#178: Full Frontal

So this week’s adventure in public transportation has resulted in me being a little bit laid up for the past couple of days. On Tuesday night, my regular commuter train coming home experienced mechanical difficulties and was taken out of service mid-run. Accordingly, after a short wait, another train was brought in alongside and the passengers, myself included, had to transfer from one to the next. Now, this wasn’t done at a station, but rather in just a stretch of track in-between stops. So right away, the first problem was that the doorway from which we had to step down was a good four feet off the ground. What’s more, that ground was on an incline, and covered in loose cobblestones. So when i made the drop from the frame to the ground, my foot hit the cobblestones and slid. And then, like stubbing a toe, I hit the bottom and my whole leg jammed into itself. I was able to get into the other train with a bit of help, but my leg has been stiff and messed up ever since. Hopefully taking a few days off from using it will give it the chance to heal up. It hasn’t hurt per se, but it’s been all sort of uncomfortable, and it doesn’t want to bend properly or support a whole lot of weight.

But enough about me. I’ve accumulated a couple of video goodies to share with you. The first is an episode of the popular game show I’ve Got A Secret, hosted by the great Steve Allen. On this particular episode from March 22, 1966, one of the participants is actor Bob Holliday, who at that time was starring in the Broadway production of the musical It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, it’s Superman. Bob shows up here in full Superman attire, and he teaches Allen how to fly by using the wire rig that was employed for the show. You can see that Holliday is so adept at it by this point that he strikes Superman poses naturally, whereas Allen flails around uncontrollably. There isn’t any known footage of the production itself, so this is about as close as it’s possible to get to seeing what the short-lived show looked like. The video is at this link

The second link I’ve got for you is just a bit of fun. It links to video of a band performing rearrangements of every tune on the Dire Straits album Brothers In Arms as though they had been recorded in the 1950s or 1960s. And it’s a hoot. It’s only one of a number of albums this unnamed group has done this with—you can find other examples at their channel. But for Brothers, you can find it at this link

And that’ll set us up to move into questions and answers. A lot of questions this week revolving around PHOENIX, in particular a bunch coming from the same small number of correspondents. So let me reiterate once again that I’m not going to be spoiling any upcoming events in this Newsletter. I’ll talk about things that have already come out mostly, but if you’re asking about what the future holds, you’re simply going to need to hang on and experience it for yourselves. That’s not what this feature is here to provide. Okay? So with that said, let’s see what questions we maybe can try to answer:

STILES

how did you decide you wanted to bring Cavan Scott on board for Age of Revelation? Or rather, how did you decide that he was the right person to write a title focused on Emma Frost and Tony Stark? I love Cavan's work, but he hasn't worked much at Marvel, right? His legacy in Star Wars is magnificent, though. I'm very excited to see him work on my favorite character, especially knowing his exceptional work with strong, independent women.

Also, how did you decide that you wanted to give Emma and Tony a title? And I'm not talking about the public's mixed reactions to the couple. You were editor of Duggan's Invincible Iron Man, right? If I'm not mistaken, you once said that the end of their marriage was designed to give more freedom to the future writers of both characters. What made you want to put these two characters back together? Are you a fan of them as a couple?

The truth here is that I didn’t, STILES. IRON & FROST is being put together by editor Danny Khazem, and he’s the one who both pitched the concept for the series and who called upon Cavan to write it. All I did was to okay it and to go over the scripts to make sure they fell in line with the overall AGE OF REVELATION world and backstory. Also, i wasn’t the editor of Gerry Duggan’s run on INVINCIBLE IRON MAN either, that was Darren Shan, who works in my area. So again there, i cleared what they wanted to do, but I didn’t have any major part of what those books became.

James Pearson

I read X-Men comics because I love the X-Men characters and the ongoing story that has been told over the decades and these alternate timeline stories always feel like that is being put on hold for a few months, during which no tales will be told with those characters I love, and instead a glorified "What if ...?" story will be told (which can be fun to a point, but are inherently gimicky, disposable and often grim-dark - perfect for single issues, less so for months long, series-wide events) featuring self-consciously very different and warped versions of those characters. I think Russell T Davies once wrote in his book The Writers Tale about hating dream sequences, because they are empty filler and dramatic dead weight with no lasting consequences, and that sums up how I feel about parallel timelines.

