#128: Like That, Like This, Oh Yeah!

Hello! It’s September 8th, and in my world, that can only mean one thing:

My mom is 83 years old today

As much as anyone and more than most, my Mom is likely responsible for the course my life has taken. While on the surface she seemed to be just another middle class housewife and mother, she was secretly a fan of science fiction and fantasy. Not to the point where she’s go to conventions or anything like that, but strongly enough that we’d inevitably watch every bad sci-fi television that came on, from THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and BUCK ROGERS and WONDER WOMAN to more obscure fare such as LUCAN the wolf-boy or THE PHOENIX or THE LATHE OF HEAVEN on PBS. And she was the one who was excited about STAR TREK being made into a movie and took all of us kids to see it (and almost got us all killed when she figured out the twist ending partway through and in her excitement blurted it out at the top of her lungs, causing the other patrons in the theater to turn our way angrily.) Like my Dad, she was an avid reader, and at least some of the books she followed were fantasy and science fiction. I can remember her excitement about reading DUNE in the late 1970s when she passed it off to me. So I was still a good deal weirder than she was, with my obsession over comic books, but there was enough common ground between us that allowed her to support my ridiculous pursuits without much complaint. She was never one of those mothers who would throw your comic books away.

And even today, a telephone call is likely to wend its way around to her latest reactions to THE RING OF POWER or OUTLANDER or THE MANDALORIAN, and she spends an inordinate amount of time in between Jazzercise and choir playing the LORD OF THE RINGS MMORPG with friends she’s met from around the world. But having raised four sons, mostly on her own after my father died, I figure that she deserves it.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: more stupid answers to silly questions!

Callie

Have you ever worked on a book where something similar to Smallville's 'No Tights, No Flights' policy was considered? Reading what you said about Exceptional X-Men, I realized it'd feel pretty natural for an X-Men book about Kate trying to avoid being an X-Men again for her to never officially adopt a costume, though obviously we've seen what it will look like when she eventually does.

For instance, I believe the original NYX had no 'superheroes' of any sort, in the sense that it was just about mutants who had nothing to do with the X-Men (Laura Kinney notwithstanding but she wasn't involved with them yet). Do you think a book like that would sell worse, a book about people with powers instead of superheroes with capes and bright colors? I mean, yeah it might sell worse than something like a flagship X-Book, but next to a separate original book/concept?

In general with this question, I'm just interested to know how you think about costumes and their significance in comics

I don’t think that costumes are absolutely necessary, Callie. And I’ve worked on the occasional project over the years where they were absent, though in a lot of those cases, the clothes that the characters wore became something akin to defacto costumes anyway. In a visual medium, you want to give people something interesting to look at, and T-shirts and ball caps don’t quite have the same manner of visual panache on the page.

Gwen

I would also like to ask if we are going to see Jean interacting with Earth teams like X-Men and Avengers, or she will be on her own in space and occasionally interacting with others cosmic heroes?

You’ll see plenty of Phoenix interacting with other heroes while off in the cosmos, Gwen—and eventually, inevitably, connecting with other mutants on Earth. But it’s only been two issues so far, let’s give Jean a chance to get settled in her new role before boomeranging her back into what she had been doing previously.

Alvaro

During your tenure as Avengers editor, did anyone consider retconning Avengers #200?

No, not that I remember, Alvaro. I’m honestly not even sure how you’d go about doing that.

Evan “Cool Guy”

X-Men #3 saw the return of our old friend Vanisher, the teleporter with the wonderfully named alter ego Telford Porter. Now, I always figured that his middle initial was "E" but looking online I can't seem to confirm that fact anywhere! If it hasn't been established, don't you think Tel Porter's middle name should definitely start with E, maybe something like... Evan?

The Vanisher’s real name had to have been something that Mark Gruenwald and his minions made up when they were working on the OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, Evan. That sort of joke name is indicative of Mark’s sense of humor. And if you asked him, I’m sure that he would have agreed that Telford’s middle initial had to be E, though he may or may not have quibbled over Evan.

Sean Stoltey

As the man (with a hat) with the longest tenure as Avengers editor, did you ever feel the need/desire to work on something else? Were there years where it started to feel stale to you? Or is the logistical and creative challenge of shipping new comics every month satisfying enough to never get bored? I ask because it seemed like you'd still be there if the powers that be hadn't asked you to take on the X-office challenege.

