Jim Calafiore is back!

It's been a while since we've seen him (or anyone) at a con, and even longer since we last got to chat on our show; but Jim is back with us this week and, as expected, we're talking comics.

Specifically, we're talking Ned.

Ned is your average guy. Like the rest of us, he's got his share of problems - relationship troubles, deceased family members, zombie roommates. His father is one of the Lords of Hell.

You know, the usual stuff.

We were first introduced to Ned and his family in the first volume of Ned, Lord of the Pit last year. Now, Jim is Kickstarting the 2nd volume to continue the story of everyone's favorite future hell-lord. Currently, the campaign has a few weeks left before time is up so we thought it would be the perfect time to talk with Jim about the book, his process, and the challenges involved with writing, penciling, inking, and coloring a horror-comedy all by yourself.

Check out www.nedlordofthepit.net for more info or search for it on Kickstarter while you still have the chance!

Enjoy!

-Jr.

I have a dumb brain.

When it comes to symbolism, interpretation, and open-endedness, my brain just does not compute. If something doesn't have a clear meaning or ending, I'm pretty much immediately on Google trying to get other people to explain what I just saw and/or read. It's not for a lack of trying, I genuinely try to figure things out...but this big, dumb brain of mine doesn't like it.

With that said, upon reading some of the Three Panel Crimes comics on Instagram, my dumb-brainness kicked in a couple of times. Each comic is three panels long and has no dialogue. The panels can sometimes be extremely detailed with tons of story told in a single image and if you're not paying attention it can be easy to miss an important clue. Long story short: you gotta use your brain. But once you get your brain going you'll quickly realize how damn good these comics are.

Three Panel Crimes is written by Tony Fabro and over the last few years he and his ever-expanding team of artists and collaborators have put together an amazing archive of "bad deeds in threes" with new comics released every week. In this episode Tony stopped in to talk about the creation of Three Panel Crimes, his process, and alligators with knives embedded in their heads.

For more on Tony and his work, check out Three Panel Crimes on Instagram and Twitter, or visit their website to get on their mailing list.

Enjoy!

-Jr.

It appears Spring has officially sprung because my sinuses have been in a constant state of explosion for the last few weeks. It's been a rough allergy season but luckily they gave me a few hours of relief, long enough for us to chat with a comic pro in Jamal Igle!

Jamal has been involved in the comics world in some way, shape, or form since the early 90s. He's worked on books for just about every major publisher whether it's DC, Marvel, Image, etc. You name it, he's probably done some work there. He's a true veteran of the industry and in 2011 he was honored with the Inkpot Award for Achievement in Comic Art.

For those looking to check out Jamal's work but don't have easy access to his runs on Green Lantern, Supergirl or any of the other dozens of books he's worked on, you can check out the new series from Ahoy Comics called The Wrong Earth: Night & Day with issue 5 hitting the stands next month! With Tom Peyer on the script, Jamal has been putting out some fantastic art to a really fun story. Be sure to check out his Instagram for some behind-the-scenes work!

We can't thank Jamal enough for coming on and chatting with us about his career, the books he's worked on, and the current state of the comics world. It's not every day we get to chat with such an experienced and talented artist. Not to mention it's always nice to chat with a fellow AEW fan...

Enjoy!

-Jr.

I got my 2nd Covid vaccine shot today and as of this writing I'm feeling great but, given all that I have read and seen on the internet, that's subject to change within the next few hours. So, I'm writing this the day before posting in the hopes that my planning ahead will work out for the best and all I have to do is click "publish" tomorrow afternoon. And yes, I usually write these posts that no one reads mere minutes before posting the episodes...what can I say? I'm a lifelong procrastinator.

Annnnnnnyway. We have an extra long episode for you this week but it's with good reason: we got to talk with Ben Templesmith.

For those who might be unaware or unfamiliar, Ben is an incredibly talented artist and writer who co-created 30 Days of Night and also created titles such as Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, Welcome to Hoxford, and he recently started his own Instagram webcomic Urnakk Black Blood.

We cover a pretty wide range of topics in our chat with Ben, but if you're looking for more or want to support him and his artistic endeavors, you can check out his Patreon page, his website, or hopefully in the near future, meet him at a show. Until then, we hope you dig this week's jam; Ben is a great dude to chat with and we can't thank him enough for stopping by.

Enjoy!

-Jr.

This episode is all about old friends, new friends, and the rad things they make. In this case, it's a graphic novel called The Monuments and, as of this writing, it's currently crushing it over on Kickstarter.

The aforementioned friends? Well longtime listeners of the show will be thrilled to hear that Michael Bracco is making his long-awaited return and this time he's joined by one of his creative partners-in-crime, Mike Isenberg! Michael and Mike along with Oliver Mertz have created an amazing new world and after years of planning and collaboration, they're finally ready to bring the story to life.

