Bad at Sports

• Bad at Sports Episode 903: Jake Nickell & Lance Curran of Threadless

  This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller cruise their way into a murder mansion fever dream with Jake Nickell and Lance Curran, two of the minds behind Threadless—the Chicago-based t-shirt empire that helped invent crowdsourced artwear before we’d marketed terms like “creator economy” or “drop ship.” What begins as a nostalgia trip (setting the stage for how the business developed through DIY screenprinting and forum culture) quickly becomes a deep dive into ethics, art careers, AI disruption, licensing chaos, and why having your work sold in Hot Topic definitely still counts as making it. We unpack: The founding of Threadless on a secret art/code forum Shifting from screen printing to digital on-demand Working with artists, bands, and comic book creators Parody vs. IP theft (and WTF the DMCA is) Building safety and anti-hate moderation into a global platform Why Chicago still rules And why Punch Nazis continues to be a top seller Along the way, we also discuss vending machines, Karl Marx, Cheetos, the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference, and what happens when art school turns into a startup. And, importantly, how capitalism can be leveraged using Foucauldian power for artists—rather than for their subjugation. Jake Nickell is the founder of Threadless, and a pioneer in crowdsourced design and artist-first merchandise models. He started Threadless in 2000 while still in art school. Lance Curran is the VIP Accounts Director at Threadless, a longtime champion of artist partnerships, muralist collaborations, and weird comic book projects. He joined the company in 2005 and once described the warehouse as “the Foot Clan layer from Ninja Turtles.” Names Dropped: Jake Nickell Lance Curran Threadless Tony Moore The Walking Dead Hot Topic Hope for the Day The Trevor Project Redbox Columbia College Chicago Four Seasons Total Landscaping Nathan Fielder Disney Warner Bros. Universal Studios Marvel Harvard Business School Case Study on Threadless Silicon Valley Chicago Art Scene

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• Episode 902: David Schilter and Pedro Vieira de Moura

  Recorded live at the Comics Without Borders / Sans Frontières gathering at Rice University, this episode dives deep into international comics publishing, aesthetic risk-taking, and how underground networks drive a truly global comics culture. David Schilter, publisher and editor of Latvia’s acclaimed kuš! comics, joins us alongside Pedro Vieira de Moura, Portuguese critic, writer, and co-founder of the bookstore/gallery Mundo Fantasma. We talk about how a small-format anthology changed Latvian comics forever, why RAW magazine changed Pedro's life, and how comics have always been a place for outsiders to find their people. It’s about pornographic comics, lipstick in mirrors, misnumbered anthologies, institutional resistance, aesthetic weirdness, bookstores as public educators, and why no one in Latvia is publishing Maus.   Guest Links: kuš! comics (David Schilter): https://www.komikss.lv Pedro Vieira de Moura: http://www.laboratori.net Mundo Fantasma (Porto bookstore/gallery): https://www.mundofantasma.pt   Names Dropped: Art Spiegelman – Creator of Maus, influence on RAW magazine: Art Spiegelman on Wikipedia Barbara Shermund – queer comics history: Barbara Shermund Basil Wolverton – Iconic MAD magazine illustrator: Basil Wolverton on Wikipedia Charles Burns – Known for Black Hole and RAW magazine: Charles Burns on Wikipedia Gary Panter – RAW magazine artist, punk comics icon: Gary Panter on Wikipedia Al Jaffee – Fold-in master at MAD Magazine: Al Jaffee on Wikipedia Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli – Daredevil and Batman: Year One: Frank Miller David Mazzucchelli Moebius – Legendary French comics artist: Moebius on Wikipedia Neil Adams, George Pérez, Jim Lee –  Scott McCloud – Author of Understanding Comics: Scott McCloud Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro – Early Portuguese cartoonist and comic pioneer David B. – French cartoonist and co-founder of L’Association: David B. on Wikipedia Adrian Tomine – Acclaimed alternative cartoonist: Adrian Tomine Marjane Satrapi – Creator of Persepolis: Marjane Satrapi Brian Baynes – Publisher of Bubbles Zine: Bubbles Zine

