#146: I'll Get Up Again As Many Times As It Takes

Well, if this week has proven anything, it’s that Spider-Man fans don’t have much of a sense of humor, some of them. In response to one of Gail Simone’s Questions of the Day, this one about which couple in comics gets busy the most often, I facetiously posted “MJ and Paul”, a reference to Mary Jane’s current boyfriend, the very existence of whom drives certain Spidey fans into a frenzy. And they weren’t shy about telling me about it! I heard that I am talentless and a stain on comics and that I should be fired if not outright killed, and that I support abusive relationships and all manner of perversions. This in response to a dopey joke about two fictional characters, three words in total. It’s nice to know that social media is progressively getting worse.

Hey, so let’s talk about some financials for a minute. Fans often like to try to do their own math on how profitable or not a particular series is, typically in connection with trying to convince the companies to either do a project or continue a project, or change a project the way they’d like. Which is a bit of a sucker’s bet, given that the companies have all of the accurate information and know down to the penny how much money a given project is making or not. But it makes the fans feel informed and authoritative, so that’s always nice.

So this got me thinking. I can’t really share any internal sales data with you, as that’s all proprietary information. But as a bit of an analogy, I can talk about the financials of this feature. So let’s do that for a moment. And let me preface things by saying right up front that I’m not at all thinking about changing things and charging people. The stated thesis of this operation continues to be Always Free. Occasionally Interesting. But that hasn’t prevented a number of people from pledging various dollar amounts that they’d be willing to pay for continued access to this space. So let’s look at that.

At the moment, this page has just under 6,800 regular subscribers. Depending on the week, the analytics tell me that it’s getting something like 8200 reads each week. Those are first week reads, columns that are up here for years can accrue an additional steady trickle of reads, though that rarely ever enters double digits on a given week past the week of release.

Okay, so a number of people have pledged to take on a yearly subscription at Substack’s base level, which amounts to $8.00 a month. I haven’t looked into the specifics of how much of that pledge money Substack would take off the top, but just for the sake of calculation ease, let’s say that they’ll keep three bucks out of every eight. That means that I would earn $5.00 per month from every subscriber.

On the average, the return rate for turning free subscriptions into paid subscriptions is around 1%. So that means that I’d be able to maybe have 68 monthly subscribers. Heck, let’s be aggressive and say that enough of you love me enough that I could pull in 100 of you to pony up every month. So I’d be making $500.00 a month, or around $6000.00 a year. Not a bad amount (and if anybody wants to give that much cash over to the Hero Initiative to continue their good works, by all means!)

Now, out of that six grand, I’d need to underwrite the costs of production. That means paying for the domain, which I do every two years or so. I don’t remember the exact cost, but we’ll say $100.00 for the sake of argument. It also means paying for my contributors’ time and services. As I’m the sole proprietor, that really means me. And clearly, I’m not raking it in. I’d be making around $5900 a year minus whatever other upkeep might be needed. That includes maintenance and replacement of my computer, scanning equipment, internet access fees (probably the largest regular expense), miscellaneous expenses like the chair that I’m sitting in, the electric bill, and so forth.

Point being: I’d need a heck of a lot more of you before this could become a going financial concern. But as a side-hustle, $5900 a year is a nice little chunk of change. Of course, that assumes that I could maintain an equilibrium, that I can be bringing in as many new subscribers as there are people who drop off because my nonsense isn’t worth their continued eight dollar support. And that’s a whole new metric to worry about. Eventually, I’d begin to focus on that, adjusting my content to chase those dollars and losing the spirit of the entire endeavor.

When Phil Silvers said, “You’ll never get rich”, he wasn’t kidding.

Anyway, on a related note, my extremely talented brother Mighty Joe Castro has just started up his own Newsletter, devoted to his performances as a musician and his works as an artist. And so, if you’d like to check it out and maybe sign up for it, you can do so at this link. It will inevitably be better than mine, and maybe you’ll feel like sliding him eight bucks a month. I’m sure he and his family would welcome that $5900 a year.

And now it’s time for some questions! I saw a pretty strong bounce-back this week after a couple of lackluster responses during the holidays. Not sure how much of that was due to the fact that I was obviously stopgapping or that the readership has more time to focus on this feature now that we’re away from the holidays. Anyway, let’s go!

Mark Coale

Talk about the Ultraverse made me think of a marketing gimmick about which it might interesting to hear your thoughts: the issue of James Robinson' s Firearm that came with a video tape. I don't remember all the details off the top of my head, but I wonder how you would handle the idea of packaging (literally and figuratively) a filmed story along side the corresponding comic. Happy new year.

