#26: Three Hours
I Don't Know Why I Haven't Been Numbering These. So Let's Fix That.
We’re now closing in on October, and I haven’t taken a day off all year. This is nothing new for me—I started off the year with my time off maxed out (even after the days I took over the Christmas holidays—I have so much time built up that it’s practically self-replicating, like yogurt. And that’s all a reflection of the fact that, for the most part, I like my work. And certainly not having to make a two-hour commute each way into and out of the city every day has made it a lot easier to go the distance without needing any sort of a break. But we’re getting to a point where it starts to feel stupid not to use some of this time, so I’m planning on taking a few days off in the coming weeks. I’ll use that time to try to put a tiny bit of a dent in the vast accumulation of reading material that’s been stacking up, and also towards filing away the massive build-up of new comics, something I haven’t tackled in a couple of years now. I don’t anticipate any disruption on the delivery of this feature, but it’s always possible. I’m writing this at 10:00 on Saturday night for delivery Sunday at noon, which is cutting things a bit tighter than I typically like to. And I have precious little of what follows written at this point. So there’s nothing to do but just sit down and pound away at it. So grab a beverage and let’s get down to it.
In our tale of the U-Decide promotion last week, I had completely forgotten one aspect of what went down—until one of my co-workers at the time send me over the photograph below.
Yes, that is a promotional MARVILLE pint glass. At some point in the midst of the competition, feeling bullish, Marvel President Bill Jemas had these made up and passed them out as gifts. To be fair, he also did ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN glasses at the same time (I made sure to get a Spidey one, as I figured that a drink out of a MARVILLE glass would probably kill me.) I don’t know how many of these still exist, a few of them must but a bunch were discarded when Marvel switched offices towards the end of the 2000s. But the one you see above is still intact and verifies the existence of this scarcely-merited merchandising. (The toy inside the glass wasn’t a part of it, it’s just what the person who sent the photo to me happens to have in it today. )
That MARVILLE recollection seemed to bring people over to this feature. Everybody likes looking at a car crash, I suppose. So welcome to all of you newcomers. Hopefully, you’ll get something worthwhile out of all of this inanity.
Let’s kick things over to reader questions, beginning with one from perennial regular Evan “Cool Guy”:
your post mentioned the "Marvel Method" and as a total outsider, that process has always seemed completely bonkers! Or at least counterintuitive in terms of how you'd make a comic. I'm surprised it lasted until the turn of the century, I thought it was much older than that. I assume that speed was the motivating factor, but it's not like it didn't produce a ton of great comics, so credit where it's due. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons of the Marvel method, and/or any interesting anecdotes arising from its use.
Well, I came up on the Marvel method—it was still in wide use when I came into the business, and I’ve used it myself on every comic book story I’ve ever written. So it isn’t strange to me, although I can see how it might be to those unfamiliar with it. What it does do is put more of the storytelling responsibility into the hands of the artist. Since comics are first and foremost a visual medium, that isn’t a bad thing, at least in theory. Of course, back when it was being used regularly, we also had a large talent pool of artists who had been trained in working that way, who understood the responsibility of storytelling that was in their hands, and who became excellent visual storytellers themselves. John Romita Jr. is perhaps the best in the business at the craft, having learned extensively from Jack Kirby and John Buscema and his own father John Sr. These days, though, that really isn’t the case. Having shifted almost everything over to full script very early on in the 2000s (and even the few books that are produced Marvel style today aren’t really quite Marvel style as it had been done—they’re a lot more restrictive about the number of panels on a page and the specifics of a given scene or sequence) most artists today approach a script not so much as a collaborator but as a carpenter: the script is the blueprint, the Ikea instructions, and they build a table from them, seldom deviating from what the writer has put down. Now, Marvel method had its issues, in particular when an artist wasn’t quite adept at storytelling or had a different perspective on the story being told than the writer did. But the flipside is that so many of today’s comics feel a bit visually staid, like the artists are afraid to color outside of the lines or really go for it in terms of adding or changing the storytelling. So what is still a visual medium has become a writer’s domain to the detriment of the artists. Not every artist is the same, not every one would want to work Marvel style or would be capable of working Marvel style. But it does sometimes feel like a waste of the talents of the John Romita Jrs of the field to not give them greater autonomy to do what they do best.
