#48: What Would You Change?

A Question With An Unconventional Answer

It’s a question that gets posed with some regularity. And why not? Who among us doesn’t have regrets about how aspects of our lives have gone? Things we did or said that we’d like to take back. People now lost to us that we’d like to see again under better circumstances. But as I ponder the question If You Could Go Back In Time And Change Anything You Wanted To, what would you change, I find myself concluding that I would refuse such an offer, that for all that there are plenty of times when I was stupid or insensitive or foolish or mean or underconfident or whatever, the sum total of all of those experiences has brought me to the present. And overall, the present is pretty awesome. Like Wally West in Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo’s terrific FLASH #0 from back in the 1990s, I find that pretty much everything that i might have hoped for as a kid growing up has come to pass. I have an excellent job that I love doing that pays me quite well, I’ve been married to pretty much the perfect person when it comes to tolerating my many shortcomings for more than a quarter-century. My kids are mostly grown and fine. My house is paid for, I have money in the bank, my health and that of my spouse is good. I have good friends and colleagues. I’ve gotten to go places and do things that few are able to. I’ve made a lasting contributing to the longest continuing fictional narrative on Earth. And I have positively as many comic books as I could ever have wanted even in the depths of my avarice as a kid. Oh, sure, like anyone, I have my problems, but I find that it’s worth stopping every once in a while and reflecting thankfully on what the universe has given me. By any measure, I’m a lucky man, and while perhaps undeserving of that luck, I’m not about to shove it away, nor take it for granted. As anyone who has interacted with me will tell you, I’m not a positive person in my outlook by nature. So, having come to this conclusion, I just wanted to share it, to mark it as a moment in some regard. And to let you know: the same can be true for you if you work very hard and are very lucky.

So, lots of questions and comments this past week, thanks. Keep them coming, if nothing else they provide tangible proof that somebody is reading these things and being spurred to action by them. We’ll begin with a comment from Bleeding Cool’s own Rich Johnston:

If it comes to Broadway, do go see Steven Moffat's The Unfriend. Just got out from seeing it for the second time, now in the West End. You may find it glorious. He also has quite the back catalogue to dig into, nothing is more pure than his earliest, Press Gang. One particular plot twist was nicked by Alan Moore.

I’d like to get a change to see The Unfriend, but the current state of the world is still such that it’s going to prevent me from traveling our of country for what is probably quite some time still. As you say, maybe if it makes its way over here at some point I’ll be able to catch a showing of it. I have seen a bunch of Moffat’s other earlier television work—it was JEKYLL and COUPLING that first put him onto my radar, even before his overt DOCTOR WHO days. And I’ve seen an assortment of episodes of PRESS GANG, though not the entirety of the series. They’re a bit difficult to come by over here. But I did manage to find JOKING APART some years ago, which was good.

Jess:

Why do old 70s/80s/even 90s mags have so many asterisked notes to previous issues (this question was inspired by reading some of 90s spectacular spider man which was particularly note heavy!). As far as I know, most stories weren't reprinted that much or collected in trades so frequently as now.... So how would a reference to a years old Spidey ish or something mean anything to the reader ? Or was it just for the collector lore junkies ??

In those days before everything was available in perpetuity as a collected edition or in digital form, Jess, such editorial notes were really there to make each successive story feel more legitimately like the latest chapter in the ongoing story of the protagonist’s life. The notion was to create a sense of soap opera about the Marvel Universe such that any particular issue could not be missed for fear that some crucial event might happen to the character in it. In addition, there was a thriving back issue market, especially as the Direct Sales Market opened up, comprised of comic book specialty shops. And so, notations to earlier issues helped to drive business into those stores, as readers might seek out some earlier issue in which a referenced moment took place. Plus, it was all a way to make the tapestry of the Marvel Universe appear more connected and holistic.

Manqueman:

I presume that your précis, Tom, that resulted in MacKay's Avengers run, sought another huge through line in the run? Which reminds me: Approximately how big is North's FF run going to be? I'd enjoying it a lot.

I wasn’t looking for another AVENGERS huge through line per se, Manqueman. I simply outlined the sort of things that I thought the series needed at the moment and the kind of approach I envisioned, and Jed built on that, changing certain aspects from what I had suggested as all writers do. In terms of Ryan North’s FANTASTIC FOUR run, glad you’re enjoying it. And like most similar runs, it’s at the moment open-ended, so it all comes down to how well it connects with readers and how enjoyable it is for Ryan to do.

