#147: No Topic

I don’t really have much of anything that I want to talk about this time out. Certainly, 2025 is proving to be every much as lousy as 2024 was already, and with the Presidential Inauguration about to happen, I’m sure that we’re going to be looking at more chaos to come in the week ahead. More locally, we’re looking at a massive snowfall coupled with polar vortex temperature drops that are going to make the next week hospitable. What’s more, my son, who’s been here for the past month during his college’s winter break, needs to make the five hour drive back up to campus tomorrow, so he’ll be racing the snowfall or caught right up in it. either way, none of this is good for peace of mind.

So, hey, let’s turn our attention to the world of comic books and see if we can’t put all of that catastrophe out of our minds for a little bit. All right?

One note before we get into the Q & A this week: in the responses, a couple of people began to get heated and argue back and forth at one another. So let me make this perfectly clear: anybody is free to express any reasonable position in the comments and nobody ought to be making personal attacks, either against one another or against creators in the field or whatever. This is meant to be a peaceful place. A couple of times this week, I thought I was going to have to step in and shut down the questions thread—things never got that bad, so thanks for that. But please, be on your best behavior when you’re contributing over there. Don’t make this Newsletter more of a pain to police than it’s worth.

Joe West

Marvel Rivals has been doing exceptionally well, and seems to be adapting comic storylines as recent as last year. Did they consult with you and other editors or writers at all during development?

Consult isn’t quite the right word, Joe, but the Marvel games team kept us abreast in broad terms of what they were doing as they developed the game, yes.

Brandon Giles

I think you might have forgotten to answer my question? I only say that because it’s posted in the newsletter but with no answer and no blue line, so it seems like you *were* going to answer it…

Wow, you are absolutely right, Brandon. That was spectacularly stupid of me. So all right, let’s try this again:

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?

I’m not sure that I can agree concerning the content of those pages in MARVEL COMICS #1000 and #1001, Brandon. At least it didn’t seem that way to me. So I don’t have any special memory of those sequences or others like them, no. Not really an answer worth waiting an extra week for, sorry.

Michael Simpson

In Exceptional X-Men #1, I think we saw a glimpse into Emma’s headspace (the messy room, etc). Are we going to get a chance to perhaps get back to that and explore what Emma has been dealing with since the fall of Krakoa?

We’ll definitely be delving deeper into Emma as we go, Michael, though it’s more likely to be about where she is at the moment than where she was in the recent past. I’m concerned that we’re still taking about the Krakoa era maybe a little bit too much as we move ahead.

Carlos

On that note… Nick Lowe for President?

Couldn’t do worse, Carlos.

Dan Gvozden

Something I’ve always been curious about: recap pages. I’m a fan. I read every book you guys publish and the recaps really help me not only keep things straight week to week, but they help me return to older stories and get immediate context.

But a handful of titles over the years have eschewed their inclusion. IMMORTAL HULK was an example of this and as much as I liked that series, it made keeping up with it month to month, especially with the complex lore, more difficult for me.

How is it determined what books do and don’t need to include a recap page?

Also, who writes these? The writer? Editor? Some, like Zdarsky’s, read in the writer’s voice while others take a more indexical approach.

As a general rule, we like every regular series title to include a recap page, Dan. Occasionally, there’ll be a series that eschews them—I hadn’t realized that IMMORTAL HULK was one, because I think we had one for my issues at least. And that would be a decision made by the editor of that title in coordination with the creative team. And the answer to your second part is Yes, depending on which recap page you might be thinking of. But some are written by the writer, others by the Editor, or an Assistant Editor, or occasionally an Intern. I myself haven’t written a recap page n several years, though I’ve rewritten bits of quite a few that have come through my office.

Alison Cabot

Tom, with this rivalry between Cyclops and Rogue, a point has been made: which side would Emma take? Most people think she would side with Cyclops because they used to date, which I think is a little sexist. They broke up years ago and barely interact, and in that time Emma has changed a lot as a character. We saw this especially during the Inferno saga, where she got tired of picking sides. Even if she were to pick a side in this rivalry, I don't think it would be Cyclops. She may hate Xavier, but she despises humans even more, and has always shown a distaste for humans meddling in mutant affairs.