Mister Stew Levine had this to ask about":
DC has seemed to be more interested in legacy characters, especially as a way to retain the spirit of a character idea when the character details no longer fit the times (e.g., multiple Green Lanterns, Flashes for successive generations). Marvel has appeared to me to try to retain the character and reframe the origin for the times (e.g., Iron Man, Punisher no longer explicitly linked to the Vietnam), with to my mind fewer explicit torch-passing decisions (Nick Fury comes to mind to no longer have to explain how he and the Commandos remain active from WW2). How does editorial decide when to refresh the backstory of an existing character vs. passing the torch to a new character when it appears that the existing character doesn't seem to fit with the times?
Well, in theory, I’d say to start out with that the reason this tends to work better with the DC characters than the Marvel characters is the idea that the Marvel stories are meant to be about the person inside the costume rather than the costume and the powers. So while the Flash or Green Lantern or whomever might be relatively interchangeable, the Marvel equivalent probably shouldn’t be. That said, we’ve certainly done our share of legacy characters over the years, particularly across the past decade or so. Heck, we have two Captain Americas at the moment. So nothing is absolute. But I think it’s rare that a character no longer fits the times and needs to be replaced. I can’t really think of any instances off the top of my head that fit that paradigm. There have been instances when it’s been fun to see some other character try to take up the mantle of a Marvel mainstay—whether that be James Rhodes becoming Iron Man or Bucky Barnes becoming Captain America or Jane Foster becoming Thor. But as often as not, those stories are about what makes the character the character as much as they are about the replacement. The question of characters being locked into specific historic events is another matter. Marvel has had a sliding timeline for decades, going back at least as far as the very early 1980s if not further, strictly as a matter of practicality. When a lot of the foundational Marvel stories were conceived, nobody had any idea that any of this stuff was going to be around for five years, let alone sixty. So there wasn’t a lot of worry about the passage of time. it was more important to make the characters relevant by connecting them to contemporary events. But as success carried the characters further and further into the future, it became more and more difficult for those references to continue to work, simply because the characters in-world simply weren’t that old. The Reed Richards and Ben Grimm of today have not been alive long enough to have fought in World War II, whereas in 1961 that wasn’t a problem. Fortunately, those “topical references” as George Olshevsky coined the term aren’t usually material to the characters, and so can be dispensed with along the way. This becomes much more difficult with certain characters—Magneto’s backstory as a holocaust survivor really doesn’t work in 2022 from a purely temporal standpoint, but it’s become such an important part of his character (especially as communicated to a mass audience in the X-MEN films) that so far, the decision has been to simply not stare at the problem too closely. In other instances, we’ve updated events as necessary—shifting Flash Thompson’s first time in the service from the Vietnam conflict to the fictional Siancong War so that it can continue to follow along in the wake of the Marvel Universe. But it’s an imperfect system, one that doesn’t work for all characters the same way. Regardless, because the backstory is there to serve the new stories that are being told, it really doesn’t have to—it just has to not draw too much attention to itself such that a reader of today is taken out of the story wondering about these matters.
And one last question from JV:
Great newsletter this week! The mention of Mark D. Bright got me thinking about the question of 'staying in' the comics industry (as opposed to the often asked 'breaking in') - would love to hear your thoughts on how some creators (like Peter David) are still getting work vs some who just fade away (aside from the obvious ones who go to another industry full time, retire, etc).
I subscribe to D.G. Chichester's newsletter - he was a prominent editor and writer in the 90s: a long run on DD (issue 300!), Wolverine with Sienkiewicz, a Punisher/Cap mini with Klaus Janson, work with the great Jorge Zaffino, etc..at the very least some cult faves. And you can tell he misses it a bit. Some writers talk of editorial turning over and they have no more contacts at the big two. Creators like Roger Stern, Daniel Way, and more seen to have fallen off...your thoughts?
