Comic Book Bears Podcast

Recorded on a rare Sunday night outing for the Comic Book Bears, this latest audio episode finds CBB boys Steve, Caleb and Billy Z reconvening on the sabbath to talk about some great comics! These include Superman/Spider-Man (the latest DC/Marvel crossover), the 2026 Absolute Wonder Woman Annual (detailing Diana's adventure with Athena and Medusa), The Death of the Silver Surfer (a speculative final tale of Marvel's soaring, spacebound hero), Black Moon Ritual (Ytasha Womack and Alitha Martinez Afrofuturist sci-fi tale from AWA Studios), A Star Called the Sun (another sci-book, this one consisting of interconnected stories by Simon Roy), and The Peril of the Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery #1 (the latest title from the relaunched Vertigo Comics) - all this and lots more! So, no matter what day of the week it is, hit play and let us hairy heavy homos take it away!!      

On this latest Comic Book Bears audio episode, recorded this past March 12th (hence the episode title), we return with another set of six recent books to delve into! Hit play to hear Bill Z, Steve and Caleb weigh in on this sextet of slick papered spectaculars! We talk about D'Orc #1, the Image book that has become an out of the gate hit with readers and speculators alike! We discuss C.O.R.T.: Children of the Round Table, the Tom Taylor helmed reinterpretation of Arthurian legends from DC. We opine on Bleeding Hearts #1, Deniz Camp's new zombie series from the resurrected Vertigo line. We examine The Crown: A Tale of Hell #1, the latest addition to the world of Hellboy from Mike Mignola and Dark Horse! We deliberate on the horror themed It Killed Everyone But Me #1, published by Mad Cave! And lastly we chatter about the wild ride that is Spirit of the Shadows from Oni Press! All this plus our usual regimen of tangents, geek gets and woofs!!

With good parts of the US having had to deal with more snow, the Comic Book Bears are back with you to present their latest storm of funnybook talk! Bill Z, Steve and Caleb bring out the books from the top of their stacks and, after some news chat including the impending return to the Australian Outback for the X-Men and Paramount's bid for Warner Brothers, there are some great books we have on this episode's docket! End of Life, the first of the new series of titles from DC's revived Vertigo imprint! DC K.O.'s The Kids Are All Fight one-shot special which previews the latest Titans relaunch! The sci-fi/horror blend of Malevolent by Justin Jordan and John Bivens from Image Comics! Dan Houser and David Lapham's crime series American Caper from Dark Horse! Tortured Hearts, the latest anthology from the relaunched EC Comics! The Jason Aaron-helmed adaptation of the early-80's animated TV series Thundarr The Barbarian from Dynamtie Entertainment! So hit play to enjoy two hours of four-color ice-thawing commentary

Hearts and Cupid's arrows were in the air when we recorded this most recent Comic Book Bears episode this past Valentine's Day! And what an assortment of comic book candy do we have for you this time around! Hit play to hear Caleb, Bill Z and Steve discuss the Dreadnok War storyline in Image's current G.I. Joe series, The Vision and The Scarlet Witch's Fear the Reaper arc by Steve Orlando and Lorenzo Tammetta from Marvel, the DC K.O. Boss Battle one-shot and the (excellent) Knightfight mini-series starring Batman and various Robins by Joshua Williamson and Dan Mora springing out of the same DC Comics event! And if your taste in confections runs more to the indie end of the spectrum, don't worry we have you covered too with the queer graphic novels In Between the Trees by Paul Winck and Dancing on the Volcano Paperback by Floor de Goede! All this plus a sweet and crunchy vintage Geek Get that Bill Z shows off from 1989!!

Recorded this past MLK Birthday, the CBB boys took advantage of the federal holiday by getting together to discuss recent comics!! Steve, Caleb and Billy Z roundtable six new books, so hit play to hear the hairy, heavy chit chat about Hulk: Smash Everything (Marvel), Aquaman #12 which features the title character's K.O. battle with Hawkman (DC), the Absolute Batman: Ark-M one-shot (DC), the new horror anthology ShiverSuspensestories (EC Comics/Oni), Mauruce Vellekoop's touching graphic novel memoir I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together (Pantheon) and the latest incarnation of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt (Dynamite Entertainment) on this latest audio episode!