Well, James, I can tell you with a great degree of certainty that the events of AGE OF REVELATION are going to be of import to what happens in the X-Men line as we head into 2026. But at the end of the day, as it always is, the choice is entirely yours as to what you want to follow or skip.

Emmanuel Cabahug

MARVEL published over the years that Jean Grey and Phoenix are one but then go around and give it Binary. Even you claim that Jean and Phoenix are one. But giving Binary the Phoenix takes Jean Grey out of the equation. I am not please with this Age of Revelation. I think it is rebranding the Age of Apocalypse but with Doug at the helm. I do not believe many Jean Grey fans are happy that you are giving Phoenix to Binary.

You really went to town this past week in the comments section, Emmanuel, so I’ve really only got a broad comment to make back to you on this. And that is that it’s always best to judge these things based on the actual work itself, and not whatever you’re afraid that the work may be. You may still not like it, but at least then you’ll be reacting to what was actually done, rather than what you were afraid of. Reading comics is meant to be for enjoyment, not anxiety. And given that Jean Grey fans have gone decades with Jean being dead and out of the books, I take their unhappiness with a grain of salt. Which is to say, I appreciate that you love the character. But my responsibility extends to all of the characters, not just any one.

Andrew Albrecht

I’m checking out 4/5 of the imperial one shots, (and I could easily be convinced to check out the 5th if something about the lineup catches my eye). Were these one shots designed to be a sneak peek into the new cosmic line?

Also how much of the plot/setup was based out of the event and how much was based on the future? Did someone come in with an idea for a new series after hearing about parts of imperial, or was it someone wanting a new story and then finding a way it could be worked into the new event? Kind of curious about the process behind how the one shots came about, I remember really enjoying the blood hunt one shots

On those IMPERIAL WAR one-shots, Andrew, Jonathan Hickman came up with the broad strokes of the stories that will be featured in them, as well as the high concepts for the eventual projects that will spin out of IMPERIAL. So yes, they’ll give you some idea of what you might expect in any later series, but it’s not entirely as 1:1 as that.

Domixt

all this talk about Heroes Reborn, what are your thoughts on Jim Lee's Fantastic Four? I was solely an X-Men reader until Heroes Reborn, when I started buying FF and loved it. I mean I was 14 and very much the target audience. I now think of that short run as an pre-2000 Ultimate version of FF, Black Panther and the Inhumans. Have you ever gone back to it?

As a reader, Domixt, I thought Jim’s FANTASTIC FOUR looked good for the most part but was pretty dry and tepid. As it was designed to be, it was updated versions of stories that had already been told, and I had already experienced the earlier versions of those stories. So it wasn’t for me. But I’m glad that you enjoyed it.

Marc Guggenheim

“Lookwell” is the most genius pilot that never went to series. Apparently, the network (CBS, I believe) was going to pick it up — but only if they dumped Adam West. Conan was, like, “I really don’t think you guys understand the show…”

I’ve recently learned, Marc, that assorted people have approached Robert Smigel over the years about doing a Lookwell movie starring Nicolas Cage. Which is both excellent casting for that role but ultimately wouldn’t quite work the same way. That entire concept is Adam West into its DNA.

Paul from ASM

NYCC is in roughly 2 months. I saw that there is a X-Men panel and I was wondering if we should expect any huge announcements or if we should keep our expectations in check?

What sort of huge announcements do you have in mind, Paul? Either way, as you say, there will be an X-Men panel there where we’ll show you all some upcoming stuff.

Venus

Do you think there's anything to the idea that creatives who are dispassionate or ambivalent to a series make for the best writers? Since they're less wedded to the classic stories of the series and less inclined to do homages?

I tend to think the opposite, Venus. I tend to not want people working on the books that I manage for whom it’s just a job, a paycheck, without some greater feeling toward the material that they are producing. I don’t think passion is intrinsically a bad thing, for all that it might occasionally lead people to making bad choices.

Okwaraji

First off, what would be your own personal definition of "original"?

And also, from the editor's chair, when you see a book with a strong hook that isn't connecting with readers, how do you differentiate between a flawed concept the audience is rejecting versus a "missed potential" situation where the execution (creative voice, plot decisions, pacing, etc.) is the actual issue?

And just how exactly does that diagnosis inform your strategy for a book like say, Exceptional, which CLEARLY has a passionate core audience (both online and those currently buying it) for its themes but faces the challenge of growing that into a commercially successful readership (after looking at its current, not-exactly-the-best sales numbers and position in the overall market)?