Honestly, not really, Sean. Had Dan Buckley not requested that I switch over to heading up X-MEN, I’d have been perfectly happy to have remained at the helm of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as I had been, and as you suggest.

Iioo

Here's an announcement of a Thunderbolts series from 2 years ago. It features a poster with character designs that... are clearly created in HeroMachine. At least the character body models are easily recognizable by anyone who ever played around with it. At it's the one that got first released as silhouettes for fans to guess the characters! Is there a story about how this came to be?

Not really, Iioo. As these are character designs, I don’t really care all that much about how they were made, only that the designs look good and fit the characters and our needs. So you’d really have to ask Sean Izaakse about the hows and whys as he was the one that did those designs.

CG

Will there be any more solo's in the pipeline? Or even just mini/maxi series spotlighting X-characters?

Yes and yes, CG!

Montana Mott

I believe Allan Heinberg once alluded that there was some audience skepticism to Young Avengers initially before its release in 2005 (which informed the framing of the first issue). Do you recall if Young Avengers was anticipated or dreaded by audiences before it came out? Thankfully at the end of the day it was a beautiful success!

Oh yeah, nobody liked the idea of YOUNG AVENGERS before the book came out, most of all me. I thought it was another dopey idea that Joe Quesada had come up with. But once Allan Heinberg was on board to create it, we came up with ways to make it work and to not have it be what everybody was dreading. This is entirely the reason why the first house ad we made up for the series, which ran in AVENGERS #500, was focused upon the idea that “They’re Not What You Think”

Jeff Ryan

You mentioned you wrote a 1990s Punisher story, and that it found print in a Back to School special. How often do editors commission stories without knowing where or how they'll run?

Not all that often, Jeff, though it occasionally happens. In the case of Don Daley at that time, he was producing a lot of PUNISHER specials since the character was hot, and so he always knew that he was going to need a certain amount of material on hand, even if he didn’t know precisely where it was going to run when he commissioned it.

Talmur Dar

Curious when you watch anime do you prefer English dub or sub?

While I have a genuine fondness for the dubs of my youth, Talmur, things like SPEED RACER and GIGANTOR and BATTLE OF THE PLANETS and STAR BLAZERS, I always prefer to watch anime in its original language with English subtitles. (and for years, I’d watch it without subtitles at all, using the smattering of Japanese that I know plus my plotting skills to figure out what was going on, more or less.) And honestly, if it was an option, I’d probably be happy to watch shows such as RICK AND MORTY in Japanese as well.

Arthur

Say I wanted to work at Marvel in an editorial or similar position (working with comics but less of the artistic aspects like writing, drawing, etc.), how would I go about doing so? What kind of qualifications/requirements might I have to meet?

Similarly, how did you get your start at Marvel?

My story isn’t necessarily going to help you much, Arthur. In my case, as an illustration major at the University of Delaware, I got an internship with Marvel in the summer of 1989, and impressed people enough with my performance that I was hired on as an Assistant Editor by December of that year. And that leads to the only practical answer that I can give you here: you need to be able to convince the person doing the hiring that you can do the job as well or better than anybody else that might be applying for it. So the more experience you have with related endeavors—editing of any kind, writing, storytelling—the better a chance that you may have. But there isn’t one secret catch-all that can get you in the door. Because there are far more people who want a spot than there are spots that become open, so the competition is fierce and it relies on luck as much as any other element. But you can stack the odds more in your favor by working in creative fields and building up skills that might be transferrable to an editorial position.

Andrew Albrecht

Out of curiosity/inspired by the questions about young avengers, are you a fan/ever worked on the runaways?

I did a few things such as YOUNG AVENGERS/RUNAWAYS during CIVIL WAR, Andrew, but I never edited the actual series. I liked the book, though I think it has an inherent problem that has never entirely been remedied. And that is that the premise has an end point, and the original creators reached that end point. There’s really no reason for the Runaways to be on the run any longer, apart from the fact that that’s the name of the series. So there’s a bunch of contrivance involved in keeping it going.

Michael Cross

Came across some old trading cards and the Jim Lee X-Men set. Which - don't get me wrong - was beyond awesome and I loved the set from start to finish. I don't know if this is one of the sets you worked on in special projects, but regardless -- why, in the height of his popularity, did Marvel give Jim Lee an assignment that would take what I can only assume were months away from drawing comics to draw the cards and split the profits with Impel?