These days, Mark, the technology is such that you wouldn’t need to include the actual video tape as they did back then—an awkward proposition to be sure. Rather, you could simply include a QR Code that led readers to a page in which the video content was embedded. We all know how much comic book readers love QR Codes. (If I could just combine a QR Code with MJ and Paul, I’m sure that I could destroy the world! Ha! Ha! Ha!)

Alvaro

When Ben Reilly was brought back in Clone Conspiracy, what was your reaction to that decision? Do you think it was the right call to take away the spotlight from Kaine and give it back to Ben instead?

I can’t really say too much about how it all ultimately worked out, but I thought at the idea of bringing Ben Reilly back and crafting him into a dark mirror image of Spider-Man, an antagonist, made an awful lot of sense, Alvaro. As Nick Lowe has said on a couple of occasions, especially given the success of Miles Morales and Spider-Gwen, there really isn’t a whole lot of room on stage for yet another middle-of-the-road spider character, especially not one with all of the history baggage that Ben brings with him. But as an enemy who believes that Peter Parker stole his life and whom readers at one point followed as a lead character, there’s a lot of strong emotional grist to play with. And Kaine continues to be Kaine, which is fine. I don’t really think that his transition into becoming the Scarlet Spider himself worked all that well.

Brandon Giles

You mentioned in your story about an attempt to retcon the Hulk origin that you regretted letting Peter David basically laugh at it on the page, and yet as much as I loved MARVEL 1000 and 1001, there are several stories in those that were either partially or wholly about old writers disparaging the work of new ones (the Hercules sequence in 1000 that was particularly unkind to INCREDIBLE HERC and the Squirrel Girl sequence in 1001 come to mind). Do you have any particular memories of sequences like those?

Mark Waid

One follow-up about the Valerie Vector question up above: I doubt the fan asking it actually read NO SURRENDER and was probably working off second-hand information about the character given that the entire point of Valerie was to be a mislead, a fake retcon that wasn't true. So it wasn't at all "the same exact thing" as the Avengers retcon in the end.

Voyager was a fake, Mark? Aw, say it ain’t so! But you’re absolutely right, one of the genuine differences between Voyager and Avenger X was that we went into Valerie’s creation knowing that all of the history was just a subterfuge, part of an overarching villain plan, so the two characters were even more different from one another.

Andrew Albrecht

Man I was looking forward to free comic book day but now I have to read a book with Paul in it? Unless he’s dying, that’s gonna be a negative

You get what you pay for, Andrew!

Sean

Apologies if this isn’t the appropriate venue, but I’d like your thoughts on a situation regarding the recent publication of DC’s Style Guide.

I’ve always been a design nerd and process junkie, and back in 2015, I supported a publishing group that crowdfunded high-quality books on niche design topics. After backing their first two campaigns, I noticed they were soliciting suggestions for future projects, and as an admirer of their work, reached out to say I had an idea I thought was perfect for them. They responded promptly, asking me to email them with more details.

Specifically, I suggested creating a book based on Jose Luis Garcia-López’s 1982 DC Comics Style Guide — explaining that it was a legendary piece of design history that has been highly sought after but never officially published.

In my email, I provided a detailed overview of the project, links to relevant resources, and notes on why this was such a significant cultural artifact. I explained how much Mr. Garcia-López’s work meant to me and how I hoped publishing the book would give him more of the recognition he deserves.

After sending the email, I never heard back, and assumed they’d decided it wasn’t a fit for their portfolio.

Fast forward nearly a decade, and I see an article about how DC Comics was finally publishing the tome. Excited, I immediately went to pre-order it — only to discover it wasn’t being published by DC themselves, but by the same group I had originally contacted.

While I’m thrilled to see the Style Guide finally brought back to life — and fully understand that “Someone should publish the DC Comics Style Guide!” is hardly an original idea — the fact that this specific company, with no prior comics-related experience or passion, spent the subsequent years taking meetings, securing licensing agreements, gathering assets, etc., all without circling back to the person who put the project on their radar in the first place, was obviously disappointing.

Although they’ve done fantastic work publishing style guides and graphic collateral for organizations like the NYC MTA and NASA, their entry into the comic book world was directly linked to the idea I presented to them. Without that email, I genuinely don’t believe this project would have happened — at least not through them. When I reached out to them this summer, I learned that as of June 2024, they had still not met or spoken with Mr. Garcia-López, either.

Green and naive as I was at the time, I didn’t realize I should formalize a finder’s fee arrangement or request acknowledgment, as I’ve since learned is standard in my licensing work. The explanation they gave me was that they had moved and lost my email address, and now that I had followed up, they offered me a free book, along with including my name somewhere inside it. While I appreciate the gesture and am waiting to see if/how it materializes, their handling of the situation still seems disingenuous.

Am I wrong for thinking this? Is it just how things work in the industry?

