Getting Familiar with Mark Z. Danielewski

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Mark Z. Danielewski is the author of the award-winning and bestselling novel House of Leaves, the National Book Award finalist Only Revolutions, and the novella The Fifty Year Sword, which was adapted and performed as a must-see opera.

Mark's latest project is a 27-volume novel, the third installment of which releases this week. Matt caught up with him on the cusp of an expansive North American book tour.

Matt and Mark discuss the challenges of early success, the benefits of rent control, famous siblings, and the daunting responsibilities of changing the reader's experience with The Familiar. Listen to it all on this in-depth episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy presented by La Luz de Jesus Gallery & Meltdown Comics!

Mark Z. Danielewski will be reading from The Familiar, Vol 3: Honeysuckle & Pain and signing all of his books at one of our favorite independent book stores: Skylight Books in Los Feliz on Monday, June 20th at 7PM. Be sure to stop by and tell them that Matt Kennedy sent you! Click here to preorder your copy.

NOTE: We switched from Audioboom to BlogTalkRadio. New links below!

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The Genetics of Superpowers from a Real Science Whistleblower

Dr. DNA is the pseudonym of a credentialed molecular biologist, whose work has been published in peer-reviewed journals. Because of the sensitive nature of his research and regulations of disclosure, I am unable to reveal his true identity at this time, but understand that he is real, his information is 100% accurate, and when you hear what he has to say about the state of biochemistry as it relates to Big Pharma, the availability of papers made possible through public funding, and relative ease of identifying the potential for super powers and actively creating a genetically advanced species, you will freak out.  

This week's program is the second attempt to present this topic for the public, after the first recording was mysteriously lost. It's hard to relate just how paranoia inducing it can be to record an entire show that deals with secret medical research and have it all vanish. That unfortunate and unexplained phenomena required us to set up a second call-in appointment, and believe me when I tell you that at certain points in the conversation, my producer, Mason, and I were convinced that some regulatory agency was going to bust into the studio and shut us down.   

It took years and a lot of convincing on my part to get Dr. DNA comfortable enough to discuss even the limited scope of topics we were able to cover here, and I hope at some point in the not too distant future that he will be able to come back on the show and relate the extent of his research to which I am personally aware. In the meantime, please enjoy this podcast on the Genetics of Superpowers, the potential of Crisper, Homeobox genes, and the repercussions of going public with too much information–while it remains unsuppressed. If you've ever wondered whether you'll witness actual super humans in your lifetime, you need to hear this. This is a definite case of Truth being Stranger Than Fiction, and something you will only hear on Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy!

NOTE: We switched from Audioboom to BlogTalkRadio. New links below!

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Mark Todd: When Is Tribute Not Appropriation?

Mark Todd works in Comic Book Iconography

Mark Todd is a fine artist who pays tribute to the greats–Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others, while opening up a conversation about image appropriation. As an instructor at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, he's been a pivotal advocate of fanzines and self-publishing among the next generation of young, California artists.

He's also the patriarch of an art family that includes wife Esther Pearl Watson (of Unloveable fame) and daughter Lili Todd, who by the age of 12 had illustrated an Amy Sedaris book, and by 14 was exhibiting on walls with some of the biggest names in pop surrealism.

Listen to it all on this in-depth episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy presented by La Luz de Jesus Gallery & Meltdown Comics!

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Click here to download via iTunes.

Be sure to add us to your RSS feed! New uploads weekly, and exclusive web content in between!

Matt and Kevin Smith Reaveal the Secret Origins of the Joker

Earlier this month, Kevin Smith brought me in to the Smodcast studios to appear on his Fatman on Batman videocast as part of a follow-up to my appearance on the SoundCloud audio podcast to talk about the Jerry Robinson original art pages I acquired that may be evidence–once and for all–that Jerry co-created the Joker in the same time frame that he co-created Robin.

Above is the second part of that interview, where we really get into Jerry's story and I explain how these pages came into my possession. I am eternally grateful, once again, for this opportunity to spread the gospel of Jerry Robinson.  

Kevin Smith has been an amazing supporter, so sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel (here) if you haven't already, and be sure to subscribe to Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy via iTunes here. Please watch, share, and enjoy!

For those of you who will go to see Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, if you stay for the end credits roll, you will see that Jerry Robinson was included in the "Special Thanks" alongside Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster. Let's hope this is the first step toward creator credit in the subsequent films!

Luke Chueh Bears All

Luke Chueh is an insanely popular contemporary artist. His signature anthropomorphic bear has emblazoned Fall Out Boy albums and merchandise, and his art toy releases inspire lines around the block. Luke opens up about the dark side of art world fame, switching gears mid-career, and how to take your art from three to five digits in six years. 
Listen to it all on this in-depth episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy presented by La Luz de Jesus Gallery & Meltdown Comics!

