Featured Guest - Jay Fosgitt

About Jay - Raised on a steady diet of Muppets, newspaper comics and classic television (which, thirty years ago, was just called "television"), Jay's taste for pop culture developed early on. For no specific reason, he took to drawing at age two, and evidently was pretty good at it. Two years later, there was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to be a cartoonist when he grew up. Working towards that goal, he won awards in grade school for his art, corresponded with my idol, Jim Henson, and began getting some positive attention for his work. High school held similar successes, ushering him into his earliest forays in freelance commercial art and professional caricaturing, and garnishing me even more attention and awards.

In college he saw his comics published for the first time in his school paper (the Delta Collegiate, which ran his "Highschool: Part II", "Cartoon Ruckus" and "Chicken Strips" comics for five years) and began correspondence with cartoonist Greg Evans (of "Luann" fame), who became his professional mentor.

After he transferred to Central Michigan University he got further experience in cartooning with the publication of two new comics in his school paper (CMLife, which ran his "Mother's Goofs" and "Waste Products of a Warped Vision" comics for three and a half years). It was also at CMU that he met the love of his life, Laura Tanner, who, for the first time ever, gave him something to cherish that he didn't create on a sheet of paper.

Today he's a self described "moderately successful cartoonist" living in mid Michigan with his true love, very happy and always looking forward to creating something new. His first graphic novel, Dead Duck, is about to be released through Ape Entertainment in December.

www.jayfosgitt.com | apecmx.com/deadduck/ | amazon

Featured Guests - Stephen Lindsay and Lauren Monardo About Lauren - Lauren Monardo first splashed onto the comic scene in Jesus Hates Zombies: Those Slack Jaw Blues with friend and collaborator Stephen Lindsay. After completing three JHZ tales and additional artwork, Lauren and Stephen went on to develop their new ongoing comic The Slightly Askew Adventures of Inspector Ham and Eggs. Second only to working on comics is Lauren's love of storyboarding! Lauren's first storyboard revision job was on the World Leaders/Granada Kids production "Super Normal". From there Lauren took a storyboard/animatic position for the "League of Evil" Net 10 commercials. These experiences ultimately lead to her position as Storyboard Revisionist on the hit Cartoon Network series "Venture Bros." About Stephen - Who am I? Well, I'm a husband, a father, a writer and a fairly average dude living his life as best he can. That's about it. I was born and raised in Rochester, New York where I still live. I went to SUNY Fredonia in Western New York and graduated with a degree in English. After college I dabbled in filmmaking - writing, producing, directing and editing no-budget flicks along with my best friend Michael Bartolotta. Film will always be a love of mine, but it burned me out really quick. After a few years of constantly struggling to find the resources to try to tell the stories we wanted to tell on film, I'd had enough. But the desire to tell stories is a strong one. If it takes hold of you, you'll have the desire all your life. So I needed a new outlet for my storytelling. One that wouldn't have me away from my family so much and one that wouldn't require constantly begging for funding. It was around that time that I rediscovered comics. Books like 30 Days of Night, The Goon and The Walking Dead really opened my eyes to where comics had gone since I stopped reading them as a kid. And I was impressed. Really impressed. So I decided to see if I could make a comic happen. Luckily, I live in the wonderful world of the Internet and was able to connect with terrific artists from all over world. So that's how it all started. Where I go from here is anyone's guess. All I know is that as long as people keep reading my stuff, I'm gonna keep writing it!

We're back with our latest episode of the Why I Love Comics podcast! Every two weeks (now on Mondays), Chuck Moore, Eric Ratcliffe and Brant Fowler grab a stack of comics and go over what's good, what's not so good and what should be avoided all together. Celebrating a mix of recent titles, Why I Love Comics is once again served up for your enjoyment! This week Chuck couldn't make it, so John steps in!

Brian K. Vaughan sits down with Russell Burlingame for a quick chat as he discusses The Escapists, playing in Michael Chabon's amazing universe and more. Along the way, he touches on such amazing series as Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina and others and even shares a detail or two on his stepping away from the television series Lost. This is an interview you will want to hear!

Featured Guest... Jake Ekiss, one of the principal organizers of Indy Comic Book Week, stops by to chat up the "call to action" that is this end of year event for independent and small press comics. What is Indy Comic Book Week? Quoting their official site for all the details, most of you know that Diamond Comic Distributors has announced they will not ship any new comics for the last week of December. As this company is a primary distributor of comic books in North America, event organizers took what was a sad week without our favorite mainstream titles and retooled it as an opportunity to fill this vacancy with independent and small press comics allowing the creators to claim the week as their own. Indy Comic Book Week challenges writers and artists to self publish new material for the week, and offer it to their local stores. Event organizers ask retailers to take this as an opportunity to showcase local independent talent on the new release shelves. They're also encouraging fans to break from their buying habits and try something new. "Raise your fist and proudly declare that comic books are more than an industry, more than a handful of corporations - it is a creative outlet for independent-minded artists and storytellers. This last week of 2009 belongs to you. Power to the people. Right on."

We're back with our latest episode of the Why I Love Comics podcast! Every two weeks (now on Monday's), Chuck Moore and Eric Ratcliffe grab a stack of comics and go over what's good, what's not so good and what should be avoided alltogether. Celebrating a mix of recent titles, Why I Love Comics is once again served up for your enjoyment!

Tony Miello is a freelance writer and illustrator and the creator of the GAPO the Clown comic strip. He has been working on independent comics for the last fifteen plus years. He pencils, inks, writes and in the past he has also worked as an assistant art editor. Tony has experiance doing rewrites and page break downs and has also converted movie screenplays into comic scripts. His other projects include Killer Robots Love You, Mr. Happy Pants, a collaboration on the new Wolfman Mac's Nightmare Sinema, the Fat Momma comic for the SyFy channel's Who Wants to be a Superhero. He has also contributed sketch cards for Marvel Masterpiece Series 2 and 3 from Upper Deck.

We return with ALL the interview audio from Mid-Ohio-Con and we're sharing it in a single show

We're back with our latest episode of the Why I Love Comics podcast! Each week, Chuck Moore and Eric Ratcliffe grab a stack of comics and go over what's good, what's not so good and what should be alltogether avoided. This week though, Chuck is away and Brant Fowler steps in as a special guest joining Eric for the hour. From the big two to the smaller companies Eric and Brant are here to let you know what's worth reading. Celebrating a mix of recent titles, Why I Love Comics is once again served up for your enjoyment!