#152: Closer to the Truth, Further from the Sky

When I was growing up, from time to time my Grandmother would often ask me in earnestness, “Why do you need so many books?” She wasn’t a reader like most of the rest of my family, outside of the occasional novel and the evening paper. And it never would have occurred to her to save a book that she had already read. This was a very basic generational difference between us. So it was a disapproving comment, but not sharply disapproving. She simply didn’t understand it, didn’t see any reason for doing it.

I’ve gotten to the point now after fifty-eight years where I’ve begun to wonder if she maybe had a point. I have a lot of comics in my home, lots of unread comics especially, with more coming in every week. And I keep up as best I can, but I don’t have as much free time to read as I once did, nor can my old eyes focus for as long as they once might have done. And none of this is supposed to be work, so whenever it begins to feel onerous, I tend to put down whatever book i was working on and go do something else. this has led to me having half-finished books stacked up all throughout my house. It’s a bit of a disease, that’s all.

Switching gears completely, I came across two really cool newspaper strips from 1948 this past week, and I’m going to share them with you here. It’s two days’ worth of GASOLINE ALLEY, which was the first comic strip to have its characters age in real time. I used to see it in the local New York newspapers when i was growing up, but it never really clicked with me—it was then being done by successors to its originator Frank King. But King himself was quite an excellent cartoonist, as we’re about to see.

The third panel of this strip stopped me cold. Look at how King creates an entire image without any linework, working entirely with light and shadow. That panel is masterful. Despite the fact that we can only make out bits of Skeezix’s figure, he’s still clear as a bell against the white of the snow and the drapes.

Similarly, the three middle panels of this sequence from a day later do similar things with black and white forms. This is an application of the sort of philosophy often preached by Alex Toth, who insisted that cartooning was the ability to break a drawing down to the minimum number of lines needed to communicate an image. King’s strip was more about characterization than anything else, but he’d pull out some panels along these lines every once in a while just to show how good an illustrator he truly was.

Seems like there was a bunch of news out of ComicsPro this week that a lot of people wanted to talk about. So just to preface things: I’m not going to be able to give you additional details about any projects that were announced there. If we were ready to tell people more, we would have done so already. So you’re just going to have to be patient. All answers will come in time.

Zack J

Seeing Squirrel Girl, Nancy and Braindrain drawn by RB Silva got me thinking about stylistic changes at Marvel over the last decade. To be at least, it feels like there is less diversity in artistic styles than there was around say 2015. Specifically it feels like cartooning and more exaggerated styles (like Henderson or Charm on Squirrel Girl, Aja on Hawkeye, Samnee on DD) have fallen out of favor.

What's your perspective on expanding the public's understand of what "superhero art" can be vs giving them what they already expect? I'm guessing in the minds of many in commercial art it's a balance but what makes you take a risk and go with something outside the norm? One great example of a time Marvel has done this was switching from the Wildstorm stylings of Ian Churchill on X-Force to the popart of Mike Allred. What would drive you to take that big of a swing?

I don’t know, Zack, I tend to think that when you consider a line in which one of the most successful titles is being drawn by Peach Momoko and another character illustrated by Gurihiru is breaking through to the mainstream, our artistic line-up is as diverse as ever. It may be diverse in different ways and different places, though. These sort of tastes always tend to be a bit cyclic. So I don’t know what we might do today that would be as much of a change-up as that X-FORCE switchover was. By that same token, I also don’t know if that X-FORCE switchover would have worked the same way today; it was very much of its moment.

Ray Cornwall

I've been doing a Guardians of the Galaxy binge read lately, so I've gotten to read the introduction of Angela to the Marvel Comics Universe. I found it interesting that the character's origin twisted so quickly from a fairly simple retelling of her role in Spawn to her ultimate role as Thor and Loki's sister. Do you recall anything about the introduction of Angela into Marvel Comics, and how or why she ended up tied to Thor and Loki?

This wasn’t any manner of huge overhaul or sea change for us, Ray. Once Angela was going to be coming to the Marvel U, we needed to figure out how to integrate her into the universe. Any of her backstory that connected directly to SPAWN couldn’t be used, so there was a big gap in her life. And so, given what there was remaining, connecting her mythology with that of Asgard (which was having a bit of a moment thanks in large part to the films) made a great deal of sense. So that’s what we went with. But there wasn’t really any other option that was considered and discarded along the way.