Click here to Stream It.
Click here to download via iTunes.


Be sure to add us to your RSS feed! New uploads weekly, and exclusive web content in between!

Feeling Lucky?

Kiyoshi “Lucky” Nakazawa is a veteran of the zine trade whose origin story is downright inspirational. Matt and Lucky discuss growing up Yonsei, having good mentors, and juggling multiple careers to make ends meet. All on this amazing episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy presented by Meltdown Comics!

To stream it live, click here: http://www.meltcomics.com/blog/2016/03/06/019-lucky-nakazawa-podcast-podsequentialism/


To subscribe via iTunes, click here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/meltdown-presents-pod-sequentialism/id1050474420?mt=2 (Episode#019)

Girls Drawin Girls

In the special Laluzapalooza edition of the Pod Sequentialism podcast, Matt interviews Girls Drawin Girls founder Melody Severns. They discuss starting an international art collective by accident, breaking boundaries with good will, and being on the right side of history–far ahead of most!

Stream it live here: http://www.meltcomics.com/blog/2016/02/29/018-girls-drawin-girls-podsequentialism-podcast/

Or listen on iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/meltdown-presents-pod-sequentialism/id1050474420?mt=2 (It's Episode #018)

Killing Your Idols

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Tom Neely is the Ignatz Award winning artist of The Blot. His collective, the Igloo Tornado, is behind the best-selling Henry & Glenn project and his Image Comics series The Humans is part of a growing trend away from superhero comics.

Matt and Tom discuss the pros and cons of taking a comic on tour, the differences between freelancing and self-publishing, and what to do when your idol wants to kill you.

If you've ever wondered about the legality of incorporating real people into your art, you'll really want to give this podcast a listen. There may be a fine line between stupid and clever, but there is often an even finer line between celebrity and megalomania. The line that separates each (in both scenarios) is often satire.

This is an interview with Glenn Danzig

Matt and Tom spend a great portion of the program talking about Tom's Henry & Glenn comics, which also entered into the conversation on Matt's appearances on Kevin Smith's Smodcasts. The question about whether or not Henry or Glenn appreciate the Killing Your Idols tenet of punk rock as it applies to them has been a frequent byproduct of any conversation about Tom's (arguably) most famous comic. It is widely reported that Rollins finds it much more entertaining than does Danzig, but in a very interesting series of recent developments Glenn Danzig has appeared on the sitcom Portlandia in a send-up of Goth culture that reveals a pretty gregarious example of self-parody (click here), while simultaneously slamming H&G in Rolling Stone.


As an anecdote to this, I can personally attest to fact that Glenn has a sense of humor–even if it hasn't always pertained to the H&G comics. I've seen him joke around, and it's my opinion that he's very much a fanboy at heart. For whatever reason, he does not see the obvious sit-com charm of the idea that the two most masculine men in Metal/Punk would be involved in a Tom of Finland scenario. One can only wonder of the backlash that might have followed if the Igloo Tornado guys were all Manowar fans.

Rollins has said in public that he is amused by all of this, but I was told (by a source who shall remain nameless) that coverage for our exhibition of the Art of Henry & Glenn was denied at the newspaper that carries Henry's column because they didn't want to "ruffle any feathers." This is a newspaper that routinely takes on City Hall, but its editors were adverse to granting coverage to a satirical art show about one of their freelance columnists. Ouch!

Anyhow, you can enjoy all this and more in the latest, exciting episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy, Presented by Meltdown Comics & La Luz de Jesus Gallery.

Stream it here: www.meltcomics.com
Subscribe to it here: iTunes

And check out Tom's comic, The Humans!

Pod Sequentialism Swag!

First of all: Many Thanks to everyone that subscribes to the Pod Sequentialism Podcast–most especially for giving me a format to talk about comics, art and pop culture with my very talented friends. If you've enjoyed it thus far, just wait until you see what's coming!

The crew at Meltdown Comics set us up with TeePublic, who have produced a whole line of Pod Sequentialism Logo Goodies!

Make my mom happy–buy a T-Shirt!

The original logo was created by me and my art-partner-in-crime, Misty Zhou, and our producers had it redrawn into what you see today. Check out her online portfolio here.

We've got a redesign coming soon and a massive update to the Pop Sequentialism website with new and classic art, more publications, and whole other host of neat stuff to appeal to your inner (and outer) geek.

Grab it all here on the TeePublic site.
And Subscribe to Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy via iTunes.
Or Stream it live on the Meltcast here.

