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Continued After the Next Page: Ahoy There! The Hits Keep on Coming!

Posted on November 2, 2025November 2, 2025 by Bob Harrison

Here at Pop Culture Squad, we have been unabashed fans of the little comic publishing company headquartered in upstate New York called Ahoy Comics. Founded in 2018, Ahoy started strong with a banging first slate of books that included Wrong Earth, Captain Ginger, and the criminally underrated High Heaven. They have continued to deliver interesting and humorous comics adding the controversial and excellent Second Coming to their roster in 2019. More recently, they have published Black’s Myth, Project Cryptid, and added the licensed property Toxic Avenger.

The Toxic Avenger line of comics at Ahoy is a strong presence. There are currently three series in that universe hitting the stands monthly. The main Toxic Avenger Comics series is supplemented by a series of spotlight crossovers called Toxie Team-Up, and Matt Bors, the TA showrunner at Ahoy, has resurrected the Toxic Crusaders cartoon from the ’90s and turned it into a fantastic comic. We caught up with Bors on the Pop Culture SquadCast over the summer to talk about his work on Toxie. You can check that here.

The reason for this column is that not enough people are talking about the original comic goodness that Ahoy continues to publish, year after year. We are going to talk about a few of the things that you should be reading. There are a few spectacular comics that I want to highlight from Ahoy Comics over the last several months. As we mention frequently on Pop Culture Squad, this it a booming time for comic books, and sometimes, things fall through the cracks. Let’s fix that now. If you haven’t read these books, you should consider correcting that error as soon as possible.

Archaic

Written by Melissa F. Olson
Art by Sally Cantirino

From Ahoy:
Meet Tess Halliday, a broke single mom desperate to protect her kids from vicious criminals trying to collect on her ex-husband’s debts. Following a mysterious message, Tess flees to the island of Demonde—a place of demons, legendary creatures, and a family secret that just might cost Tess her life. Written by acclaimed novelist Melissa F. Olson, with evocative art by Sally Cantirino.

PCS Notes:
Archaic is a great story about family and the struggle to protect the ones you love at any cost. The partnership of Olson and Cantirino is spectacular. The character development in this story is top notch. I absolutely love this book. It is now out in collected form, and if you haven’t read it yet, well, you can find it right here.

Babs

Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Jacen Burrows

From Ahoy:
A savage sword-and-sorcery parody from the co-creators of Preacher, The Boys, and The Punisher: Soviet!

A hilarious sword-and-sorcery parody from the acclaimed creative team behind Crossed and Marvel’s Get Fury! Meet Babs, a barbarian thief, and Barry, the world’s worst enchanted sword. Together they travel a fantastic landscape of wizards, dragons, demons, and castles, looking to steal treasure. Their plans are interrupted by the arrival of a band of VERY white knights who exploit and divide the townsfolk. Babs wasn’t looking for a fight…but she’s never found a bad situation she couldn’t make 100 times worse!

PCS Notes:
The biting satire mixed with beautiful imagery makes this series a big hit in my book. I could not wait for each next issue to come out. The depiction of the titular character in both personality and look is terrific. The reluctant hero narrative in this first arc is perfectly developed. Readers will relate to Babs’ disgust with the “villains” and pitiful disdain she has for the towns people that she is challenged to help. The jokes flow freely in this one, and we recommend not putting one and one together too seriously as you compare the fictional world in the book to the one we are living, or it might just depress you even more. Enjoy the raucous comedy and beautiful art in this book. The collected first arc can be found here, and get ready for more Babs in January 2026. Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page: Ahoy There! The Hits Keep on Coming!” →

Continued After the Next Page #026: A Look Back at 2024

Posted on January 1, 2025June 13, 2025 by Bob Harrison

We have been doing this for SIX YEARS now! CRAZY! We are in our seventh year of Pop Culture Squad.

Thank you all for paying attention to our little site and our attempt to bring commentary, news, and a smattering of entertainment to your lives.

Now that we have left 2024 in the rear view mirror, let’s take a quick moment to look at some of the highlights and do our best to forget the lowlights.

Convention-A-Rama

I attended or worked a grand total of eleven conventions in 2024. Between visiting with friends, attending and hosting panels, meeting creators and fans, and volunteering for Hero Initiative it was fantastically rewarding if not exhausting.

My SquadCast partner Mike Gold often says that he attended one long thirty year comic convention, and I understand what he means.

It looks like 2025 is shaping up to be another year full of comic convention activities.

