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This week on Back to Pop, we sit down with Adam Cahoon — artist, designer, and Senior Designer & former Production Lead at Vault Comics. Adam stepped into The Nasty, Vault’s horror-comedy about VHS culture and the “video nasties” moral panic in 1990s Scotland, taking over as sole interior artist from issue #3.

He’s also the designer behind the premium hardcover edition of He Who Fights With Monsters and the cover of The Two Week Curse (Book 1 of The Ten Realms), and the artist/co-creator of Greetings from the Maglev, a post-apocalyptic revenge story from Invader Comics.

We dig into what day to day, the invisible design choices that make a comic feel like an object instead of just printed pages, and how Adam built the “1950s title card” energy into the He Who Fights With Monsters typography. We also get into horror fandom, the challenge of stepping into a world someone else built, and the quiet, personal comics Adam’s been building on the side — superhero spas, cosmic consequences, and family mistakes.

In this episode:

•Designing The Nasty and taking over from original artist George Kambadais

•Inside the cover and hardcover design of He Who Fights With Monsters

•Building a cover for LitRPG/portal fantasy with The Two Week Curse

•Greetings from the Maglev and the pull of personal, self-owned work

•What makes a comic book logo actually work

Find Adam:

🌐 https://adamcahoon.com

📷 Instagram: https://instagram.com/adamccahoon

🛒 Greetings from the Maglev Vol. 2: https://invadercomics.com

🎙️ Back to Pop — the podcast that looks back through the eyes of those who were there.

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Some covers don’t ask you to pick them up — they grab you by the collar.

That’s exactly what happened with Honor and Curse from Mad Cave Studios. One look at the cover and the search was on: who made this?

This week on Back to Pop, we sit down with the artist behind that image — Nick Marinkovich, Canadian comic artist, illustrator, concept artist, and co-creator of Dead Romans (Image Comics Shadowline). Nick’s work carries grit, atmosphere, and cinematic weight — the kind of art that makes a panel feel like it has history behind it.

We talk about what makes a cover stop a reader cold, how a visual style gets built over years of sketchbooks and false starts, the discipline behind sequential storytelling, and what it really means to co-create a world from the ground up alongside a writer. Nick also opens up about process, pressure, deadlines, and the influences — comics and otherwise — that shaped how he sees light, composition, and motion.

If you’ve ever picked up a book purely because the cover wouldn’t let you put it down, this one’s for you.

Find Nick’s work: https://nickmarinkovich.com/

Follow Nick here: https://www.instagram.com/nick.marinkovich?igsh=aWJzZ3g5NW52MjRh

Including Dead Romans and his cover art for Honor and Curse, and keep supporting the artists making comics feel alive before you even turn the first page.

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by Ron Wasserman

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Lauren M. Antoine

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Composer

Ron Wasserman

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Writer Doug Wagner returns to Back to Pop and this time, he brings his artistic partner in crime with him.

Daniel Hillyard joins the conversation for a wide-ranging discussion on what it looks like when a creative partnership builds its own corner of the comics world, strange, violent, funny, and more emotionally honest than it has any right to be.

Together, they’ve made Plastic, Vinyl, Plush, and I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer. Now there’s Narco. And the work keeps getting bolder.

Marc, Doug, and Daniel dig into the DNA of their collaboration how they balance horror and humor, what makes a damaged character feel real inside an absurd premise, and why the strangest stories often carry the most human weight.

If you’ve been reading these books, this one’s for you. If you haven’t, this is a great place to start.

You can connect with Daniel here https://www.12gaugecomics.com/creator_danielhillyard

You can can connect with Doug here https://shocknoggin.com/about

Theme music composed by Ron Wasserman

Audio composed and edited by

Lauren M. Antoine

Website:

Composer Ron Wasserman

Back To Pop

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This week on Back to Pop, Marc is joined by cover and variant artist Suspiria Vilchez — a Barcelona-born, Toronto-based painter whose hand-crafted acrylic technique sets her apart in today’s comics industry. Her work has appeared across Vault Comics, BOOM Studios, IDW, Image, Penthouse Comics, and Sumerian Comics, with credits including Nectar, Buffy: The Last Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Dune, and G.I. Joe. In this conversation, Suspiria talks about her artistic upbringing in Spain, the European comics and fashion worlds that shaped her perspective, finding her visual voice, and the turning point that launched her career in American comics. A conversation about craft, identity, and what it takes to create art that truly stops you cold.

For all things Suspiria head here: https://suspirialand.com/

Theme music composed by Ron Wasserman

Audio composed and edited by

Lauren M. Antoine

Website:

Composer Ron Wasserman

Back To Pop

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What happens when the dream doesn’t die — it just waits?

