SUPERSONIC Pod Comics

SUPERSONIC Pod Comics borrows its structure from the comics rack. Episodes carry issue numbers, spin-offs are tagged with the series they belong to, and the whole slate feeds a single superhero universe. THE RANDOMS is where the powers come from. The whole world watches an unknown object get destroyed in space, and energy from the blast leaves certain people with abilities. Graham Walker and Jenna Kirkwood set out to find all 42 of them, traveling with the precognitive Cecilia and Nick Foster, whose power gets the group out of trouble and who would rather not keep using it. Someone else is hunting them too, and the pursuers come armed. One episode closes on a father presenting his daughter Rosemary's healing power to a crowd as a gift from the Lord. THE MARK plays rougher and, oddly, funnier. Characters resent the codenames they are handed: one would have kept Stone Cold, or even taken Earth, Wind, and Fire, over Rock Fist, and someone else groans at a lineup that includes Fleetfeet and Firehands. The menace under the jokes is real. Mr. Boyle wants answers about Toby's touch, captives are threatened, and Maria confronts Toby over months of lies. Lady Vigilante ends up in an exoskeleton that, by her own account, does not make her as strong as she was. Just strong enough. Red, White, and Blue narrows the focus. Two co-workers who were never friends, one an idealist newcomer and the other a grizzled veteran, break into a facility where a guard warns a drained prisoner about something called the collection and being frozen like others before. The Kid Raptor journals, billed as Randoms stories, drop the ensemble for a single voice reading diary entries numbered by day. Ball lightning from outer space left the writer with wings of weird space fire, and the entries mix patrols by car with a police scanner, a flaming-winged rival overhead and a zombie-turkey nightmare that goes back to a Thanksgiving at age four. The comedy there comes from boredom: in a hometown with almost no crime, a first supervillain feels like a break in the monotony. Behind the Pods steps outside the fiction to interview cast, crew and creators. Creators Ben Avery and J.S. Earls describe weaving four cornerstone series, one-shots and side stories into one larger story, and they acknowledge that release order and story order do not always match. They single out House of Heroes as a story that belongs before Origin even though it came out later, and they raise the idea of publishing a timeline for anyone who wants to listen in story order. The two also turn up in the cast: the credits for Red, White, and Blue list Ben Avery as Red and J.S. Earls as Blue, with Nathan James Norman as White and sound design and production by Josiah Crandall. Some episodes end by thanking Kickstarter and Patreon supporters and pointing to bonus content on Patreon.