#40: New Year, Same Drivel

Stay Fresh, Cheese Bags!

Welcome to 2023! I’m still writing this from the distant past of 2022, but the New Year is only a few hours away, and it’s entirely likely that I’ll still be posted here typing this when it rolls around. This was a strangely ephemeral year—it still feels as though 2022 is relatively new. (Heck, I’m still thinking about writing out the full date 2020 on my checks to prevent people from being able to back-date them, something that hasn’t been a real concern for a few years now.)

Spent the past few days visiting with an old friend who I haven’t been able to see in person for many years thanks to the lockdown. This represented an opportunity to step away from my current position in life and to re-engage with my younger self, Which is perhaps a necessary bit of renewal from time to time. The days when I used to hang out with that old crowd and do stupid and dangerous stuff is now a solid four decades in the past, but it never hurts to touch base with it every now and then.

My family similarly went to spend Thanksgiving with relatives last month, which we hadn’t done in a good long while. So it feels as though, at least for the moment, the world is beginning to open up again—which has both up-sides and down-sides to it. I’ve gotten very used to being able to get a reasonably human amount of sleep every night since Marvel has been working remotely, and while there are definite advantages to all being together in the same space, I do not look forward to either the two-hour-each-way commute coming back, nor its attenuated loss of several hours of sleep during the weekdays. I’m not as young and sturdy as I used to be, and having been off of that regimen for a few years now, it’s going to be a bit hellish to get back to it.

During that trip, I shared the bit below with my wife after having been bowled over by it when it first turned up in my feed, and it’s become part of our ongoing lexicon as a result:

Trying to bring this one in a bit shorter, so let’s dive into your questions for the week, beginning with this one from John Allison:

I have a quick question. What comics are published in the Marvel Universe? I’m sure that comic artists have drawn characters reading comics on many occasions, because we are a solipsistic species. But are there superhero comics? Or is it all the evolution of the pre-Marvel heroes market? Romance comics, cowboys and funnies? I don’t want to know if my own comics are published on Earth-616 as I likely have no pandimensional legal claim on any royalty due and they could be going gangbusters there. That would be frustrating.

Actually, John, I put out a fifth week event more than twenty years ago that was built around this very concept. It was called MARVELS COMICS, and I’m sure that it’ll get written about in greater detail at some point. But the idea that Marvel titles are produced and released within the Marvel Universe itself is an idea that goes back to FANTASTIC FOUR #10 and has been used as story fodder on a number of occasions. The idea is that Marvel licenses the rights from the different heroes and is given access to the details of their exploits. So in the MARVELS COMICS line, we did six books: FANTASTIC FOUR, which was almost more like a Teen Beat sort of celebrity magazine, HE LIVES! HE WALKS! SPIDER-MAN, which was a monster comic in which it’s implied that the titular creature is actually the transformed son of a thinly-disguised version of J. Jonah Jameson, CAPTAIN AMERICA; GUARDIAN OF FREEDOM, which was written by Rick Jones and drawn by Steve Rogers—at least up to the point where Steve vanished and a different artist had to finish the issue, CALL HIM THOR which showed how two brothers used super-scientific technology to become a hero and villain reflective of Norse mythology, BEWARE THE DARE-DEVIL that detailed the exploits of the supernatural demon-spawn hero of Hell’s Kitchen, and CODENAME X-MEN which was about how the government was using a suicide squad of mutants under the direction of Colonel America to fight back against the growing mutant menace. That last one was written by Mark Millar before his breakout run on THE AUTHORITY. I also wrote a fake history of Marvel Comics within the Marvel Universe as a retail giveaway, which incorporated as many historical instances as I could think of from the comics themselves—such as the fact that the most valuable comic book in the Marvel Universe is PURPLE PIG #1, released in 1937. No, I don’t know why I remember this stuff either.

Next up, one from writer Alex Segura, whose novel Secret Identity you should check out:

I've been reading a ton of Avengers issues from different eras (mostly to fill gaps of my own reading, or just for kicks) and I've found a lot of entertaining runs that don't fall under the typical "Best Runs Ever." So, as someone who's edited the book forever and read most, if not all, of the issues - which are your favorite "underrated" Avengers/West Coast Avengers runs?