Alan Russell:

Have really enjoyed Savage Avengers, shame that’s ending. Do you feel it doesn’t work so well now that Conan’s not a part of it any more, or just that you’ve come to the end of the idea?

It all came down to what it almost always comes down to, Alan: sales were simply not strong enough to warrant continuing on with it. But very glad that you enjoyed the issues that we were able to do.

JV:

Last newsletter you mentioned working with Geoff Johns on Avengers - any anecdotes or plans that never were to share?

Plans yes, JV, though I’m not about to give you any particulars, since those stories wound up never happening, and thus they aren’t owned by Marvel or anybody apart from Geoff. I will say that he had a great idea for a locked room murder mystery story set inside Avengers Mansion with a pretty terrific payoff. But it’s likely that nobody else will ever get to experience that story apart from Geoff and me at this point.

Steve McSheffrey:

What does 'eat his own feet' mean? Google was no help and even offered links to cannabilism. Yay, Google.

“Eating your own feet” is a term that means going back and doing riffs on the same core ideas again and again. Repeating one’s self. An argument could be made, for example, that over the years Jim Starlin has eaten his own feet in some or most of the later INFINITY projects he’s done.

Ray Cornwall:

OK, since this is about asking you questions...if you had permission to bring Doctor Who into the Marvel Universe, which incarnation of the Doctor would you choose? (And for fun, let's say you couldn't use the most recent, even though that would probably be the most marketable.)

Well, the most recent is the David Tennant version, who is also the most popular of the revived series. So that certainly puts me at a disadvantage. Given that limitation, I’m sure I’d go with the Matt Smith incarnation, and he’s similarly popular and was the face of the show when it broke large over here in the States in the 2010s. But really, it almost doesn’t matter which incarnation of the character you use so much as what you do with him in the story. They’re all the same person, after all.

Stephen:

Around the time the Crossgen books came out was the same time I was at peak monthly reading, and there were so many great titles in the bunch. Ruse, Meridian, Sojourn, Mystic and Abadazad were personal favorites. Several of these series received brief reboots, and the line recently had a reprint collection. How does editorial look at these books, as far as whether to bring them back for another go? It seems like these series in particular would do well in the book market, and book fairs etc, since they’re a different aesthetic than many Marvel books. Meridian in particular is begging for a reboot and a Disney channel series. We’ve seen Marvel taking on more properties like Alien and Predator. How does editorial go about deciding which of your parent company’s IP to tackle?

Well, it’s not so simple as us deciding, Stephen. We don’t control the publishing rights to any of those series, even though they are controlled by companies which, like Marvel, are owned by Disney. So this maybe makes it a smidge easier to gain access to those rights at a certain point if there’s an interest in pursuing them for publishing. But we also need to navigate any existing deals that may already be in place, and work hand-in-hand with the representatives of the rights-holding company just as we would for an outside license. But typically, we make efforts to acquire the rights to make comics featuring such properties when we feel that there are opportunities to grow the business and the audience, to flesh out our publishing line in different ways, and to capitalize on the success of the underlying IP. With the CrossGen titles, we did our short-lived revival series simply to see if we could make something successful of them in the contemporary marketplace. With, say, ALIEN and PREDATOR, those are two well-known franchises that each scratch a slightly different itch than the typical Marvel release, and they’ve headlined successful comic book series for many years, so a base audience is already there and willing to accept the medium. But it all really just comes down to what we think may have legs.

Matt Strawbridge:

May I ask, would it be appropriate to direct any general questions about seeing specific characters in future to you or should I just wait and hope? I understand you won’t be giving out any details about future stories but I’m curious about poor Hank Pym and if Nick Fury Sr. will show up… and hopefully have his hair back!

You can ask whatever you like, Matt, and if you hit me with a question that I either can’t or don’t want to answer, I simply won’t. In terms of the specific characters you’re asking about, there are plans afoot for both—we’ve already announced the FURY #1 60th Anniversary one-shot for May, which will feature all of the various incarnations of Nick. For Hank, you’ll need to wait a little bit longer to find out where he might be turning up next.

Gary Sassaman:

I've been listening to some of your appearances on various podcasts, including Screw It, We're Just Gonna Talk About Comics and Marvel by the Month. In one episode (I think on MBTM), you mentioned how Jack Kirby's Galactus story in Thor fell victim to both being out of Marvel continuity not coinciding with a story in the Tales of the Watcher series, I believe) and also Martin Goodman's edict to restrict stories to one-issue only, because readers couldn't always get every issue of any given title due to distribution problems.. (At least that's what I remember.) I think you mentioned there were numerous pages Kirby had pencilled that were never used.

