#142: This is a World With No Right Answers

Hey, it’s the end of the year! I can remember the approach of 2024 and the overwhelming feeling that it was going to be a largely crappy year. And indeed it was! But if anything, 2025 looks poised to kick its ass completely! So while we’re still on this side of the slide back into the Dark Ages, let’s enjoy what time we have left—and that means a lot of talking about comic books and related media!

So to start with this week, George Beliard, who is a bit of a Marvel jack-of-all-trades, shared the piece below last week, as well as the story behind it. It’s seemingly a very nice piece of Bill Sienkiewicz artwork, right? But it’s a very good example of why clear and concise communication with your talent is vital in the world of comics.

The piece was commissioned as the cover to a collection of stories in which Judge Dredd went to Australia. Unfortunately, the e-mail that commissioned it referred to it as Judge Dredd in Oz, without any further explanation. So Bill painted what he thought that might entail. Frankly, it’s such a good piece that I feel like 2000 AD should immediately create a Judge Dredd in Oz storyline so that they can use this cover.

Secondly, since it’s available completely for free online at the moment, I wanted to gift you all my favorite seasonal special, A Muppet Family Christmas. This was a one-off special created a year or two before Jim Henson’s passing that unites the casts of the Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock and which introduces the Muppet Babies, here presented as puppets rather than animation. And it’s great! In my circles, for years we’d refer to it as Crisis on Infinite Muppets because pretty much every active puppet in the Henson closet is pressed into service for it. It’s funny and its warm and it contains some really nice seasonal music—everything that you could possibly want from a Muppet special. And because it was filmed while Jim was still with us, all of the voices are the originals as well. Can’t praise this piece highly enough.

Okay, let’s throw the doors open and see what people were wondering about this past week:

Joseph Ruiz

I think you’ve talked about this before, but how did (or did he) Jonathan Hickman react to the X-titles evolve from Krakoa to From The Ashes? Those first Hickman Krakoa comics were, in my opinion, fantastic, and showed us a different side of the X-Men. I’m curious is all.

I don’t want to speak for Jonathan, Joseph, but my sense of things is that he pretty much didn’t care one way or the other. Jonathan’s been around the block for long enough that he had to know on some level that things weren’t going to stay just the way he had left them indefinitely, and I don’t think he’s especially concerned about the work others are doing—and the work that he did still exists in collected form. That said, if Jonathan says differently, believe him.

Jeff Ryan

In the early 1990s crossovers were labelled with a upper-right "dogear" saying "AN INFINITY CRUSADE CROSSOVER": It was noticeable if you were looking for it, but it didn't take over the cover the way, say, AvX did. When did Marvel transition to having larger, very prominent branding elements?

The branding of crossovers and the like evolved over time away from what we used to call the “Nabisco box” corner, Jeff. Even by the mid-1980s, when the concept of a series-within-a-series was created, those would tend to carry some manner of bannering or tie-in bug on their covers. But especially when the sales of tie-ins were hitting big, it was more important than ever that a prospective reader knew that your book was a part of that big event, because that meant they were more likely to pick it up. And so the trade dresses started to become more all-encompassing. And by the time of CIVIL WAR, they were great for being able to spot all of the related comics even among a wall full of other covers.

Chris Sutcliffe

Considering how quickly misinformation spreads on the internet, what are some of the biggest misconceptions about how Marvel works behind the scenes that you'd love to straighten out?

I don’t know, Chris. It seems like there are plenty of them. But the one that I see the most often that I’m pretty well sick of is the idea that “Marvel” (or the people who work at Marvel) hate whatever character or development the reader is railing against. That’s so obviously not true that even saying it aloud feels foolish, and yet you can’t turn around but for hearing some fan pontificate as to how Marvel hates, I don’t know, Nightcrawler, and that’s why Kurt doesn’t have a series or whatever. It’s clearly not true (for one thing, Marvel is a company, so it doesn’t have any feelings whatsoever), but it makes that reader feel better in the moment, I guess.

David Baroldy

Forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere and I missed it, but is there currently a “regular” artist on Fantastic Four? I remember Carlos Gomez being announced a while back, but he’s since moved over to All-New Venom.

It seems like this FF run has been burning through artists, which may have been expected due to accelerated shipping. Wondering if you can share anything about coordinating it all behind the scenes. Not looking for dirt or anything, just some perspective on whether this process has been more tumultuous than usual.