I don’t feel that there are only two sides to that conflict, Alison, so I don’t know that Emma’s views would entirely align with either Cyclops or Rogue. Changes are, she’d have her own take on the issues at play.

Lee

How much of the creative process do you get to decide? do you just listen to pitches from writers or do you go to a particular writer who you like the tone of and say, for example, "I want a story about X character doing X thing where eventually X happens". thanks for your time.

As should have become apparent in all of the stories told across this Newsletter, Lee, I have as much say over the creative contents of the books that I put out as I want. So it isn’t a consistent thing, but I do some of all of the different approaches that you’ve outlined. Sometimes I have a general direction for something, other times I have something a lot more specific in mind. But even in those instances, the eventual final work tends to change and adapt and grow from my starting point as the creators involved move the stories in directions that are appealing to them. But this past week, I solicited a story from a writer that needs to fit a certain puzzle piece shape, and I commissioned another one that was an idea that I’ve had in my back pocket for 25 years, and a third that didn’t have much more to it than a page count and a project that it would be a part of. All are valid.

Michael Baumann

Phoenix, for NINE solicited issues, has not been part of any single crossover or event, which are usually used to promote books by exposing them to the readership of the other book, part of the crossover.

Circle this day on your calendar, folks! I think this is the first time in my experience that I’ve had a fan come to me demanding more crossovers in the title they like! I have to tell you, Michael, I don’t involve books in a crossover willy-nilly; they have to fit in with the story that’s being told. When PHOENIX does that, it will be so included, and when it doesn’t, I won’t try to force it. Doing so doesn’t make for good comics.

David Brazier

can’t the emotional contract we have with him and his strange and amazing history be honoured? Put a great writer and a great artist on his strip as this would bring him to life and tap into his mythology.

The problem with this argument, David, is that you could say the exact same thing about virtually every character in Marvel’s back-catalog. And we can’t put out 10,000 comics every month. If nothing else, that would be expensive! So we devote our energies to those efforts that we think evidence the best chance of success. I’m sure that there’ll be some additional Captain Britain project at some point, but there isn’t any driving need for one at this moment. Also, when you say “put a great writer and a great artist on it”, we first need to have a great writer and a great artist that truly want to do it. Otherwise, again, you tend to get a crummy result. So you may dream of, I don’t know, Jonathan Hickman writing a Captain Britain series, but unless Jonathan has a genuine desire to do so, that’s not likely to happen.

Malachi Wells

Was Marrow's last name ever revealed in canon? Her profile on https://www.marvel.com/characters/marrow lists her as "Sarah Knuckey", but I cannot find the comic or Handbook in which that name was used.

It must have been revealed somewhere, Malachi, or we wouldn’t have been able to include it in this write-up. But I couldn’t begin to tell you where that might have been, sorry.

Manqueman

Are comics fans’ interest in art limited to comics art or is their interest in comics art part of a much broader interest in art?

Depends on the fan I would say, Manqueman.

Ian A

Is Richard Case the same artist as Richard Pace?

No, that was an error on my part. The Canadian Richard Pace once drew NEW WARRIORS. The American Richard Case is often remembered for his work on DOOM PATROL and others.

Ben Morse

Speaking of QR codes, Tom, what was your favorite activation from the heyday of Marvel AR?

Oh, I don’t know, Ben. First thing to comes to mind is the issue of FF on which I challenged artist Mike Allred to do a MAD-style fold-in cover, and we animated that cover through AR, showing it folding and the end result.

Nicolas Hall

The idea that writing off Carol Danvers in AVENGERS #200 could be in any way a "service due her fans" is the most staggeringly bizarre assertion I've seen in a hot minute. Somehow actually more bizarre than the story itself.

That may be, Nicolas, but the thinking at the time was that wrapping up those characters’ stories was better than simply having them vanish into limbo with nothing resolved. Nobody involved intended to make a bad story in AVENGERS #200, nobody ever does. But that’s the way things break sometimes.

Daniel

With your recollections on New Warriors, I've always been curious about the transition from Marvel Style. What was the point when most stories transitioned from this and were being written full script? Are there any projects that you publish that are still created this way?