I have read them all, Alex, but I don’t know that I have too many underrated runs that I can recommend to you. The best issues in the series are all pretty much universally beloved. I will say that I do have a certain fondness for the Bob Harras/Steve Epting period of the 1990s—the “jacket” era, if you will. It was a solid soap opera approach with good art from Steve and the late Tom Palmer. Its only downfall was how often fill-in issues were called for (one of which was written by me—but don’t seek it out, it’s lousy.)

And a question from JV

Marvel was always known as the 'world outside your window' - I find in recent years the titles are more fantastical - Avengers are no longer on 5th avenue but in a giant Celestial, the X-men are on Krakoa, Spidey is swinging through the multiverse, etc..not a complaint - I love all these titles but I wonder if that is something you have taken note of?

Do you feel the need to 'ground' some of these titles after their current adventures (will the Avengers get back to Earth and work out of the old mansion)? Or is this just nostalgia talking? I just noted it as a lot of the titles new status quo was out of NYC and into some fantastic setting these days (maybe it is an old trope that the heroes all worked out of Swanky mansions:)).

I feel as though I answered a question very much like this not all that long ago. But what the heck, I’ll hit it again. First off, for all that we’ve taken to using the “World Outside Your Window” line in recent months to describe the MU, it actually originated as the tagline to the New Universe in 1986. But the spirit still applies. That spirit, though, doesn’t mean that everything needs to remain static, nor that most all of our stories have to take place in Manhattan or wherever. What it does speak to is the idea that the people who inhabit the Marvel Universe, not just the heroes and villains but also the regular people, should live in a world that is reflective of the one in which we live. So the problems and issues that our readership is grappling with should be reflected to some degree to what the Marvel heroes are dealing with. And I think that’s still largely the case. Now it could be that we’ve permitted too much of the Universe to stray too far into larger-than-life territory. That sort of situation where a bunch of different creators all start telling exciting stories and then one day we look up and the landscape is unrecognizable is something of a persistent hazard. So I don’t know that you’re entirely wrong. It’s a condition that we’ll need to evaluate on a situation-by-situation basis as we move ahead. I don’t know that the Avengers will begin bunking down in the old Mansion again—the main team hasn’t occupied it since it was blown up in AVENGERS #500 almost twenty years ago now. But they certainly could shift to another environment that might prove to have similar strengths.

Next, a few thoughts from reader Matt concerning “stories about stories”:

Didn't Bill Jemas come up with that term? At least, the first time I recall hearing it was in an interview with him or perhaps the pages of Marville. Ironically, the biggest Marvel film of all time, Avengers: Endgame, was a story about stories (ie; the previous Marvel films) so I'm not so sure Jemas was right about the mass appeal of the concept.

I tend to think the problems with stories about stories occur mostly in the execution and the storytelling skill of the given creators, rather than the concept itself. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a series of stories about stories, and it's regarded as one of the finest comics produced, because Moore and O'Neill provide enough for it to be enjoyed on multiple levels; both by those who haven't ever read the source material, and an added experience for those who have.

I don’t think you’ve quite got a handle on the specifics of what we describe as “stories about stories”, Matt. It’s not about having no history or connection to earliest adventures. Rather, it’s all about what a particular story has to say, what it’s about beyond just guys in funny suits punching one another. During the 1980s and 1990s, there were a bunch of stories that really only existed to “fix” some bit of seeming discontinuity in older stories. That was an outgrowth of the ethos of the time, as championed by the OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE and Mark Gruenwald in general. And it came from the position that the overall Marvel Universe was more important than any of its component parts. But those sorts of stories often only had something to say to that small subset of readers who were bothered by whatever discontinuity they were being done to repair—and they didn’t have anything to say to the general audience that didn’t know or care about any of it. I feel like your example of AVENGERS: ENDGAME doesn’t fit that paradigm, as even for a viewer who hasn’t watched any of the previous AVENGERS/MARVEL STUDIOS films, it’s pretty clear from the outset that the story is about coping with loss. And that’s a straightforward human emotion that anybody can relate to, and that most filmgoers have probably grappled with themselves at one point or another. The callbacks and Easter eggs are nice, but, for example, the Black Widow’s sacrifice works regardless of whether you know the history or not, or whether you have any idea who that Skull-faced guy is. Same thing with LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. That was a series that worked, by and large, even for people who may not have read the literary works it was based upon (which I suspect was most of the audience, at least in terms of people who’d read all of the books in question.)

