# From Cover to Cover
> Scott Cederlund and Mike Baxter cover the world of comic books.
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## Pages
### About this site
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/about/
Last updated: 2021-10-30T20:28:59.000Z
Mike and I have been talking for a while about what we love about comics and what we love about criticism In a lot of ways, how we approach these loves is the same even as where we find that love overlaps but comes from different directions. And that’s one of the things we love about comics-- they’re so different. There are no defined statutes about what a comic needs to be. In a recent trip to the comic shop, I grabbed the latest issue of Jason Aaron’s Avengers and a recent edition of Dan Clowe’s Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. The stack next to my desk (just one of many stacks in the house) has the aforementioned Gabrielle Bell and Kieron Gillen in it but it also has Rumiko Takahashi, Elsa Charrettier, John Porcellino, Grant Morrison, Joe Matt, and Lale Westvind in it. It’s not well balanced and will probably topple over at any moment but this is what we love about comics. It’s the voices, the creators, the stories, and the possibilities that start with a blank page.
And if you looked at a lot of comic websites, you would see only a portion of those comics and voices represented. I can’t say that Mike and I and whoever else we manage to coax into this thing are going to be all-encompassing because there’s just too much out there to be able to read everything. We’ve got our own blinders on as well and realize that there are cartoonists, writers, and artists out there that we don’t even know about. But we want to. We want to find voices and perspectives that will show us something new. And they can be the most established mainstream Marvel or DC creators but they could be doing something fascinating with decades-old characters or they could be some young person in a far corner of the world posting their first comic to Instagram.
### Contact
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/contact/
Last updated: 2021-11-14T21:51:55.000Z
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### Privacy
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/privacy/
Last updated: 2021-08-21T00:01:28.000Z
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### Contribute
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/contribute/
Last updated: 2022-01-01T20:10:41.000Z
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### From Cover To Cover Team
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-cover-staff/
Last updated: 2021-09-16T20:45:54.000Z
Scott Cederlund
Mike Baxter
### Who We Support
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/who-we-support/
Last updated: 2022-01-01T20:27:01.000Z
Here at From Cover to Cover, we believe in being upfront and honest about what cartoonists and journalists that I support through their online subscriptions or crowd-funding projects. Each month, I'll be updating this page and also putting a new post on the site. As much as this is to be forthright about my own money is going, it's also my opportunity to shout out some of the great work that's being done by the people creating comics, the people who engage in dialogue with those comics, and maybe even a few great movie critics as well.
MB= Mike is supporting the campaign.
SC= Scott is supporting the campaign.
## Comics
### Kickstarter
In the past, Kickstarter has been a wonderful way for creators to be able to connect and sell directly to their audience. But with the recent news of [Kickstarter looking to rework their back end to base it on blockchain and cryptocurrency](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/web3-kickstarter-and-discord-face-backlash-over-moves-into-crypto.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), we will need to re-evaluate the viability of using that service to be able to support projects that we find appealing.
### Patreon
[John Allison](https://www.patreon.com/scarygoround?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Katrion Chapman](https://www.patreon.com/user?u=840956&ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Joshua/False Knees](https://www.patreon.com/falseknees?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Jesse Lonegran](https://www.patreon.com/jesselonergan?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Melissa Mendes](https://www.patreon.com/melissamendes/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
[B. Mure](https://www.patreon.com/bmure?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
## Comics Journalism
### Patreon
[Broken Frontier](https://www.patreon.com/brokenfrontier?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Rob Clough](https://www.patreon.com/highlowcomics/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
[Fieldmouse Press (Solrad)](https://www.patreon.com/solrad/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
[Strip Panel Naked](https://www.patreon.com/strippanelnaked/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
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[Sktchd](https://sktchd.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
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## Film Journalism
### Patreon
[Filmspotting](https://www.patreon.com/filmspotting/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
### Substack Newsletter
[The Reveal](https://thereveal.substack.com/) (sc)
## Podcast
[A History of Italy](https://www.patreon.com/ahistoryofitaly?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
## Posts
### Pierre-Henry Gomont's Soviet Land In Four Pages
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/pierre-henry-gomonts-soviet-land-in-four-pages/
Last updated: 2026-09-04T01:01:56.000Z
## **“The beauty of capitalism isn’t getting to buy whatever you want. It’s selling whatever you want.” (Page 6)**
[Pierre-Henry Gomont’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/pierre-henry-gomont/) [**Soviet Land**](https://amzn.to/4i6w97P?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (*originally published in France by Dargaud as *Slava Books 1-3*)* explores what it means to sell something, whether it’s Soviet-era knick-knacks, mining equipment, art, or your own integrity. The Russia that Gomont shows here is still trying to figure out what it will be after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s practically wide open for a opportunistic capitalists looking to profit off the power vacuum left by the fall of the political system. Without an oppressive hand over its people this Russia is wide open and ready to be exploited.
This early page sets up the main dilemma of the book, and a particular nugget of wisdom comes from Lavrin, a small time operator just looking for an opportunity to make something of himself and maybe the most complex but self-aware character in the book. “You gotta pick the right side,” he tells Slava, his boyhood friend You are either a buyer or a seller in this new Russia. That’s seeing the world a bit too black-and-white but Lavrin sees only two sides to this— buy or sell. For Lavrin, the right side— the winning side—is unbridled capitalism, something that most Russians have only recently gotten a taste of but has existed all along for those powerful enough to know how to play the previous system. But it’s got to be a bit more nuanced than that, right? Maybe the truth he’s talking about here isn’t buying or selling but about the choice you make of which side you’re going to participate in or if you are going to accept these two choices as the only ones. Lavrin has already made his choice even before the book begins and that choice guides every subsequent decision he makes.
As Lavrin and his friend Slava scavenge through an old Soviet-era building looking for anything they can make a buck off of, Slava is completely out of his element. In his narration on the first page, Slava tells us “I’ve got no head for business,” so we can read page 6 as the beginning of his education by his friend and mentor Lavrin. Once an artist, this new Russia seemingly has no need of art. Slava is trying to figure out his place in this new world. Gomont is fascinated by these displaced people, not geographically but societally displaced as all the rules they knew growing up no longer exist. Slava and Lavrin stand on the edge of a new Wild West; the beliefs and systems that they grew up in and thought were forever have proved to be temporary and have disappeared.
So here they are in this new world where morals and ethics are practically still formless as their country tries to figure out what it wants to be. The world around them is lost and directionless as these two men feel abandoned by a system that Slava artistically rebelled against while Lavrin sees nothing but opportunity and fortune ahead of him.
## **“And life is what needs painting.” (Page 149)**
Following that initial scavenge job and getting lost in the surrounding woods, Slava and Lavrin meet Nina, a young woman from a nearby mining town that’s struggling to survive. A Russian businessman wants to buy all of their equipment- so they would have the mine but not the equipment to do the work. The relationship between Lavrin, Slava, Nina, and her father Volodya starts as one of need— Volodya and Nina are trying to hold on to their way of life which requires money. Lavrin, being the opportunistic capitalist he is, sees their need as the perfect opening for him to practice his art. And Slava is pulled along for the ride, trying to be supportive of his longtime friend while falling in love with a woman he just met.
For most of the book, Slava tries to exist in Lavrin and Nina’ worlds— the world of a seller and the world of a survivor. But neither world is where he comes from or belongs. Slava gained some notoriety during the last days of the Soviet empire by painting people oppressed by the system. Since the collapse of the empire, he’s felt like he hasn’t been able to do anything meaningful. You can tell that he has lost his passion for work and life and is searching for something to give his life meaning. That’s why he fell in with his old boyhood pal Lavrin in looting and selling off parts of the old Soviet culture.
Eventually as Slava and Nina begin to fall in love, she wants to see his art so Nina sends Slava to an old woman in town to get art supplies. He’s given up the dream of art but for Nina, he’ll try it again. Slava is told that the art supplies are the old woman’s father’s— his possessions that she’s kept in his memory. He was jailed for his art— that’s how important and dangerous art can be. Slava once felt this way and that is what he has lost— that passion to be dangerous. Gomont makes an interesting call here— he never shows us anyone’s art; the characters just talk about it. He leaves these images up to the reader’s imagination. But the old woman sends Slava off with her father’s words, “And life is what needs painting.” While he thinks he’s no longer an artist, she admonishes him to connect with the life around him more than he is. For much of the book, including after this scene, Slava follows other people, letting them take the lead. It is as if he is cared to be his own person; he’s trying to be what everyone else thinks he should be.
Similarly to Slava, Lavrin finds his own older woman to be his patron and mentor at this time. Magdalena Ivanovna Grishenka is part of the world that Lavrin wants to be in. She is Lavrin’s sugar momma but it’s more than that. He had been looking for a mentor, and a legitimate entry-point into the higher world of selling and buying. Magdalena, he believes, gives him a legitimacy that he longs for. So there are these two older women, one rich and traveling in the right circles and the other just another old woman living well within her lesser means, who in their different ways take these young men under their wings to teach the ways of their worlds. Each woman provides the path and the future that these young men are looking for.
The time spend with these women is so different— Slava’s times with the old woman are these brief encounters but are so pivotal to his growth, whereas Lavrin gets what he wants and much more out of it. Magdalena uses Lavrin as much as he uses her. Slava gets a calling; “Pack up all this stuff and go do your job.” That’s an affirmation that Slava has been looking for. It’s a simple, almost flippant line but it’s a strong counter to Lavrin’s worldview that the selling and buying of stuff is our highest calling.
## **“Don’t be like us.” (Page 195)**
This is the breaking point in Gomont’s book— the moment where you realize that Slava, Nina, Yolodya, and even Lavrin have been working for the past and have lost sight of the future. It’s a moment between a father and a daughter that’s so small and personal but Gomont in the two large panels tells us that we all are part of it as well. It’s a moment of recognizing that the past is the past and it is time to move forward. But we also recognize in this moment that the future is not for everyone. Yolodya is a fascinating character. He’s a bear in this story, often in his own world. Maybe this is what a Russian father is like but he’s nothing like what you or I think a father is. As a person, he’s largely unreadable except for his contempt for Lavrin but he’s willing to use him if it means saving his way of life. This hug on the side of the road is the most vulnerable and fatherly he gets in **Soviet Land**.
He’s the old man of the story. Nina wants to be her father’s daughter, Slava wants to be an artist, Lavrin wants to be a capitalist but at this stage in his life, and Volodya just wants the life he had under communism. It’s what he knows but he also knows it is not the life for his daughter’s future. In trying to save the mine, all four of them have found some kind of meaning but it all feels fleeting. Russia is in the middle of a transitional time and its people are caught up in the country's growing pains.
Volodya is at the point in the story where he is realizing that they can’t win. And maybe he’s just too tired to see this through. He’s not going to get what he wants. It’s a rare moment of tenderness for him, hugging his daughter and wanting something else for her that’s different from what he thought he wanted for both of them. As he was fighting, he was fighting for her and her future. Up to this point in the story, he’s been this impenetrable being— silent, brooding, and violent.
Volodya holding his daughter tightly here is an inversion of what their relationship up until this point has been. He’s not very fatherly; she often just refers to him by his first name. When we first see Volodya standing out in the Russian snow in just his underwear, the only way that you know their family is that she tells Lavrin, “he’s my dad.” But as you get deeper into the book, you can see that he means everything to her. Her actions are for him, what she does for the mine is for him. Slava is a distraction from that but she’s invested in the mine and the miners because Volodya is. It’s not like Gomont ever has her say it but you know she wants her father to be proud of her.
And that’s what this page is— his pride in and his love for his daughter. She still has the drive to see all of this through in ways that he no longer recognizes in himself. He knows that there is no way for them to win here. So Gomont gives us one moment of him being a father and Nina being a daughter. It’s one of the most heartfelt pages of the book and shows that with everything happening to them, there’s still room for human connection in this changing world.
## **“This wasn’t a game you ever really thought you could win, was it?” (Page 272)**
Morkhov is the businessman who originally had a deal to buy the mine’s equipment until Lavrin, Slava, and Nina came up with a plan to screw him over and keep more of the equipment for the miners. For him, losing the equipment was chump change but he took it very personally that anyone thought they could pull one over on him. It’s the cruelest page in the whole book as Morkhov explains how this world actually works to Nina. This is what Volodya was triaging to spare Nina from. While Nina and company thought they could actually pull all of this off, Morkhov was just pulling their strings, leading them on and waiting for the moment to pull everything down around them.
It’s not so much the surprise of this page but the gleeful ruthlessness that Morkhov takes in explaining his tactics to Nina that sets up the book's conclusion. As we’ve followed Slava, Lavrin, Nina, and Volodya’s attempts to take some control of their world, this page shows us just how little control most people will ever have. This story is very much a story of the one percenters and everyone else, just framed around the fall of the Soviet empire instead of the heady days of more recent financial collapses. Gomont explains how the world works here and how it is set up to screw over most of us. So the sotry becomes not about saving the mine but how do we recognize unfair systems and start working to change them to create a better world.
Nina starts this meeting feeling like she’s in control but by the fourth panel, a great silhouette image of her realizing that her world is crumbling around her, she knows it’s men like Morkhov who really control this world. Not Slava. Not Lavrin. And not her father. They’re just dollars and cents for Morkhov to move around and play with. So much of this book has been about these four people trying to understand this brave new capitalistic world so that they could have a piece of it and then finding out that was just a dream.
While this is happening to Nina, Slava is off trying to sell some of his art he’s been creating with the old woman’s supplies. As Gomont shows it, the art world is a strange blending of art and commerce. Slava is trying to produce capital “A” Art but the market is just looking for wall decorations that will match the furniture in their room. Slava is having a similar realization to how the world works as Ninais but the intentional cruelty of Morkhov’s actions is more shattering.
---
Even though **Soviet Land** is a period piece, Pierre-Henry Gomont prods us to question what do we want the world to be. That starts with having to see the world for what it is and to have an idea of what it could be. Through these four main characters that have such different hopes and dreams, we see that their primary adversary isn’t another person not another person but the systems that are set up to benefit only the system and those who control the system. By setting the story in the former Soviet Union, he gives his story enough room to be just a story of these four people. But he also gives his audience the room to question is this a story about Russia or is there something more contemporary here, something that speaks to our human condition in the 2020s.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### The Crisis Before The War in Avengers: Time Runs Out by Jonathan Hickman
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-avengers-time-runs-out-by-jonathan-hickman/
Last updated: 2026-08-20T11:06:40.000Z
A few things to know at the start:
- The new[*Marvel Premier Collection*](https://amzn.to/4qqerhu?ref=fromcovertocover.com) of **Time Runs Out** is an abridged version of Hickman’s story. The full story is available in [*Avengers By Jonathan Hickman: The Complete Collection Vol. 5*](https://amzn.to/4qmLUtf?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
- This isn’t the first Hickman *Avengers* story. It’s actually Jonathan Hickman’s finale to his multi-year/multi-titled run. And there are ways that it can be read as the last Avengers story.
- The multiverse is collapsing in on itself. Universes are colliding, and the only way to prevent the destruction of both is to destroy the Earth in one of them.
- There are only a small handful of people on our Earth who knew about this and were acting to prevent the destruction of our universe. This includes Tony Stark, Reed Richards, T’Challa, Namor, Hank McCoy, and Stephen Strange.
- Steve Rogers has discovered that his former teammates have been killing other worlds and has organized SHIELD and his allies to hunt them down as criminals. This is where **Avengers: Time Runs Out** begins.
In other words, this is a book that requires a bit of homework to start it.
It’s clear from the start of **Avengers: Time Runs Out** that the heroes aren’t going to win. The rift between the team’s two leaders, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, is just too deep for one of them to pull up to the other’s house, offer a heartfelt apology, and issue the call “Avengers Assemble!” to rally the troops back together. While on the surface of his *Avengers* run, [Jonathan Hickman](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jonathan-hickman/) built a machine designed specifically to save everything, his story turned on two men’s pride and their need to always be right. They have already lost as **Time Runs Out**opens with the Avengers split into nearly unrecognizable fractions. **Time Runs Out** revolves around the failures of the two men who dreamed the dreams that everyone believed in.
Everyone remembers Hickman’s *Secret Wars*, but we rarely talk about the mad story that preceded it. For years before *Secret Wars*, Hickman told stories of Marvel’s superheroes basically fucking everything up. Reed Richards fucked up by trusting alternate-universe versions of himself in Hickman’s *Fantastic Four* run where the alternate versions had abandoned their family in their attempts to solve everything. Richards continued this pattern of trusting the wrong people in *The New Avengers*, egged on by Tony Stark and his merry band of universe killers to embrace his darker solutions. In *The Avengers,* Stark screwed everything up by secretly manipulating Steve Rogers and a whole team of super-powered beings for his own savior-complex agenda. And Steve Rogers fucked things up by not being able to see the world in anything other than black-and-white morality and looking for revenge instead of justice. **Time Runs Out** culminates all of that, finding the Avengers at their most petty. When Roberto DeCosta (Sunspot from *The New Mutants* and now leading his own faction of Avengers) is the voice of reason, you know you’re in trouble.
Art by Stefano Caselli
Is this Hickman showing that the idea of “superheroes” is over? “Everything dies” (the opening lines of his *New* Avengers run) is the most compelling statement of Hickman’s *Avengers*. It is fascinating to think that is what he was saying while Marvel’s corporate overlords Disney exploited the Avengers as the biggest franchise in the world. The Avengers were on lunch boxes, t-shirts, and in the toy aisles at Target and Walmart. That was the cultural impact of the Avengers when this was coming out, and here was Hickman over in the comics, the source material for all of this, going “look at this bunch of losers.”
*“You can’t win.*
*“Time to start figuring out how not to lose.”*
That was a note that Valeria Richards wrote to her father early in **Time Runs Out**, but you have to wonder if Jonathan Hickman was writing it to himself as he raced toward the end of his Marvel multi-title epic story. Hickman set this story in motion with the heat death of the multiverse being imminent and now had to pay that off. It was time for the heroes to put up or shut up, but each faction of the Avengers here had a different idea of what “put up or shut up” meant. For Stark’s allies, it’s continuing the quest to save everything, a quest personified by Reed Richards. He sees the multiversal entropy as an unnatural act and will be damned if he lets a cosmic whim take his family from him. Rogers takes the moral high ground, hunting his former friends and teammates around the world like they are war criminals. They all betrayed his idealism and he’s not going to stop until his idealism rules the day again. Roberto DaCosta tries to be the adult in the room; he acts like a team leader for a team that unfortunately no longer exists.
These are all mostly Earth-bound concerns, heroes fighting heroes to prove who is right and who is wrong. There’s another contingent, exploring the multiverse and trying to live up to Valeria’s request of figuring out how not to lose. Thor, Stephen Strange, Hyperion, and even Doctor Doom with the Molecule Man accept the call to act as warriors to discover the cause of the multiversal collapse and fix the universe. Stephen Strange ends up being one of the more interesting characters when he shows up here, living up to his profession as a doctor and methodically determining a course of action. Of all the characters here, Strange approaches this as a clinical problem, looking at everything more as a doctor than as a sorcerer supreme.
Art by Kev Walker
Thor is often part of Marvel’s Avengers trinity, fighting alongside Tony & Steve. The fact that Thor is in space, fighting the good fight but separate from his brother-in-arms, is another example of just how broken this team is. Due to events external to Hickman’s story (found in Jason Aaron’s excellent *Thor* run), Thor is unworthy at this point in this life, meaning that he’s lost his hammer so he’s lost everything. Losing his team may be a step too far for him so he joins Hyperion on what is essentially a suicide mission.
This version of Hyperion is a Hickman character, his riff on the Roy Thomas Superman-stand-in. Devised specifically for this Avengers run, along with a Starbrand and a Nightshade that Hickman borrows from Marvel’s 1980s experiment, New Universe. The inclusion of these characters expands Hickman’s story for those in the know about where they come from. **Time Runs Out** is a multiversal story before the movies made the multiverse all the rage so why not bring these elements into his story about the death of all of these universes?
This is the end of Hickman’s *Avengers* story but not the end of his Marvel story; this leads directly into *Secret Wars*, the story where Doctor Doom is God-Emperor Doom. In **Time Runs Out**, Doom is more active in the fate of the universe than nearly any other character. Valeria, Doom’s godchild, delivers the same message to Doom as she did to her father— “try not to lose.” But that’s not Doom’s style. He’s a “win it all or nothing” kind of man. He’s going to go all the way to win or lose everything. Accompanied by his own personal Molecule Man, a powerful being essential to every universe, Doom is fighting the same battle as Reed Richards, but Hickman demonstrates that Doom understands what is at stake more than Richards, Stark, or anyone else does. Richards is fighting for his family; Doom is fighting for everything.
Art by Mike Deodato Jr.
Hickman’s story needs realists in it, and here that is Doom. Doom sees the end of everything not in terms of raging-against-the-dying-of-the-light but as an opportunity to grab what he wants the most- power. He recognizes that the end of the multiverse will create a void, a Doom-sized void. Doom’s story is essentially a heist story. While everyone is distracted by incursions and petty squabbles, he sees the opportunity to get the power he’s long desired. If he pulls this off, he gets to be both savior and ruler over all of creation. He gets his ultimate victory over Richards if instead of stopping death, he steps into the void and is present at the birth of the new creation.
**Time Runs Out** is a messy book. Just as a starter, there are way too many artists to name working on this story. The look and quality of the art jumps all over the place as if the universal breakdown also caused a breakdown of the story’s artistic continuity. (But let’s be honest here, the multiple artists are probably more to get the book out on time than any kind of aesthetic statement. This needed to be wrapped up in time for *Secret* Wars to hit as scheduled.). There are also too many characters but it’s not like this should be a clean book. The messiness of the story is a character of it, not an impediment to it (although a bit more artistic continuity would have been appreciated.) The apocalypse should not be clean or easy. The end of everything should be chaotic and that is what this story is right from the beginning. This is Hickman’s Grand Guignol where the Avengers are backed up against the wall while everything falls apart around them.
And while all of the universe rages and dies around them, this story still comes down to Tony Stark and Steve Rogers unable to set aside their grudges so they end up just pummeling one another until one or the other relents, which both know is never going to happen. They know what the stakes are but from a storytelling point of view, it would be easy to get lost in all of the fireworks and distractions and forget the human side of this story. The final fight of the story isn’t Doom against heavenly beings but between these two men, lost in their anger toward each other. As the universe dies around them, they’re unwilling or unable to set their grievances aside.
Art by Kev Walker
Tony and Steve’s story ends here. They play no part in Hickman and Esad Ribić’s *Secret Wars* (other than minor roles in some of the tie-in stories). There is no reconciliation or closure given to their fight other than it does on until everything comes crashing down around them. Most of the time at the end of these kinds of stories, the two would hug, make up, and then go out and save the universe with the rest of the Avengers.
At the end of **Time Runs Out**, everything dies— the one outcome that everyone was one way or another fighting against. Everything dies and the heroes are impotent against the decay eating away the multiverse. Hickman’s story is mean, ugly, and cynical as this version of the Avengers is built on deceit and betrayals. Everything dies, including the idealistic belief in superheroes.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### Teddy Bear, Sociopath, or Both-- thoughts on Patrick Horvath's Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rites of Spring
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/patrick-horvath-beneath-the-trees-where-nobody-sees-rites-of-spring-review/
Last updated: 2026-08-12T14:48:49.000Z
*Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees* looks like a Build-A-Bear comic, something that IDW would license to be their next big thing. They’ve done My Pretty Pony, so why not create a mythology around the shopping-mall-based stuffed animals that you can dress up in whatever outfit, uniform, or costume you want? If that was all that [Patrick Horvath](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/patrick-horvath/) was doing, our imaginary Build-A-Bear comic would be one of the best-looking books on the comic stands. I’m not even too sure what the story would be (maybe some kind of riff on “sharing is caring”) but Horvath’s depictions of stuffed animals could be a great story about the diversity of mankind— all of these different animals living in the town of Woodbrook, VA in a peaceful unity. Horvath’s very first issue back in 2023, which introduced Samantha Strong as the friendly proprietor of a local hardware store, opened with an idyllic fantasy of small-town life that lasted only a few pages before Horvath turned everything upside down.
Samantha turned out to be a serial killer living right there in that little town, a teddy bear in a flannel shirt. Sam perfectly illustrated the dichotomy between what we were reading and what we were seeing— a Thomas Harris book illustrated by Richard Scary. Horvath tapped into the desire for innocence among the repulsive acts committed by his main character. Samantha was a monster who was living at the center of Americana purity. With Horvath’s second book, [**Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rites of Spring**](https://amzn.to/4xHca4h?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Horvath takes the horror to a new level as we learn just how much of a sociopath Sam really is. In the first book, she was arguably the protagonist as her safe life was threatened by another serial killer moving into her town. In this new book, Sam is clearly the villain here and not in the “every villain is the hero of their story” kind of way. If she was the underdog of the first book, in **Rites of Spring** she’s the disease that has lain dormant in this town for years but is now itching to break confinement.