Ben Morse

for years and years, Mike wanted to draw a Deathlok book as he loves that character, and eventually did (short-lived but gorgeous). Curious if you had a particular story of a writer and/or artist pining after a character they had such affinity to eventually getting to take a shot?

None that immediately come to mind, Ben, for all that they must happen on a regular basis. Sorry.

Patrick

I recently re-read Magneto Testament, and was blown away. As an HS history teacher, I immediately thought that I wanted to get a class set to use to teach the lead up to and the Holocaust, because it does such a tremendous job showing the aspects people often don’t know about (it even has teaching suggesting in the TPB) and I’ve been trying to add more comics and graphic novels into my teaching. But I was shocked to see it’s no longer in print. How can we as a fan base change this? Do you have any say as the EIC in what goes to print from the back catalogue? This isn’t just a comic but it is a historical teaching tool that matters.

The plain fact of the matter, Patrick, is that Marvel’s back catalogue is far, far too large for us to be able to keep all but the tiniest fraction of it in print, so titles fall out of print within it on the regular. But when there’s demand for a given storyline, either because of renewed interest stemming from a pending film or television project, or a creator doing some new prominent thing, or what-have-you, we tend to try to put those works back into print in order to capitalize on the moment. In the case of MAGNETO: TESTAMENT, if you’d like to see a new printing of it, it’s probably best to communicate that to your local retailer, who can pass the information upwards along the chain of communication, And if there are enough others like you, it’ll be more likely to happen sooner rather than later.

Pandoro

Are there any future plans in store for Kid Omega? Mentorships, friendships or a romantic relationship?

He’ll be appearing in X-MEN on the regular, Pandoro. Beyond that, you’re going to have to wait and see what Jed MacKay has in store for him.

Jeff Ryan

If Marvel Comics had to all get smaller (digest sized, like manga) or bigger (magazine sized), which one would you choose?

This is something of a rigged game, isn’t it, Jeff? Without understanding the conditions that might be forcing a format change, it’s impossible for me to answer effectively. There have been successful formats that have been both larger and smaller than standard comic book size (and there still are) so one isn’t intrinsically better than the other. It all depends on what is required.

Andrew Albrecht

I’ve been reading a lot of issues from the 2015-2018ish era lately, and read through “Power Man and Iron Fist”, and the first 6 issues of Jessica Jones (Marvel Now). I couldn’t find much online so I wanted to ask, what went into the decision to have Jessica start the series in the position she did? I.E separated from Luke, hiding her daughter, on a deep undercover op.

Again, that wasn’t much of a long-debated decision so much as it was a choice, Andrew, and a bit of a necessary one to put Jessica back into a position where she could be the main character in her story without automatically pulling husband Luke and a whole cadre of other super heroes into it. I was only involved with that project from a distance, though, so I don’t remember the specifics of how it all came about.

JV

Do you think there is a market for comic book adaptations of the Marvel films? A nice trade collection of MCU phase 1 with phot covers in bookstores? Do you like movie adaptations Tom?

I don’t know, JV. Maybe? I don’t know that I’d ever say never, but I do think that the function that adaptations once fulfilled in the days before films were readily available on home media and instantly accessible on streaming simply isn’t there in the same way any more. So while there will always be people who are interested in how a certain favorite movie may have been adapted, i don’t know that there are enough of such people to make such a project a going concern. There’d need to be something more to it, I expect.

Matt Strawbridge

That still is from 1959’s “The Tingler”, directed by William Castle and starring Vincent Price. One of my faves!

Are you sure about that, Matt?

Kurt Busiek

Ha! Everyone knows it's the immortal MGM musical, "Singin' In the Rain," referencing the "Moses Supposes" number, when Gene and Donald sing "AAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

Kurt’s usually on point with this stuff. Still, I’m going to assume that you’re right, Matt, rather than double-checking myself. So thanks for sharing that bit of information!

JV

do you know what Roger Stern had planned for Machine Man and the Avengers during his aborted "Heavy Metal' arc of Avengers (circa issues 286-289)?

He seemed to have an arc with Machine Man seeded over several guest appearances (like in Hulk) - possible links to the Fixer and the Super Adaptoid.

No, I’m afraid I don’t have any insider information about this, JV. You would have to ask Roger.