I can’t help but feel as though this all sounds like a trap, Okwaraji. But originality is pretty simple: it’s doing something new even with familiar pieces. And I mostly don’t tend to blame the concept when a particular series fails to connect with an audience, assuming that I was the one who put it out in the first place. In other situations, I may look at some title and diagnose it as having a flawed concept, but that’s regardless of its success or failure in the marketplace. And I think that I measure the success of a title or a concept differently than you might. You seem to be indicating that you feel EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN is a failure of some sort, but I don’t really see it that way. More readers would always be nice, sure, but that isn’t the only metric by which I judge the effectiveness of a given series. But there are any number of ways we might try to positively affect the fortunes of such a title, some of which we’ve implemented already.

Robert Furey

are there ever times where generating new material for the wider organization has become the priority over sales and has that ever been an issue creatively?

Not really, no, Robert. Occasionally there have been times when the success of some aspect of some other portion of the organization has inspired a change of direction among what we’re doing. But success for one is success for all, so I’m not even quite sure what “generating new material for the wider organization being the priority over sales” would even look like. At the end of the day, as a publishing entity, we need to make our numbers in order to remain profitable and functional. Nothing ever really supersedes that.

Craig Byrne

If ever revisiting Avengers history to the period where Conan was part of the team, how would that be handled? Would it be mostly ignored, or could, say, Conan be replaced by Arkon in that history? It was such a short period of time I understand if it's nothing that's really going to come up.

I think the essence of what you’re asking here is whether we could show Conan in a flashback to some earlier story that he was a part of, yes, Craig? And the answer is no. If we no longer have the rights, we couldn’t thereafter depict the characters in question. This has impacted on some of our collections over the years, where issues that guest-starred characters for whom Marvel no longer held the rights couldn’t be reprinted. I suppose we could choose to replace Conan with Arkon or whomever, but it would be simpler just to avoid the question entirely.

Ben Morse

Tom, off the strength of your Imperial cover work, how much would you charge for a full body Nova sketch?

If you want to go ahead and make an appropriate donation to the Hero Initiative, Ben, I’d be happy to do one for you.

Lee

would you do a signing at new york comic con this year??

Well, I’ll be at NYCC this year, Lee, at least for some of the time. And if somebody approached me with something to sign, I’d likely sign it unless there were some mitigating circumstances (like being in the bathroom or something.) But I don’t think there’ll be any manner of organized signing that I’d be a part of. Relatively few people are looking for signatures from editors.

Jeff Ryan

How soon can Marvel tell is a new title is a hit or not? (I'm assuming it's before the release date of issue #1.) Is it preorders for the first issue? Actual LCS sales? The decline/increase of how many second issues are ordered? And if it's a hit, when does the talk with the creative team begin about continuing on for issue 6 and beyond?

In general, Jeff, if you’re talking about something for which we’ve only committed to doing five issues but the hope is for it to go on and do more, you’d need to see orders up through at least issue #3 before you’d want to commit more resources to it.

JK 2011

Longtime listener, first-time caller. I've always wondered how comic creators in a shared universe keep track of which characters know -- or at least have met -- each other. Is there a database or spreadsheet with that info? Or is it just up to the editors and writers to know the history? I'm just thinking that if you write a story where, say, Moon Knight and Rocket Raccoon share a scene, you wouldn't want their dialogue to be written as if they are meeting each other for the first time if they'd already met in 1976 or something like that. It's probably not a problem for DC because they reboot the universe every 3rd Tuesday of the month, but with 60+ years of Marvel's history, that's gotta be a big deal to keep track

Not as big as you might think, JK, given that the Marvel heroes have been meeting one another for over 65 years already, which means that most of the prominent characters have likely run into one another by this point. But really, this is down to the memories of the editors and creators involved. Plus, there’s a whole searchable Internet right here where such information can typically be tracked down swiftly. For example, a quick search seems to indicate that Moon Knight and Rocket Raccoon have not yet encountered one another, apart from possibly both being in the background of some larger crossover somewhere together.

Plymouth

Tom, what the people really want, is Adam X the X-Treme. Don't you know that for the X-Men to be cool again, they need the most totally radical and gnarly mutant to ever be? Give the readers what they yearn for: Farah Fawcett waves and that X-Treme edge X-Men has been missing.