My question is: Do these pages still exist in some form? I think this is probably before Kirby started using a Xerox machine to copy his pencils to help keep track of his stories, but if--between Marvel and collectors and John Morrow and the Jack Kirby Collector--they do, is there a chance Marvel could hire someone to write a script for them and get them ready for publication, maybe as some kind of new graphic novel?

I’ve been meaning to write a piece on Kirby’s version of THOR #169 for my website for a while now, Gary, I just haven’t gotten around to it since those sorts of articles tend to be a bit more complex than the usual fare. But I can tell you that at least a bunch of pages exist from Jack’s version, though some of them were altered and scripted for the published version of #169, and others were inked by amateurs over the years. There also isn’t enough of a story made up from just those pages that it could be completed and turned into a new ting—some of what was cut was set-ups for the next couple of issues, and those stories still happened, even if their lead-in was changed. I’ll try to get this all together at some point, but as you intuit, the Jack Kirby Collector has done some articles on these pages and these issues as well over the years, including reproducing many of the pages.

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Behind the Curtain

.Here’s an ad that Marvel ran in a magazine for Distributors back in 1973.

This was just after Marvel’s total circulation pulled ahead of that of DC/National Periodical Publications’ numbers, and so this particular ad crows about that a little bit. It’s a snarky piece, but entirely in keeping with the Marvel brand of humor—the fact that the Marvel heroes have toppled Clark Kent’s phone booth, trapping Superman within it as they’ve taken over the landscape sends a powerful visual message of long-fought triumph. Plus, it’s kind of funny, too—at least if you weren’t DC’s Publisher Carmine Infantino. From this point forward, DC would struggle to catch of to Marvel’s sales, doing so a couple of times over the years, but never quite taking the top spot on a permanent basis again. Still, there’s always next month.

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Pimp My Wednesday

Man, it seems like there’s less and less time between when we start working on some of these books and when they go out to the racks to reach you. That’s a side effect of getting old, time passes more quickly. Anyway, here’s what we’ve done for you this week:

I AM IRON MAN is a five-issue anniversary limited series written by Murewa Ayodele and illustrated by Dotun Akande, and it’s made up of five self-contained stories set in different periods of Shell-head’s past that nonetheless add up to a statement that is greater than the sum of its parts. This was a project that Murewa and Dotun pitched to me after I’d brought them on board to do a MOON KNIGHT: BLACK, WHITE & BLOOD story after seeing their web series MY GRANDFATHER WAS A GOD. We ran sort of a precursor story in IRON MAN #25 a few months ago that gives a sense of the scale and the sensibility of this series—so if you liked that, then you’re sure to like this. (have to try to remember to include that IRON MAN #25 story in the eventual collection.)

And Associate Editor Annalise Bissa strikes again, this time with the first of three connected Marvel Specials that bring back the almost-forgotten vampire team the Forgiven, pairing them with a different super-star in each chapter. This first one stars Spider-Man and is written by Tim Seeley and illustrated by Sid Kodian. It also bring back an obscure character from the past who was introduced on my watch many years ago. Who is it? You’ll have to pick up a copy to find out!

And Assistant Editor martin Biro has a book that he’s responsible for on the shelves this week as well. It’s the first issue of a new COSMIC GHOST RIDER limited series that’s a clean enough entry point where even if you don’t know much of anything about this truly bizarre creation, you should be able to jump right into the action. It’s written by Stephanie Phillips and illustrated by Juann Cabal and Jonas Scharf.

And of course, the train that is AVENGERS UNLIMITED just keeps rolling along on the MARVEL UNLIMITED service. This week sees the third chapter of Alex Segura and Jim Towe’s story involving the Avengers seeking a missing Moon Knight in a zombified town, only to come face-to-face with some old adversaries.

