Mike’s Podcast Survival Guide

So, this past Saturday, I got on the line with Conor and Josh to do the Pick of the Week Podcast. Though I try to sound fairly calm and collected when I record, the road leading up to actually doing the podcast is a windy one, and I thought I would spin that particular yarn for this week’s article…

Let’s got back a few years ago… to, what, 2006? Sometime in 2006. The whole podcast thing was just starting to go crazy on iTunes — yes, podcasts were definitely around before that, but I would argue that iTunes made it a lot easier to search for and subscribe to podcasts — and I found myself adding 2+2 and going, “Hey, maybe they have ‘poddywhatevers’ about comics!”

And lo and behold there was the iFanboy podcast. I remember listening for the first time and realizing, “Whoa — you can actually talk about comics?! There are other people out there that really like comics, too — this is fantastic!” It was a big moment for me, since, as I have mentioned before, I was kind of a shut-in when it came to my comics habit. So, I spent a few weeks listening to older podcasts — the guys were basically commuting to work with me for awhile there — and then, all of a sudden Comic-Con 2006 comes up. My wife Whit and I were planning on going anyway, so I was doubly stoked to see that the guys were doing a meet up one night during the con (see pic below — we look so young and fresh!). On the way down, Whit and I listened to a few episodes and Whit kept laughing at me because I kept talking back to the show, laughing and agreeing with, “Yeah, exACTly,” and “I mean, of course, totally — so obvious!” She said that I should try to get on the show and I just laughed, “Yeah, right, it would be awesome, but…” 

So you can imagine my surprise (and delight, of course) when I was asked to be on the show back in June (June?!). I had just been asked to write a column and now I was gonna be on the show??Somewhere, there’s a character sheet, and, on the character sheet, someone went up a level.

Now, while I have been on radio shows and podcasts before for my day job, but I gotta say, getting ready to talk about something you like with people you have literally been listening to talk about the same thing every week for over a year… well, it’s a bit nerve-wracking. You have to be part of the conversation, sure, but you have to actually contribute to the conversation as well, as opposed to just saying, well, the stuff I would say in the car — it works by yourself, but it doesn’t make for a particularly interesting podcast.

Here’s how life changes, just a bit, when you get asked to be on the podcast:

1) You get an email, “Hey–____’s gone, you haven’t been on in awhile, do you have time to record the podcast on ____?” and you reply, HOLY CRAP WOW YAH TOTALLY THAT WOULD BE AWESOME and then you delete that and go, “Yeah, I can do that.” You do this because, you know, you’re not some kind of geek.

2) Wednesday approaches and you basically have to get your books that day. Now, because I live in LA, I have no problem driving 20-30 minutes completely and utterly out of my way to get my books on the way to work (I’m cheap and I have no idea — none — how I could ever “break up” with my comic book store owner and go someplace nearby — and, seriously, I actually do have a problem with all the driving, but that’s another article for different website). After you say hello to your surprised comic book store owner, you pick up the books you normally pick up and try to figure out how you are going to squeeze in all that reading in one or two nights. You realize you are lucky you are not Josh, Ron, or Conor, who have to read all of their books that night and actually write about them in the Pick of the Week feature. You realize that they have been doing this for years — even before the podcast; long before the podcast — and realize that these guys might be kind of crazy.

3) Later, like the next day, you get a list of the comics that are gonna be discussed. You compare the list to the books you bought and realize that if you really wanna participate in the show and even have a chance to sound like you know what you are talking about (perhaps a futile task, in my case), you gotta pick up a few books that you’ve never even heard of. The flip sides are: a) they don’t expect you to buy a book you don’t normally read, so it’s artificial pressure in the first place, so just calm down and b) the book is probably good (case in point, the Magneto book). This means an extra trip to the store, but in my case, I just went to the one that’s closer to my shop since it was only a few books and, like, it’s not like I am dating my comic shop owner.

4) Somehow, you get all of the “show books” read. (Note: no one uses the term “show books.) What I like to do is read them, and then flip through them again, making notes. This is similar to when I write articles about certain books, but those notes are actually embarrassingly extensive. These are just talking points. I actually have deleted my notes from the show, but they mostly were like:

• Green Lantern – rushed ending? Sinestro — always red? The brother ending — good for trade, kinda lame page waster for comic? Funny Oans with their jumping and their anger.
• Action Comics – Gary Frank’s art slipping a bit? Supergirl reaction shot — lame; Braniac was so awesome, now… wet? Ending awesome, quiet. Pa gripped the arm just like the movie! whooa!
  
• Magneto – what comics do best, personalized history, was tired of Magneto, much more interesting now, still hate Ultimates #5
  
• End League – wtf is this book about? Laughing Man as Joker, lame name, tiring rehash of heroes, didn’t we see this in The Boys? Art — amazing, wish the book stayed with opening scene, so confused not sure will continue

5) Suddenly, it’s time to record. This is where I wish I had taken a picture of my setup. I tend to sit at our dining room table with my Mac (we do the show using Skype and I always, always screw up my microphone settings before we start, but I guess everyone else does too so I don’t feel too bad), with the stack of books in the order they are to be discussed with the show notes on one side of the screen and my notes next to them. I have a large glass of water, I turn off the phones, and sit on a pillow. The show is recorded in one go, so you don’t want me to be the newbie that makes everything stop to answer the phone or use the bathroom.

6) Recording the show is actually super trippy because you are so used to just listening to the show in the first place that it’s kinda a surprise when you are now expected to talk back to the guys. The real trick is figuring out when to speak — you can hear me sputter a bit in the show when I time a response wrong — and how long to speak. It’s kinda like being on the cell phone — when you are talking you don’t hear the other person (at least I don’t), so if you speak too long you become very aware of the silence on the other line and then you think, “Oh my god, I am just talking gibberish, I am making some obviously lame point or it’s totally irrelevant and I bet that they want to talk about the next book but wait I am still talking I hope I am not actually saying these thoughts out loud instead of the thoughts I had started a few seconds ago.” Actually, maybe that’s just me talking about Magneto: Testament #2. Eventually, however, you get kind of in the rhythm of it, and you relax. What was interesting is that I really didn’t refer to my notes at all, and, as you can hear, I never actually got out some of my criticisms of the book because: a) Conor would have beat me up the next time I saw him if I ripped on Gary Frank’s art (though I am a huge fan) and b) overall, my negative points were more nitpicks when compared to how successful the book was as a complete piece of work. I still feel that Green Lantern finished too quickly (I really thought we had at least one more issue — when Sinestro and Hal got summoned back I thought the consequences were going to be a lot more interesting than, “Hey, you guys are ridiculous!” “Oh yeah, you’re right — nevermind, we’re just grumpy because, well, we’re short and many of us have been balding for many, many years.”)

7) When we play the voicemail, we have .wmv files that we all listen to — it’s the only time the show gets paused — and then someone says, “I’ll start with this one.” Josh rocked the Watchmen response, for example, after we all kinda discussed it a bit. The email is kind of the same way and it was fun to get my butt handed to me when I ripped on 52 — for the record, I thought 52 was a good weekly book for the most part but I admit that I was still feeling cheated by Countdown, which, as Josh correctly states, was a totally different thing. But I still don’t think you need to read the thing as a trade…

8) And then… it’s done! It’s all done and then Josh has to go get dinner and you just sit there, wondering, really, “They do this every week?!” I mean, it’s kind of an astounding thing, really, since then they gotta insert music, edit it up (Josh and I had a discussion about hair gel that was cut (mercifully, I think)) and then post it. A lot of work… thanks guys

All in all it’s a good time and, honestly, I feel very lucky to have had a chance to do it even once. I am thinking it would be fun to do some podcast “meet the iFanbase” interviews sometime… I’ll have to bounce it off the crew, but until then, I hope this description gave you a bit of a feeling of what it’s like.

So there it is! Hope you are having a good week and thanks for reading!

Mike Romo is an actor in LA. He just pulled his comics for this week and is hoping that the next president will offer a major comic book tax credit because he’s gonna need the help. He can be reached at mike@ifanboy.com.