Today on Word Balloon, I’m talking with a creator who’s carving out his own lane between nostalgia, genre chaos, and straight-up adrenaline storytelling, Curt Pires. From his breakout fantasy hit Lost Fantasy at Image Comics: a monster-slaying throwback with serious momentum thanks to artist Luca Casalanguida. To the hyperviolent sexy cosmic trip parody of Galactic at DSTLRY with Amilcar Pinna, Curt’s work is all about big swings and bold humor. 

Now he’s leveling up again with Fireborn, co-written with musician Franklin Jonas and drawn by Patrick Mulholland. It's a neon-charged, ’90s comics and 32-bit video game fever dream about a billionaire’s reckless son fused with a dragon egg in the heart of New York City. We’ll talk about the evolution of his storytelling, the energy behind these books, and why Fireborn might be his wildest ride yet.

The Beasts Of Berwyn joined ne live on stage to discuss their careers and their excellent Saturday night show on METV 

SCTV Head Writer Dave Thomas joined to to discuss writing comedy, his love for Superman and  promoting his sci-fi comedy book we wrote with Max Allen Collins 

For Part 2 of my conversation on radio sketch comedy, we’re diving deeper with one of the true architects of the form, Phil Proctor from The Firesign Theatre. Long before podcasts made audio storytelling cool again, Firesign was bending minds and blowing up the rules with albums like Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers. Layered, surreal, and way ahead of its time. For anyone like me who grew up obsessed with what you could do with sound, characters, and pure imagination, Phil wasn’t just part of the act,he helped invent the language. In this second round, we go even deeper into the craft, the chaos, and the lasting influence of audio comedy that still echoes today.

Back in my WXRT days, when rock radio still had a little room to get weird, there was one audio ,The Usual Suspects. Their sharp, character-driven sketches didn’t just make me laugh, they lit the fuse for everything I later tried on The Score and even here on Word Balloon. Today, I’m talking with two of the masterminds behind that magic, Barb Wallace and Tom Wolfe, a brilliant writing team whose partnership went from Chicago airwaves to Hollywood success, with credits on shows like Murphy Brown and Welcome to New York, starring Christine Baranski and a young Jim Gaffigan. For me, these two weren’t just funny—they were the blueprint.

From 2021 Filmmaker Stacey Souther made an incredible documentary about Valerie Perrine , who made us all fall in love with her Superman performance as Lex Luthor's Moll  not to mention Lenny, Slaughterhouse Five, WC Fields and Me and more. She was nominated for best actress in the Oscars for Lenny with Dustin Hoffman but then was in the Disco Bomb Can't Stop The Music with The Villiage People. 

I spoke to Stacey about the film and his longtime friendship with Valerie. 

Ok, I gave Mitch Wayne and Franco the day off while I vent my spleen with the guys from Dork Court John Price a teacher and essayist who's been writing about Star Trek for Years, and Larry Young of Planet AIT LAR and the excellent Astronauts In TRouble series.

I swear a lot on this episode. I couldn't hold back on my frustrations about Alex Kurtzman Star Trek. 
The confirmation that there will be no more than the 2 already amde seasons of Academy. Good. 

Today on Word Balloon, we’re diving into one of those conversations that I love—because it’s not just about comics, it’s about how we read comics. My guest is Dr. Stanford Carpenter, cultural anthropologist, comics scholar, and one of the driving forces behind Comicpalooza University, and we get into a really interesting debate about the Fantastic Four.

Stanford makes the case that the Fantastic Four can be seen as a kind of white colonial metaphor—a reflection of 1960s power structures, exploration narratives, and who gets to define “the unknown.” And honestly? I push back. Because while I absolutely get where that reading comes from, I’ve always seen the FF first and foremost as a family book—messy, emotional, human… and a product of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby trying to tell more grounded, character-driven stories in the middle of the space race.

So this becomes a really fun, thoughtful back-and-forth about intent versus interpretation…
about whether these stories reflect colonial thinking, or just the era they were created in…
and how much meaning we should assign to that when we’re reading them today. It’s smart, it’s respectful, and yeah—we don’t totally agree. And that’s the good stuff.

A WB classic from 2005 Walter Simonson looks back at his classic work. From Thor The Frog and the creation of Beta Ray Bill, to Orion and The New Gods.

From his collaborations with Martin Pasko to put the bronze age spin on Dr Fate, to reviving Manhunter with Archie Goowdwin.

We talk about the Fantastic Four, his spin on X-Factor co-plotted with his wife Louise , to working on the Marvel Star Wars comic at that awkward time between The Empire Strikes Back, and Return Of The Jedi.

Tales of wonder, from a true master.

The Finder creator is back with a new famiy fantasy series eries she's posying free at her patreon. It's part Harry Potter Part Twilight Zone and part star trek. patreon.com/carlaspeedmcneil