One of the bits of wisdom that I try to pass on to Marvel’s younger editors is the fact that you can’t save everyone. In fact, given enough time, you can’t save anyone. Like any other entertainment industry, a creative person in the comics field comes with an expiration date or sorts—a moment when the zeitgeist has passed them by and they are considered yesterday’s news by fans, retailers and editorial members. This isn’t exclusive to creators, it’s the same for editors as well. I try to bear in mind that eventually, probably sooner than I would like, somebody other than me will be editing AVENGERS and I’ll be just one more barely-remembered name in an old credits box. It’s sad, but it’s a fact of life. Nobody gets to be on top forever. What you can do is to maximize the opportunities that you have. The creators who have stood that test of time have largely done so by doing that, by playing to their strengths, keeping their output strong and relevant, by not refusing to change with the times, by working as hard today as they did when they got their first break years before. It isn’t easy at all. And even that isn’t a guarantee that you’re going to get to keep your seat. The audience are the ultimate make-or-break barometer of this fact. Every creator has a certain number of devoted fans, fans who will follow them from project to project and who love their work unreservedly. But that number may not be enough (and typically isn’t) to keep a career alive all by itself. Any creator needs to be connecting the audience of the moment as well, bringing in new and casual readers based on the material they’re doing and its contemporary strength. It’s always tempting to feel as though you can rest a little bit on your laurels, but that’s inevitably the first step towards irrelevancy. Nobody wants to pay $3.99 for a comic book that’s only good enough, they want the best that money can buy. That’s the job, that’s the gig. It’s unforgiving, and only a relative few can make it work over the long haul. (Artists tend to have an easier time with this than writers do, so long as their drawing chops hold up.) But to use your example, I know Dan Chichester, he was on staff at Marvel when I started. And he was a good writer and a good editor. But a couple of things happened over the years that were probably ultimately not to his advantage. Dan had been on staff during a period when the typical way to become a Marvel writer was to get writing work while on staff, something that hasn’t been permitted in two decades. So some of the breaks that got him his earliest writing gigs were likely due to the fact that he was present and available where other creators weren’t. The second thing that happened is that Dan left staff at a certain point to write full time. This meant giving up that advantage that he had in the early 1990s, but at that point he felt like he had enough work to sustain himself and people were aware of who he was, which would help guarantee future assignments. And then the speculator boom of the mid-1990s happened, which meant that the companies that survived, like Marvel and DC, reduced their output. And this meant fewer assignments available overall, for the same talent pool. Marvel also went through mass layoff, which meant that the number of people on staff who had firsthand experience working with Dan diminished. Additionally, Dan started working in other fields, which meant he didn’t have as much time to press the flesh and make himself known to any new editors who might be coming into the business. And finally, one by one, his assignments wrapped up until he had nothing left on his plate. Now, Dan is just as talented as he ever was, but if he wants to get back into comics in a real way, he’s going to have to scrape and scramble and get some good breaks along the way. Because right next to him there’s a Donny Cates who wants to be in the industry as well, has a fire in his belly and stories to tell. And a step behind both of them them is some newcomer whose name you don’t even know but whose work is going to knock your socks off when you see it in a year or two once they get their big break. There isn’t any tenure in comics, there’s no point where you can feel like you’re definitely in it for life. And you can do nothing wrong and find that the ground has suddenly evaporated underneath you. I’ve used this phrase a lot over the years, and almost every time it angers somebody who disagrees with it. But based on my experience, it is absolutely true: Nobody Is Owed Work. If you want to keep working, then you need to keep working, you need to constantly get wood on the ball every time at bat. This is one of the reasons why I tend to avoid reunions of former Marvel staffers. Every time I encounter somebody from the old days, I can see the thought balloon floating over their heads: “How the hell is this idiot still at Marvel and I’m not?” Damned if I know—all I can do is continue to work hard at the job until my number is eventually up like everyone else.
Behind the Curtain
.This next item is presently being displayed in the Spider-Man exhibit at the San Diego Comic Con Museum, but I believe it comes from the collection of David Mandel, best known for his work on SEINFELD and VEEP and the like but also a major original art collector.
This is a rare surviving typewritten page of dialogue from the opening page of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #82 as written by Stan Lee. Now, this is the dialogue only, which is an important distinction to understand. The way Marvel comics were put together under Stan put much of the story plotting onus onto the artist—in this case, John Romita. Since John was working on staff even then, it’s likely that there was never any sort of actual plot document written up—it’s more likely that Stan and John simply spoke broadly about this story at some point while in the office, and John went off and drew up 20 pages of artwork based on what they discussed. Which means that John controlled all of the pacing, made up the specific scenes, added in bits of business while he drew, and essentially shaped the entirety of the issue. That’s a lot of work that today we would say comes under the heading of plotting. But those distinctions really weren’t made that way back in 1969 when this story was done. After John was finished, he brought the 20 pages to Stan, who then went off and added the copy to them, which is what we see on the sheet above.