Lee

I wondered if you knew how hard/easy it was to get Jon Hamm and Kevin Feige in the Helfire Gala issue.

I imagine Feige would know the context of the scene but did someone have to explain to Jon Hamm who Emma Frost was and why she’d be flirting with him?

I wasn’t directly involved, Lee, but if I’m recalling matters correctly, Gerry Duggan knew Jon from his work as a script doctor, and so was able to facilitate communications with Hamm. And Kevin clearly understands what it is that we do.

Steve McSheffrey

Has one of the reasons for the Psylocke series been to differentiate Kwannon finally from Betsy? 'Cause I don't think that's working. It still feels like you could call her Betsy and the story would still work. It's a great story and drawn very well so I'm not disappointed in anything except feeling like Betsy got all the character growth

The only reason for having a PSYLOCKE series, Steve, is that we thought it might perform well enough to be a going concern. It wasn’t specifically to develop Kwannon rather than Betsy or in place of her. that whole situation is a bit of a thorny mess, honestly, but my feeling is that we need to play the ball where it lies. Which means that, for the time being at least, Kwannon is going to remain as Psylocke, and future stories will delve more deeply into who she is and why she does what she does.

Neon Frost

It’s very early days yet for Exceptional but with Kitty seemingly getting a potentially more serious relationship with Nina, any chance Emma might meet & date someone new in Exceptional? Like Kitty, it would be interesting to see her with a non-superhero.

Second question, how much input do you have if any in costume design? I know Carmen Carnero put out costume options when FtA was announced so was wondering what kind of input you had.

Anything is possible, Neon. But I don’t tend to worry about being even-handed in our storytelling in precisely this way. Just because one character enters a relationship doesn’t mean that all of the other characters are required to as well. Different characters need and want different things, after all. But I don’t think it would be a bad idea to link Emma up romantically with somebody. And in the realm of character design, I have a lot of say, in that unless I approve a given costume, it isn’t getting used. But I don’t tend to run an autocratic shop, so I want input from all of the creators and my junior editors as well as myself before we decide on a course of action. So I don’t think i had anything really noteworthy to say about Emma’s EXCEPTIONAL look—that was all Carmen with input from Eve.

Sato

I've been re-reading a lot of Shang-Chi comics lately, andI just noticed that he made 50 years recently (in 2023 if I'm right)... And I noticied that he's quite absent from marvel in general (He was in Assemble! and now in Infinity Comic, which is good, love Orlando's work!)

But I feel like he deserves a little more spotlight...

And I know its VERY HARD to give attention to all the characters in Marvel Universe, but we have so much to explore with Ta Lo and the Rings! And Shang means so much to AAPI community!

So any chance we might se a little more of him?

It’s the eternal problem, Sato: we have more characters than we can feature consistently at any given point in time. So as you say, Shang Chi has been showing up in AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and in the Infinity comic, and I’m sure that there’ll be more in the future. But nothing is so definitive that I can tell you about it, sorry.

Branden

Could you give us a little insight into deciding what a character has been up to when they've been off screen for an extended amount of time? There are quite a few X-Characters that haven't been seen since Krakoa ended, and more that weren't seen during Krakoa in the first place. What goes into deciding when it's the right time to bring a character back? Is that all on the writers that want to use those characters, or editorial, or a healthy mix of both?

In most cases, a writer pitches a story, and we either like it and go with it or have comments on it and revise it, or don’t like it and don’t do it, Branden. But there isn’t any sort of a clock demanding that we use a particular character by a particular point. It all comes down mainly to who the creators are interested in and whom they have good story ideas for. Speaking for myself, I prefer not to bring a character back until we have a strong reason for doing so and a place where that story can play out. But sometimes, needs must.

Chuck Was Right

in the spirit of Alyssa Moy, can I ask what the timeline with her is now? When she was first introduced, Reed is 10 years older than Sue, so dating Alyssa and proposing marriage to her at some point in his 20s made a lot of sense.

With Reed I think being 4 years older than Sue and having been in love with her since they met at her aunt's house, is Alyssa now someone Reed knew before he ever met Sue?

The history with Alyssa remains exactly the same, Chuck.

Geo Harriett

Seeing all the Silver Age DC covers you are posting, I must say that one of my favorites is World's Finest #169. I'm not old enough to have gotten it when it came out, but when I came across it years later around the age of 12 or so, this helped inspire my crushes on Supergirl and Batgirl. And that cover is hilarious! I've got an issue framed and hanging on a wall with other covers that are my faves. I did a quick search of your blog and didn't see anything there, do you recall this cover from your youth?