Even though the campaign is already more than halfway completed, and even though they've absolutely demolished their goal and subsequent stretch-goals, we still couldn't wait to chat about this book. Gigantic mechs? Unsolved mysteries spanning hundreds of years?  Past/present timelines slowly revealing the truth? Sign me up. Take my money.

Check out our chat with Michael and Mike, learn about The Monuments and, if there's still time, head on over to the Kickstarter and check it out first-hand because hot damn, it looks rad.

Enjoy!

-Jr.

So The Snyder Cut happened.

It's been a while since we did the whole "let's ramble about the latest blockbuster movie" so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do just that. With this being a discussion about movies, we also thought it would be fun to include our good friend Jared Skolnick in the conversation seeing as he writes, directs, and appreciates movies better than we could ever imagine.

This is probably a good time to mention that Jared has a website and a Vimeo that you can check out (featuring many familiar faces to those lucky few who have seen some of our real human faces).

It should also be noted that, per usual, this discussion contains some tasty, tasty SPOILERS. So if you haven't seen the flick yet and you don't want literally everything ruined, watch it first before listening to our voices. With that said, check out our ramblings as we discuss the characters, the plot, the things we liked and the things that made us question our sanity in the 4+ hour marathon that was The Snyder Cut.

Enjoy!

-Jr.

Another year of casting pods has come and gone and this one, despite the odd circumstances and ongoing global pandemic, was a pretty solid banger. Of course, I'm biased. But after listening to the yearly montage that Alex put together featuring some of the best clips and snippets from the last year, you'll understand where I'm coming from.

This recap is the longest one yet so I'm going to do my best to keep this short. With that said, we talked to some incredible people over the past 23 episodes and per usual, we can't thank them enough for coming on the show. This has been a challenging 12 months but being able to talk with artists, creators, musicians, and everything else in-between made it just a little bit easier. And at the end of the day, if we were able to provide you with some escape and entertainment, then I'd say it was all worth the effort.

Enjoy!

-Jr.

Audio Credits:

You're going to want to set yourself a reminder for March 2nd.

I realize that doesn't make any sense at the moment, but bear with me because this week we're talking about a rad little card game called "Doomlings". To put it simply, Doomlings is described as "A delightful card game for the end of the world" and it's coming to Kickstarter soon on, you guessed it, March 2nd!

We're especially psyched about this one because while Doomlings is cute and easy to learn, it's also surprisingly strategic and we had the absolute pleasure of talking with two of the developers, Eric McCoy and Justus Meyer, all about the creation, development, and challenges that went into creating such a neat game about the world ending.

Alex has already posted some videos over on our Instagram showing a quick run-down of the game and some mechanics. But if you wanted to learn more be sure to check out the Doomlings website, subscribe to their newsletter and keep your eyes peeled for the March 2nd Kickstarter launch!

Enjoy!

-Jr.

With the last episode being such a major departure from what we typically talk about here on OMV, it would probably be a good idea to get back to basics and start talking about comics, movies, and videogames again.

But we didn't. We kinda did. But we mostly didn't.

Have I completely lost you yet? I hope not because this week we got to talk with a super rad guest in musician and YouTuber Christina Pepper! Christina is a professional pianist who has been uploading pieces to YouTube for over a decade now. While that is a feat in and of itself, in 2018 she expanded the channel to include accompaniment tracks with the intent of helping other musicians practice when a pianist isn't readily available.

With the pandemic obliterating everyone's plans for almost all of 2020 and now the beginning of 2021, I don't think anyone would fault Christina for taking it easy and putting her channel on hold for a bit. But she didn't. In fact, according to her video feed she has uploaded almost 20 videos in the last month alone. She has used the pandemic and all this newfound free time as an excuse to help people even more and it's great.

If you haven't already, be sure to check out her channel and various socials. And if you feel like supporting Christina even more, you can donate to her on Ko-Fi and even commission a custom piano accompaniment/karaoke piece!

Enjoy!

-Jr.

So, yeah.

This one is a bit of a departure from our normal song-and-dance. Rather than discuss the latest happenings in the comics world, the next neat thing coming to Kickstarter, or bothering one of our friends to come on and talk about Star Wars or something....we took a dive into the world of diamond hands and rocket ships. Hedge funds and short squeezes.

Folks. We're talking about the stock market.

One could make the argument that "hey, it's GameStop! Videogames! OMV talks about videogames all the time!" but it really has almost nothing to do with videogames. But, seeing as it's a massive, game changing moment in history that, to this day, is evolving and yet unresolved we thought we take a stab at talking about it.

One thing to note that's probably pretty obvious but needs to be stated: Neither of us are financial professionals and nothing said in this episode should be taken as advice.

With that said, we hope you enjoy our attempt at explaining this whole thing. At the very least, maybe some of the memes will make a little more sense now.

Enjoy!

-Jr.