Comic Cast First Year Birthday....Twisted Pepper, Friday July 17th

See these are the kind of conversations I enjoy in rural

Q: What are you doing at the weekend?

A; Ah, I'm going down to Dublin for a birthday party.

Q: Whose is it?

A: Well it's more of a what

Q: What?

A: It's like a birthday party for a podcast about comics and it's one year old.

Q: Is that one of the Ballinode Podcasts? lovely wee baby it is....

but anyway it's the first year party of Liam Geraghty and Craig O'Connor's great Comic Cast . I remember finally meeting the great Bob Byrne at the Birmingham Comic Show and having the conversation about growing up in Ireland and being a comic fan and all the comic-relating things you have in common even if you haven't met. Like the hot geeky girl that worked in Forbidden Planet etc. So listening to the lads is like an online version of that style of conversation

which goes from hilarious to suprisingly touching in places. Official blurb here:

The Comic Cast is an Irish based show about comic books - from the heroes of DC & Marvel to the anti-heroes of Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and beyond. Hosted by Craig O'Connor and Liam Geraghty, the show comes out fortnightly alternating between comics news and discussion and

interviews with mainly Irish comic creators, illustrators and animators.

They have also done a great job in connecting the worlds of comics, animation and graphic design in Ireland. Anyway, there first birthday is at the Twisted Pepper on Friday 17th of July

See in my day, comic geeks weren't allowed to hang out with top lady celebrities, but with a geek in the White House....yes we can.

Samatha Mumba rocks, at least I know who she is, had to look up Glenda Gilson as I've been England for 5 years and it takes a while to catch up on nonentities. Looking forward to it.

Give it up for the Comic Cast lads....

Just a quick shout out to Craig O'Connor and Liam Geraghty the Comic Cast lads who have been providing me with late night audio to the recent blogging madness. (that hoovering up all these great Siskel and Ebert movie reviews, found when I did the Robocop post)

Promo shot for the comiccast that reminded me a bit of this.

I first heard of the Comic Cast via Bob Byrne's blog, where his post on their great show here. If you've never heard the Mack Daddy of Irish Comics Bob speak this a great hilarious interview full of great personal anecdotes and his usual/unusal for most monkeys opinions of the world of comics. I especially loved his stories of sending someone out to get the 'megazine' and they'd be like don't you mean magazine, and you'd be there no..the megazine, obviously for me these discussions were with family members and not the parade of Bob's lady friends.

A representative pic of Bob and I at the Birmingham Comic Show last year.

The lastest one is an amazing interview with Cliodhna Lyons as some readers may know as the organiser of Ireland's 24 Hour Comics day which I must get to soon. I stay up half night here scrawling dementing pictures and ranting so it might be nice to do it with other people.

Listening to this interview was the reason for the more sentimental parts of my Robocop post as her father died a few months before mine last year while working for Goal in Sri Lanka. She created The Goal Anthology entitled after her father's answering machine message: "sorry I can't take your call right now but I'm off saving the world"

There's also some great discussions of the current Irish and New York comic scenes both in terms of artists and the academic training structure and Brendan and the Secret of Kells, trailer here. I'm working my way through the other episodes but the lads have a very nice relaxed style and it really creates interesting stories from the guests and makes me nostalgic for wandering around the comic shops of Dublin when I used to live there.

Bob's Interview
Cliodhna's Interview


The Goal Anthology