It was pretty much around 2001 when Bill Jemas declared that all comics henceforth would be written full script rather than the classic Marvel style. Some books at that time were already being done that way, notably the ULTIMATE titles. And some books continued to do things Marvel-style (though even there, the plots were a lot more worked out and constricting than they would have been in a true Marvel-style collaboration) and a couple still are. But not many.

Chris Sutcliffe

Gerry Conway (and other comic creators, including maybe yourself?) has spoken about how comic characters tend to fit into archetypes, their core of the character, that they will often return to. Fantastic Four are about family, for example. Spider-Man is about youth or about that moment on the edge of adulthood and responsibility.

Outside of characters that didn't have a core and creators spent a while trying to find it (Spider-Woman is her first series was reformed villain, then dealing in magic, then a private eye, etc), do you think there are any characters that had a core archetype and then successfully moved away from that to have a different core archetype?

I’m sure that there are, Chris, although that is often a case of people not quite figuring out what the best core concept is for the series right away. For example, I would argue that the premise of X-MEN at the very beginning was “school for super heroes.” Yes, the characters, hero and villain alike, were all mutants, but the broader themes of being hated and feared by humanity weren’t yet a thing (The X-Men are downright popular with the general public for their first two or three issues.) But that didn’t last long—Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had the X-Men pass their “final exam” by issue #5, and while they still trained thereafter, the idea of the X-Men as super heroes in training was downplayed in favor most often of issues of bigotry and intolerance, where the real strengths of the ideas could be developed for maximum impact.

Eleanor

Do you dislike Laura Kinney: Wolverine? You're never putting it into upcoming titles, I'm wondering why are you excluding it from promoting solos.

Of course I like it, Eleanor. But LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE is edited by Mark Basso as part of what we internally call the “claw office”. I made a decision a long while ago to only list the books that are coming out of my direct office in the weekly Wednesday listings. Otherwise, that section would be three times as long and take forever to write. That’s what the monthly X-MENTIONS pages are for.

Jeff Ryan

At work one day, you find a box that's fallen behind the shelves, of old art boards lost for decades. What's the best-case scenario of what's inside that box?

Depends on what you mean by “best-case scenario.”, Jeff. But just sitting here thinking about it, I’d say that the most revelatory thing of this sort that might be able to turn up would be Jack Kirby’s original pitch sheets for his version of “Spiderman”, before Steve Ditko and Stan Lee completely reinvented much of the character.

Geo Harriet

I love the latest Spider-Man video games and think the second one is one of my favorite stories in a game that I've ever played. Playing as Peter, Miles, and as Venom at various times was just bat$#!+ crazy. Have you ever played any of those or have any insight into or stories about those games?

I’ve played a few of them over the years, Geo, but not often and not for a really long time. So I don’t really have a lot of insight into their creation, sorry. There have been instances when different Spidey writers have ben brought in as story consultants on those assorted games over the years, though.

Bella Sutherland

Thank you for responding to my query. I appreciate you saying that there is no "staggering deficit" in efforts to promote Phoenix compared to Storm and Scarlet Witch, but I would like to point out this is false. I would love to get your honest insight on this matter.

Bella, I gave you my honest insight when you first asked me the question. If you’ve decided that I’m really just lying and that there’s some other imagined dark, secret reason for whatever you don’t like, well, we simply need to go our separate ways. I’m happy to answer any honestly-asked question that is put to me, as you’ve hopefully seen over the past 147 Newsletters. But when you come to me with phrases like “honest insight”, you’re pretty well calling me a lair, and nothing that I tell you is going to dissuade you from that perspective. So it’s time to walk away.

Mark Coale

Do you think it’s realistic we could ever see an accepted hero turn bad that wasn’t just designed as a temporary change in personality or exposure to Element X or being possessed by a noxious cloud of fear? Unlike other parts of entertainment where the flip flop of white hat/black is not unusual?

As was happened with some recent examples, the fan outcry from however large or small a percentage of the audience, likely just wouldn't accept it and would likely make life miserable for creators/editors . (Imagine what this page would be like you someone like Jean or Storm had a heel turn.)

Would it even work using a minor C list hero? The best example I could think of the other day was Sargon, GA Hero revived as SA villain before a heroic death in Crisis and then a shades of Grey role in some Vertigo stuff. He might as well been a new character to most of the audience reading Flash #186.