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A Comic Book On Sale 80 Years Ago Today, Feburary 26, 1943

As you can see from the banner on this cover, by 1943 CAPTAIN MAREVL ADVENTURES had become so popular and sold so well that its frequency was increased to once every three weeks. In a way, that isn’t so surprising, as the Captain’s publisher Fawcett Publications, had spent years building up a line of successful magazines before even entering the comic book business. They were a known and respected quantity. To help increase regional loyalty, the editorial team had Captain Marvel get involved in stories specifically set in major cities all across the nation, which would include cameo appearances by local celebrities and businesses as well as the local distributor. But none of this would have amounted to much of Captain Marvel’s adventures weren’t connecting with an audience. And they were—and in a greater amount than anything else. This more than anything else is what led DC/National Comics to be so aggressive in their lawsuit against Fawcett and Captain Marvel, claiming that the captain was just a knock-off of Superman. And to be honest, they had a point—while Captain Marvel developed in different directions, as initially conceived, he was about as close to Superman as you might come without getting in trouble—or maybe a shade too close. In any event, the Big Red Cheese beat the Man of Steel to the movie screen after DC’s negotiations with Republic studios to make a Superman serial fell apart and Republic instead licensed the rights to Captain Marvel. having the character in local movie theaters coast-to-coast in real life gave him a huge promotional leg up. the captain Marvel stories were still just a little bit crude at this point, not as polished as they would become after the war was over. But they had already developed the sense of whimsey that would differentiate them from the hundreds of other generic costumed do-gooders that were crowding the stands. This isn’t just any old issue of CAPTAIN MARVEL ADVENTURES, though, this was the one that started off what was perhaps the longest and greatest story told during the Golden Age of Comics. It was called “The Monster Society of Evil” and it would be serialized for 25 chapters over the next two years, eventually coming to a conclusion in CAPTAIN MARVEL ADVENTURES #46. At a time when most comic book stories were only 13 or so pages long, with the occasional book-length epic tossed in, this was an unprecedented length for a story to run. It started off with the revelation that a mysterious disembodied voice calling itself Mister Mind had brought together an alliance of Captain Marvel’s many foes, including Doctor Sivana, IBAC, Captain Nazi, and a few unfortunate racist Japanese caricature characters. Mister Mind was determined to rule the world, and Captain Marvel contended with his assorted emissaries issue after issue for around the first third of the serial. but Mister Mind himself proved to be elusive. In part, that’s because the creative braintrust behind the serial, which included writer Otto Binder and editor Rod Reed, hadn’t bothered to figure out just exactly who or what Mister Mind actually was! They were flying by the seat of their pants, letting the popularity of the serial determine its length. And it was popular—and no aspect of it was more intriguing to kids than the identity and true appearance of Mister Mind. As time went on, the creative crew realized that they had a problem: they had built up expectations so much that just about anything that they did would wind up being a disappointment. Legend tells of an editorial meeting called to figure out a solution to this problem, at which somebody suggested, “Why don’t we make him the most unexpected thing in the world instead? Like, a worm!” The worm idea stuck, and in a following chapter, as Captain Marvel broke through the barriers to Mister Mind’s sanctum, he had a moment where he brushed away a little worm that had fallen atop his head. This turned out to be Mister Mind himself, who wore spectacles and had a voice box hung around his neck so that his speech could be understood. This reveal was a phenomenon for readers, and so the middle section of the serial concerned itself with the ongoing duel between Marvel and Mind, as the worm turned his many forces against the world, attempting to knock off the Captain while he was in his vulnerable Billy Batson identity time and time again. Issue after issue was ended with Billy facing some life-threatening jeopardy that he’d have to get out of through wits and cleverness (and in a few instances, through blind luck and the writer’s fiat.) But eventually, as all things must, this conflict began to run out of steam. This seemed to coincide with the winddown of World War II itself. So the back portion of the serial flipped matters, largely putting Mister Mind on the back foot and leaving him in danger at the end of a few installments. In the end, after 25 breakneck chapters, Captain Marvel finally defeated the last bits of the Monster Society of Evil and captured Mister Mind. the worm was put on trial for the deaths of 144,800 people (a pretty paltry number next to the War, but still a respectable number for a would-be world conqueror.) He was sentenced to the electric chair, and after his execution, his body was stuffed and mounted and put on display. Mister Mind wouldn’t return until the 1970s, when the Captain and his cast of characters were revived by DC under the SHAZAM! banner. For all that it’s a seminal work of the era, the Monster Society of Evil is also a product of its era, and rife with stereotyping of a sort that causes double-takes in a modern context. because of this, despite having solicited a collection several times over the years, DC feels (probably correctly) that they can’t collect the story in a single edition. There was a beautiful slipcase edition produced by the American Nostalgia Library in 1989, but it was pricey then and even pricier now on the aftermarket. so for all its virtues, I don’t know that the Monster Society of Evil will ever see the light of day again. But what a ride it was!