Tune in every Sunday for a new episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy!

Who Really Created the Joker?

The feedback I've gotten from my appearance on Kevin Smith's Fatman on Batman has been incredible! Sales of my Pop Sequentialism book have been off the chain and the spike in listenership on my Pod Sequentialism podcast has almost doubled my audience.

Click here to stream my podcast

After recording the audio-only version of the show Kevin had me back for the videocast to which I'll be posting a link as soon as it goes live. I've posted a little teaser photo to the left of us holding the smoking gun, as it may be.

In researching the history of Jerry Robinson's involvement with the Joker I amassed a mountain of info that didn't get mentioned in either broadcast, and I wanted to dedicate a version of my own show to the proto-Joker pagers to elaborate on how I came to posses them and what these pages may mean to fandom.

If you haven't heard it by now, I purchased some original art a few years back when setting up the follow-up to the original Pop Sequentialism exhibition. The pages turned out to be preliminary, unpublished (though later incompletely copied) pages that retell the origin of Robin that feature a villainous clown character that was never entered into the official cannon, which would seem to support Jerry Robinson's lifelong claim to having created the character, and losing that credit after bringing his idea to Bob Kane and Bill Finger.

As Kevin said in his podcast, this is a real barn-burner. It's not just a mystery, it's a matter of real significance that effects pop culture history.

I previously posted images right here in the blog, which you can see again below.
Listen to the show before rushing to judgment based on the images alone.

Stream it here on the Meltdown Comics site.
Or Subscribe here via iTunes.

Front of the page

Back of the page

Second page from set

Tune in every Sunday for a new episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy!

How to Find a Publisher

Ann Shen on the latest Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy

Ann Shen is a recent art school graduate working on her first book, Bad Girls Throughout History, to be published by Chronicle Books in Fall 2016.

Matt asks Ann how she landed that book deal, and how life plans can change and change back on the way to realizing your dreams. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to find a publisher, this is the podcast for you!

Ann holds two bachelor degrees, so when she gives the lowdown on art school pros and cons, you should listen.

Stream it here on the Meltdown Comics site.
Or Subscribe here via iTunes.

Tune in every Sunday for a new episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy!

Lindsey Way: Raw & Uncut

Click here to stream it!

My in-depth interview with fine artist and musician Lindsey Way went live yesterday on the Pod Sequentialism podcast. Fans of her band Mindless Self Indulgence may be more familiar with her than the patrons of Blue Chip art galleries, but not for long!

We got our first Explicit Language Warning for this, because her upc show title is "Shitty Teen," and we knew we'd get flagged anyway, so we didn't censor ourselves. Lin-z discusses being forced to grow up fast to care for a sick parent, and using art school to escaping small town limitations.

Anyone who has struggled with what they do, or what they've endured on the way there NEEDS to HEAR THIS!


Please subscribe to the Pod Sequentialism podcast on iTunes here.
Check out her feature exhibition at La Luz de Jesus Gallery here.


All of the works in Lindsey Way's Shitty Teen exhibition were taken from her high school notebook, and the vast majority of her pieces directly utilize those notes, so when you see hand-written sentiment, in all but two cases those are pages from her actual high school notebook and they are filled with the type of angst, rage, and comedy that you might expect from the pen of teenager.

As such this show is not just an exhibition of work from an acclaimed artist with a degree from Pratt, but a nostalgic time capsule from the life of a celebrity musician. The work is brave, and in many ways this podcast is even braver. Honesty this raw is rare, and we hope that you'll find this episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy as inspiring and rewarding as we do.

Shitty Teen on view at La Luz de Jesus Gallery (4633 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027) Feb. 5–28th. Jessicka Addams (of Jack of Jill and Scarling) exhibits alongside her in Gallery I with her show, Please Stop Loving Me.

Matt on Fatman on Batman!

Matt & Kevin on Fatman on Batman

I taped an epic 2 1/2 hour Fatman on Batman with Kevin Smith, and it's now uploaded for your listening pleasure! This covers a lot of ground for sure, but it revolves primarily around an unpublished Batman page I bought years ago that may be evidence of Jerry Robinson's contribution to the Joker and an alternative origin story for Robin. My comic geek friends will love this, and everyone else is bound to learn a lot about me.

