#181: Stop
All right, the big story this week is that I’m going to be taking this feature on hiatus for a while. This shouldn’t be any big surprise to those who have been paying attention for the last month or so. I always told myself that this wasn’t a job and that I’d quit or pull back if it stopped being fun. But lately, the work of putting these pieces together has felt more and more like work and the enjoyment quotient has gone way down. So I think it’s time to step away for a bit and recharge the batteries and see what i might want to play around with next.
I’m sure that I’ll continue to post new material here from time to time, but it won’t be on a weekly basis and I have no set plan for when I might pick things up again. So thanks to everybody for their attention and support these couple of years, in particular the folks who pledged a total of $2214.00 yearly towards keeping this column active.
So I’m going to do this one final Newsletter for the moment, if only because I already had it all set up as I typically do. It might be more stripped down than usual, we’ll see how it goes.
I was told recently that the subtext of a lot of my answers in this Q & A section is that the questioner is an idiot. Which wasn’t ever my intent, so I apologize if my answers have been coming across that way. I try to answer the assorted questions put to me directly and succinctly, but directly can sometimes feel like brusquely, and succinctly can sometimes come across like dismissively, i suppose. I’d like to hope that people who’ve been reading this feature for a bit of time kind of understand who I am. Either way, I’m not looking to make any questioner feel bad, I’m happy that you all are around.
Patrick Brower
I have 2 things for you based off of this week's topics.
First up, here's a fun look at different inkers on the same piece: https://www.comicartfans.com/galleryroom.asp?gsub=80971
It's Wolverine #62 with a penciled cover by Ron Garney. The man who bought it, Ron S., had me scan it so he could comission other inkers to do their version of it (and he also let me have a go as I inked a little bit in the industry in the early 2000's). Aside from me, there are some heavy hitters in his inkers line-up!
Also, this is an addition to your brother's coffee-themed playlist. It's a little aggressive, but his playlist is pretty diverse, so I thought I'd point it out. "Cupajoe" by Anthrax.
Patrick Brower/Challengers Comics in Chicago
Appreciate you sharing both of these, Patrick!
Kelly Brown
I’m curious how is it decided when to give a character a new costume is it artists discretion, editor or a mixture of both? And what might be some reasons why some characters get new looks consistently vs some characters that tend to get only variations on the same few costumes?
It’s a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B, Kelly. A costume change may be something that an editor requests or something that the creators themselves want to do. And most often, it’s about differentiating one story and set of circumstances from another. Changing a character’s look is a way to get people to take a second look at what might be going on. On the other hand, most of the classic costumes tend to exert a very strong magnetic pull, so there’s a tendency to shift back towards them over time, in general if not every single costume line. The look of, say, Spider-Man is iconic and recognized globally, so it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to alter it too much on a long-term basis.
Brandon Giles
if a creator who’s done good work in the past writes something that’s just bad, how do you figure out if they’ve lost their touch or if it’s a one time aberration? There have been books by storied creators that have been so horrible that if I were an editor at the big two I’d have them on my Do Not Call list, no matter how good some of their previous work was. In your view, does the past good work or the present bad work weigh more?
I think this is a judgment call, Brandon. And five different editors would give you five different responses to the material and the situation. Speaking just for me, I try never to call in somebody who I don’t think can do the job, so if I have any strong misgivings about a particular creator’s ability to perform—whether we’re talking about a long-established pro or a relative newcomer—I tend to cast my net elsewhere. But there’s also the question of individual taste, plus everybody has creators whose work means a lot to them personally. So there are instances when what reads as “horrible” to you might be acceptable to the person who commissioned the work. Or vice versa.
Stephen
I’m curious about your thoughts on Marvel having some books on Webtoons now. It seems like a way to expand the readership quite a bit. Personally I hadn’t read the ASM run that’s on there, but judging by comments on the app, it wasn’t well received at the time, however the books had over a million views on Webtoons at the time I read the first part, which seems like a pretty large number of readers who probably don’t have the same biases as the more hardcore fans. Are there other runs you could see placing over that you think would benefit from a newer readership?
As I said a couple of weeks back when we talked about this venture a little bit, Stephen, I think it’s a really cool thing—something that will potentially expose our material to a huge audience that doesn’t typically engage with it. Too early to say how successful it will be, but the potential is certainly there.
J. Kevin Carrier
I don't quite get the gag about John Byrne causing comics prices to go up -- do you recall what that was a reference to?
At the time, Kevin, back issues featuring John’s work, in particular on UNCANNY X-MEN, carried a much higher price tag than other contemporary back issues. Simple as that.
David Brazier
I know you love the FF but what did you think when you received Hickman’s pitch and what were your favorite elements? Reading it myself for a second time it really is a work of art and so nuanced, serving the history of the characters and yet breaking new ground. So many beautiful moments.