So you responded to a call for suggestions with a suggestion, Sean—and you’re upset that somebody there followed up on it and took it seriously? I think you maybe didn’t understand the rules of engagement when you put forward your suggestion, but everything here seems absolutely above board to me. I think this is how things work in any industry—they asked for ideas, you gave them an idea at will, and they made it happen. That’s the transaction. So, sorry to say, I don’t think that they owe you anything apart from maybe a Special Thanks. But even that wasn’t a condition of submitting an idea at the start.

Phil

I am curious as to how Storm will continue to be written as part of the Avengers team and other X-Men comics now that the book's writer has confirmed on twitter/X that Storm "will be the most powerful being in the universe". I can see how that works for her solo book, but will this not ruin the dynamics for her team book in Avengers and other possible team-book appearances?

You’re essentially asking about spoilers here. Phil, so all I can tell you is to keep reading the books—that’s where any such answers will appear.

David Goldfarb

This may be a silly question, but what is "ANAD" in "ANAD character"?

Not silly at all, David. ANAD is short for All-New, All-Different, which was the monicker of the revived X-MEN series for a couple of years.

Jeff Ryan

Weekly Q is a hypothetical: what if a reprint issue (say Fantastic Four #1) accidentally ships with its original cover art, and thus a ten-cent cover price?

If such a thing happened, Jeff, we’d probably ask retailers to pull copies and return them and then replace the print run. And they’d want to do that, too, since they would have paid the full listed price already to order those books.

Carlos

In fact, I think Nick Lowe would make for a great EIC someday! (After Cebulski, of course.)

Clearly the bar on any sort of job qualifications has been lowered a great deal these past couple of years, Carlos.

Ben Morse

Do you feel there is a cohesive through line from Marv’s initial run on Rich Rider to Fabian’s New Warriors and then on into Annihilation and the DnA era? If not, do you have a preferred incarnation? Personally I feel his journey holds together across creative eras and I’ve enjoyed them all.

I don’t know about cohesive necessarily, Ben—Fabian’s Nova, especially early on when he was positioned as a bit more of a “bro” is a little bit tough to reconcile with the generic good kid that Marv Wolfman wrote, and neither of them are quite the often-world-weary space cop of the past couple of years. But that said, I think that steady evolution of the character across the years has worked fine, so I’m not saying that Fabian or anybody else got it wrong. They made decisions based on what they thought would work best at the point where they were writing Rich.

Ian A

A new class of Stormbreakers should be inaugurated this year, if I'm not mistaken. What does the selection process entail? Do you, as an editor, submit names for consideration? Do artists have to sign up to participate or campaign to be nominated? Is there a juried art show to narrow down the finalists?

Most of the heavy lifting on the Stormbreakers program is undertaken by our Talent group, in particular Rickey Purdin, who usually assembles an additional slate of candidates, Ian. Then that list is bounced around among our senior staff, and we hone in on a balance of creators that most everybody can agree upon. So yes, I might put somebody forward as a suggestion, but that might not even happen at the start of the process. And on the other hand, I could voice a concern or an objection to somebody else’s pick, and either convince people or not.

Steve McSheffrey

Just a question I've wondered about for years and it has to do with Avengers 200. We know how the story got reworked and tweaked because of similarities to something else that had been published earlier but I don't think we've ever heard why Ms Marvel had to be written out so completely from Avengers and if Caro Strickland hadn't happened, Marvel in general. Have you ever heard any explanation for why Ms M was targeted for deletion?

In that era, Steve, it was pretty well standard operating procedure to try to wrap up the stories of cancelled features. This is why Skull the Slayer’s tale ended in a MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE story, It the Living Colossus was destroyed in an issue of INCREDIBLE HULK, and Omega the Unknown’s whole convoluted background was revealed in some pretty lousy DEFENDERS issues. So I expect the thinking was along these lines. At the time, Ms Marvel’s solo series had been cancelled, and it looks like the AVENGERS team was ready to rotate her out of the series. So bringing her story to some manner of conclusion was seen as a service due her fans.

Branden

what about a revisitation of The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix instead?

I wouldn’t rule it out, Brandon. But I think I’d be more likely to do a Scott and Jean project set in the here-and-now than to follow up on the concept of sending them into the future to become Slym and Redd.

Tashmon Dimps

You probably get this all the time, but what does it take break in as a Writer or Artist at Marvel

(or any kind of comic publisher) these days? Are there entry level jobs at these big companies anymore? I know everyone is mostly a freelancer, but are there still assistant-type jobs to theoretically climb up the ladder from?