Well, let’s take a look at it, Geo:

The thing is, I never read this issue as a kid, so I don’t really have much that I can relate about it from a personal point of view. I do recall this cover from a DC house ad at the time, but that’s about it. It would have been the waning days of the BATMAN television series, given the prominence of Batgirl and the overall tone of the cover image. And unless I miss my guess, this was the first comic book that future SUPERMAN editor Mike Carlin ever read.

Callie

What's your policy on spoilers in covers? Like, obviously there's always gonna be some element of that due to the nature of covers being 'tell me what's in this issue but in a page of art,' but for instance, the next Exceptional X-Men cover fully spoils a very sinister reveal that probably would've been a huge and interesting surprise if not for the cover. Like, what's the thought process with this kind of thing?

As a general rule, I try not to spoil stories on the covers, Callie. But there are occasions, such as this one, where I feel like the reveal is too strongly saleable not to feature in some way on the cover. So that EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN cover doesn’t really spoil anything unless you know the players involved. And if you do know, the fact that you can recognize what’s going on is maybe more likely to compel you to pick the issue up. As I want to sell as many copies as I can, that’s a clear-cut choice for me. And hopefully, there’s more to that story that simply one reveal.

Shaun

You mentioned before about trying to make heroes villains and how sometimes that can be damaging to a character. What are your thoughts on that subject, considering Colossus?

As of recently, he has been presented as a villain in the Ultimate books and Wolverine: Revenge. There was a villain version of him in the most recent X-Force issue, and a time displaced villain Colossus in the Bendis X-Men run. He even spent the majority of the Krakoan Era as a brainwashed villain.

I fear that if that character doesn't get some wins, or more character growth, he's going to end up taking damage.

I don’t tend to worry too much about things like how another universe like the Ultimate line treats a character, Shaun, nor how they may be depicted in a possible future series such as WOLVERINE REVENGE. I think the difficulty that Colossus has had for a very long time is that he’s by his nature a very introspective sort of a figure, gentle in his demeanor, and I think that it can be difficult for both readers and creators to connect with that. and the taboo of taking such a person and turning them into somebody aggressive and nasty and loud is irresistible to a certain type of creator. It’s sure to get a reaction, regardless of whether that reaction is positive or negative. So I suspect that this is why Colossus has spent a bunch of years dancing around the dark side so much. But I don’t really think that he’s damaged at this point—it’s nothing that one good story can’t repair.

Branden

Are there any plans to address the elephant in the room regarding Magneto's origin and his age? Him being a survivor of the Holocaust is central to the character, but the further we get away from World War 2 the less it makes sense with his age. He has been deaged, reaged, killed, and resurrected a few different times at this point which addresses why he is young now, but there will come a point - if we're not there now - that he would be too old to realistically meet Xavier in his youth and even be a capable supervillain when he's first turned into a baby by Lucifer.

I don’t think this is an elephant at all, Branden, nor do I really think that there’s anything to address. At this point, as we’ve spoken about here in the past, you simply have to accept the idea that Magneto’s mutant nature gives him a much longer than typical lifespan, in the same way that Namor does. But Magneto’s past as a Holocaust-survivor is now too tightly woven into his backstory to be easily updated or removed, so the character is always going to be tethered firmly to the 1940s. Which means that he already can’t have met Xavier during his youth—that ship has long since sailed. When they met, he would have been older than he appeared to be.

Chris Sutcliffe

There have been Marvel comics in the past (and coming up) with initials after the number, like 68.DEATHS coming for Spider-Man, or .AU or .MU in the past. What's the thinking behind this method of labelling the comics? Obviously it's to denote a side story, but why wasn't something like 68.5 used, for example?

In general, Chris, the idea here is to indicate in some manner what the side story is associated with. In the case of that ASM issue, it’s connected to the Eight Deaths of Spider-Man story. So, sure, we could have used #68.1 or #68.5 or, I don’t know, #68.CHEESE, but doing it this way makes the connection just a little bit more obvious and overt.

Nathan

Why did you cancel X-Force? I'm so disappointed. I was really invested in this title. When will I see Betsy Braddock next?

