#133: Emma is Everywhere!

So this coming week is my 30th wedding anniversary. While I came from a stable home where only death separated my mother and father, for the lonest time I expected to fill out my allotted years alone. (I also assumed that I was going to live a much shorter life than I have, given that my father died when he was 41.) I was definitely wired differently than pretty much all of the people around me, and it was years before I found anybody that I was romantically compatible with. And to be honest, my wife and I sort of backed into the relationship in a long distance fashion. We spent years writing to one another before we ever met in person, and after that initial meeting, it was another half a decade or so before we saw one another again. But somehow, this all works, and it’s really to the credit of my wife, Jes. She’s the whole reason that I can do what I do, and has always borne the more heavy lifting in our partnership. I would guess that she’s had to make far more accommodations for me that I’ve had to make for her. And I haven’t the slightest idea why she likes me. But she does, and that’s been enough to carry us together through three decades (plus another year or two of dating. I used to routinely get off work on a Friday night and then drive for six hours to spend the weekend with her, driving back to New York Sunday evening in time for work the next morning. )

But now it’s time to get down to business. And that starts with reader mail. So here’s what you guys have been asking about this week:

Michael Simpson

In NYX, we see that the Stepford Cuckoos have been able to almost perfectly wield telekinesis. I wonder is it in the cards to see Emma use these same powers as well, since they are genetically the same kinda?

I must have gotten half-a-dozen different wrinkles on this same question about Emma Frost this week, indicating that the White Queen fandom is out in force. But as I said last week, Michael, I’m not really looking to continuously push every mutant’s powers ad infinitum. I don’t know that I’d even agree with the assertion that the Cuckoos can wield telekinesis necessarily. But I understand that a certain percentage of the fandom is always going to be hyper-invested in their particular favorite character being the most powerful and the most amazing and the best. And I’m not against that per se. I just happen to think that all of the characters need to be pretty amazing.

Jeff Ryan

Regarding the Deathlok inventory story, were there any woefully out-of-date inventory stories you chose-slash-had to run? And if so, what did have to do to update it?

No, Jeff, not in my instance. I did inherit a NEW WARRIORS fill-in story that never saw print anywhere to this day, but by and large, whenever I got titles, either they didn’t have inventory in the drawer or else the inventory stories were good and usable and we eventually used them. Now, if you’re talking about Marvel in general, then yes—especially when we’d occasionally lose the rights to some property or other. This is how an issue of TARZAN was repurposed as an issue of STAR WARS, an issue of JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS became two issues of BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA, and an issue of GODZILLA became a one-off issue of MARVEL SPOTLIGHT featuring Dragon Lord. And I showed a few pages a number of weeks back of a NOVA inventory story that became an issue of IRON MAN—though that one wasn’t as much of a challenge, I don’t think.

Levi

Were there ever any plans for a Tom Taylor written “Bendis New Avengers” roster book? I ask because he wrote that team first in the Hunt for Wolverine: Adamantium Agenda miniseries and then again in a War of the Realms one shot. It felt to me like he was building up to something and that never coming to fruition feels like a real missed opportunity. Love that roster and would love to see it again some day.

Afraid not, Levi, no plans for that at all. I think that Tom must have simply been reading during that Bendis NEW AVENGERS period and liked that cast.

Gwen

you mentioned a few weeks ago that Jean will be involved in the next cosmic event that will happen next year. I wonder if that will be a big event like Judgement Day or it will be more contained like Sins Of Sinister?

Afraid that you’re going to have to wait and see, Gwen. But it won’t be nothing.

STILES

Tom, can we expect an official trailer for "RAID ON GRAYMALKIN" when the crossover is close to release? Or even one for Psylocke's new solo series? I have to say, this is turning out to be one of the most fun parts of From The Ashes.

I’ve no idea, Stiles. The editors don’t typically select which projects get trailers made for them. That’s the responsibility of the marketing department. I did see a new trailer just last week that we’ll likely be premiering at New York Comic Con, but it wasn’t for RAID ON GRAYMALKIN, nor was it for PSYLOCKE. But glad that you’ve been enjoying them at any rate.

X of Alex

With Marvel Unlimited's incredible handiness as a reference tool for editors especially, I began to wonder what became of Marvel's old school back issue archives, if there were any.

