#11: Party Time

With luck, a full Newsletter just as I typed it this time!

Jun 12, 2022

Hello, everyone! Welcome back! Let’s see if we have better luck in getting all of today’s Newsletter to post in a single go, shall we?

Amidst all of the other stuff going on last week, I failed to mention that June 5th represented the 33rd anniversary of my start as a Marvel intern back in 1989

It would not be wrong to say that I peaked as an intern, and everything that’s happened since has been a slow but inevitable slide downwards. Anyway, that’s 1/3 of a century at Marvel so far, so you can’t say that I don’t have stick-to-it-iveness.

This should maybe be a part of this week’s Monofocus section, but I wanted to give everybody a brief update concerning the finale of a series I spoke about last week, the Korean game show Black Sheep Game—because it was an amazing finish. As I laid out last time, the show involved eight players, two of whom are secretly “black sheep”. The objective of the group is to expel the two Black Sheep in a limited amount of time, with mini-games being played for clues as to the identities of the twin Black Sheep. And the audience is only aware of the true identity of one Black Sheep player, with the other hidden.

And now I’m going to spoil the finale, so if this is something that you think you’ll ever seek out, look away for two paragraph. But after two eliminations, both Black Sheep remained in a filed of what was now 6 players. Our one Black Sheep player figured that the best strategy for securing victory was to sacrifice himself, setting up an innocent “white Sheep” player to take the fall with him—as long as one Black Sheep remained in the game up until the end, the Black Sheep would split the prize money. Our Black Sheep carried out this strategy, only to discover that the person he had targeted was his fellow Black Sheep—who was running the same strategy on him! In essence, they had both been so good at diverting suspicion from themselves that they fooled one another into losing the whole event.

But then came the kicker! Because the remaining four victorious White Sheep players had to complete one last task in order to secure their share of the prize money: they had to correctly identify the one “trait” category that the two Black Sheep had in common. This should have been a cakewalk, as the group had identified the trait earlier, when they had focused in on the two Black Sheep. But first, they decided that they should all cast the same answer, so as to divide the winnings equally. And then, one of the players indicated that the answer that they had selected had been disqualified, that it couldn’t be right. Despite the fact that nothing of the sort had been said, this woman convinced the other three to go along with her and select a different trait entirely. Watching this, I was sure that this was a brilliant strategy on her part, getting the other three to deliberately vote for the wrong thing while she voted for the one that they all knew was right and taking home all of the prize money herself. But no, she was just a ditz, and consequently, every single player in the series went home empty handed. Sheep indeed! I have to say, this whole outcome was delightful to me.

I also need to confess as to how stupid I feel having gotten further into the Chinese drama Reset. Last week I opined that I didn’t know how they were going to find enough story to fill the 15 episodes of the show’s run, but the answer as it turns out was obvious—so much so that I feel like a dope for having not thought of it. As out two leads need to find out who or what is setting off the explosion on the bus they were traveling on and thus break the time loop they are in, they naturally begin to investigate one passenger after the next, looking for the culprit. This kicks off side-stories and adventures which serve to eliminate different passengers from the suspect pool while providing new drama and new interest in the later episodes. So I’m a good, and I need to own up to it.

And now, let’s dig into a few more questions from you guys. Sam Ray asks:

Reading your old blog here and there it seems like you were quite the DC fan in your early years. What are some of your favorite DC characters?

You are correct, I love the DC Universe and its characters about as much as I do the Marvel U—though I have to say that I’ve felt very disconnected from the DC line for more than a decade, since NEW 52 wiped out everything that had come before and changed a lot of the ethos of the characters and their world. And the efforts to restore some of it haven’t been enough to get me back on board completely. (Though there are still plenty of DC titles that I like, including WORLD’S FINEST, NIGHTWING, SUPERMAN SON OF KAL-EL and much of Tom King’s output.) In terms of specific characters that I love, the Flash remains my all-time favorite super hero-and that’s either Jay Garrick, Barry Allen or Wally West. Other favorite characters would include Superman, the Doom Patrol, the New Teen Titans, Green Lantern, the Justice League of America, the Justice Society of America, the Metal Men—I could keep going for a very long time here.

Rob London has a very simple query:

Is current Marvel editor Martin Biro related to Golden Age comics creator Charles Biro?