Got a bunch of comments along these lines this week, and I have to say that they make me chuckle just a little bit, Nathan. I mean really, how do you think we feel? We didn’t want to cancel it—we put a lot of work into these books—we’re not ending them just to mess with you or to deprive you of the entertainment you so clearly seek! No, the only reason that we ever pull the plug on a series is that it isn’t being purchased in great enough numbers to be profitable in the way we need it to be. That isn’t the audience’s fault, but neither is it the creators’ fault nor the editors’ fault. You can do everything right and still not pull in enough of an audience—it’s a tough marketplace out there. Not everything is going to work, and especially work ad infinitum. But that doens’t mean that any of these books are a waste of time or effort. it simply means that, for whatever reason, this wasn’t the right moment for whatever the thing was. So you dust yourself off and try something else. As for Betsy, we’ll just have to see where she might turn up again in the future.

Caleido

We had some news about the Imperial event and im really excited about it. Will Jean be part of this event?

As I mentioned at the top of this section, Caleido, while we dropped just a hint of news about IMPERIAL at ComicsPro, we aren’t ready just yet to say anything more about it. But that information is coming your way shortly.

Deborah

Can you say at all how long it will be till Magneto's resurrection sickness will be dealt with - not as in, when will he get better, as I know that's too spoilery to reveal, but as in when finding a cure for RDS will really matter to the story as a whole. At the moment, so much other stuff is going on in X-Men, and no one else seems to be affected by RDS so it feels as if he;s just being left to deteriorate further without it seeming to be a priority for anyone to do anything about it. He's my favourite character and I hate to see him stuck this way, especially when he only just came back from the dead (again) at the end of Krakoa.

I grew up reading X-MEN in the Chris Claremont days, Deborah. We only first mentioned R-LDS in X-MEN #7, four issues ago. In my time, plotlines could run for years and years before they were resolved (and some of them never quite got there!) I don’t think you’re going to have to wait quite that long in this case, but it’s been like no time at all. So there’s more coming, but that plotline is only one of maybe a dozen things that Jed is juggling in the title, to say nothing bout needing to fit a story and an adventure into every issue, so it’s all going to take the time that it takes.

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Off The Wall

Back when we were actively working on the JLA/AVENGERS crossover, this was known in my editorial office as “Tom’s Page” even before I bought the original. and that’s because I was the one who insisted vociferously (though, it must be said, without any particular opposition) that the Flash should be the first DC character to pass through the multiversal barrier into the Marvel Universe as a part of that story. So once the project was completed and artist George Perez was putting the pages up for sale, it wasn’t any surprise that I bought this one. George was kind enough to give me the “friends and family discount” on it. And it’s presently framed in the main hallway, one of the first things I see every day when I emerge from my bedroom.

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On The Spinner Rack

Another turn of the Rack brings a bunch of new titles to look at, with a bit of an emphasis on FANTASTIC FOUR. At the top, two Stan Lee & Jack Kirby issues, #67 (introducing Him!, who would grow up to become Adam Warlock) and #87, the climax to a Doctor Doom story inspired by television’s The Prisoner. Below that is a random issue of SUPERGIRL from her short early 1970s run, followed by the final Alan Moore and John Toteben issue of MIRACLEMAN, a series that I absolutely loved during the 1980s and 1990s. Beneath that is a pair of CAPTAIN AMERICA issue, #120 by Stan and Gene Colan in which they set up a new status quo for Cap but Stan thinks twice and reverses it in the last two panels, and #454, the last issue of the Mark Waid and Ron Garney run before Heroes Reborn hit. Below that is a random issue of MARVEL TEAM-UP, then two issues of Matt Wagner’s GRENDEL from different points in its long and complex run, another series that I was a big fan of back in the 80s. And then finally, an issue of Martin Wagner’s HEPCATS, a series i was also very invested in during its short and aborted run.

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Behind the Curtain

BESTSELLERS was a retailer specialty magazine that serviced newsstands and candy stores—anyplace where magazines were sold, pretty much. It was designed to help meet the needs of retail outlets while allowing publishers to hawk the wonders of their products.

