The final panel we attended at WonderCon 2025 was the kick-off of the Superfan Podcast, with the appropriately named We Are All Superfans panel.
You can read our recap below, right after the official synopsis from the WonderCon schedule:
Welcome to the Superfan Podcast, where the people who make the comics you love talk about the things they love . . . that are not comics. Co-hosts Christian Gossett (The Red Star, Eyes of Wakanda), Kristen Simon (senior editor, Mad Cave Studios’ Nakama Press) and David Hyde (Superfan Promotions) are joined by superstar creators Pornsak Pichetshote (writer, The Good Asian) and Marco Finnegan (cartoonist, Calvera, P.I.,Morning Star) for a free-wheeling, candid conversation with a surprise or two.
After the intros of the podcast (which hasn’t launched yet), as well as the guests, we discovered what the panelists would be talking about… Because of the concept of the podcast is the guests talk about things they are fans of. Pitchetshote was there to talk about “one man army films” and Finnegan was talking about (per his book Calavera, P.I.) detective stories.
“I’ve always grown up reading detective fiction,” Finnegan said. He grew up watching The Rockford Files, then got into the Parker books. As for Pitchetshote, he joked that he had an existential crisis because he was worried he was all work. He is working on a one-man army movie, but he loves them and has been watching a ton for research. “You feel very productive going through all these action movies,” Pitchetshote said.
Riffing off of that, he praised the simplicity of the movies, that it’s mostly a guy trying to get a thing and fighting people in the process — and that’s pretty much it. If it’s confusing? “That’s the movie’s fault,” Pitchetshote said.
Diving even further, Pitchetshote explained that there are different time period sections for action movies, and The Transporter is a dividing line for the subgenre. Before The Transporter, the star had to train their entire lives. After? You could have people who were actors first. “How much can you strip the genre down before it’s not the genre?” Pitchetshote asked. He noted that John Wick is the genre stripped down: they kill his dog, he gets revenge. Or in Nobody, he gets emasculated, and it spins out from there.
As for which came first, his love for one-man army movies, or writing one? A little bit of both. He gets obsessed with things he loves, and then writes about them.
Talking more about the current spate of one-man army movies, he loves that you can take a relatively regular guy like Bob Odenkirk or Liam Neeson, and you feel more for them as well as enjoying the action.
Then the convo turned over to Finnegan. “It’s all character stuff,” he said about his love of detective stories. “I don’t remember plots. I remember character moments.” He also loves how detectives all have their own codes in the books — and he’s a big fan of moments where sidekicks step up and become the main characters.
Continuing to talk about his own work, Finnegan explained that setting his books in Los Angeles is very similar to the detective stories he loves: they all have very specific places, down to restaurants, offices, and more. “There’s something about when these characters live in a real place,” he explained that makes them more special and real, themselves. “I learned more about how water comes to Chinatown [from the movie] than in any class I’ve ever taken,” Finnegan said.
Pichetshote then prompted Finnegan to talk more about the journey of detectives, who he called “Ronin” who go on a journey all alone. But really it’s the cities that define them. “That’s why Batman is so interesting, because Gotham City is so interesting,” Finnegan said.
Back to Pichetshote, he was asked about his first one-man army movie, and he couldn’t remember but thought that it must have been a Bruce Lee. He also shouted out Ong Bak as a movie that was distinctly Thai, and that was impactful on him. He also shouted out Upgrade, Kate, and I believe Riders of Justice. On Kate, he explained that the script is “fascinating” because it’s all written in Haiku.
As for Finnegan, he referenced Robert Crais’s Taken (which is different than Liam Neeson’s Taken) which may not be his first, either, but was very impactful.
Pichetshote then shouted out Long Kiss Goodnight, which Finnegan said is “the bridge” between their two topics, as both a noir movie and a one-man army movie.
The topic then talked to collecting. While Pichetshote has to limit himself because otherwise, he would go crazy, Finnegan has ended up with multiple copies of the same book — accidentally — because he’ll borrow them from friends, and then forget to give them back. Pichetshote’s recommendation? When you borrow a book, take a picture of your friend with the book so you know who you lend it to.
On a similar topic, they were asked about what three books they would pack for vacation. Pichetshote said The Invisibles omnibus, while Finnegan has a book that contains fifty years of jazz articles from the New Yorker, which he’s read multiple times.
Then it was time for some Q&A, with a fan asking if they have a favorite Marvel movie. Finnegan asked if Blade counts (it does) while Pichetshote said Avengers: Endgame, though that felt like cheating to him because it’s a “season finale.” But his actual answer was Black Panther, which he felt was the most like a “real movie.”
The next question was about books they wished they hadn’t read. Finnegan said the last Bosch book, he had built it up too much because he thought Bosch was going to die, but Bosch wasn’t even in the book. “That’s on me,” Finnegan said.
Next question from one of the hosts of Comic Book Couples Counseling was about whether Finnegan has been watching Murder She Wrote, and indeed, he has! He started rewatching it, and loves it.
Asked about whether they work to music, Pichetshote doesn’t listen to music while he writes because “I can only do one thing at a time.” Finnegan listens to jazz “constantly” but can’t listen if it has lyrics.
The last question for the panel was about whether you would want to do the thing you’re obsessed with, with Pichetshote saying he always has “a self-serving professional interest” in anything he obsesses on — which is why he’s writing a one-man army movie.
And that was it for the panel! Bye-bye, WonderCon!
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