Going into this new book, the shock value of the stuffed animal aesthetic has come and gone. This could be another funny animal story (is “funny animal horror” a legitimate genre yet?) So Horvath goes in the opposite direction, leaning more into the psychology of a killer. Picking up 8 years later and set during the early days of the internet (when it used to come in your mail on physical CDs,) Sam is still in her small town, still serial killing, and still keeping it on the down low. But the killing is not enough as Sam finds a new thrill— playing with her victims before she kills them. In an online chat room, she finds Monica, the sister of one of her victims, looking to find out what happened to her brother. Sam dangles just enough clues in front of her to entice Monica to do things that would have been unimaginable to her before this. It is thrilling for Sam but also careless as she starts taking chances that she never would have before.
As we see Sam starting to break her own rules, Horvath also takes us back to some of Sam’s earliest killings. He doesn’t try to explain the whys behind Sam’s psychology because maybe there are none. Even without the psychological exploration, we get a view into Sam’s mind, the ways the wheels turn in there, and the steely methodology she employs. It’s chilling to watch a younger Sam learning about the hardware business from her father, her mind connecting how basic household tools and supplies could become the tools of her true calling. It doesn’t even feel like Sam is evil— she’s just wired differently than everyone else and that’s even more frightening than if she were something like the devil incarnate, or a personification of evil. Instead, she’s a part of this town and it’s part of her.
If the stuffed animal look isn’t a shock anymore, it still gives these characters an innocence that human characters wouldn’t be capable of. Are animals even capable of sin? Even Sam looks like a cuddly toy animal. Ultimately, we don’t read Sam as a bear or Monica as a goose or any of the other characters as the animal they are (with the possible exception of the turtle who’s capable of retreating into his shell when frightened.) This isn’t Art Spiegelman’s *Maus* where the type of animal those characters were related to their nationality and role in World War II. The animals they are aren’t their story but they are part of their character. Sam is a bear in that there’s always the potential for danger with her. Horvath uses the animal nature on a more individual level to show us character and temperament rather than role in the story. He matches these characters with an animal that reflects their sounds and personalities. Turtles, moles, geese, birds, and koala bears give us insight into these characters that we wouldn’t get if they appeared as human as you or I.
We’ve already seen behind the masks that were in the first *Behind The Trees Where Nobody Sees* book. From that story, we had an incomplete notion of who Samantha Strong was. We knew her actions and Horvath uses those acts to peel back how Sam was perceived by the town around her. In **Behind the Trees Where Nobody Sees: Rites of Spring**, Horvath starts diving into what we know and don’t know about Sam. We find out so much more about her but still realize that we’re only seeing a glimpse of her mind and soul. The funny animal look & feel of this book masks a much darker and more invasive sickness at the heart of Americana.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### Noir and the Sunset Haze of Family Memory in Iman Vellani and Marianna Ignazzi's Chachu #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/iman-vellani-and-marianna-ignazzi-chachu-1-review/
Last updated: 2026-08-05T14:15:12.000Z
Let’s be up front about it— **Chachu #1** is trying really hard. [Iman Vellani](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/404/) and [Marianna Ignazzi](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/404/) put the effort in for this comic to be a Gen Z neo-noir, looking at 1979 through [Jordie Bellaire’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jordie-bellaire/) golden hour hues. Nineteen-year-old Leila heads out to Los Angeles for college, at least that’s what her Pakistani family back in Canada believes, and there is some truth to that. She can move into her dorm tomorrow. But there’s another reason for her to be in L.A. Even all the way in Canada, they got news that Hollywood star Cleo Handler just recently married one of their own, a local boy who left the Great White North and his family 20 years ago, right about the same time that Leila’s father died. That starlet’s husband is Leila’s Chachu, her father’s brother, whom she’s never met. He’s the family’s secret, known to the older generation but just a family ghost to her. He’s a family story— actually, there are many stories; a mobster, a junkie, and an atheist. The story you get depends on who you ask. So Leila wants to find her own story about her Chachu, hopefully the true story.
Only this is Los Angeles, the city of *The Long Goodbye and Chinatown*. Chachu’s (he’s never given a proper name as far as I can find) starlet wife wants to retire, something her father Cyril strongly disagrees with. Busting into Chachu’s house with guns pointed, Cyril thinks that Chachu has something to do with his golden ticket’s decision to get out of the biz. But Cleo is already off, having sped away earlier that day to have a rendezvous of her own—just another mystery to add to Chachu’s growing amateur casebook.
Ignazzi’s art has the expressiveness of [Elsa Charretier](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/elsa-charretier/), through Eduardo Risso’s use of shadows and negative space. Leila gets to be an animated character while her Chachu is the observant private eye, trying to put all of the pieces of what’s happening in his life together like it’s another case. Just the way that she draws Leila and Chachu smoking cigarettes speaks to the character work that Ignazzi is doing. For Leila, the cigarette feels like a prop, something she should do because she’s playing a role in Los Angeles. But for Chachu, the cigarette feels like a part of him, a part of who he is. One is part of this Los Angeles, while the other is still just a tourist, and the way that Ignazzi stages the characters tells you all of this. Look at Leila’s clothes, the vintage car she drives, just the way her body language changes in each moment. Ignazzi is telling us as much, if not more, about this young woman as Vellani’s writing does.
There’s a precociousness to Vellani’s scripting of the book. It’s very flowery and off-putting at first. “His mustache sat too politely under his nose—like it was there to chaperone his more boyish features. Meanwhile his hair staged a coup against its own follicles. Oh, the fury of tangled casualties…” There’s a lot of work and effort in Leila’s description of Chachu that sounds a bit like a 3rd-period high school creative writing class assignment. As much as it’s Vellani’s writing, that’s also Leila’s narration and maybe it speaks to the character more than it does the writing. There’s that air of roleplaying here— the girl from Canada in the big city to find her long-lost uncle— so it makes a bit of sense that her own inner voice would sound like an attempt to mimic the hard-boiled noir detectives that she’s trying to be.
This is a young woman who, as seen through the art and the writing, exudes a coolness— she’s trying to be the niece that a long-lost uncle in L.A. would want. She’s trying to be cool and tough but in a later scene when Chachu’s father-in-law breaks in and has his men threaten the reunited pair at gunpoint to find his daughter, Vellani and Ignazzi use this scene to show us who these two are— a girl who’s scared and out of place in this world and an uncle who is a bit too much in this world. Chachu doesn’t flinch. It’s more like he’s been in this position before and knows what to do. It’s a couple of pages but it gives a lot of insight into these two. This scene reveals more of them to us than they’re willing to reveal to each other.
There’s a lot not said between these two and those are some of the really intriguing things. Leila is 19 years old and Chachu tells Cyril that his brother died 20 years ago. That lines up with when Chachu left his family. How does that all tie up with what these characters want or what they’re running from? What exactly is the nature of Chachu and Cleo’s marriage? She says she loves him but she ran from him at the start of the comic. These are components of the little mysteries that Vellani and Ignazzi are laying out before us in this comic of family, of stardom, and a longing for something that transcends everything else.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### A Lambent Thing-- Paul Chadwick's That Concrete: Stars Over Sand #2
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-lambent-thing-paul-chadwicks-that-concrete-stars-over-sand-2/
Last updated: 2026-08-03T14:41:38.000Z
More than the first issue, **Concrete: Stars Over Sand #2** gives us a taste of what it must be like to be Concrete. The first issue was a return years (decades) after Paul Chadwick’s last major Concrete story, in which Ron Lithgow’s stony body spawned a tiny, comatose copy of his alien body. In the first issue of the miniseries, Chadwick didn’t make it easy for the reader trying to catch up— there was no attempt to explain who anyone was or how they found themselves at this point in their lives. He just picked up where he ended and had Concrete, his assistant/friend Larry, Maureen (it’s complicated,) and Baby Concrete (if we can have a Baby Yoda, we can have a Baby Concrete) try to get away for a few days with a camping trip out to the Colorado dunes. Going for a late-night solo walk on the dunes to do some writing, Concrete is struck by lightning from an unexpected storm that knocks Concrete unconscious. And then, the dune rolled over Concrete, burying him.
In the second issue, he wakes up amnesiac. He has no idea why his body is stone and that (understandably) freaks him out. Back in the 1980s when Concrete first appeared in the pages of *Dark Horse Presents*, Ron Lithgow was already in the alien body and had been adjusting to it. That introduction and those early stories focused on the mundanity of life, even in Lithgow’s uniquely unique experience. While he eventually showed how Lithgow became Concrete (that sounds way more superheroey than it needs to,) it was basically a flashback for the reader and for Concrete— a tale he was telling. We got to know his experience but saw it as something that he experienced in the past and had worked beyond. **Stars Over Sand** is much more immediate and raw; this is happening in the here and now, not in the past as a memory.
In many ways, this feels more like what the experience of waking up in an alien body would be— the confusion, disorientation, and fear that would be there to wake up in a body that’s not your own and have no idea what was happening. That desperation of not knowing, whether it’s Concrete not knowing who or what he is or Maureen not knowing where Concrete is, energizes the story. It’s not a fun or exciting energy but an anxious energy, one more scared of the world and our place within it. Chadwick has always been great at creating these stories that have a hum of this anxiousness but here it becomes the overwhelming beat of this story.
Chadwick’s art is wonderfully normal until the moments that it’s extraordinary. He lulls you into the normalcy of everyday life and then surprises and delights you with moments of sheer spectacle. A page of a search party walking over the dunes becomes this rolling tapestry of disorienting peaks and valleys that is all too easy to get lost in. There’s another page of a lost and memoryless Concrete seeing something on the horizon in extremely clear detail. “He sees the moon as *a new thing in the world.*” Chadwick turns the whole experience of being lost into an experience of discovery. His pages open up this old world to new senses.
**Concrete: Stars Over Sand #2** is a great issue that feels like an introduction to Concrete, or at least what it would be like to be Concrete. This is a comic about the mystery and grandeur of life; that’s what Chadwick explores in his comics. Even in the mundane everyday existence, there are wonders all around that we’re blind to. Even a person like Concrete, who’s had a singular existence that we could only imagine, can get bogged down by endless days and nights. This comic explores a day-in-day-out magic that we’re blind to and reminds us that we need to look at the world around us with new eyes.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### Breathe in the Sickness of Rob Williams & Henry Flint's Judge Dredd: And To The Sea Return
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/judge-dredd-and-to-the-sea-return-by-rob-williams-and-henry-flint-review/
Last updated: 2026-07-30T14:09:33.000Z
The opening page of **Judge Dredd: And to the Sea Return** tells you everything you need to know about the first story in this book (the first story shares the name with the book’s title) even if you’ve never read a Judge Dredd story before. [Rob Williams](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/rob-williams/) and [Henry Flint](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/henry-flint/) expertly set the tone for this story in these 15 images. The top tier of panels shows that there is something unhealthy at the core of this story; the ashen colors tell you that right away. The first two images look like any other establishing shot of a sky after a storm, the dark clouds rolling away to reveal a clear sky behind them but all is not right in the second panel. In a small detail, just above the horizon line, you can see something that is a peaked hue of green coming into the image. It increases over a couple of panels. Then you see something, a ship (?), on the distant horizon and you realize that these images that almost appear static have actually been dynamic, moving subtly through space and time. Flint has been slowly pulling us into the horizon to the point where that green mist fills the entire sky. “The mist rolled in lazy and greedy across the black Atlantic” the caption tells us just in case you can’t read that in Flint’s more evocative staging of these images.
“And To The Sea Return,” page 1
The second tier of panels moves closer to the horizon, narrowing in on a cargo ship that’s sailing the ocean. The first three panels of the sequence are silent, almost deathly silent as the green sky nearly fills all the space in the image that isn’t the ship. The silence is ominous. In real life, the ocean is never silent; there would at least be the sound of the waves lapping at the ship’s hull but Williams and Flint are so careful on this page about how they invoke sound with the minimal dialogue that you imagine everything else is unnaturally silent, as if the mist is overpowering everything else including the sound of the wind or the water. The muted colors of the boat and the seamen add to the landscape's dreaded feeling, the queasy moments before full seasickness hits your gut. “Man in the water!” one of the sailors yells!
The third tier of panels somewhat echoes the first tier as we pan down to the waterline; we see something in the water, still having that sinking feeling in our guts as it dawns on us why we’re feeling that way. Similar to the first tier, the bottom tier could have been a single long image instead of five. Then we would have read it as a single moment in time. The shock of this sequence would have been immediate as Flint could have just shown it as a simple pan down to the water to see the bodies of the man in the water. Instead, it’s broken into five panels, each one a bit more horrific than the last as one body in the water becomes two in the next image, then four, and then more than you can count. Introducing the element of time here introduces the creepy feeling that we haven’t seen all of the horrors that Williams and Flint are getting ready to dive into in this story.
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This opening page introduces two key elements for this story— the sickly green mist and the sense of dread (not Dredd, who won’t show up until the last panel of page 2) that is the soul of this story. This first page is the beginning of the roadmap for “*And To The Sea Return*.” Even without a Judge showing up, Flint tells you what kind of story this is going to be. Each page in this story, which really ends up being an Atlantic coast small town horror story, ramps up from page 1, upping the horror & the dread with each new sequence. The first page establishes the visual foundation of the story. There is a physicality of time and space in the story, a dimensional and bodily force that transcends the limitation of the comic page.
From “And To The Sea Return”
As Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson, and other Judges are dispatched to investigate what’s happening, the story becomes something like a John Carpenter or H.P. Lovecraft horror story, combining a horrific environment with creepy, threatening creatures. Williams and Flint turn that horror into the lead of the story. Everyone knows who and what Judge Dredd is; he’s a fairly flat character in that the stories aren’t so much about him. No lesson or growth is happening to that character over the course of a single story. The emotional focus of the story needs to come from someplace external to Judge Dredd. So the horror has to become the center of the story and other Judges really become the characters we follow to see how they act and react. In the case of this story, there are two Judges- Tan and Hurst. Tan is a Judge who investigates the fog and the bodies with Dredd while Hurst is the Judge of the Sector House right in the middle of everything. It’s in these two characters that we see the cost and the effects of the horrors.
From “Buratino Must Die”
There’s a second story in this book, “*Buratino Must Die*.” This one is from a few years before “*And To The Sea Return*,” and isn’t quite the horror story that the first tale is. It’s more of an action thriller as Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson have to handle a threat that the Judges welcomed into their headquarters. It’s less visceral than the first story but Flint’s artwork is still all about creating a disorientating environment. It’s more of a Dredd story in that he has to clean up a situation that he saw coming even if others wanted to ignore it. It belongs to a continuity that the first story is largely independent from but it stands on its own, a testament to how Williams and Flint can bring you into this world that’s already in motion.
Common to both of these stories is the way that Flint visually envelops you in these horrors. Reading both tales, you’re in these environments, pummeled by the same creatures, forces, and evil that Dredd is fighting against. These are comics that beat you up. The environment is so all-encompassing that the action also envelops the reader and almost becomes a physical experience. You don’t just read these two Judge Dredd stories, you survive them. How many comics can you say that about? Williams’ stories are gut punches, dark and creepy tales, but it’s Flint’s artwork that knocks you out. That green mist rolling in on the first page is just the beginning of a book that starts uneasy— you know something is coming and that it isn’t good. From there, the art is doing everything and more that it can to drag you into this cruel and beaten world.
Cover art by Christian Ward
### Bring Me The Head of Silvio Silvermane-- thoughts on Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber's The Superior Foes of Spider-Man
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-superior-foes-of-spider-man-by-nick-spencer-and-steve-lieber-review-2026/
Last updated: 2026-07-30T00:23:37.000Z
When you think about Spider-Man’s superior foes, what villains come to mind? Green Goblin obviously. Doctor Octopus has to be up there. Kraven and the Vulture are pantheonic foes. Maybe even Sandman. How about Speed Demon? Beetle? Shocker? Overdrive? If not them, how about Boomerang? (Wait, is he even a Spider-Man villain— the guy with the boomerangs? That’s really his whole deal.) Yet Boomerang is the leader of the latest incarnation of the Sinister Six, a villainous team that once was made up of Spider-Man’s biggest foes. In Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber’s **The Superior Foes of Spider-Man** (originally published in 2013 and recently republished in 2026), the Sinister Six has been reduced to only five members, as just one example of how far the concept of the villainous team has fallen. Instead of plotting ways to defeat Spider-Man, their latest attempted heist is to steal the cybernetic head of former Maggia crime family boss Silvermane from The Owl because they read somewhere online that whoever has the head of Silvermane will be the new head of the Maggia crime syndicate in NYC. Or maybe they are trying to find a secret portrait of Doctor Doom, the only one ever painted to show his true face. Or maybe (and it’s more likely,) they don’t know what they’re doing even as they follow Boomerang’s lead, knowing that they’re probably going to get screwed over. Honor among thieves and all of that stuff.
Heist stories are rarely about the heist— they are stories of the men and women trying to pull off the heist. The modern model for these kinds of stories is Steven Soderbergh’s *Ocean’s 11*, where Danny Ocean leads a crew to rip off not 1 but 3 Las Vegas casinos. The mission to rob the casinos is the skeleton of the story— it provides the plot necessary to get the characters where they need to be, from point A to point B and conclude at point C. The story is really about what Danny Ocean wants— his wife back— and how the other members of his crew react to finding that out. The story is about a man trying to show the love of his life that the person she’s with now is no good. This is how each of Soderberg’s *Ocean’s* films work— there’s the heist (or the plot), and then there are the characters’ stories. When the heist becomes the story (my memory is fuzzy here, but that feels like what happened a bit with the attempted *Ocean’s 8* reboot), the whole thing falls apart because there are no real characters in the tale.
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There aren’t too many actual heist stories in comics. There are stories about a hero stopping the bad guys from pulling off a job; those are hero stories about being a good guy, not about being the stiff who has to pull off one more job. That’s probably because there aren’t too many comics focused on the criminals among us. (Although as a product of its time, this is ostensibly a spinoff of *The Superior Spider-Man*, a comic showing Doctor Octopus taking over Spider-Man’s body for a period of time and kind of being a hero, but that series was not about a criminal only being a criminal.) Spencer and Lieber’s **Superior Foes of Spider-Man** fills that gap, giving us a story showcasing a group of thieves trying to steal something or another.
That something or another brings this crew together to give them a purpose, a shared goal that makes them a team. It really doesn't matter what those targets are; they’re MacGuffins dangled in front of their eyes by Boomerang to simply lead them on. He never expects them to really find the head of Silvermane or Doctor Doom’s unmasked portrait. Those are legends that the underworld tells itself to think they could one day be rich or run a crime family. It shows how easily manipulated the members of the Sinister Six are when Boomerang could seem to be a criminal mastermind. It allows them to also be dirty, mean, and ugly once they start to realize the truth. It allows them to be human in ways that the big iconic villains can’t be.
Spencer and Lieber don’t portray these guys as villains. They’re not out to defeat Spider-Man or try to take over the world. Their motivations are actually somewhat more pure than that, making them far more relatable. If anything, these criminals are working-class stiffs, maybe one step up from being a henchman. At one point, Shocker reminds Boomerang that he enjoyed being a henchman and could go back to being that if the current plan doesn’t work out. They just want to successfully pull off a job and grab a beer at the end of the day. If they get rich hitting the right jackpot, that’s icing on the cake. For the most part, they want to get through today and have it be a bit better than yesterday was. That’s the American dream.
This cast isn’t treated like they are merely villains; it explores them as actual characters with their own agency. They’re not only gimmicks designed to foil the hero. Spencer gives each of them their own motivations. Overdrive sees being a criminal as a step towards becoming a reformed hero (similar to Mach VII, the original Beetle, who ends up being Boomerang’s parole officer in this story). The current Beetle wants to follow in her father’s footsteps, daddy’s little girl; her father just happens to be the criminal Tombstone. Shocker wants to be in a group of friends, to be a decent guy and a good friend. Speed Demon is the guy who wants to screw the system. And Boomerang has his own motivations, similar to Danny Ocean organizing the casino heists to get to his ex-wife.
**The Superior Foes of Spider-Man** taps into some of that old J.M. DeMatteis and Keith Giffen *Justice League* magic with the way it brings an irreverent tone to the story. It doesn’t take itself too seriously; Spencer and Lieber know that this is more than a joke book— there are people’s lives that they’re telling the story of. It’s blaw-ha-ha funny, but there is a heart to this story about friendship and what it means to be part of a team. Everyone sees themselves as the hero, but this group is at least self-aware enough to know that they are not superheroes. They’re who we’re rooting for from almost the first page of the story because there’s a balance of humor, warmth, and adventure in this story that DeMatteis and Giffen trailblazed years ago that almost no one has been able to replicate until now.
Lieber’s storytelling grounds the humanity of the story. Even if they may be criminals wearing silly costumes (Silvermane compares Shocker’s costume to a quilt), Lieber expresses the humanity of everyone in the book— they’re not serious people, but they’re also not silly. Through his artwork, Lieber brings out the value of the characters. The Shocker is a bit of a loser in this book, not seeing the double crosses coming or constantly being belittled by a severed cybernetic head. Lieber doesn’t draw him as a loser. He’s dejected and confused, but he’s not a one-note joke in the story. There’s range to all of these characters that makes them multi-dimensional. When Lieber does get to draw a joke, he indulges in slapstick humor that is always in service of the characters’ stories.
Boomerang is the team leader and the de facto lead of the story. He’s also trying to pull something over on everyone, including the reader. He’s the ultimate unreliable narrator. He’s not a good guy; he’s clearly a villain, but Spencer and Lieber still kind of get us to root for this guy. Or at least, we root for his success, just not at the expense of his teammates. It’s a tightrope that Spencer and Lieber are walking, getting us to root for Boomerang as well as his teammates, even when their goals aren’t completely aligned. Boomerang lacks the charm of a Danny Ocean but not the conniving nature. He has his plans, and no one is going to get in the way of those plans.
In many ways, **The Superior Foes of Spider-Man** is a perfect airport book— it’s a story that you can pick up almost on a whim and get sucked into these people’s costumed lives. Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber turn what could have been a joke book (5 costumed criminals walk into a bar…) into a fun exploration of what it is to be a C-list (at best) villain, a working-class stiff who’s not bent on world domination and wants today to be a bit better than what yesterday was. That’s what the heist actually is in this story— not an object or riches but trying to wrestle a bit of control away from the crimelords who suck all of the oxygen out of the room. The Sinister Six (the sixth member was the friends we made along the way) may be rejects, but Spencer and Lieber see that there’s more to them underneath the spandex masks to explore. They get to be the heroes of their story even as they pursue their criminal dreams.
### Gigs by Mark Mosedale and Si Smith
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gigs-by-mark-mosedale-and-si-smith/
Last updated: 2026-07-15T15:35:09.000Z
The future is now. In **Gigs**, [Mark Mosedale](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/mark-mosedale/) and [Si Smith](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/si-smith/) tell a story that places us among gig workers, all waiting on the next notification telling us where to be and when to be there. Life is driven by work and technology. Ivy is caught up in that system, one of the masses picking up jobs that are assigned to her, or in this case, picking up jobs assigned to her sister, Sara, that Sara doesn’t want to do. Sara wants to stay at home and live in her virtual world. So she’s only too happy to pass her gifts off to her sister. At a temp job at a care facility, Ivy meets Syd, a one-time free thinker turned capitalist dreamer, whose code was eventually bought and gobbled up by the tech that powers the whole gig system. **Gigs** shows an existence that the technocrats have taken over, but the book shows that it’s not too late to reclaim our lives from uncaring systems.
**Gigs** takes place in a time and space where most people’s livelihoods are reduced to being where they’re told by their phones. When Ivy starts picking up her sister’s gigs at Oakview, an “arse-wiping gig” as her sister calls it, she finds Syd out back, smoking a joint. Syd claims it helps manage the “existential boredom that being in this horrible fucking place gives me.” The two eventually develop a friendship— Ivy finds someone to show her that there was life before the algorithms, and Syd finds someone who wants that life outside of the algorithms and gigs. At the heart of **Gigs**is a brewing rebellion, encouraged by Syd and fought by Ivy and others against the systems built to oppress and control.
“I lost my independence to a fucking algorithm.”
That line when Syd laments the life she once had hits hard as I’m half working on this piece and half scrolling through YouTube, trying to find something to watch, a distraction from the real world. But the algorithm fails to find anything interesting enough to watch. Instead of just quitting the app and getting on with my life, I keep refreshing the screen, keep giving the algorithm another chance to get it right, scrolling through the feed, hoping for a good hit. Maybe I’ll switch over to Instagram, Threads, or Blue Sky. At least I have a choice of which “fucking algorithm” I’ll let run my life.