Fabian Nicieza, is that you?

Zenon Silva

Will Age of Revelation have a main title, or are all titles important?

Of course all the titles are important, Zenon. But if you’re asking if there’ll be like an event spine series, no, there will not. There is the kickoff book: X-MEN: AGE OF REVELATION OVERTURE, but then the story gets carried forward across all of the assorted titles in the line.

Andrew Albrecht

The planet she hulk one shot preview came out this week and one particular panel/thought box caught my eye.

Jen mentions saving time to knock Titania around on weekends. Is this meant to be a reference to

A. Titania being commonly known as her street level nemesis?

B. Their friendly fight club in her last series?

C. Kind of a catch all reference that fits both scenarios?

I think you can choose the letter you like in this case, Andrew.

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Off The Wall

Pepe Larraz gave me this Captain America drawing when we met up at a Chicago convention after having finished up the weekly-released AVENGERS: NO SURRENDER project. Pepe was one of the central artists on that project, and he, myself, Mark Waid and Jim Zub all went out to dinner on the first night of the show to celebrate having gotten all sixteen issues of the series out on time without a miss.

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Misspent Youth

ATTACK FORCE was the first of my home-grown comics where I collaborated with another person, in this case my new friend Israel Litwack. We met in seventh grade when it caught my attention that he was working on his own comic before a mutual class that we were in got started. It’s hard to believe from the above example, but at the time, I was the better artist, whereas he was the better writer, and so we decided to pool our efforts with the goal of ultimately breaking into the business. We never quite managed that, but we did wind up printing a bunch of xeroxed versions of this full 20-page issue and selling them for a quarter to other kids in our class. One of the reasons the cover above feels a bit haphazard to me is that Litwack was forced to “ink” it in order to make the linework dark enough to reproduce on the copiers of that period.) The local comic shop wound up carrying a few copies as well, since we were on very familiar terms with the owners, hanging around there so often. At my insistence, we produced ATTACK FORCE Marvel-style, which meant that Litwack came up with the basic idea of the five characters—Ion, N-Girl, The Mercenary, Dagger and Nightwing—and wrote a single page synopsis of the story for me to work from. I drew the 20 pages from that, and then Israel produced the final dialogue and copy to the artwork. But we weren’t entirely on the same wavelength. He was trying to build a group of more grounded and ground-level heroes of the sort that he often preferred, whereas I was looking to do a Fantastic Four or Avengers, and so steered the visuals in that direction. Nevertheless, we produced four-and-a-half issues together, and plotted out 49, before we moved on to other subjects.

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I Buy Crap

Well, in this case it wasn’t something that I bought so much as something that I was gifted. A week or so back, I received a package from John Voulieris, who signs his questions JV in the comments section. John had taken a trip to Greece, and remembering my fondness for overseas reprints of classic Marvel stories, he picked up a couple for me, which was nice of him, an issue of THOR and an issue of IRON MAN, both of which reprint several consecutive stories from the 1960s. John also included a 1984 French-Canadian issue of X-MEN in his package, which reprinted not only a vintage Claremont/Byrne issue but also issues of NOVA and DEFENDERS, as well as a local strip DELTA SQUADRON. This was a pretty cool thing to have show up, so thanks, JV!

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Behind the Curtain

What we’ve got below is a memo from 1975 written by Stan Lee to then-editor Len Wein giving him some feedback on the cover to GIANT-SIZE MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION #1 reproduced below.

As you can see, Len did have Goliath’s face changed a bit, and he did add a burst where Stan suggested, although he didn’t go ahead with the Avengers Assemble balloon that had been suggested. Stan used to mess around with covers in this manner, often to little actual good; it’s unlikely that Goliath’s changed expression got any more readers to part with their fifty cents for this issue. By that same token, the ideas that Stan puts forward here are absolutely legitimate.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Here they come! Get your coins and bills ready!

With Cyclops cooling his heels in lock-up, X-MEN #21 features the rematch between the new Upstarts and the X-Men led by Magik. It’s a fun action brawl with some portents for the future and it’s coming your way from Jed MacKay and Netho Diaz.

And the final issue of FANTASTIC FOUR FANFARE comes out this week, with another trio of stories about the cosmic-powered foursome with a special emphasis on Sue this time. In JMS and Cafu’s opener, the Invisible Woman comes to the aid of a stricken Mole Man, Greg Weisman and Mark Bagley go back to the days just after Reed and Sue announced her pregnancy, and Daniel Warren Johnson and Ty Cannon deliver an absolutely bonkers tag-team match that pits the FF against a barrel of their worst enemies.