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A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

GHOST RIDER #84 came out on February 26, 1997 and it was credited to the previous editor, James Felder. But I was the one who finished it up and sent it to print after Felder had been laid off during one of Marvel’s seemingly-yearly downsizings of the era. GHOST RIDER had been enormously popular when it first launched in this incarnation seven years earlier, but by this point line extensions and turnover in creative oversight to say nothing of a strain on the overall talent pool had reduced it to a shell of what it once had been. My mission was to try to put it back on top—and ultimately, I failed in that mission, for all that I still feel like most of the choices that I made were right ones. Sometimes, you can do everything right and still lose. Anyway, in his own attempt to spike interest in the character and the series, Felder had brought Pop Mhan onto the series as the new regular artists. Pop was one of the new breed of artist whose work was very manga and anime influenced, though it was also a lot brighter and more cartoony than what had been done on the character before. Steering into the direction, Felder and Mhan, along with writer Ivan Velez, redesigned the character, giving him a more AKIRA-influenced motorcycle and a bright red and yellow outfit. It was a bold choice, but one that didn’t wind up paying off—in part because Pop was still young enough and deliberate enough in his craft that he had to be spelled on a few issues, often at the last minute. Anyway, I hadn’t really had all that much interest in Ghost Rider as a character when I took over the series. Back in the 1970s when I was a reader, it was one of Marvel’s lousiest books for a good long stretch. I bought it, but really almost only because it was there. So the first thing I had to do was to work out what the series was meant to be about, why it appealed to the people it appealed to, and then head back towards that. After some consideration, I decided to keep Ivan Velez on the series as writer. This may have been a mistake, honestly, but he was doing good work, and I felt as though I could give him guidance and get him on track with what I had in mind. And also, I was still a relatively young editor at that time and so not as experienced with firing people off of books. I was cowardly, to make no bones about it, so it was easier to move ahead than to pull the trigger. But I can remember that we had a lunch, myself, Ivan and assistant editor Glenn Greenberg, by which point I had refined my approach to the series. I told Ivan to forget literally everything he had been told up to this point, throw out everything that he had been thinking, and to make room for all possibilities. My distillation of GHOST RIDER was that it was a Supernatural Urban Western, with the Rider as an unremitting force of vengeance against evildoers, blowing into town like a modern day cowboy to meet out justice to the wicked. We pivoted almost immediately, using the impending FLASHBACK event which was to feature stories about the Marvel heroes prior to when they got their powers to re-examine the underlying mythos of the series and introduce a new predecessor to both Danny Ketch and the earlier Johnny Blaze. We also brought back the Rider’s leathers, and the flaming logo that had been rolled out at the start of the new series. Most critically, I was able to lure Javier Saltares back as the title’s penciler. While it had wound up being the inking (and eventually, the entire art job) of Mark Texiera that had really set GHOST RIDER apart back in the day, Saltares had been the revival’s first penciler, and he brought with him some of the spirit of those early days. The threats became more unsettling and supernatural, and it felt like things were on the right track. But the marketplace had moved on by this point, the industry as a whole wasn’t doing well, and the title was cancelled. To add insult to injury, the Editor in Chief decided to spike the series an issue early on a day when I was out of the office, a tactic he would use whenever the circumstance arose—I was not the only one who was occasionally cowardly. In the end, I held onto that unpublished and not-entirely-finished issue for about ten years, until it eventually saw print as one of our FROM THE MARVEL VAULT titles in 2007. So I won in the end—but I really lost. Because I wasn’t able to save the series in the first place. So it goes.

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A Comic I Didn’t Work On That Came Out On This Date

Just a quick moment to acknowledge the beginning of this run of FANTASTIC FOUR, which came out on February 26, 2014. It was the first issue of FANTASTIC FOUR, my favorite Marvel title, that I hadn’t edited since 2002—after wrapping up the Matt Fraction run and establishing a record as the person who’d edited the series for the longest, i was asked to step aside and let somebody else have a try. That somebody else turned out to be Mark Paniccia, who brought in James Robinson and Leonard Kirk to helm the series. Rian Hughes created a new logo for the title, and the characters were given new red costumes to mark the occasion. It was a good run, for the most part—I didn’t love all of it, but I liked a lot of it, and it was as solid as anything that I had put out in my time on the series. But by the end, the numbers on the book were flagging, as they’d been towards the end of Fraction’s era as well, and so the decision was made that, as Jonathan Hickman’s SECRET WARS Event was going to wind up being very FF-centric since he’d developed a lot of it while he was writing FANTASTIC FOUR before Fraction, it would be a good place to put the series on hiatus, in the hopes that absence would make the heart grow fonder and improve the title’s fortunes when we eventually brought it back—a strategy that had previously worked with THOR some years earlier. To be honest, I never expected to edit FANTASTIC FOUR again. I figured that somebody like Jordan White would end up helming it when it came back, that I’d had my chance. But when the time came to do MARVEL 2-IN-ONE, all eyes turned to me, and after only a momentary hesitation I took it on. And so I’m back editing FANTASTIC FOUR once more, having overseen Dan Slott’s tenure and recently brought in Ryan North for his crack at the team.