Yes, i think it could be done, Mark, but it requires an extraordinary amount of commitment, more than we typically have, Because every character is somebody’s favorite, and having a hero take a turn to the dark side is always something that fans of that character will want to see overturned. Just look at how many different creators over the years have attempted (unsuccessfully as it turns out) to redeem Hank Pym after he struck his wife Janet. In that story, writer Jim Shooter was trying to chart the course of a hero going legitimately bad, but that course was reversed even before the story was completed, and so creators still try to take back the bad stuff the character did in those set-up stories. More recently, a decade-plus back, when we were working on the SHADOWLAND crossover, there was a real push internally to make Daredevil an out-and-out villain. At the time, Fox controlled the media rights to the character and it didn’t seem like they’d be coming back any time soon, and there was an interest in beginning to build up Moon Knight as a similar player that could be exploited across other media. The DD editor of the period, Stephen Wacker, had to work very carefully and very quietly to prevent Matt Murdock from crossing any lines-of-no-return in that story. And it’s a good thing that he did. Because only a couple of years later, those rights did come back to Marvel and we wound up doing three seasons of a television series (plus DEFENDERS) And so, had we gone for it during SHADOWLAND, we would have had a lot more work cut out for us in suddenly needing to redeem Matt so that he could be a headliner again.

Neon Frost

Any plans to have Exceptional X-Men crossover with NYX? I’d love to see Emma get to reunite with the Cuckoos, even if it’s just Sophie. If not a crossover, any plans to have them reunite in the future? Feels like it’s been forever since they shared pages together. Also any chance we might see Banshee or other Gen-X characters cameoing in Exceptional?

I think you’re going to get just about everything that you want over the next several months, Neon, though likely not in the way that you mean, and possibly not in the places that you expect. How’s that for vague?

Pandoro

Since Kid Omega was Xavier's prize pupil in Morrison's New X-Men, are we going to see them interact or even fight in X-Manhunt?

And speaking of, are we going to see a mentorship between him, Cyclops and Psylocke?

You’ll have to wait and see, Pandoro, but I’ll give you a hint: yes.

Ben

I was what your opinion on the new ultimate universe's approach to time is? What are the chances that the main universe changes its approach to the sliding timescale? Might we be able to see certain characters age and let younger characters have the spotlight in a more natural way?

I think the ULTIMATE Universe’s approach to the passage of time is valid, Ben, but really only as a counterpoint to the mainstream Marvel Universe. And I don’t think we’ll ever see the genuine MU begin to move in real time every again. That fictional construction will outlive all of us, and we need to be responsible to the readers of the future not to wind up damaging it too greatly as we tell the stories of today.

Dylan D

2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the seminal GIANT-SIZE X-MEN #1. Do you have any plans to celebrate the anniversary, and if so, do they involve Chris Claremont?

Yes we do, Dylan, though I don’t know that Chris will be involved. He is, though, writing a WOLVERINE & KITTY PRYDE limited series at this very moment.

Phil

Our Storm writer just informed us via twitter that her age reveal, which he said would be in Storm issue #4, was cut at the last minute by you. I wonder why that is the case?

I’m not sure just exactly what is being referred to here, Phil, but as a general rule I try to avoid locking down a specific age for any of the Marvel characters, because the passage of time in the MU doesn’t work the way it does in the real world, and doing so only invited readers to get angry or upset. So whatever that was, it’s hardly the first such reference that I’ve cut over the years, and it won’t be the last.

Marie

I don’t understand why this was marketed in a way that was so off-putting to so many people. I know that you’re trying to sell as many comics as possible, and if you’re only trying to appeal to a certain demographic, then, well… you did it, I guess. But it alienated a lot of readers as well. If you saw the backlash this book was getting, why didn’t anyone say anything to assuage our fears that Rogue was going to be objectified and over-sexualized?

Marie, let’s be real here for a moment: there is nothing in the world that I could have said that would have made the fans who thought that series was going to be nothing but a softcore wankfest believe otherwise. Heck, I can’t even convince people that there isn’t some dark conspiracy to promote STORM and SCARLET WITCH at the expense of PHOENIX. All that trying to do so would have resulted in is a lot of those angry fans calling me a misogynist and blaming me for whatever their darkest fears for the project were. No, the only way that anybody was going to feel differently was by experiencing the book themselves and seeing that their fears were unfounded. So I’m glad that you enjoyed it.