SquadCast Success

Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page #026: A Look Back at 2024” →

Continued After the Next Page #025: A Look Back at NYCC 2024

Posted on October 29, 2024October 28, 2024 by Bob Harrison

About a week ago, I returned from the latest installment of comics and pop culture chaos that is known as New York Comic Con. ReedPop, the company that presents New York City’s premier comic convention, definitely continues to raise the bar.

My feet and knees took a couple of days to recover from the four-day marathon of walking the floor and Artist Alley while trudging back and forth from panel rooms, but it was a pain of joy.

The vibe at this year’s show was absolutely more upbeat than last year. You could feel it from the attendees, the exhibitors, the panelists, and creators. This represents an incremental improvement, and is not meant to imply last year’s show was substandard, just that this year was better. Generally better for exhibitors, fans, and pros.

Artist Alley

The attendance seemed more intense. I don’t have numbers to compare with but anecdotally folks that I was speaking to in Artist Alley on Sunday were surprised to see it as busy as it was on the last day of the show and attendees were still looking to pick up that piece of art or trade paperback that they needed. Artist Alley was pretty packed the whole weekend. You can check the video below to see what the layout looked like. It was quite a collection of talent.

Panel Programming

Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page #025: A Look Back at NYCC 2024” →

Continued After the Next Page #024: Celebrating One of the Greatest Nightwing Runs Ever

Posted on October 10, 2024June 13, 2025 by Bob Harrison

As we approach the end of Tom Taylor‘s tenure writing Nightwing, I wanted to take a minute or two to recognize it. The series has won multiple industry awards during Taylor’s stewardship from issues #78 to #118. The majority of the run has been drawn beautifully by Bruno Redondo with colors by Adriano Lucas and letters by Wes Abbott. It is, in my opinion, one of the finest runs on the character ever. There are a few reasons for that.

What Came Before

Taylor took over the Nightwing title with Nightwing #78 when the character was emerging from a time of turmoil. Remember that almost immediately before Taylor’s run, Dick Grayson spent about a two years or so calling himself Rik. Dan Jurgens’ custodial transition arc returned Grayson to his blacks and blues and set a clean stage for Taylor’s run.

The interlude that the original Robin took due to gunshot induced amnesia (Nightwing #50 – 75) was regrettable and represents a low point in the character’s history, but we are not here to blame those involved, and there was some fine work done on those issues despite editorial story guidelines.

The character has been presented with some difficult situations at the start of runs before, and it is not since Chuck Dixon‘s run on the first solo ongoing Nightwing title that a creative team had this clean of a slate to take Dick Grayson where they wanted.

Leaping Into The Light

With this blue sky of opportunity, Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo, along with other artists, went to work and crafted a series of stories that reset the status quo for this beloved character and put him in the center of the DC Universe. Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page #024: Celebrating One of the Greatest Nightwing Runs Ever” →

Continued After the Next Page #023: New Comics Companies Emerge from SDCC 2024

Posted on August 15, 2024June 13, 2025 by Bob Harrison

If anyone interacts with me for just about any length of time, they will discover that I love comic books. More than that, I support comic creators and their efforts to continue to make new comic books. Innovation and fresh voices along with original stories are the fertilizer that keeps the crops of comic books growing and expanding.

In the aftermath of the biggest comic convention of the year, the comic industry has been presented with some new avenues for artists to tell their stories. There were three new comic companies that were announced at Comic-Con International, colloquially known as San Diego Comic Con (SDCC), that deserve some attention.

In 2023, we saw companies like DSTLRY Media, and Magma Comix, along with imprints like Giant Generator and Ghost Machine, start to enter the chaotic fray of publishing comics. And while each entity has their own economic model, the fact that they seem to be committed to telling interesting and good stories makes the industry better as whole.

This year’s SDCC saw new ventures launched by industry veterans who are stepping out on their own after years with other companies.

ACT 4 Publishing

Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page #023: New Comics Companies Emerge from SDCC 2024” →

Continued After the Next Page #022: Planning Panels and Conventioning in the Windy City and Ithaca

Posted on March 19, 2023December 30, 2023 by Bob Harrison

In the “before times”, people would come to the gathering place and wander the concourse taking in the sights purchasing shiny wares with no fear of deadly disease. That was three years ago. Are we back to that point? Probably not, and probably not for a while still, but we are getting closer.

