Ben and Mick revisit Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook’s Harrow County Vol. 1: Countless Haints (Dark Horse Comics, issues #1–4) in this remastered Halloween archive episode, with new context added for 2026.

Emmy is turning 18 on a quiet Southern farm, but Harrow County has a long memory. The witch Hester Beck was hanged from a tree years ago, and the town has been waiting for her to come back ever since. We dig into why this Southern Gothic folk horror series still sends chills down the spine, and how it kept its dread going right to the final issue.

• What a “haint” is, and the Gullah Geechee roots of haint blue porch ceilings
• Skinwalkers, boo hags, the hare witch, and the folklore behind the skinless boy
• Hester Beck and the history of the Salem witch trials of 1692
• Tyler Crook’s hand-painted watercolour art and the hidden “Harrow County” titles in the landscape
• How horror works in comics compared to film and prose, and the power of the page-turn scare
• The series’ origins as Bunn’s online prose serial, plus its Eisner nomination and Ghastly Award wins
• Influences and companions: Hellboy, The Witch (Black Phillip), and Over the Garden Wall

Spoilers for Harrow County issues #1–4.

Thanks to Sean Northridge for the recommendation.

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Time Stamps:

00:00 Introduction

04:06 What Is a Haint?

09:59 Horror in Comics vs. Film

16:10 The Creators: Bunn & Crook

30:52 The Art of Harrow County

38:44 Recommendations & Outro

Collecting Issues is a monthly comic book club and criticism podcast. Read along with us and send in your thoughts to be featured on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you listen.

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Harrow County, Cullen Bunn, Tyler Crook, Dark Horse Comics, horror comics, folk horror, Southern Gothic, haint blue, Gullah Geechee, skinwalker, witch comics, Halloween podcast, comic book podcast, comic book club, graphic novel review

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Mick and Ben open spooky season with Fault Lines, the debut comic anthology from Robert Cullen, the Irish animator who founded Boulder Media (Danger Mouse, Transformers, Wacky Races). It has three stories about guilt, grief and the Irish diaspora. They range from Twilight Zone strange to quietly devastating, and each turns on the moment a life breaks apart.

In this episode:

• The Vanishing Act: Blackpool, 1976. Kathleen, an Irish showgirl in Tommy Cooper’s variety act, takes work as the assistant to a sleazy magician whose disappearing trick sometimes actually works. We look at magical realism, women “staying in their places”, and an eight-page silent sequence that shows how much comics can do.
• How to Be a Ghost: Mick’s favourite. A grief story set in Canada with a twist you’ll want to reread straight away. We cover Cullen’s limited colour palette, his nine-panel grids, and why this story only works as a comic.
• Siren: Campbell, a deaf man in Glasgow, hears a sound for the first time in 40 years and is pulled back to Edinburgh and an old crime. We talk about one of the best depictions of deafness and sign language we’ve seen in a comic, and about how guilt gets handed down to the next generation.

Along the way: Cullen’s move from animation director to comic book creator, how he uses cinematic framing without making the pages feel like storyboards, and why independent Irish comics deserve your money. Spoilers throughout, so read it first. It’s a book club, not a review show.

Next time, for Halloween: A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll.

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Buy Fault Lines from your local independent comic shop.

Time Stamps:

00:00 Intro and Premise

01:13 Support Indie Comics

01:51 What Is Fault Lines

03:26 Creator Background

04:24 Vanishing Act Setup

04:32 Kathleen in Blackpool

13:34 Break In and Loss

16:47 Great Dini Offer

20:07 Snuff Magic Audience

22:43 Escape and Rescue

29:03 Story One Wrap

29:52 Story Two Tease

30:54 Follow and Subscribe

32:44 Ghost Story Twist

35:22 Comics Medium Advantage

36:43 Cullen Interview Craft

38:56 Color Memory Motifs

42:49 Crash Site Grief Reveal

44:26 Restraint Happy Ending

47:06 Siren Call Deafness

52:03 Guilt Road Trip Edinburgh

55:47 Accident Backstory Unfolds

58:20 Fault Lines Aftermath

01:00:30 Wrap Up Next Episode

Tags / keywords: Fault Lines comic, Robert Cullen, Boulder Media, Irish comics, independent comics, horror comic anthology, graphic novel review, comic book podcast, comic book club, magical realism comics, Halloween comics, spooky season, Irish podcast, Collecting Issues