Matt also asked:

"pretty much the only thing that we can evaluate a newcomer like yourself by is the finished product. "

How finished does a product have to be in order for you to look at it? Do you only look at comics printed on paper from newcomers, or might you check out a webcomic someone sends you a link to? Do you limit it to comics solicited by the biggest distributors (ie; PRH, Diamond, Lunar), or could someone use other channels get your attention? Would you need to pick it up from the comic store yourself, or can you accept freebies after solicitation but before release? Has anyone ever tried to convince store owners, where they know editors shop, to carry their self-published comics, in the hopes of getting access that way?

We’re talking about finished rather than published for the most part. I’ve certainly hired people based on their webcomics work, most recently Murewa Ayodele and Dotun Akande, who had sent me a link to their digital comic My Grandfather Was A God. For a writer, though, it’s probably going to need to be published work of some kind, as Marvel doesn’t accept unsolicited submissions, and I can’t think of a single editor who’ll have the time and inclination to read through an unproduced script from a potential writer. That said, the published work in that case needn’t even be comics per se. It can be prose of one sort or another. Derek Landy wrote novels. Christopher Cantwell wrote for television. It simply has to be in a form where I can engage with it and evaluate the craft that went into it, and decide that there are qualities to the writing that would translate over into doing Marvel comics.

Got this one from David Baroldy:

Wondering if there is, or has been consideration, of some kind of character reference guide for artists working at Marvel to help things like artists not drawing Captain America in his slightly updated costume to characters of color being, well, colored in ways that some people find offensive? Would such a thing even be logistically feasible? Would artists bristle at that level of direction?

You mean like some sort of Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe? :) The reality is that we have things like what you’re talking about, a lot of them. But the specifics of the Marvel Universe tend to be in constant and rapid flux—costumes tend to change fairly regular, even on long-established characters, and so it’s incredibly easy to get some detail wrong. Similarly, as creators are now spread out all over the world, some of them will tend to get reference wrong. There’s also a tendency of “character drift” when it comes to questions of things such as skin tones. One artist lights a character brightly, that piece gets used by another artists as reference, the next artist goes even lighter based on the reference from artist #2 and so forth. It’s something that we spend an awful lot of time policing these days (the time we used to spend on figuring out stories about stories, pretty much) but it remains a constant issue. Because it doesn’t matter if you catch something 100 times, if just one instance slips through, not only are you readers upset by it, but it sets back the entire process by a bit. But we’re working on it constantly.

And finally, one last question courtesy of Y. Lu:

A question about story titles: Back in the day, it seems like story titles were de rigueur for Marvel comics, even if readers often didn't pay much attention to them. (Everyone knows the words "This Man, This Monster" but how many remember, say, the title of the last chapter of the Dark Phoenix Saga?) But pretty much every story had one. These days, it seems a lot more inconsistent. Some series have them, some don't. Some series normally have them but every once in a while forget for an issue. Some series have them in the periodicals but omit them in the trade collections. (A decision I'm not too fond of. I feel the story title's still part of the story, even if a very small part.)

Was there an official change of policy at some point, and what brought it about? And what goes into deciding whether a book should have story titles? I imagine it's at least partly individual writer's preference, but I also see instances of broader consistency than that (like how all the Judgment Day minis and one-shots didn't have them).

Oh, and on a related note, back in the days before the recap page, when the story title would appear on an interior page, who decided which page? Writer, artist, editor, letterer?

The title to the last chapter of the Dark Phoenix Saga is “The Fate of the Phoenix!” No, I don’t know why I remember this stuff either.

Anyway, the reason that every story used to have an individual title was actually driven by accounting necessity, stemming from the days in which an average comic book might contain two, three or even more stories per issue. You needed some way to help to keep things straight in terms of understanding what exactly was being paid for, so every individual story was required to have a title that could be filled in on a freelance voucher along with the title of the comic book and the issue number and so forth. That ceased to be a consideration at a certain point. The other thing that changed was the rise of the collected edition, and in conjunction with that, the recap page. The original idea of the recap page was that it was distracting to a reader of a collected edition to keep hitting the same boiler plate information every twenty pages or so—DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN is a good example of this, as it was produced during a period when EIC Jim Shooter was cracking down hard on the idea that every comic book could be a reader’s first. Thus, every twenty pages, the narration tells us that Daredevil is Matt Murdock, that he was blinded in a childhood accident that enhanced his other senses, and so forth. So the theory was, if you put that repeated information onto the recap page, you could leave it out of the collection and the reading experience would be smoother. At that point, you were also thinking about the collection as a unit, and so the need and desire for a typical cliffhanger and especially another splash page to open the subsequent issue was no longer as critical. And when the opening splash went away, the issue’s story title largely went with it. Today, we’re relatively agnostic about this. Some writers like to title every story, every issue, and some writers are happy to have one title for an overall storyline and not chapterize things beyond that. There isn’t really much rhyme or reason apart from writer and editor preference in terms of which way a given title leans.