And since I’ve got it, here’s the original art to that selfsame splash page to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #82. That graytone pattern was made with what was called zip-a-tone. These were thin, transparent, adhesive sheets that had a dot screen at a certain percentage printed on them. To use them, you would place the zip-a-tone sheet over the desired area and cut a piece out to match using an X-Acto knife, placing it onto the board where it would adhere. The radiating lines on Spidey’s mask were likely cut after the tone had been applied—Jim Mooney, who inked the issue and who likely applied the tone, went in with his knife and cut away the bits in-between each tiny shock line (which is why they seem a bit haphazard.) It’s antiquated technology by today’s standards, but in 1969, zip-a-tone added a whole new dimension to comic book pages.
Pimp My Wednesday
A slightly smaller week this time. Between this and the vacation days, I need to watch myself or I’ll wind up sitting alongside Dan Chichester and the rest of the gang on the outside, watching other people do this job.
AXE JUDGMENT DAY moves into its final stage with a trio of connected one-shots each one focusing on a single character from that particular family. So the lead-off is AXE AVENGERS which puts the spotlight on Tony Stark. It’s written by AXE mastermind Kieron Gillen and illustrated by the supremely talented Federico Vicentini, with expert colors from the painterly Dean White. I think that Vicentini is one of the most exciting new artists Marvel has at the moment, I’m very impressed with his command of action and movement and the manner of his stylization. There’s something kinetic about his work, something that mixes in manga influences in terms of the way bodies in motion are rendered without losing the essential Marvel-ness of the artwork. He’s going to be a big deal, I think—and you can see him in action right here on Wednesday.
Elsewhere, TV’s Adam F. Goldberg (and go online and look up the story behind that middle initial credit, it is CRAZY!) and Hans Rodinoff are joined by artist Will Robson for a second helping of DAMAGE CONTROL. Adam has been trying to get a DAMAGE CONTROL television series green-lit for years, so working on this comic incarnation is the next best thing for him. What the team is doing here feels very much in the spirit of the original set of series by my late friend Dwayne McDuffie and Ernie Colon, a situation comedy set in the Marvel Universe. So expect to see plenty of character cameos and some fun with the particulars of our fictional reality. Also, as I think I mentioned last time, I had to hand this project over to editors Wil Moss and Michelle Marchese to finish up after I had gotten it started due to workload issues, so anything that you like about the book editorially is down to them. I only contributed the lousy parts.
And the same is true of THUNDERBOLTS #2, which I also had to hand off to Wil Moss and Michelle Marchese to edit at a certain point. Which is probably why I don’t love the lettering on this cover. The copy itself is fine and the gag is good, I just think the line spacing on the EEGRO caption is too wide, and the inconsistency of spacing on the various word balloons bothers my eye. By that same token, I’m a bit anal when it comes to this stuff, having been trained by John Romita on the elements of cover attractiveness. John would become physically pained upon seeing a tangent or some bad coloring on a cover, and he passed that anxiety accidentally on to me. And now, I share it with the current staff. The circle of life! Anyway, it’s another blast of an adventure from Jim Zub and Sean Izaakse in which New York’s only sanctioned super hero team has to deal with a monstrous menace, and we learn a little bit more about what makes each of them tick.
Over in the digital realm, Jim Zub strikes again, this time with an installment of AVENGERS UNLIMITED that focuses on the Avengers’ dedicated manservant Jarvis. But the special draw here is that the artwork is provided by Leonardo Romero, who makes great use of the vertical scroll in his compositions. This story is a one-off, a bit of a palate-cleanser, so you can expect something different next week. But that said, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you check it out on MARVEL UNLIMITED this week.
And while you’re there checking things out, don’t forget to stop by for Chapter Four of MILLIE THE SPY in the LOVE UNLIMITED track. It’s once again the work of Stephanie Phillips and Nick Roche as well as my Associate Editor Annalise Bissa and it’s a hoot-and-a-half. The mission is becoming steadily more dangerous for Millie and her handler, but our girl is ready to prove that she’s got what it takes to go the distance. It’s an unexpected pleasure!