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What happens when a Justice League pastiche decides the only way to save the world is to run it? On this episode of Collecting Issues, the monthly comic book club podcast, Ben and Michael read Squadron Supreme #1–12 (Marvel Comics, 1985) by Mark Gruenwald, Bob Hall and John Beatty.

Hyperion, Power Princess, Nighthawk, Doctor Spectrum, the Whizzer and the rest of the Squadron Supreme wake up in a world wrecked by alien mind control, and their solution is the Utopia Program: disarm the population, fix hunger, cure death and, eventually, rewire criminals' brains with Tom Thumb's behaviour-modification tech. What could go wrong?

We get into the Squadron's origins as Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League, the grim secret lives of its heroes, the B-Mod debate that splits the team, Golden Archer's horrifying abuse of Lark, the bizarre Hyperion doppelgänger subplot, Nuke and Doctor Spectrum's fatal fight, and the brutal final showdown. We also ask whether this is an accidental first draft of the postmodern superhero comic, and how it stacks up against Watchmen, Kingdom Come and Identity Crisis.

Plus: eighties comic book dialogue, a whole lot of recap panels, and the famous story of Mark Gruenwald's ashes being mixed into the ink of the Squadron Supreme trade paperback.

Spoiler warning: this is a book club, not a review. Read the comic first, then come back.

Next up: Fault Lines, an eerie, Twilight Zone-style sci-fi anthology of three stories from Irish creator Robert Cullen.

Chapters

00:00 Intro & Spoiler Warning

04:24 What Is Squadron Supreme?

31:27 Secret Lives & Character Backstories

38:57 The B-Mod Debate

42:57 Golden Archer & Lark

50:54 Hyperion's Doppelgänger

58:34 The Civil War Showdown

01:11:46 Outro & Next Episode

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Tags / keywords

Squadron Supreme, Mark Gruenwald, Bob Hall, Marvel Comics, Hyperion, Power Princess, Nighthawk, Justice League, Watchmen, Kingdom Come, Identity Crisis, Bronze Age comics, superhero deconstruction, comic book podcast, comic book club, graphic novel review, Irish podcast

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In this remastered archive episode, first recorded in 2019 and reissued with new context and commentary, Mick and Ben dig into Mister Miracle (2017-2018) by Tom King and Mitch Gerads, the Eisner Award winning 12 issue series from DC Comics.

The episode covers:

• Jack Kirby's Fourth World and why the New Gods were born out of Kirby's experience as an army field artist in World War II
• Darkseid as inevitability rather than brawler, the Anti-Life Equation as a proof that free will does not exist, and how "Darkseid Is" moves from a Grant Morrison and Howard Porter phrase in Rock of Ages into a formal storytelling device
• Scott Free and Big Barda as one of the most realistic relationships in superhero comics, and how nature versus nurture plays out for two people raised on Apokolips
• Depression, PTSD and the "stand / standing" mantra, plus the recurring shower motif and the comic's critique of push-through-it advice
• Mitch Gerads' art, the post-eighties nine-panel grid, and a rendition of Apokolips inspired by burning oil wells in Iraq
• Granny Goodness, Lightray, Orion, Highfather, Funky Flashman and the Stan Lee parody nobody quite agreed on
• Is any of it real? Metron, the offer to return to continuity, and that final "will not be continued" panel

Plus a disagreement about whether Tom King can write an ending, and recommendations if you liked this one: The Vision, God Country, Invincible.

Timely too, with Mister Miracle newly announced as its own DC Animated series.

