Comic Belief

04/05/2022

May the Fourth Be With You!

Happy Star Wars Feast Day from Comic Belief. What is the Faith of Luke Skywalker, and does he seem like the Force’s Doubting Thomas? Sure, Yoda can be his backpack while he jumps, but what’s his real Leap of Faith? All that and more on our special May the 4th Issue. Enjoy, Believers!

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/special-issue-luke-skywalker-doubting-thomas/

26/04/2022

We're out of cryosleep, friends! Okay, maybe we're still a bit groggy, but we powered through it to bring you a special issue in celebration of Alien Day (4-26, in honor of LV-426, the rock where it all started!).

We've talked Alien plenty of times before, so this has a special focus on how the movies lift up the horrors of ... the workplace! Uncaring bosses! Snippy office co-workers! That one guy who doesn't do his job and makes yours harder! But if Alien shows that workplaces can be horrifically uncaring, it also shows that they can be the place where we save each other, bond together to form communities of trust and care, and meet the people with whom we will journey through life's challenges. Life's spiky, pointy, salivating challenges. On our way to the escape shuttle. Enjoy!


https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/special-lv-426-day-issue-aliens-at-work/

03/04/2022

Okay: so when Turning Red 2 involves a yellow, green, and purple set of animal spirits for Mei’s friends, what do Priya, Abby, and Miriam each become?

13/02/2022

H/y to one of our guest hosts, Rev Stacy Alan!

08/02/2022

This week we take up Andy Weir's spectacular book from last year: Project Hail Mary! The book has some mystery elements, so we give you plenty of spoiler warnings so you can listen until you're ready to pause and go read it (or do the amazing audiobook) yourself! We leave the final ending unspoiled, though -- it's just worth people getting to experience it themselves.

Like Weir's other work, you come for the science, stay for the friendship, and wind up thinking over what it means to be a human being, and what kind of choices we make together. This book is masterful, funny, and warm, and we heartily recommend it!

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-34-project-hail-mary/

29/01/2022

Definitely something we’ve been playing

28/01/2022

As timely as Comic Belief episodes themselves

18/01/2022

New episode is up! If you're going to walk into the vast realms of the Lord of the Rings, you should bring a friend. So we brought the Right Reverend Craig Loya, who just finished his first read-through of the books and watch-through of the movies! Come see the story again through his eyes and ours as we talk about some of our favorite parts of Middle Earth.

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-33-the-fellowship-of-the-ring/

After a winter break basically as long as the stewardship of Gondor, we're back to talk Lord of the Rings with guest host (the Right Reverend) Craig Loya! Craig explains what it means to live a "nerd-adjacent" life (if we can even call that living?) and di...

12/01/2022

This is amazing

Silver Surfer

01/01/2022

We finished up the LOTR trilogy just in time to fit it into 2021! Remember this part?

31/12/2021

We don't exactly podcast on an annual schedule, but just as a fun look-back, in 2021, we:
- finished Season 2 in the spring with episodes on K-Dramas, Star Trek, Black Panther, Wanda Vision, the Incredible Hulk, and Darth Vader (plus a special May the Fourth Be With You episode)
- We planned out and got into Season 3, working with media that have a book connection of some kind, with episodes on Firefly, Queen's Gambit, Stardust, Lovecraft Country, Alien, Redshirts, and Dune.
- We had a total of 4 (amazing) guest hosts on this year
- We picked up 8 more regular listeners (Thanks! You know who you are!)
- We had over 1400 downloads across our three seasons

This is a hobby podcast for us, but we really enjoy it, and we're glad to have all of you along for the ride! Here's to 2022, Believers!

19/12/2021

JUST in time for Christmas, we have a Comic Belief episode with a guest host who (literally) wrote the book on keeping an Advent time in Narnia: the Reverend Heidi Haverkamp.

This one leans way more into the "Belief" side of Comic Belief, so if you're looking for a very seasonal romp in a fantasy land for Christmas, we're very happy to have you take a turn in Narnia with us!

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-32-christmas-and-advent-greetings-from-narnia/

06/12/2021

Have you been wondering what Frank Herbert's background views were? Are you curious about fake prophecies that wind up coming true? Is there a winner in the morally-beige politics of Arrakis? Do you, too, feel like there was JUST a tad too much Momoa and not QUITE enough Idaho to that portrayal? And what exactly is this cult classic from the 60's holding up as a mirror for us to look in, today (and what's coming with the next installment)?

Feel free to ride shotgun in our podcasting ornithopter as our Irreverent Search stumbles onto Reverend Mothers and more this week, with our own Spicy takes on Dune!

Using the Apple podcast link this time, for folks who are hip like that.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/comic-belief/id1513052226

‎TV & Film · 2021

25/11/2021

Happy Thanksgiving from Comic Belief!

(Couldn’t find a photo credit, but this has been floating around the internet)

24/11/2021

Okay, it's not ACTUALLY more Firefly this week ... but Megan and I "read" the audiobook of John Scalzi's "Redshirts," and the ending brought us both to the good kind of tears.

Here's a quick episode (well, for us) about what happens if the Redshirts on Star Trek start to notice that they're in the hands of an angry God ...