A Comic Book On Sale 70 Years Ago Today, September 25, 1952
One of the reasons that the EC Comics of the 1950s are still held in such high regard by fans and collectors is the fact that they never skimped on quality. For all that they were toiling in what was considered at the time to be a throwaway medium, the creators and editors of EC took their jobs seriously. They were also aiming at a somewhat more intelligent breed of reader—not quite adults, although they were always welcome as well. But smart, literate older kids. Additionally, EC would use their tiny bully pulpit to put forth observations and lessons about the state of the world they were living in. They would soapbox, to put it bluntly. And they were no more overt about this than they were in the pages of SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES, a series dedicated to twist ending tales. As they developed the format of the book, the second of the four stories contained in each issue became what they nicknamed “the preachies”—stories with a pro-social message. These were strong stories for the era, and it was brave (and perhaps just a little bit foolhearty) for publisher Bill Gaines to print them. But they made an impact. The cover of this particular issue, #6, showcases the “preachie” story for the issue, a tale involving a Klan-like hooded organization that kidnaps and whips a young woman for the crime of being seen in the company of a black man. This wasn’t done especially salaciously (though artist Wally Wood’s precision linework was never not going to be attractive.) When they go to far and accidentally kill the girl, the fat hits the fan. Unfortunately for the Black Vigilante Society, this has been witnessed by a reporter, who has seen their Grand Leader with his hood off. He’s determined to bring down the hate-filled group, and even though they beat the hell out of him, he vows to reveal what he knows to the authorities. Waking up in a hospital bed after the beating, the reporter tells the FBI men who are there to question him that he can identify the ringleader. And the Feds promptly pull out their guns upon hearing this and murder the reporter—they are a part of the Black Vigilante Society themselves. (The copy indicates that they are faking being FBI agents, but that feels like a sop to decency—in 1952, the idea of a corrupt FBI man would have seemed downright unbelievable.) And the story ends with a final caption written by author Al Feldstein: “Yes…safe! Safe behind their masks of prejudice, these hooded peddlers of racial, religious and political hatred operate today! Mind you, they are shrewd and ruthless men such as those in our story! How long can we stay ‘cool” and indifferent to this threat to our democratic way of life? It is time to unveil these usurpers of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms"!” Could have been written today, virtually. And it’s hard to imagine this story being published today, let along 70 years ago when social mores were much harsher. EC pulled no punches—which is one of the many reasons why steps were taken to shut the organization down completely. But the work, thankfully, survives.
A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date
Probably nobody on Earth especially cares about this issue of COUNT DUCKULA, published on September 25, 1990, apart from me. But it’s a milestone in my live as it was the very first published comic book that I ever wrote. Or co-wrote, really—all throughout the time when I was writing for Marvel, I did so in partnership with my friend Mike Kanterovich. We had collaborated on fan stories before I made it into the business—he would write them and I would illustrate them, though we would both contribute ideas and bits. My artistic skills even then weren’t good enough to land an actual assignment at Marvel, so we switched gears past a certain point to concentrate on writing alone. And our break came when Michael Gallagher, who had been writing COUNT DUCKULA, got busy with other assignments and had to let something go. The book was being edited by my friend Evan Skolnick, with whom I had interned before eventually getting hired on staff. He had worked under Greg Wright during the time of my internship, but had segued over to the Star Comics office where he worked under first editor Sid Jacobson (something of a legendary figure in the world of kids comics) and thereafter Fabian Nicieza after Sid had left. Fabian had ceded editorial oversight of COUNT DUCKULA to Evan, and having read a few of our fan comics previously, Evan asked us to come up with stories for the book. Which was more of a challenge than it may have seemed. I hadn’t seen any episodes of the animated COUNT DUCKULA series that ran on Nickelodeon. I was vaguely familiar with DANGER MOUSE, the earlier show the character had been spun off from, but I was hardly an expert. And in those days, there wasn’t any internet that could be consulted, any streaming services or YouTube where you might see episodes or clips. There were only previous issues of the comic and the licensing bible, which Evan let me borrow. Another wrinkle here, but one that may have worked to our advantage, is the fact that the Star line produced their stories not in Marvel style but as “visual scripts”. Which is to say, not only was every line of copy written ahead of time as in a typical full script, but the writer would draw crude layouts for the artists to follow. It was an even more restrictive model for the artists, but it was apparently a great help in dealing with the licensors who had to approve the script and who could thus visualize them more clearly. Looking through my files, I don’t still have copies of any of the visual scripts for this issue, but I did find the one for the Danger Mouse back-up story in issue #15, which is reproduced below.