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Monofocus

A bit more reading this past week, though I haven’t yet entirely finished everything up. For example, I’m still in the middle of CONFABULATIONS, Dave Gibbons’ massive autobiography published by Dark Horse. It takes a unique approach to the subject matter, organizing its stories into alphabetical order by topic rather than going through them chronologically as a typical autobiography might. And it’s all pretty interesting. Gibbons has had a long and varied career working on a wide variety of projects, though WATCHMEN is clearly the one for which he’s become best known. But it’s interesting to me to hear about the UK comic book scene and especially his early days as a creator breaking into the field. There’s also lots of cool vintage and behind-the-scenes artwork, including pages that Gibbons drew when he was still just a fan. I always love seeing stuff like that. The volume is meaty as well, more than it might appear at first glance. i expected to be able to get through it in a single sitting, but I’ve only managed to get around halfway so far. Not because it’s difficult to read or anything, Gibbons’ prose is comfortable and direct. It’s more that there’s simply so much to it. If you’ve ever had any liking for Dave’s work, it’s a must-read volume.

A book I had an easier time making my way through was ASTRO CITY METROBOOK VOLUME 3, which collects the entirety of the 16-issue Dark Age storyline, as well as the two-issue Silver Agent story that served as its coda. This was a story whose beginnings went back to when Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross were approached to produce a sequel to the phenomenally popular MARVELS. In the end, MARVELS II didn’t happen, but by the time everything fell apart, Kurt had already come up with the nugget of an idea about two brothers, one a criminal and the other a cop, who would live through the Marvel Universe of the Bronze Age. All of the details got retooled for ASTRO CITY, of course, but the core idea is still there. And I have to say, I didn’t remember this sequence being quite as long as it is. And it’s not my favorite ASTRO CITY story—I feel like it goes on for too long, that it doesn’t stick the landing, and that it tries to bring together too many disparate elements along the way. That assessment really didn’t change with this reread, but any ASTRO CITY is going to have something to recommend it, so I don’t feel as though it was wasted effort or anything.

On the video front, at the recommendation of my former Associate Editor Alanna Smith, I tried out the first two episodes of the anime BOCCHI THE ROCK, about a painfully introverted high school girl who wants to perform in a rock and roll band. And they were pretty entertaining, so I intend to continue on through the first 10-episode series. it really does seem like stories about introverts and the socially awkward have become something of a sub-genre in manga and anime, a reflection of the fears and concerns of its Japanese audience I would imagine. Anyway, I’ll do my usual thing and share the opening title sequence with you, to give you a taste of the show’s flavor.

I also sampled the first episode of Apple TV+’s new series HELLO TOMORROW, despite some mediocre reactions from the folks who got to see it ahead of time. And, sadly, those reviews seem to be on the money. The show has a great visual aesthetic, set in a retro-future world that resembles the 1950s by way of the jetsons, with flying cars and helpful robots and self-driving vehicles. But the writing doesn’t seem especially sharp, the characters are all a bit dull, and while it’s going for a bit of the ambiance of MADMEN (which, frankly, would be welcome) its producers don’t seem to have the chops to pull that off. It isn’t terrible, but that doesn’t make it good enough to keep going with. It’s possible that I may try one more episode, just to see if I’m being too hasty—that visual design sense is very appealing. But given those other reactions, I fear that I am not.

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Posted at TomBrevoort.com

Yesterday, I took a look at the first issue of the 1980s revival of THE COMET

I also examined this (Not So) Great Cover

And five years ago, I wrote about the Wonder Woman vs Superman conflict in this issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA

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And with that, I will leave you good people for another week. But with a promise to return seven days hence, with more useless trivia and old man stories from comic books past.

Tom B