Firebat

Noticed that Eternity in Phoenix 5 used the G.O.D.S. redesign while Eternity in Storm 4 seems to be using the older design. Are these 2 the same Eternity just drawn with the different designs from artistic choices?

They are the same Eternity, yes, Firebat—as you will see clearly in STORM #5.

Jalon

I wanted to ask you your thoughts on Bethany Cabe and Kirsten McDuffie. I find them to be two of the more underrated characters in Marvel canon, although I suppose that's no longer true for Kirsten with her upcoming appearance in the Born Again series. I love how both women refuse to fall for or buy into Tony and Matt's respective BS while retaining their own motivations and identities despite being in both men's crazy orbits.

Bethany in particular has long been one of my favorite characters/love interests in Marvel. She is my ideal choice for a Tony Stark pairing and I'd love to see more material with her in it (even if she's not a love interest) or a media adaptation at the very least that showcases her role in the resolution of the Demon in a Bottle saga.

Are you a fan of the storylines that feature her or do you think there are characters who match up with Tony better? Also, do you think her backstory with her husband Alex was contrived and/or convoluted or did it serve as more of a bit of juicy drama to you?

I like both of those characters. Jalon, though I click more with Bethany simply because she was in the books when I was reading them back in the day (and because Dwayne McDuffie was a friend of mine, and so I tend to trip on Kirsten’s name, a nice homage though it is.) That said, the last time Bethany was a romantic interest was, what, 1981? I don’t know that it would be easy to ever go back there in our world. It’s more likely that you could introduce a new romantic interest for Tony that had some of those same qualities.

X of Alex

Cover copy: yay or nay?

It was a silver age staple, featured prominently on Marvel books in the 90s, then fell out of vogue sometime during Joe Q's EIC tenure, and is now seemingly popping back up on Marvel books, X-titles included. How do you feel about it?

As I think you can tell from the current X-Books, Alex, I’m always open to doing cover copy. It’s another tool in your tool chest that can sometimes plus up a cover. It isn’t mandatory, but I use it when I want to try to get a certain idea or concept across.

Kevin F

Just saw Storm #7 celebrating her 50th anniversary! Any plans to celebrate Nightcrawler's and Colossus's as well?

Man, this thing where we need to keep absolute parity among all characters has to stop being a thing, Kevin. Yes, we’ll be celebrating Nightcrawler and Colossus this year, as well as Thunderbird. And we’ll do so in their own titles just as soon as they start having titles.

Chris Sutcliffe

Sorry to double dip on questions, but I'm curious how old Aunt May is supposed to be (either now or when she was first around). Appreciate that comic ages are timey-wimey, but are we talking 50s? 80s?

Aunt May is 63 years old, Chris. Just as Spidey is.

---

Off The Wall

Here’s a page from NEW TEEN TITANS #17 that I bought at a New York show sometime in the early 1990s. I don’t remember quite what I paid for it, but it was an affordable page, mainly because George Perez only did breakdowns on it, with Romeo Tanghal providing finishes. But it’s a nice page from a nice issue of a series that I was big time into when it was first coming out. And it’s up on the wall in “The Batcave”, the room in my home where all of the comics are stored.

---

I Buy Crap

I bought this issue of FANTASTICO because of the novelty of it, and I paid more than I really wanted to for it. But it’s a heck of a talking piece. As you can see, this issue, released in 1956 in Mexico, reprints a number of early stories featuring Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s character Fighting American, including his origin story. But either by accident or by design, these stories call the characters Captain America and Bucky (this despite Speedboy having a huge winged “S” on his shirt front), including changing all of the logos on the splash pages. I would imagine that even in 1956, Captain America was still a better known and more popular character than Fighting American, but it’s still an odd choice. No idea, either, whether they got away with it or whether anybody on either side noticed and complained about it.

---

Behind the Curtain

I often talk about “Breakdowns” in my assorted write-ups of old comics, and I expect that most readers of this feature don’t really have any understanding as to just what Breakdowns actually means. So let’s take a look at an example.

