5 Great audio story podcasts for Comic Book fans of all types

1. Marvel's Wastelanders

Hey, speaking of bleak! What if I told you that Marvel's biggest podcast takes place in a world about 40 years from now where most of the villains won, took claim of different parts of the world, and had the majority of the heroes executed? In addition to that, they completely changed the education system so that kids grow up thinking the villains are the heroes and the heroes were terrible villains that stomped on the freedom of everyone thus creating a lack of public support for any upstart hero? Meet Marvel's Wastelanders.

Marvel's Wastelanders is a brilliant story where each season follows a different hero as they make their way through this terrible dystopia. They all happen at the same time leading to an exciting final season in which the remaining heroes have to work together to stop a common threat.

The first chapter in the story is called Marvel's Wastelanders: Star-Lord. In it, a much older Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon are the only surviving members of the Guardians of the Galaxy after an accident cost the lives of Drax, Gamora, and Groot. It's been decades since Peter Quill visited Earth and, upon arrival, finds out that nothing is as it was. The villains have completely taken over the landscape. All his hero friends are long since dead and gone. And the people of the planet are living out the kinda lives you'd expect from people of a dystopia. The two of them have to work together, with the help of a local bartender and former X-Men, Emma Frost, to stop Doom's control over this particular area of the country. But things may not be as they seem.

The second season, called Marvel's Wastelanders: Hawkeye, follows one of the only surviving Avengers, Hawkeye. It wasn't that he necessarily survived, more that when the Red Skull was killing the Avengers he felt it would be funny to leave the powerless and blinded Hawkeye alive as a joke. Now a performer in a villain-run circus, Hawkeye has a plan to overthrow the ruler of his area, a villain known as Baron Zemo.

The third season, called Marvel's Wasterlanders: Black Widow, is a huge change from the other seasons. A security enforcer who's tasked with keeping an eye on the citizens of a giant apartment complex "big brother" style, is noticing something odd about one of the elderly women in the building. When rumors come in that the thought-to-be-deceased Black Widow might be in the area, her quest to figure out more about this strange woman throws her into a world of mystery. Oh, and Susan Sarandon playing a lead role in this is awesome.

Those are just the first three seasons. From there you get season four, which follows Wolverine (of course), season five which follows, of all people, Dr. Doom, and a final season in which our heroes team up against the big bad, and you have a Marvel-style connected universe that introduces several characters and several worlds only to see them all collide and interact Endgame style. And like all the others listed here, absolutely completely free. Get on it comic fans.