Comic convention season is back in full force. That break in con scheduling that we normally have from before the December holidays until late February didn’t really happen this year. Most people seems to be willing to return to the circuit with little concern for the pandemic creating coronavirus. The best part of this is that my social media feeds are not filling up with tales of infections or even the dreaded con-crud.

All of this has me even more excited to begin my 2023 convention season in a couple of weeks. Your intrepid correspondent will be part of the press contingent at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, more commonly known by its geek friendly acronym C2E2. I will be walking the floors all three days talking to exhibitors and fans and checking out some of the interesting panel programming.

However, the most exciting panels, in my not so humble opinion, will take place on Sunday April 2, 2023. I will be hosting two panels a Reed event for the first time in my career, and I am beyond excited. Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page #022: Planning Panels and Conventioning in the Windy City and Ithaca” →

Continued After The Next Page #021: It’s Time for Sparkles and Butterflies

Posted on January 1, 2023January 1, 2023 by Bob Harrison

Happy New Year! It is that time of year for renewed hope and fresh starts; so bring on the sparkles and butterflies!

The past few years have started with varying degrees of optimism for the future, and they often left the hopeful disappointed. Therefore, I have decided that this year’s resolution is to “not let 2023 suck”. I know that is ambitious, but it put’s some responsibility on me to make things happen while hoping that the magic genies send good juju my way.

I already know it is going to be an eventful year, but before we get to what’s to come, let’s look back at what we accomplished in 2022.

As we are in our fifth year of existence here at Pop Culture Squad, we had some milestones in 2022. We reached our 100,000th page view and published one hundred and twenty-three articles.

Personally, I ran some numbers, and this is what I came up with.

Attended eleven comic conventions
Hosted seven convention discussion panels
Published eight podcast episodes and two live broadcasts
Published fifty-eight articles on this site
Read somewhere around 400 comic books!

I will take that as a win.

Throughout my travels, I met some amazing people and had incredible conversations about comics. Some of those people have become good friends and I am better for it. Continue reading “Continued After The Next Page #021: It’s Time for Sparkles and Butterflies” →

Continued After the Next Page #20: Representation Matters Even in the 30th Century

Posted on June 30, 2022December 30, 2023 by Bob Harrison

As Pride Month 2022 comes to a close, I want to highlight what I feel is an often overlooked relationship in comic books. In the last couple of decades, gender and sexual identity in mainstream comic books have made great strides in diversity. I always have fond memories of the first same-sex relationship involving two superheroes that I saw in DC Comics.

The “Five Years Later” run of the Legion of Super-Heroes that started with Legion of Super-Heroes Volume 4 #1 (1989) has often been the subject of derision from fans as it represented a significant break in the history of the team. I am not sure how well received the book was at the time of publication, but it took almost thirty years for it to ever be collected. However, as a long time LSH fan, I find it to be one of the most daring, unique, and compelling version of one of my favorite super hero teams.

The initial run of this volume of the Legion was plotted and penciled by Keith Giffen with scripts by Tom and Mary Bierbaum. Within the pages of this run, particularly at the beginning, the reader is exposed to a slightly older group of familiar characters coming to grips with the reality of the political world that they live in and searching for the thing that is missing in their lives. For many, that thing is the Legion and their friends.

In the five years since the end of the Magic Wars, the characters of Salu Digby (Shrinking Violet or just “Vi”) and Ayla Ranzz (Lightning Lass) have suffered trauma but come through it with a love for each other that will forever remain truly special in my heart. I could go through all the details of what happened to them and how their relationship was portrayed in each individual issue of this series, but that has been done, and done well, by others [see below]. I want to focus on why this relationship means so much to me.

*Shrinking Violet – art by Keith Giffen*

I have wanted to write this article for some time. However, I have struggled with it as I am not confident that mine is the voice that needs to be heard. For full disclosure, I am a cis, hetero, white male. I believe that love is love and celebrate diversity in every medium and support inclusive representation in pop-culture and society as a whole. It is with that perspective that I approach this article. Representation is important. Continue reading “Continued After the Next Page #20: Representation Matters Even in the 30th Century” →

Continued after the Next Page #019: Telling Complete Stories From Supergirl to Danger Street

Posted on May 27, 2022May 27, 2022 by Bob Harrison

With the current format of comics publishing, it makes sense at times to wait and and evaluate the work after it has been completed. When I was younger, the norm was that when a comic series was green lit and published, it was perceived to have no end date. The limited series or mini-series were the exceptions, but more recently, the never ending ongoing series has become the exception. The limited series tend to have an intentional story and are filled with overarching themes that are better explored as a whole rather than issue by issue.