The Comic Book Bears Podcast is back for its first audio episode of 2026! After getting caught up with what their holidays were like (including a little bit of early Geek Gets show and tell) Bill Z, Steve and Caleb take us into the first rotation of the 2026 virtual spinner rack to talk about recent comics! DC is represented by Absolute Wonder Woman #15 (the first ever team up with Absolute Batman), by Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum, and by the second omnibus of The Question by Denny O'Neill and Denys Cowan. Two new Mad Cave books are also discussed - Look Into My Eyes and The New Space Age! And Kieron Gillen's Die series continues with Die Loaded from our friends at Image Comics! One quick note - this episode was recorded on January 8th, one day after the killing of Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis. A lot has gone down since. #abolishice 

The final Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode of the year finds us providing our picks for the best of comics for 2025! Hit play and discover what each of the CBB boys - Caleb, Bill Z and Steve - selected for our favorites in a number of categories: Best Series, Best Single Issue, Best Graphic Novel, Best Writer and Best Artist! We also chime in on what our other favorites were for 2025 in music, film, television, Happy Meals toy promotions (!), video games and more! Thank you again for your continued support for our podcast throughout 2025 and we look forward to joining you again soon in 2026!!! Hoping that you all had an awesome holiday season and wishing you all safety and success in ringing in the new year!!

Join us for the penultimate audio episode of the Comic Book Bears Podcast for 2025! Unfortunately Caleb was unable to join us so in his seat we welcome back to the show longtime friend Jon Runyan of Comics By Night and A Comic Book Look! Listen in as Steve, Billy Z and Jon roundtable a bunch of recent comics including Strange Tales (Marvel), Nightwing Annual 2025 (DC), Matt Kindt's Space Scouts (Dark Horse), Doomed 2099 (Marvel), the Over Easy graphic novel from Mimi Pond (Drawn and Quarterly) and the dollar bin discovery of Nocturnal Emissions by Fiona Smyth from 1991. All this plus our Woofs of the Week and Geek Gets segments and some speculation about a Marvel Comics reboot potentially being on the horizon.  

One more new Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode for November! Recorded on a livestream before Thanksgiving 2025 but hitting your ear buds after, Bill Z, Steve and Caleb discuss some of the comics they were thankful to have read recently - the origin expanding Mr. Terrific: Year One (DC), the spicy sci-fi romance of Maria Llovet's Artificial (Image), the action packed Skinbreaker from Robert Kirkman and David Finch (Image), the kick-off of a mini-series based on TV's Gargoyles mini-series focused on Demona (Dynamite), the tarot inspired fantasy of Arcana: The Lost Heirs graphic novel (Feiwel and Friends) and the first issue Mark Russell's new sci-fi horror anthology series Terrorbytes (Mad Cave!!!) GOBBLE GOBBLE!!!

Time for another Comic Book Bears audio episode from one of our recent livestreams! And this time Steve, Caleb and Billy Z have a whole bunch of cool books in this comic roundtable! And it kicks off with Deadpool/Batman #1, the first new Marvel/DC crossover in 21 years! We have more Marvel books on the docket with Avengers #s 29 and 30 as well as the premiere issue of Amazing Spider-Man: Torn #1! DC is also represented with the return of Gotham Academy! Lastly, we chat about the collected edition of Oni's Out of Alcatraz and the western themed Outlaw Showdown from the relaunched EC Comics line! We hope you had a great Thanksgiving and hope you give this a listen after your Tryptophan injection!!    

We are almost at Halloween and the CBB boys are back with another new audio episode! Since the last episode was horror themed, we opted to travel down our familiar round table route for this one. Join us to hear Caleb, Bill Z and Steve talk about a host of new comics! Both DC and Marvel have new crossover events starting up so we first discuss DC K.O. #1 (and the prologue issues associated with it - Justice League Unlimited #11 and Justice League: The Omega Act Special #1) and X-Men of Apocalypse: Alpha #1! Two Image books are on our spinner rack in the form of the first issues of Good as Dead and News from the Fallout. We also check out the new body-swap book Flip by Ngozi Ukazu and published by First Second. Lastly, we are thrilled to discuss the espionage-based graphic novel Shaken and Stirred written by good friend of the show Steve Bryant with art by Rob Jones! So hit play - we promise no tricks and all treats!  

It's spooky season and to pay tribute to that, on this new Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode Steve and Bill Z head to the movies to talk about films based on horror comic from the past six decades! Among the many films discussed on the episode are Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Vault of Horror (1973), Swamp Thing (1982), The Crow (1994), Spawn (1997), Blade (1998), Virus (1999), From Hell (2001), Blade II (2002), Alien vs. Predator (2004), Blade: Trinity (2004), Hellboy (2004), Constantine (2005), Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), Ghost Rider (2007), Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011) and the Hellboy (2019) and The Crow (2024) reboots! And that's not even the full list! Halloween is only a few days away and if you wanted to get in the spirit and watch a horror movie, hit play and we will definitely give you some ideas for one, albeit with a funnybook bent!  

It's another roundtable of recent comics with your hairy heavy funnybook reading homos as we say goodbye to September! Hit play to hear Steve, Caleb and Bill Z opine on new series like Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League (DC), All-New Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider (Marvel) and Speed Racer (Mad Cave!) We also discuss the touching done-in-one Incredible Hulk #27 (Marvel), the immensely consequential Transformers #24 (Image) and we touch base on the latest developments in the long running Something is Killing the Children (Boom Studios!)  