I don’t know that I feel like it’s been any more tumultuous than any other, David, though having shipped 14 issues a year makes it a bit more challenging than a straight up monthly. But Iban Coello was he regular artist from the first issue through issue #13, so the first year more or less, and then Carlos Gomez came on with #17 and stayed through #25, again, pretty consistent. And sure, there were issues in there illustrated by others, but mostly by Ivan Fiorelli, so even that was largely regulated. In the immediate future we’ve got Cory Smith coming on with #28—and that’ll last until something else happens.

Jordan L

whose idea was it to homage Marvel vs. Capcom for this week’s fantastic Uncanny X-Men cover? Yours? David’s? Someone else in editorial?

That UNCANNY X-MEN #7 cover was all David Marquez’s idea and execution, Jordan.

kek-w

who's reviving them, Tom? I always had a soft spot for some of their titles too.

Here’s a piece about that Atlas Comics revival that should tell you what you want to know, kek-w: link

Ian A

Do you know if there were any concerns (internal, external, legal, or what have you) with Dan Slott reusing the name and title for Bailey Briggs and his book?

No, Ian, none at all. Examining the situation, our guys determined that, just like Super-soldier, which we did earlier, we have a strong enough historic claim to the name Spider-Boy for it to not be a problem. (By that same token, I expect that DC wouldn’t have any difficulty doing Bat-Thing if they really wanted to.)

Thom B

The Exceptional X-Men and X-Factor titles for from the ashes are VERY GOOD. WE demand the creative teams STAY THE SAME.

Who do you think you’re talking to, Thom, Nick Lowe? Nothing ever stays the same in the world of the X for long! But glad to hear that you’re digging them.

Alex Redwing

Back when you first started it, you mentioned in passing that Nicieza had pitched a second team book but been shot down. Do you have any extra info on this? In #47 it seems like the team was ready to split into “Warriors” (founding members plus Rage and Silhouette) and “New Warriors” (every character introduced after), but i assume shortly after this was when the idea got shot down.

I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of that timing or situation, Alex. I was around, but not really working on any of those titles yet. But it’s possible that Fabian will turn up in the comments to share his recollections with us about it. My sense is that the spin-of was intended to happen in the aftermath of #50, and the plug was pulled on it late enough that it was too late to change the multi-part, multi-title storyline that was intended to lead up to that moment. But that’s just an educated guess.

Evan “Cool Guy”

What was the event that Civil War was created to hurriedly replace?

PLANET HULK/WORLD WAR HULK. The set-up for it was only just about to happen, and we discovered in the room that Greg Pak and company were going to need more time to take the Hulk through that storyline on Sakaar before he could come back to challenge the heroes who had accidentally exiled him there, Evan. So it needed to be pushed back accordingly.

Andrew Albrecht

Tom, in your last newsletter you said “Say what you want about the Kamala Khan situation, but it’s a stone-cold fact that far, far more people relate to her as having weirdo hard light powers than embiggening herself.”

This is why I asked where the idea that she is now more relatable comes from.

Well that’s definitely a poor word choice on my part then, Andrew. Let’s substitute “are aware of”, so it’s “far, far more people are aware of her as having weirdo hard light powers than embiggening hands.” Sorry.

Leigh Hunt

So when you say "every cover" needs the approval of an editor and EIC or Exec editor, does that include all the variants? If so, it's a wonder anything else gets done!

Yes, every cover, including every single variant. And yes, that does take up a certain amount of time every day, even somewhat split between myself, Nick Lowe and CB.

Andrew Seal

My apologies if you've already answered a version of this question at some point, but I am wondering if you would please share some recommendations for histories of the comic book industry in the US.

Good timing on your part, Andrew, as the latest volume just came out: as a starting point, I would recommend TwoMorrows’ series The American Comic Book Chronicles, whose multiple volumes chart that history starting in 1940 through the end of the 1990s so far. These are really thorough, really all-encompassing volumes. Beyond that, it all depends on what specific information you’re looking for, really.

Caleb Wong

May I know how Marvel manage to hire writer and artist that come from different country. For example, we know the artist "Leinil Yu" come from Phillipines. I wonder how he manage to get some of his artworks send to Marvel HQ. Did he also do remote as well unless he got to travel all the way to USA if his artwork got pitch forward from the editors.

Well, Caleb, we do it in a number of ways. For one thing, our people do conventions all around the globe: Rickey Purdin was just in Brazil, for example, while CB Cebulski was attending Tokyo Comic Con in Japan. But even outside of meeting people directly, you can always make arrangements to send your samples to the editors at Marvel. We hire all sorts of people whom we haven’t yet met in person. (I did something like 32 issues of MOON KNIGHT with Alessandro Cappuccio before I met him in person, for instance.)