You don’t really climb a ladder from being an Assistant Editor to becoming a writer or an artist, Tashmon, not these days. At both major companies, staff members mostly aren’t allowed to do freelance work as they could back in the 1970s and 1980s. So the way you get a break in the major leagues is by honing your talents in the farm leagues first, and then doing something that catches the eye of an editor who might be in the position to hire some new talent. That’s probably easier for an artist than a writer, since you can look at sample art pages and know instantly whether the person is ready or now, whereas it takes time to read a sample of someone’s writing.

Warren V Wind

I wonder if you are aware of any of the Doctor Who Big Finish audio plays?

If you are, what is your take on their legitimacy? Do you characterize them in the same light as Doctor Who comics? Are they canon or not?

I know I enjoy them immensely, especially as the original actors voices are used & the stories are as good as the original Doctor Who TV series stories.

I am aware of them, Warren, and I’ve listened to a smattering of them over the years. And they fit an interesting niche (though they were likely more crucial during the wilderness years when the show wasn’t in production.) So they can definitely be fun. But no, I don’t consider them “real” DOCTOR WHO any more than I do the comics. Nothing wrong with that if they’re good and people enjoy them, though.

Glenn Simpson

I remember learning a bit about how variant covers are set up back when Greg Rucka was complaining about the Frank Cho variant covers on Wonder Woman, but wanted to check and see if I've got it right - so the book's main editor selects the "A" cover, but the Marketing department handles all of the others? Even the free-to-order ones?

I can’t really speak for how DC does it, Glenn, other to say that Greg’s example from there wouldn’t necessarily apply in the same manner over at Marvel. In most cases, the main editor will execute the main cover and may do a certain number of variants as well. Additionally, our Talent team will also execute a number of our variants, Including Emily Newcomen and Hernan Guarderas. And sometimes, a particular editor will do an entire program of covers, such as those New Champions covers a while ago, even though most of them ran on books not edited by that editor. In other words, there isn’t just one simple way this all gets done.

Bella Sutherland

I would like to ask, with all due respect, why Phoenix does not get any of the push that Storm and Scarlet Witch get?

And I would tell you, with all due respect, Bella, that from my perspective, PHOENIX gets every bit as much a push as STORM and SCARLET WITCH. I’m always happy to take more promo, but I can’t say that I see any staggering deficit around what we’ve done to get the word out on PHOENIX, not as compared to the other two books you listed. If you’re talking more about the efforts that fans have taken up online, well, that really isn’t up to me. Get to it!

Isaac Kelley

I've been reading old issues of the original 80's G.I. Joe comics, and several of these early issues that I have are second printings, released maybe 4 years after the originals. And I've noticed that several issues in a row have had the same month's house ads. I was just curious if you knew anything about how these issues came to be reprinted and how they were released. Did Marvel do other reprints of popular series years after the fact (not counting repackaged stuff like "Classic X-Men"?) Would several issues of these books hit the racks or the newsstand all at once? I'm glad these books exist because I don't want to pay for first printings, but I find the context in which they would have been made a little puzzling.

I seem to recall that a bunch of the early issues of G.I.JOE were reprinted for 3-Bags to be distributed in department stores and toy stores when the property hit big, Isaac. So I’m guessing that’s where those come from.

Cian McDarby

Since the beginning of time (the earlyish 60s), there have been two big comic book companies. The Big 2. Two companies with their own massive universe. Do you think it’ll ever become a Big 3? Will a new company come swinging with a superhero universe that changed the game like Marvel did or has that era most likely passed? There have been many attempts, including Atlas Malibu and the Ultraverse, Valiant, Valiant and Valiant but none of them have succeeded in coming close to standing equal to the Big 2. Is there any potential these days for a Third big Marvel/DC style comic book company to emerge?

I’ve always wanted there to be one, Cian—or even two or three. But at this point, I don’t think it’s likely to happen, not in the way that you mean. There’s definitely been a move away from the sort of “large shared universe” structure that defines a Marvel or a DC over the past 25 years, where even those that tried to emulate that model at first, such as IMAGE, eventually shifted away from it. I think we’re more likely to see more of a push to more limited sorts of publishing efforts, like the Energon Universe at SKYBOUND or the Massiveverse books at IMAGE.

Jackie Laura Dragotta

Are there any plans to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Dark Phoenix saga and Phoenix’s first appearance this year ?

Yes there are, Jackie. But not ready to talk about those yet.

Firebat

I was giving Phoenix #5 a second read earlier today and I was still pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of the redesigned cosmic abstracts that we got in Jonathan Hickman's G.O.D.S. It got me wondering though, (without giving away any specifics or details) if we can expect to see the Phoenix book tackle big story beats/lines involving the cosmic abstracts or cosmic beings of a similar nature down the line at some point?

To a certain degree we will, Firebat. But actually, you’re more likely to see that sort of material in short order in STORM.

Mperer

Is there no free Marvel calendar this year? I asked my local shop and they didn’t have it and when I called around no one else did either.

