A very special tribute episode of NERTZ in which Mathew Klickstein's 2014 interview with legendary (and, as of 2017, late) comic book creator and icon Len Wein (co-creator of Wolverine, Swamp Thing, et al; editor of Alan Moore's Watchmen, etc.) is expanded and explored, delving into the changing face of the comic book industry today.

After a lengthy hiatus (which has become par for the course), your favorite nerd/geek culture podcast -- NERTZ -- returns triumphantly with a VERY "indie" new production including brand new intro/outro music and a very special, very apropos guest: Get Up Kids frontman Matt Pryor. The Get Up Kids being one of the pioneers of so-called "emo" music, despite the fact Pryor, his band and most people in that "scene" so to speak detest the title. But the music is great, Pryor is an articulate and passionate interview subject and now you too can find out what it is that makes "indie rock" (HA!) so very nerdy and geeky on this episode of NERTZ.

It's another huge get for the world of NERTZ, fellow NERTZERS: the one and only supreme geek rocker himself, Mark Mothersbaugh! Find out all you ever wanted to know about the intersection between the birth (and sustaining resonance) of Devo and nerd/geek culture, why Mark just looooves Andy Warhol and making music for "geeky" indie filmmakers like Wes Anderson and why the Internet helps him find all the weird and wacky music his innovative brain can handle. It's one of our super geekiest episodes yet!

BOOM! It's Sara Driver, longtime partner and collaborator of the one and only master of indie films, Jim Jarmusch. Driver is also a filmmaker in her own right, having made a handful of movies back in the day and her recent documentary Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Driver was a close friend of Basquiat's, and her intimate portrait of the late artist is quite the quite-the! And speaking of, we have quite the quite-the episode here: Driver explains where Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and she used to see people get mugged ... in the same spot where now there's a Damien Hirst gallery that you can't even get into if you're not dressed right! We talk about how the "nerdy" weirdos of those days grew up to create a lot of what became No Wave and the Cinema of Transgression .. before there would eventually be such a thing as the "indie" movie scene ... and why the hell we should care on a podcast like this.

Time to get caffeinated! On the this episode of NERTZ, we have one of our favorite all-time comix folks: Mr. Shannon Wheeler, the creator of one of the great indie comix of all time: TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN. Tah-dah! Wheeler also teaches and writes about comix (and comics; you'll find out the difference, as you will whether or not folks in the industry actually LIKE the term "graphic novel"), regularly contributes to the New Yorker and recently put out what is becoming an incredibly popular book, Shit My President Says: The Illustrated Tweets of Donald J. Trump. There's so much to glom off of Wheeler, his adventures through the world of comix, comics, graphic novels, illustrations, conventions, what R. Crumb is REALLY like, and much-much more.

We are so excited to present one of the key figures of Nerd/Geek Culture, Mr. Toby Radloff, to our podcast. Toby took on the qualifier of "Genuine Nerd" after becoming fascinated by the quintessential Nerd Culture film Revenge of the Nerds, and later built his own reputation as such through his reoccurring role in Harvey Pekar's groundbreaking comic book series American Splendor. Toby would appear as himself in the film adaptation of Splendor, which also featured renown comedian/actor Judah Friedlander as Toby, too. Toby starred in his own series of "Genuine Nerd" interstitials which he helped write and produce for MTV in the late eighties/early nineties, as well. These brief spots were directed by longtime friend and collaborator Wayne Alan Harold who additionally directed Toby's two Troma films Killer Nerd and Bride of the Killer Nerd. Get ready to hear the word "nerd" far more than any episode of NERTZ yet!

This episode of NERTZ gets right to the skinny of how Nerd/Geek Culture and pop culture intersect with our good friend Caseen Gaines. Caseen has contributed many pieces to outlets ranging from Vanity Fair to Rolling Stone and has written books on: Pee-Wee's Playhouse, A Christmas Story, the Back to the Future trilogy and (just released!) The Dark Crystal. As something more than the typical "fanboy," what does Caseen have to say about obsessing so passionately over a geek totem like Howard the Duck or "Weird" Al (as he has for his journalistic pieces) ... while at the same time receiving so much (occasionally frantic) adoration from fellow geeks/nerds/fans himself? Find out in this fun-filled and geeky episode!

After a brief hiatus, we return to NERTZ with a truly fascinating character who, frankly, loves investigating truly fascinating characters for his many articles, books and classes on subjects ranging from the rapper Common (with whom he wrote a bestselling memoir), to the monumentally impactful writer of Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, whose literary estate he assisted throughout Bradley's time at Harvard), to the "poetry" of pop music. Many of his books on hip hop and pop culture (such as The Anthology of Rap and Book of Rhymes) have become seminal texts for university classes around the country. He speaks all over the country on a series of compelling topics, directs the Laboratory for Race & Popular Culture (RAP Lab) at the University of Colorado - Boulder where is an English professor and dresses really snazzily too. What the FUNK does THIS guy have to do with Geek/Nerd Culture? Find out in this episode of your favorite nerdy nerd podcast, NERTZ!