Yo! Welcome into the House of L podcast. I am Lauren Tombs. There's not a more House of L podcast episode than this one.

If you know anything about why the podcast is called House of L or the emblem that pops up when you are scrolling through your podcast, the logo for House of L podcast, it works two different ways.

Sorry, I guess technically three different ways. And two of them are very comic book centric.

So it's only right that I have someone on the podcast that knows comic books better than anybody.

It's not all that we talk about though in the episode. By the way, thanks for listening to the podcast. I appreciate all the support that you give. And especially when we do episodes like this one that I think are some of the more interesting ones that we do. Like obviously we talk to people in media. That's what the whole podcast is about. But I've, I've been expanding the definition of media.

When I get into some of these subjects, if you go back, I had a really incredible conversation about the propaganda of comic books. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way, although I guess you could probably take it that way.

Back during the summer, I had this incredible interview with court Scott, who's a professor.

He's a PhD and his PhD dissertation was all about the propaganda in comic books. And we had this, this really awesome conversation about how comic books have been used.

In the war effort and everything else. That was a more serious conversation. This is a more fun conversation.

My guess this week is one of my favorite people. And, and when I see Terry Gantt, it's hard to miss him with the, with the dreads and it's hard to, hard to miss him because he's in spaces that people are ordinarily at.

I ran up on him as C2E to a couple years ago in the olden times. And I was just so happy to see him there. And he was giving me like the different places that I should go inside of the festival and who the creators were that I should be paying attention to.

And what he was going to do. And I was overwhelmed. Like I, I, I'm overwhelmed by crowds anyway. Like that's become a thing for me over the last, I would say five years.

I've been very uncomfortable in crowds like my anxiety has gone through the roof. So it's a thing now or in the olden times when we could go out and be parts of crowds to get me to go to a crowded place like C2E2 or even games.

Going and sitting at games can be uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. I'm not going to waste your time for this episode. I'm just saying that seeing him as C2E2 a few years ago gave me some real comfort.

He owns a comic book shop and a comic book service third coast comics on Sheridan Road. I'm telling you, if you want to have an experience in buying your comics, if you want to have someone that's going to give you recommendations based on your personality.

Like he's not pushing anything because Marvel or DC or whomever or image, like said, you should be reading us. No, he will read everything and intuitively understand who you are after having a conversation with you and give you an idea of what it is that you should be reading.

I love talking to him. As you can tell by the length of this episode, I love talking to him and really please support his story. I'm telling you, it's right there on Sheridan Road right on Loyola's campus.

Support his store telling that you heard him on the podcast and go in there and be like, all right, Terry, please help me out. Tell me what I should be reading.

So in this episode, he and I talk about comic books and how we saw the world change over the last decade with the Marvel movies and we also try to fix DC and their movies.

But beyond that and where we start in the conversation is in the arena of the black geek or the black nerd, how does one grow up that way?

How do Terry get to this point growing up in South Shore? And was it a struggle for him to be as different as he was? How did he find that equilibrium and self-reliance?

Enjoying the things that he liked instead of feeling compelled to like things that he didn't like because of who he is and where he grew up. All of it is fascinating.

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