I was honored and humbled to be invited on Kevin's show and even more so to be given so much air time, which I used to give as much credit as I could to some of the great people who have played an important part in my particular story and to give shout outs to some other fine folks:

Billy Shire, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Fantastic Store Comics, Meltdown Comics and Collectibles, Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, Tony Scott, Mel Brooks, Comics Legends & Lore, Paul Marcure, Paul Glavin, Tim Cole, Thomas Sniegoski, Ai Honda Kennedy, The Goblin Market, Døc Gillespie, Wacko: Purveyor of Post-Pop Culture, Sean Francis Kennedy, Howard Hallis, Joel Spielman, Hollywood Book & Poster Co., Panik House Entertainment, Liberation Entertainment, CaseNegra Entertainment, Pinky Violence, Chris D., Hector Cruz Sandoval, Lindsay Way, James Euringer, Troma Entertainment, Lloyd Kaufman, David Shultz, Blue Underground, James Gunn, John Kantas, Eric Caidin, David Gregory, Joyce Shen, José Rodolfo Loaiza Ontiveros, Larry Edmunds Bookshop, The Wu-Tang Clan, Tom Neely, Glenn L Barr, and my Mom and Dad. Many thanks to you all!

Stream it here on the Smodcast site.

Tune in every Sunday for a new episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy!

Cracking the Code of the Blockbuster Imperative

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a comic book or collectibles shop and overheard a conversation about how badly a studio handled a project beloved from another medium, or how another project would have been a better idea.

Fans have definite opinions about these things but they are infrequently consulted because they rarely back-up those opinions with trackable purchase power.

In researching the 14th episode of the Pod Sequentialism podcast, I crunched numbers from  a bunch of different sources (including a great article by the Hollywood Reporter's Pamela McClintock) and came across a pattern that can't possibly be lost on the studios.

In fact, it's an actual formula for box office success that has thus far only experienced a 5% margin of error. I feel like Christian Bale in The Big Short; like I've combined enough data to reach a conclusion that has to be worth a fortune to the right people. But, instead of knocking on studio doors, or writing my own article for The Hollywood Reporter or Variety, I'm imparting this knowledge to you, my listenership.

Stream it here on the Meltdown Comics site.
Or Subscribe here via iTunes.

Tune in every Sunday for a new episode of Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy!

Is Cosplay Killing Comicon?

Actress Milynn Sarley, my guest on Episode 12

As a regular attendee to comic conventions, and as someone with friends in the industry who rely on convention income I noticed a tendency for retailers to bash cosplay.

Comic book shops now definitely don't look like they did when I was a kid. Until the 1990s most comic shops were dark rows of long boxes filled with poly-bagged back issues, walls decorated in matrixes of mylar-covered first appearances, and windows covered in promotional posters that prevented almost any light from breaching the shop until someone opened the door. And we wondered why the only women were aggravated moms whose teenaged boys didn't hear the car horn because they were arguing over the merits of the Teen Titans over the X-men.

But for the last 25 or so years, slicker, brighter and more versatile retail design has transformed the hobby from a collection of library/caves into pop-culture superstores. Back east, Newbury Comics was the first to diversify a newsstand mentality into a punk rock record store with cool t-shirts, toys AND comics. In Los Angeles, Golden Apple's original Melrose Ave location was the celebrity hangout where one might bump into Los Bros Hernandez or go to a Neil Gaiman signing. Other smaller shops on both coasts found a niche that their audience enjoyed in addition to comic books and gave it visible real estate–Comics, Legends, and Lore where I worked as a teen had a full wall of gaming miniatures and was THE role-playing Mecca of the North Shore of Boston. Fantastic Store in Hollywood had a gigantic, paper mâché Thing hanging over it–and Tony Scott picked it as the comic shop location for his Quentin Tarantino scripted masterpiece, True Romance.

The competition noticed and the now places like Meltdown Comics and Collectibles are almost the standard, or at least the ideal toward which new shops strive. Bright without teetering completely over the edge of information overload, and hosting weekly events for audiences that probably don't even read comics.

Bob Violence, from the pages of American Flagg!

In other words, comic shops have always evolved to survive, so it's always bothered me that cosplayers have repeatedly been blamed for "killing comicon" by retailers who haven't found a way to cater to their new, visible attendee base. I've always enjoyed seeing people wear their fandom, but I haven't dressed in character since BosCon '86, when my mother sewed a Bob Violence (look to the left) costume and let me spend a weekend (unsupervised!) with my older peers at a fancy hotel in Boston. So I called in my favorite cosplay expert: Milynn Sarley!

Milynn is a co-creator of Team Unicorn, and has acted in TV shows and co-hosted gamer and entertainment programs.

She's also beautiful and smart, and one of the nicest people I know.

I sincerely apologize that this one wasn't a video podcast.

Click here for the live-stream link!
Click here for the iTunes page for Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy.

Stranger than (Dr.) Strange

Howard Hallis: World Authority on Dr. Strange

Happy New Year!