Does Marvel still store a hardcopy archive of published material akin to the Criterion Closet in this digital age?

We do still have a library of hard copy material, Alex, but it’s far from comprehensive at this point. And really, that’s been the case ever since I started at Marvel, as once those early issues began to command some real money, any copies of them, even in bound volume form, tended to walk out the door. I seem to recall that the earliest volume of FANTASTIC FOUR that we still had in house when I started at Marvel only went back as far as issue #38—which was still pretty good for 1989. Today, it would be a lot more recent.

Clive Reston

Now that the True Believers line appears to have gone the way of all amazing bargains, who is making decisions about what issues get facsimile reprints? (And has there been any consideration of doing facsimile reprints on newsprint? I love the newsprint reprints DC has been doing.)

Just as with the True Believers books, Clive, the decision as to what books we should do as facsimile editions is made by our Sales department, in particular David Gabriel. And the problem with printing those on newsprint is that it would actually make them cost more, as newsprint isn’t used as much these days and is more expensive to procure as a result.

JV

Speaking of the Heroes return era of Thor (Jurgens/JRJR) - I had read that there was a 'bake off' at the time that included writers like Roger Stern, Kurt Busiek and even David Quinn (which would have been wild)!

Any recollection on what those pitches were about?

And do you still do 'bake off' pitches for titles among writers/creative teams?

That isn’t quite correct, JV. While I have done bake-offs in the past, I tend not to like them much on principle. So I’m much more likely to audition each writer one at a time, rather than sending a few of them off to compete with each other head-to-head. In the case of THOR, we did speak to a few people, and we did get a written pitch from Roger Stern. But we’d already decided that it wasn’t going to work when we reached out to Dan Jurgens for his take. David Quinn may have turned in a pitch on his own initiative, I really don’t remember it though. What I can tell you is that the person i really wanted to get to write the book was Matt Wagner, but I wasn’t able to get that to happen. Still haven’t worked with Wagner after all these years apart from on one Marvel poster decades ago.

Alvaro

Have you ever been surprised by how much fans liked/were okay with a pairing or the idea of a pairing? One example that comes to mind to me is how many Spider-Man fans actually found the idea of Peter being paired up with Carol Danvers pretty interesting. Granted, that went nowhere, but I still recall fans were alright with it

I don’t know if surprised is quite the right word, Alvaro. After awhile, you grow used to the idea that there are going to be segments of the readership who are really into all sorts of things—such as Emma Frost being all-powerful! So if we did a story like the ones that paired up Spidey and Carol, it was with the expectation that there would be some type of a reaction to it. Every once in a while something pops from over in left field, but most of the time, it’s a reaction to something we’ve floated out there.

Chris Sutcliffe

I'd love to know more about how editors work with the MCU. I'm not trying to get a scoop, so we'll work with the hypothetical that the MCU right now is planning their first X-Men film.

When do you, as X-Men editor, find out? Script phase? Same time as us? Are there any external drivers (or internal ones) to make sure the film characters are also playing prominent roles in the comics? Do you ever advise, or get early access?

It varies, Chris. But in general we have two or three meetings a year with the Marvel Studios team, during which we lay out what we’re working on and they do the same. I will occasionally get to see early cuts of various projects for coordination purposes, but that’s on an as-relevant basis. Point being, except for the stuff that Kevin Feige and his crew told us when last we met, I don’t have any further insight as to what they may be planning for an X-MEN film.

Paul from ASM

Tom what's your favorite single issue of x-men ever?

Wow, that’s a pretty daunting question, Paul. But thinking about it for two seconds, I guess I’d have to go with a boring, predictable choice, which is UNCANNY X-MEN #137. The entire Dark Phoenix Saga was amazing reading it in real time, and I can recall picking that issue up and reading it on a corner of my family’s couch that afternoon. And it was a mind-blowingly good finale—one that’s only slightly been diminished by all that’s come after it. I wrote about that issue in depth over at my Blog.

Alison Cabot

Tom, is there a reason why Saturnyne and Emma look so similar? Even today, people still confuse the characters, thinking they are the same person.

I think this simply boils down to some artists really only having one model for a statuesque commanding blond woman, Alison. In general, over time the specificity of a lot of character designs tend to erode away as the characters are drawn by multiple artists. Saturnyne and Emma were both originated by different artists, but they were similar enough in bearing and frame that it’s no great shock that they’ve started to resemble one another more over the years.