I’m glad you liked it, David. I liked it too, which is why I went ahead with it. But when Jonathan and I first spoke about it, it was simply another pitch for the series, one of many that I’ve worked on over the years. And in all of those cases, you hope for the best as you set out, and then the chips fall where they may depending on how well the material is executed.
Emmanuel Cabahug
The letter section in the recent X-Men # 21 mention about Cyclops solo serries which I had brought up before. In the letter, one of your staff wrote, "It's been months, Riley, and fans are still talking about X-Men # 10. Seems like we hit that one right, doesn't it? Anyways, you might get your wish for a solo Cyclops project in the coming year. "
I would like to know the time table when Cyclops or any other unannounced X-title coming out in 2026, including if Jean Grey will have an issue in 2026. I'm not asking for spoilers just future issues that fans want to know.
There’s only one answer that I can give you to this question, Emmanuel, and it’s sadly going to leave you feeling unfulfilled I fear: the future. Stuff will be announced when it’s ready to be announced. But I appreciate your hunger to know more.
James Rhoads
In the early 90s, Marvel was publishing 3 different anthology titles. Marvel Fanfare, Marvel Comics Presents, and Marvel Super-Heroes. Were the titles distinct enough justify having each or was there a glut of inventory stories that Marvel wanted to clear out?
Spider-Man Team Up would make a good Chronicles feature. 7 issues with different creative teams for each issue. I'm sure you have plenty of stories from that time.
Those books were all a bit different, James, so yes, there were different reasons for doing them. MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS Was a biweekly and was seen as a way to get readers coming into comic stores on a more regular basis to keep up with the stories and the releases. MARVEL FANFARE was created as a place to burn off unusable inventory, but typically inventory of a certain level of quality, typically produced by more recognized creators. And those MARVEL SUPER-HEROES Specials didn’t start coming out until MARVEL FANFARE had just about run its course, and they had the same general mission: to use up inventory that was still on the books. In the case of MSH, it tended to primarily use material that was considered sub-standard in some way, typically because it was either written or drawn by newcomers. So it didn’t carry the same prestige flavor of FANFARE.
JV
what were your thoughts on that era of Superman (triangle era leading to the Death and Rebirth events)? Back then and looking back now.
I liked the triangle era pretty well, JV, all the way through the return of Superman at least. That’s a tough thing to do (and not wind up with certain creators only writing Part Twos) and editor Mike Carlin and his assorted creative teams crafted a methodology that kept the quality at a strong level and made all of those titles feel essential.
Felipe Visentin
I was wondering if the Red Band titles will ever be available on digital. Obviously, the singles are only physical since that’s part of the gimmick, but what about the trades? Could those be available on digital?
You can never be sure what will happen in the future, Felipe, but at the moment, we don’t have any plans to make the Red Band books available on digital.
Dave O’Neill
this weeks there's been death threats online towards a artist because he drew a cover. Please, please speak out on fan entitlement and this belief amongst certain fans that characters only exist to be attached to each other forever.
I can’t imagine that anybody who’s been issuing death threats is going to stop doing so just because I admonish them, Dave. But obviously, death threats are unacceptable in all instances—especially when we’re talking about comic books. There isn’t a comic book on the face of the planet that’s worth a human life. People can stump for the character developments they want (or don’t want) without needing to escalate to that level. Especially in these times, it’s more important that ever to engage with one another civilly.
Ben Forte
1. I was curious about how much information has to be in a solicitation? I've also seen previous art from solicitation change but how malleable can it be? What's the sparsest a solicitation can be? Personally, I wouldn't mind if a solicitation for a book didn't have art or a description just whether it's tie in and the creative team.
2. What interesting things have been done with covers over the years? I was thinking about the cover stories in One Piece and how they can give a look into characters from previous story arcs and what they're doing now. Would that kind of thing be possible in American comics?
There isn’t specifically any set length that a solicitation needs to be, Ben, so that comes down to the creative team and the editor and how much they think they need to say in order to hook readers and sell the book. And there is a school of thought that suggests that less is more. That said, when books are struggling to connect with an audience, that’s also a hell of a gamble to take, and one that can wipe a book out in an instance if it doesn’t work. So pretty much everybody shows off the best that they can muster as a result.
In terms of covers, again, there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for this, so it’s whatever the editor and creators can come up with to represent the contents and make that particular issue look cool and interesting.
Off The Wall
What you see here is a page from FANTASTIC FOUR #62, the third issue in the run by Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo and Karl Kesel. It’s from before the point where Ringo started electronically sending his pages to Karl to ink digitally, meaning that Karl would print them out in non-repro blue on another board, and there’d be two originals for each page. This was the first page that Karl gifted me as we were working on that run all those years ago.