No, he is not. Not directly at least, there may be a familial connection if you go back far enough. Which is a shame, because I’m a big fan of Charles Biro’s work.

And Steve Levine asked a pair of questions:

1. What goes into the decision making related to a permanent status quo change for characters? So much seems caught up in the illusion of change and eventual reversion to the status quo that I would imagine true permanent change seems like a rare editorial decision made with a lot of care.
2. Which major Big Two changes feel permanent to you and which seem like a careful creative person could eventually undo or retcon? It feels to me the big changes that are unlikely to be undone are Dick Grayson becoming Nightwing and Carol Danvers becoming Captain Marvel, maybe there are others you would also think have been accepted as additive and not helpful to undo down the road?\

It all depends on the specific decision you’re talking about. Often, changes that you see in stories that are presented as true permanent changes aren’t really intended to be that at all, but nobody is quite certain how well or how poorly they are going to work out and therefore how long it might take for things to get back to their classic status quo, if ever. And honestly, sometimes they happen by accident, when somebody doesn’t think something through well enough beyond the moment. Giving super heroes children is a good example of the latter—there’s always a certain amount of excitement creatively in the moment, and it’s only after the fact that everybody realizes that they’ve just hung a very permanent millstone around that character’s neck.
I think if time has proven anything, it’s that even the changes that seem like they should be permanent have a tendency to come unraveled. So I don’t know that your two examples are quite as bulletproof as you feel they are. I would have said the same thing about Wally West as the Flash a decade ago, but there’s Barry Allen, back in the saddle again—and for all that Wally is currently headlining the FLASH title, that definitely feels like seat-saving to me, since Barry is involved with whatever DARK CRISIS stuff is brewing. At the end of the day, the thing that makes a change permanent (or “permanent” at least) is its success, the degree to which the audience accepts and embraces it. I think, especially given that she got a whole movie in the role, that it would be relatively difficult to divorce Carol Danvers from the Captain Marvel identity at this point. By that same token, not a month goes by without somebody wanting to bring back Captain Mar-Vell—and if Marv were to be resurrected, what does anybody think we’re going to call him? The same is true, I expect, with Dick Grayson as Robin. All that really needs to happen is for Matt Reeves to cast the Boy Wonder in the sequel to THE BATMAN and you’ll likely see DC get Dick back into whatever the modern equivalent of short pants is at lightning speed.

Behind the Curtain

.What we see here is an invitation to Marvel’s Christmas Party of 1992 (which was in celebration of Christmas 1991—we didn’t get to the party until the following January). It was illustrated by Matt Wagner, the creator of GRENDEL and MAGE, who didn’t actually do a whole lot of work for Marvel. But Creative Services, who were responsible for commissioning these invitations, liked to use creators whose work they liked—and as I love Wagner’s work as well, I saved it all of these years.

The Marvel Party in 1992 was a relatively reasonable affair, though it was a mostly wasted on me. I’m not really a party person to begin with. I don’t drink, I don’t dance, I don’t really love to socialize, and my hearing within a certain sound range is lousy, so it’s difficult to carry on a conversation in a place like this. Nevertheless, I went to all of the Marvel parties in my earliest years with the company, and watched as, buoyed by the success Marvel was having, they ballooned beyond all reason into baccinals of incredible excess. Seriously, in later years, there would be gigantic ice sculptures of Marvel heroes, models in Marvel cosplay passing out drinks, a dance floor decked out to resemble the Danger Room with the DJ decked out in full Professor X regalia, and just a monstrous number of attendees. It wasn’t uncommon in those later years to walk in on people either mid-coitus in the restroom or else partaking of one controlled substance or another. It was definitely “Wall Street” culture, and it couldn’t last—and didn’t, once the speculator bubble burst, Marvel’s owner-company’s debts (backed by Marvel stock) came due, and the stock price plummeted. So this invite is a remnant of a past era that I wouldn’t be anxious to revisit. But it’s still a nice piece of artwork.

Pimp My Wednesday

In the ebb and flow of publishing, it’s another big week for books coming out of my office. So let’s see what we’ve got.