CG

IDK if you’re able to discuss this but is Captain Britain with your X-Office? Would you be the editor for that character IP or is it assigned to another editor? I feel like Betsy Braddock deserves another shot at a solo title. Is this X-Office having a difficult time knowing what to do with this character?

If you’re talking about Betsy Braddock, CG, then we certainly know what to do with her—which is why she’s in X-FORCE at this very minute. If you’re speaking of either Brian Braddock or Captain Britain as a concept, then I’d say that those both fall under the jurisdiction of the X-Office, yes. That isn’t absolute necessarily, but the likeliest place for a new Captain Britain project to originate would be with my team.

Evan “Cool Guy”

What was it like witnessing the impact of Death of Superman from over at Marvel?

P.S. With the end of Deathlok in sight, I'm hoping you have another series to recall the creation of, it's probably my favorite part of your newsletter!

I just watched an interview with Ryan North where he mentioned that he got assigned his current Fantastic Four run via bake off!

Well, Evan, it was fun to watch, but nothing too surprising to us. You have to remember, in the years leading up to the Death of Superman we had put out SPIDER-MAN #1 and X-FORCE #1 and X-MEN #1, each of which broke sales records established by its predecessors. So we had experienced such a feeding frenzy before. The Death of Superman had the added wrinkle of getting a lot of media pick-up, which was good for comics in general, so that was fine by us. The common thinking at that point was that somebody would go to a shop to buy DOS and come out with that and three Marvel books.

I’m still on the fence about following up the Deathlok Chronicles with something else—though I’m glad you’ve been enjoying it. Ben Morse asked me to do NEW WARRIORS next, which I’ve been considering. The challenge there is that I don’t think there are as many interesting stories to be had during that run—I was at least marginally better at doing this by that point.

And Ryan isn’t 100% correct about that either, though I certainly told him that we were talking to other writers at the same time. But by the time we reached out to Ryan about putting together a pitch, I’d had two other pitches not work out for one reason or another But when Ryan was pitching, he was the only one pitching for FANTASTIC FOUR at that moment. And fortunately, his pitch worked.

Isaac Kelley

I'm curious, what's the rule for legacy numbering with Thor in particular? Do all Thor titles and all Journey Into Mystery titles count? Seems like a particularly weird case.

Well, Isaac, the first rule we follow in assigning Legacy numbers is to not litigate the past. THOR started out as JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, and so its issue #100 and #200 and #300 and #400 include a count of 82 issues that didn’t star the Thunder God. But that choice was made in the early 1970s, so it doesn’t make any sense to try to retrofit it so long after the fact. There were also some weird circumstances where the numbering of THOR was carried over into different iterations of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY over the years. So when we did our calculation, we decided what we thought counted towards the THOR numbering and what didn’t. And there are definitely some fans who don’t agree with the decisions that we made—but that’s what makes horse races.

Daniel C. Parmenter

That Watchmen proof of concept page is completely fascinating. That said, one thing that I've always wondered about is that in issue #1, despite Gibbons' adherence to the basic 9-panel format (with the understanding that sometimes the squares of the grid are merged or further divided) the title page, which is actually page 6, breaks this and has four panels running along the bottom. When the issues were coming out, I no doubt thought to myself "This means something!" but now I wonder if it was just Gibbons still working things out.

That’s a good question, Dan. I have to assume that it was Alan Moore who wrote that page in that manner, though I suppose it could just as easily have been Dave who chose to break that sequence into four panels rather than three so that the storytelling worked to his satisfaction. But yes, they may not have yet decided 100% to stick with the rigid 9-panel grid format at that point.

Jason

What's the correct singular for a member of the X-Men? Mutant would include characters who aren't members of the X-Men and X-Man seems wrong for any character who isn't male.

The singular of X-Men, regardless of gender, is X-Man, Jason. So Storm is an X-Man, Emma Frost is an X-Man, and Phoenix is an X-Man.

Jeanne

Tom, will Emma actually have a significant role in Exceptional X-Men, or will she just be used as an evil antagonist who appears at the end of issues?

Be patient, Jeanne, it’s only been two issues, and she only just got there at the end of issue #2. (In point of fact, Emma wasn’t in the first draft of issue #1, but upon consideration, we thought that fans would lose their minds if we didn’t at least show her in #1—so Eve revised accordingly.)

