Matt Baume

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is queer artist and illustrator Cheyne Gallarde, whose style blends drag icons with classic comic book covers. Cheyne first discovered drag in queer bars of Hawaii, and after a memorable night getting pulled up onstage, he started translating the magic

Back in the 1980s, the guys who wrote Conan the Destroyer wrote an X-Men film that was supposed to be the launch of a Marvel movie universe ... but then the studio fell on hard times, the script was shelved, and the project was lost to the sands of time. But not completely lost, because I dug up an

I have two guests on this week’s Sewers of Paris, both of them connected to a secret society of mutants. JP Karliak is the voice of Morph on X-Men ‘97, among many other roles; and Anthony Oliveira is a writer of many Marvel comics, among many other books. I spoke to them both about why the X-Men hol

Sometimes, you can get your way through polite negotiation. And other times, you just have to be a real jerk about it. That's what happened with Northstar, the first openly gay superhero at Marvel: Top executives went "ballistic" at the idea, back in 1992, but some brave writers and editors stood up

It's hard to imagine anyone other than Hugh Jackman in the role of Wolverine, and yet ... it very nearly wasn't. And it's even harder to imagine anyone other than Ian McKellen playing Magneto (successfully) ... and yet it nearly wasn't him, either. Who do we have to thank for these two actors landin

There are two different versions of But I'm a Cheerleader -- one that looks great, and another that looks absolutely terrible. And of course, the terrible version was the only one you could get for many years, because the studio that produced it threw out all of the original elements. But there was

Is there any more friendship in showbiz as wholesome as Ian McKellen's and Patrick Stewart? I've been doing a lot of Ian-related research for an upcoming video about his show Vicious, and I just keep coming across really lovely stories about how close these two actors are -- so for this week's bonus

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Chad Anderson, host of the Graymalkin Lane podcast. Chad grew up in a home that was not exactly a happy place to be, for a variety of reasons — among them, the rule that everything always had to look as though everything was fine. His one escape: Co

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Ian Carlos Crawford, who you may know from the podcasts Slayerfest 98 and My Bloody Judy. As a youngster Ian felt something awakened in him by powerful women like Storm and Buffy — but it wasn’t until moving to New York that he discovered it was a f

Returning to The Sewers of Paris this week is voice actor JP Karliak — you heard him as the voice of Morph on X-Men '97, but he’s also been keeping busy with lots of other projects, from advocating for up-and-coming queer voice actors to performing alongside Rhianna in an upcoming Smurfs movie. We l

You may have most recently heard this week’s guest on X-Men 97, where he plays the character morph — but you’ve also heard him as the voice of the Green Goblin, the Joker, Boss Baby, Archie, Wile E. Coyote, and so many more I’ve lost count. I spoke with JP Karliak back in 2020 about his career as a

Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. Have you ever been lucky enough to enjoy the sensation of villainy? For this week’s episode, we’re revisiting my interview from three years ago with Anthony Olivera, who you might also know for his incisive tweeting as Meakoopa. We spoke in 2017 about his lo

How have you discovered your hidden talents? My guest this week is a former shy kid who, after trying to hide from the spotlight for years, was shocked to discover that he’s actually really good at acting, journalism, and go-go dancing. Growing up in a rougher environment, Mike learned the hard ay t

What's the difference between confidence and arrogance? My guest this week is Evan Peterson, author of the memoir The PrEP Diaries. For years, he trained himself to be aggressive, aloof, above it all, as a way to pre-empt criticism. That meant erecting masks and disguises, from gothic costumes to cl

When you need to get away from it all, how far do you go? My guest this week reached his fill of human interaction and so he did what so many of us have done: flew to South America to wander the forest for weeks while befriending a mountain lion. And just a reminder about what's coming up for The Se

Have you ever been lucky enough to enjoy the sensation of villainy? My guest this week is Anthony Olivera, who you might also know for his incisive tweeting as Meakoopa. Anthony's always felt a sympathy for monsters and villains -- or at least, the figures assumed to be monsters and villains -- even