In the 1980s when he was working on AVENGERS, artist John Buscema provided only breakdowns. This let him control the pacing of the story and the composition of each panel and page, but freed him up from having to complete all of the detail on every figure and background. Consequently, John could do more books’ worth of work in this fashion, and as his storytelling approach was what was most valued at that moment, that was a good deal for Marvel at that moment. As you can see in the splash page above, everything is there, but it’s sketchy, unfinalized, and very open, with no areas of hard black or any line weights really in place yet. But the characters’ attitudes and personalities and body language all comes across.

And here’s the same page as Finished by Tom Palmer, who did this work throughout much of John’s return to the series. Not only is Tom transitioning all of John’s work into ink, but he’s developing it along the way, adding in details, solidifying forms and structures and creating depth and texture. John’s breakdowns don’t feel like a finished page, but Tom’s Finished page does. The trade-off here is that there’s more Palmer in the finished work than there might be were he simply inking a tightly penciled Buscema page. But that was the division of labor here—and Tom was a good enough artist in his own right to be able to simply draw anything that John had left out or only loosely scribbled in. Tom also rules all of the lines that John freehanded on the background equipment.

---

Pimp My Wednesday

Here we go again! We’ve got a bunch of new books coming your way this week!

Hey, look—cover copy! This issue of UNCANNY X-MEN is the start of a two-parter in which the new young Outliers take center stage and we learn a bit more about them. It also features an attack by the Sentinel Dogs that have been developed in Graymalkin Prison as seen in SENTINELS and elsewhere. It’s by Gail Simone and guest artist Andrei Bressan, who does #10 as well.

And FANTASTIC FOUR #28 is the prologue to the upcoming ONE WORLD UNDER DOOM status quo that’ll be reflected across the entire Marvel line. It also guest-stars the Black Knight in what must be the most unanticipated appearance of the month. Ryan North and Steven Cummings are the perpetrators.

And once more from Assistant Editor Martin Biro is the fourth issue of WHAT IF dedicated to revealing what might have happened had Galactus selected other Marvel superstars to be his herald. This time out, the lucky winner is Rogue, and it’s Ann Nocenti and Stephen Byrne who are bringing the story to you.

Hey, do you think anybody is going to realize that Jean Grey is fighting Thanos in this latest issue of PHOENIX? I certainly hope so! It’s brought to you by Stephanie Phillips and Marco Renna as well as Associate Editor Annalise Bissa.

And X-Editor Darren Shan has also put together a print edition of the first six From The Ashes Infinity Comics that were featured on MARVEL UNLIMITED. So it’s a pair of stories written by Alex Paknadel in which Cyclops and Phoenix share a final adventure together on Earth before Jean heads off into space, and Sally Floyd investigates discrepancies surrounding the incarceration of Professor Xavier. Do you think this information might come in handy for readers during the upcoming X-MANHUNT storyline? Could be…

---

A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

INCREDIBLE HULK #12 came out on January 19, 2000 and was the first issue of the series written by Paul Jenkins. It’s also the first issue of what I think of as “my” run, the preceding issues were all dedicated in one way or another to playing out the string on my predecessor Matt Idelson’s time as editor. Consequently, I took this moment to restore both the adjective Incredible to the title and the classic logo as well. Artist Ron Garney was interested in remaining on the book even after the departure of writer John Byrne, which was good news to my ears. Ron’s powerful depiction of the Green Goliath was one of the real strengths that the series had at that point. Speaking with him about potential writers, he mentioned that he’d met Paul Jenkins at a recent convention and gotten along with him really well. At this point, Paul hadn’t done a whole lot of work with Marvel—I’d spoken with him all of one time, when he was working on Werewolf By Night in STRANGE TALES and was guest-starring Ghost Rider. But he seemed like a capable and intelligent writer, and so after speaking with him a little bit, I signed him on. Our intention was to bring in more of the elements last seen in popular HULK writer Peter David’s tenure on the series, though we’d treat them in a different way tonally. That meant immediately going back to the idea that the Hulk wasn’t a single personification but instead there were different incarnations of the creature, each one representing a different portion of Bruce Banner’s shattered sense of self. We brought back the popular Grey Hulk, and began calling him simply Joe Fixit after the name of his Las Vegas legbreaker persona from Peter’s run. We also resurrected the intelligent Hulk from Peter’s era, though it irked some of his fans when we revealed that, rather than being the Hulk’s ultimate, unified form, “The Professor” as we called him was simply another alternate incarnation. And the classic Sal Buscema Hulk Smash Hulk was also present as the “Childlike Hulk.” Paul also introduced a new incarnation of the character, the aggregation of all of the worst impulses within Banner’s psyche, the appropriate-named Devil Hulk, who’d be a regular threat within our run. Years later, writer Al Ewing would recast the Devil Hulk into the core persona of his IMMORTAL HULK run. Banner also got a new love interest in the form of a college girlfriend, Dr. Angela Lipscombe and a new nemesis in the person of General John Ryker, who had a personal vendetta against the Hulk. Most crucially, Paul and Ron began to make the series once again literate and grounded and dangerous, and a little bit more sophisticated than the past year’s stories had been, again, hoping to tap into some of the appeal of the popular Peter David era. Thus run has largely been overlooked today, having been eclipsed by the next few runs still to come, but at the time it represented a step forward for the series after a general feeling that the title had been largely spinning its wheels since David’s departure.