As much as **Gigs** is about those technologies, Mosedale and Smith don’t excuse us from letting go of the steering wheel of our lives. Or at least, they don’t excuse those of us from older generations, like Syd’s, who could have maybe set up guard posts once upon a time on technology where now it feels too late to reign any of it in. As Ivy looks around at this world where human life is valued too much by what you can contribute to the workforce and economy, it’s a world that she inherited but that Syd helped create. Mosedale and Smith don’t dwell on this accusation but get it out of the way and then move on. They define how we got here, but then spend more time figuring out how to move forward than pointing fingers at the past. It is important to understand where we’ve come from and who let it happen. These events are not just happening, but are the sins of the fathers and mothers that the children are now unable to escape. But the story is about the here and now, about the world that the children are inheriting, and not about the past.
This world and its troubles are larger than just Ivy and Syd. At first, it almost seems like this is going to be an anthology book built around the concept of the gig economy, as Mosedale and Smith give us multiple stories and perspectives centered on this gig economy. After over a hundred pages focused on Ivy and Syd, Mosedale and Smith shift the focus to other characters controlled by this system, telling stories of others’ struggles and lives. Through each of these stories, they are showing that we can fight and push against these oppressive systems. In this world, we see everything from detectives to couriers to even astronauts existing and being controlled by this gig system. Any dignity of work has been reduced to an algorithm— the same thing that drives your TikTok viewing drives who gets assigned to a missing persons case. The same system that drives who cleans the toilets on an orbiting space station. In a world of DoorDash and Uber, it’s not a stretch to see where Mosedale and Smith take us in this book.
Smith’s drawings take us to many different places, both real and virtual spaces. He draws a story that’s the present as much as it is the future. The way Smith stages this story creates a tension that is a reflection of the plot. There are shades of Ridley Scott’s *Blade Runner* and Terry Gilliam’s *Brazil* in how this story balances the mundane, labor-focused story against the heightened drama of people trying to survive in this world. Smith captures the feeling of being trapped by our lives, a totally modern feeling, but projects it on a slightly futuristic setting. It’s a future that is only days or weeks ahead of us, not years or decades. The way he does it allows us to read this as speculative fiction about the future, while Mosedale's story feels very current and something that we need to address now.
Five or ten years ago, **Gigs** would have been pure science fiction, a dystopian view of a future controlled by the few who control the technology. It would have been more of a warning than a guidebook. In Ivy, Mark Mosedale and Si Smith show us a way to navigate the world, moving from just recognizing how the system works to reclaiming life from the devices in our pockets. The best science fiction reflects our times, and **Gigs** is a mirror for us as a society on the brink of monumental changes. It’s just a question of which way we change— for the better or for the worse?
### Go Into Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&! V16 With Childlike Wonder
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/go-into-kiyohiko-azumas-yotsuba-v16-with-childlike-wonder/
Last updated: 2026-07-09T15:00:08.000Z
In 2026, it’s too easy to look at the world and feel beaten down or cynical about it. When a [President can make a call](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/breaking-news/article/president-trump-confirms-role-in-fifa-reviewing-overturning-folarin-balogun-red-card-they-made-the-right-decision-153324297.html&ved=2ahUKEwjGjo37qcSVAxWs48kDHaeXE-EQxfQBKAB6BAgJEAE&usg=AOvVaw36yST-CB1WFrtVQjEMttd8) and get a major sports competition’s penalty overturned, it seems like the fix is in and the world is just a broken place. And that’s just a symptom of everything wrong, not the real issues that we would need to address to start turning this world around. See? That’s how easy it is to look at the world and think that it sucks. And then there’s [Kiyohiko Azuma’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/404/) **Yotsuba&! V16**, which makes the world a little less dark, a bit lighter, and offers joy and hope that nearly everything else around us denies us.
There are really only three things that happen in this volume: 1) Yotsuba and her father set up a Christmas tree, 2) Yotsuba, her father, and their friend Yanda hike up a mountain just outside of Tokyo, and 3) Yotsuba sees a school teacher for the first time and tests the teacher’s skills. In case you don’t know, Yotsuba is a young, green-haired girl who gets to experience everything that life has to offer for the first time. Azuma’s stories are equal parts innocence, naïveté, and longing as she opens up the world to a child’s view of it. Most of us have had years and years of Christmas trees, but for Yotsuba, this is the first time.
Just seeing the box that the tree is in prompts Yotsuba to ask her dad, “Is that Christmas?” as if the tree is everything. This is all new to her, and for a little bit, Azuma allows us to give ourselves over to the moment and live this life through Yotsuba’s eyes. That sounds like it could all be extremely sugary and cloying- the world seen from the viewpoint of a silly child— so Azuma balances it out by inserting here and there other viewpoints like her father’s and the older neighbor girls’. Yotsuba is never alone— she’s got an amazing supporting cast around her that Azuma allows to react to Yotsuba or to offer a differing view of the experience.
As Yotsuba discovers things like Christmas trees and ornaments, it would be too easy to be cynical and wonder what’s so special about these things. She’s a child, so of course these things would be new and exciting to her. Just wait until she grows up a bit and gets a taste of the real world. We see a bit of that worldly sensibility in Yotsuba’s father. He’s not cynical, but he’s worn and tired. On their hike up the mountain’s easy path, he’s looking for the benches to rest on. He clearly loves Yotsuba and wants to do these things with her, but he’s coming at it from a different direction. He has work to do, and he has responsibilities (including Yotsuba) that wear him down. You can see what he’s trying to do for his daughter and the experiences he’s trying to give her.
Through Yotsuba, Azuma makes the world both bigger and smaller. The wide-eyed view that this young girl offers does allow us to remember those days of innocence when everything was new. Everything is just there waiting for us to discover it anew through Yotsuba’s experiences. This volume opens with Yotsuba practicing riding a bike. Again, it’s rather commonplace, but the glee Azuma draws on Yotsuba’s face turns it into an extraordinary moment. Or looking at the overhead cloud and being amazed by their formation allows us to have this moment of awe and wonder.
But Azuma also captures the universality of these experiences. What we see and experience in this comic is not so different than the things that we see and experience in everyday life. This is a comic about growing up in Tokyo, but it could be any big city anywhere in the world. It’s not like Yotsuba is having an exotic upbringing; it’s fairly normal, and that’s part of the way that Azuma makes the world seem just a bit smaller— it’s relatable in a very hands-on way. Somewhere along the way, we’ve all had to learn something from our parents or teach something to our children. We’ve all looked at a Christmas tree with wonder.
This is where Azuma’s drawings become so effective. Between her simple but stylized figures and the detailed drawings of the world around them, it’s easy to see ourselves in these characters and imprint their reactions as our reactions. It’s how the story of a young girl becomes so effective at pulling us into it and how her world becomes our world. Yotsuba’s cartoonish and exaggerated expressions invite us into her world. But it’s an easy transition because it’s a world that we recognize through the realistic backgrounds. Azuma shapes this so we understand all of the stimulation that Yotsuba is taking in and her reactions to it.
Kiyohiko Azuma’s **Yotsuba&! V16** is a balm for cynicism, a reminder (or maybe an encouragement) to look at the world with the eyes of a child. It’s wonderful and a small miracle to be able to give yourself over to a book like this, a child’s story but not a childish story. It allows you to live through this green-haired girl and approach the world without any biases or preconceived ideas. Cynicism is easy nowadays, maybe too easy, but this book permits us to appreciate the world around us with wonder and awe.
### Urasawa explores the mystery of manga in Billy Bat Volume 1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/urasawa-explores-the-mystery-of-manga-in-billy-bat-volume-1/
Last updated: 2026-06-19T15:34:16.000Z
Looking at [Naoki Urasawa’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/naoki-urasawa/) previous two long-running series, *Monster* and *20th/21st Century Boys* (*Pluto* is 6 volumes and *Asadora* is only up to volume 9), the first volumes tell you everything and nothing about what those series were going to be. When starting these 20+ volume series, the introductory volumes of *Monster* and *20th Century Boys* introduced characters, high concepts, and the tone of what the series would be. Still, both of those series were so much more than those introductions. For Urasawa, these first volumes function as step into this world, something to tease and prime the audience (and maybe the creators as well) for everything that’s going to be coming from these series. **Billy Bat Volume 1** is a thriller, the story of a normal man pulled into extraordinary circumstances (so actually somewhat similar to *Monster*), but is that the story, or is this going to evolve into something else before it ends?
BillIn the years following Wor. ld War II, Kevin Yamagata is the Japanese/American creator of the success comic book Billy Bat, a hard boiled anthropomorphic detective. When someone points out that his character Billy Bat is the same as a manga character, Kevin travels back to Japan where he served as an interpreter during the war, trying to track down the mangaka that he suddenly thinks he’s unintentionally plagiarizing. Once in Japan, Kevin is pulled into a mysterious world where the events in the manga appear to be controlling the events in the real world, including the killing of people around Kevin. Even though he’s been in Japan before, Urasawa and co-author Takashi Nagasaki set up Kevin as a classic stranger-in-a-strange-world character, totally out of his element and his depth of any experience he’s had before.
It starts simply enough with a cartoonist who thinks he unintentionally ripped off another cartoonist and wants to try to make amends for it. So the opening is equal parts post-war story and a meta story about cartooning. But once Kevin hits Japan and starts his quest to find the mangaka, it’s like he’s stepped into his own, private Wonderland. It’s the world but a twisted version of it. During the war, he had been stationed here but for this story, it’s like he’s stepped into this city for the first time— it’s familiar he’s changed since he was an interpreter so the city has changed. It’s dangerous in ways that he cannot see or imagine.
Opening with a couple of chapters of Kevin’s *Billy Bat* comic, Urasawa exhibits a playfulness in that we have rarely seen from him before. The story-in-the-story of Billy Bat getting hired by a guy to follow his wife and prove her unfaithfulness primes the us for a mystery. It’s a relatively standard gumshoe story- a private eye takes the wrong case and gets pulled into something more than he expected. Billy Bat’s story is different than Kevin’s but it’s a wonderful entry into this new series and prepares us for a much bigger mystery than just a cheating wife.
On this journey, Kevin meets all kinds of people, each with their own motivations and intentions. This is probably one of the hallmarks of Urasawa’s storytelling- the richness and depth of his characters. Some want to help Kevin, some want to take advantage of him, and some are there to unload their burdens on Kevin. There’s no such thing as a bit player in a Urasawa story; they’re all crucial and add something essential to the story. The little boy who guides Kevin through Tokyo is as important to the story as the young woman who leads him deeper into the mystery.
It’s not like there’s a lot of action in this book so Urasawa has to build his mystery by posing the question of “where did Billy Bat come from” and then he has to draw us into the mystery more right alongside Kevin. For this story to work, we’ve got to be as lost and disoriented as the protagonist is. And Urasawa does that by introducing all of these characters, creating a link between them and this deepening chasm of mysticism and murder that Kevin (and by extension us, the audience) finds himself drawn into. It’s in these people that Urasawa reveals a whole world to us.
Urasawa tells this story through these people’s faces and their actions. Kevin, a man who discovers that the world is not what he thought it was, goes through so many stages in this book. Urasawa draws him confused, disoriented, angry, lost, and mystified by the events around him. He finds multiple guides in the story— a young boy, a fellow interpreter from the army, the inscrutable Kurusu, and the mangaka Zofu Karama. Each of these men is a puzzle that slowly unveil this mystery to Kevin. They each begin the process of revealing what this world and this story is going to be.
Like Kevin in **Billy Bat Volume 1**, Urasawa is finding his way into this series. He sets up the mystery— what actually is Billy Bat— and deliberately starts pulling back these layers to delve deeper into that question but this is still the early chapters of this story. And knowing Urasawa from other stories he’s told, we’re only have a surface level view of what this story is going to be. There’s they mystery in the story but there’s also the mystery of what this story is going to be? What is Kevin going to discover about himself and the world as he gets pulled deeper into this unexplored view of Tokyo.
### Two American Kids Doin' the Best They Can-- thoughts on Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Five Gears In Reverse
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/ed-brubaker-and-sean-phillips-criminal-five-gears-in-reverse-review/
Last updated: 2026-05-28T14:22:49.000Z
Ricky Lawless is his father’s son. The ghost of old man Teeg Lawless haunts the pages of [Ed Brubaker](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/ed-brubaker/) and [Sean Phillips’](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/sean-phillips/) **Criminal: Five Gears In Reverse**, the story of a couple of bad days for Ricky, when he has to fight for more than just his own survival. In all of the stories about Teeg, you never get the feeling that Teeg has anything to lose, but in this new story, Ricky is fighting to survive, but he’s also fighting for Mallory, maybe the only girl in the world who could truly fall in love with a Lawless. But can the part of Ricky that’s his father get out of his way enough for Ricky and Mallory to find a future together, or is Ricky just another story about a man who can’t get out of his own way to find a good kind of life?
Over the course of 20+ years, Brubaker and Phillips have told 12 stories in **Criminal,** but most of those stories have been about a single family (both a nuclear and extended family) of characters who are just trying to survive, just trying to find something in this world that’s worth holding on to. That could be Tracy Lawless’ story of a man trying to find his place in this violent world. It could be Angie, a child of this world, who’s just trying to navigate it. It could be Teeg, Gnarly, or even Chester—the old guard trying to make a living in this world. Or it could be Ricky, the kid in this book who’s living his life in his father’s long shadow and trying to make his long-dead father proud of him by following in his footsteps. The multi-generational and non-linear aspects of **Criminal** add depth to the story that’s being told through these books, painting a picture but working on different areas of the canvas to slowly reveal what the whole picture will be.
Ricky Lawless is reckless, but he has a puppy-dog loyalty to certain people, weirdly including his father, who is the cause of most of Ricky’s damage. It’s Teeg, it’s Leo (see *Criminal: Sinners* and *Criminal: Cruel Summer* for Leo’s story), and it’s Mallory, the woman who may be the love of Ricky’s short and tragic life. These are the people who mean the most to Ricky, and he carries something of each of them in his adventures here; they’re the voices in his head that lead him and guide him (even if he refuses to listen to Leo’s). These are the people that Ricky’s story keeps coming back to; the father who taught him all the wrong lessons, the best friend who did everything he could to protect Ricky, and the lover who gave Ricky hope that maybe there was something more in this cruel world than he had experienced before. But with each of them, Ricky can’t help but be self-destructive, showing that the sins of the father remain the biggest force in his life. Reading this book, you can see that the lessons he learned from his father remain the strongest influence in Ricky’s life.
But we’ve seen that in last year’s *Giant Size Criminal #1*, which is actually the first chapter of **Five Gears In Reverse** ([reviewed here),](http://www.apple.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and Brubaker and Phillips continue to explore the broken souls through the rest of the book, giving us just enough echoes of Teeg’s story and actions in Ricky’s that just dig deeper and deeper into Ricky’s trauma. We know Ricky and Teeg, so we can see those echoes, but Mallory is the wild card here, the lover and partner in crime who brings out the best of the worst in Ricky. And while Mallory was a player in Tracy’s story *Sinners,* we don’t know much of her story, where she came from, or what made her just as damaged as Ricky.
Mallory is more than just the “girlfriend” in this story. The Bonnie to Ricky’s Clyde, Mallory has a backstory that’s just as bleak and hopeless as Ricky’s, maybe even more so. Abandoned by her mother and left with her grandparents, there’s nothing for Mallory to do but start breaking the rules from a young age. Hers is a story of being alone in the world, rebelling and lashing out with no one there to protect or comfort her. She wonders, “... would she have given up the straight world, become who she was… if there had been any kind of love in her life as a kid?” Say what you want about Teeg Lawless, there are these moments with Ricky where there’s some kind of connection, a night of watching cartoons that’s one of Ricky’s best memories of his dad. Mallory has nothing like that.
So does Ricky provide that missing love in Mallory’s life? Not really, but he does provide something like it, a connection between these two that fills some kind of parent-sized hole in each of their lives. It’s not just the sins of the parents but the sins of the world that have produced both Ricky and Mallory. Brubaker and Phillips’ **Criminal** is a world of hope but not of redemption—Ricky and Mallory can hope for a better future, but they’re not going to get it. Thanks to the non-linear way that Brubaker and Phillips have told these stories over the years, we know both Ricky and Mallory’s futures, so we can see the two paths that these kids are on. Eventually, they will both escape this life, but in two very different ways. That knowledge of their future, as it has been shown in other stories, just adds to the tragedy that hides in the background of this story. It’s just out of our sight line, but it’s still there, the future waiting for both of these characters.
Maybe Ricky and Mallory have something true that in each other. In all of the hurt and pain, all of the struggle just to survive, maybe there’s a glimpse of hope for the future. Or at least there would be if we didn’t know where the story goes from here. Five Gears in Reverse is a bleak story—it depicts a self-destructive Ricky pulling Mallory into his self-destructive ways. It’s not like she was an innocent or anything; she was clearly on some kind of parallel path to Ricky, so when they meet, their mutual brokenness just accelerates because they each now have a true partner in crime.
### What We Lost in the Zombie Apocalypse- thoughts on Everything Dead & Dying
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/everything-dead-dying-tate-brombal-jakob-phillips-review-2026/
Last updated: 2026-05-21T16:03:09.000Z
Jack Chandler is trying to be a good family man— a good husband and an even better father. Even at the end of the world, he’s trying to be the man his family would have wanted him to be. In[ Tate Brombal](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/404/) and [Jacob Phillips](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jacob-phillips/)’ **Everything Dead & Dying**, the world ended years ago in a zombie outbreak. Still, Jack is trying to live his life as if nothing happened in his small, remote Canadian village because, for some reason, the zombies are stuck repeating their last day over and over. They’re not rampaging or searching for brains as long as Jack can keep them satisfied; his zombie husband and zombie daughter begin each day preparing breakfast just as they did in real life, and Jack welcomes that normality instead of facing the horrors that are all about him. They’re still zombies, but there’s something to the daily routine that Jack maintains with his family and the village that keeps their hunger at bay. There’s no explanation for what’s happening here; Jack just accepts that it’s his responsibility to take care of his family and his neighbors in their undead state.
Jack’s zombified domestic bliss is shattered when a group of survivors from another outpost finds his village and finds him protecting these zombies. Brombal and Phillips flip the script on your typical zombie story (think *The Walking Dead* or *28 Days Later* as examples of typical stories), where the zombies are a sign of the apocalypse. If we try to look through Jack’s eyes, this story is about a man trying to protect the sick and suffering. It’s not like he expresses hope to reverse their fate; he just finds some kind of comfort in the normality of his daily existence. The story starts out feeling like a very empathetic story about a man trying to hold onto hope in the face of flesh-eating dread. Trombal writes an opening chapter that’s a surprisingly grounded story about domestic life (the hopes and fears of it) as Phillips’ artwork captures a pastoral calmness not often seen in zombie stories. But Trombal and Phillips' work also shows cracks in this reality, these flashes of horror that keep you on unsteady ground as you try to figure out just what Jack’s story is.
**Everything Dead and Dying** seems like it’s going to be contrasting life before and after a pandemic, in this case, a zombie one. It’s clear that Jack is living in a post-apocalyptic world, but he’s somehow the one person who’s able to hold onto hope and normality. His husband and daughter are zombies, yet somehow he goes through the motions of having breakfast with them, of serving his community, and being able to be relatively unbroken in a broken world. And then you realize that this is not that story.
Like most zombie stories, this is about just how broken Jack and the world are.
Phillips is the type of artist that’s as comfortable drawing horses as he is zombies (or at least, his art comes off that comfortably at home with both.) He can create images that bring nature and horror together, so that here he can create a small town zombie story. By placing the story in a small Canadian village, Phillips and Brombal can lean into what Jack is trying to hold onto. Unlike other zombie stories that start with what was lost, this zombie story begins with what Jack has held onto during the apocalypse — the people and the daily activities that were just a part of his normal life, no matter how many years ago those were. Even in the face of all of the devastation, Jack ignores all of that to try to live in the past. And that gives us a view into Jack’s emotional state, all the effort and energy spent trying to mollify the zombies’ fateful hunger.
When another band of survivors disrupts Jack’s existence with the zombies, the peace that Jack has worked so hard to maintain reveals itself to be madness instead. And it’s not just Jack’s madness that’s evident, but the world’s madness itself demonstrated by the other survivors who find Jack. At first, it’s easy to see Jack as the hero of this story, trying to protect the zombies from the invaders who want to eradicate them, which is an interesting twist on a zombie story. But as Brombal and Phillips get deeper into the story, it becomes hard to see this as a story of good and evil. Jack isn’t the good guy and the other survivors aren’t bad guys. Instead, we see the world through all of these characters and the emotional and spiritual damage that’s been inflicted on them by a changing world.
We all want the happy, normal moments but Brombal and Phillips explore the damaged and messy lives that we actually have. While in 2026 it’s hard not to read zombie stories as Covid stories, **Everything Dead & Dying** harkens back to that feeling of normalcy that we all wanted even as we hunkered down in our houses, isolated, and fearing our neighbors. It wasn’t a rational time and this isn’t a story about rationality. All over the world, we were lost, wandering, and desperately trying to just be as normal as we could possibly be. And we all went a little crazy in our isolation in ways that are probably still haunting us today. We are all Jack here, just wanting breakfast with family members who were sick and dying. We just want to hold onto the past as long as we can because the future is scary.
### A Shot in the Dark in Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips' Brutal Dark #3
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/brutal-dark-ezra-cain-mystery-3-by-chris-condon-and-jacob-phillips-review/
Last updated: 2026-04-30T13:35:25.000Z
As **Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery #3** opens, Ezra Cain is working two cases that may be the same case. A museum has hired him to track down a missing artifact while a German woman has pleaded with him to find her missing husband, a night watchman at that very same museum. The cases converge this issue as Cain wakes up handcuffed in a dark building, basically told by the owner of the building, Hans Huber, that there’s nothing to see here so leave or face the consequences. It’s definitely more of a threat than simply a warning. And just to drive the point home, Karl Meyer— the missing husband— is pushed into the room, weakly trying to convince Cain that he’s where he wants to be. Writer [Chris Condon](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/chris-condon/) and artist [Jacob Phillips](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jacob-phillips/) know all of the old noir stories and movies; they know how and why they work. So when they employ all of those noir elements here, they’re weaving them together into a story about those elements and those types of stories. This is a story that’s practically begging to be a 1940’s black-and-white movie. So why does it feel like that’s only scratching the surface of what they could be trying to do here?
Ezra Cain is a classic character type—a former cop turned gumshoe detective. Previous issues of this series have hinted at his past; before he became a cop, he was a promising archeology student. But World War I derailed that future and set him on his current path. He could have been Indiana Jones but he became Phillip Marlowe instead. So when he finally leaves that darkened building with more questions than answers, a buddy of his well-meaningly pulls him into a cop bar to hang out with his old cop buddies. With the questions about Huber and Meyer still fresh on his mind, he’s not eager to be pulled back into his own past, reliving memories from a lifetime ago. Key to those memories that confront him in the bar are an old flame, a reporter in a red dress, and the cigar-chomping commissioner he butted heads with and who kicked Cain off the force. Condon and Phillips accept these noirish elements and turn right into them; these are the stories they’re telling so these are the narrative signifiers that they need to include in this story.
Art by Jacob Phillips
But there are these small, little things that Condon and Phillips are seeding throughout this story. The first issue opened up with the discovery of ancient automatons protecting the Anvil of Hephaestus (the museum’s missing artifact.) In this latest issue, Huber tries to explain that a man Cain saw with “mechanical legs” outside of the building was just a WWI vet with new legs to replace the ones that the man lost in the war. This introduces something else into this noir story— a tinge of science fiction and/or fantasy. This injection of something else is also seen in Cain’s unconscious visions (usually while asleep or knocked out) and memories where enemy soldiers are ghoulish zombies haunting him. These narrative suggestions fit within the noir framework so far because they’re not the story— they’re just elements of it.
But while there’s the surface level— all that noir and other stuff— it’s difficult to glimpse what’s really happening here. What is Ezra Cain’s story? What is he going through on a deep and personal level? So much of this issue feels like Condon and Phillips are still setting the scene, introducing us to the cast that they’ve (at best) glossed over what the stakes are for Cain. What it means for him to succeed or fail is nowhere to be seen. While it’s a fun little puzzle that they’re setting up— these intertwined mysteries, these characters have yet to find any agency beyond serving that mystery. If there’s something that’s being said here, some point that’s being made through this story, it’s hard to unearth it underneath all of the noir trappings that the creators are playing with.
**Brutal Dark: An Ezra Cain Mystery #3** is a brew of different story elements. Starting with the heavy noir base, Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips are enhancing their story with these different flavors which complement but give a bit of a counter feel to everything else that’s happening in Cain’s life. As a noir story, this issue is a bit of comfort food, giving us what we want and expect without offering anything of true substance. Condon and Phillips are dancing around something here. There’s the mystery but there also has to be something behind it, some insight or commentary that we’ve barely seen yet.
