The Runs is a podcast in which host
Ryan Alexander-Tanner discusses a run of a comic book series with a different brilliant guest each episode. Guests are often comics creators but also include comedians, academics, bloggers or any other number of fascinating people.
What is a "run," you ask? It's one of those comic book terms that invites endless pedantic debate when a precise definition is attempted. The interpretation may change some between episodes, but, fundamentally, a run is when a consistent creative team (or single creator) produces regular serialized installments of a comic book series. For example, Chris Claremont and John Byrne produced Uncanny X-Men #108-143 together, so those issues are the Claremont/Byrne X-men run.
Guests on this show are invited to pick a run that they'd like to discuss. Sometimes the run is decided through discussion between the guest and the host. One major agreement is that no more than 12 issues will be discussed in an episode, so if a longer run is proposed, most often the beginning of that run is discussed and the guest is invited to come back for a follow-up episode that continues the run.
Click here to listen to the introductory episode of The Runs. This will be the only episode that doesn't feature a guest (it's just the host discussing the show, what inspired it, etc.). The first official episode will be released next week, with new episodes releasing every week after that for at least 12 episodes.