There were a couple of reasons for this, Michael: 1) Jim didn’t actually miss any issues of X-MEN while he was drawing the card set. It was all work he did in addition to his regular output of pages. And 2) Marvel made a hell of a lot of money and got a lot of mainstream exposure among kids who weren’t already comic book readers buy who might become them with those cards. So it was seen as an acceptable investment.

Martin

As a wolverine fan, other than his solo comic will there be any other can't miss stuff for him?

Definitely, Martin! There’s already WOLVERINE: REVENGE and UNCANNY X-MEN, to say nothing of stories such as WEAPON X-TRACTION. And there’s more to come that we’re not ready to announce just yet.

Alison Cabot

I read Exceptional X-Men #1 and I understand why the magazine is called 'Exceptional' - there is no better word to describe it. Also, I saw the trailer you mentioned and it was pure euphoria. My question is, we know that Bobby will be joining the cast of Exceptional, but will he be a regular character in the series or just a special guest? I'm also curious if all the issues will focus solely on Kitty's perspective, or will they also explore other points of view, like Emma's?

Glad you liked it, Alison. Iceman will become a regular member of the cast—he’s not there for just a guest spot. And as you’ll see, while Kitty’s presence remains strong in every issue, particularly the first three, hers is not the only perspective that we’ll be taking.

Andrew

I really enjoyed the exceptional x-men's first issue, glad to know that iceman is gonna be joining the cast too, now that we know he's in the book, there's something that you think that you can say about him in the book that you couldn't tell before the announcement

Iceman is going to be joining the cast, Andrew. Beyond that, I’d rather have you read the issues to find out what’s going to happen. But glad you liked it, too!

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I Buy Crap

This is the way that I live my life: earlier this week, after watching a video extolling its virtues, I went and ordered the entire 12-volume manga run of WITCH HAT ATELIER, despite never having read a word of it. I’m still waiting for them to arrive, and I hope that they’re as good as this video piece claimed. But we’ll see.

I also saw this Peanuts-themed Tarot Card set in a Facebook ad, and despite the fact that I have no real use for Tarot Cards and no belief in their underlying power to predict future events, I went ahead and ordered a set anyway. I just found a few of the examples, such as the one illustrated above, to be a clever combination of the Peanuts mythos and the Tarot symbology. And I guess that’s all it takes to sway me.

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Behind the Curtain

When Mark Gruenwald passed away in 1996, it was a profoundly sad and unexpected event for those of on staff. Mark had always been the beating heart of the place, the self-styled morale officer, the person most prone to cartoonish hijinks. he was also seemingly in good health, which made his sudden demise even more startling.

.Accordingly, feelings were so strong that Lysa Hawkins had the above image made up and hung in the center of the Bullpen. It was made from a recent Ron Garney CAPTAIN AMERICA cover and a photo of Mark. And it stayed there until Marvel moved offices, at which time I rescued it from being discarded and left behind. Since then, it’s hung in my offices in all of the spaces that followed—this is a shot of it on the wall of our current digs.

Thematically, it’s my own version of the relief of Captain Avatar that resides on the first bridge of Space Battleship Yamato, a reminder of the ship’s first noble Captain and the ideals he stood for. In the same way, pretty much none of the editors of today ever got to meet Mark and are only slightly aware of him as an entity. So in this manner, I do a little bit to keep his memory and his flame alive.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Here we go, another big one, big one, big one!

FANTASTIC FOUR #25 is an oversized issue celebrating our 25th consecutive release. As usual, Ryan North and Carlos Gomez are the creative team, and the story involves the team being transported elsewhere after an unsuccessful attempt to find out what Doctor Doom has been doing in Latveria. It also includes a great and non-traditional love story for Johnny Storm, one that, like other recent issues, stands a better-than-average chance of getting some tears out of some of you. So fortify yourself and dive on in!

It feels like it’s been a long wait, but it’s only been a month since UNCANNY X-MEN #1 introduced our new mutants, collectively referred to as the Outliers. And in #2, on sale this week, you’ll get your first real look at them in action. Plus the introduction of a very creepy new villain, more on what’s going on within Graymalkin Prison and the return of Jubilee! It was crafted by Gail Simone and David Marquez, the team to beat!

And Assistant Editor Martin Biro has the second issue of BLOOD HUNTERS coming out, as crafted by Erica Schultz and Robert Gill. And as the above cover image shows, it also follows up on Miles Morales’ transformation into a card-carrying vampire during the BLOOD HUNT crossover.