### Comics at 120MPH-- thoughts on Jesse Lonergan's FASTER
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-jesse-lonergan-faster/
Last updated: 2026-04-10T04:00:26.000Z
[Jesse Lonergan](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jesse-lonergan/) obviously loves the comic page. Maybe that’s something to say about an artist, but in too many comics, the page and its panels seem more like containers— part of the language of comics, and that language has largely become tired and staid. The language of comics has calcified as new artists have imitated imitators or imitators of imitators. We’re so far removed from the artistic innovators of comics that it’s hard to find any spark in the visual storytelling (hard, but not impossible). So when something like Lonergan’s **Faster** pops up on your radar, his love of the comic page is infectious.
Lonergan spins a tale of auto racers Kona Demille (5x World Champion,) Molly Vox (5x runner-up), and the big race at the Bonzo International Speedway. It’s a fast-paced (pun only slightly intended but still apt description) story about these rivals and the rest of their competitors as they all race toward the finish line. The race and the whole plot around it feel less like the reason for the comic as they exist to serve the dynamic artwork and storytelling. Come for a racing story but stay for the artwork to carry you away into this exciting way to experience the speed and g-force in static images.
When Lonergan is drawing the race, you can see how every panel, the framing of each image, the tilt of the panel, and even the colors draw your eye through the story. Here Lonegran is sculpting time through the page, pulling at it like taffy to manipulate it and our experience of it. The sequence above keeps your eye darting through it. This is a two-page spread that’s easy to read; the tiers of the page create three distinct phrases— the top and bottom tiers focusing on the speed and energy of the car race. And then in between the cars, these quick, staccato panels focus in on the races, still maintaining the speed and velocity of the race but bringing them down to the human element of the race— the drivers and spectators trying to keep up with all of the action. Lonergan pulls us into the story on this page, caught up in all of the action and drama of the comic.
As he builds his pages in **Faster**, you need to pay attention to where Lonergan zigs in his storytelling when you expect him to zag. Pages 18 and 19 stick us right behind the steering wheel of the cars but then he pulls us briefly out of the race with the red panels that take us to the moments before the race— the desperation and the aloofness of the racers that make the race all the more thrilling. This isn’t necessarily a story about the racers but Lonergan finds the space in the story to give us these small little personal insights into the racers to make them more than just NPCs in this story. These red panels become a signifier throughout the book that we’re stepping into an aside without ever breaking up the flow of the race.
Lonergan knows that the comic page is more powerful than just being a storyboard, just moving us forward a little bit in time with each panel. The page is a living, breathing thing and even as we’re moving through time, we’re moving through space, emotions, and sensations. You can go from a page that’s a fairly literal pre-race moment that still communicates the mounting tension through sound effects that amp up the rumble of the engines, to a page that’s fairly abstract storytelling, repeating circles and stretching out the wave of the starters flag over the whole page, honestly maybe my favorite page of the book. The way that Lonergan pulls in and out of the page, repeating the curved shape of the wheels in three of the panels, creates a pulse to this story. It’s not a literal moment-to-moment page but more of a statement to prepare us for race.
This comic reads like a love letter to comics, a statement, and a reminder of how art can make us feel something on each and every page. There’s a raw and primal quality to the storytelling here, something that connects to the reader that is so rare to find in comics. On each page, Lonergan gives way to the moment, boiling it down to the key elements that the story needs. Sometimes that’s an open page with just a few panels that gives us a moment to slow down in the story and take everything in. Other times, it’s a two-page spread packed with panels, practically pelting us with images but never overpowering our ability to read the scene or sequence. **Faster** is a love letter- a love to art, storytelling, and comics.
### The Shared Headspace of Love and Rockets #17
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/love-and-rockets-17-gilbert-hernandez-jaime-hernandez/
Last updated: 2026-03-20T04:30:13.000Z
Let’s talk about [Gilbert’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/gilbert-hernandez/) half of **Love and Rockets #17** first. It feels like we’re moving through time and space with Fritz here. We’re light-years away from Palomar, but these stories of women and men feel like an abstracted version of those stories. Fritz confronts her past, her mistakes, and her ghosts. You could question if the events of this issue are literal— is Fritz walking naked through a forest, meeting these people, and having these discussions? But it doesn’t really matter whether or not this is something happening or a reflection of past events and emotions. Gilbert can get us into a kind of shared headspace with his characters. That’s the power of this storytelling, to create a space that’s shared between the story and the readers.
So here’s Fritz, walking through her life and trying to move forward behind the emptiness of it. For several years, his Fritz stories have felt cold & distant. Let’s be honest, while something is intriguing about these characters, Fritz and her family aren’t beloved characters in the **L&R** pantheon even if they’ve been the focus of Gilbert’s half of comics for years now. But something different is happening here in “Afterglow 2.0.”
Like for instance, Gilbert has never shied away from nudity, female or male. The bigger the breasts, the better for him (that’s an extreme generalization of his storytelling but it’s long been an element of it.). But here, he’s oddly self-censoring; he draws an empty rectangle covering every bare breast in the first half of his story. There’s plenty of other explicit and suggestive imagery here but its odd that there isn’t one fully naked breast or a penis in a story featuring Gilbert drawing a lot of naked women and men. Let’s be honest, that’s just what he does.
Nudity has always been a part of his storytelling; his characters are sexual and he hasn’t pulled back from that here. Fritz, her daughters, and the men in their lives are still sexual creatures in this comic but for Fritz, these encounters with her lovers are for the last time. At least, that’s what she tells them and herself. But it would be awfully strange at this point in his career if Gilbert were developing some prudish tendencies. And even by the way he draws the rectangles over the breasts, he’s drawing more attention to them. You notice his covering of breasts in the first half so when you get to the second half of his story, he’s more subtle in how he doesn’t show anything. It all draws attention to Fritz’s and tells us something is different here. Fritz is different.
So that’s where it becomes interesting to compare what Gilbert is don’t here to [Jaime’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jaime-hernandez/) work where Maggie and Ray have these family encounters with his brother and her father’s family. Jaime is 40+ years into Maggie’s story. He’s that much older than when he started and so are Maggie and Ray. Similar to Fritz, there’s an exploration of memories and ghosts that’s happening here. Ray (and Maggie’s) one-time lover Vivian (a.k.a. Frogmouth) is now their sister-in-law. She’s married to Ray’s brother Ignacio. Sitting out on a patio enjoying some time together, Ray and Ignacio share memories of their childhood like only brothers can— recalling early teenage nights spent looking for trouble and not really finding it. The flip side of this story is Maggie visiting her dying father, seeing the family he got after he left Maggie’s family, and awkwardly connecting with her sister over the whole situation. It’s not a place that Maggie or her sister wants to be but this is where their father is and it’s where they need to be. Both stories express love but also distance.
It’s both odd and comforting to think of Ray and Maggie as actual adults, facing these trials of aging. These were punks, artists, lovers, and fighters. But that was back when they were young. In this issue, Maggie tugs at her silver hair and comments that this is the first time she hasn’t colored it since her punk days. Again, a sign of moving beyond something. It’s funny how “Maggie & Ray” has replaced “Maggie and Hopey” but that’s 40 years of storytelling for you. “Maggie and Hopey” was practically its own brand; that relationship was punk circa the 1980s. Thanks to hindsight, maybe we can say now that of course, it was eventually going to run its course. But wasn’t Hopey the friend and lover that we all wanted— maybe not her specifically but that kind of intimacy with another person. Not to say that Ray is any better or worse but he’s safer than Hopey ever was; he’s stable in a way that Hopey isn’t and he’s what Maggie needs.
More than a lot of issues of **Love and Rockets**, there’s a shared wavelength that Gilbert and Jaime are both operating on for these about this liminal space and time in these characters’ lives. Jaime’s stories have been here for a bit, at least since [*The Love Bunglers*](https://www.panelpatter.com/2014/05/third-verse-different-than-first-love.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) which felt like it could have been the conclusion of Maggie’s story, and that came out 12 years ago (see [*Is This How You See Me*](https://www.panelpatter.com/2019/05/waiting-for-ape-sex-thoughts-on-jaime.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) or [*Life Drawings*](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jaime-hernandez-life-drawings/#gsc.tab=0).) But since then, his stories have tried to find a new setting with Tonta and her crew; could they be the new punks? Maggie remains central to these stories but you can see Jaime trying to figure out what’s next. Similarly in this issue, Gilbert is in the same position; his stories have always been generational and while Fritz has been his focus for some time now, this issue seems to be questioning where we go from here.
Gilbert and Jaime are telling stories about, in, and through time. These aren’t forever young and forever unchanging comic characters, trapped in some nebulous and static time frame. To read an issue of **Love and Rockets** is to catch these characters at some specific point in their lives. That’s why rereads of this series are so satisfying; you can make all of these connections to things these characters have done or lived through before. **Love and Rockets #17** shows us that things change but life goes on and that’s probably the big lesson that both Hernandez brothers teach us over the decades with their stories; there’s always tomorrow and all we can do is take these lives one day (or issue) at a time.
### Falling in Love and Saving the Universe in Ram V and Anand RK’s Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/falling-in-love-and-saving-the-universe-in-ram-v-and-anand-rks-resurrection-man-quantum-karma/
Last updated: 2026-03-11T13:00:51.000Z
In the [Ram V](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/ram-v/)\-written **Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma**, Anand RK (artist) and Mike Spicer (colorist) create a dream-like atmosphere. Anand’s artwork can be full of detail, very descriptive, and well-defined. And then at other points, it’s more vague, outlines and impressions of Mitch Shelley’s life. Reading this book is like reading someone’s memories; some of those memories are indelibly locked in while others flit in and out, half there and half gone. And that only makes sense when reading a book about an immortal, doomed to be resurrected every time he dies. Spicer’s colors walk the same pathways, not nearly as saturated into the page as we’re used to seeing from his coloring elsewhere but almost more suggestions of times, places, and feelings than trying to capture any realism in the moment.
Art by Jackson Guice
Under the pens and brushes of other artists, this story could read as standard end-of-the-world-superheroing. Original 1990’s-era *Resurrection Man* artist, the late and great [Jackson Guice](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/rip-butch-guice-jenny-blakes-first-comic-book-credit-the-diamond-soap-opera-and-more-the-comic-bookmarks-may-11th-2025/) (and Guice stand-in Mike Perkins after Guice’s passing) gives us a glimpse of that version of this story on a page at the beginning of each chapter. Each chapter opens with a Guice/Perkins drawn page reflecting what the story would look like in a more mainstream superhero world, including a shot of the 90’s era Justice League with electric-blue Superman. Ram V doesn’t include these to point at them or anything. By bringing Guice back to the character, these pages provide another perspective for this story. Maybe Ram is trying to play the story you expect against the story he’s writing for you but these pages give a glimpse of another version of this story, maybe a bit more conventional version of the story but no less complex or demanding of a version of the story but a more base version of the story that’s not so driven by emotion but by superheroic action.
The driving force behind **Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma** is feelings and motivations that we don’t usually see have this much hold on the story as they do here. There’s usually not room for those kinds of things in monthly superhero comics but that’s what Ram V does— he finds different paths into his stories that don’t align neatly with the paths we know. This story opens on a family saying goodbye to their dying father and husband. The old man lies in a hospital bed— his spirit strong but his body at the end of its line and not able to hold on much longer. A wife, a daughter, and a granddaughter, already in the stages of grief, try to figure out how they will go on once Mathieu Salierre lets go of his mortal body. The story opens in death and grief but it also opens in love and these are the elements that Ram V and Anand RK keep coming back to in this story.
Let’s be clear— in many ways, this is your fairly standard end-of-everything story as a threat from Mitch Shelley’s past tracks him down at the ends of creation, looking to devour everything and Shelley (the resurrected Salierre) is the only person who can defeat the threat and save everything. If you were asked to describe this story, that may be the most straightforward and non-nuanced way to try to explain what happens here. There are other details to add (an older, more single-minded, and ruthless Resurrection Man from another universe now called Shesha tries to guide the Shelley of this universe on this mission) and time travel elements that you could then dive into. But that’s ignoring the death, grief, and love that open and hang over the story. That’s the plot of this tale but it’s not the story that these creators are invested in.
While this is a revival of a 90s series, the book feels more related to Ram V’s Boom Studios work *The Many Deaths of Laila Starring* and[*Rare Flavours*](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-ghost-of-bourdain-haunts-ram-v-and-filipe-andrades-rare-flavours/)*,* meditative stories about (you guessed it,) love, death, and grief. Like those stories, Ram V finds this balance of the grand and the intimate. Beyond the end-of-everything histrionics of this story, Mitch Shelley is a man whose gift and curse is to always be resurrected— that’s different than immortality. His power isn’t to live forever— he has to die over and over again for his powers to express themselves. The method of his death influences the power he has in his resurrection. But he has to die first and die continually to be resurrected.
That’s the beginning point of Shelley’s story- death. What could it mean to him when he dies? What does it mean to him when those he gets close to die? Early on in the story, Shelley asks, “You think saving the universe and falling in love are the same thing?” “You’d be surprised,” Shesha answers. And there is Ram and Anand’s story. Having died of old age, of time, Shelley’s resurrected power isn’t over time and memory as he looks back over his life, his times of falling in and losing love, of saving the world from petty, earthly threats even as he nudges his memories and events to prepare for the upcoming battles. And it’s not preparing the likes of Batman or Superman for this battle— it’s preparing the answer to his question if falling in love and saving the universe are the same thing.
Imagine if that question were asked more in comics- if each crisis or alternate universe was saved by emotions & love rather than mostly punching. This is still that kind of story but the struggle is far more internal— Shelley versus Shesha. The man he is versus the man he will be. Yes, there is another, imminent threat out there that threatens to devour reality but Ram and Anand’s story shows a man trying to hold onto the love that makes him who he is— all of the highs and lows that come from allowing yourself to love.
### Growing Up Day by Day in Keigo Shinzo's Hirayasumi Volume 7
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/growing-up-day-by-day-in-keigo-shinzos-hirayasumi-volume-7/
Last updated: 2026-02-20T05:15:30.000Z
For cousins Hiroto and Natsumi, things seem to be going in opposite directions; Natsumi has hit a creative block with her budding manga career while Hiroto is finally making a low-budget zombie movie with his best friend Hideki. It’s a bit of a reversal of fortunes as Hiroto wasn’t quite a slacker, but his ambition wasn’t much more than that and Natsumi was making headway early on in her attempts to get her manga published. Maybe they’d be able to help each other during this time if they weren’t both wrapped up in their small worlds. Worse yet, even as they try to get through their lives, they see their friends taking steps, making progress, and growing up a bit. Natsumi’s best friend Akari wins an art competition that compounds Natsumi’s creative block. At the same time, Hideki tells Hiroto about a major upcoming change in his own life that upends Hiroto’s joy over their movie. In **Hirayasumi Volume 7**, [Keigo Shinzo](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/keigo-shinzo/) tells the story of Hiroto and Natsumi’s struggles with a compassion for all of his characters that is a gentle nudge to remind all of us to try and have the same kind of compassion for ourselves and others.
A couple of months ago, I described **Hirayasumi** to my son as “it’s Scott Pilgrim if Scott Pilgrim was actually a good guy.” (My son has read enough *Scott Pilgrim* to get this reference.) Like Bryan Lee O’Malley’s seminal story of growing up, Shinzo’s Hiroto is pretty much the definition of a man-child, grown up and responsible enough to be on his own (maybe that’s a bit more than Scott Pilgrim’s capable of) but still immature enough to be a hanger-on. Hiroto has his own place because an old granny that he was friends with left her house to him when she passed on. But he works at the local fishing pond, hanging out with the old dudes and families who spend their days there to pass the time. So when Hideki had his mid-life crisis and quit his job (in previous volumes,) the two old friends decide it’s time to do what they used to do when they were younger and make a low-budget movie. And they recruit Natsumi’s art school friends to be their crew.
While all of this is happening in Hiroto’s life, Natsumi won a manga competition and has a budding career as she tries to balance that with art school and the friends that she’s made there. So when her creativity feels at its lowest, she sees Akari’s star rising after she won a competition and that sends Natsumi spiraling into an even deeper funk and she begins trying to avoid her apparently more successful friend. Worse yet, she sees her slacker cousin doing something that he’s actually good at and it all weighs down even more on her. Of course, she doesn’t realize that Akari felt the same way when Natsumi’s manga started getting noticed.
Shinzo’s slice-of-life story captures the ups and downs that most of us face every day, reflecting them through our own insecurities as we watch these mismatched cousins try to navigate their lives. Hiroto and Natsumi are fairly universal types of characters; it’s easy to see something of yourself in both of them. Shinzo even extends that to their friends. **Hirayasumi Volume 7** is about these specific days in these characters' lives but he writes and draws his stories in a way that opens them up for all of us. The story focuses on both the hopes and insecurities of these characters; the hope for tomorrow to be better than today but the fear that the people we love are going to leave us behind.
Akari and Hideki are Natsumi and Hiroto’s best friends but they’re also anchors in their lives. So if the anchors are moving up and on without them, where does that leave the cousins? Shinzo’s series has been a series of highs and lows for these characters; we see their lives shifting between these extremes in this very volume. So it’s this story of getting through each hour, day, week, and year trying to be open to the experience of these times. Shinzo manages to be both sympathetic and judgmental of his characters, giving them space to feel these emotions but that only goes so far before the storyteller wants to smack them upside their heads to get them back on track and see their friendships for what they really are.
Shinzo Kenzo captures the ups and downs of life and how they propel us or drag us down. He generates excitement in **Hirayasumi Volume 7** by practically focusing on the mundane day-in-day-out life of these characters and the little things that happen that keep them going. A game of catch can become these moments of connection and reconciliation. Or the memory of sharing a shaved ice with a friend who is no longer around can trigger a memory of some wise words that they once had for you. As the characters go through their days and have these small, personal revelations, Kenzo uplifts his audience hoping that they’ll have the same little learnings that Hiroto and Natsumi have.
### Dennis O'Neil and Denys Cowan Restate The Question
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/dennis-oneil-and-denys-cowan-restate-the-question/
Last updated: 2026-02-16T01:32:51.000Z
**Question #1** is a nearly perfect first issue to revamp a character who was barely known or remembered in 1986, despite being created by one of the greats, Steve Ditko. The Question appeared a year or so earlier in *Crisis on Infinite Earths* after DC swooped up the Charlton charters (including Blue Beetle, Judo Master, and Peacemaker.) Worlds lived, worlds died, and it was time for older characters to have a new life.
Following that event, DC was all about revamping and reintroducing their characters. Superman and Wonder Woman were rebooted with new series and Batman’s origin was reworked. John Byrne, George Perez, and Frank Miller were the wunderkinds of the time, reshaping these golden-age characters to appeal to a mid-1980s reading audience. It was the “Marvelization” of those characters as DC saw the popularity of Marvel’s, particularly Chris Claremont’s X-Men, and wanted some of that razzle-dazzle for their characters and myths. It extended to team books as well as the Justice League and Suicide Squad were reworked. Somehow in all of that, DC decided to brush off Ditko’s old character The Question, and update him as well.
Denys Cowan is a fascinating artist to charge with this task— he doesn’t look anything like Ditko. Where Ditko is all about the flow, Cowan is about brutality and that’s what’s showcased in this introductory issue. And that’s exactly what [Dennis O’Neil’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/denny-oneil/) story needed. **The Question #1**, “The Bad News,” is a ragged book, opening up on a rainy night as a man, whose face is hidden in shadow, waits outside a shack, waiting for the moment to strike. “Hub City, Friday, November 21, 10:45PM: Charles Victor Szasz has exactly 25 hours and 15 minutes to live,” O’Neil writes as the opening to this series and this issue. Cowan’s framing of The Question on this first page, shows us a man ready for violence. “… He will burst through the door to do violence. Or have violence done to him,” O’Neil writes and Cowan delivers a page of so much potential energy, a powerful entry into this comic book. With that, the countdown to The Question's death begins.
This issue takes place over the span of those 25 hours. O’Neil and Cowan show us almost everything we need to know about the man Charles Victor Szasz, aka Vic Sage and more secretly aka The Question. We see his pride on full display as well as his self-righteousness. And we see those get in his way causing him to stumble as he tries to expose and tear down the greed and corruption controlling Hub City. In this issue, we witness the last day of his life as his righteous anger meets the more calm killer Lady Shiva who could maybe teach him a thing or two.
Through Cowan’s pencils and Rick Magyar’s inks, we get a tour of a city that just doesn’t care enough about the people it should be protecting and encouraging. Hub city and most of those in it, maybe even including Sage himself, lack any empathy for the general population of the city. It’s a city where the ugly and ruthless rule over the weak and are powerless; it’s a city of corruption. Even when Sage steps in to stand up for one of the city’s homeless, a former reporter, any empathy that Sage displays is expressed through violence and force. These are the lessons that the city has taught its citizens and its protector.
Sage isn’t the type to let process or decorum get in the way of his crusade. When he’s not a vigilante, he’s a reporter for the local television station, working to uncover the corruption that controls his city. Without clearing his story with the producer or the station’s lawyers, he goes on live television to deliver the news that the city’s officials are bought and paid for. “He comes on strong! But he delivers the goods!” the stations bosses praise him for even as he shows local school officials “with the nose candy.” And then, after the broadcast, he goes home and sleeps with the news anchor, Myra Connelly. It’s not the way anything should work but it’s what Sage makes work for him.
This is the “hero” that O’Neil and Cowan are introducing to us even as they count down to his death.
“Charles Victor Szasz has 24 hours and 59 minutes to live.
“Charles Victor Szasz has 16 hours and 14 minutes to live.
“Charles Victor Szasz has 14 hours and 33 minutes…
“Exactly 12 hours…
“Exactly 7 hours and 14 minutes…
“4 hours and 46 minutes…
“1 hour and 15 minutes…”
Up to this point, we’ve seen a man in control of his world and everything around him. He moves with the confidence of a man who can’t be touched. The Question is equal parts *Dirty Harry* and *Death Wish* as O’Neil and Cowan guide us in these 25 hours of a man’s life. And then they have him face Lady Shiva, this superior fighter who has been hanging around in the background of the story and who’s everything that Sage isn’t; she’s calm, she’s professional, and she’s ruthless. That last hour is her beating him practically to death, where he’s thrown into the river and sinks to the bottom of it. “Down, down, into the freezing depths… A minute passes, two— ten… as the husk of what had been Charles Victor Szasz settles into the sand and is cold and silent and still…”
The way that O’Neil and Cowan show us this portrait of who The Question is and so effortlessly tear it down in the final pages is as ruthless as Lady Shiva is. They walk us through a day in the life of this vigilante to the point where we think we know him and then rip it all away at the bottom of that river. It’s one of the more inventive ways to revamp a character like this and it was something that DC could never have done with Batman or Superman. O’Neil, a storytelling veteran, takes a big swing with this issue and delivers one of the best reintroductions during this era at DC. Because here was a character we didn’t know; O’Neil and Cowan had to give us an idea of who he was so they could reinvent him. Everything that comes after this couldn’t have worked without having the baseline character traits that are introduced in **The Question #1**.
### From the Archives- Jeff Lemire's The Nobody
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-jeff-lemires-the-nobody/
Last updated: 2026-02-06T12:00:22.000Z
Here is a review from 2009, looking at Jeff Lemire's **The Nobody**. The book is being republished by Dark Horse Comics and will be released next week so it seems like a good time to dust this one off and represent it.
The plan wasn't to run another archived review after running one last week but I've been sidelined all week by some bug or another. Hopefully we'll be back to normal programming next week.
---
The story of a stranger coming to town always involves upsetting the status quo and change for everyone involved. In **The Nobody** *,* John Griffen brings a whole unknown history with him, and that disturbs the people in the sleepy town of Large Mouth. This bandaged man makes them scared and suspicious, just as he makes Vickie, a Large Mouth teen, curious and excited for the same reasons. [ Jeff Lemire's](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jeff-lemire/) story plays with anxieties, reminiscent of a Hitchcock film that way, as mysteries and suspicions create a psychological horror that plays with your anxieties. The mysteries of Griffen play off of all of our fears of upsetting our staid lives. Sometimes those fears are imaginary, and sometimes they are real. Like in Hitchcock's stories, Lemire forces us to look at how much those fears and anxieties exist only in our heads and how much of them are real and truly dangerous.
It was back in 1994 that John Griffen came to Large Mouth for his own reasons. The sleepy, small little town was nothing extraordinary. It was a fairly normal town that Vickie, only sixteen at the time, grew up in and was bored by. John Griffen was something new in her young life, a man of shadows that disturbed the regular day-to-day routines of Large Mouth. The man, wrapped completely in bandages and wearing goggles, kept to himself in his hotel room but only came out occasionally to get something to eat. That's where Vickie first met him, when we went to her father's diner just to get a take out menu. To the teenager, the mystery of John Griffen brought something unknown into her life. She saw him and watched him. She looked solidly at him in a way that Lemire's characters a barely do, with round, well defined and well focused eyes, trying to see under those bandages and to catch a glimpse of what life is like outside of Large Mouth.