But this is really Associate Editor Annalise Bissa’s week, as she has no fewer than three releases hitting the racks. The first one is IMPERIAL WAR: PLANET SHE_HULK #1, which shows what’s been happening on New Sakaar since the Hulk left his cousin in charge of the place. Stephanie Phillips and Emilio Laiso bring the thunder.

On another front, in IMPERIAL WAR: BLACK PANTHER #1, T’Challa finds himself on the receiving end of a maddened Worldbreaker Hulk and Amadeus Cho, all while trying to escape a failing starship. it’s by Victor LaValle and Cafu.

And finally, everybody’s favorite and least-favorite comic releases another issue as PHOENIX #14 gets down to the nitty-gritty of Sara Grey’s resurrection and pits Phoenix against the great powers of the cosmos. Stephanie Phillips and Roi Mercado are behind this one.

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A Comic Book On Sale 75 Years Ago Today, August 24, 1950

Marvel Boy was the first Marvel super hero of the Atomic age, that period that spanned the gap from the close-out of the Golden Age proper and the advent of the dawning Silver Age. He arrive fully formed in the pages of MARVEL BOY #1, with artwork provided by the great Russ Heath. Nobody is quite sure after all this time who wrote this first issue, but whoever did it was clearly plugged into the growing interest in science fiction and UFO culture. Marvel Boy was Bob Grayson, who had been rocketed away to the distant planet Uranus by his scientist father on the eve of World War II. He’s sent back to Earth on a mission of peace, armed with a pair of bracelets that let him create intense flashes of light as well as a perfectly-curated physique and telepathic abilities. In effect, he was a bit of a hybrid between a classic super hero and a space hero. But the timing wasn’t quite right, and his series only lasted for two issues, at which point the book transitioned into ASTONISHING, a suspense/horror title. Marvel Boy’s adventures continued to appear in ASTONISHING #3-6, but he lost the cover slot after #5 and vanished without comment by #7. Of course, Roy Thomas liked this feature when it first came out, and he not only reprinted a number of Marvel Boy’s stories in random issues of MARVEL TALES as filler material, but he also brought the character back in the Marvel Age in FANTASTIC FOUR #164-165, by which point he’d become a foe for the FF to battle. More proof, if any was needed, that Marvel didn’t throw anything away over the years. In any event, I wrote about this issue at length on my blog here, and I covered the first half of Marvel Boy’s return as the villainous Crusader here.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

DAMAGE CONTROL #1 came out on August 24, 2022 and represented the culmination of a years-long effort, one spearheaded in part by Marvel staffer George Beliard. I’m not entirely certain how George came to make contact with Adam F. Goldberg, the television writer and producer who was behind, among other things, the popular comedy series THE GOLDBERGS. But he did. At a certain point, Goldberg was trying to get a DAMAGE CONTROL television series off the ground, and so George suggested that he might be a good person to turn to for one of the single page stories that would make up MARVEL COMICS #1000, our big 80th Anniversary birthday project. Adam was indeed up for it, and wound up doing a page for that project with his buddy writer Hans Rodionoff, whose strange claim to fame was that he’d written the largely-forgotten MAN-THING television movie. Having done that single page, both Adam and Hans were interested in doing more with the concept, an idea they’d thought about a whole lot due to the time spent developing it as a TV project. But the process of getting the comic book made hit an unexpected slowdown when the pandemic hit, causing us to go pencils down on pretty much everything. Eventually, though, I was able to get the book restarted, and the series was completed—though I only wound up editing the first two issues, thereafter handing it off to editor Wil Moss to complete. In part due to the break in production, artist Will Robson wound up only drawing the first two issues, which saw a new and hapless young intern join the Damage Control team, bouncing from one division to another as he caused chaos to break out wherever he landed. It was pretty fun. For this first issue, I also reached out to Charlotte Fullerton-McDuffie, the widow of DAMAGE CONTROL creator Dwayne McDuffie and a writer in her own right. It felt like the proper karma to commission her to do a story in this first issue as well—kind of like getting Dwayne’s blessing. Jay Fosgitt did some very fun art for that story. This DAMAGE CONTROL issue also featured one of the last covers produced by my late friend Carlos Pacheco. I had worked with Carlos many times over the years, but wasn’t aware of exactly how ill he was. If I’d known that these would be the final covers he’d ever produce, I might have assigned him something more noteworthy to draw. But in a way, these were the perfect covers for him to execute, representing the whole of the Marvel Universe as well as acknowledging that it was inexorably a very silly place. Nothing much more to add hear apart from the fact that I thought Goldberg’s television series MUPPET MAYHEM was the best Muppet project produced since the passing of Jim Henson, and I was bitterly disappointed that it didn’t get to run for another season.