Finally, from the Office of Claws (Clawfice, as one reader of this feature dubbed it) headed up by Mark Basso and Drew Baumgartner, we’ve got the first issue of WOLVERINE under our new FROM THE ASHES banner. This one fills in some of the gaps as to where Logan’s been and why he’s been so stand-offish in recent appearances in X-MEN and UNCANNY. And it too hints at an all-new foe for Wolverine that’s going to be a fixture for some time to come. Saladin Ahmed and Martin Coccolo make this one of the best-looking, best-reading titles in the launch. And the best part is, you don’t need to know anything else to hop on board with this first issue.

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A Comic Book On Sale 60 Years Ago Today, September 8, 1964

People tend to think of Jack Kirby as an artist, a creative one no doubt, but an artist nonetheless. But that doesn’t really get to the heart of who he was and what he did, nor does it explain why nobody else, despite their drawing skill or speed, has ever been able to match him. The truth is that Jack Kirby was primarily a storyteller. The story is what he cared about expressing, and his artwork was just the medium through which he was able to communicate it. So when Kirby was working on a title such as FANTASTIC FOUR where he wasn’t the writer of record, he was still doing the lion’s share of the plotting, typically after a brief conversation with Stan Lee, who at that point in the process functioned more as an editor than as a writer. Except on rare occasions, Lee wouldn’t allow Kirby to write the final copy—for whatever reason, and rightly or wrongly, he didn’t think that Kirby’s prose had the right flavor for what he was trying to achieve with the Marvel style. So Kirby would typically add copious border notes to the sides of his pages to tell Lee the specifics of what was going on in the story he was working on, so that Lee could reflect these details in the final copy. And sometimes, Kirby follows those notes precisely, and in other instances, he deviated from them wildly. But this was all more or less frosting atop a story that Kirby had already put together. Jack was also forward-looking when it came to the packaging of comic book material, and he experimented regularly with all sorts of techniques as well as stumping for a better physical package overall—nicer paper, better color reproduction, more like a magazine than a cheap comic book. But he found very few takers who would go along with him. The existing package worked and was profitable, so publishers didn’t really want to dicker around with it all that much. Kirby was also interested in collage as a medium, and over the years he put together several collaged images on his own time as a hobby, transforming photographs sourced from the many magazines that his household subscribed to into works of breathtaking design and beauty. Throughout his Marvel years and beyond, on occasion Jack would attempt to incorporate collages into his pages. The earliest such as attempt, I believe, was in FANTASTIC FOUR #29. But the printing limitations of the time meant that such images had to be printed in black and white rathe than the full color that they were done in, and they inevitably also printed like sludge. Kirby’s collage concept fared better here, on the cover to FANTASTIC FOUR #33, but it wasn’t such a strong success that Marvel attempted to do it again (though there’d later be covers with photographic backgrounds that were similar.) One has to assume that this striking cover didn’t do anything to pop up sales on this issue as opposed to the ones released around it. Still, for 1964, it was a progressive thing to try and attempt. The colorist on this cover, likely Stan Goldberg, made a mistake and colored Attuma’s upraised arm and his three-bladed sword as part of the background, thus taking away just a little bit of the oomph from the image.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