Much like Vickie, John Griffen is searching for something too. The bandages that cover his face hide a past full of mistakes and pain. He wants to be alone and uninterrupted and idyllic and rural Large Mouth looks like the place where he can find that solitude. There are reasons for those bandages; they help protect him after he used himself as his own test subject in a scientific experiment. His own actions have driven him into hiding in Large Mouth where he thought he could just literally disappear but his bandages and general strangeness around town makes him the new town gossip target as they try to figure out who this odd stranger is?
Vickie and Griffen's eyes almost tell the whole story in this story. While Vickie's eyes are the wide, observant eyes of youth, Griffen's eyes are hidden behind welder's goggles the entire time. Lemire tells Griffen's story, hardly ever showing us the true John Griffen, if that is even his true name? Other than through flashbacks to the experiment, Lemire's leading man remains cloaked to us, never showing a smile or a frown or a wrinkled brow. He remains the eponymous "nobody" to us, barely existing beneath a mask of goggles, bandages and heavy clothes. Without ever truly seeing Griffen, Lemire tells us much about the character through his substitute eyes, his goggles. Griffen's eyes are ever present, one of the most distinguished characteristics of the man. Wider and rounder than Vickie's, Griffen observes everything but absorbs in nothing. He's not there to get to know the people or to live in Large Mouth. His large eyes never reflect anything around him. He may as well be invisible or even dead.
Building off of his own *Essex County* books, Lemire adds a Hitchcockian element to this story, exploring how the small insecurities and fear of change can lead to disaster for all involved. **The Nobody** shares many similarities to Lemire's earlier work, including a general air of simple-life sadness. His stories remain based in rural settings and contain a timeless quality to them, as if these places always have and always will exist. We're told as the book opens that these events actually took place sixteen years ago but there is little in the book to place the story in 1994 as opposed to 2009 or in any other year. This is an old story that's finally being told to us by an adult Vickie. I wonder if she's still in Large Mouth as she's telling it, perhaps to her own children as a warning, or did those events in 1994 send her on a new path, taking her out of the small town that she most likely would have spent her whole life in.
Whether through Vickie's eyes or Griffen's goggles or everyone else's sad eyes, how well do any of the characters in **The Nobody** see their world or the events that are unfolding around them? Like us, they see what they want to see; an exotic mystery, a town where you can easily disappear or an unknown danger that will threaten us all. They all see different things but maybe they are all seeing the same thing and that's the horror of it. Maybe they are all seeing their stable lives upset and are excited and scared by that.
### From the Archives- Beasts of Burden: Animal Rights
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/beasts-of-burden-animal-rights-evan-dorkin-jill-thompson-review/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:51:44.000Z
Here's one from August 2010, and it opens with a reminder of how old this probably is. The **Beasts of Burden Compendium** came out last year and was one of the best things I read, and it all started here with **Beasts of Burden: Animal Rights**. This review is presented here with just a few updates for clarity and corrections.
---
It’s an idea so simple that I’m sure it has to have been done before, but I’ve never seen it.
A haunted doghouse.
That’s how [Evan Dorkin ](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/evan-dorkin/)and [Jill Thompson](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jillian-tamaki/) begin **Beasts of Burden: Animal Rights**, a collection of short stories about the dogs and a neighborhood stray cat in the town of Burden Hill who have to deal with the kind of ghouls and monsters that would be more at home in one of [Mike Mignola](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/mike-mignola/)’s *Hellboy* stories than in a talking animal comic. Their first story in this books is about these dogs trying to figure out why one of their friend’s doghouse is haunted. It’s not like the dog’s are professional ghost hunters or anything; they’re just the neighborhood mutts, trying to help a frightened friend. The haunted doghouse is only be beginning of the horrors to be found in Burden Hill.
If you are used to Dorkin as the smart-alec, self-effacing and funny cartoonist of Dork! or Milk & Cheese, **Beasts of Burden: Animal Rights** firmly establishes him as more than just a sardonic writer with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture. He gives each dog and the occasional cat a distinctive voice. There’s the protective leader of the group, the scaredy cat (but not the real cat) of the group, the trusting friend, the adventurer and the cat, the outsider who just wants to run with the dogs. With this cast of characters, he creates a warmth to the book as they know quite obviously that they’re in over their heads but they keep on going up against these other creatures and monsters because it’s their instinct to protect.
Dorkin strikes a nice medium, planting his stories somewhere between *Hellboy* and *Scooby Doo*. Like Mignola did in the early days of *Hellboy*, Dorkin is building a world where the supernatural is very real. It’s a world with werewolves, frog monsters, witches and covens, ghosts and old, ancient wise dogs exist while his main characters are simple suburban household pets. Mignola’s Hellboy has to travel around the world to find beasts and horrors but Dorkin’s dogs find them in our backyards or in the woods just down at the end of the block. The normal, suburban setting makes Dorkin’s monsters more real and threatening than Mignola’s. Have you looked inside your dog’s house today to see who or what is in there?
Of course, it’s easy for the threats to seem more real when Jill Thompson is painting them. More and more, I become convinced that Thompson can draw and paint just about everything. Her animals are so full of life and character in this book. The greatest compliment to pay her I think is to simply say that I could see any of my own dogs being characters in this book. Between the five main dogs and one cat, she captures just the individual personalities that dogs can have. Without over-exaggerating or becoming too cartoony, her dogs are real dogs. She knows how to show us the different breeds, their expressions and even their mannerisms perfectly on the page. Similarly to [Grant Morrison](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/grant-morrison/) and Frank Quitely’s *WE3*, which also featured a team of animals, Evan Dorkin’s **Beasts of Burden** stories comes together so well because the artist knows how to draw animals and make them look like real animals, not some overly cartoonish simplification of what they think a dog or a cat should look like.
More than just drawing the neighborhood dogs and strays, Thompson also perfectly captures the horrors that they have to face. She brings the ghosts, zombie dogs, witches and rains of frogs that Dorkin writes to life, making them as real as the normal dogs and cats. Much like I never thought of Dorkin as a horror writer, I don’t know if I ever really thought of Thompson as a horror artist; she draws the cute witch stories, not the really scary ones. With the vividness of colors she achieves by painting this book, she’s able to push the mood of this book, creating both a well-lit and safe world and a dark, shadowy world of giant frogs and ghost dogs. There’s one page in this book that’s basically out of *The Walking Dead*, only with dogs. It’s creepy, horrible and fantastic and I think only Jill Thompson could have pulled it off.
In the afterword, Dorkin explains a bit about how **Beasts of Burden** is a bit of a happy accident. Asked to contribute a story to a Dark Horse anthology, Evan Dorkin wrote a story about a haunted dog house and got lucky enough that Jill Thompson drew the story. It was not meant to be a continuing story; he wrote it as a one shot. Then he was asked to write another story featuring these animals for another anthology. And then stories in another anthology or two came along and eventually a miniseries, all of which are collected in this book. Whether you want to call it an animal story or a horror story, **Beasts of Burden: Animal Rights** is great work by two talented creators who are obviously having fun with their story.
### “Change Your Heart…”— Lessons from Mark Russell and Mike Feehan’s Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/mark-russell-and-mike-feehan-exit-stage-left-the-snagglepuss-chronicles-review/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:52:08.000Z
You probably wouldn’t expect to find a story about the queer experience in the 1950s in a comic book that’s based on a cartoon character but that’s exactly what [Mark Russell](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/404/) and [Mike Feehan](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/404/) did in 2018’s **Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles**. Oddly, they begin in 1953, six years before the character’s actual debut on “The Quick Draw McGraw Show,” and they work that into the story, exploring the life of this cartoon character before he became a television star. So it’s the story about how he became a TV celebrity but it’s much more than that— it’s the story of the 1950s, about the repression, fear, and power of the time. It’s the story of a government out of control, seeing enemies everywhere (in this case, Communists,) and out to stamp it down before they gets a hold on our good, American culture. And while the book doesn’t come out and say it, it’s heavily implied that good culture is “*Leave It to Beaver*” and “*Ozzie and Harriet*.” In other words, it’s patriotic, straight, and white. And if you don’t fall into one of those categories, then you must be a godless Communist. It all was as black-and-white as the television of the times.
Snagglepuss is a man (mountain lion?) that has it all— he’s a famous playwright, married to a wonderful woman, and can get into all of the best restaurants. He’s respected so when he’s called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify and to give names of Communist sympathizers, he casually disarms his inquisitors. When directly asked, “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Snagglepuss deftly answers “Lord of Heaven, no! I never even go to parties anymore.” He walks out of that first committee hearing unscathed and his head held high. And that’s an attitude he carries through much of this comic; he deflects suspicion and attacks in ways that few can. Yet even as he deflects, he’s hiding something from the committee and the world. The marriage is a shield from the truth; he’s a gay man in a society that’s scared of homosexuality and condemns it.
Exploring the ways that we play roles to protect ourselves, nearly every person in this story is trying to be something that they’re not. At the most basic level, you have the actors in Snagglepuss’s plays, human actors wearing costumed animal ears and noses. They’re one aspect of Snagglepuss’s voice; there’s an equality present on the stage that’s seen nowhere else in this story. The theater seems to be the safest place in this book, where all of these different people come together without prejudice. Russell and Feehan show the work that’s involved but they also use the stage to show the purity of art.
Set in the repressive 1950s, Snagglepuss has to hide that he’s queer. It’s portrayed as one of those secrets that the people closest to Snagglepuss know but if you’re not part of his circle, you think he’s “100% American.” He’s a celebrity; he’s the great American playwright (think Tennessee Williams.) Snagglepuss is really good at hiding in plain sight. He carries himself with the confidence of who he is and what his actions are, which another character, Huckleberry Hound, lacks. Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss’s old and dear friend, isn’t as good at keeping his secrets. So like his actors, Snagglepuss has to take on many roles just as he makes those in his life take on roles. As a gay man (let’s just call him a man as it’s easier than saying “gay mountain lion”,) we see Snagglepuss put on a straight persona for the public to see. He’s married so he can’t be gay, right? Russell and Feehan are trying to show this 1950s society that’s one thing on the surface and then something else underneath it.
Snagglepuss has the carefree attitude of a Southern Dandy. He faces off against the House Un-American Activity Committee, armed only with his bon mots, and walks out the first time unscathed. He’s a New York playwright who has wealth, fame, a beautiful wife, and can get a last-minute reservation at all the right restaurants. He’s the man (or tiger) of the moment. Snagglepuss has to hide that he’s queer. It’s portrayed as one of those secrets that the people closest to Snagglepuss know but if you’re not part of his circle, you think he’s “100% American.” He’s the great American playwright (think Tennessee Williams.) And Snagglepuss is really good at hiding in plain sight.
And yet for all of the ways he tries to protect himself, he has to expose himself and give in to his fears to try to inspire change. There’s something here as Snagglepuss has to be a sacrifice in ways that no other character in this book can be. He stands up to the HUAC and ends up losing everything because of it. He speaks truth to the committee and the American people. “There is no greater tragedy in life than to die a stranger to yourself. Conformity and shame destroy people. And a culture that doesn’t fight back is as useful as an old calendar.”
Russell and Feehan’s comic is a reminder and a call to arms. Back in 2017 and 2018 when this was first coming out, in the early years of the first Trump presidency and MAGA and all of that, there’s definitely a way to read this as “those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” But now that we’re only a year into the second Trump regime, it feels like we’ve moved beyond just remembering the past and now have to do something about it— to take up the call of Snagglepuss and to live the lives we’re supposed to, to stop being strangers to ourselves.
So **Exit Strange Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles** isn’t a call to revolution but a call for change. And as David Lunch once put it, “Change your hearts or die.” And yes, it’s strange to get this lesson from a pantsless human-like pink mountain lion (or whatever Snagglepuss is) but by removing those human physical qualities from Snagglepuss, Mark Russell and Mike Feehan end up making the message so much more universal. It’s not a story about protecting something that’s othered; it’s a story about protecting ourselves and our loved ones from fear, anger, and repression.
Cover art by Ben Caldwell
### Friends and Sinners in Sammy Harkham’s Crickets #9
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/sammy-harkham-crickets-9-review/
Last updated: 2026-08-03T14:05:29.000Z
[Sammy Harkham](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/sammy-harkham/)’s **Crickets #9** opens with a two-page story of a suburban couple awkwardly running into an old acquaintance at the local mall. That story leads into the centerpiece of the issue— a story of a man in the 1860s facing a murder charge and the death penalty. The issue wraps up with a story of (of all things) Frederick the Great. And then, as a coda, Harkham throws in a one-page strip on the back cover of a man calling an old friend only to realize why he hasn’t called in a long time. It’s an odd collection of stories; the quality is consistently great, but Harkham seems to be jumping all over the place. The first story, the one about the couple and the old acquaintance, opens with the caption “A million years ago.” That story, “Reunion,” and the back cover’s “A Sunday Afternoon” share some thematic links to open and close the issue, but what can we make of everything in between?
The clues may actually be found on the cover and on the inside cover front piece. The cover is a nighttime shot of the old California town that is the setting of the second story, “The San Fernando Kid,”. It’’s a tranquil image of the setting, like nothing we actually experience in the story. It’s a wonderful image but it’s not what we should be focusing on if we’re looking to unlock some thematic connective tissue for this issue. Instead, we need to look at the subtitle just under the logo— “sing, you sinners.” Who is Harkham directing this command to? Himself? The various characters in the stories? Us, the audience? Who are the sinners here? It’s a matter introduced as soon as we pick up the issue.
And then the mystery continues on the inside cover where a new subtitle is introduced— “Goodbye to friendship.” So here things become a tad clearer. In most of these stories, we see various friendships explored. But the imager on the front piece seems more related to “sing, you sinners.” Harkham draws Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, expelled out of paradise and into a wasteland. But even there, could Harkham be trying to tie the breakup of Adam and Eve’s relationship with God to the other friendships we encounter in this issue?
In “The San Fernando Kid,” the beginning of his long-form follow-up to [*Blood of the Virgin*](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/blood-of-the-virgin-by-sammy-harkham/#gsc.tab=0)*,* Harkham tells the story of a man who may or may not be named Alvarez. In court, as a prosecutor argues Alvarez’s guilt in killing a man over $600 and a horse, the lawyer tells the jury “‘Alvarez’ being as common in California as ‘Smith’ is in Boston. There’s over thirty Alvarez’s in the state registries… none of the Alvarez clans claim him as one of their own…” Just who this man is remains part of the continuing mysteries of this issue.
For all we know, San Fernando may be a paradise (but as seen here, I kind of doubt it) but either way, Alvarez isn’t a part of the community so he isn’t part of whatever paradise it may be. His only friend is a fellow prisoner locked up in the cell next to him. Here we see the sinners and the friends coming together and read on to see which role becomes the driving force behind the story. Harkham’s cartooning conveys Alvarez’s cool calmness as he faces the death penalty; this is clearly a man who has other plans than facing the hangman’s noose. So when the legal drama gives way to an action-packed chase, you know what Alvarez is running from. But what is he running to?
So let’s loop back to the first story in the issue, “Reunion,” which turns out to be all about friendship (or at least longing for a stable relationship in life) and sins. Avi, the man that the couple runs into at the mall, is a troubled man with a troubled past; the interaction between the three is strained and rather painful to witness. The shared life experiences that are looked back on come from such different and conflicting perspectives. The second page of this two-page story narrows its scope to just Avi alone in his car after the chance encounter and he is angry at the world. There’s a world of differences between Alvarez and Avi but their anger binds these characters together even as what they do with that anger speaks to the differences between the two men.
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Then coming to “Frederick the Great,” it’s a story all about friendship and more. It’s about longing in the face of destiny as Frederick’s own longings run counter to his father’s plans for him. Maybe like Avi and Alvarez, Frederick is a man struggling with his past— who he has been and what he has done— as he faces an uncertain future. Similar to Avi and Alvarez, there are connections between Alvarez and Frederick that speak to the different “sins” of these two stories and the different ways their characters approach “friendship.”
**Crickets #9** explores the room in our lives from friends and sinners. If nothing else, what rings throughout this issue is the loneliness of these characters. Alvarez faces that loneliness with defiance, Avi faces it with sadness, and Frederick faces it with pleading. In one complete issue, Harkham explores these voids and absences brought on by isolation in the face of being surrounded by “friends.”
### Linus Liu Dreams Of A Long Lost Childhood in Cat Mask Boy
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/linus-liu-cat-mask-boy-review/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:52:27.000Z
Linus Liu’s **Cat Mask Boy** is a relatively inconsequential story and that’s part of its charm. When given a class assignment to describe what his dream job would be when he grows up, seven-year-old Tiger shows up at school wearing a cat mask, telling his teacher and class that he wants to be a superhero. The class laughs and the teacher tells Tiger, “… there’s no such career as a superhero” and that he’ll need to redo his homework. Walking back to his desk, Tiger proudly proclaims, “Superheroes are the champions of justice, not schoolwork!” before slumping back down into his desk. It’s the defiance of a school kid who wants to hold onto a dream but is already fighting against a future that he doesn’t want.
When pushed, Tiger wants to be a kid who does good, does better. The Cat Mask Boy wants to do well in school to make his mom proud of him. So for him, it’s an accomplishment when he goes from worst in the class to just third worst. It’s an improvement that he’s proud of. Liu shows us a good kid who is a dreamer and doesn’t quite fit in with what everyone else thinks a “good” kid should be. They see a troublemaker or a loafer but Liu sees a kid who, for better or worse, dreams of being a hero. It’s a child’s dream and simple vision of the world but Liu’s **Cat Mask Boy** allows us to get lost in the purity and the innocence of that kind of unformed worldview.
There are actually three boys with cat masks— Tiger, his friend Rocky who Tiger makes a mask to hide his parotitis, and the mysterious Dragon of Kowloon Walled City, whom Tiger encounters on a search for his missing report card. The three boys are very different but Liu finds ways to use each of them to explore this age where boys can just be boys with everything that comes with it. In many ways, there’s no planning to these boys’ days other than waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night. Everything else in between is just full of potential and possibility. Liu captures the aimless days of childhood, when days would start as one thing and end up being something completely different by the time they were over.
So on this day, Tiger wakes up for school and ends up in the rough’n’tumble Kowloon Walled City trying to find his report card which got swept up by a man and taken away. Tiger needs the report card to show his mother and his teacher that he’s responsible and capable of being better. Even though he’s only third worst in the class, that report card is a demonstration that he can be something more than everyone thinks he is. So all he has to do is go to school and go home. That’s what the day starts as but then it turns into something much darker and more dangerous as he has to enter a city where law doesn’t exist and he won’t get any leeway from the thieves and criminals just because he’s a kid.
Rocky and Dragon represent two very different future paths for Tiger. Rocky is the son of a shop owner, a quiet boy who follows the rules. His friendship with Tiger may be his one act of rebellion but Rocky is that “good” boy who lives within the rules and roles of society. Dragon is something different and unexpected. He lives within the lawlessness of the walled city so he could be the “bad” boy, the criminal who could lure Tiger over to the dark side. Dragon represents more the possibilities of who Tiger could be- the [**yin and yang**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin%5Fand%5Fyang?ref=fromcovertocover.com) shading of Dragon’s mask suggesting a harmony that’s not present in either of the other boys’ lives.
Using a limited color palette (largely warm brownish oranges and cool bluish green,) Liu mirrors the yin & yang of Dragon’s mask in the colors, often bringing these colors together in the same panels to create unity out of disharmony. If the color combination was used only once or twice throughout the book, it would be jarring and pull the reader in opposing directions. Using them as Liu does, he creates these warm and cool zones on the page and often in the same image. By limiting his colors to these ranges and repeating them throughout the book, he creates a unity showing that all the different spaces Tiger moves through aren’t all that different from one another. Maybe it’s the perception of a child but between home, school, and the Walled City, the colors bind them all together as spaces for Tiger and the other boys.
As he creates these spaces, Liu then shapes these boys through their actions. Tiger, Rocky, and Dragon are all young boys, not even fully formed yet. That’s part of the masks— Tiger imagining himself as a superhero. But that’s also part of how the masks function— these are boys still developing their identities. We never see Tiger or Dragon without their masks and we only briefly see Rocky before he gets his. As Liu is nostalgic for this period of life, he’s also wondering who we are when we’re 7 or 10 and who we will be when we grow up. Rocky is this kid that Tiger meets in the bad part of town but the mask means he’s a lot like Tiger. These boys are different but they’re also the same.
So Dragon becomes a guide for Tiger but he also represents the mystery of Kowloon Walled City. Is Dragon’s story a happy or a tragic one? Is he a good boy or a bad boy? He’s certainly not what Tiger expected to find in the seedy part of town. In the time that the two boys spend together (a good majority of this book,) maybe the idea that Liu wants us to come away with is that there are no “bad” boys. Dragon and Tiger are just boys and even the other kids that they meet in and out of the walled city are just kids. It’s not until we start to see the adults that we see anyone who’s truly good and truly bad. And even there, Liu shows us shading. Tiger’s mother is mean and stern when she needs to be but loving and tender when all Tiger really needs is a hug.
There were days during childhood that were full of endless possibility and that’s the nostalgia that Liu is remembering here. **Cat Mask Boy** is the story of a simpler time, before every kid had a cellphone or a traveling sports team to keep them occupied. Back in those days, kids were on their own. It wasn’t neglectful or hurtful or anything like that; it’s just the way it was and Liu spends time in this book reflecting on what that means and what we did with the days. Maybe we all didn’t have to take detours into dark and crime-ridden cities but was there anything really stopping us from doing that? **Cat Mask Boy** reflects on the days when it seemed like anything was possible and we were completely open to those possibilities.
### Na na na na, hey hey, goodbye (to 2025)-- Comic Bookmarks for January 4, 2026
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/na-na-na-na-hey-hey-goodbye-to-2025-comic-bookmarks-for-january-4-2026/
Last updated: 2026-01-04T13:30:23.000Z
There's a lot of ways that 2025 wasn't the year that I wanted it to be and one of them is what we had up on the site this year. I'm still proud of it and reviewing the list below, I think there's a good range of comics covered but it's a thing of my hopes and aspirations for From Cover to Cover not being met by what actually gets accomplished. A large part of that is that there are personal things that happened in the second half of the year that took up a lot of my time and attention so I just didn't have the attention span to be reading or thinking about comics. And even as I type that, about half of my writing below was done during or after July.
So here's the 2025 that was over here at From Cover to Cover. I'm looking over this list with a mix of feelings as I'm trying to figure out what, if anything, this list of comics says about the year. It's a mixed list of books that weirdly I don't feel good about and maybe that says that 2025 wasn't a great year for comics, or at least the ones that I read. I look at [our favorites of 2024 ](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-favorite-comics-of-2024/#gsc.tab=0)and I don't know if I connected with any book this year the way that I did with Emma Rios' **Anzuelo** or Charles Burns' **Final Cut** or Ram V and Filipe Andrade's **Rare Flavours**. While there are some really good books in 2025, are there lasting ones?
If I had to pick a book from the list below for some coveted Book of the Year, I'd probably have to go with Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, Henry Flint, Jake Lynch, and Boo Cook's **Judge Dredd: A Better World**. After all, I called it "the perfect comic that we need in 2025" and I think that still holds up. But that probably says as much or more about 2025 as it does that comic.