Tho Mas

How does cyclops powers actually work, are his eyes a portal to another dimension or does he simply absorb ambient energy?

Also can he use the energy on his whole body like his ultimate universe counterpart?

My understanding, Tho Mas, is that Cyclops’ body absorbs ambient solar radiation and processes it into crimson beams of concussive force that channel through his eyes. That “portals to another dimension” explanation was a one-time thing listed in the very first Official Marvel Handbook and discarded thereafter as it was at variance with what had been previously established. And no, I don’t think Cyclops can emit optic blasts from anywhere apart from his eyes—that’s why they’re called optic blasts. (He did once pose as Erik the Red, and somehow channel them down into his gloves so he could zap with his hands. But that really didn’t make a whole lot of sense, so let’s move on. )

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Off The Wall

This is the cover to AVENGERS #4, which was gifted to me by artist George Perez back when we were working on the series together, an extremely nice gesture on his part. It had actually been done of an entirely different purpose—it was meant to be the cover to an issue of MARVEL VISION dedicated to the four HEROES RETURN titles. However, when it came in, VISION editor Tim Tuohy found that he didn’t like it, and that it wouldn’t fulfill the needs of that magazine. I told him that I’d take it off his hands if he didn’t want it and use it on the actual series, which made everybody happy. But this is why you can see MARVEL VISIONS crossed out at the bottom of the board and replaced by AVENGERS #4 in my handwriting. A couple of years ago, an original art collector who was trying to put together a complete set of all of George’s AVENGERS covers offered me $5000.00 for it. But I’ve got a good job, I don’t especially need five grand, and this was a gift from George, so I turned him down. I’d need to be in some pretty serious financial straits to sell it. It’s framed on the wall of my office (which my wife likes to call “The Toy Room” as one wall is taken up by display cases of all of the assorted actin figures and models and toys and stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years.)

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I Buy Crap

So at some point a week or two ago, Matt Fraction sent me a link to this volume on sale at eBay, indicating that while he liked Robert Kanigher, he wasn’t sure he liked Robert Kanigher the asking price of the volume. It turned out, though, that I do, and so I immediately bought the thing. It’s less a book than a pamphlet, about the size of a paperback book. Written in 1943, it’s chick-full of insider tips and tricks about how to write saleable stories for the comics of the day. It also includes a couple full scripts, one for a Fawcett Captain Marvel story and another for an MLJ Steel Sterling story. Pretty much the information in it is dated and not very helpful today, but it is a fascinating relic of a time now gone and gives some insight into what editors might have been looking for in their stories back in the early days of the industry (or at least what Kanigher thought they were looking for. As a gainfully-employed comic book writer, though, he was likely to have a good sense of things.)

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Behind the Curtain

.What we see here is a xerox copy of the pencils to a John Buscema page from SILVER SURFER #1, released in 1968. It’s interesting to see shorn of the slick finish of eventual inker Joe Sinnott. By this point, John had been back in the field for just under two years, and his pencils here are a lot tighter and more complete than he’d typically be called upon to do in the 1970s—when it was his pacing and storytelling that was paramount. Like Jack Kirby before him, John here adds margin notes penciled in the outer borders to let eventual scripter stan Lee know clearly what is meant to be going on. This copy was given to aspiring artist Ken Landgraf by Marie Severin back in the mid-1970s as an example of how to do things right. That’s Marie’s note pointing to the first panel and indicating that this image could have been a splash page. This story is the point where Jack Kirby’s conception of the Silver Surfer was overwritten by Stan Lee, who gave the character an origin of his own devising (without even telling Kirby about it ahead of time.) Kirby’s Surfer had been a creature of pure energy created whole cloth by Galactus, whereas Stan’s version had been a regular (alien) human being who had entered into Galactus’ service in order to save his homeworld. Stan’s version is today paramount, but if you read the Surfer’s first appearances thinking of this interpretation, none of the stories really work.

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Pimp My Wednesday

As usual, there’s more brand-new goodness awaiting you this Wednesday at your local comic book retailer!

This issue of UNCANNY X-MEN, #4, features an especially brutal and unrelenting fight sequence by artist David Marquez and writer Gail Simone. And the Southern gothic flavor of the series is out in full force. Plus, plenty of strong character moments and some additional info on the new Outliers who have joined the X-Men.