Misspent Youth
This story has a bit of an interesting history to it. It was originally penciled by me around 1985, working in conjunction with my friend Israel Litwack, who was meant to write it. This was another strip that we were preparing to submit to Comico, which was a going concern by this point. and as you can see, I’d been deep-diving into anime by this point, having discovered STAR BLAZERS around 1982. So this space opera was definitely drawing from those influences. The strip was all penciled, but it never got scripted, lettered or inked, and so it sat in a portfolio for a few years. At that point, rediscovering it, I believe I gave it to my collaborator Mike Kanterovich as something of a challenge—script this, even though there is no plot. So the final strip has something of a WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY flavor to it, as Mike built an unrelated backstory about kids on a totalitarian world playing hooky from school. It was lettered and inked in 1987 and ran in a few different fanzines and APAs that we were a part of that that time.
It Came From The Collection
The EC Comics line of the 1950s is a strong contender for the best overall line of comic books ever published in terms of quality. While some of the storytelling is a bit dated and of its era, the story content was very progressive for its era and the artwork held to a very high standard. Of the variety of genres that EC published: horror (of course), science fiction, humor and crime/suspense, it was their two war titles, edited and mostly written by Harvey Kurtzman, that I liked the best. And so, over the years, I’ve collected a small stack of those vintage issues, a half-dozen of which you see here. But it really isn’t all that necessary; the EC material is constantly being reprinted, both as individual issues and in collections either archival or artist-themed. Still, there’s something that I love about a vintage comic book. It’s wild to imagine where each of these books was purchased when it came out, and how many hands it passed through over the years before winding up in my possession. It has to be said that the title TWO-FISTED TALES gives perhaps a skewed impression of what these books are about. They’re really excellent.
I Buy Crap
So this is a thing that happened. A couple weeks back, I ordered the SUPER FRIENDS action figure of the Flash as produced by Todd McFarlane’s toy company. That’s pretty straightforward—I’m a sucker for a classic Flash figure. But when the box arrived, it was a lot larger than it should have been—and upon opening it, I discovered why. The company had mis-filled my order, sending me not just the Flash but the entire assortment of characters in this release line. I went back and checked and I did only pay for the Flash figure on the right. I don’t know what I’m going to do with a Toyman or a Cheetah figure per se (Captain Cold can always fight the Flash, and a Superman figure is usually welcome) but I guess it’s a better problem to have than the reverse. It’s a nice set of toys at any rate.
Behind the Curtain
What you see below is a xerox copy of the pencils from the final page of FANTASTIC FOUR #76, released in 1968. Jack Kirby was penciling and plotting the series at this time, and so you can see Jack’s notes in the border, describing what is going on for editor/scripter Stan Lee for when Stan does his dialogue for the page. There’s a note from Stan on the page to production man Sol Brodsky about the second to last panel. As illustrated by Kirby, this is the villainous Psycho-Man watching the surfer and the FF leave his microscopic realm. Apparently, Stan wanted to go in another direction and have the FF face off more directly against Psycho-Man in the next issue, so he instructed Sol to change that arm so that it belonged instead to Reed Richards, and then the Psycho-Man image in the final panel was a promotion for the next issue.
And below is Stan Lee’s typewritten dialogue for this page. In an era when there weren’t any word processors, if you made a mistake, you had to cross it out, as Stan does here a few times as he refines his copy. These pages were both sent to Kirby, presumably so that Jack would know what Stan had done to set up the next issue so that Kirby could continue plotting out the sequence of events from that point.
Hey Look
Like the page we ran last time, this installment of humorist Harvey Kurtzman’s HEY LOOK feature first ran in JOKER COMICS #23 in 1946..
Pimp My Wednesday
Here’s one last look at what we have coming out this week. From here on in, you’re going to be on your own!
UNCANNY X-MEN #21 concludes our two-part story that takes Wolverine and Ransom back to Brazil and delves into Valentin’s background. Gail Simone and Luciano Vecchio put it all together. This cover really could have used some cover copy to plus it up and provide some context to the image, but it went to print during the two weeks I was on the West Coast for SDCC, so I didn’t get my usual crack at it, unfortunately.
FANTASTIC FOUR #3 wraps up our opening ONE WORLD UNDER DOOM tie-in story as the team has discovered Doom’s secret stratagem for how he keeps winning and attempts to find a way around it. Ryan North and Humberto Ramos deliver the goods.
And from Associate Editor Annalise Bissa comes PHOENIX #15, in which Jean Grey and her allies throw down with the cosmic powers of the universe for the life of Jean’s reconstituted sister. Stephanie Phillips delivers the story, Roi Mercado the visuals.