Yeah, sorry, Mperer, we didn’t do a calendar this year (or a “calender”, which we mislabeled it on two different years. Oops.) Could be we figure that this coming year is going to be lousy enough that nobody will need to be reminded of what it is.

Chris Sutcliffe

Obviously editors own certain characters and another editor can't use, say, Cyclops without your say so. But I'm curious if this applies to the adjectives too. Could Nick Lowe run an Exceptional Spider-Man without your permission, or you run an Amazing X-Men series without his?

Well, not quite, Chris. Marvel Comics owns all of the characters, and the individual editors are the momentary custodians of their adventures. But nobody gets to control an adjective, apart from Marvel. So, sure, I could do an AMAZING X-MEN series if I wanted to, presuming that I could convince the Powers-That-Be that using that name was a good idea. And sometimes, when a particular project is especially successful, there’s a desire to use that same adjective in other places—just look at all of the SUPERIOR and IMMORTAL projects we’ve had the past couple of years.

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Off The Wall

This is one of the very first bits of original artwork that I ever got. It was gifted to me by Paul Mounts, who had helped us out on the DEATHLOK Bookshelf Limited Series at a few points where regular color artist Gregory Wright was too jammed up on stuff. This is two pages of original blueline coloring matted and mounted as a gift for me by Paul. Blueline isn’t really used much at all today, but back in the days when our printing was a lot more primitive, it was a way to achieve a more fully-rendered realistic color palate on a project. Each page was photographed onto a piece of sturdy watercolor board and then also made into a transparent black line overlay. The artist would then fully paint the color layer with watercolors and airbrush and really anything that would create a color. The eventual combined pages were then shot for publication. This meant that you had to have all of your copy-editing absolutely completed ahead of time before the coloring was done, as you wouldn’t be able to change anything past that point. And yes, I did typeset those Deathlok computer captions myself.

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I Buy Crap

Having gone down a deep rabbit hole in exploring the Japanese music group Ulfuls, I bought a copy of their twin CD from 2014, “One Mind”, recently, and it’s a great pair of disks. The first is a (new in 2014) album, and the second a Best Of compilation of ten of their most popular tracks. And it’s great—I bought a new drive just so that I could play it (and rip the tracks) while sitting here writing.

And this, of course, gives me the opportunity to share another link with you, this one to their video for the song “Ee-Nen”, which translates more or less to “It’s Okay”. And so that you can get full enjoyment out of it, here are the translated lyrics:

No matter what I say, it's fine.

It's okay even if I don't do anything.

It's okay if you just laugh it off

It's okay to do what you like.

It's okay just to feel it

As long as it feels good, fine.

That's okay. That's okay.

It's okay even if you regret it.

It's okay if I start again

It's okay even if I fail.

If I do it again, okay.

If you look forward, yes.

It's okay if you cut your chest off.

That's okay. That's okay.

I don't like you

It's okay if I love you

It would be great if we could have the same dream

Such a wonderful couple, right?

Don't worry, it's okay

If you look at me, yes.

That's fine.

That's all

I don't have any ideas.

It doesn't matter if there isn't anything else.

Just bluffing is fine.

Even if you stretch your back, it doesn't matter.

Even if I get angry, that's okay.

As long as it ends well, fine.

That's okay. That's okay.

Tight and stiff

fall and roll around

My heart is pounding sometimes

If you like yourself like that, then yes.

If you like days like that, yes.

Even if it's pathetic, it's fine.

It's okay if you shout it out

There are bitter tears too.

It's spilled all over, isn't it?

It's okay if you take a little rest

It's okay if you just laugh out loud.

That's okay. That's okay.

It's okay even if there's nothing

Yes, if you believe it.

Even if it doesn't make sense, it's okay

It's okay if you feel something

I don't need anything else

I don't need anything else

That's fine.

That's all

Yeah...

I promise, by brother’s Newsletter is better than this.

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Behind the Curtain

It’s time for some Bad Photosop Theater! Despite the fact that I possess only rudimentary and pitiful skills with Photoshop, I use it quite often in the cause of mocking my fellow editors and co-workers. Because the idea here isn’t the execution so much as the joke, so if it looks good enough, then it’s good enough. So here are a couple of examples.

As I recall, I did this piece around the time of AVENGERS VS X-MEN, showcasing then-EIC Axel Alonso as Nick Fury and then-X-Editor Nick Lowe as Coulson.

This old Jack Kirby romance story splash page got easily turned into a piece about Talent Manager Rickey Purdin and his girlfriend.

Nick Lowe has his own annoying running joke, in which he insists on referring to Thursday as Thorsday during our weekly scheduling meetings. And he always sings the phrase Spider-Verse no matter what context he’s using it in. So at some point, I mocked up this sleeve for his hit single for him.