My point here is that with a complete story, evaluating a series as a whole feels like something I should be doing more of, and I am going to start that with the recently completed Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. The eight-issue series was written by Tom King with lineart by Bilquis Evely and colors by Matheus Lopes. Clayton Cowles did the lettering, and Brittany Holzherr edited it.

It is important to note that comic creators are telling the stories that they want to tell more often without continuity constraints. The concept of shared universes and continuity really began to take shape in the sixties and came to a head in the eighties. At the very beginning, there were issues with it. Legend says that the Avengers were a thrown together group intended as a sort of a one-off, and not part of a grand concept of one great Marvel Universe. Stan Lee is said to have given the reason for the original Avengers leaving and being left with Cap’s Quirky Quartet because it was too difficult to keep stories straight between the Avengers and the individual heroes’ books. While a lot of deluge has flowed under the bridge of comic continuity, both Marvel and DC Comics have more recently provided readers with stories about their favorite characters that may or may not be in continuity.

Tom King while working mostly for DC has been a master of telling compelling comic stories that do not necessarily fit into current or historical continuity. His Mister Miracle, Strange Adventures, Omega Men, and even Vision for Marvel are all complete stories that can be read without any context of what is going on in the larger comic universes. I think that is a good thing. When the time is taken to tell an extended story, and the creative team executes that story without continuity interference, it makes for excellent comic book storytelling, and that brings us Supergirl. Continue reading “Continued after the Next Page #019: Telling Complete Stories From Supergirl to Danger Street” →

Continued After the Next Page #018: What is a Substack and Why Do I Care?

Posted on August 10, 2021August 10, 2021 by Bob Harrison

After decades of predictable delivery methods for comic book content, the past twenty years has been full of novel delivery mechanisms, and now we are being presented with an new option: Comics via Newsletter. The New York Times reported on the announcement that several high profile writers are joining Nick Spencer at Substack.com and creating comic content for their subscription based newsletters.

Writers Jonathan Hickman, James Tynion IV, Saladin Ahmed, Molly Ostertag, and Scott Snyder are the first group of creators that are announced to be creating on the Substack platform. Substack is a website that bills itself as “a place for independent writing.” If you want to try to determine what the platform is trying to accomplish, you can start with their About Page, and I wish you luck. George Gustines of the New York Times did a good job of covering the details of the announcement, and if you have access to the NYT, I recommend checking it out, as it is a big deal in comics news.

I would like to look at this concept from a consumer’s perspective. This development is indicative of the difficult economics behind comic book publishing. Print publishing in general seems to be in great turmoil in terms of making things profitable as the world moves further away from paper. I get that writers and artists are struggling and do not begrudge anyone the opportunity to get paid for their art.

This newsletter platform concerns me as a consumer of comics. It raises questions in terms of delivery expectation and content. I wonder how often a subscriber will be paying for expected content on a subscription and be disappointed that someone fails to deliver. The difference in this type of platform versus Patreon.com is that while Patreon is advertised as a support mechanism for creators, Substack is promising a product in return for the subscription. Without corporations and publishing companies absorbing the liability for delays and errors in products, the creators on Substack will have no one to hide behind if the product does not make it to market as anticipated. This is a big risk for future revenue and reputation.

There has been little said to this point as to what the subscribers are actually entitled to and what the subscription tiers actually cost. A concern is that the typical subscription is around $5 per month, and that generally works out to the cost of a single issue of a comic book. Will these Substack Comics be generating a full single issue per month? Other digital platforms such as Webtoon or Comixology deliver products that are either free or complete at time of consumption. Therefore. the consumer knows what they are getting for their “money”.

My last concern is that as a consumer, I now have to determine if reading and purchasing comic content from some of my favorite creators is worth supporting Substack. There are plenty of reservations about the way the platform does business and who it does it with. A simple google search should give you plenty of reading material. The comic book consumer’s budget is now divided between Direct Market Retail shops, Online Digital delivery of published comics, Kickstarter campaigns, and bookstores. Adding this new expense may require thoughtful deliberation on the part of the consumer.

Ultimately, this is a way for creators to take more control of the monetization and delivery of their art. I applaud that. There is a feeling that comic creators are underpaid and under supported. I want comics to thrive and survive. I wish the creators who are endeavoring to deliver comics in this innovative way all the luck for success. I am not sold yet on this, but for the creators and fans, I hope it works and we get the next great comic story delivered in our inboxes via Substack.

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