MOON KNIGHT: BLACK, WHITE AND BLOOD #2 continues to feature hopefully-cool stories set throughout Moon Knight’s career and history by a diverse pool of talent. This particular release displays a wide range of artistic styles across its thirty pages—creating these juxtapositions in visual approach is one of the things I like about putting together anthologies. There are three stories in all, one by Benjamin Percy and Vanesa Del Rey, one by David Pepose and Leonardo Romero, and one by Patch Zircher that represents his first time writing a script as well as drawing it.

The penultimate issue of THE MARVELS continues to draw all of the story threads from the series together in what will hopefully be a satisfying conclusion next time. But maybe the big news here is this cover by Alex Ross. I’ve always loved an Infinity Cover, so when Alex and Kurt Busiek suggested it, I was all for it. I had to assure folks in our sign-off chain that it was all right that we were obscuring Kurt’s name on this cover. The interior artwork, as it has been for the entirety of the previous ten issues, is provided by Yildiray Cinar.

FANTASTIC FOUR #44 is an oversized issue that represents the climax of the ongoing Reckoning War storyline; there’ll be a wrap-up/epilogue next issue, but this one is really where everything comes together and explodes. As was revealed this week, writer Dan Slott will be departing the series shortly after this story wraps up—it seemed like a good one to finish on after four years. Artwork on this issue was split up between Rachael Stott, Andrea Di Vito and Davide Tinto, all unified nicely by the coloring of Jesus Aburtov.

And finally, we also have a significant issue of IRON MAN by writer Christopher Cantwell and artist Angel Unzueta, in which Tony Stark proposes to his love interest Patsy Walker, a.k.a Hellcat. There’s also a fight with a super-intelligent gorilla, for those who demand more intellectual stimulation from their comic books. I’m a big fan of the insight and slow-burn deconstruction of Tony Stark that Chris has been undertaking—this is one of those series that I wish more people would pay attention to. But you can’t always control how the audience is going to react. It’s weird, because I feel like this material is the equal of the DOCTOR DOOM series that Chris did with artist Salvador Larroca, but that book got notice and praise and award nominations all over the place, but IRON MAN largely flies under the radar. I could write a million words about the dissonance, but the point is, if you haven’t tried it before this (or in a while) give IRON MAN #20 your attention please.

A Comic Book On Sale 70 Years Ago Today, June 12, 1952

SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES was conceived as a sort of a “sampler” of the EC Comics line, with each issue containing a twist-ending story from one of the core genres that EC was publishing in: Horror, Crime and Science Fiction. But the most notable stories in SHOCK, the ones that are best recalled today, occupied the second story slot, and were known affectionately among the EC staff as “preachies.” These were stories that it was legitimately courageous of EC Publisher Bill Gaines to publish, as they were about then-contemporary social issues: bigotry, race and class hatred, the plight of the disabled and the injured, the corruption of trusted institutions, and so on. They were designed to get across a message, to preach as it were. This particular issue, #4, featured the story “Confession” by writer Al Feldstein (who wrote the lion’s share of EC’s output) and illustrated by Wally Wood. In it, an innocent man who comes across a dead woman’s body in the road one night is beaten by the police until he confesses to the crime—a crime which of course was carried out by the Lieutenant in charge of the investigation. It maybe sounds trite today, but in 1952, comic books simply didn’t touch material of this sort (and once the Comics Code came in a few years later, they wouldn’t touch it again for another few decades.) For those who are interested, all of the “preachies” were collected in glorious black and white in this volume still available through Amazon.

A Comic Book On Sale 25 Years Ago Today, June 12, 1997

Doing a two-fer this week on this subject!