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The New Warriors Chronicles

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the cover to NEW WARRIORS #74 was the fact that we were able to do it at all. I chalk that up to this being the second-to-last issue of the series, and EIC Bob Harras therefore not caring what sort of an impact it might have on sales. But artist Patrick Zircher and I both liked the covers that Carmine Infantino had done for DC during the 1960s in which he worked the logo of the title into the composition in the manner of Will Eisner. Patrick wanted to try something like that here, and so I let him. The color ended up a little bit dark (though not really as dark as this reproduction would have you believe) but it worked pretty well in terms of drawing the eye and demanding attention.

Looking back at it, this issue is jam-packed with developments as writer Evan Skolnick attempts to juggle the wrap-ups to any number of running subplots before time runs out on the series. So in addition to advancing the central threat of the Dire Wraith-Queen Volx now possessing the Torpedo armor, which had been created as an answer to the Wraiths’ eternal enemies the Spaceknights, we also see Night Thrasher and Rage rescue Namorita from Protocol and his Soldiers of Misfortune, and bring in Rich Rider’s replacement as Nova, Garthaan Saal as a player by the story’s end. Consequently, this issue is crammed in the visuals department, with panel gutters all but disappearing and more and more story is packed in. By the end of it, the threat is that Volx is planning on using a satellite-sized version of Forge’s neutralizer technology (which was base din part on ROM’s neutralizer) to depower all of the heroes on Earth, leaving the door open to a full scale Dire Wraith invasion. And that’s the note that we went into #75 and the big wrap-up on.

I think I maybe ought to mention some of what we were going to do had our series not ended with #75, as this storyline would have been at least slightly different. In our original conception, we were going to bring in some aspect of the Spaceknights themselves (though not ROM, as Marvel no longer had the rights to the character.) And in a moment of crisis, Rich Rider was going to give up his humanity to bond with a suit of spaceknight armor, becoming a spaceknight himself in order to defeat Volx. The idea, after a year or so of Rich feeling unworthy because he didn’t have his lost Nova powers, was to flip the script and give him all the powers that he coveted, but to take away from him the regular humanity that he took for granted. Eventually, of course, we’d get Rich back as Nova at some point, but for the next cycle of stories at least, he’d be a spaceknight. I don’t really if we ever had a name for him in that form yet, as we didn’t ever get to the point of designing him as that character. Possibly Evan will remember.

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Monofocus

I tell you, I had seen a mention of a full-frontal orgy being a thing that happened in the opening episode of PEACEMAKER season two, but I just thought it was hyperbole. But no, that happened, and it was as shocking and uncomfortable as you might expect—especially in a show that’s been advertised as following up directly on the more general audience SUPERMAN film. Seriously, I’m not sure what anybody was thinking here, the sequence felt gratuitous to me, something that got done to push the envelope solely for the sake of envelope-pushing. There were certainly ways you might have shot such a sequence that wouldn’t have been anywhere near as shocking. My kids are all grown now, and still my instinctive reaction to seeing it on screen was to be thankful that I was alone when i was watching the episode. And it wasn’t entirely enough to spoil the rest of the episode, which I thought was a very strong outing that set up the conflicts for the new season and carried some unexpected emotional weight to them. But it definitely dominated the conversation about that episode, and not in a good way, I think. Still, if somebody was trying to prove that the new DCU would go to places that the MCU never would, case closed. Really, who thought that was a good idea?

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I wrote about the second Starman Story.

Five years ago, I wrote about Five More Best Forgotten Marvel Story Developments

And ten years ago, I spotlighted this great cover

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That’s going to do us for another of these, thanks. but as always, we’ll be back next time yadda yadda. Until then, just say no to full frontal orgy invitations, and I’ll see you back here in a week.

Hat’s All, Folks!

Tom B