Except in rare instances, the writer would place the story title, though the choice was almost always determined ahead of when they were scripting by the inclusion of a splash/credits page, which was the natural place for it to go. Some creators liked to run the title at the end of the issue as a bit of style, but that was relatively rare.

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Behind the Curtain

Going to do another one from DC this week, as I feel as though I’ve naturally weighting these to Marvel.

So what you see here is Bernie Wrightson’s original washtone cover to HOUSE OF SECRETS #92, the issue that featured the stand-alone one-off story “Swamp Thing”. This story proved to be so popular that creators Len Wein and Wrightson eventually figured out how to turn it into an ongoing series, and SWAMP THING became a sensation. Fun fact: Louise Simonson was the model for the woman at the mirror, and her likeness was used for Linda Olsen all throughout the first tale. I can remember photographs turning up somewhere from the reference shoot that was done for this story, but I can’t seem to lay hands on them at the moment. Louise, of course, became an important writer and editor in her own right.

And this is Jack Adler’s original color guide for this cover. Adler is one of the undersung geniuses of comics, in large part because he worked in production, whose work wasn’t often credited. But he colored a monstrous number of DC covers over the years. He also innovated how to do washtone pieces such as this one as covers, something that DC rolled out in the late 1950s. Adler also invented ways in which older printed stories could be photographed in such a manner to generate a workable black plate, thus allowing for reprints when no original reproduction materials existed. Without him, volumes such as Jules Feiffer’s THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES would have been impossible. Adler did a great, sensitive coloring job on this piece, not all of which survived the lackluster color separations process of the day. The final cover is still pretty impressive, though.

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Pimp My Wednesday

It’s back to business as usual now that 2023 is upon us, and the Marvel Heroes office has been hard at work to sate your need for colorful super heroic excitement.

AVENGERS #64 features the fourth chapter of the ten-part “Avengers Assemble” saga that is running between AVENGERS and AVENGERS FOREVER. It’s writer Jason Aaron’s swansong, and so he’s getting every last batshit idea he has for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes out of his system in this storyline. As usual, artist Javier Garron is up to the challenge of illustrating all of the absolutely bananas visuals that Jason lays out for him. Jason pretty much tries to kill Javier every issue in his script, and Javier simply rises to the occasion.

Over in FANTASTIC FOUR #3, it’s time for the spotlight to swing over to the final member of the titular quartet, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. He’s got a new job, a new secret identity and a new place in the world. And this issue, he gets to fight a tornado among other things. It’s all been dreamed up by Ryan North and set down by Iban Coello. The response to our first two issues has been heartening—they’ve shown up on a bunch of best-of-the-year lists in the last day or two, which is amazing considering how young the run is. Hopefully, this issue will continue to propel the series ever upward in your estimation!

And in the land of Tokusatsu, ULTRAMAN: THE MYSTERY OF ULTRASEVEN wraps up with a fifth issue that’s brought to you by the team of Kyle Higgins, Mat Groom and Davide Tinto. We’ve been having a great time reinterpreting the mythos of the ULTRAMAN franchise in a Marvel manner—I’ve described our approach a few times as being analogous to “Ultimate Ultraman”

Elsewhere, under the watchful eye of Associate Editor Annalise Bissa, Ryan North and Francesco Mobili continue their subversive and surprising SECRET INVASION series. I’m very fond of this cover by EJ Su. There’s a pretty deep cut reference in this issue on which the story turns, so it’ll definitely be unexpected.

And finally, the new year brings another chapter of “Key To A Mystery”, the currently running serial in the AVENGERS track on MARVEL UNLIMITED by Jim Zub and Mike Bowden. Last week, Iron Man was confronted by an unexpected assailant, and this time out, Captain Marvel finds herself in similar circumstances. What’s behind it? Join up and follow the clues yourself, as this is only the second chapter!