AVENGERS: UNITED THEY STAND #1 was released on September 8, 1999 and was a tie-in to a short-lived AVENGERS cartoon series. The show was run by Eric and Julia Lewald, the husband-and-wife duo who had previously written X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. But much more so than that earlier program, this AVENGERS series was designed from the start as a vehicle to sell toys. Avi Arad, a toy designer who had moved into film and animation work, was a big proponent of using a cartoon to propel sales of merchandise as a way of financing the operation. So rather than being a faithful adaptation of the property, this iteration of the Avengers all had suits of powered armor that they’d don in regular armor-up sequences every episode—the better to give the toys accessories. In addition, the Falcon, who was positioned to be the show’s “black Batman” was given a car. (I successfully talked Avi out of giving him a plane as well, arguing that the Falcon could fly on his own, so what did he need with a plane?) Also, due to not wanting to tie up all of the bigger characters in a single license, Thor, Iron Man and Captain America weren’t a part of the show, though they were intended to make guest appearances throughout the run, assuming the series reached a second season (which it didn’t.) As the AVENGERS editor, I consulted on the show and gave notes on all of the scripts, and I have to say that Eric and Julia were dedicated and passionate and smart about what they were doing. They were simply hampered in this instance by outside directives over which they had no real control. At a certain point, as the show neared its premiere date, Marvel was asked to do a tie-in comic book series. Rather than merely adapting the existing episodes, which I judged would be both dull and also have the problem of making certain that the adaptations didn’t get printed before the episodes aired, I instead chose to make the series entirely original material. Again here, Eric and Julia were very accommodating, treating the comic book as though it were a part of the overall canon of the show. I’m sure that if push came to shove, they’d have violated what we were doing in the book in favor of their needs in animation, but they were very active in wanting the two pieces to work well together. In wanting to make the comic as high-quality as I could, even for those who weren’t watching the show, I turned to Ty Templeton to write it. He was a shade hesitant at first, but after I told him that he should approach it as though it was the legitimate one-and-only Marvel Avengers title, and he’d had a chance to hear from Eric and Julia, he signed on whole hog. On the artist side, my assistant editor Gregg Schigiel (who had been involved in some of the initial designs that were done for the show—Avi kept costs minimal at that point by having them all done in-house by staff people) championed a young artist whose samples he’d seen and whose work he really liked. A guy named Marcos Martin. Marcos’ samples were good, but I was worried about putting a book that was likely to have more eyes on it internally into the hands of an untested newcomer. So I wound up giving the job to Derec Aucoin, a well-established penciler, and thus lost out on being the person who would give Marcos his big break. Mike Wieringo did this first cover, based on a sketch from Schigiel, and we were off to the races. But the market was unforgiving in 1999, and the fact that the show crashed and burned pretty quickly meant that the comic was going to do the same. We wound up producing only 7 issues, but I can stand behind them as being solid, quality stories, despite the need to incorporate the dopey Avengers Armor and some of the designs being awkward as hell. Ty and Derec did exactly what was asked of them and treated this series with the same intensity and seriousness that they would have given the regular AVENGERS book. But their work on it is mostly forgotten today, as these issues have never been reprinted, there being no real market for a comic based on a dead animated show.

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The Deathlok Chronicles

As always, we begin with the thoughts of DEATHLOK writer Gregory Wright:

Gregory Wright

Yeah. Yoda speak. I really like characters to have distinctive voices...but...that was Yoda's and...man I wish we would have made sense of it or changed it or SOMETHING...LOL. I loved writing Siege. That was the problem, because you honed in here an issue I unintentionally created...taking the focus off of Michael Collins. I still don't quite understand why the character never got traction...maybe he was just TOO MUCH? Kevin Kobasic's art just makes me so happy. This was the first time CYBERSPACE looked like I'd imagined it. Plus he was really good at giving us great visual acting with Michael's family. And I was also very happy with Greg Adams’ inking and Sarra's colors...

I think the problem with Siege, in hindsight, is that there wasn’t really all that much to him other than being an uber-violent ex-soldier. He didn’t have a personality so much as an attitude, and in that he was very much like a whole mob of similar characters that were making the scene back then. If we had done more to make Kelly distinctive as an individual and given him a conflict or relationships that were unique to him, I suspect we would have fared better. But as you say, every page that was spent focusing on Siege was one less focused on our actual lead, Michael Collins.

By the time the third installment of Jim Starlin’s INFINITY epic rolled around, everybody could see that the first two series, INFINITY GAUNTLET and INFINITY WAR had been big hits. And so, while relatively few tied into the first, and a couple more tied in with the second, by the time of INFINITY CRUSADE, just about every title in the line did tie-ins. And DEATHLOK was no exception. By this point, our sales were flagging, and so we needed every advantage that we could get. But the tie-in didn’t really help with this issue, as it was also the second part to the story that had begun in #27. The material introducing the Goddess and setting up all of the INFINITY CRUSADE conflict felt awkwardly shoehorned in. Also, in all honesty, while I had liked GAUNTLET, I had thought that WAR felt like a naked cash grab, and I liked CRUSADE even less. In particular, I didn’t love the central concept, that the Goddess was the sum total of all of the goodness in Adam Warlock, and that she’d recruit all of the Marvel characters who had a belief in a higher power, whatever religion that might be, whereas the atheists would be able to resist her and would form the heroic resistance against her well-intentioned-but-individuality-crushing takeover of the universe. Given his feelings about organized religion, it’s no real surprise that Starlin plotted this the way he did, but I didn’t like the way it made characters such as Nightcrawler or Captain America or Daredevil out to be more weak-willed and instinctively subservient because of their faith. But those were the rules of play, and so Deathlok fell squarely into the camp of those characters who would be mesmerized by the Goddess’ spiel and sign on to become crusaders in her cause, whereas the godless Siege was able to resist her. I don’t know that this did anything to make Michael Collins more appealing as a character either. Apart from that, though, there’s not much else to say about this issue. Artist Kevin Kobasic and inker Greg Adams continued to find a groove with one another, and having a stable art team definitely improved the overall look of the series. And the full responsibility for writing was now in Greg’s hands, so he wasn’t having to make accommodations for what his co-writer might be doing, and so he began to get more comfortable in the chair as well. I expect that everybody involved knew that we were living on borrowed time at this point, but we were also all sure that we’d be able to turn things around and make our numbers climb back up into safe territory again. That, though, never happened.