A Comic Book On Sale 30 Years Ago Today, September 14, 1995
THUNDERSTRIKE #24 came out thirty years ago today and meant a fatal end for the Everyman Avenger. It was also the final time that Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz worked on THOR on a regular basis—they did a few related limited series and short stories in the years since, but always in a satellite capacity. And I tell you, when their run on THOR began, I didn’t like it, despite the fact that it was almost narrowcast to be something I’d appreciate. But it came directly after Walt Simonson’s progressive run, and so a lot of the first half of it felt a lot like turning the clock back away from what Walter did to a more classic Stan and Jack approach. Looking back at it, though, it’s a worthwhile run all on its own merits, and in the rear view mirror it looks better than it did at that exact moment. Probably the point where it really took off for me as a reader (I was on staff at Marvel by this time, so I was getting copies every month in my bundle of comps) was when they replaced the true Thunder God with Eric Masterson in the role. I can remember commenting to Tom DeFalco, who was then the EIC as well as the writer of this series, how much I liked the first issue with Masterson headlining. Tom’s reply to me was, “Eh. He dies.” He and Ron had the ending worked out even then, though it took many more years to get to than they had anticipated when they started out. It was particularly successful in mainstream newsstand outlets where a more casual buying audience was able to connect with it. Also, while a lot of people give the Mike Deodato Thor design that came a year or two later a lot of grief for its design, for my money that costume on this cover is the worst that the Son of Odin has ever looked. I used to call it Thor’s “stoplight” costume, since it has a single row of two big octagonal chest elements that looked like a Walk/Don’t Walk sign to my eye.
A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date
SLEEPWALKER #30 came out on September 14, 1993 and featured a fill-in story written by myself and my writing partner Mike Kanterovich and drawn by the terrific Terry Shoemaker. It isn’t a terribly memorable story, but I feel like it was solidly put together and works as an entertaining one-off. Mike and I were interested in inheriting the series, feeling like the approach that the character’s creator Bob Budiansky was following wasn’t taking full advantage of the full creepiness of the concept. Ah, the arrogance of youth, right? Anyway, Bob was often running late on his plots and scripts, which frustrated editor Don Daley. On more than one occasion, he activated Mike and me to be ready to step in and jam out a script for whatever the next issue would be. But of course, that never happened, nor should it have. It did make for a bit of frustration for us, though, since we’d go off and work out a story to pick up from wherever the series had left off the prior issue, only to not get a chance to use it. Commissioning this fill-in (as well as the story that saw print in the SLEEPWALKER HOLIDAY SPECIAL) was perhaps Don’s way of making good on winding us up so frequently. Or else it was a way to keep us on the hook in the eventuality that he’d get to the point where he’d need an emergency bail-out.
Monofocus
Amazing to me to discover that the brand new KAMEN RIDER tokusatsu series KAMEN RIDER ZEZTZ is being simulcast in the U.S. on SHOUT Factory’s YouTube channel. What a world we live in. The first episode was of this new series was pretty fun, with a theme based around dreams and nightmares. Our main character, Baku Yorozu, is a young man who literally dreams of being a James Bond-style secret agent. Instead, he’s granted a transformation device (which he wears like a bandolier rather than a belt) that turns him into Kamen Rider Zeztz, who is tasked with hunting down monsters that originate in the nightmares of others. The effects are pretty polished for a show of this kind, and the cast seems very appealing. And the first episode at least showcases some appropriately trippy sequences. As somebody who’s been an on-and-off fan of the franchise since the mid-1980s, it’s something of a delight to be able to get this as a regular weekly thing. Here’s a trailer for you to check out.
I also wound up sampling the very strange Japanese comedy series KISS OR DIE on Netflix. Comedy in Japan is a very strange thing, culturally if nothing else, so it doesn’t always translate. But this show is often very amusing in an over-the-top way. It’s about three separate Japanese comedians who are hired to be in a show they know nothing about, and who are thrust into a scenario where they have to ad lib and improvise their way through the scenario. But the big thing is that if their female co-stars lure them into a kiss, their characters are immediately killed off. As is typical in a lot of similar Japanese shows, there’s also a three-person group of commentators who watch the action as it unfolds and who provide live running color commentary. There really isn’t anything like this to be found on American TV. I don’t know that it will hold me for its full six-episode season, but I’m pretty certain that I’ll try to down at least one more and see just where this whole thing goes. And hey, let’s share a trailer here as well.
Posted at TomBrevoort.com
Yesterday, I wrote about FANTASTIC FOUR #200
Five years ago, I wrote about Five More Best Forgotten DC Retcons
And ten years ago, I spotlighted this Great Cover
For the last time for the time being: Hat’s All, Folks!
Tom B
Obviously, the real victim here is Rich Johnston not being able to get three articles out on Monday from this column
Tom, you were part of my Sunday ritual, and I will miss your newsletter. But I completely understand wanting to take a break. Thank you for doing this for as long as you did.