(Plus: was Job -- the Bible Job -- the first Redshirt ever tormented for the pleasure of the audience? All that and more, Believers!)

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-30-the-job-of-a-redshirt/

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19/11/2021

We've had some bugs over the past week -- we'll be back to our regular recording schedule soon!

08/11/2021

Hi Believers! After two weeks in cryosleep, we’re waking up to an episode with guest Sarah Welch-Larson ( on Twitter). Her book on Alien and feminist theology came out this year, and it’s a blast!

We are totally on the same wavelength as Sarah, and she talks through how some of the key pieces of the Alien franchise — subverting endings, leaving questions unanswered, repeating a plot with new spins — are features and not bugs in the franchise. And by the end of it all, she’s got an incredible way of making this a metaphor for feminist critiques of too-reductive theology that tries to put everything in a box.

This helped us put words to what we love about the series — come check it out!

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-29-becoming-alien/

28/10/2021

Inverse Magazine has put out a really cool Superhero Issue, kicking around plenty of style topics this month!

N.B.: Some of the writers here use language some people might find offensive.

Inverse is rethinking superheroes with a series of articles, essays, interviews, and more. Welcome to the 2021 Superhero Issue.

27/10/2021

We've talked a few times about whether audiences can or should separate the art from the artist -- here's Wil Wheaton weighing in!

A truly thoughtful response.

26/10/2021

Hey, if this year's episode wasn't scary enough for you, there's always last year's episode on 's It: Chapters 1 and 2.

A a day keeps the monsters at bay ... right?

Need a bit more Halloween in the season? Megan and Ben talk phobias and Stephen King in “It’s Creek,” a podcast episode sure to win many Emmy nominations!

You can tune in on the free Podbean app, Apple podcasts, or check your favorite podcast platform to see if Comoc Belief is cross-listed there!

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-14-its-creek/

25/10/2021

Happy Anniversary, Wonder Woman!

To the extraordinary character who changed my life forever, and to all the people who she inspires to do good in this world...

Happy 80th Anniversary, Wonder Woman!

25/10/2021

Happy Hallo-week, Believers! We’re teeing up Lovecraft Country this episode, and talking about the power of names and the temptations of wielding magic powers. We’ve got some critiques, but by and large enjoyed this set of pulp adventures that takes the old Lovecraft aesthetic and turns it on its head to tell different kinds of stories.



https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-28-lovecraft-country/

16/10/2021

Can a DC Bird of Prey and an MCU Big Bad make things work?

Next Comic Belief episode is out on October 25th!

11/10/2021

We honestly didn't plan to have a q***r guest host talking about a q***r character for the episode that released on National Coming Out Day today, but we're very much PRO Captain Shakespeare, and the crew that meets him with such gentleness.

Here's to Stardust's great theme of growing beyond all the Walls that we start with.

10/10/2021

“What makes this, for you, a Comic Belief kind of work?”
…
“Each main character — even a lot of the side characters — are on this journey between ‘Who I’m convinced that I am’ and ‘Who I actually want to be.’”

This week is Stardust with our good friend Ashley as a guest host. Enjoy!

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-27-stardust/

02/10/2021

What do Daredevil, Catwoman, and Superman have in common ... find out on our next episode!

28/09/2021

A friend posted a picture of visiting the Yorktown Victory Monument, and now all we want here at Comic Belief is photoshops of monuments as lightsaber hilts.

How about it, Internet?

27/09/2021

New episode, Believers!

It could be a Stan Lee comic. Tragic origin, raised in a nearly-hostile orphanage, forced to learn the world's ropes on her own, and constantly fighting off the effects of tranquilizers, Beth Harmon discovers that she has a superpower: she's REALLY good at chess.

The Queen's Gambit tees up tons of great themes about a young woman in the 1950's and 60's making her way in a man's world, navigating relationships, and wrestling with addiction. Is she more than her analytical powers? Can she stand against a Russian grandmaster backed by a chess establishment that has the advantage of decades of experience over her? And along the way, is romance a game she's fated to lose?

Gambits are a kind of offer in chess: lots of excitement and the possibility of victory, but with a lot more risk along the way, if you dare to take them on instead of playing it safe in the duller, familiar lines. Turns out that Beth Harmon has a chance to play the Gambit we all get offered: to love and be loved in the broken world, and find patterns of victory in its midst nonetheless.



https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-26-the-queen-s-gambit/

17/09/2021

We pre-recorded on Queen’s Gambit over the summer and the episode is coming out next week … but we might have to add a comment on this to the end!

Nona Gaprindashvili, a history-making chess champion, sued Netflix after a line in the series mentioned her by name and said she had “never faced men.” She had, often.

13/09/2021

Season Three is here!

We take on the beloved cult classic Firefly and talk about some of the less lovely parts of it. Turns out “take my love, take my land” gets a bit awkward if you took that land from someone else first and forgot to mention it. Still, working metaphors back and forth helps show the good, bad, and the ugly of this stagecoach of strangers in space, and we just might find a saint by the end after all.

Welcome to Season Three.

https://comicbelief.podbean.com/e/issue-25-shiny-new-season-firefly/