Sandman Act III dropped on Audible this week, I'll be waiting for the MP3 CD release. I kinda hate the audible business model and delivery system; the model is fine for a "lending library" approach to material, it's the systems general inability to make the content as portable as I prefer for material I have actually purchased that non-plusses me.

Per social media, Act III covers the following aspects of the Sandman story:

• The Song of Orpheus (This was the original Sandman Special)
• Fear of Falling (from Vertigo Preview #1)
• The Flowers of Romance (from Vertigo Winter's Edge #1)
• Brief Lives (Sandman #41-#49)
• How They Met Themselves (from Vertigo Winter's Edge #3)
• Worlds' End (Sandman #51-#56)

This is obviously NOT completing the Sandman arc. Including the short stories to "bulk up" this release was a smart move... assuming that an Act IV will eventually complete the series. By my count there are 13 (or 14) issues in The Kindly Ones plus another 6 from The Wake, so another 20-episode release seems obvious. There is plenty of extra material from Overture, Endless Nights (although the Despair story may be very difficult to adapt for audio), Dream Hunters, the Death stories, and even the short pieces in the collections of covers that this adaptation could be stretched for another couple of Acts past IV. Personally I'd like to get Jill Thompson on board for some "Little Endless" adaptations! Kat Dennings is killing it (har har) as Death, I'd appreciate a focused release that only stars her as that character.

EDIT: The physical release is scheduled for 13 Dec 2022. Pre-orders not yet accepted.

I added a reference to Alan Moore's Shadowplay, which was half of his comic Brought to Light. It's basically a spoken word performance by Moore, but it is an adaptation of the comic.

I updated the "Indy" list with some more comic-adjacent works. I had forgotten that Eddie Campbell had adapted two of Alan Moore's spoken-word releases (The Birth Caul, Snakes & Ladders) into comic form; these have been added. There are other spoken word releases by Alan Moore, but I don't know that any other have been adapted into/from comic form.

I also decided to include a reference to Dave McKean's multi-media project that had an orchestral release, Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash. The book part of this was released by Dark Horse Comics.

I've also added a reference to a commercially released collection of Elfquest filksongs, A Wolfrider's Reflections. I've never had a taste for filk, but it seems unfair to allow any prejudice on my part to exclude it. I can't deny the creative outlet that filk provided for many comic fans over the years. The songbook is available at the Elfquest website.

I knew it was coming, yet I still missed the release of Batman: The Audio Adventures Season 2. The 10-episode series dropped on 07 October 2022. As far as I know it is only available for streaming on HBOmax.

EDIT: My review is here.

I added something old and something new to the "Indy" section:

There was a 1993 cassette production of The Maxx, designed to be read along with the first three issues of the comic. It is available on youtube.

Harrow County is being adapted by GraphicAudio, starting 2022... now available for library borrowing in time for Halloween!

Pre-orders for the physical copies of Sandman Act III (MP3 CDs) became available, and I placed my order. The current price is $29.99, with the "lowest price" guarantee before ship-date... there is always a possibility that it will drop by a few dollars, but I have enjoyed this production enough that I think it is well worth it, it should come out to about just over $1/hour of entertainment.

Sandman Act III arrived tonight, about an hour after the rain started... for what has been promised to be a bomb cyclone delivering solid coating of ice followed by several inches of snow! This physical media was supposed to release on 13 December 2023, but it had been pushed back, and back again. I had given up hope it would arrive before Christmas.

It will be a while before I complete a listen to the 11.5 hours, so my cost isn't as low as $1/hour but it should still be worth it. There are 19 "issues" covered, although 3 of them are from short stories and not full issues of the Sandman comic. Those 3 are significantly shorter in duration than the others, and serve as "one-shots" between the Sandman Special (Song of Orpheus), Brief Lives, and Worlds' End. With the 'filler' episodes, the series has been paced such that one fourth act of 19 stories would close out the "classic" run.

I want to believe that an Act IV will get the green light, and that there is some serious consideration being given an adaptation of Endless Nights... although the Fifteen Portraits of Despair story would probably need to be reworked for audio. I could take or leave an adaptation of Overture; it has some bits I rather like but it tries to be too clever for its own good, YMMV. Dream Hunters is certainly adaptable, and I can imagine enjoying this story more more in an audio form than I did in the prose.

With the assumption that Dirk Maggs would want to keep releases around 20 episodes, I'd put the most likely plans for a "fifth act" would be Endless Nights, and the two Death mini-series. Kat Dennings would be "starring" in this hypothetical production, and James McAvoy would have a guest role. Who can say what the powers-that-be at WB-Discovery/DC are even thinking at this point.

I haven't updated the lists yet, but I wanted to make note of some things on Spotify. Marvel's Wastelanders has concluded. Harley Quinn and the Joker: Sound Mind has dropped. The Batman Audio Adventures Seasons 1 and 2 are available... but the audio levels for the last one are crap, especially with the advertisement tacked onto the front.

