This episode’s guest has intrigued me ever since I first encountered him in the pages of the New York Times, one reason being that in an alternate universe, I could have been him. George Gene Gustines has worked at the paper for more than a third of a century, and during that time, he’s written hundreds of articles about comics books and comics-related pop culture events alone.

And the thing is — when I was a teenager attending the State University of New York at Buffalo and worked on the student newspaper, I continually tried to convince my editors to allow me to write about comics in addition to my other assignments. At the time, my plan was to be a journalist, with no inkling of my eventual career in comics. But if I’d continued on my original path, I can imagine I’d now be doing what Gustines does, and hope my editors would allow me cover the things I love for a mainstream audience as often as I could.

Gustines, like me, started out as a fan, and got his first letter published in an issue of The New Teen Titans when he was 16. He’s even gone on to write comics of his own, with an autobiographical graphic novel in the works. We talked about all of this over dinner at one of his favorite spots near the New York Times headquarters.

We discussed the reason what he’s pulled off would have been impossible a generation ago, why he calls himself “the Forrest Gump of the New York Times,” how he determines which potential articles are right for the paper and which are too inside baseball, what moved him to write his first letter to a comics editor (and his secret to getting them published frequently), why he loves superhero team books, the grace of George Perez, what defines a fan, the story he regrets being the first to report, what he does when not writing about comics, who he wishes he could have interviewed before they passed, what it takes to get an idea approved by his editors, when he rather than another writer gets to write comic book obituaries, his upcoming autobiographical graphic novel about how comics changed his life, the voicemail Stan Lee left which matches what you’d imagine “The Man” might say, how he intends to reach his goal of 1,000 bylines, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at Ollie’s Szechuan restaurant in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen (where I did not spot Daredevil) —

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Here’s what you would have seen us nibbling had you been with us at Ollie’s Szechuan restaurant —

Scallion Pancakes

Fried Pork Dumplings

Alas, the sautéed string beans and dried sautéed braised pork belly were inhaled before I remembered to photograph them.

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Coming up two weeks from now on the first episode of 2026, you’ll be able to head out for pizza with Andy Duncan on a rather unusual episode, because we’ll be doing a deep dive into the creation of a single short story — his “Criswell Predicts!,” which recently appeared in the Tanith Lee tribute anthology Storyteller more than a decade after he began. It will a fascinating study in how fiction is formed, and I hope you’ll join us.

Thanks for listening!