Jackoyeah

Have you heard the Japanese psyche band Bo Ningen? They just released an original score for Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain that is so cool

I’ve got a quick question that I’ve always wondered about - I don’t believe you were involved in Old Man Logan at all from an editing perspective (I may be wrong), but could you offer any insight on what Millar’s idea for a sequel would have been?

I wasn’t aware of Bo Ningen, Jackoyeah, but I’ve since checked out that score, which is pretty cool. As for Old Man Logan, I don’t know what Mark may have had in mind for a sequel (or even whether there was any thought to there being a sequel, really.)

Snark Shark

Atlas Comics! May I recommend the Destructor? Essentially an amalgam of Spider-Man, Daredevil, and Wolverine, it was rather good. Written by Archie Goodwin. Art by Steve Ditko!

I’m certainly familiar with the Destructor, Snark but thanks for the recommendation! For anybody else, though, I wrote about the first issue of that series over here at this link.

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Off The Wall

This one’s not on the wall at all, but instead resides at the moment in a huge art portfolio that I’ve got that’s filled with stuff. It’s a piece that the late Paul Ryan presented to me while on a visit up to the Marvel offices in the very late 1990s or early 2000s. Paul was scouting out more work, and I had used him recently on some AVENGERS and THOR issues, so this was intended as something of a thank you for that. And he showed up with it in hand, so there wasn’t any easy way that I could turn it down, even though it was sort of an uncomfortable thing to receive from an artist who’s looking for an assignment. Paul, though, was a sweetheart of a guy, and so I don’t expect that he meant anything by it apart from wanting to be kind and grateful. Paul wasn’t always well served by his inkers, so this penciled piece is a reflection of his true level of talent.

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Behind the Curtain

I stole this image completely from Elliot R. Brown. So go visit him at his website at this link to make up for it.

.This is the floorplan of the Marvel offices located at 575 Madison Avenue, up between 56th and 57th Streets. Marvel was there throughout the 1970s until the company relocated to 387 Park Avenue South around 1982. Anyway, this handy chart that Elliot created illustrates who was situated where, so it’s a shade like visiting that old place. I’ve never been there myself—by the time I started, Marvel was still at 387 Park.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Hey, it’s a rare non-X week in my office! And yet, we still have a bunch of new comic books for you. So let’s see what they might be!

FANTASTIC FOUR #27 swings the spotlight unexpectedly to Ben and Alicia’s Skrull daughter Nicki, and her uncomfortable life being a shape-changer in a world of static-shaped beings. It also features the malevolent Mole Man, as the above Josh Cassara cover illustrates. It’s another fanciful entry by Ryan North and Steven Cummings. complete in a single issue (but with plot threads that continue forward.)

And events begin to ramp up in NAMOR #5 as the Sub-Mariner attempts to put off World War sea by negotiating a peace between the seven claimants to his discarded undersea throne. Nobody is better at crafting a pulpy adventure story these days than Jason Aaron, and this material is right in his wheelhouse. The artistic pairing of Paul Davidson and Alex Lins provide visual illumination for events both of today and back in the relevant past. Dumb-dumb that I am, we had intended to run quotes from each issue on the covers in the way we had done with Jason’s PUNISHER series. But I completely forgot to do this on the first three issues or so, and by that point it seemed like the ship had sailed on the idea. So my foul-up.

And finally Assistant Editor Martin Biro is wrapping up the BLOOD HUNTERS project that spun out of the conclusion of BLOOD HUNT some months ago. Erica Schultz and Robert Gill and friends combine their forces to bring you the conclusion of the Blood Hunters’ clash with the vampiric Blood Coven.

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A Comic Book On Sale 25 Years Ago Today, December 15, 1999