COUNT DUCKULA was being drawn by a man named Howie Post, whose work I remembered from DC’s short-lived ANTHRO series in the late 1960s. But he’d been a professional comic book artist for decades, and I can’t say that working on COUNT DUCKULA represented anything more than an assignment and a paycheck for him. But that didn’t stop him from changing our copy in a number of places as he drew the story, which infuriated Mike and me. As young writers do, we had slaved over every syllable, so the idea that the artist on his own would see fit to change jokes to suit himself was maddening to us. And really, he shouldn’t have done so unilaterally. But Howie also had a lot more experience than we did, and so Evan let him get away with it. (It’s also entirely possible that Post’s new lines were >gasp< funnier than what we had written.) Anyway, while this wasn’t a passionate favorite of ours or anything, Kanterovich and I gave the gig everything we had—which is why it was so disappointing when the series was discontinued with #15. That had nothing to do with us particularly, but was based on sales up to that point (though our efforts would not have turned that trend around in the slightest.) Still, it was a breakthrough assignment and made it possible for us to begin to sell other stories in the future.
Monofocus
Lots of new watching and reading this week. To begin with, I took in THREE-THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING, which was a visual delight and a very unique film all around. It’s a contemporary fantasy about Alithea, a narrativist who studies stories and who is solitary by nature. On a research trip to Istanbul, she comes into possession of an ancient bottle—and when she opens it, she releases a Djinn, who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. But as a scholar of stories, Alithea knows that all stories concerning wishes are cautionary tales, and that Djinn are reputedly deceitful and malicious. In order to get Alithea to make the wishes necessary to secure his freedom, the Djinn must tell her the story of his life, and reveal the circumstances that got him trapped in that bottle in the first place. It’s a very unique story with a striking visual style and rhythm, and both main stars, Tilda Swindon and Idris Elba give electrifying performances. As such, it was a picture that stayed with me. Certainly recommended, at least for those who seem interested by the premise. It’s not a film that you can just kind of coast through, it’s not a popcorn movie. But it is a rewarding experience.
I also tuned in for the first episode of the revived QUANTUM LEAP on Peacock. I was a regular viewer of the original series, though I came to it a year or two into its run, and it wasn’t as beloved by me as other things of the era. But the nostalgia of familiarity can be a strong thing. The new series tries really hard to be a legitimate follow-up to the original, placing its events into continuity with the climax of the original show (despite the fact that Dean Stockwell has passed away and Scott Bakula has made it public that he isn’t affiliated with the new series at all.) Raymond Lee is perfectly fine as the new lead, Dr. Ben Song, who is part of a government effort to recreate the original Quantum Leap project and possibly rescue the missing Sam Beckett. But for reasons unknown (even to himself after he does the deed, as his memory gets swiss-cheesed by the process) one night Song uploads some new operating code into Ziggy and steps into the Quantum Leap accelerator as Beckett had done years before. The balance of the episode involved Song attempting to prevent a dispossessed shop owner from being killed in a heist-gone-wrong. But the real difference is everything back in 2022. As opposed to the original, that confined 99% of the action to Sam in the past, the new series has what feels like a massive cast of characters back at the project, including Caitlin Bassett as Addison Augustine, Song’s fiancé who was also supposed to be the project’s test subject and who functions as Song’s holographic guide in the past. And she’s only one of about five players in the present, which immediately leads me to wonder just how the production thinks they’re going to be able to feed all of these actors material every week and still have space for an actual Leap story. The other new aspect, of course, is that there’s some secret government conspiracy behind the goings-on at Project; Quantum Leap that will need to be unraveled. I don’t know, the series could grow into something (although my instinct pegs it as one-season-and-done in the manner of so many other streaming programs before it) but I do wonder if the addition of all of these extra elements is additive or subtractive.