(No relation to Michael's friend Tom King, who does jujitsu.)

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Tags / keywords

Mister Miracle, Tom King, Mitch Gerads, Scott Free, Big Barda, Darkseid, New Gods, Fourth World, Jack Kirby, DC Comics, Anti-Life Equation, Granny Goodness, Apokolips, New Genesis, comic book podcast, comic book review, nine panel grid, Eisner Award, depression in comics, Collecting Issues

00:00 Archive Episode Setup

01:28 Premise and Darkseid Context

02:45 Tom King Not Your Friend

04:03 Kirby Fourth World Basics

05:41 War and Anti Life Origins

09:19 Scott and Barda Home Life

10:19 Unreliable Reality Question

11:44 Humanizing Gods and Morality

17:22 Nature Versus Nurture Trauma

18:49 Mitch Gerads Art Breakdown

20:47 Continuity Constraints Critique

22:17 Shock Deaths No Stakes

22:30 Tom King No Consequences

23:42 End Of Fourth World

24:17 Messy Structure Endings

25:01 Darkseid Is Device

26:49 Inevitable Darkseid Dread

29:10 Funky Flashman Critique

30:30 Depression PTSD Themes

31:17 Stand And Shower Metaphors

34:05 Choice Happy Ending

36:23 Symbolism Silver Age Love

37:50 Stakes Alternate Reality

38:35 What Else To Read

41:24 Final Thoughts And Outro

42:04 Reissue And Animated News

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Welcome back to Collecting Issues, ladies and gentlemen! This week, Mick and Ben are looking into an absolute titan of comic book history: Marvel’s The Dark Phoenix Saga (collecting Uncanny X-Men #129-137), first published in the bloody 1980s by the legendary creative team of Chris Claremont and John Byrne.

Join us as we tackle a comic run that is somehow marginally older than both of us and infinitely more packed with leather corsets than we remembered. We’re digging deep into the cosmic epic that has been adapted by almost every X-Men cartoon and movie timeline (with wildly varying degrees of success).

In this episode, we cover:

• The Big Bait-and-Switch: Why does a legendary "cosmic" space saga spend three-quarters of its time messing around with the Hellfire Club in New York fetish wear?
• The Claremont Aesthetic: We break down the sheer amount of psychosexual tension, BDSM aesthetics, mind-control weirdness, and female subjugation. It's an '80s trope fest featuring "frail, unstable female minds," plus a whole lot of shirtless, hairy Wolverine and a suspiciously "thick" Sebastian Shaw.
• The Birth of Modern Wolverine: We pinpoint the exact, legendary sewer panel that transformed Wolverine from a grumpy 24-year-old kid into the definitive, scrappy, badass mutant we know and love today.
• Creative Explosions & Hokey Dialogue: From Banshee's questionable Irish catchphrases to Colossus screaming about Lenin's ghost, we look past the dated tropes to appreciate the absolute sheer volume of character building and world-defining concepts introduced in just eight issues.

Whether you're here for the definitive tragic tale of Jean Grey, the introduction of Kitty Pryde and Dazzler, or just to watch Cyclops stumble around in a gimp hood, this is a veritable smorgasbord of juicy X-Men goodness.

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Time Stamps:

00:00 Archive Episode Setup

00:32 Dark Phoenix Overview

01:50 Adaptations and Legacy

04:20 Plot Kicks Off Muir Island

05:24 Wyngarde and Hellfire Club

07:49 Hellfire Battles and Big Twist

09:58 Claremont Kinks and Controversy

14:30 Young X Men and Early Wolverine

17:54 Modern Wolverine Born

19:10 Trade Extras And Covers

20:02 Dialogue And Stereotypes

20:58 Low Powered Early X Men

22:22 Cyclops Melodrama Era

23:06 Why This Run Matters

26:21 Hickman Era Comparisons

28:43 Dark Phoenix In Space

30:29 Byrne Art And Origins

31:51 Recommendations And Wrap

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