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• Episode 901: Florencia Rodriguez and CAB 6

  In this episode, we sit down with architect, editor, and curator Florencia Rodriguez, Artistic Director of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) 6. We dig into the ideas shaping this year’s edition—titled “Shift: Architecture in Times of Radical Change”—and her approach to curating a biennial that centers transformation, public space, and critical imagination. Rodriguez reflects on her journey from Buenos Aires to Chicago, the founding of PLOT and SOILED, and her evolving relationship to criticism as both practice and provocation. We explore how writing and curating can act as architectural tools, shaping not only discourse but the environments we inhabit. We also soft-launch Bad at Sports’ partnership with CAB 6—an evolving audio collaboration that will track the biennial’s voices, urgencies, and ideas throughout the year. Mentioned in this episode: Chicago Architecture Biennial CAB 6: Shift – Architecture in Times of Radical Change Florencia Rodriguez – SOILED Florencia Rodriguez – PLOT Journal (Spanish/archived)

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• Bad at Sports Episode 900: Robert Pruitt

  Recorded live at Comics Sans Frontières, Houston For our milestone 900th episode, we headed to Houston and sat down with the brilliant Robert Pruitt, live at the Cats Conference: Comics Sans Frontières—a gathering of artists, thinkers, and cultural workers reshaping the future of comics, narrative, and speculative visual worlds. Live at a bar after the second conference day. So, this is never going to make it to the radio. Cuss-y MacCusserson shows up and healthy arguments occur. Pruitt, known for his richly layered drawings and deep engagement with Black cultural production, walks us through the politics of representation, the influence of comics and sci-fi on his work, and the shifting cultural landscape of the Gulf Coast. We talk materials, mythology, the beauty of inconsistency, and what it means to make work that traffics in both critique and care. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what it means to reach 900 episodes of Bad at Sports—and what’s next for us in the ever-evolving, ever-weird world of contemporary art discourse. Nah. Let’s do it later this week at EXPO Chicago. Mentioned in this episode: Robert Pruitt – Artist Website The Drawing Center Comics Sans Frontières Conference The Studio Museum in Harlem Project Row Houses EXPO Chicago 2025 Bad at Sports: The Center of Discourse (link coming soon!)

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• Bad at Sports Episode 899: Jessica Snow & Liga Spunde

  Gremlins, Borders, and Recipes for Resistance This week we’re joined by Jessica Snow and Liga Spunde, two artists navigating the world through comics, street theater, and occasionally letterpress and photoshop. Jessica Snow walks us through her wide-ranging practice—from illustration and letterpress to building massive puppets and organizing street performances to attempting to confronting the entangled realities of border politics, ecological collapse, and resistance. Her work with Kitchen Table Press and collaborative projects like Recipes of Resistance blend protest and performance into shared, tangible experiences that challenge the quiet violence of contemporary life. Meanwhile, Liga Spunde brings us deep into a psychological terrain. Working with a unique computer-generated drawing style, Liga explores the emotional weight of the traumas of contemporary life—from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the various ways we experienced the pandemic to the existential task of making a 6 page comic. Her work resists tidy narratives, instead making room for ambiguity, emotional excess, fragile and detailed humor, and a specific fascination with Gremlins. This episode was recorded as part of Chris Sperandio’s Comics Without Borders (but say it in French) event at Rice University—an international gathering of artists, publishers, and thinkers reframing what comics can do in turbulent times. (More here: Comics Without Borders.) We cover a lot of ground—Latvia’s premier comic publisher, post-crisis psychology, DIY print culture, and why strange books and big puppets might still save us all. This is Bad at Sports at its finest: loose, live, urgent and embedded, and full of strange joy. Links & Projects Mentioned: Jessica Snow: jessicasnowart.com Kitchen Table Press: kitchentablepress.org Recipes of Resistance: recipesofresistance.com Liga Spunde: ligaspunde.com kuš! komikss: https://komikss.lv/ Comics Without Borders @ Rice University: https://cats.rice.edu/comics-sans-frontieres-march-20-24-2025/ Christopher Sperandio: https://pinkojoe.com/

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