And Assistant Editor Martin Biro has overseen the third issue of BLOOD HUNTERS, in which Dagger, Elsa Bloodstone, the White Widow and Hallows’ Eve team up with a now-vampiric Miles Morales to take on the Bloodcoven from the recent BLOOD HUNT series. Erica Schultz writes and Robert Gill illustrates. It’s also got a vampire cat in it.

And over in editor Darren Shan’s corner of the X-Verse comes the first issue of MYSTIQUE, both written and illustrated by Declan Shalvey. It’s straight up a dark espionage series with a very different tone than the rest of the line. Which is the whole point—we really wanted each of the individual titles to stand on separate ground beyond he fact that they star different mutants. We’ll see what people think, but I personally love that this series does something different from everything else.

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A Comic Book On Sale 25 Years Ago Today, October 13, 1999

After having spent a good portion of the preceding decade working elsewhere, popular creator John Byrne returned to Marvel in a big way in 1998. He took over illustrating and co-plotting AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and also helmed his revisionist retelling of the web-slinger’s early years, SPIDER-MAN CHAPTER ONE. But what fans were really salivating to see what John returning to do the X-Men (or the Fantastic Four.) And he did so, in his own way. X-MEN: THE HIDDEN YEARS was built on a simple premise: for the first half of the 1970s, X-MEN had been a reprint title, and the characters themselves were relegated to only showing up occasionally here and there across the Marvel line. But surely they were still having adventures during that period. So what John proposed was a series in which he would tell those missing stories. In this way, he’d only have to deal with the continuity of years ago, a history that he was well familiar with, and he could also channel his great love for the Neal Adams X-Men issues that came out just before the title went reprint. Tom Palmer, Neal’s inker back in the day, even came on board to provide a continuity of style with those older works. Given the enormous popularity of X-MEN at the time, this series seemed like an easy slam dunk. But things didn’t quite turn out that way. Somehow, the magic that had backed John’s pen years before was in scant supply this go-around, and so while the series looked good, the stories felt a bit pedestrian, a bit retro, and certainly locked into a different style of characterization than what was being done with them contemporarily. So it sold solidly enough, but it wasn’t the huge hit that everybody was expecting it to be. In the end, the book ran for 22 issues, and when it was cancelled, John swore that he’d never work for Marvel again—a vow that he’s kept to since that time (though he did produce thirty-something “issues” of his own unauthorized X-MEN comic that he serialized on his website years later.)

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The Deathlok Chronicles

To start off, let’s hand things over to DEATHLOK writer Gregory Wright once again:

Gregory Wright

For the record, I never felt "robbed'. At this specific moment I was severely overworked and trying to bring the conclusion to more than one title that had met its end due to the sales numbers at the time. It was pretty stressful and I found that most of my editors were also stressed about books being cancelled. I thought this was a good fit in and am glad to see it get its place in the run of the title instead of shoved into one of those inventory eater books. It really was sad learning we only had a few issues left, just as we seemed to be getting going in the right direction.

As we started working on DEATHLOK #30, we still had no idea yet that the book was going to be cancelled, although the sales figures were concerning. This was our last-ditch attempt to grab some attention and pull in both new and lapsed readers as well as those who may have had a nostalgic attachment to the 1970s version of the character. To signify this big moment, I went ahead and swapped our regular logo for the one that was used on the Luther Manning series in ASTONISHING TALES. If nothing else, a different logo instantly tells a prospective buyer that something different is going on here.

Unfortunately, in trying to be all things to all people, we wound up overcomplicating our story. See, we didn’t wind up with two Deathloks, but three. Due to the machinations of the villains in this storyline, the present day Luther Manning found himself transformed into a replica of the classic Deathlok. We of course also had our new Deathlok Michael Collins. But beyond that, we also pulled in the genuine Manning Deathlok from his alternate future. In the intervening time, he’d been blown up and rebuilt so that he had an entirely different look, and was being known only as the Demolisher, his old descriptor. In all honesty, we would have been much better off settling on a single Manning Deathlok rather than trying to have it both ways. But we both wanted to tap into the fondness for that earlier version and also to update him so that he might be able to attract a following in the present. I can’t say that this was the mistake that finished us, but it definitely made our story a lot more difficult to follow and didn’t help matters.