---

The New Warriors Chronicles

The next NEW WARRIORS book that I released was NIGHT THRASHER #18, which contained the final chapter of “Money Don’t Buy.” For whatever reason, most likely there now being more work than he could comfortably handle, by this issue writer Kurt Busiek had brought in Steve Mattsson as a co-writer. I’m not entirely sure how much Steve did on this last issue, as the essential concept of the story would have been worked out earlier as part of the initial pitch to Rob Tokar. And honestly, looking back on it, it’s not really all that effective an ending to the storyline. The core concept was that Night Thrasher had begun using his wealth as a weapon, like a super-power, to accomplish his objectives, and would come face-to-face with the limitations of that approach. And that kind of happens here, but it feels a bit like almost an afterthought in what is otherwise an adventure that teams Thrash up with the Black Panther and brings in several villains who had been created for T’Challa’s strip years earlier.

Beyond that, I really don’t have all that much to say about this issue. I know that he book was in a schedule hole when I inherited it (the same was true with all of the WARRIORS titles at the time) and so I was likely focused just on getting the issue finished and out the door on time rather than giving any deep thought to it. It took three issues working over some relatively sparse pencils to get the story completed on time, so this was about triage rather than art in a very real way. But also, NIGHT THRASHER was the title whose sales were in the worst shape when I took it on, and also the book among the three that I felt the smallest connection to. So while I never made a conscious decision to do so, i think that in general I focused most of my energies and effort on salvaging NEW WARRIORS and NOVA and largely left NIGHT THRASHER to its own devices, to stand or fall on its own.

Art Nichols, who had been drawing the series, let me know around this time that this would be his final issue on the title, which wasn’t a huge surprise. I think he’d only really signed on for this four-parter, and the schedule was so bad at this point that he was really having to grind to get the pages completed (and then they were being handed off to a whole team of inkers—not exactly the best way to get a simpatico finish on them. But needs must.) I pretty quickly moved to get a fill-in issue done in order to scrape back some time on the schedule, hiring Mattsson to write it figuring that he was already in the mix on the book. That would be for #19, the next month’s issue.

I’m not in love with the cover here either. I can’t say for certain that I commissioned it, but given that it was done by Mike Manley and Mike was a guy that I might have called in such a situation, I think it’s likely that I did. It’s really the coloring that I object to more than anything else. It’s fine, but really nothing pops terribly well here, and the text is harder to read than it ought to be. At this point, I was still figuring out color theory and cover concept, so it would be a while still before I got any good at it. This cover shows my shortcomings as an editor at this time.

---

Monofocus

I was given a copy of it at work, so I wound up reading over UNFORGETTABLE STORIES, a collection of Marvel stories put together for The Folio Society by Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum, who selected the contents. In that respect, it was a broad sampler of work and reminded me of nothing so much as a volume in Marvel’s old ORIGINS line from the late 1970s. The selections were diverse but they all had something interesting to offer. And I was pleased to have two different stories represented in the volume, an obscure issue of UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER-MAN and the death of the Human Torch years later in FANTASTIC FOUR. That’s ultimately a pretty good batting average for this sort of thing.