## A Look Back at 2025- The Criticism
[Imaging Space and Silence in Oscar Zarate’s Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter“Oscar Zarate is telling a story about art and the ways that it’s a life choice by making these characters face several other choices that may or may not be related to art. But with every challenge faced, with every decision made, it always comes back to Art.“From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/oscar-zarate-thomas-girtin-the-forgotten-painter-review/)
[Taking the Plunge into Paul Chadwick’s Concrete: DepthThe story of a man whose brain has been put into an alien body is the stuff of B-level science fiction, the b/w movies that we used to be able to watch on Saturday afternoons. And there’s plenty of that in Concrete: Depth but it’s not the only type of story that Paul Chadwick wants to tell.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/paul-chadwick-concrete-depth-review/)
[“The music of the future needs a future to exist in.”— Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard’s The Power Fantasy Volume One: The SuperpowersThe question in The Power Fantasy isn’t if the world is going to end but how is it going to end?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/kieron-gillen-and-caspar-wijngaards-the-power-fantasy-volume-one-the-superpowers/)
[Ram V, Riccardo Federici, and Evan Cagle Build On Jack Kirby in The New Gods #3Ram V, Riccardo Federici, and Evan Cagle’s The New Gods #3 is another attempt to go back to Kirby, firmly planted in the original source, being true to it while pushing in new directions.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-new-gods-3-by-ram-v-riccardo-federici-and-evan-cagle/)
[Back in the Day, We Used To Be Punk — on Jaime Hernandez’s Life DrawingsIs this Love and Rockets: The Next Generation or the continuation of an ongoing story that started over 40 years ago?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jaime-hernandez-life-drawings/)
[It’s Time to Wake Up- Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 by Deniz Camp & Javier RodriguezDC’s Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 delivers a radical reimagining with Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez creating a mind-bending sensory experience that transcends traditional superhero storytelling.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-martian-manhunter-1-by-deniz-camp-javier-rodriguez/)
[Trying to Escape the Past in Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook‘s Out of AlcatrazIt’s the American dream told through the dream of freedom but struggling through the morals of its time.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/trying-to-escape-the-past-in-christopher-cantwell-and-tyler-crooks-out-of-alcatraz/)
[The Big Tease That Is Summer of Superman Special #1Sometimes, you just want to read a Superman comic. It’s a bit surprising how hard that is to do without getting pulled into all kinds of other drama.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-big-tease-that-is-summer-of-superman-special-1/)
[Living Outside of the Law in Inio Asano’s Mujina Into the Deep Volume 1The opening is action-packed, a thrill ride that gets us into Inio Asano’s book but it’s not the story that Asano is telling.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/inio-asanos-mujina-into-the-deep-volume-1-review/)
[Superheroes, Aliens, and Cartoons, Oh My!!! - a review of Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Chris Weston’s Paranoid GardensGerard Way and Shawn Simon doing their obscure Vertigo book, just for Dark Horse. So who better to get to draw than Chris Weston?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-of-gerard-way-shaun-simon-and-chris-westons-paranoid-gardens/)
[More Than Just Another Crisis— a look at Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki’s Assorted Crisis Events #3This comic is not apologetic about being a bit preachy.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-than-just-another-crisis-a-look-at-deniz-camp-and-eric-zawadzkis-assorted-crisis-events-3/)
[The Tease and the Promise of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun: Road to the Six #0Sometimes a tease is all you need.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-cullen-bunn-and-brian-hurtts-the-sixth-gun-road-to-the-six-0/)
[Gerard Way & Gabriel Bá Expand the Family Tree in The Umbrella Academy: Plan B #1The Umbrella Academy has been a family story from the start, using the language of superheroes to explore family dynamics.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gerard-way-gabriel-ba-the-umbrella-academy-plan-b-1-review/)
[Review: I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together by Maurice VellekoopThis forms the space for Vellekoop to dig into these different relationships in his life, some of which are deep-rooted while others are fleeting connections that are more building blocks for Maurice to learn about himself.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-im-so-glad-we-had-this-time-together-by-maurice-vellekoop/)
[Review— Kevin Smith Presents: Archie Meets Jay & Silent BobWhy does this comic exist?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-kevin-smith-presents-archie-meets-jay-silent-bob/)
[We Don’t Need No Education- A Look at Judge Dredd: A Better WorldThe perfect comic that we need in 2025.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-judge-dredd-a-better-world-by-rob-williams-arthur-wyatt-henry-flint-jake-lynch-and-boo-cook/)
[The Kids Aren’t Alright-- Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s Absolute Batman Volume One: The ZooNick Dragotta jumps between the child-like innocence of childhood to the darkness of modern existence where it seems like nothing means anything anymore.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-scott-snyder-and-nick-dragottas-absolute-batman-volume-one-the-zoo/)
[Loving the Grid in Giovanna Fabi’s Perfect Love (mini kuš! #133)Giovanna Fabi uses her artwork to evoke so many feelings out of the reader.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/giovanna-fabi-perfect-love-mini-kus-133/)
[The Kids Aren’t Alright Part 2-- Jason Aaron & Rafa Sandoval’s Absolute Superman: Last Dust of KryptonSo what does the story of an alien boy, saved from a dying world by his parents and sent to Earth, look like in 2025 when “alien” is an extremely loaded and fraught word?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-kids-arent-alright-part-2-jason-aaron-rafa-sandovals-absolute-superman-last-dust-of-krypton/)
[Off to College in Caroline Cash’s Adventure Time Alternate Universe StorySo if we know that the story is a meet-cute story, that allows Cash to focus on how we move through this story.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/adventure-time-the-bubbline-college-special-caroline-cash/)
[The Rebellious Comics in Jason’s Death In TriesteJason doesn’t give you any more than he has to and that’s often less than you think you need.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-rebellious-comics-in-jasons-death-in-trieste/)
[Die Loaded #1 by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans— The Bones Continue to RollKieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans remind us that some stories just don’t end.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/die-loaded-1-by-kieron-gillen-and-stephanie-hans-the-bones-continue-to-roll/)
[Charles Soule and Steve McNiven Explore Ghosts in Daredevil: Cold Day in HellFrank Miller casts a long shadow over this story and Charles Soule and Steve McNiven know it.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/charles-soule-and-steve-mcniven-daredevil-cold-day-in-hell/)
[The Life and Times of Ricky Lawless— Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips Giant Size Criminal #1Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip explore the tragedy of living under the sins of our fathers.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/ed-brubaker-sean-phillips-giant-size-criminal-1-review/)
## A Look Forward to 2026
So I've got plans for 2026, the beginnings of a schedule that would nearly double the output of reviews and essays compared to 2025\. But even saying that feels like showing my cards a bit too much just in terms of not knowing how 2026 could blow up any plans. In November, we'll be celebrating the 5th anniversary of the site. And by "celebrating," I more mean that we'll be hitting the 5 year mark of this site being up and running. I hope that this year is the year that this site can become something like I imagine it could be.
### Is There Life on Mars? — a look at Paul Pope’s Total THB Volume One
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/total-thb-volume-one-review-paul-pope/
Last updated: 2026-01-01T14:00:19.000Z
[Paul Pope’s](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/404/) comics usually have one foot in reality and one foot firmly in his imagination. His science fiction explores the possibilities of the future, and it all started with **THB**. Maybe someday we’ll live on Mars with other aliens. Perhaps someday we’ll have robotic butlers and friends. Maybe someday in the future, a schoolgirl will find herself on the run from her father’s enemies. Pope imagines this dreamt-of someday and uses that to ground his wild stories.
By building a futuristic Mars that owes more than a bit of its character to Victorian times, HR Watson is the perfect person to guide us through this world. She’s a young native of this Mars having grown up on it but still young enough not to know everything about it. So as she gets pulled into her father’s social/political intrigue, Pope shows her discovering parts of this world that she never dreamt of. HR likes to imagine herself as cosmopolitan and worldly but it’s in that way that we all do before we grow up and realize that we don’t really understand the world at all. For her and her best friend Lollie, the future is all about the potential for their lives.
At the beginning of **THB**, there’s actually nothing too special about HR. She’s a schoolgirl, maybe a bit brighter than everyone else but that’s about it. Her father is a successful businessman, maybe too powerful for the powers-that-be on Mars. And when her father’s business takes him to a remote part of the planet, he makes sure that HR is well cared for. She may look like an ordinary teenage girl but that doesn’t mean that her world is ordinary. In the opening pages of the book, we’re introduced to (or lectured by) Doctor Yokimoto and THB, a mysterious rubbery material that he created and that we’ll soon see how it’s “ideally suited for a number of practical applications.” Yukimoto’s use of the word “practical” to describe THB should tell you all you need to know about the man. You see, when this small, rubbery ball of THB comes into contact with water, it expands into a 9’ genie-like bodyguard, takes to protect HR. She may not completely understand the world but her father does and he knows that his daughter will need all the protection he can give her. And after he leaves her, THB does his job quite well.
Pope’s inky artwork makes it sometimes difficult to separate the mundane from the wondrous in this story. That helps sink us into this old, alien world that’s anything but old or alien to HR. This is the world she knows so Pope makes it feel inhabited and lived in. But it’s also able to have these moments of wonder, of robotic manservants, alien pop stars, and incredible technology like THB. Even 30 years after it originally came out, Pope’s artwork is full of surprises as it tries to maintain a fairly conservative aesthetic. There’s an effort in these pages to protect HR not just from the threats around her but from growing up and losing just a bit of her innocence. Each page is its own frontier, full of possibilities. You can see how the story dictates the flow of the page as Pope explores this imaginative Mars and the people (human, indigenous, and artificial,) who live there.
The magic of **Total THB Volume 1** is the balance that Pope finds between the action and this being a coming-of-age story. HR thinks she’s worldly but there’s obviously so much about this world that she doesn’t know. Pope is working on a comic book genre that wasn’t really around back when he was originally doing this comic; it’s a young adult science fiction story. While there’s all of this fantastic stuff going on around her (and we haven’t even talked about how at one point a grand piano becomes alive and starts rampaging through the Watson home,) HR takes it all in with the bravado of someone who doesn’t really know how dangerous all of this is. We do and that raises the stakes of the book. HR may not know the danger that she is in but Pope doesn’t shield us from that understanding. Even if this is stuff we haven’t seen before, Pope makes the danger palpable.
### The Life and Times of Ricky Lawless— Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips Giant Size Criminal #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/ed-brubaker-sean-phillips-giant-size-criminal-1-review/
Last updated: 2025-12-05T22:03:44.000Z
**Giant Size Criminal #1* by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips (Image Comics, 2025)*
So **Criminal #1** (or **Giant Size Criminal #1** as I guess it’s officially titled even if the cover leaves off “Giant Size”) exists because it wants you to know that there’s an Amazon series based on it coming out soon. “Coming soon to a streaming platform near you!!” the back cover declares in a very non-descriptive way. Looking through the book there are a lot of references to the upcoming television show but I don’t know if it ever identifies which streaming service, which seems odd. It’s almost as if [Ed Brubaker ](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/ed-brubaker/)and [Sean Phillips](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/sean-phillips/) are ashamed to be taking Amazon’s money, as if that’s any better or worse than Apple or Netflix. Actually, it’s Jeff Bezos’ money so it’s certainly worse. But let’s take out the whole “selling out to the man” element here and just focus on the real work of these two creators— the comic book.
Over the past 20 years, we’ve witnessed the tragedy of Ricky Lawless, his father Teeg, and his older brother Tracy. The story of these three men forms the backbone of the *Criminal* story. At least two of these men would have wanted Bezos’ money, thinking it would have made their lives better. Maybe Tracy was the smart one or the moral one or just smart enough to realize that nothing he could do would make him worthy of a good life. **Criminal #1** is Ricky’s story but it’s important to ground him in relationship to his family as he takes on a job to rob a three-time world poker champ to pay off his own debts. It’s supposed to be easy money— all Ricky has to do is wait in a luxury hotel room for the poker champ to show up and then he can pull off the job.
“High Roller” is maybe the story that most clearly shows us just who Ricky Lawless is. He’s been the focus of other stories like *Cruel Summer* before but that story shows a teen Ricky reacting to his father’s world. “High Roller” shows Ricky at his prime, a man doing a job to get out of some other trouble. And that’s really the Lawless modus operandi— anything they’re doing is reacting to the world around them rather than them taking charge of their situation. Brubaker and Phillips use this story to show us how Ricky is his father’s son. There’s one nice and touching flashback to Ricky’s best memory of his father and then reality set in for Ricky as everything on this easy job falls apart.
In this short story, Brubaker shows us the best and worst of Ricky Lawless. More than any other character in this series (Angie in [My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies](https://www.panelpatter.com/2018/11/my-heroes-have-always-been-junkies-brubaker-phillips.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and *The Knives* being the exception here,) Ricky is the child of this world without law. And it’s not just a legal law but a moral law— where does right and wrong come in when trying to get through the day is all about survival? And this story is just about trying to get through one day, trying to survive the night to take on the world again tomorrow. That’s what Ricky’s life is and this story boils that struggle down into less than 40 pages. It’s the tragedy of Ricky Lawless writ large in a short story.
When you have Sean Phillips on the art and [Jacob Phillips](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/jacob-phillips/) coloring the comic, you can tell that kind of epic story by just showing a guy sitting around a plush casino hotel room, listening to an Agatha Christie mystery on his iPod, and getting high on a much stronger drug than he thought he was getting high on. This story doesn’t go to the emotional and fraught heights of other *Criminal* stories but it gets right to the heart of it because Sean Phillips' artistic storytelling is about the characters far more than it is about the action (and he’s a great action artist.) In the art, we empathize with this kid who doesn’t have anything more than the job in front of him. This is the only thing that Ricky knows; it’s his life and in that way, it’s no different from yours or mine.
This story is just a day and a night in the life of Ricky Lawless. In itself, it’s not some epic exploration of who he is and why he does the things that he does. And yet Brubaker and Phillips get all of that in there. This may be the purest story we’ve gotten about Ricky (and that’s a weird thing to call it— “pure”.) “High Rollers” shows him at his most natural and most vulnerable that way. It’s relatively low stakes so it shows us this kid who grew up not knowing the possibilities that there are other types of a life to live other than the one he knows.
There is this purity to Ricky’s story that’s contained in this package that’s kind of aimed at people who may want to check out *Criminal* before the television show on a nameless streaming service begins. By telling Ricky’s story this way, are Brubaker and Phillips trying to hold onto the purity of their little comic book? There’s a chance that *Criminal* could blow up and become something much bigger than it is now. It’s equally possible that it will just get lost amid so much other steaming flotsam and jetsam. It’s been 20 years since the first *Criminal* story “Coward” but **Giant Size Criminal #1** shows us that there’s still a lot of life and mystery to tell the story of in these comic books.
### Charles Soule and Steve McNiven Explore Ghosts in Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/charles-soule-and-steve-mcniven-daredevil-cold-day-in-hell/
Last updated: 2026-01-30T12:49:34.000Z
**Daredevil: Cold Day In Hell #1-3* by Charles Soule, Steve McNiven, Dean White, & Clayton Cowles (Marvel Comics, 2025)*
Matt Murdock, the superhero known as Daredevil, has always been a haunted character. Going all the way back to 1964’s *Daredevil #1*, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Bill Everett, the inciting act that leads to Murdock becoming a superhero isn’t the chemical spill that blinded him and gave him superpowers. It’s years later and the murder of his father, a boxer, was killed after he didn’t throw a fixed fight. That first issue establishes that Murdock’s driving motivation is making up for the death of a loved one. And then the deaths would just keep on coming over the years and decades of stories—Elektra, Karen Page, Heather Glenn. These deaths are part of the mythology and the guilt that continues to drive Murdock today. But more than any of those past loves and family, there is one ghost which haunts Daredevil and all of the writers and artists telling his tale more than any other— Frank Miller. Since Miller’s first run on the character in the early 1980s, nearly every story every creator since then has had to live in the shadow of Miller and his classic stories. Some try to dig deep into recreating the Miller atmosphere and others try to run away from it as quickly as they can. But whether it’s Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Mark Waid, or Saladin Ahmed, Frank Miller casts a long shadow over the stories they told. In **Daredevil: Cold Day In Hell**, writer Charles Soule and artist Steve McNiven embrace Frank Miller’s hold on the character in intriguing ways, including engaging in another Miller classic story, *The Dark Knight Returns.*
As the story opens, Matt Murdock is no longer a superhero or a lawyer. He’s an old man running a soup kitchen, his powers long ago faded. Of all the roles he’s tried to assume over the years, this seems the most appropriate for the character— his Catholic guilt finally leading him to serve people in a simple yet vital way. Returning to a war-ravaged Manhattan after visiting an old acquaintance’s grave on Staten Island, Murdock reflects on his life and how it has been “all part of God’s plan.” At least, that’s what he tries to convince himself. “Priests love it. They tell it to their parishioners when something terrible happens, as a way of framing bad things in a good way” he muses. “Framing bad things in a good way” is practically the story of Daredevil. After a subway explosion triggers the reactivation of his heightened senses that made him Daredevil, Murdock finds himself embracing his old superhero ways to protect a young girl who is the hunted by an old adversary, Bullseye.
It is not hyperbole to say that Soule and McNiven want to do *The Dark Knight Returns* for Daredevil, aping everything from the aged-out hero to Miller’s 16-panel page. And honestly, they do a decent job of it. Even if **Cold Day In Hell** lacks the visceral punch of *DKR*, there are enough creative flourishes to engage with, particularly in McNiven’s art. Thanks to his thin lines and the painterly coloring by McNiven and Dean White, these comics most closely resemble Miller and Lynn Varley’s underrated [*Elektra Lives Again*](https://www.popoptiq.com/elektra-lives-again-frank-miller-lynn-varley/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)more than they do other, more iconic Miller artwork*.* McNiven and White convey so much of the story like the cold atmosphere or the age of the characters. It’s more than just drawing a few lines to signify wrinkles— it’s Murdock’s stitched-together costume, making it look like he could just unravel completely at any time. That barely-holding-it-together physical appearance sharply contrasts with the images of Daredevil acrobatically bouncing around the Manhattan skyline. In McNiven’s images, we get the thrill of a hero having his one last hurrah contrasted against the frailty of his physical frame. McNiven conveys that it is just a matter of time until his body will come apart and fail him.
McNiven is leaning a lot into Miller’s visual language without ever going so far into obvious fannishness that it becomes distracting. It enhances the story as it grounds the story in a sense of history. That history is just another of the many ghosts found in these pages but the more subtle ghost of the story. McNiven’s Daredevil isn’t the sleek fighter or handsome, devil-may-care swashbuckler he often is. This isn’t even *DKR*’s Bruce Wayne, whose physical stature is still large, solid, and intimidating. **Cold Day In Hell** goes in the opposite direction, embracing the characters’ age and the years that have passed. Murdock and Bullseye are old men and look like it. The Punisher, a tertiary character in the story, is clearly a victim of the years and wars that he’s fought, well beyond his prime as his anger has only grown over time. McNiven doesn’t even try to pretend that these characters can possess a fraction of the vitality they once possessed as they suit up for one last hurrah. In fact, the only character who appears as vital as ever is Elektra, a brief but fascinating mystery that has us wondering what her story is.
And yet, the story rarely stays with any of these ghosts long enough for them to have any real impact. Images and memories of Murdock’s past life float in and out of this story offering Daredevil’s greatest hits without leaving any truly lasting impressions. They’re present to say “hey, here’s Elektra and there’s Foggy Nelson. You remember them, don’t you?” They’re signposts of old stories and wounds for Murdock but don’t alter the future with their appearances. Captain America and Daredevil aren’t characters who have a strong connection but in *Daredevil: Born Again*, Frank Miller had Murdock describe Captain America in a way that will forever bond the characters. In *Daredevil #233* (July, 1986 ) when Daredevil describes Captain America as, “A soldier with a voice that could command a god and does,” Miller created this great link between the character; this description could only come from someone whose main experience with Captain America was an aural one and not a visual one. A blind man is not going to describe what Captain America looks like.
So it makes sense that Soule and McNiven use Captain America to set a repowered Matt Murdock on his path to rescue someone. Captain America wasn’t commanding a god but he was commanding Daredevil to take up the fight once again. But the moment is so thin that it seems wasted— it’s just a cameo, creating some ties to a larger Marvel world, but nothing more than that. And this story is full of so many moments like this— these callbacks to older Daredevil stories that could create real meaningful echoes in this story but instead are just thin, inconsequential ghosts of meaning. They are empty Easter Eggs of past stories, having meaning only in the past that they reflect rather than adding anything meaningful to this comic or to Murdock’s journey. Captain America, Foggy Nelson, Elektra, and the Punisher show up as a lot of noise in the story but miss the way that Miller used them to challenge or support Murdock. In **Cold Day in Hell**, they are important only as they represent the past but they add nothing to the story; it could have been told without any of these ghosts showing up and would not have missed any beats.
What this ends up really being once you strip out all of the unneeded fluff is the final confrontation between Daredevil and Bullseye and that’s where this gets interesting. You have the Catholic trying to reconcile everything happening in the world as being “part of God’s plan” with a madman. “… we’ve lost what made us powerful,” Bullseye broadcasts to the city as he’s about to unleash his final weapon. “We’ve forgotten how to dance. The wonder of seeing someone try to destroy everything for reasons we can’t understand. The stakes so high you can’t even breathe… We’ve forgotten.” He’s talking to all of NYC but he may as well be talking only to Matt Murdock. Here we have a hero who has found something akin to contentment after his superhero life and a villain who just wants to blow up the world to feel something again. Bullseye wants his old playmate back.
Here’s where Soule and McNiven’s story feels vibrant— when it gives room for these two characters to exist in opposition to each other. It’s a story about a man who just wants to move on with his life versus a man who wants to recreate the past. So maybe Bullseye is just another ghost of Daredevil’s but one who has more of a pull on him than these others do. There’s just not enough room in this story given to that idea to make it anything more than a possible suggestion of this conflict Frank Miller used the 16-panel page in *Dark Knight Returns* to cram as much text and subtext into those four issues. Soule and McNiven just never use the format to stuff as much story into every page and Miller did. **Daredevil: Cold Day In Hell** feels so light and airy compared to *DKR*.
### Die Loaded #1 by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans— The Bones Continue to Roll
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/die-loaded-1-by-kieron-gillen-and-stephanie-hans-the-bones-continue-to-roll/
Last updated: 2025-11-12T02:32:22.000Z
**Die Loaded #1** by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, Clayton Cowls, Rian Hughes, & Katie West (Image Comics, 2025)
The first time around with *Die*, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans built in a back door to a sequel. The story of a group of childhood friends who are sucked into a fantasy role-playing world explores everything from story to identity, not just once but twice in their lives. It ended in 2021 with the group returning to a world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. With *Die*, Gillen wrote a story that was equal parts fantasy novel and role-playing session while Hans sucked us into the world through artwork that belonged right next to any D&D guidebook cover. **Die Loaded #1** picks up shortly after *Die* ended, with the group re-adjusting to life as they gather to mourn one of their own who didn’t return from the fantasy world.
This issue leads us into the next campaign, pulling a bit of a bait-and-switch along the way. The first half of the issue could serve as an epilogue to the first series, as a few friends gather at a funeral for the one who didn’t make it back, revealing what they learned or the mistakes they’re willing to make again, leading up to everything happening yet again. But that’s where Gillen and Hans zig when it looks like they were zagging as they pull two newish characters into the fantasy world, minor characters from the first half of the issue whose story **Die Reloaded** seems to really be about. Both characters share interesting backstory similarities from the first series— they were the family left behind when the other disappeared in 2018\. When Ash, Angela, Chuck, Matt, and Izzy were pulled back into the fantasy world in *Die #1*, they left family behind, loved ones who were left to put their lives back together as husbands and mothers disappeared without a trace.
As Gillen and Hans pull us back into this story, it feels both familiar and unknown, a neat trick for a sequel/continuation of a story that’s lingered out there since it ended. There were elements from the first series that were left unanswered that Gillen and Hans didn’t need to return to. Those unanswered questions were part of the characters’ journey in *Die*, mysteries from an unseen dungeon master to prod these men and women in certain directions and to make certain decisions. This issue reminds us of those mysteries and makes us consider the consequences of the decisions made regarding them. **Die Loaded** looks to be about those left behind, who didn’t have choices to make about what happened to them then. They didn’t understand what happened to their husbands or mothers. Even now when they gather for a funeral, those who didn’t experience the fantasy world don’t know what their loved ones did to survive and make it home.
**Die Loaded #1** brings all of the uncertainty in the world rushing back to us. Seeing the characters from the first series, you can’t help but look at this brief glimpse back into their world without remembering all the betrayals, conflicts, and neglect they experienced and inflicted on each other. These were people barely hanging onto their sanity as they were pulled into the world of a game. And here we are back in that world, placed there firmly by Hans’ painted artwork that evokes every cheap (but great) fantasy novel you got lost in during your teen years. There’s no mistaking this as a feel-good comic as Gillen and Hans seem invested in making us recall our darkest days as we see these characters about to face theirs.
And one of the mistakes this series seems set to remind us about is one of the tragic characters of the first series, a character who was already dead when we first encountered them. (And not in the good, romantic already-dead sense but in the horrific walking dead kind of way.) This character’s presence in the first series was one of those unanswered mysteries, the back door entrance into this sequel that offers up little hope for what this series is going to be. There’s a story to be told here but there’s no hope for a happy ending. It’s hard not to think that you know what this story is going to be if you’ve read the first series but maybe that’s where there’s room for something to happen and maybe that’s the story of *Die* and **Die Loaded** —just because it happened once (or maybe even twice,) it doesn’t need to happen again. And that’s why we keep reading.
### The Rebellious Comics in Jason's Death In Trieste
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-rebellious-comics-in-jasons-death-in-trieste/
Last updated: 2025-10-31T04:45:29.000Z
**Death in Trieste* by Jason (Fantagraphics Books, 2025)*
How do you describe a Jason comic book? Do you start with the anthropomorphized characters? The thin lines between history and fiction? The non-interest in easy storytelling? Those are all on display in Jason’s **Death In Trieste-**, his new trio of loosely-connected short stories. While it seems easy to boil his work down to simple descriptions that frees you to offhandedly quantify and classify his work as something “Jasonesque”, that’s also an abdication of engaging with Jason in any meaningful way. You can write it off as just another Jason book and you probably have an idea of why that means and whether or not that works for you.
