“Tall Tale” is Recommended Reading

I recently became hooked on Tall Tale Radio, a podcast show that focuses on the cartooning and comics industry, after my friend Stephen Pastis told me about it.

Tall Tale Radio is hosted by Tom Racine, who shows a great deal of knowledge about cartooning and clearly loves the art form. The show’s format is focused on interviews with cartoonists and industry experts, and features some pretty big names from various areas of cartooning like comic strips, web comics, comic books, graphic novels, animation… you name it. As of this writing Tom has 52 shows that “air” on Mondays and run about 25 minutes. Some of those interviewed include the afore mentioned Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Jeff Keane (The Family Circus), John and Anne Hambrock (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee), Mark Tatuli (Heart of the City, Lio), Dave Coverly (Speedbump) and lots of other cartoonists. There are also episodes that report from events like ComicCon, the Reuben awards, etc. and interviews with other cartooning industry folks like Andrew Farago of the San Fransisco Cartoon Art Museum, John Read of Stay Tooned magazine. In the archives you’ll find gems that discuss aspects, trends and concerns of the cartooning world like the plight of newspapers, the webcomics phenomenon and all sorts of other goodies. The shows are informative and entertaining, and have been a great contribution to the world of cartooning.

It just so happens that the Podcast Awards are accepting nominations for consideration for their annual awards, and folks like Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist are rightfully suggesting that Tall Tale Radio is well deserving of such an award. If you’ve ever listened to any of TTR’s episodes, you know that is most definitely true, so go and nominate it (under “Cultural/Arts”). More importantly, if you have not heard any of Tom’s Tall Tall Radio podcasts… what are you waiting for?!