This particular ad for Marvel Comics ran in the July 1963 issue of BESTSELLERS, very early on in the lifetime of the new Marvel Universe. Interestingly, while it lists the entire line at this time (with X-MEN being mislisted as X-MAN), the four series that would be publishing Annuals that year were listed as retailing for 25 cents rather than the standard 12 cent cover price, and that’s the only place that FANTASTIC FOUR is listed, despite a regular 12 cent issue being displayed in the ad. And far from courting the college age audience, this ad indicates to the retail community the idea that the Marvel books were appealing to children.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Here we go again! New comics for a new week!

We make one of writer Jed MacKay’s dreams into a reality in this issue of X-MEN, as after pitching the idea a number of times over the years, he finally gets his chance to write Canada’s greatest super heroes, Alpha Flight, who guest-star in this issue. Netho Diaz does an excellent job in bringing them to life—his work grows by leaps and bounds on the regular, a reflection of the hard work he’s been putting into the series.

And speaking of guest-stars, FANTASTIC FOUR #29 has one as well, in the form of former replacement FF member She-Hulk! It’s a full-on ONE WORLD UNDER DOOM tie-in issue written by Ryan North and illustrated by Steven Cummings, and it also touches on some business hanging over from BLOOD HUNT as well.

And finally, ULTRAMAN X AVENGERS finishes up this week as well after a delay or two slowed things down. This one’s got a great confrontation between Galactus and the Land of Light and it ends with karaoke! Brought to you by Kyle Higgins, Mat Groom and Francesco Manna.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

The oversized issue of AVENGERS #27 was released on February 23, 2000 and was noteworthy for being the first issue we did in the 100 PAGE MONSTER format. I had always loved big, thick comics, and some of my earliest comic book memories revolved around DC’s old 100 PAGE SUPER-SPECTACULAR format of the early 1970s. At this time, I was doing some research into the finances of our books for another project when I came upon some data that made me realize that as long as a given series was selling at above a certain number of copies an issue, if we enlarged its size with reprint material for which we already had existing print film in hand (as opposed to needing to recolor and reseparate the material) we would ultimately wind up making a better profit margin on the book. So AVENGERS #27 was a test-case, a one-off to see whether this approach would prove to be viable. And it was, at least for a while. The thing that killed the 100 PAGE MONSTER format in the end was our switching over from old-fashioned color separations to the modern system where computer colorists would provide both full color and seps. But before that happened, there had been MONSTER issues of a half-dozen titles, many of them edited by me. In addition to the all-new lead story by Kurt Busiek and George Perez, this particular issue also reprinted an Avengers story that had been plotted by Harlan Ellison, an obscure Avengers back-up tale written by Kurt years before, and a two-parter drawn by a much younger George in which the Avengers’ line-up changed. That story incorporated material from the first Avengers roster-shift by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby because the issue had been running late—but while that reprint was maybe unwelcome back in the day, to me it was a way of increasing the diversity of material that I was offering in this issue. Of course, there were some fans who wrote in complaining, saying that they didn’t want to have to pay for reprints. But I didn’t care all that much, and didn’t think that it was such a bad thing to do an issue in this format once in a while. And the success of it bore my theory out—the MONSTER issues never caused sales to go down, and in every case helped Marvel’s bottom line more than the issues surrounding them.

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The New Warriors Chronicles

NEW WARRIORS #56 wound up being something of a transition issue for the series, though not entirely by intent. Shortly after completing work on issue #54, Richard Pace called to let me know that he’d be leaving the title. He didn’t feel in synch with Evan Skolnick or what we were planning to do, so he decided to depart. Which was a real break for me, as I knew that the time was coming when I’d need to make a choice and probably remove him from the series. This way, everybody walked away as happy as they were going to be, and of their own accord. Richard did wind up doing the cover to #56 before he left—the covers were produced ahead of the interiors, especially when a book was running as behind as we were. I was amazed to discover that the cover was inked by Mark Buckingham, something that I don’t have any particular memory of. But that had to have been a suggestion on Evan’s part, as Mark was then working on GHOST RIDER 2099 under Evan’s editorship.

Fortunately, I had the perfect replacement right to hand. Patrick (today, Patch) Zircher had been drawing issue #55 as a fill-in assignment, his first for Marvel, and I really liked the look of it. So I reached out to him and offered him the series, which he took on. Zircher was young and hungry in those days, and he wound up not missing a single issue for the rest of the run—and that included fitting in two double-sized issues along the way. What’s more, as he grew in confidence, he began to offer up his own thoughts on the characters and the storylines, becoming a valuable part of the creative team. he and Evan weren’t always 100% on the same page, but they developed a good working partnership over time.