Michael Tove spent decades in North Carolina as a regional actor, film extra, and financial adviser. His first screen credit goes back to 1990, when he worked as an extra on the theatrical adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale — shot right in his home state. He carried a screenplay called Hot Ice for nearly thirty years. He never stopped.

Now, well past his 70th birthday, Tove is a debut screenwriter whose short film Yard Saleing — a Hitchcockian thriller about a yard sale, a locked box, and a decades-old jewelry heist — is making serious noise on the festival circuit. The film stars Eric Roberts and Eliza Roberts, and was directed by Tom Logan, veteran acting coach and former head of the acting department at the American Film Institute. Tove wrote it, and produced it.

There is no expiration date on your dreams. Michael Tove is living proof. If you would like to see Yard Sailing watch it here https://youtu.be/QTNAGtQSWm4

And for all things Mike Tove click here https://www.emeraldoakproductions.com/

Theme music composed by Ron Wasserman

Audio composed and edited by

Lauren M. Antoine

Website:

Composer Ron Wasserman

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George Vega grew up in Newark, New Jersey watching Voltron and filling sketchbooks with Jim Lee panels. Today he’s doing G.I. Joe cover work through Skybound and his art has appeared across Marvel, DC, Alien, Firefly, and Rick and Morty. In this conversation, George talks about the artists who shaped him — Jim Lee, Brom, Todd McFarlane, Larry Elmore — and what he actually took from each of them. We get into his process, his discipline philosophy, what it means to capture what makes a character unique, and why showing up anyway is the only real answer to artist’s block. If you grew up on trading cards, action figures, and Saturday morning cartoons, this one hits different.

To connect more with what George has going on click here https://www.georgevegaart.com/

Theme music composed by Ron Wasserman

Audio composed and edited by

Lauren M. Antoine

Website:

Composer Ron Wasserman

Back To Pop

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JP Mavinga has spent over twenty-five years building one of the most distinctive careers in illustration and comics — born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, trained at SCAD, and forged across three continents before landing as a senior concept designer and art director at Sideshow Collectibles, where his work on the Thanos on Throne maquette set sales records.
In this episode, JP joins Back to Pop to talk craft, identity, and his debut Image Comics series White Sky written by William Harms, colored by Lee Loughridge, and already on its third printing.

The conversation covers his multicultural journey and how it shaped his visual voice, his years designing iconic collector pieces for DC, Marvel, and beyond, and the process behind building every page of White Sky a post-apocalyptic survival story about a father and daughter crossing a haunted America. JP also gets into the tools he uses, how he draws emotion without dialogue, and what twenty-five years in this industry has taught him about staying in it.

Find out more about JP at mavinga.com.

Theme music composed by Ron Wasserman

Audio composed and edited by

Lauren M. Antoine

Website:

Composer Ron Wasserman

Back To Pop

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Ever had an idea for an action figure, or maybe you just wish one had been made? Well at Lecroy Toys you don't have to wait anymore, head over and tell Matthew we sent you! https://www.instagram.com/lecroystoys?igsh=MW1ndWE5cHhzaGQ3dw==

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If you grew up reading The Batman Adventures, Batman: Gotham Adventures, or Superman Adventures, Rick Burchett’s work shaped how you see those characters.

His pages don’t just look good — they move, they breathe, they act.
In this episode, we sit down with Rick to talk about how a commercial art background at a St. Louis ad agency quietly became one of the best training grounds for comics storytelling, why the animated Batman books weren’t just tie-ins but a genuine artistic statement, and what it actually takes to sustain a career in comics across decades without losing your voice.

Rick breaks down what he’s really chasing when he builds a page, how he shifted gears between Batman’s tension and Superman’s optimism without losing himself, and why clarity and restraint — not flash — are the rarest skills in the medium.
This one’s for the fans who wore out those pages. And for anyone who ever wondered what makes a comic actually work.

Theme music composed by Ron Wasserman

Audio composed and edited by

Lauren M. Antoine

Website:

Composer Ron Wasserman

Back To Pop

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Ever had an idea for an action figure, or maybe you just wish one had been made? Well at Lecroy Toys you don't have to wait anymore, head over and tell Matthew we sent you! https://www.instagram.com/lecroystoys?igsh=MW1ndWE5cHhzaGQ3dw==

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Ever had an idea for an action figure, or maybe you just wish one had been made? Well at Lecroy Toys you don't have to wait anymore, head over and tell Matthew we sent you! https://www.instagram.com/lecroystoys?igsh=MW1ndWE5cHhzaGQ3dw==