UNITY 2000 was the last gasp of the original Valiant line of comics. Valiant had grown up almost out of nowhere in the early 1990s under former Marvel editor in chief Jim Shooter to become a viable alternative publisher that competed with Marvel, DC and the newly-formed Image. It built its line around a number of characters licensed from Gold Key, including Magnus, Solar and Turok, adding to that a number of new original characters created by Shooter and his staff. The scarcity of the earliest issues and early experiments with limited variants helped to create a bit of speculation around Valiant. But when the speculator bubble burst in the mid-1990s, Valiant’s sales took the same hit that everyone else had, but was less equipped to survive it. By that point, the company had been sold to Acclaim, who attempted a pricy revitalization program that didn’t even cover its costs (Dan Jurgens told me back in the day that he wound up being paid something like $1.51 on each copy sold, which clearly didn’t leave enough revenue to pay for everything else—Acclaim had built their business model around anticipating much greater sales.) There was an attempt to restart and reboot the line in the latter half of the 1990s under new EIC Fabian Nicieza, but while again there was some nice work done and some fun new properties launched, the marketplace was still pretty shaky and so those books couldn’t get the traction they needed either. By the end of the decade, Valiant was just a shell of the company it had been, and what remained of the editorial staff went all-in on a last ditch series intended to deliberately harken back to the prime days of the company only a few years before. It had been the UNITY crossover that had really put Valiant on the map, so this new series would be called UNITY 2000, and it would feature both the reimagined versions of the Valiant heroes fighting alongside the original incarnations, a bit like an Earth-One/Earth-Two crossover. In an attempt to generate some buzz in the market, Valiant succeeded in luring back Jim Shooter, who’d gone through an acrimonious breakup with the firm years earlier. Shooter worked with artist Jim Starlin, himself no stranger to universe-ending crossover events. What’s more, the plot turned on a prediction made in one of the seminal Valiant stories of the earlier era that indicated that Shadowman was fated to die in 1999. If anything was going to bring lapsed Valiant readers back, this was it. But unfortunately, this wasn’t it. Like with the earlier Acclaim relaunch, consumers simply didn’t show up in great enough numbers, and the UNITY 2000 series petered out halfway to its conclusion, releasing only three of its proposed six issues. Which is sort of a shame, as the Valiant Universe was a nice alternative to the rest of the mainstream. Since that time, it’s been revived and remounted at least twice more, but hasn’t evidenced the staying power needed to eke out a substantial portion of the marketplace. It seems as though there’s still a tiny trickle of Valiant releases coming out, but they don’t appear to be making much of an impact these days.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

MARVEL YEAR IN REVIEW ‘92 was released on December 15, 1992 and represented a break with the so-far short-lived tradition of the publication. Prior to this, the magazine had encompassed a yearly summary of what had happened across the Marvel line over the preceding twelve months. It was popular enough to keep doing, but didn’t seem to have a real purpose or much of a point of view. The one crowd-pleasing element that it incorporated was a series of faux ads using the Marvel heroes that were often quite funny. This became the key to 1992’s attempt to change up the book’s approach. Editorship had passed to Evan Skolnick, then working as part of Bobbie Chase’s office—Bobbie had spearheaded the first couple of years of MYIR, but handed it off to Evan for 1992. Evan didn’t see a lot of point in the magazine the way it had been done, and he had a new inspiration for what he wanted out of it. At this time, SPY Magazine was growing increasingly popular, and Evan liked its sensibility. So that became his guiding star for the new MYIR. It would still recap the events of the year, but with more of an overt satirical edge to it. Whether this was a good idea or not, or a sane approach to a magazine meant to be a broad entry point to the Marvel Universe is a different question—the goal here was definitely to bite the hand that fed you. And being about the snarkiest person that Evan knew, he pulled myself and co-writer Mike Kanterovich in to tackle the cover feature for the issue, about the rise of darker, grittier vigilante heroes. It was one of a number of pieces that we wound up contributing to this issue, including a bit about the Stark employee who won an office pool on which malady was finally going to off Tony Stark (who had died in his series recently) as well as one that I’m still quite fond of in which Ant-Man laments that he’s been around as long as Spider-Man has, so why is he getting shafted on his 30th Anniversary. This was decades before anybody really thought there’d ever be an Ant-Man movie; today, I’m happy to report that he’s doing fine. The talented Chuck Fiala drew this great image of an irate Ant-Man that I wasn’t smart enough (or flush enough) at the time to buy the original of.

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Another Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

I’m really just going to touch on this second issue of THE THING limited series that was released on December 15, 2021, and mainly just to convey what an honor and a pleasure it was to work on it with the legendary author Walter Mosley. Mosley isn’t just one of the greats of crime fiction, he’s also an avowed comic book fan who had fond memories of buying and reading all of the earliest Marvel books when he was a kid back in the 1960s. He’s kept up with things, so he knew his way around the characters. What I was primarily there to do was to help break down his script into images, as he was more used to thinking in terms of either pure prose or else screenplays for film and television. Artist Tom Reilly was a bit of a revelation on this series as well. His compositions were clean and classic, and really beautiful in a Marcos Martin way. Just look at that clever cover. It’s nice that he’s recently been getting a lot of attention for his work on Energon Universe material for Skybound.