We have reached the end of another month and that means more Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episodes! This time around the principal focus is on the new Batman #1, the relaunch of the title from writer Matt Fraction with superstar artist Jorge Jiménez! Establishing a new status quo for the Caped Crusader and his home city of Gotham, Batman #1 from DC hits the ground running including a supporting cast shakeup and a much more high tech Batman. But that isn't the only new title discussed this time around. Hit play to hear CBB boys Bill Z, Steve and Caleb also discuss The Adventures of Lumen N (Dark Horse), No Saints Nor Poets (Tightrope Press), Hellboy in Love: The Art of Fire (Dark Horse), Everything Dead and Dying (Image) and Jeff Lemire's memoir 10,000 Ink Stains (again, Dark Horse.) 

We have reached the symbolic end of Summer 2025 and the CBB Boys are back with a new audio episode. Caleb, Bill Z and Steve reconvene to discuss a set of new comics and graphic novels as we close out August. We have the Big Two represented by this year's Titans Annual from DC with Donna Troy in the spotlight with a story written and drawn by Phil Jimenez and by a new Captain America #1 from Marvel from the team of Chip Zdarsky and Valerio Schiti. We have Oni's EC Comics revival represented by Catacomb of Torment #1 and Cruel Universe #1. We also have the manga body horror of Brain Damage by Shintaro Kago and the-coming-of-gay-age of Mike Curatoro's Gaysians graphic novel. So hit play and enjoy two hours of funnybook chatter as this summer sunsets.   

The CBB Boys head back to the movies, this time for for The Fantastic Four: First Steps!!! TFF:FS is the 37th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franschise and the second reboot of the Fantastic Four for the cinema. The film was directed by Matt Shakman and features an ensemble cast including Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn as the family-based super-hero foursome, alongside Julia Garner, Sarah Niles, Mark Gatiss, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser and others. Set in the early 1960s of a retro-futuristic world, the film finds the Fantastic Four desperate to protect Earth from the planet-devouring cosmic force known as Galactus! Steve, Caleb and Bill Z are all on hand to discuss what they thought of the movie and, as is our custom with our movie centered episodes, spend the back half of the show discussing collected editions featuring the Fantastic Four in comic form whuch you might enjoy! So, hit play and Flame On with this group of hairy heavy homos!

This new Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode is a little bit different. We were down to two bears in the cave this week so we elected to use this time together as a "backdoor pilot" for Steve Mowry's new horror-centered podcast The Bear Cave of Terror. BCOT will be available in its own feeds going forward but with Bill Z as the first of Steve's guest co-hosts, we are thrilled to present you our discussion of the seminal 1975 film Jaws as it celebrates its 50th anniversary this summer! Jaws was the first wide-release summer blockbuster which changed the way films were marketed forever and established its director Steven Spielberg as a major figure in filmmaking! We discuss the book that the film was based on, the cast, the later imitators and (of course) the scares!!! However we still were able to get a little bit of comic book talk in as well, with the first issues of The New History of the DC Universe and Lazarus Fallen by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark from Image Comics getting the CBB chat treatment! So hi

We could not wait to bring you this episode!!!  Superman, the new film, is written and directed by James Gunn and is the kickoff movie for the new DC Universe media franchise! David Corenswet stars as Superman/Clark Kent, alongside Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor along with Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion, Isabela Merced and others. In the film, Superman must prove to a suspect world that he is a protector after billionaire Lex Luthor enacts a plan to turn public opinion against him. Be forewarned, this episode is COMPLETELY spoileriffic! We all weigh in on what we thought of the movie and, as has become customary for our film-centric episodes, we also offer up our suggestions of collected editions starring the characters from the film - in this case The Man of Steel, Superman: Birthright and Superman: Lost - that we hope you might enjoy! So, hit play and ... LOOK UP!    

To finish out Pride Month we have another new Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode! Bill Z and Steve share their HeroesCon experience in Charlotte in the beginning of the episode. And though Caleb was not with them for the con, he is back with them on the mic to discuss a series of new books! We first cover this year's Pride Month anthology offerings from the Big Two - Marvel United: A Pride Special #1 and DC Pride 2025! The queer anthology talk continues with a discussion of Young Men in Love: New Romance (Wave Blue World), and the new book chat is rounded out by Blood Type #1 (Oni), Whatever Happened to the Crimson Justice #1 (Mad Cave) and the last few issues of Namor (Marvel) - so hit play to enjoy two hours of The Heroes and The Gay!  

New Comic Book Bears Podcast audio episode! On June 19th, CBB boys Steve and Bill Z were actually together in the same place for this mini-episode previewing HeroesCon in Charlotte which ran from June 20th-22nd! Though sadly Caleb-less, hit play to hear what we had planned for the con ... and you won't have to wait too long for the follow-up as our post-convention wrap up episode is following right behind this one tomorrow!