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Monofocus

This week, I cracked into a series that I’d been eyeballing on Netflix, a J-Drama with the awkward title of THE OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS. It’s original title had been OLD ROOKIE when it was broadcast in Japan, but apparently somebody felt that this wasn’t an effective title for the west. But I don’t think their replacement was really any better. The show is a feel-good dramedy, one that reminds me a lot of a favorite K-Drama, EXTRAORDINARY ATTORNEY WOO. Our lead character here is Ryotaro Shinmachi, a soccer player who is forcibly retired when the team he’s playing for is disbanded, and no other team in the league wants to pick up a player that’s as old and past his prime as he is. In order to provide for his family, Ryotaro winds up landing a job at the sports management firm Victory, despite the fact that he has no real experience with living in the workaday world. What he does have is an athlete’s understanding of other athletes, and so his very presence at Victory slowly but steadily begins to shift the company and its assorted workers back towards the ideals that it had initially been founded upon: “Respect for All Athletes, Always.” Despite the fact that its episodes run pretty long ,it’s a very easy show to watch. The lead character is very likable, and the situations aren’t ever so intense that the show creates any negative energy. It’s feel-good television and comfort food, really, where a kind-hearted person can impact on people who have compromised on their principles due to a profit motive suddenly turn around and do the right thing. Plu, sit’s a short run, just 10 episodes in total.

But the series that I’ve been obsessed with this past week I stumbled into while reading a report on Tim Eldred’s excellent website about the famous DAICON III opening animation, a short film that launched the careers of several notable players in the anime field. In the write-up, Eldred mentioned that the making of the short had been dramatized as part of a live action series called BLUE BLAZES, and he provided a link to where the show could be watched. And it’s an incredible thing! Set around 1980, the series is based on a manga by creator Shimamoto Kazuhiko and is loosely autobiographical. It follows the efforts of a young would-be manga-ka Moyuru Honoo to become a successful cartoonist or anime artist. But Honoo is both self-absorbed and overconfident in his own abilities, and he has the misfortune of attending the Osaka University of Arts at the same time as a number of other people who will go on to have a massive influence on the worlds of anime and manga. Those characters appear as themselves rather than under an assumed name as Kazuhiko does. Consequently, the show mixes actual history with fictionalized drama in a really fun way. It’s also set just before the point where I got into anime and manga in a big way myself, so I’m pretty familiar with all of the classic works that it references. it reminds me of nothing so much as my own young anime fan crowd from that same period, several of whom wanted to do comics professionally.

And it has an absolutely baller opening title sequence, one in which the assorted characters are animated mimicking the movements of notable anime clips of the past. It’s so good, in fact, that not only am I going to give you this link where you can watch it, but I’m also going to attempt to embed it right here in this Newsletter. So we’ll see how well this functionality works:

The opening song, “Like This, Like That, Oh Yeah” by the Ulfuls isn’t quite as connected to the show without its lyrics. So here’s what they’re all singing:

Like that, like this, oh yeah!

In the pissing rain

He runs while enduring his troubles.

I am that man.

And there’s no cure for stupidity.

Changing direction again and again

While constantly starting and stopping.

(Yeah, yeah, yeah)

Kept up late by visions of crazy dreams.

But what’s it even matter?

What are you trying to say?

This vicious cycle ain’t so bad, baby!

Like that, like this, oh yeah!

Like that, like this, oh yeah!

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about When Captain America Killed a Million People.

And five years ago, I wrote about Captain America getting discharged from the military.

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All right, that seems like enough to hold you over for the time being. I need to go call my Mom anyway and wish her a Happy Birthday. See everybody back around these parts in a week!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B