And what goes around, comes around. Here’s a piece that Nick Lowe whipped up after a strange trip to Japan where CB Cebulski and myself were shanghaied into a shopping trip for “trendier clothes” for an upcoming event. This is Nick’s image of the result.

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Pimp My Wednesday

It’s been seven days, so we’re now restocked with a bevy of new goodies to satisfy your craving for drama and adventure!

EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #5 brings our first movement in the series to a close, with twin spotlights on the aggressive and activist Melee as well as the recent murderous past of sensei Kitty Pryde as Shadowkat. It’s delivered by Eve L. Ewing and Carmen Carnero as usual—this is the fifth straight issue in a row that Carmen has illustrated, for those who are keeping track. Fans like it when a creative team is consistent, but they often forget to compliment them for such consistency.

And STORM #4 sets up some ONE WORLD UNDER DOOM stuff as well as bringing a still-powerless Ororo Munroe into the orbit of Sorcerer Supreme Victor Von Doom. But this may not be as much of a mismatch as it seems on the surface. Murewa Ayodele writes and Lucas Werneck illustrates. (That’s four in a row so far for Lucas.)

And from Assistant Editor Martin Biro comes the third of five WHAT IF stories revealing what would have happened had Galactus selected other characters to serve as his herald. This one centers on Moon Knight and is delivered by Alex Segura, Scot Eaton and friends.

And we’ve also got a series that’s been maligned by a small but focal section of the fan base from the moment we announced it, as editor Darren Shan releases the first issue of the throwback limited series ROGUE: THE SAVAGE LAND by Tim Seeley and Zulema Lavina. Amazingly, I’m pretty certain that the sky isn’t going to fall in as a result, but some enjoyment may be had for the open-minded, just saying.

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Two Comic Books On Sale 30 Years Ago Today, January 12, 1995

Both issues of CAPTAIN JOHNER & THE ALIENS were released at the same time 30 years ago today. And no, I don’t know why Valiant chose to do it this way either.

These were reprint editions collecting the first batch of installments from the long-running serial strip that ran in the back pages of MAGNUS: ROBOT FIGHTER in the 1960s, with artwork by the great Russ Manning. The new covers were contributed by Paul Smith, who definitely channeled his inner Manning for them. This was a great little forgotten strip concerning mankind’s first contact with alien life forms, and it was intelligently written and immaculately drawn. Valiant reprinted some nice stuff from their past (and a couple of more dodgy things as well), but this series must have been a favorite of somebody’s at the company, as the characters weren’t being used then and haven’t been since, so I’m not sure who this was intended for apart from Russ Manning fanatics. But I sure ate it up with a spoon. It was a great little surprise that week, and is well worth seeking out.

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A Comic Book On Sale 25 Years Ago Today, January 12, 2000

This one’s a very well-remembered issue and served as one of the inspirations for MARVEL COMICS #1000, a comic I discussed at length recently. Inspired in turn by the “22 Short stories About Springfield” episode of THE SIMPSONS, this issue of SUPERMAN ADVENTURES written by future superstar Mark Millar told 22 single-page stories about the Man of Steel and the other characters in his orbit. So it was a pretty clever, well-executed conceit, especially given that the events of several of the stories link up to form a larger narrative concerning Superman’s day, both as Clark Kent and in his guise as the Man of Tomorrow. The issue spotlighted contributions from a series of guest-artists, including Ty Templeton, Darwyn Cooke, Philip Bond and others, all of whom worked in the stylized Bruce Timm idiom, which was fairly interesting to see. This is definitely the kind of memorable one-off that I’m constantly trying to come up with and execute.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

SPIDER-MAN/HUMAN TORCH #1 was released on January 12, 2005 and came about as part of a push to generate more Fantastic Four-related content in the run-up to the first Fox movie, something that I was only too happy to do. Unless I’m mistaken, it represents the first time that writer Dan Slott ever wrote a full comic book in which Spider-Man was a headliner, though he’d done assorted other stories involving the web-slinger up to this point in places as diverse as REN & STIMPY and VENOM. At the time, Dan was just starting to get noticed for his straight super hero material on projects such as SHE-HULK and ARKHAM ASYLEM: LIVING HELL, so this was another step towards him becoming a regular Marvel writer. The conceit of the project was that each issue would be set in a different period of Spidey and the FF’s history, and so allow us to both do a series of effectively one-off adventures while also studying the evolving relationship between the two heroes over the course of their publishing lifetime. Covers were contributed by Paul Smith, and the interior artwork was produced by Ty Templeton, with whom Slott had earlier worked on DC’s BATMAN ADVENTURES series. The stories were all built as complete each issue, but with the running thread of the relationship between the Torch and the Web-Head to create a sum-of-its-parts situation by the end. These books veered a little bit more towards the comedic than much of what Dan would do later, both because that’s where his preferences were at the time (his SHE-HULK and GLA projects had the same sort of tone to them) and also because he’d done years of comedy and licensed property work before anybody would let him write genuine super hero stories. Anyway, the most memorable conflict that came up during the course of the series was over the cover to the second issue. The published cover looked like this:

The story involved Kraven the Hunter attacking Spidey and by extension the Torch during Peter Parker’s early college days, in which MJ and Gwen Stacy would often rock out at the Coffee Bean to the latest jams. As depicted by John Romita, this was no joke. Anyway, as was the custom of the time, Paul Smith did up I think four small sketches for what the cover image could be based on my description of the story. And among them, he included one as a joke. It featured a full size shot of Kraven dancing with a gorilla while the other characters similarly frugged in the background. It was a very funny image, but humor turned to horror when I showed the sketches to EIC Joe Quesada for approval. For whatever reason, he was completely enamored of that joke sketch, and insisted that it would sell us a ton of copies. He may have been right, but we didn’t want to put a joke cover on the book. It took me a couple of days to eventual convince him to relent and let me do the more straightforward cover above, though I don’t think he was all that happy about it. I’m not sure whether the unused sketch made it into the eventual collected editions of this project, but I hope that it did.

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The New Warriors Chronicles

The next month brought NEW WARRIORS #54, the first issue that I really had anything to do with beginning to end and the first issue of the series not to be written by Fabian Nicieza—not that you could easily have told that just by looking at it. The story here was really designed to maintain the flavor of what Fabian had been doing, though incoming writer Evan Skolnick and I certainly didn’t execute it as well as Fabian might have. But the set-up drew from the established playbook for the series. Having become aware of an international humanitarian crisis that nobody is doing much about, the Warriors decide to get involved, a decision that puts them at odds with a mysterious new team of quasi-military superhumans. We also brought in Cardinal, a grey area anti-hero from earlier in the run, though we jobbed him out a bit in order to make the new bad guys look formidable. It isn’t the best issue of the series ever, but it runs the bases perfectly well. still, there were pings and knocks coming from the engine.

Some of those were coming from artist Richard Case. Richard has his own feelings about what the series should be about, and he and Evan didn’t see eye-to-eye right from the start. This put Case in a bad position, in that both the editor who had hired him and the earlier writer who had made him a partner were now gone only a few issues into his run. So he had to feel like he’d been left out to dry. Unfortunately, the fact that he clearly wasn’t enjoying himself was reflected in his pages. Admittedly, Evan was asking for a lot in a couple of these sequences—for one thing, our new villain group was made up of something like a dozen brand new characters, each of which acted as a pair, such as CUT and DRY. That’s a lot to ask an artist to design on the fly, and Case wound up favoring his favorite one or two designs over everybody else. So a double-spread that was meant to be a big introductory shot of the newcomers turned into a huge shot of Cut with a couple of other tiny figures way in the background. The image had impact, but it didn’t do what those pages were there to do, which was to establish all of these guys visually. Any panel that called for multiple characters inevitably came back with one large character in the foreground and then a lot of super-tiny figures in the back (kind of like this cover, come to think of it, where that approach at least works.). The book was being produced in the Marvel style, which is to say that final dialogue was done after the pages were drawn. So Evan and then I needed to find ways to bridge the storytelling gap when things like this cropped up. I can remember Evan in particular growing very frustrated by the situation, since we only got one chance to make a first impression of the replacement creative team. Clearly something was going to have to give here at some point.

A word about the cover, which looks to my eye today as being a bit over-produced. The launch of the Image titles a few years earlier had set off a bit of a Cold War over coloring, in particular SPAWN which looked far and away better and more sophisticated in its launch year than anything else on the stands. It would still be years before Marvel would start using colorist-created computer separations on the line in general, preferring to stick the the cheaper hand separations that had been used since the birth of the medium. The one place where there was a bit of rhythm was on covers. So that’s where I tried to use it. Working on Trading Cards, Bob Budianksy had found a young artist named Jung Choi in his local area and we’d brought him in to do some graphics and coloring on different Trading Card sets. Having the connection in place, I had him start coloring the NEW WARRIORS covers with this one being the first. It isn’t bad, but that shadow is too dense, especially as printed, and it wound up obscuring a large portion of the cover art. And that weird marbling tone in the triangle behind the logo doesn’t do anything but call attention to itself, the last place you’d want a reader’s eye going. I also hate that billboard-sized signature box today, and I’d scrub that right out of a cover that was handed in to me like this today. It’s fine to sign the work, but the point of the cover is to sell the comic, not the artist.

