Time Codes: 00:00:27 - Introduction 00:02:28 - The Blubber report 00:10:51 - Scooter Girl 00:44:42 - My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 01:30:15 - Wrap up 01:31:35 - Contact us Mods and Monsters On this week's episode the Two Guys with PhDs Talking about Comics do deep dives into two recent, and very different, publications. They begin with Chynna Clugston Flores's Scooter Girl, just released from Image Comics. This is a brand new color edition of a six-issue black-and-white series originally published by Oni Press is 2003-2004, and then collected as a trade in 2004. Derek describes this it as an adult Archie, and throughout their discussion the guys make reference to the series that Chynna Clugston Flores is perhaps best known for, Blue Monday. As is evident in the recent publication, her writing is heavily infused with music and pop references -- specifically, mod culture and the mod revival during the 1970s and early 1980s -- and her art has a manga flair. As Andy and Derek point out, much of the appeal of Scooter Girl is the author's ability to take a milieu out of time and set it in a time and place where in never really existed. Next, the Two Guys spend a lot of time discussing Emil Ferris's My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 (Fantagraphics). This is a phenomenal new work from an artist that neither Andy nor Derek knew about until the release of Resist!, to which Ferris contributed a story. The range and depth of this narrative is truly impressive, and as the guys make clear, it's a text that requires serious research and sustained analysis. The storytelling is ambitious and multilayered, its engagement with identity and marginalized cultures is sophisticated, its art style is unlike any other, and its treatment of late 1960s horror culture is thematically resonant. In short, this is one of the most astounding works that Derek and Andy have encountered so far this year. However, as much as the guys agree on this book's significance, they disagree on what constitutes the narrative's turning point. On one occasion in their discussion, Derek describes a particular illustration that Andy feels is a spoiler and could potentially diminish the emotional impact of the story. Derek disagrees, and the guys go back and forth over role of Ferris's art in establishing the text's climax (or climaxes). As their debate demonstrates, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is a richly textured work that should generate future analysis. And the guys eagerly await the second volume, which is due out in the fall. Check out the titles discussed in this episode: