Hey, have you heard Indefensible Ink is over and there's a NEW PODCAST in town? Subscribe to THE IRON AGE OF COMICS now on your podcasting app of choice for future updates! Follow @ironageofcomics on Twitter and Instagram! From 1985 to 1987, DC released three groundbreaking series that kicked off the Iron Age and changed comics forever: Crisis on I…

Indefensible Ink has ended, but retro comics enthusiast and Jim Shooter apologist Justin Zyduck is not done podcasting. Check out this preview of his new show, co-hosted by recurring Indefensible Ink guest Jim Cannon: THE IRON AGE OF COMICS, a critical re-evaluation of comic books from about 1985 to 2000… including, of course, the boom and bust of …

It's the final episode of Indefensible Ink! And what could be a more appropriate topic to cover than something called Final Crisis? Justin discusses Grant Morrison's divisive 2008 crossover event and why its title and marketing may have led to a chilly reception from many fans. PLUS: An introduction to a new podcast! Stay subscribed to the Indefens…

Part two of a conversation with original co-host Ryan McClure about continuity and canon in superhero comics. This episode covers cross-media adaptations and how they affect continuity, the concept of headcanon, and what should we do about this whole continuity/canon mess anyway? Also discussed in this episode: how Grant Morrison may have ended “th…

Original co-host Ryan McClure returns for the first of a two-part discussion about continuity and canon in superhero comics: the benefits, the downsides, and drilling down into what makes comics different from other longrunning narratives in other media.Also discussed in this episode: the many Atlantises (Atlanti?) of the pre-Crisis DC Universe, th…

Our look at the two-year-long “Nightwing Gets Amnesia” storyline concludes as Justin and guest Jim Cannon get to the bottom of a sinister brainwashing scheme by the Court of Owls that ultimately results in the creation of…”Dickyboy”?! Plus wrap-up and speculation on how DC might have been able to make a halfway decent story out of Dick Grayson losi…

Plenty of superheroes go through an amnesia storyline or two in their careers, but Dick Grayson spent around 25 entire issues of his Nightwing series from 2019-2020 with memory loss and a new identity as a cab driver named Ric. Justin taps Nightwing fan supreme Jim Cannon to explain why Dick Grayson is so beloved both in-universe and among comics f…

There were dozens of TV shows trying to replicate the success of Friends in the late '90s, but only one of them was trying to do so with superheroes. If you're wondering how they could have made a Justice League movie on a television budget at the end of last century, the answer is "very inexpensively" and "with M*A*S*H's David Ogden Stiers in gree…

Here it is, the comic so controversial it made George Clooney drop out of playing Nick Fury in movies and got Marvel publisher Bill Jemas fired! Or at least, that's what people say about Fury, Garth Ennis and Darrick Robertson's six-issue limited series from 2001 published by Marvel's mature-readers MAX imprint. Justin takes a look at the story beh…

In part two of an examination of superheroes and the so-called "code against killing," Justin and Jim discuss how Hawkeye typifies a change of attitudes about lethal force in the genre, how Wolverine's natural tendency towards bezerker rage has made him the unlikely moral center of the X-Men, how the Punisher might break the Marvel Universe from a …

Superheroes don't kill supervillains...except for the ones who do. But it's a conceit of the genre that even if some heroes cross this line, they at least acknowledge the line exists. In this episode, regular host Justin Zyduck takes a break from critiquing specific comics to discussing the trope of the "code against killing" with returning guest J…

The lead story of 1982's Superman #372 might look a little old-fashioned next to the cutting-edge superhero storytelling of Claremont's Uncanny X-Men, Miller's Daredevil, or the Wolfman-Perez New Teen Titans, but readers raved about the brain-bending plot twist in Cary Bates and Curt Swan's "Superman's History-Changing Mission!" What did comics fan…

Has anyone ever done a podcast on...complaining about a video game? Probably not, in which case it pleases Indefensible Ink to break new ground and discuss 1989's Uncanny X-Men for the Nintendo Entertainment System, released by the notorious game publisher LJN. Regular host Justin Zyduck welcomes his brother Zach as a guest to discuss a punishingly…

Everybody knows an accident caused Captain America to spend decades in suspended animation after World War II. What this book presupposes is…maybe the U.S. Government froze him on purpose? But if that’s the high concept behind “Ice” by Chuck Austen (with John Ney Reiber) and Jae Lee, why is the comic mostly about a guy with an alien robot hand tryi…

In the year 2000, the comic book Captain Marvel belonged to Genis-Vell, a novice superhero trying to to live up to his father's name and keep up the momentum gained by his appearances in the popular Avengers Forever series. But series writer Peter David may have been more interested in chronicling the sitcom antics of Genis' odd-couple partner, lon…

Remembering the New Coke of Superman storylines 25 years later, when a desperate DC Comics tried to get people excited about the Man of Steel again by giving him new powers and a '90s X-Men-style costume. But can absolute mastery of the electromagnetic spectrum counteract event fatigue, a flagging comics industry, and a morass of subplots? Indefens…

We will not see his like again.By Justin Zyduck

Today, many comics artists work completely digitally, but in 1988, creating a comic book using a computer was a noteworthy novelty. Is Mike Saenz's cyberpunk thriller Iron Man: Crash--billed on its cover as "The First Computer-Generated Graphic Novel"--just a gimmick, or is there a story behind the low-rez bitmaps? And if there is a story...is it a…

Comic book titles don't get much bloodier than Youngblood: Bloodsport...but there's even more types of bodily fluids to worry about in this unfinished miniseries by Mark Millar and Rob Liefeld! What happens when you let a then-up-and-coming Scottish provocateur off the leash and turn him loose on an excitable artist's flagship team? Your host Justi…

So many podcasts have already weighed in on Matt Reeves' The Batman, but only Indefensible Ink asks the most important question of all: Is the Penguin in this film actually penguin-y enough to merit the name? Host Justin Zyduck welcomes back his recurring guest and brother, Zach, to discuss what they liked about this film and whether a lifetime of …

Building a year-long weekly comic book series around an ensemble of sub-A-list superheroes might sound like a risky gamble, but DC pulled it off in the middle part of the '00s with the acclaimed 52. So why wouldn't it work a second time, especially if it led in to the company's next big Crisis event? Your humble host tries to explain Countdown to F…

Indefensible Ink is back in a new format, and to mark the occasion, we'll look at the time Peter Parker went through a soft-reboot of his own in Spider-Man: Chapter One. John Byrne took a swing at trying to redefine the web-spinner's origin story for the late '90s without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so why did his carefully chosen cha…

Well ... it might not actually be that all-new or all-different, but come listen to Justin talk about what the future holds for this podcast anyway.By Justin Zyduck

It's the end of an era at Indefensible Ink, and to mark the occasion, Ryan and Justin have reconvened one last time to tackle a topic they've had their eye on since the podcast began nearly three years ago: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller's controversial turn-of-the-century followup to his legendary Batman epic The Dark Knight Returns. …

In this week’s Very Special Episode, Ryan and Justin discuss the controversial 2017 Marvel mega-event, Secret Empire, the crossover that spun out of the idea “What if Captain America was secretly a Hydra agent all along?” and inspired many people to understandably question whether publishing a storyline with a fascist-led America was either colossa…

On every episode of Indefensible Ink, Ryan and Justin painstakingly craft trivia questions on the bizarre and obscure corners of comics history to try to stump each other and provide some momentary diversion for you, the faithful listener. For the first time, the inaugural 2019 season of Canon Fodder—the trivia sensation that took the nation* by st…

Picture this: It's 1978, you're working on the insanely popular Star Wars comic book for Marvel, and you've just finished adapting the hit film. Now you've got to write a new Star Wars story, but here's the problem: at this point in history, there is zero precedent for what a "Star Wars story" looks like outside of the first movie. This is the chal…

Happy Star Wars Day, fellow nerds! This May the Fourth, hosts Ryan McClure, Justin Zyduck, and recurring guest Jerome Knox talk about what the Star Wars saga means to each of us, in a preview of Wednesday's regular episode of Indefensible Ink where we dig into Marvel Comics' Star Wars (vol. 1) #7-10, some of the first post-A New Hope Star Wars cont…

We’re on the highway to obscurity, as today’s episode of Indefensible Ink covers Marvel Comics’ motorcycle-based supergroup Team America (no, not the Team America with puppet sex)! When a mysterious psychic connection brings together a disowned rich kid with daddy issues, a freelance spy, and an angry loner, they do the logical thing and...form a m…

Who better to discuss a comic featuring He-Man and the Masters of the Universe than the self-proclaimed He-Men of Podcasting, Ryan and Justin? In this episode, Indefensible Ink delves into the Masters of the Universe preview that ran in DC comic books in November of 1982 and attempted to introduce the barbarian sword-and-sorcery toy line to the mas…

On today's special episode of Indefensible Ink, Ryan and Justin are joined by Ryan’s good friend and fellow superhero fanatic Jerome Knox to discuss C-list Marvel superteam book The Champions! Are the adventures of this 1970s grab bag of random heroes (Hercules, Iceman, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, and Angel) a good starting point for a comics noob li…

On this episode of Indefensible Ink, Justin and Ryan go to the ends of the Earth to say something positive about Superman: At Earth’s End, the 1995 post-apocalyptic Elseworlds tale that poses the question, “What if Superman, but Daddy Santa Claus?” Your hosts tackle this question along with a bevy of other questionable creative decisions involving …

In this episode, Ryan and Justin continue to power through the much-maligned '90s Marvel event, X-Men: Onslaught, in which your favorite mutants (plus a bunch of other Marvel guest stars) battle a villainous mash-up of Professor X’s dark side and Magneto’s more murderous impulses, with the fate of the Marvel Universe hanging in the balance! Which h…

Get ready for some more 1990s X-cess when Justin and Ryan X-amine X-Men: Onslaught! In this first of two episodes covering the massive mutant-centric Marvel crossover, your hosts discuss the event that attempted to wrap up a years-long X-Men mystery while introducing a mysterious new villain and laying the groundwork for a reboot of then-unpopular …

Everybody knows that there aren’t three Jokers. What this book presupposes is...maybe there are? Ryan and Justin reunite to cover 2020’s Batman: Three Jokers, Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok’s critically-panned-but-bestselling story for DC’s Black Label imprint featuring 300% percent more Jokers for all your murderclown needs. We discuss the intricacie…

This is a rerelease of Ryan and Justin's two-part look at legendarily bizarre 1980s Marvel mega-crossover Secret Wars II, now combined and condensed into a single episode for your convenience. Find out what happens when Jim Shooter trades crowd-pleasing, sprawling battles between their most popular characters for wacky fish-out-of-water hijinks, th…

In this gripping audio drama, Ryan finds out that every time he tries to get out of the podcast game, Justin pulls him back in. Here's a quick update on podcast status and a sneak peak of what Indefensible Ink has in store for the first part of 2021. (Additional voice by Liam Zyduck.)By Ryan McClure and Justin Zyduck

Justin and Zach review one of the crown jewels of any self-respecting comic fan's bootleg video collection: the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four movie produced by Roger Corman for only around $1 million and subsequently buried by Marvel. The hot take going 'round the internet is that this is secretly the best Fantastic Four movie in existence. True? …

In this particularly dispiriting episode of Indefensible Ink, Justin and Zach cover the second half of the supposedly "Ultimate Edition" of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. You might actually prefer drinking a big heaping jar of Granny's peach tea to sitting down with this metaphorical crawl over broken glass to get to the end of the film, but i…

Before this episode, Justin had never seen Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice before. Zach decided to do something about it. Join the Brothers Zyduck as they dive into the THREE-HOUR "Ultimate Edition" of Zack (no relation) Snyder's dark, divisive superhero team-up film. Along the way, they'll discuss highly unintuitive ways to frame Kryptonians fo…

You may have noticed that Ryan and Justin haven't sat down together for one of their usual discussions of (allegedly) terrible comics for a few months now. There's no cause for alarm: everybody's okay. But, like seemingly everything else in the year 2020, things just haven't been quite normal lately. Ryan checks in to say where he's been, what's go…

Justin once more sits down with his brother, Zach, to talk about comics. In this episode, what began as a hasty text exchange at the grocery store expands to an in-depth discussion about perhaps the greatest origin story in superhero comics: that of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. The Brothers Zyduck discuss whether Peter let the burglar …

Ryan is taking August off, so Justin has invited his brother, Zach, on the show once more to discuss comics from the point of view of a slightly more casual fan. In this episode, the topic turns to Captain America. Zach has never read a single Cap solo comic, and yet he's his favorite character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Is it all down to th…

In the summertime, when the weather is hot, you can download this and touch the sky; when the weather's fine, you got comics, you got comics on your mind. School's out, and with no assigned reading to do, Ryan and Justin are taking the rest of July off. But before they do, they've decided to kick back, have some soothing (non-alcoholic) island drin…

In this week’s episode of Indefensible Ink, Ryan and Justin continue to fight through the tangled web of ‘90s Spider-Man continuity by covering the second half of 1995’s Maximum Clonage! In these issues, Peter Parker (who thinks he’s a clone of Peter Parker) teams up with a clone of Peter Parker (who thinks he’s the real Peter Parker) in order to f…

In this episode of Indefensible Ink, Ryan and Justin discuss the first half of one of the most reviled storylines of all time: the Spider-Man-centered Clone Saga! Specifically, they tackle 1995’s "Maximum Clonage," in which the Peter Parker fans had known and loved for approximately 20 years turned out to be (possibly) a clone created by C-list Spi…

What if you made a collector's edition that nobody cared to collect? Ryan and Justin break open a sealed polybag of Adventures of Superman #500 to find out what happened to the Man of Steel after the Death of Superman. Along the way we meet your starting lineup of the 1993 Superman Replacements. Also covered in this episode: vigilante branding issu…

In this special episode of Indefensible Ink, Ryan and Justin trade bad comics for a reputedly bad movie: the 2000 animated adaptation of the popular '90s super-teens-with-attitude comic Gen 13! Did this direct-to-nowhere movie (featuring the voice talents of Mark Hamill, Alicia Witt, and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) get unfairly sent to its…

Taking a break from the usual format, Justin does the unthinkable and spends a podcast talking about GOOD comics. To do so, he's invited his brother, Zach, to have a laid-back conversation about Daredevil. Zach brings a different perspective with different taste in comics as a far more casual fan, and together they'll try to get to the bottom of wh…

"Defensible Ink" strikes again! When Marvel asked Image breakaways Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee to reboot the Avengers and Fantastic Four titles in 1996, it infuriated fans and Marvel staffers alike. The Heroes Reborn publishing initiative was soon scuttled and became a notorious reminder of the grim 'n' gritty, all-style-no-substance 1990s. But revisit…