I also watched the first two episodes of STAR WARS: ANDOR. People have been telling me all along that the show doesn’t really get good until the third episode, but frankly, that seems like entirely too much homework for me to do in order to enjoy the series. Certainly, the opening two installments each feel like haphazard chunks of a longer piece that were almost randomly cut at a certain run time. Neither one had an episode close that felt like a close—the shows simply stopped. Worse, I was bored watching them. And sure, part of that is no doubt due to the fact that I feel practically no connection to Cassian Andor. I liked ROGUE ONE well enough, though I don’t know that I’ve really thought about it since I first watched it. But you could get me, I think, with a STAR WARS series—I had no attachment or even awareness of the mythology behind THE MANDOLORIAN when it first started, but it hooked me from the jump. So I don’t know. Having done the two episodes, it seems likely that I’ll sit through the third having come this far. But it’ll be a make-=or-break episode for me, I think. (I did love new droid B2EMO every time the little red guy was on screen, so there’s that at least.)
In the world of print, while I wasn’t looking, Garry Trudeau released another new Doonesbury collection, entitled FORMER GUY. And it was a pisser to read through. I became a huge fan of the strip in the early 1990s after having spent years neither following nor really understanding it. But having chanced into one of the big omnibus collections that were available then, I wound up reading pretty much the entire twenty years up tot hat point over the course of a week. By that point, I was hooked, and its remained a favorite ever since. This collection moves into the post-election and January 6th period, where Trudeau functions both as a sharp-eyed observer of history-as-it-happens and a razor-edged satirist, whose characters carry with them literally decades of lived reader experiences. In particular, I was stunned by a decision on Trudeau’s part, after the Covid death toll had hit a certain plateau, to thereafter depict Trump has having blood-stained hands, even well after he was out of office. It’s one of those things I might have missed entirely if I hadn’t seen the strip in which it’s articulated.
I also really enjoyed the uber-talented Jason Shiga’s new book ADVENTUREGAME COMICS; LEVIATHAN. Shiga is one of those creators who is so multi-talented that every project they take on is its own thing and is wonderful in its own way, and this book is no exception. I came to Shiga’s work in his long-running and profane serial DEMON, But ADVENTUREGAME COMICS owes more to his MEANWHILE book, as it too tells a story in a choose-your-own-adventure format. Having written a choose-your-own-adventure book in my fan days, I’m pretty familiar with the limitations of the format, but Shiga finds at least two or three totally new things to do with it in the course of 150 pages, and his almost-diagrammatical art style is perfect for the book’s complex structure. He is clever as hell. It’s also entirely kid friendly as well as being a story with a point or a message to it. And a great deal of fun as well. This may well be the book that I give out to everybody come the Holiday season, it was just that well done. And from context, it appears to be the first in a series of similar volumes that Shiga is planning in this format. I can’t wait for the next one.
Finally, because I saw the title in a Kindle books offering that was sent to me and related to it instantly, I’ve started reading SORRY I’M LATE (I DIDN’T WANT TO COME) by author Jessica Pan. It’s something of a riff on one of my favorite books, Danny Wallace’s YES MAN which I’ve gone ahead and linked to. (Don’t confuse it with the tepid film based on it starring Jim Carrey. The genuine article is fantastic.) Like Wallace before her, introvert Jessica Pan decides to try to expand her sphere of meaningful encounters with people by saying yes to invitations and opportunities that she would previously have said no to. This involves talking to people on public transit and deliberately making a fool of herself to take on board that the opinions of strangers who you will never see again don’t really matter at all. I’m only partway into it, and the writing isn’t quite as snappy as Wallace’s prose. But I can empathize strongly with Pan’s situation, as I’m legitimately anti-social—every trip I’ve ever gone on that’s turned out to be brilliant has been prefaced with a moment a few days beforehand when for no reason at all, my mind says, “I don’t want to go.” So vicariously watching Pan fight that instinct is remotely cathartic.
Okay, it is now 1:00 am on Sunday morning, you’ll all be reading this in about 11 hours .(I will likely still be asleep when you do. So please don’t wake me.) So that’s about three hours of work you’ve just digested. But I’m certain that the memories will last a lifetime! All right, that ought to hold things until next week—my typing is growing progressively less polished and I keep having to back up and correct haphazard misspellings. So I’ll see you all in seven!
Tom B.
Who is it that would need to be bribed to bring back thought balloons, and how much are we talking about it in USD?
Doesn't Magneto being returned to infancy and then returned to adulthood create the out for his age thing? It doesn't help explain why the High Evolutionary kept the twins on ice for decades before passing them off to the Maximoffs (or I guess lied to Magneto that he kept them on ice for decades so he could pass them off as Magda's children)