From **The Magritte Affair*
Personally, it works for me. I like the distinctive quirkiness of a Jason book. It’s kind of like a Wes Anderson movie—you know going into it what it will be like. Jason has delighted me, entertained me, and puzzled me but in many ways, it’s the cartoonist who has left an impression on me far more than the work has. Maybe it is the quirkiness of his particular mode of storytelling that makes it easy to read, enjoy in the moment, and move on. That’s not to say there’s nothing to his stories but it’s often hidden behind a stylistic veneer that really drives how you engage with the storytelling far more than with the stories themselves.
The book opens up with “The Magritte Affair,” a story of two detectives on a case involving “René Magritte-related nervous breakdown(s).” It’s an intriguing introduction to this trio of stories, establishing art as essential (or maybe fundamental) to life. Magritte becomes some kind of virus in this story; a Magritte painting leads to people dressing like the painter as they commit crimes. The detectives operate on a Steed & Peel kind of partnership, playing off one another as they both bring different qualities to their partnership.
From **Death in Trieste*
The middle piece, the titular “Death In Trieste” takes place between the two world wars, as Dadaism informs so much of these characters and situations. Jason explores this liminal time of peace where the world is not fully healed from the First World War and not yet prepared for a second one. A time-travelling David Bowie finds himself in a relationship with Marlene Dietrich while a trio of performance Dadaist artists try to find exactly what their act is and Nosferatu haunts the nighttime rooftops of the city. It reads as stream-of-conscious storytelling, Jason following whatever threads interest him on the page.
In “Sweet Dreams,” the final story, Jason tells the story of New Age musicians trying to save the world. Like “Death in Trieste” this is Jason working without a net as the story feels even more fragmented and disconnected than either of the prior stories in this book. David Bowie appears here again, tying into “Death in Trieste” but the story reads very episodic as groups like The Eurythmics, Ultra Vox, and U2 each have their own quick adventures at the end of the world as Bowie launches into space to destroy an asteroid that’s mysteriously on a collision course with the planet. There’s even a little bit of Mike Mignola-type monsters in this story.
In each of these stories, we see art in the place of politics, of civil servants, and of any other kind of worldview. Art is the oxygen we breathe Jason seems to be saying. Jason and his anthropomorphic characters live in this world where art is everything and it seems like a better world, or maybe just a more palatable one, even as it faces impending horrors. Just knowing that Bowie or Annie Lennox is out there fighting for us makes the world seem a bit better.
From **Sweet Dreams*
But there’s this nagging question that comes up after you read these stories— what is Jason doing here? These stories are full of characters but they’re not really stories about the characters. It’s hard to find any kind of character growth to latch onto. There are ways that Jason’s stories feel more like just a series of occurrences with little to tie them together. Plot point A leads to point B and point C follows but there’s not a lot in between them. It’s like Jason is interested only in the plot and leaves the gutter space to us to fill in any story we want. Why is Bowie in pre-WW2 Berlin? What’s the connection between 3 Dadaist artists and visions of future Nazi horrors? How did the Eurythmics become secret agents? These are the kind of things other cartoonists would explore to fill out the story, to define character, and to build their worlds.
Instead, Jason is all about the visual storytelling here. The design of his worlds tells us so much of who and what these characters are. Where others would fill the space with dialogue and exposition, Jason strips almost all of that out of his work to tell the stories through the panels on the page, through the images in those panels. What’s in those drawings is what’s important and everything else would just be needless fluff. So the stories feel puzzling even though everything is there but it’s just not as much as we’re used to in western storytelling. It’s very traditional but stripped back to the bare structure.
That’s the puzzling nature of Jason stories— he doesn’t give you any more than he has to and that’s often less than you think you need. The trio of stories in **Death in Trieste** are pure Jason, stripped of anything that gets in the way of him just telling these stories of art, history, and the dread of the end of the world. These aren’t stories to read because you want to read about characters and their feelings; they’re stories that you read because you have the same need to read them that Jason has to draw them— that almost primal need to be living in the world of art and pure story.
### Off to College in Caroline Cash's Adventure Time Alternate Universe Story
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/adventure-time-the-bubbline-college-special-caroline-cash/
Last updated: 2025-10-08T11:45:55.000Z
**Adventure Time: The Bubbline College Special** by Caroline Cash (Oni Press, 2025)
Maybe it’s weird to say but we just don’t get enough nice, small, intimate stories. Or perhaps it’s just that we’re not reading the right books. Caroline Cash lets us get lost in **Adventure Time: The Bubbline College Special**. This story is an alternate universe story to an established property but don’t let that scare you off— you don’t need to really know anything about *Adventure Time* to be able to be enthralled by Cash’s story about stepping outside of the world you know (i.e. in this case heading off to college) to discover that the world is a bit bigger and more special than you thought it was. Cash pushes us to identify with these characters while we learn that there’s more to our lives than what we’ve been brought up to believe about them.
Getting dropped off at college for the first time, Princess Bubbline tries to be the perfect student. Cash does a great job in the first few pages of showing us who Bubbline is as she has to deal with being dropped off by a parental figure (in this case, a butler who’s a bow-tie wearing peppermint (remember, this is still *Adventure Time*,) dealing with an inconsiderate new roommate who uses Bubbline’s toothbrush to clean their room, and Marceline, the “bad girl” who gets set up to be the adversary for our sweet Bubbline. Cash never has Bubbline come out and just tell us what Bubbline is feeling when dealing with these people; Cash wonderfully uses a few marks to draw Bubbline’s reactions to them. She expresses joy, frustration, resignation, and joy in her cartooning so it’s easy to get lost in this story without feeling like Cash is having to pull us into it.
It’s easy to get lost in this tale of discovery because Cash makes it so much fun to get swept up into it. Even her letting is fun and bouncy. So as we get to know Bubbline and Marceline (it’s really their story with plenty of other *Adventure Time* characters showing up in supporting roles) and even see a relationship develop. There’s nothing necessarily groundbreaking here— it’s basically a meet-cute story where the two appear to despise each other because of their differences. So you know where it’s going fairly early. So if we know what the story is, that allows Cash to focus on how we get move this story.
If you’ve read Cash’s *Pee Pee Poo Poo*, this is basically a story out of her one-person anthology but just with some of the rawness and cynicism smoothed out. That doesn’t mean it’s a watered-down Cash story as she still tells the story of a young woman navigating the world. Cash gets to be sweet, innocent, defiant, queer, and celebratory in this story. It’s not too hard to see that the cartoonist who does *Pee Pee Poo Poo* is very much still present here, able to tell an alternate universe story (don’t call it fanfic) that it feels only she could do. This may be an *Adventure Time* story but it’s very much a Caroline Cash story as well.
Every now and then, you just need a nice and sweet story to help you get through everything else.
### The Kids Aren't Alright Part 2-- Jason Aaron & Rafa Sandoval's Absolute Superman: Last Dust of Krypton
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-kids-arent-alright-part-2-jason-aaron-rafa-sandovals-absolute-superman-last-dust-of-krypton/
Last updated: 2025-09-23T13:18:04.000Z
**Absolute Superman: The Last Dust of Krypton* by Jason Aaron, Rafa Sandoval, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Ulises Arreola, and Becca Carey (DC Comics)*
So right now in the Chicagoland area, we’ve got I.C.E. agents seemingly everywhere. There is a facility just outside of the city where the windows and doors are boarded up, people have been taken in and out of it, citizens have held protests in front of it, and agents have shot tear gas into the streets. Many days there have been reports of masked agents on the streets, pulling people from their roofing jobs and taking them who knows where (some to that western suburban facility, others—???). Who knows where these agents come from but messages are being sent that they’re not welcomed here; they’re not part of our community but they are actively disappearing people who are. This is the people in power asserting their political will and force by trampling over things like rights and human dignity that have been part of the American experiment since the start of it.
Reading Jason Aaron, Rafa Sandoval, and Ulises Arreola’s **Absolute Superman: Last Dust of Krypton**, it’s hard not to see these I.C.E. agents in the fictional Lazarus Corp’s Peacekeepers, the shiny-helmeted corporatized military force hunting down the alien “Superman” across South America. These Peacekeepers are on a mission to find this boy (to them, he’s just “the target”), and they’ll go through anyone to get to him. They nearly destroy a Brazilian favela to get to him. And what crime has this person committed? He’s done the dangerous work that Lazarus practically enslaves the favela’s residents to do. He’s travelled the world, helping the people who need to be helped. And that’s made him an enemy of Lazarus Corp. He stands in their way of more power and control so he needs to be taken care of.
This “Superman” has a name and it’s Kal-El, the name his now-dead parents gave him. They were scientists on a faraway doomed planet that, like Earth, was controlled by the powerful who reigned over everyone else. And when Jor-El, Kal’s father, tried to warn them that their planet was hurtling toward destruction, rather than listen to Jor-El, they imprisoned him. He spoke truths they didn’t want to listen to or acknowledge. In this new series, Aaron and Sandoval have a template to start with, the work of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Nearly 90 years ago, Siegel and Shuster saw their world and created a superhero— THE superhero— who could save everyone and everything. Their Superman knew the tragedy of a dead world but was raised with small-town Kansan ideals to know that he had to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. That was a story that was needed as the world braced itself for a second World War.
Maybe **Absolute Superman** puts us in an “everything old is new again” mindset. In 2025, it feels like daily we’re struggling against the rise of fascist regimes. That must have been how it felt in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Only this time, it almost feels like we’re already trapped behind enemy lines. ”I have seen the enemy and he is us” as Walt Kelly and Pogo told us in 1971\. Truer words were never spoken by an opossum and as we look at the Peacekeepers, including one of their analysts Lois Lane, Aaron and Sandoval hold up a reflection of those I.C.E. agents in the Chicago suburbs and elsewhere, rounding up both undocumented and documented citizens without regard to anything resembling the way things should be done.
**Absolute Superman** is the new stranger in a strange land story, the tale of an exiled farm boy with no hope of ever returning to his home or to the parents who raised him. Instead of having a home, Kal-El has a cause— to protect the workers of his adopted planet from the rulers. And it’s more than just protecting the working class, it’s fighting for them. This image of the “Superman,” as he’s called by those who view him as a hero as well as those who think he is an enemy (but more importantly, not by himself,) shows someone you can place your hope in. That hopeful optimism should be central to the superhero mythology but Jason Arron and Rafa Sandoval shift it from being about “Truth, justice, and the American way” into something more relevant. This “Superman” is a reaction to the world of 2025 the same way Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster used their Superman to react to the world of 1938.
Sandoval and colorist Ulises Arreola are drawing images about rising against those corporations that run our world. Take out the superheroes and the corporate thugs, and **Absolute Superman** is full of normal people suffering under oppression on both Krypton and Earth. As above, so below it seems. On Krypton and on Earth, they draw the faces of the oppressed, showing the weight of their daily struggles on them. Kal-El is drawn as innocent as he he powerful— he’s everything people are fighting for even as he’s the one who can fight for us. Of all the Absolute books (i.e. compared to Nick Dragotta, Hayden Sherman, or Javier Rodriguez,) Sandoval and Arreola are producing some of the most traditional-looking mainstream work but are engaging with their story to produce something that feels grounded in some version of reality. And Carmine Di Giandominico, who draws a chapter focused on the Kents of Smallville, Kansas, does some strong work in focusing on the confusion and anger that this boy experiences.
Somehow we have a corporate comic telling us that corporations suck, as if we needed that message. In the grand scheme of DC’s corporate overlords, this may just be a small line item on some Profit & Loss statement somewhere but that’s how these things start— small. **Absolute Superman: Last Dust of Krypton** doesn’t feel like a big, bold statement like some of the other Absolute books have; it’s not flashy or showy like others. So maybe it’s avoided some of the fanfare and hyperbole that the other books have gotten. But as Siegel and Shuster’s idea of Superman has been deconstructed, examined, and put back together over the decades, Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval feel like they’re working in the same creative space as Siegel and Shuster without getting so beholden to it that they can’t reimagine it as anything other than an outdated Golden/Silver Age homage to the idea of Superman. This is a mainstream comic that’s engaging and questioning the world we are now experiencing in 2025 and that actually feels a little dangerous.
### Loving the Grid in Giovanna Fabi’s Perfect Love (mini kuš! #133)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/giovanna-fabi-perfect-love-mini-kus-133/
Last updated: 2025-09-05T04:40:23.000Z
**Perfect Love (mini kuš! #133)** by Giovanna Fabi (kuš!)
In her comic **Perfect Love**, Giovanna Fabi poses a fascinating challenge to her readers right away— look beyond the image. Her artwork is built over grids— not the usual grids (i.e., panel layouts) that we usually talk about in comic circles but grids like the graph paper you used in school to chart out mathematical equations. She draws her panels in the grids, layered beneath (or maybe over) her already geometrically-influenced figures. In a lot of her images, the grids provide a foundation for her drawings; she’s not a slave to the grids but you can see how lines and shapes roughly snap to them. The grids are structural but they are also narrative, creating a distancing between the story and the reader that mirrors the character’s own relation to what’s happening to her.
On one level, Fabi uses the grids to create patterns for her backgrounds that infuse a buzz, an energy, to her image. Having these 1x1 squares juxtaposed over every image is kind of exciting because there’s this repetition that’s happening on every page, a rhythm to each panel and page that pulls you in. And like the best rhythms, her artwork becomes even more special when she pulls away from the grids, almost defying the order that the grid is trying to impose on her. For large parts of this mini comic, she’s working in concert with the grid— she creates patterns and boundaries in the story with the grids but her characters, two lovers, are ever so slightly out of synch with the grid work. Their edges don’t quite match with the grid work— it’s close but they’re still organic and don’t fall completely within the confines of the grid.
The story is about this woman and her lover, enjoying a physical connection with each other. The sensuality of the book becomes this thing that pulls these two together even as forces in the story try to keep them apart. It’s a surreal story about love, dreams, and touch. These are all the ways that these two interact and when they’re apart, you feel the absence of the other. Fabi moves around the spaces of these connections and the void produced when one of them goes away. Her artwork is very simple and open; it’s easy to put yourself into the position of both the woman and the man, experiencing this story through the masks of Fabi’s drawings.
Those are the things that the grid amplifies. When the characters are together, the lines of the grid connect and bind these two together, creating this gravitational force that exists just for these two. The repetition of the grids laid over the lovers suggests this shared air that they’re breathing. It’s part of the intimacy of the art. And then when it’s only one of them in the image, the grid just highlights the isolation that they’re feeling. It becomes so noticeable that one of them is missing as the grids become so much more dominant.
Functioning on many levels, the grid also suggests that there’s something else happening here, that this story isn’t quite what it seems to be. It creates a veil over the narrative that dares you to look beyond it. The grid never gets in the way of the storytelling but it suggests depth to the artwork— is the grid in front of or behind the characters? It’s there somewhere in relationship to the reader, the characters, and the setting but it’s never quite too clear where in space it is.
Fabi’s use of the grid could be a gimmick, something that’s just there in an inert way but that’s not how she’s working. It’s never there just to be there. It’s suggestive in so many different ways that make this an exciting comic. **Perfect Love** s a small, simple comic— deceptively simple as Fabi uses her artwork to evoke so many feelings out of the reader. It’s a short comic that feels different each time because the grid seems to do something different with every reading. It’s effective, evocative, and emotional.
### The Kids Aren’t Alright-- Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta's Absolute Batman Volume One: The Zoo
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-scott-snyder-and-nick-dragottas-absolute-batman-volume-one-the-zoo/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:52:36.000Z
**Absolute Batman Volume One: The Zoo* by Scott Snyder, Nick Dragotta, Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Frank Martin, and Clayton Cowles (DC Comics; feature image by Nick Dragotta & Frank Martin)*
Bruce Wayne is not a serious man. He may think he is, fighting a war against Gotham City crime but there’s nothing in **Absolute Batman Volume One: The Zoo** to suggest that Wayne has any idea of how to engage in the world other than lashing out at it. That’s what his alter ego “Batman” is designed to do— meet violence with more violence. That’s clear from the first chapter of the book, where Wayne’s bat-shaped chest emblem transforms into an axe that he uses to slice through an attacking opponent’s wrist. “I hear they can reattach them sometimes. There’s a hospital three blocks south of here. Or is it East? I can’t seem to remember all of a sudden… but I’d run.” Some real vigilante attitude right there. Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta crib 80+ year old ideas and characters, using them to dive into a 21st century Gotham City, a city on the verge of chaos that needs someone to pull it back from the brink. But is Bruce Wayne the hero needed to save the city?
Scott Snyder is no stranger to Gotham City, having been its architect with the New 52 launch so long ago. But this Absolute Bruce Wayne is something new, not a man of privilege but a child of tragedy. His father was killed protecting his young students (Bruce among them) at a shooting at the zoo during a class trip that Bruce won his class by designing a bridge based on… You guessed it… the structure of a bat’s wings. The ghost of Thomas Wayne, a school teacher, hangs heavy over his son Bruce, even many years later when Bruce should be a man. Snyder and Dragotta find many ways to tie past tragedies to the current events, where the zoo becomes a metaphor for Gotham, a setting of a lot of promise but built on chaos and tragedy. This kind of city seems like the perfect target for The Black Mask, a crime lord who wants Gotham citizens to rise against the local government to prime the city for whatever is coming next. This is the city that Alfred Pennyworth, an agent for a shadowy organization, rolls up into on his motorcycle. Pennyworth is the wildcard; his motivations for fighting are somewhere between Wayne’s and The Black Mask’s.
As a child, Bruce was there when his father died; he’s the reason his father was at the zoo to begin with. With all Bruce Wayne stories, that’s the point where any emotional development starts and stops— frozen in that point of time of his parent’s death. Dragotta even draws Bruce Wayne as an overgrown boy— big, muscular, but with a little boy’s face, a little boy’s eyes. He may be the big bad Batman but he’s still his momma’s little boy. That’s the key characteristic of this Batman; he’s just a kid no matter how old he is. He’s travelled the world, learned all there is about Gotham, put together an impressive arsenal of weapons and tools but Bruce Wayne is acting out the only way he knows. He’s lashing out at the evil that took his father from him.
Dragotta gives Bruce and his friends a childlike hope for the world. All of these kids grew up in the shadow of that zoo shooting and his friends tried to be there for Bruce afterwards. Bruce did what he could to push them away but for one reason or another, they’ve tried to stick by him. While they’ve all gone on to have their own lives, some on the side of law and others on the other side of law. But they’ve stuck together over the years and have tried to support their friend. Dragotta jumps between the child-like innocence of childhood to the darkness of modern existence where it seems like nothing means anything anymore. You have this group of kids who love each other in this world that wants to divide people and make everyone look out just for themselves and not for others. That’s the main struggle in Snyder and Dragotta’s story; do we rise together or fall separately?
This is a baby-faced Bruce Wayne. Our first real encounter with Bruce is at Croc’s Gym, a boxing joint owned by one of those childhood friends Waylon Jones. A young man dances around a punching bag, throwing punches and kicks at it. “No fear. No weakness. Tonight you are a…” he psyches himself up the way a man about to face the unknown night may. But this isn’t our hero, just another Gotham City schmuck who gets out of Bruce’s way. Bruce is big, about twice the size of the man. But even in the little bit we can see, he has a soft face. That’s the way that Dragotta draws Bruce. It’s a sharp contrast to the Batman, a dark armored character who’s very costume contains all kinds of weapons. The only thing that Bruce and Batman have in common is their size. One is a creature of the night and the other is a boy in a man’s body.
Art by Gabriel Hernandez Walta
The fourth issue, drawn by Gabriel Hernandez Walta is largely flashbacks to Bruce’s first attempts at being Batman. That first stab at trying to be something that Gotham needs is a fascinating cross between Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s original designs and Nosferatu, showing Wayne trying to make this idea of Batman in his head into something concrete and real. But more than that, it focuses on Bruce’s bridge design that one him and his class the zoo trip as well Bruce’s statements at the trial of his father’s killer, Joe Chill. More than other parts of the story, it highlights just how much of Bruce’s drive is tied into and still trapped by that childhood trauma. In the middle of this larger story about the fight for Gotham, Snyder and Hernandez Walta tell this story about Bruce’s ways now and then of dealing with what happened to him and his father. This part of the story establishes what Bruce is searching for.
Pennyworth has a fascinating role here; he clearly has agendas, personal and professional. He’s sent to Gotham to deal with Black Mask but for far different and unknown reasons than why Bruce is. Pennyworth also has his history with Gotham; it’s where his daughter is and maybe this is his chance to protect her from whatever is coming. Bruce is both an opportunity and a challenge for Pennyworth, an ally and a roadblock. So like the reader, Pennyworth is trying to figure out this kid, just like the reader is. Bruce is lashing out but Pennyworth seems to have something that he’s fighting for in Gotham City. Maybe that’s the difference between Pennyworth and Wayne. Pennyworth has lived and fought; he’s got stakes in what happens in Gotham where Bruce is trying to fix something that happened years and years ago, something that the city and its citizens moved on from a long time ago.
Ultimately, Pennyworth pegs Bruce Wayne correctly when he calls him an “idealist” the first time he watches Wayne in action. Wayne sees Gotham in black and white, right and wrong— when everyone else— Black Mask, his mother Martha Wayne, Mayor Gordon, and Pennyworth— sees the shades of the city, the tradeoffs needed to keep a city and its people together. Bruce Wayne, Batman, Idealist, Child. In **Absolute Batman Volume One: The Zoo**, Snyder and Dragotta create a Bruce Wayne who’s not as formed as others we know but also isn’t as jaded as they are. He’s experienced pain and it’s given him the mission to take on that kind of pain for others. That’s what he’s fighting for in this Gotham. It’s a simplistic view of what a Batman could be but it’s one that maybe we need. It’s not about all of the sidekicks, the gadgets, the allies that one has but it’s about the belief and the drive that a vigilante has that could make him into a hero.
### We Don’t Need No Education- A Look at Judge Dredd: A Better World
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-judge-dredd-a-better-world-by-rob-williams-arthur-wyatt-henry-flint-jake-lynch-and-boo-cook/
Last updated: 2025-07-25T04:59:55.000Z
**Judge Dredd: A Better World* by Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, Henry Flint, Jake Lynch, and Boo Cook (2000 AD, 2025; above image art by Henry Flint)*
Ultimately, it all comes down to money and power, particularly who has both. Comic books are often about power but most don’t want to deal with the money part of it other than in laughable ways of millionaire heroes or billionaire villains. Then again, most comics aren’t **Judge Dredd: A Better World**. Writers Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt along with artists Henry Flint, Jake Lynch, and Boo Cook deliver what may be one of the most realistic comics for our times as Judge Maitland poses the question of what if we diverted some of the money we use to police people toward social programs and education? What if instead of keeping people down, we tried to lift them up? Seems simple but Mega City, much like the real world, is not a simple place.
Art by Henry Flint
**A Better World** follows Maitland’s quixotic quest to try to improve society by investing in it. Her role as one of Mega City One’s judges is basically to be an accountant so as she studies the numbers. She looks at the numbers and realizes that there’s a way that Mega City One could wipe out crime. The way that the powers-that-be operate today just perpetuates a system of poverty and violence. With Maitland, Williams and Wyatt explore what it would take to change a society, the work and the sacrifice. This story hits hard, particularly right now, because it asks us to trust in our fellow citizens rather than fearing them. And that’s a great thing.
But getting in the way of that trust is power. In this story, Judge Dredd walks a line between Maitland and their superiors. It’s fascinating to watch this character who knows who he is and what his role is being able to recognize that maybe there’s a different way. Now, he probably doesn’t have a place in the world which that different way could lead to and he seems fine with that. Then there are the ruling Judges who like the current status quo because it gives them their power and position.
Art by Henry Flint
Through the three artists, we get different views of Mega City One but what remains constant is the struggle of its ordinary citizens. They face many trials in their daily existence but those struggles are often tied to the Judges. Like Dredd may be a peace keeper but he’s the bull in the China shop as he tries to uphold the law. Jake Lynch gets to draw the middle portion of the book where Dredd is protecting people. He’s big and powerful but his is also just there. He’s not changing lives but is just trying to maintain some semblance of order. As he’s the titular character, Judge Dredd is the engine of this story but he isn’t the story itself.
Henry Flint gets to draw the final part where everything comes together and then falls apart. Maitland becomes the focus of the story as she’s driving the plot. Flint focuses on how the city pushes back on Maitland’s goals even as those goals show progress when executed. The complications of the world, shown through Flint’s tight line works, are resistant to change, even when it’s change for the better.
Art by Henry Flint
Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt feel like they’re doing something really daring here by challenging the status quo. Judge Dredd seems to work best sometimes when it’s embracing elements of satire and those elements are present, just without much humor to poke at the ways that we accept police states today as just the norm. We live in societies of laws and rules and we need to be policed to make sure that we hold to those laws and rules. We’ve been conditioned to think that this is just part of the social contract that holds us all together.