I really dislike the Spotify delivery system, but I appreciate that these are out there to be had without a subscription.

Just a short note (while power is out): Harley Quinn and The Joker Sound Mind is awesome. It is also a relatively short series, perhaps just under two hours in total length. The acting and sound composition are both amazing, and the writing is TIGHT.


The series uses adult language, in very natural ways so it isn't for listening with the younguns.



I have an odd argument I want to make in recommendation for any doubters, but really it is simply worth jumping into. This is simply that good of a story.

Here is a 2022 entry that slipped past me: ElfQuest - Journey to Sorrow's End. This is also known as Elfquest The Audio Movie, at least when it was 2021 KickStarter Project. The KickStarter had a $50K goal which was exceeded many times over. The project appears to have been run rather well, and the audio dropped pretty much on schedule.

The production (full cast!) sounds great. Wendy and Richard Pini have long been among the most fan-friendly creators imaginable... they've even made almost the entire run of ElfQuest available at no cost. I enjoyed the early collections of ElfQuest, and then I simply lost interest in the mid 1980s. I only mention this because I'm nothing like "true fanatic" and I certainly have nothing bad to say about the epic.

The project was released publicly via Realm, but I did locate an actual RSS feed for downloads... I really dislike the streaming model, and I have no love for Realm's interface. Audio levels are perfect on the downloads. There are 10 episodes, plus a bonus. The episode lengths are uneven, the shortest is ~15 minutes, typical length is ~25 minutes (some are longer).

Technical sidebar: The Realm publishing will put (at least) two rounds of adverts into the show, including in the middle. This is VERY jarring. I did get a kick out of Tinder being advertised in one episode, given the some of the content! The insertion of adverts does 'kinda break' one aspect of the MP3 format. Weirdly, two of the downloads didn't have the issue. To avoid any compatibility issues I did a simple reprocessing of each download with ffmpeg and then edited out the adverts. I also found the beginning and ending credits to be somewhat jarring with the rest of the content (they sound as if they were tacked on), so I removed them from episodes to make the listening experience more like the promised "audio movie".

In the Indy list, I also added reference to the ElfQuest Filksong album: A Wolfrider's Reflections. Most of the tracks from the album are available via youtube or other sources. Filk is not my jam (for convention-goers of a certain era, we may have lived through a time when filk was more popular than cosplay), but I appreciate the dedication to it.

I have some more updates to make, in particular GraphicAudio has produced many more adapted stories. However, there is some big news:

Stitcher is closing shop on 29 Aug 2023.

I have absolutely no idea where any of the hosted content will land (*1), so let this serve as a warning to listen/download/whatever any of the dramas/podcasts currently hosted there. I don't know what will happen with the post-stitcher SiriusXM content. From my list:

Marvels website rss
Wolverine (2 seasons) website rss
Squirrel Girl radio Show website rss
Wastelanders (6 seasons) website rss rss

I put a couple of the old RSS feeds for Wastelanders because it seems like every time a series started a new feed was created (or used). Use search-fu to find all six. I no longer have the original Star-Lord feed. Typically the last entry in any season's feed is a link to the next season's feed.

I apologize if any of the rss feeds no longer work, I'm simply posting the ones that I have in my feed back when the feeds were 'live'.

(*1) Some (all?) of the material I listed above is currently available on Spotify, but I wouldn't trust SiriusXM to keep those on another service when they are explicitly trying to get more folks into their premium subscription service. RSS feeds are IMO the easiest to use, as they are designed for downloading of the content (as opposed to stream-only content that mat-or-may-not include DRM).

Generally: Adapted-from-comics content doesn't stay available forever anyway, as new licensing deals get inked.

I updated the Indy section with:

• GraphicAudio's Hellboy and Black Ghost projects
• A fan production of Bubblegum Crisis
• Seeing Ear Theatre's Tales from the Crypt

The last was part of SciFi.com's dive into fully-produced audio efforts on the early 2000s. Seeing Ear Theatre had a number of excellent productions, many of these have started cropping up in multiple places... Tales from the Crypt is the only property with a direct comic connection.

Here is an rss feed for a drama based on (parts of) the life of Jack Kirby called King Kirby. Audio levels are annoyingly uneven in the first "episode", and with the inserted adverts. It was produced/released in 2021.

Here is something I stumbled across on the (HBO)Max app: The Flash: Escape The Midnight Circus. This was a dramatic podcast released in conjunction with the 2023 Flash film, and is included on some of the physical releases.

The podcast is available in both English and Spanish language versions. (links are to the RSS feeds) No subscriptions are required for either version.

Added reference to Spotify's 2023 series Riddler: Secrets in the Dark.


GraphicAudio now has 13 different Vampire Hunter D releases.