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A Comic Book On Sale 50 Years Ago Today, January 1, 1973

THE AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN was something of an odd duck release. It was an early DC attempt to do a tabloid-sized magazine—the interiors were in black and white. And it was released in conjunction with a celebration being held in Metropolis, Illinois, a real-world town that had declared itself the home of the Man of Steel. I’m not privy to all of the details, but there were genuine plans at the time to construct a massive Superman-themed amusement park in Metropolis, and a few of its features related directly to this goal—most notably, a reprint of “Superman in Superman Land” by Bill Finger and Wayne Boring from a 1955 issue of ACTION COMICS, which was being used, somewhat surprisingly, as the template for the proposed park. The book was aimed at a more general audience rather than hardcore comic book readers, so it also included a brand new Origin of Superman story written by DC’s in-house historian E. Nelson Bridwell and laid out by DC’s Publisher Carmine Infantino. The classic Superman art team of the era, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, provided the finished art. It would eventually be reprinted in color in SECRET ORIGINS OF THE SUPER DC HEROES, DC’s answer to the ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS books. There was also a detailed article on how a comic book is made that included many behind-the-scenes photographs of creators and editors working at the DC offices of the time, and which included descriptions of even how the books were being printed at that time. I believe that the idea here was that this publication would be kept in print and sold in the eventual park, but as the entire enterprise fell through, copies were plentiful on back issue dealers’ tables well throughout the 1980s at least. It was also a large book and difficult to store, and part of DC’s stumbling efforts to innovate a new format for comics that might prove to be more profitable than the dying 20 cent color comic of that day. DC’s eventual in-house fan publication THE AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS would take inspiration from it as well.

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

No less in the service of a licensing deal than THE AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN was, the NFL SUPERPRO SUPER BOWL SPECIAL came out on January 1, 1991. It was the product of a partnership between Marvel and the National Football League to develop a character who could become the center of merchandising efforts as well as be realized in real life as a costumed mascot—neither of which really happened. Instead, this first Special, which was released in the Dark Knight squarebound format (and thus cost a whopping $3.95) was later re-released on softcover and an ongoing monthly series followed. I missed editing that series by a cat’s whisker—which was good, as I have absolutely no working knowledge of football at all. In the end, Bob Budiansky, who had helped to conceive the character and who edited this initial one-shot, kept the title, in part due to the promise of Super Bowl tickets provided by the book’s NFL liaison. And I was the assistant editor on it. It’s a really weird beast of a book, as befits its origins as well as the time in which it was created. On the surface, it feels like any of a dozen other licensed tie-in titles Marvel was doing at around that time—the twin successes of G.I.JOE and TRANSFORMERS had caused Marvel to leap into such deals with abandon. And in that way, the set-up and the character’s origin are fanciful and absurd. On the other hand, writer Fabian Nicieza treated the series with as much gravitas as he could muster, attempting to write it like he would any other title. As such, it’s all a strange mix of real world problems (drug use) and super hero nonsense (flammable nitrate films of NFL greats of the past transferring the abilities of their players onto lead character Phil Grayfield after he’s caught with them in an explosion) Artwork was provided by Jose Delbo, who at that time was doing a bunch of work for us in the Special Projects Department on licensed products. The front cover was painted by Joe Jusko, and if I remember correctly, the logo was done by Ken Lopez, who at that time was working out in the Marvel Bullpen. I can recall that the real challenge of it was getting the NFL to sign off on the italicized version of their own shield-logo—Ken wound up having to rework that two or three times to appease them. Ron Frenz designed NFL SuperPro himself, and I was the one who worked out his eventual color scheme. I can recall coloring up several different variations in primary colors, and everybody settling on this one. It’s a series that gets a bit of a bum rap, I think, in particular the early issues that Fabian wrote, which aren’t high literature but which succeed as fun super hero comics. Of course, the issue that everybody remembers came out after I was off the series, in which later writer Buzz Dixon used Kachina-themed villains, thus angering the Hopi Tribe and requiring Marvel to make a public apology and to recall the issue.