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The New Warriors Chronicles

The third NEW WARRIORS book that I finished up was the JUSTICE: FOUR BALANCE limited series, and it’s the one that I had the least to do with. By the time I came in, the first three issues had all been completed and this fourth one was deep into production. So I pretty much simply batted clean-up on it. Not to be mean about it, but the inker on this issue, Frank Turner, didn’t do penciler Craig Brasfield any favors—the final pages are messy and a bit lifeless, with almost everything delineated with a pretty dead line. Don’t know that I would have been willing to make a change there if I’d had more time, but I recognized it as a problem. (What I didn’t recognize is the coloring mistakes on this cover. As you can see, one of Justice’s gloves is colored the reverse of the other. Oops.)

Writer Fabian Nicieza had no shortage of stories that he wanted to do with the Warriors characters, and so having already done a NIGHT THRASHER limited series that then spawned an ongoing title, and having launched a regular NOVA series, doing a limited with Vance Astro was the next move. But unfortunately, this was right when teh bottom was falling out of the marketplace, and the same forces that doomed a second ongoing NEW WARRIORS spin-off series kept most people from checking out this limited series. It sank like a stone without making a ripple. Which is a shame, as it’s actually pretty good work, inking notwithstanding. It was set up as four stand-alone single issues that connected to one another and provided a fuller picture of who Justice was at this point and what kind of a hero he was going to be.

As Fabian explains on this issue’s text page, this last story introduces a pair of character that Fabian had been pitching for years, a series about a young kid who gets super-powers but really isn’t interested in becoming a super hero, and his single father, who very much is. It was pitched as LAZER BOY AND THE SIDEKICK, and then LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON, but Fabian could never drum up enough interest in the idea to make it a go-project. So having transformed Vance Astro from Marvel Boy into Justice along the course of his run, Fabian repurposed the idea here, having Vance pass on his old costume and code-name to the new young potential hero David Bank. Unfortunately, I don’t know that David or his father ever appeared again after this. I suppose we can all presume that David won out over his father’s wishes and grew up as just a regular kid rather than as a super hero. That’s not really a bad ending for him.

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Monofocus

Now that it’s available on Crunchyroll, I watched the 2202 compilation movie SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO 2202 CHRONICLE the other day. I had watched 2202 as it was coming out serially, and thought that it went completely off the rails at a number of points, taking what had been the strongest material in the original SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO series of the 1970s and completely bungling it in an attempt to make it palatable for a modern day audience. And watching the compilation film, that impression really didn’t change. The film also adds a bunch of new additional details, some of which I found to be part of an underlying problem with the revival series, where it feels the need to explain things that nobody is really asking about. So there’s an entire prologue indicating that in the year 2145, on the 200th anniversary of the sinking of the battleship Yamato the fragments of the ship had been excavated and restored as a memorial, before it was promptly sunk to the bottom of the sea again afterwards. That’s a long way to go to explain how the Yamato could be intact in 2199 when we know today that the ship had been broken into three sections when it sank. This production tends to feel compelled to do this kind of thing, which feels very Mark Gruenwaldy to me, and which doesn’t really do anything to improve the storytelling. It’s fixing stuff that nobody cares about—the show is about a flying World War II battleship, it’s preposterous right from the premise, so no amount of gilding the lily is going to turn it into serious hard SF.

I also quickly consumed the short film SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN on YouTube, which can be watched at this link. It’s a time travel romantic comedy with a fun twist, which is what got me to sit through it in the first place, and while it does belabor its twist for a bit too long (leading me to start wondering if it had another twist up its sleeve—it doesn’t) it was fun enough. So give it a look if this sounds interesting.

And finally, I began watching the newly-dropped third season of MISMATCHED on Netflix, which feels just a hair like a show that’s gone beyond its premise a little bit. The cast is still good and the presentation is still fun, but it feels a bit like the production team is having to work to come up with reasons why lead characters Dimple and Rashi can’t be happily together, especially after the manner in which season two wrapped up. (I suspect they thought that the second season was all they were getting, and so now they’re having to scramble a bit.)

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about the lost crossover MAGAZINELAND, USA

And five years ago, I wrote about UNCANNY X-MEN #100

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I’ve got a bunch of holiday travel to attend to, so the next few weeks may be a bit sparse in terms of new Newsletter content. But I promise not to leave you entirely high and dry! And I’ll see you all for certain in the new year! Have a good one!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B