CEREBUS was a long-running black and white independent series, one that chronicled the life story of the titular Aardvark in a sword-and-sorcery era. It started out as simply a funny animal parody of CONAN but swiftly grew into something more unique and interesting. Throughout the 1980s, it was always about the most consistently innovative and entertaining series being published. That all said, its creator Dave Sim is also a profoundly troubling individual, who holds certain beliefs that can only be described as abhorrent. That said, in part because of when I read it all (as it was coming out, mostly) I’m still largely able to separate the man from his work, o Dave’s beliefs don’t diminish the parts of CEREBUS that I enjoy. And it has to be said, while the early issues were extremely crude, he swiftly grew into one of the absolute best cartoonists in the field. A lot of the pacing of contemporary comics owe a debt to Sim as a pioneer. He was the first to create extended storylines of 25 issues or more and to collect them into massive paperbacks he called phone books. This particular issue, #219, wraps up GUYS, the first storyline of the final third of the series run. Once he hit issue #200, Sim had largely wrapped up all of his earlier plotlines (at least as much as he was ever going to) and pivoted away from doing stories with any sort of adventure narrative at all. GUYS is completely about a group of men, including Cerebus, who spend their days drinking in a local tavern while their wives run the community. It’s an exploration of the male psyche, albeit the male psyche as reckoned with by Sim (who had and it seems has some legitimate issues with women.) As a reader, I found these post-#200 issues tough going, a slot at several points, and I only hung on to the end through sheer willpower, both remembering how good the series had been earlier and committed to making it all the way to the finale in #300 like Sim himself. Years later, I wound up doing a reread of the entire run after IDW published a collection of the CEREBUS covers, and I found that I liked the material far more in a single sitting. That shouldn’t have been a surprise—Sim was really about the first person in American comics to adopt “writing for the trade” as a methodology—his trades were just a lot longer than average.

A Comic I Worked On That Came Out On This Date

Yes, it’s true: I was the uncredited assistant editor on 1990’s seminal BRUTE FORCE limited series. This little piece of of-its-time nonsense has garnered a lot of attention and even notoriety in recent years, largely thanks to an episode of the MARVEL 616 documentary series that aired on Disney+ in which Paul Scheer attempts to convince Marvel (largely in the person of Stephen Wacker, who was the mastermind behind the production, to allow him to resurrect the property. But back in the day, BRUTE FORCE was one of a couple of would-be properties developed with the intention of turning them into toy lines and animation—G.I.JOE and TRANSFORMERS were a massive success, and as a lot of their content had been developed by Marvel, people thought it might be wise to develop something similar to which the company owned all of the rights. As a result, BRUTE FORCE is pitched at a somewhat less sophisticated level than even the average super hero comic book. And as the cover shows you, it involved hyper-intelligent anthropomorphized animals in high-tech battle suits fighting to save the natural environment from those who would pollute it. What makes it all a bit absurd is that the animals are all drawn quasi-realistically, and they routinely have conversations with regular people. It’s a strange melange of elements—but, hey, in 1990 nobody knew what was going to catch the fancy of kids all that well. BRUTE FORCE was the creation of toy designer Charles Voila, and he was painfully sincere in his desire to put forward the message of helping the environment. The actual series was written by Simon Furman (a UK-based writer best known for his TRANSFORMERS scripts) and illustrated by longtime pro Jose Delbo. BRUTE FORCE was launched as a four-issue limited series, just as TRANSFORMERS had been years earlier. It sold poorly and sank like a stone without a ripple, never becoming a cartoon or a toy, seemingly forgotten. At least until editor Jordan White found the characters almost thirty years later and decided to bring them back for a ridiculous romp in a DEADPOOL special. Since then, these have been the best years for BRUTE FORCE—which is really saying something, given that not much has happened with them still. This first issue made its public debut on June 12, 1990.

Monofocus

This has been a week that’s been more about finishing series that I had started than sampling new stuff—although I do have the first episode of the latest season of Apple TV’s FOR ALL MANKIND waiting for me. And I covered a bunch of the international shows at the top.

I did realize that I haven’t said anything about OBI-WAN KENOBI yet, which I’ve been following on Disney+. From what I’ve seen, people seem to either really love this series or really hate it, and the divide seems to center around how much or how little you care for the three STAR WARS prequel movies. Speaking for myself, I’m right up the middle, which is my baseline position on STAR WARS in general. I’ve found it to be all right, but it certainly doesn’t grab me the way it does some. On the other hand, I also don’t care that it makes a hash out of certain continuity beats in earlier works either, so I’m untroubled by its existence. It’s fine, it’ll do until some other STAR WARS show comes along. And it’s a damn sight better than BOOK OF BOBA FETT, which was an actual mess that had to resort to looping in another series in order to save itself. Nothing here is all that dire. And like everybody else, I like the actress playing young Leia.

I also began rereading THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE in the umbra of the current television series. It is remarkable how much of Steven Moffat’s canon was strongly influenced by it.

And I think we’re going to call things there! Thanks as always for your attention and support, and if you want to recommend this thing to other people, you’ll get no argument from me.

Tom B