke, introduce the show, do an interesting/off beat “moment in history” thing, have a bartender invent a drink based on that event, have a guest on, etc.

Without devoting too much thought to it, here’s the way I’d put together a structured “variety show”-type podcast about indie/alt/art/foreign/notable comics:

• Opening reading: the month’s guest narrates aloud a few panels from a comic that he/she particularly likes or found particularly influential/inspiring. Hopefully this will be more funny than serious.
• Show intro & host introduction: I can think of a few possible partners to co-host such a show. I’ve no idea what I’d call it.
• Comics news: each of the two hosts would select three comics news stories that he/she found particularly important, interesting or funny and would trade off discussing them.
• Guest: I’d not want to weight the guest segment any longer than the other main sections time-wise. There are already several podcasts that have a guest interview as the “meat” of the show; there doesn’t need to be another. The last question to the guest would always be to pick and extol the virtues of one comic he/she has recently read–which would in turn segue into…
• Reading picks: Each host would highlight a book he/she had read and enjoyed in the preceding month.
• Upcoming reads: Each host presents a “pick” from books slated to be released the following month.
• Some kind of outro: I’m not really sure what to do here. An obvious choice would be a guest-picked song, but that’s kinda what Inkstuds does. Suggestions?

Anyway…

Would you listen to my Imaginary Comics Podcast? Would you? It doesn’t really matter since I can’t imagine when I’d really ever have the time to commit to something of this scope, but I guess “thinking out loud” like this is at least slightly more constructive than simply complaining.