It’s no surprise that I really like DC’s recent FINEST collections of vintage material, their answer to Marvel’s EPIC collections. I’ve bought a bunch of these as they’ve started to be released—I think I’ve already spoken about the volumes that collected the earliest Silver Age Flash stories and Justice Society of America stories, both favorites. But I also picked up the Legion of Super-Heroes volume, which was an odd slice from a historical perspective. It contained pretty much all of the content concerning the Legion during the strip’s “wilderness years”, including the last few stories to appear in ADVENTURE COMICS, it’s short run as a back-up series in ACTION COMICS, and then its sporadic appearances in SUPERBOY until it became popular enough again to take over as the lead feature. It has to be said, most of the stories in this volume are staggeringly stupid, with some egregious storytelling choices and a vision of the future that is quaint at best. But you can see what an impact the arrival of Dave Cockrum had on the series. The stories continued to be relatively dopey, but he made the visuals look spectacular and modern. And his sense of costume design was cutting edge for the era—he made the Legion look a lot more futuristic and slick instantly.

Also, having discovered it thanks to a testimonial by frequent Newsletter visitor Gregory Wright, I sent off for a copy of the French magazine BLACK &WHITE STORIES that was dedicated to the work and career of Klaus Janson. And it’s a beautiful volume, one in which the text is helpfully printed in English as well as in French. But the big draw is the reproductions of Klaus’ originals, pencils and inks. (The kind publisher Rafael, recognizing my name on the order, also included a copy of the limited edition SACRED CREATURES sketchbook that they released with this edition, which was lovely of him and much appreciated.) I’ve seen a lot of Klaus’ work over the years since I’ve worked with him so often, and I think that familiarity maybe made me underestimate it, in particular his penciling. It’s hard to stand out when your stuff is sitting next to all-time greats like John Romita Jr and Frank Miller all the time. But this volume really made me stop and appreciate the work in a way I hadn’t done before, and it is truly incredibly accomplished stuff. In particular, I was really impressed by the texture of Klaus’ pencils, which reminded me a little bit of that of JRJR in that you really get a sense of the graphite on the page.

Moving on to other media, because I was so knocked out by LIGHT SHOP (a show that really stuck its landing), I wound up deciding to try out the creators’ earlier series, MOVING. I’ve only watched one episode so far, but…it’s all right. It doesn’t quite have the same sort of visceral hook that LIGHT SHOP did in terms of the kind of story that it is and the manner in which it’s being told. But it’s a super hero drama, a sort of Korean X-Men story, and so I’m going to continue with it at least for a bit to see if I start to groove to it over time and more episodes. I’ll update you should things improve.

But the big thing I’ve been watching is the latest season of BLOODY GAME, the Korean survival game show. I had entirely missed the second season as well, but liked the first run big time. It’s clearly by the team that produced THE GENIUS, the greatest Korean game show ever made, and it shares a lot of the same DNA with that beloved series. And really, the big draw from me is that the two biggest stars to come out of THE GENIUS, multi-year champion and professional poker player Hong Jin Ho and his edgier rival Jang Dong-Min, have both been brought in to play for this season. I’m three episodes in and things are already heating up, with Dong-min showing off his truly terrifying intellect and judgment of human psychology and Jin Ho reeling a little bit after a disastrous showing in the opening challenge, a performance so poor that all of the rest of the contestants can’t quite believe that it was what it seemed, thinking there must have been some larger strategic reason for why the great champion did so poorly other than bad play. These episodes are also monumentally long—I put one on the other night and got 90 minutes into it with no end in sight. That made me stop and look at the run time: it was two hours and forty-one minutes long! That’s a damn movie! And yet, I kept on watching all the way through to the end. Even a 50 minute show feels like more time than I want to devote these days, but when it’s something that’s already got its hooks into me as this does, going the distance doesn’t seem to be a huge problem. I’ll likely crack into the next episode tonight after this Newsletter has been put to bed. What, I haven’t given you a trailer this week? Well, okay, here it is.

---

Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about The First Two-Gun Kid Story

And five years ago, I wrote about the Greatest Betty & Veronica Story Ever. Seriously, this one’s great!

---

That’s going to finish things here, folks! Thanks for dropping by, stay warm, and with any luck we’ll be able to do this again in a week’s time!

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B