In this episode I describe the British comic Puck #1 and its mad scientist/wacky inventor, Professor Radium, who turns out to be more influential than one might suppose. I go in depth on the history of the mad scientist and the wacky inventor, with stops at Faustus of Mileve, Roger Bacon, Dante's Inferno, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Gulliver's Travels, the Marquis de Sade, Frankenstein, penny dreadfuls, the Romantics, the furor poeticus, the Victorian burlesque, Heath Robinson, the radium girls, Vannevar Bush, and much, much more!

In this episode I discuss the history of the genre of the Western, beginning early in the 19th century as frontier fiction and proceeding up to the late-1930s, when the first two Western comic books--Star Ranger #1 and Western Picture Stories #1--were published. Among the topics discussed: frontier fiction of England, France, and Spain; James Fenimore Cooper; the Mexican-American War; anti-Mexican racism and pro-Mexican racism; the novelettes; the dime novels; Deadwood Dick, Frank and Jesse James, and the progressive (verging on revolutionary) politics of the dime novel Western; the first Western novel; Owen Wister's The Virginian; how a club of elite Easterners not only created the Western as we now know it, but shaped the discourse of the Western, with effects that are still felt today; the Western pulps; the Western comic strips; and the eleven interesting things in Star Ranger #1 and Western Picture Stories #1. 

In this episode I describe the early history of the Chinese comic book industry--specifically the lianhuanhua industry--from its beginning in 1899 to its first end during the Cultural Revolution. I discuss the history of pictorial communication in pre-modern China; the influence of lithography on Chinese publishing; the Romance of the Three Kingdoms; the "Four Famous Female Roles," i.e. the four major lianhuanhua writer/artists of the 1930s; The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple; Lu Xun; and Mao's opinion on lianhuanhua.

In this episode I go back to 1935 and 1936 and discuss how business was actually done in the early comics industry the rise of Comics Magazine Company Everett M. "Busy" Arnold's career in comics the unsavory intersection of "Busy" Arnold, Joe Paterno, and the realities of big-time college football in the 1930s Funny Pages #6, and why it's an important issue in the history of American comics

In which I take a look at British comics during the 19th century, talk about some of the notable and important people who were a part of it, and describe what led up to Comic Cuts #1, the most important British comic of the 19th century and the comic that set the standard for British comics for the next forty years.  The transcript, complete with illustrations, can be found at my Patreon page.