IDEAS DON'T BLEED episode one hundred forty-six | Frank Barbiere and Morgan Beem, part two

WELCOME BACK TO IDEAS DON’T BLEED!

This week, we’re joined once again by Frank Barbiere and Morgan Beem (Five Ghosts, You Belong Here) as we discuss being in relationships with other comics creators, death of the author, their new Image Comics series The Author Immortal, and more!

IDB is an all-new weekly podcast presented by Ashcan Press and featuring Matthew Rosenberg, Ethan S. Parker, sometimes Griffin Sheridan, and wonderful guests from the world of comic books!

Our theme song is “Where’s the Poison” by Summer People.

Enjoy!

Two weeks in a row for podcasts! A new record. Please clap.

Here we have Part II of our chat with artist Morgan Beem and writer Frank Barbiere as we dive into their upcoming Image Comics series THE AUTHOR IMMORTAL. And what an amazing coincidence today is Final Order Cutoff for issue #1. So you can listen to this while you head to your local comic shop and ask them to order you a copy.

Obviously you saw Morgan’s great cover above but check out these other great covers-

Yuko Shimizu’s gorgeous one-

Jorge Corona’s very cool 1 in 25 cover-

And there is a rare 1 in 50 foil version of Yuko’s cover too. So get your orders for the book in now or risk missing out.

A number of people have been asking me about getting some rare books, out of print books, and more signed books up in the shop. In the interest of A) making people happy B) clearing stuff out of my office, I have decided to start more regularly putting up stuff in our webstore. If you’re looking for specific books, issues, covers, or sets let me know and I’ll do my best to find them.

First up are our amazing tour variants from the month long YOU’LL DO BAD THINGS / WE’RE TAKING EVERYONE DOWN WITH US tour. We had our good buddy Dylan Burnett (Cosmic Ghost Rider / Arcade Kings) draw a set of connecting covers of both issue #1’s. We made like 400 of them and sold them on tour to help pay for our gas, hotels, rental car, and crippling burger addiction. Good news- we sold a lot. Bad news- we spend a lot more on hamburgers than is physically of fiscally wise.

But we kept a bunch off to the side so nice folks who couldn’t make it out to the signings (or didn’t want to) could still get copies. And today I remembered that we did that!

This is what they look like when they’re put together.

We have copies of both covers individually or the set of both up for sale on the site right now. If you order them I’ll make sure to throw in some extra goodies as a thank you. And I promise to use the money on something other than hamburgers. Probably. Maybe.

Just a heads up, shipping these outside the U.S. is going to be a real headache. Our mail system is not playing nice with the rest of the world so it’s costly and unreliable. I’m down to try if you want to pay that much for them but it’s probably not the best idea.

Superchunk. Always.

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That’s it for me.

Stay safe. Take care of each other. Feels weird to be doing the podcast again regularly.

-Matthew Rosenberg

NYC 9/8/25