With the Winter Solstice exactly thirteen days behind us, we thought it perfect timing to launch Pod Sequentialism with Matt Kennedy's interview with Dr. Strange expert Howard Hallis. The two dig deep into the occult origins of comic book magic, the Crowleyan underpinnings of everybody's favorite comic book sorcerer–and a whole lot more!

Howard Hallis has the largest independent collection of Dr. Strange ephemera. From the comics to original art and merchandised paraphernalia, Howard has been adding to his ever-expanding Dr. Strange Museum for nearly four decades. But Howard is no stranger to the mystic world of true magick, either.

Hallis has a long curriculum vitae that spans an art degree from UCLA (studying with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley), a music career with the seminal Yidcore band Gefilte Fuck, recording the death of 60s psychedelic guru Dr. Timothy Leary for posterity via live stream video, and the pioneering lenticular work, The Picture of Everything–a gigantic, 15-foot-high drawing of ALL things pop culture (covered in the pages of Wired magazine).

It's a history lesson sure to make Benedict Cumberbatch proud!
Click here for a live stream, or subscribe to the Pod Sequentialism podcast on iTunes.

The Ubiquitous Boombox

laluzdejesus.com/boombox/

Back in Episode 6 of the Pod Sequentialism podcast, in discussing how graffiti was so closely associated with Hip Hop culture, Mason and Matt mentioned the Boombox as another pivotal catalyst in the birth of Hip Hop. They also mentioned the that Matt would be curating a boombox exhibition at La Luz de Jesus Gallery. That show, titled Boombox Creators, displays 30 classic boomboxes and a lot of ephemera connected to the boombox and Hip Hop in general.

The fine folks at Hi-Fructose Magazine gave some wonderful coverage to what started as a little boombox vanity project, and the new goal is to get this show into the Brooklyn Museum. Miles Lightwood and Matt Kennedy spent about two years putting this show together, and with some help from Brian Fox and Trevor Baade pulled it off swimmingly. The Boombox Creators Exhibition is the first to focus on the boombox as a fine art object. The idea was to present the notion that the boomboxes themselves are perfect without painting on them or otherwise altering them from the commercially marketed home electronics device that they were originally intended to be. Included are classics like the JVC M-90 and the Sharp HK9000 (which is the only boombox in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution), and a lot of other amazing pieces of machinery. Also included are original, production designs by Richard Culbertson for boomboxes that never went into production.

Throughout the exhibition are info cards dedicated to the designers behind the boomboxes on display and for sale.

The exhibit runs through the holidays, and closes on January 3rd–when there will be a closing party with breakdancers and a bunch of the boomboxes will be tuned to an FM transmitter that will broadcast the mix tape produced specifically for the show (and limited to 100 copies). It's highly recommended that you check out the amazing collection of factory sealed cassette tapes, LPs and photography from the boombox era by Bobby Grossman, Ed Colver, and Lyle Owerko alongside new art pieces by The Panik Collective, Sean Steppanof, and Josh Gardner.

See the installation photos, and come visit the show in person at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, 4633 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90027.

Getting Steampunk'd with Ave Rose

Ave Rose is a singer, a performer, a publisher, a writer, a designer and an exhibiting fine artist. With collaborators Trieops Treyfid, Cig Neutron, and Rannie Rodil she put together the Aliens in L.A. book and performance project, and via Ink Pen Mutations Press she is a self-publishing mogul specializing in illustrated counter-culture story-telling. As the one-to-beat on GSNTV's Steampunk'd, she became the posterchild of the post-gothic industrial set.

This makes her a pretty great interview by anyone's standard.

This week on Pod Sequentialism, Ave Rose and Matt Kennedy discuss the many hats artists must wear (both literally and figuratively), and what it was like to be the star of a Reality TV Series.

How Do You Get More Girls to Play D&D? You Let Them.

Satine Phoenix's New Praetorians

My guest this week on Pod Sequentialism is Satine Phoenix, a comic book illustrating gamer-girl who was dubbed the "Queen of D&D" by Time Magazine. She initially found fame in the adult film industry but soon after  went mainstream via her web series I Hit It With My Axe and her weekly gaming series DnDMelt.

I've known Satine for quite a few years and seeing her transition from a fan of comics into a published professional has been very personally gratifying, but it's also a great template for other young people to follow in the quest for identity and professional success.

This is one of my favorite episodes so far because there is a wonderful uplifting message about the comics and gaming community as it currently exists. The real mindblower here was in hearing from a woman's point of view that girls have always been interested in gaming, but the boys in their lives weren't very welcoming to the idea.

This episode is broadcast without commercial interruption and it's one I think a lot of people can learn from.