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Monofocus

After first seeing the trailer for the film maybe as long as a decade ago, I finally got the opportunity to see the film 5-25-77, which is now available through Amazon Prime. It’s a long-gestating project, a fictionalized account of the life of the filmmaker, Patrick Reed Johnson, and his days growing up as a genre film-obsessed kid in the midwest who was driven to make amateur movies of his own. It stars actor John Francis Daley as Johnson—Daley is probably best remembered as Sam Weir from FREAKS AND GEEKS, and that connection gives the movie just a little bit of the flavor of that series. The arc of the film describes Johnson’s journey into becoming a filmmaker himself, its centerpiece being Johnson’s wait for the release of STAR WARS on May 25, 1977 and his determination to prove the film a huge hit so as to make possible his own similar filmmaking ambitions. It’s definitely a movie with its own style and rhythm, but I found it to be largely charming, as will anybody who ever used a Super-8 camera to shoot their own Sci-Fi epics in their back yard. Most of it was shot back in the mid-2000s, but Johnson was only able to raise funding to complete the movie in the last couple of years—so all of the actors in it are way younger than you would expect them to me. (Daley has since gone on to a successful screenwriting career that includes being one of the writers on SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING.)

I talked about THE TRAITORS last time, and the United Kingdom edition of that series wrapped up with an ending whose perfection was so sublime that I don’t even want to spoil it. It was a thing of beauty all around. Accordingly, I immediately transitioned into watching the show that it was based on, the Australian version of THE TRAITORS. The format is exactly the same, though some of the specifics of the gameplay differs from the UK version—you can see that it hasn’t yet worked out some of the kinks. consequently, the Australian version is somehow a bit more leisurely, though just as addictive as the British version. In particular, the Australian version includes a contestant, Chloe, whose profession is being a clairvoyant and who seems to genuinely believe that she receives messages from the spirit world. Seeing just how her predictions and pronouncements make the game spin wildly is a big part of the fun of the early episodes.

I also started rereading Steve Martin’s book BORN STANDING UP after being given a deal on a digital copy. I had read it years ago—I swiped Steve Wacker’s copy off of his desk and read it over two days, returning it wordlessly thereafter. The book essentially charts Martin’s history performing stand up comedy, and his rise from a struggling never-gonna-make-it performer to a sensation who at his height was filling stadiums with paying customers. I have a fascination for almost any of the creative arts, and stand up is one of those things that, while I could never do it myself, I have a real draw towards reading about. Martin’s prose is direct and intelligent and appropriately self-effacing, so it’s an entertaining volume.

I also watched a whole bunch of weird stuff while I was visiting my old friend, an assortment of Tokusatsu, Genre material, Anime, Comic book adaptations and big budget blockbusters. Of particular note is the first four episodes of CHAINSAW MAN, a show that’s become something of a breakout hit. I’m honestly very much still on the fence about it, and the coming week will determine whether I continue on with it, as it’s a lot more overtly bloody and sexualized than I typically like. Its lead character, the impoverished Denji, winds up merged with his demonic pet Pochita, who is a cross between a barky dog and a chainsaw. Now, whenever Denji pulls the starter cord that’s embedded in his chest, he’s transformed into a half-man/half chainsaw demon. He’s quickly conscripted by the Public Safety Works as a Devil Hunter seeking out and taking down other demonic threats. But he’s treated as not much more than a dog himself, and given his sad upbringing, Denji is obsessed with being able to eat well (jam on toast is a luxury for him) and with groping female breasts. It’s an almost indescribable confluence of elements, and I can’t honestly say that I like it just yet. But there is something strangely compelling about it. My son is completely into it and recommended it to us, so we watched the first four over a couple of nights as a group. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not sure that I’ll continue with it, though.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I posted a survey of five times Real People Teamed Up With Super Heroes, including such luminaries as Uri Geller and Don Rickles (but not Perry Como, despite an embarrassing typo in the earliest posted version.)

And five years ago, I wrote about GREEN LANTERN #94, whose prime selling point wasn’t that the Black Canary was facing peril so much as the question of why Green Arrow had shaved off his trademark beard. Facial hair lovers, this one’s for you!

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And that’s another one of these Newsletters under the bridge, for a total of 40 in total! It’s still proving to be a lot of work each week, but for the moment, I’m still enjoying it. Your constant attention and feedback has been key to keeping things that way, so thanks so much for it—and if you have a question that I can answer, it would go a long way to keeping me from having to talk about my vacation trips and the like. You have been warned. See you in seven!

Tom B