This was the final chapter to Evan’s first three-part story, all of which had to be plotted rather quickly in order to help get the book back to something approaching a regular schedule. And it began the process of shuffling the deck on the roster of the team. In the previous month, we had brought in a number of auxiliary Warriors such as Turbo and Alex Power with the intent of making them regulars, and the end of this issue also wrote out Kymaera, though her disappearance—she’d been brainwashed by the villainous Protocol and taken off with his Soldiers of Misfortune, despite Nova’s best efforts to prevent it. This was good drama, as Nova and Kymaera had been set up as one of the key couples in the group, so this shook up a stable ecosystem in all of the right ways. Plus, neither Evan nor myself were al that wild about Kymaera’s new name nor her new costume—we had liked her as Namorita a lot better So this was also a way to start shifting those aspects of the character back in a direction that was more appealing to us, and, we hoped, to the audience. The three-parter also positioned Nova as a driving force behind this iteration of the team, something that had been a key part of Evan’s pitch for the book.

Unfortunately, I was just about to foul all of that up for Evan.

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Monofocus

Like pretty mush everybody else in America, I tuned in this past week for the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 50th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL. What’s more, I wound up watching the show live rather than on delay, which is somewhat unprecedented in these times, at least for me. I haven’t watched SNL at all pretty much in twenty-five of those years, and the last time I had seen a full episode was when I went to see one in person back in 2009 (an experience which I wrote about here). But I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of SNL, the fact that the team creates, crafts and mounts an entire 90 minute live sketch comedy show week in and week out. It sounds both like utter madness and an awful lot of fun. All of the reviews of the Special were pretty much spot-on; like SNL itself, it was an uneven affair, and a certain amount of your ability to enjoy different portions depended upon when you were first watching the series and which cast was “yours”. Eddie Murphy was a stand-out, as sharp doing this sort of work as he’s ever been, and Adam Sandler’s anniversary song was surprisingly touching. I also really liked the choice to end on one of the original cast’s best bits, the filmed piece “Don’t Look Back in Anger” starring John Belushi as the last surviving SNL player—a choice that time has lent far greater bite. So I found it all a nostalgic experience, though not one that’ll have me tuning in to the show again this week.

I’ve also started watching HOW DISNEY BUILT AMERICA on Hulu, which was originally produced for the History Channel. It’s a fictionalized and somewhat sanitized recounting of how the Walt Disney company became such a powerhouse in entertainment, done by the same production team that had previously made THE TOYS THAT MADE US and other similar documentary shows. There isn’t a whole lot here that’s new to me—I’ve read a number of Disney biographies over the years, both that held the man in high regard and those that showed him warts-and-all. But it’s a fine and polished production and very easy to watch, so I imagine that I’ll stick with it to the end.

And then tonight, at the recommendation of writer Karl Kesel, I checked out the first episode of the Netflix comedy NOBODY WANTS THIS and found it to be pretty appealing. It stars Kristen Bell as a vaguely-Eleanor Shellstrop-esque podcaster with perpetually terrible dating instincts who winds up in a romantic relationship with Adam Brody as a young Rabbi. And one episode in, it’s charming an delightful. It also helps that each episode is only a half-hour in length, which makes them easy to consume. And the comedy is all about character, rather than cracking one-liners constantly. Add in a low-key soundtrack and some lovely emotional work, and this could be a solid contender. I understand that it’s been around for awhile now (Netflix is actively promoting that the second season is on its way) but it’s new to me. So far, so good.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

This week, I wrote about TWENTY CHILDREN'S SHOWS THAT MADE AN IMPACT ON ME.

Five years ago, I reposted this piece about UNSTABLE MOLECULES #1

And ten years ago, I wrote about this Great Cover. That cover copy is brilliant.

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Right! So here’s a question that maybe people can have a good time pondering in the questions for next week. At ComicsPro, it was announced that Marvel and DC will be doing crossover projects, one each. Now, our plans are already in place, but I’m curious. If you had to do only one crossover between a Marvel property and a DC property, what would it be? And to make it interesting, let’s make it a ground rule that any previously-done combination, like JLA/AVENGERS or SPIDER-MAN/BATMAN, isn’t available. So what’s the best Marvel/DC crossover that’s never been done?

See you next time! Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B