One Panel Later

Kelly and Angela have a great rapport while gently ripping the other's fandom apart. As someone who's pretty into manga and keeps up on industry debates, of course I support Kelly's line of thinking more. But I keep meaning to get into more Western comics, so this is also a good way to keep up with general trends there. Since they're both librarians, it's also interesting to more clearly understand how libraries purchase and then remove books from their collections. Looking forward to any and all future topics!

I really wanted to like this. It’s the only podcast I’ve found about BOTH manga and western comics AND hosted by ladies! A dream come true! Unfortunately, I find myself continually frustrated by many elements. The very conceit of “mine vs. yours” is just disheartening to someone who passionately loves all kinds of comics (yes, I read big 2, all kinds of manga, creator owned, webcomics, newspaper strips, and so much more.) Comics often get broadly defined as just Big 2 comics, and manga as the most generic shounen ecchi title. They do ACTUALLY cover more than that, but despite discussing specifics like creator owned titles and critically acclaimed manga, it goes back to the punchline of “comics are all superheroes” and “manga is all panty shots.” I also find the discussion of “bad” elements of manga to be kind of xenophobic/racist at times. (“Ugly art” in ep 41 was especially egregious.) The bafflement at black and white manga is nonsensical when TMNT was b&w and created a b&w boom, and the most common mainstream comics for decades (newspaper strips) are b&w. TMNT being b&w eventually, a few episodes later, gets acknowledged, but this is an example of a general lack of nuance and ignoring just how broad comics (not just western, all comics worldwide) are as a medium in order to maintain this forced conceit of “yours is bad and mine is great.” That doesn’t even touch on just how often I disagree with their opinions (i get it - you REALLY don’t like a certain comic I love, do we need to hear about this in several different episodes at length?) or find some statements just factually incorrect to my knowledge. I’ve listened to every episode, and I think I’ve reached the point where I can finally let it go. There are moments I genuinely enjoy (most often when they get away from the vs conceit and discuss more industry problems, like manga being sidelined in best of lists, or going beyond their generalized definitions of each to talk about specific topics I’m very into - I started listening because they did episodes devoted to BL and queer comics,) but my frustrations greatly outweigh those to the point that I can’t recommend this, unless you don’t find issue with the elements that I did. For me, it being the only lady led podcast on both manga and western comics (that I know of) has finally stopped being enough of a draw to keep listening.

Enjoying this podcast so far, hosts have a good rapport and I learned some things about manga's quirks. Still, I hope that by the end the inferiority of manga will be proven once and for all!

Covers big topics from both comics and manga viewpoints. It's nice to see manga represented on a comics podcast for once!