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Monofocus

I got to watch the new Aardman stop-motion film WALLACE AND GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL once it came to Netflix at the top of the year. I’d first encountered the characters and the studio twenty-five or so years ago in a documentary on PBS, and was a huge fan of their early efforts, including THE WRONG TROUSERS, which this film is a direct sequel to. And…it was all right. The animation and design work is on point as it always is, but the story felt over-long to me, and also like it was trying to trade on previous victories more than innovating on its own. I’ve been a bit underwhelmed with all of the WALLACE AND GROMIT material for the last decade or so, and this fits in among it. It’s very much like my feelings about Pixar, whose name used to be a sure sign of absolute quality but who slowly but steadily turned into just a reliable shop over time.

The big creative winner for me this week, though, is LIGHT SHOP, a Korean drama that’s available on both Disney+ and Hulu, and which I watched pretty much on a whim. And it was fantastic on every level, though there are a couple of caveats going in. The first is that nobody quite does unsettling horror as adroitly as Korea, and this show is designed to make you feel disquieted. And in fact, the first couple of episodes are much more about atmosphere than anything else. You’d be hard-pressed to relate what the plot of the series even is by the end of the first episode. But the events are just so compelling that I was driven to keep watching anyway, and I’m glad that I did. Because throughout the episodes, a story pattern began to emerge—and then, in the show’s fifth episode, they turned absolutely everything upside down as they began to turn over their cards as to what is actually going on and what it’s all about. The whole thing is profoundly affecting. Not wanting to spoil anything for anybody who may choose to sample it, all I can tell you is that it concerns a strange alley at the end of which is a Light Shop, a store that sells lamps and light bulbs and all manner of methods of illumination. And this store stays open all night, for anybody who might show up there in need—which often happens. The dark glasses-wearing proprietor seems to know more about the strange goings on in the area than he immediately discloses, and throughout the early episodes, we’re introduced to a bevy of characters and storylines that all intersect with one another in strange ways. The opening hook concerns a man who takes the last bus home from work every night. As he arrives at his stop, he notices a strange woman sitting on the bus bench with a roll-away suitcase seemingly waiting for a bus. But there aren’t any more busses. The next night, the woman is there again, seemingly unmoved. The third night, it’s raining like crazy, and yet the woman is still sitting there, heedless. And so the man begins to speak to her and offer her his umbrella. Bad idea—but I’ll let you see where things go from there. The show is available both with subtitles and dubbed. I haven’t tried the dub since I’m very much a purist when it comes to this stuff, but you do what’s best for you. Here’s the inevitable trailer.

I also discovered that AFTERWAR: GUNDAM X is now available for free on Tubi. It’s one of the mid-90s alternate timeline GUNDAM series, this one taking place fifteen years after a brutal war between space colonies and Earth has all but destroyed the ecosystem and left only a handful of the planet’s population alive. I watched it and enjoyed in real time back in 1996, even though it’s a bit of a flawed production. The plotting is a bit choppy—you can see the writing team begin to shift directions wildly at a certain point as they try to reset what isn’t working. And the ending was compromised when the order was scaled back from 50 episodes to 39 midway through production. Still, it’s got an absolutely great soundtrack and a pair of terrific opening title songs as well. You can find the first episode at this link, after which you’re on your own.

I also caught the debut episode of SAKAMOTO DAYS, based on the manga running in SHONEN JUMP. I’ve been following its story from the beginning, so I was completely primed for this adaptation, and so far it’s pretty good (though it’s difficult to tell for certain from one outing.) The story is all about Taro Sakamoto, who was once the greatest hit man in the world, whose skills were legendary. Five years ago, though, he quit the business to get married and raise a daughter. Today, he and his family run a small convenience store, and he’s let himself completely go—he’s enormous. But when his old employers find him and attempt to bump him of for daring to walk away without permission, he’s reluctantly pulled back into the orbit of the world of professional assassination. The title sequence is lovely, and you can see it at this link

And I’m definitely primed for the anime adaptation of MY HERO ACADEMIA: VIGILANTES, the concluded spin-off of the ultra-popular MY HERO ACADEMIA. It’s set years earlier, though it features some of the same characters, and it’s about a group of unlicensed heroes who still strive to use their Quirks to save lives and protect people. The manga was quite good, so I have high hopes for the series. Here’s the promotional trailer, right at this link.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I revealed Why The 1983 AVENGERS/JUSTICE LEAGUE Crossover Didn't Happen

Five years ago, I reposted this piece about how a page of Jack Kirby artwork turned up just after I had reconstructed the story.

And ten years ago, I wrote about this amazing great LOIS LANE cover.

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And that’ll see us out this week! Stay safe, stay healthy, especially if you’re on the West coast in the middle of all of those fires, and don’t be too proud to ask for help if you need it. We’ll meet back here in seven!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B