I happen to still have a scan of Kevin Kobasic and Greg Adams’ cover artwork to this issue fo DEATHLOK, so I’m including it here as an extra bonus. The logo and cover elements were positioned on a vellum overlay for position—they would be stripped into place behind the art as needed at the printer.

To help try to make this storyline seem like a bigger deal, I’d also gotten permission to reprint the three-issue J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck CAPTAIN AMERICA storyline that wrapped up the Luther Manning Deathlok run in a squarebound album. Zeck provided this all-new cover for it, which was colored by Paul Mounts. On the last page of it, I ran a promotional page touting Manning’s return in DEATHLOK #30 and #31—I recall that EIC Tom DeFalco chastised me for doing so once the book came out and he saw it. He viewed these collections like Trade Paperbacks, feeling that they ought to be evergreen. As this slim volume was never reprinted, I don’t see that it mattered at all.

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Monofocus

On my recent travels, I entertained myself by cracking into WHAT’S NEXT, cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormick’s new book on the making of Aaron Sorkin’s THE WEST WING. The volume is also very centered on the acts of charity and service that the assorted cast members still work towards, so a bevy of worthwhile causes are spotlighted with information as to how readers can get involved or donate. I was a huge fan of THE WEST WING when it was first airing, though I came to the show right at the end of its first season, so this was right in my sweet spot. It made me want to go back and watch a few episodes again, but between my travels and all of the other stuff I’ve been watching, that hasn’t happened yet. But especially right now, when we’re in the midst of another of the most harrowing election cycles in recent memory, the fantasy of government employees who always try to do the right thing and who are committed to service above personal glory is pretty compelling fast food. Almost any Aaron Sorkin-led show is like the super hero version of whatever occupation it’s centered around, which may be why I like them all so much (yes, even STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP.)

Also this past week, Netflix began running the new version of RANMA 1/2, based on manga-ka Rumiko Takahashi’s wild sex-change martial arts romantic comedy series. And it’s a perfectly fine adaptation based solely on the opening episode—but no better than that. The real problem the show has is that there’s already been a really good anime version of RANMA 1/2 produced back in the 1990s—and it’s still available to watch as well, with hundreds of episodes in its run. As an experiment, after watching the new show, i went ahead and put on the first episode of the classic series, which similarly adapted the opening and set up the premise. And while the new show looks more contemporary, the old show has a bit more zip to it. The character designs are better and the comedy beats his better. So I’d give a reserved recommendation to the new show. If you haven’t seen the 90s series, it’s pretty enjoyable. But that said, you can always just go watch the old show instead. And since I run a full-service operation here, here are the opening titles of the new series.

I also checked out the first two episodes of DAN DA DAN, a series that I knew nothing about before diving it, apart from the fact that the manga that it’s based on has proven to be popular. And it’s a strange beast, but not without its charms. It’s about a girl who believes in ghosts and a boy who believes in aliens attempting to convince one another that their point of view is correct. There’s a whole lot more, involving mystic curses and telekinetic powers and stuff, but it’s ultimately a relationship show that shares just a hint of DNA with the X-FILES. As is usual for me, I’ve provided you with a link to the series’ absolutely batshit and hypnotic opening title sequence here.

I also tuned in for the initial two episodes of BLUE BOX, another anime that I was unfamiliar with beforehand. But I’ve been downing a lot of sports-themed anime of late—I’m almost through the 76 episodes of HAJIME NO IPPO: THE FIGHTING at this point—so a romantic comedy about a badminton player who is in love with a basketball star who ends up staying at his home seemed like a safe bet. The second episode was a bit quiet once the premise had been put into place, but it has its charms. We’ll see in a week or two whether I stick with it—though the fact that all three of these series are dropping in weekly serialized form makes it more likely that I will. Might as well make this a trifecta and give you all a link to the opening titles to this show as well.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about the seldom-seen Jerry Siegel and Russell Keaton samples done for Superman.

And five years ago, I wrote about one of my favorite faux-Marvel strips of the 1960s, The Sentinels in THUNDERBOLT #57.

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And that’s going to do us, everybody! New York Comic Con is this week, and while I’m not planning on being there any longer than I have to, it’s not entirely unlikely that I may run into a few of you on the floor. For everybody else, see you back here in seven!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B