But there has to be other answers to how we move forward as a society than just having to be policed to the point where we basically develop Stockholm Syndrome to our authorities. **Judge Dredd: A Better World** is almost too perfect of a comic for the mid-2020s, when we’re leaning so far toward authoritarianism and fascism, two words that clearly describe the world of Dredd. Williams, Wyatt and their artists just cut to the point that we don’t see change because the people in power don’t want change. It’s as simple as that. And of all the comics out there right now, it’s Judge Dredd that has to remind us of that.
### Review— Kevin Smith Presents: Archie Meets Jay & Silent Bob
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-kevin-smith-presents-archie-meets-jay-silent-bob/
Last updated: 2026-08-07T23:45:28.000Z
The first page of **Kevin Smith Presents: Archie Meets Jay & Silent Bob** tricks you into thinking that Smith may be going somewhere with this story. Taking place after his movie *Clerks 3* where the Quick Stop clerks had to wrestle with their mortality, this issue opens with Randall Graves deciding that he should spend some time outside of his store so he needs to hire a new convenience store clerk. There’s something there, particularly if you’ve followed Smith’s Viewaskew movies and watched these characters over the past 30 years. Not to say that *Clerks 2* or *Clerks 3* are any kind of great movies but you can see Smith trying to do something in those movies to talk about aging and caring for ourselves. And the first page of this crossover seems to pick up on that and maybe try to follow some of those threads here. And that’s giving Kevin Smith way too much credit.
The Wit and Wisdom of ****Archie Meets Jay & Silent Bob**
This isn’t a Clerks comic. It states right up there that this is Archie meeting **Jay & Silent Bob**, Smith’s stone alter ego for himself and Jason Mewes. That in itself implies something. And this being a crossover, the applicant for that new clerk position is none other than Archie Andrews of Archie and Jughead, Archie and Betty, and Archie and Veronica. You know, the squeaky clean teens from Riverdale who are about 30 years older than Smith is. Archie’s world is full of school, malt shops, and trying to figure out which girl to date. Maybe that’s what Smith’s work is also about but it’s influenced much more by dick and fart jokes than Archie ever dared to be. And this may be the comic that introduces marijuana to Riverdale.
Penciler Fernando Ruiz and inker Rich Koslowski do a fantastic job of bringing the two worlds of New Jersey and Riverdale together. The book follows the Archie model and welcomes Smith’s ensemble and settings to that world. Ruiz and Koslowski get to play a lot in this book, bouncing off the script that’s being fairly transgressive for an Archie comic without feeling like they are crossing any kind of boundary. It’s a gentle melding of these two worlds that allows Archie and Jughead to share the stage with Jay and Silent Bob.
That allows Smith to bring the Archie crew down to his level without ever having them partake in the more lewd elements of it. They’re the tourists in this story Smith’s characters overpower Archie’s sweet innocence. And yet, for all of the dick and fart jokes, the true Archie characters come out of this relatively unscathed. Apparently, Riverdale has some killer weed that’s too much for Jay and Silent Bob but it’s not like the Archie characters ever partake in it.
So why does this comic exist? In the end, this isn’t so much a story but a Saturday Night Live skit, as if some late-night writing session led to a Kevin Smith-hosted episode where for 5 minutes between commercial breaks these two worlds collided. But that’s all there is to this comic— an idea, some jokes, two worlds colliding, the audience laughs a bit (maybe nervously at one or two of the jokes,) and then it will be forgotten after the next skit. Maybe if we’re lucky, it will be the musical guest or Weekend Update. There’s some fun to be had here, particularly if you’re up on your Kevin Smith lore but… yeah… it’s a comic that exists in 2025\. What more can or really needs to be said about it than that?
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### Review: I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together by Maurice Vellekoop
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-im-so-glad-we-had-this-time-together-by-maurice-vellekoop/
Last updated: 2025-07-10T10:56:15.000Z
Maurice Vellekoop’s **I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together** is not an easy read. It’s the story of a gay man navigating life, from his earliest childhood days growing up in a very conservative environment to trying to figure out the dating scene as a young man, and finally just trying to figure out who he is in light of all the other people in his life. It’s not that Vellekoop was ever unloved but more that he didn’t know how to love himself and others. You look at all of the people in his life as he shows them in the book, particularly the big influences like his parents or the gay college professor who all obviously love and care for this man but who all fail on some level to relate to him and show him how to navigate his life. In that way, Maurice is a man set adrift to find his path, to find out who he is without a map to provide the support that he needs. Each of these influences silently wishes Maurice were more like them instead of the person he is. This leads Maurice to question every choice he makes. With this memoir, Vellekoop explores these years where he was searching for happiness in an honest but regretful way; not regretful that he was gay but that there wasn’t any kind of model for him to follow. He had to spend so many years in the relationship wilderness and it’s not until he makes the effort to focus on himself that he even begins to find some kind of happiness.
As he’s telling the story of his life, Vellekoop is always establishing the context for the timeframe he is focusing on. He’s very aware of the time and the framing of his life— his youth in the conservative Christian Reformed family, his time of exploration of what it means to be young and gay in Toronto, his time in New York City that should have been the best times of his life, and his retreat back to Toronto. Vellekoop knows it is important to understand where and when Maurice is. It’s easy to track the chronology of the story but it is that connection to where Maurice is in his maturity and growth where the external settings become part of Maurice’s internal development. These are parts of his story and they’re important to Maurice’s growth as a person so just as he’s deliberate about his portrayal of the men and women around him, he’s just as deliberate about where he is living at each stage of his life.
By anchoring Maurice in both time and space, Vellekoop defines his self-portraiture character by those settings. It creates space for Maurice to explore his life and himself— he has to live in these places and these times to find out who he is. Vellekoop recognizes this and uses this spatial rooting to make connections between his characters and his audience. These places represent real stages of Maurice’s life so this isn’t just some nebulous story occurring regardless of setting as many autobiographical comics do (for better or for worse.) There’s the movement through time and space that makes up the stuff of life in Vellekoop’s exploration of his life.
This forms the space for Vellekoop to dig into these different relationships in his life, some of which are deep-rooted while others are fleeting connections that are more building blocks for Maurice to learn about himself. It begins with his parents and his siblings in suburban Toronto. There’s an expectation about what a family like this should be like, from the hard-working immigrant parents to the thoroughly suburban kids, of which Maurice is the youngest. In his parents, we can see all of the expectations that a parent has in their children, the love, and, sadly, the disappointments. And these are confusing enough for kids but are just magnified when by Maurice’s exploration of gender and sexuality that’s there from the beginning in innocent enough ways— the friends he has and the toys that he wants to play with. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with any of this but young Maurice looks to his mother and father for love and guidance. And when he doesn’t find those things in the ways that he expects them, it just adds to his confusion.
It’s mostly thanks to the hindsight that Vellekoop has after 40+ years but there’s some recognition that it’s not that his parents didn’t love him because he was gay or anything like that but that they just didn’t know how to show their love. It’s there but that’s not something that Vellekoop can even come close to acknowledging until years later. His father, a Dutch Protestant immigrant, is more closed off than Maurice or the rest of the family needs. His mother, also an immigrant, tries to be the good housewife and mother but even she feels like these are roles she needs to fulfill more than who she is. So starting with his parents, there’s this internal conflict we see about trying to conform to some kind of idea of what it means to be a suburban family. And this conflict carries over to their children as we see this bubbling up over and over again as Maurice searches for peace.
This cycle often repeats itself in the people that Maurice meets to the point where it feels like it’s the only way that everyone Maurice knows is that way. There’s a lot of love in this story as well as a lot of pain and it’s understandably hard for Vellekoop to reconcile these conflicting feelings. He visualizes it throughout the book as two spirits sitting on each shoulder— a cherubim-like version of a young Maurice and a deformed blob— each whispering their worldviews to him. While these spirits resemble an angel and a devil trying to lead him, that’s too simplistic a view of them. These avatars do more than just simply trying to lead Maurice down the paths of righteousness and damnation; they represent more his feelings of self-love and self-worth. They’re an externalization of his internal desires. They still whisper to him, lead him, but both of them are steering him to a place of protection from the world around him. They both want to shelter him from any kind of pain.
**I’m So Glad We had This Time Together** is the work of an artist trying to make sense of his life. It feels like we need to go through all of this pain with Vellekoop to come out on the other side with a clarity of self. Vellekoop ends his book with steps toward self-realization and a sense of self-worth that’s not present through much of this book. It takes the journey of a lifetime for Vellekoop to arrive at this point in his life where he can look back and see how he’s gotten there. He takes the reader with him on this journey; we’ve grown with him and it feels like we’re also at a good place by the end of the book or at least a better place.
### More Diamond, Alpha Flight, and the Quest for a Good Superman Comi — The Comic Bookmark, June 15th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-diamond-alpha-flight-and-the-quest-for-a-good-superman-comi-the-comic-bookmark-june-15th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-06-15T23:30:50.000Z
Forgot to hit publish this morning so this is going up late. It’s still out on Sunday so that counts for something.
## Previously on FC2C
[Gerard Way & Gabriel Bá Expand the Family Tree in The Umbrella Academy: Plan B #1The Umbrella Academy has been a family story from the start, using the language of superheroes to explore family dynamics.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gerard-way-gabriel-ba-the-umbrella-academy-plan-b-1-review/)
## Headlines
[Sparkle Pop enters a complaint against Alliance Entertainment for Disregarding a Non-Disclosure and Non-Solicitation Obligation and theft of Trade Secrets - Graphic PolicyThis is a hell of a turn of eventsGraphic PolicyBrett](https://graphicpolicy.com/2025/06/09/sparkle-pop-enters-a-complaint-against-alliance-entertainment-for-disregarding-a-non-disclosure-and-non-solicitation-obligation-and-theft-of-trade-secrets/?utm%5Fsource=facebook&utm%5Fmedium=jetpack%5Fsocial&fbclid=IwQ0xDSwK06o9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHiVP%5FHnjlzVYrNSN7SIPb7rxRYTEwf4guPWwPHOD-7EA538FfAIAqC8052e-%5Faem%5FiVMqBRiwZeqFLNCyTururg#google%5Fvignette)
The Diamond story and things related to it aren't going away as the companies who succeeded and dropped out of purchasing Diamond are now sniping at and suing each other. Heidi MacDonald at the Beat offers a fairly comprehensive ["This Week in Diamond"](https://www.comicsbeat.com/the-week-in-diamond-non-payments-non-shipping-and-10-million-lost-value/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) summary.
[Next U of I chancellor talks AI, responding to Trump policies and comic books - IPM NewsroomUniversity of Illinois Chancellor Designate Charles Isbell holds a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. His research focuses on artificial intelligence.Illinois NewsroomEmily Hays](https://ipmnewsroom.org/next-u-of-i-chancellor-talks-ai-responding-to-trump-policies-and-comic-books/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This may be a human interest story but the new Chancellor for the University of Illinois is a comic book fan and spends a brief moment in this article talking about *Absolute Wonder Woman*.
## **The Funny Pages**
New Jason? About Nick Drake? Where do I send my money?
True goals.
## **Interviews**
[‘True North’, true insight: Daryl Lawrence on Alpha Flight’s legacyInside ‘True North’ with author Daryl Lawrence and on writing the ultimate Alpha Flight companion.AIPTChandler Poling](https://aiptcomics.com/2025/06/13/alpha-flight-analysis-true-north-qa/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Alpha Flight finally getting their due? Say it isn't so.
## **Reviews & Features**
[The Best Superman Comic for the Curious ReaderWe asked 21 creators to name the Best Superman Comic for the curious reader stepping out of James Gunn’s new movie. Some answers may surprise.CBCCCBCCPodcast](https://www.comicbookcouplescounseling.com/post/the-best-superman-comic?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So lately I've been wondering to myself what are the iconic Superman stories? Brad and Lisa of Comic Book Couple Counseling asked a number of creators for the best Superman stories and the results are fairly... limited? Generic? Vanilla?
When you take out creators hyping their own work (not a good look, Jason Aaron and Dan Slott) it comes down to *All Star Superman* and *Superman Birthright*. There's a few others in there (*Kingdom Come????*) Is Superman just that limited or are people's reading just that narrow? Honestly, I think I would include the original *Superman Red/Superman Blue* story in there, such a great imaginary story. The first *Superman/Spider-Man* crossover is pretty spiffy as well (and recently reprinted in the Marve/DC omnibus.)
And Mark Waid calling himself Salieri to Grant Morrison's Mozart is a stunning bit of self-realization on exhibition.
> In the award-winning memoir “Gender Queer,” Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir) deploys deceptively simple, symbolically rich visual metaphors to document eir search for an authentic identity and to create empathy & understanding for the emotional needs & social pressures informing that search. #PrideMonth 1/13
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wavczzmrnypki3bhrvsbtmjy/post/3lqzcf4obhc2j?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Sequential Scholars ([@sequentialscholars.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wavczzmrnypki3bhrvsbtmjy?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [June 7, 2025 at 7:00 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wavczzmrnypki3bhrvsbtmjy/post/3lqzcf4obhc2j?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Sequential Scholars has a whole Bluesky thread about Maia Kobabe's *Gender Queer* and how Kobabe uses a deliberate art choices to explore the eir gender identity.
[Shelfdust’s Column, Jimmy Olsen: Issue #8“As long as I have a good time, the audience usually has a good time” – Reggie Watts By David Brothers Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #8 is twenty-two pages long. Matt Fraction…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2025/06/11/shelfdusts-column-jimmy-olsen-issue-8/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
David Brothers explores the humor density of *Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #8*.
### Gerard Way & Gabriel Bá Expand the Family Tree in The Umbrella Academy: Plan B #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gerard-way-gabriel-ba-the-umbrella-academy-plan-b-1-review/
Last updated: 2025-06-13T04:30:24.000Z
Hello, old friend. It’s been a while. Six years to be exact since the cliffhanger of *The Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion #6* when our heroes The Umbrella Academy were saved by a group of seven heroes, their replacements. So much has happened in that time (like an insurrection in our capitol) but you’d never know it as this new issue, **The Umbrella Academy: Plan B #1** picks up only moments after that last issue ended. But that time in between issues isn’t anything new; the very first Umbrella Academy book was the Free Comic Book Day offering back in 2007, 18 years and 19 issues ago (with a side miniseries thrown in there. Oh, and a Netflix series as well.) That’s all just to say that Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá aren’t rushing anything here. You can’t accuse them of trying to flood the market with Umbrella Academy content. And if they are trying to do that, they’re pretty crappy at it.
Essentially the last story ended in a giant jailbreak as all of the Umbrella Academy’s deadliest rogues sought revenge on them and the city until the not-the-Umbrella-Academy team, The Sparrows, stepped in to save the day. The cliffhanger was that somehow The Sparrows were related to the Umbrella Academy. Turns out that The Umbrella Academy’s mum and dad had a whole other family. A secret family. Maybe even a favorite family. A better family.
Way and Bá jump into this issue like it’s only been 30 days since the last issue and shake the team to their core. There’s no trying to remind the reader of what happened last issue. You just have to remember that The Umbrella Academy has never been the most stable team or family— think of the X-Men at their most emotionally dysfunctional. That X-Men reference is quite intentional as Way and Bá have been telling one of the best X-Men stories of the 21st Century if you think about the X-Men more as a family than as superheroes. Way has been more Claremontian in these issues than Grant Morrison or Jonathan Hickman ever were. And this issue is the team at their lowest; they are losers and they know it. And they’ve always known it but now they see the Sparrows and see what winners look like.
Bà draws just a devastating issue as The Umbrella Academy is dismantled physically and emotionally. He’s able to show one team in total control of the situation and another team realizing just how over their heads they are by the whole deal. As this issue is a giant fight, the writing (which Bà is credited for along with Way) is relatively sparse in terms of what it does. There’s not much characterization through dialogue as The Umbrella Academy are just largely in shock this whole issue and the Sparrows are in control. That gives Bá the room to build the characterization visually and that characterization is “lost.” More than before, these characters are lost as it dawns on them that their parents lied to them and made them think they were special. Their father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, was an emotionally distant tyrant but he was *their* emotionally distant tyrant. But it turns out he had another family that he just loved more.
Bá draws the characters as they realize they weren’t their father’s only children during the story. He gets to show their confusion, their hurt, and even their numbness as the shock sets in. Way gets out of the way and let’s Bá carry the weight of this issue. Without Bá’s ability to portray the damaged psyche of the characters, this is just another superhero brouhaha, two teams of heroes mistakenly thinking that the others are the villains— cases of mistaken identity and all that. But this is personal, it’s family and there’s a different kind of pain inflicted by family that Bá has been showing since the beginning of this series and amps it up here.
*The Umbrella Academy* has been a family story from the start, using the language of superheroes to explore family dynamics. These characters have been damaged by their upbringing and came together again after Hargreeves’ death. And since then, they’ve endured one emotional defeat after another. Way and Bá don’t let up this issue; they don’t give this family a win. It’s the first issue of the latest storyline and they’ve found a new emotional low for the series to sink to and that’s where we start this new story cycle- bottomed out and retreating. And with where this series has been already, it doesn’t feel like this is the end of the misery for the Umbrella Academy as Way and Bá continue to do a great job of telling a family story with these offbeat characters. And now, it’s only gotten to be a bigger family to work with.
### The Family Circus, A Defense of R. Crumb, a New Distributor, and More-- The Comic Bookmarks June 8th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-family-circus-a-defense-of-r-crumb-a-new-distributor-and-more-the-comic-bookmarks-june-8th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-06-08T12:32:50.000Z
It's the beginning of summer and, honestly, not too much is happening. Not much news but go down to the reviews/criticism portion and there's some really good stuff there, including a good video about the zombification of the Family Circus comic strip.
## Previously on FC2C
[The Tease and the Promise of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun: Road to the Six #0Sometimes a tease is all you need.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-cullen-bunn-and-brian-hurtts-the-sixth-gun-road-to-the-six-0/)
## Headlines
[Cancel culture is over and we’re free again, says comic book writerMark Millar, who sold his Millarworld empire to Netflix in 2017, said he was looking forward to ‘crazy’ stories on screen and in print once moreThe TimesStuart MacDonald](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/mark-millar-comic-cancel-culture-6g67zt5hd?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Hey, Mark Millar. Remember him? I guess he still works for Netflix. And here he is claiming "the world is more relaxed again." In case you need a translator, that means it's more relaxed for his personal style of white man writing so now it's time roll out something called... checks notes... "Psychic Sam."
This seems to reporting mostly from a Comicsgate or at least Comicsgate-adjacent podcast that he was on so it really doesn't get into a lot of details, just claims that people were scared to write what they really wanted to for the last couple of year
Is it me or is it weird that he declares that cancel culture is over and calls it just a "youth trend" like he's the final arbiter of such things?
## **Business**
[Philbo Entertainment Promotions Inc. announces Philbo Distribution focused on Independent and Small Press Publishers - Graphic PolicyPhilbo Entertainment Promotions Inc., the publisher is expanding with the launch of Philbo Publishing and Philbo DistributionGraphic PolicyGraphic Policy Team](https://graphicpolicy.com/2025/06/01/philbo-entertainment-promotions-inc-announces-philbo-distribution-focused-on-independent-and-small-press-publishers/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A new comic distributor emerges and it sounds like they're trying to pick up some of the mid–small publishers that the old Diamond catered to but the new Diamond probably doesn't want to touch.
## **Interviews**
[“I’m not the bad boy of comics anymore”: Inside the life of Donny CatesDonny Cates revamped Marvel’s Venom and almost did the same for Ultimate Spider-Man - but instead he spent the last two years rebuilding himself.PopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-donny-cates-c2e2-2025-feature-essay?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
An update from Popverse on Donny Cates, who seemed to be everywhere until he was in a series car accident a couple of years ago. It's good to hear about his recovery but sounds like he still has a way to go.
But about this article... if I'm reading it right, it's basically a summary of an interview they had with him that's behind their paywall?
## **Reviews & Features**
[The Return of the Comics ManifestoSean Kleefeld’s daily thoughts about comics and the comic industry.Sean Kleefeld](http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2025/06/the-return-of-comics-manifesto.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Sean Kleefield mines his rich archives and uncovers his "manifesto" or "how to read & appreciate comics that same way \[Sean does.\]" It's pretty good for both readers and critics/reviewers/commentators.
[A letter I still owe Dan Nadel about Robert Crumb and racial obscenity - The Comics JournalR. Fiore returns to the Comics Journal to offer some thoughts on Robert Crumb, racism and this here life in Modern America.The Comics JournalR. Fiore](https://www.tcj.com/a-letter-i-still-owe-dan-nadel-about-robert-crumb-and-racial-obscenity/?utm%5Fsource=rss&utm%5Fmedium=rss&utm%5Fcampaign=a-letter-i-still-owe-dan-nadel-about-robert-crumb-and-racial-obscenity)
R. Fiore digs into Robert Crumb's use of racial caricatures. I'll admit that I've only dipped my toe into the Crumb pool, and fairly recently at that. To start engaging him in the 21st century is a challenging prospect.
And how does Fiore come to terms with engaging with Crumb now?
> All I would like is the right to read it myself. It’s not that the morality of a work is irrelevant but that morality and aesthetics are separate categories, and good aesthetics will get you through times of dubious morals better than admirable morals will get you through times of aesthetic poverty.
It's interesting to compare what Fiore is saying here with that Mark Millar piece above, where we have both Fiore and Millar essentially trying to convince the world to let them enjoy they things that they enjoy.
[DC Pride 2025 is an ambitious comic that takes the time to dig into the characters’ individual hopes, fears, and dreams - Graphic PolicyDC Pride 2025 is an ambitious comic with summer crossover energy that tells an epic story with DC’s LGBTQ+ charactersGraphic PolicyLogan Dalton](https://graphicpolicy.com/2025/06/06/dc-pride-2025-is-an-ambitious-comic-that-takes-the-time-to-dig-into-the-characters-individual-hopes-fears-and-dreams/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I somehow missed this book last week. I'll need to try to pick it up next time I'm in a shop.
[SunflowersPut simply, Sunflowers is an amazing comic, an autobiographical account of what it is like to being bipolar. It goes from hypomania to mania…Stergios Botzakis](https://graphicnovelresources.blogspot.com/2025/06/sunflowers.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Keezy Young's *Sunflowers* is a stunning comic.
[Batman: Dark Patterns feels both impossible and impressiveThe current Dark Patterns miniseries from DC and creators Dan Watters and Hayden Sherman is a future classic Batman comic.PopverseGraeme McMillan](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-batman-dark-patterns-dc-single-minded-review?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Graeme McMillan finds that Batman: Dark Patterns feels like it's forging some kind of new path by embracing an approach to Batman that's rooted in the 1970s and 1980s.
[It’s Generic! So Why Did Marvel Publish This Comic?By Martyn Pedler It’s 1984\. Alan Moore has just taken over writing duties on DC Comics’ Swamp Thing, beginning one of the most lauded runs in comic book history. Marvel publishes the iconic, fan-fa…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2025/06/04/its-generic-why-did-marvel-publish-this-comic/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I remember this comic but have no memories of the comic itself. It's this huge blank spot in my memory.
I had no idea how the Family Circus has been in this state of updated reruns for years now.
[Keiler Roberts’ Preparing To BiteKeiler Roberts’ first book with Drawn & Quarterly was My Begging Chart. For a while, it seemed like it would be her last original book for…Rob Clough](https://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2025/06/keiler-roberts-preparing-to-bite.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Keiler Roberts is a favorite around here and her new book is sitting on my desk right now.
### The Tease and the Promise of Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt's The Sixth Gun: Road to the Six #0
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-cullen-bunn-and-brian-hurtts-the-sixth-gun-road-to-the-six-0/
Last updated: 2025-12-05T22:06:25.000Z
Sometimes a tease is all you need. Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s *The Sixth Gun* wrapped up in 2016 with the end and the remaking of the world. Bunn and Hurtt spent some time after in that world with the spinoff series *Shadow Roads* but just as that series was starting to gain some real steam, it just stopped and that’s been all there’s been of *Sixth Gun* stories until a Kickstarter a couple of years ago and 3 short comics that are now collected in **The Sixth Gun: Road to the Six #0**, a prologue to a new miniseries- *The Sixth Gun: Battle for the Six*. And as just a taste of what was and what is to come, **Road to the Six** is the right amount of that old familiar spark of action/adventure and the promise that there are more stories to tell within this world and with these characters.
This issue is getting the creative band back together. As well as Bunn and Hurtt being back, colorist Bill Crabtree and letterer Crank! show back up to slip back into the old ways. Bunn writes three short stories— one taking place 600 years ago featuring a medieval incarnation of Drake Sinclair, and two stories set shortly after the events of *The Sixth Gun*, catching us up with what’s been happening since the end but also laying some new ground. Some characters from past series return, a new MacGuffin is introduced, and the world seems to be in danger once again.
Bunn has always been a natural storyteller; you could picture him sitting around a campfire spinning tales that you’re never quite too sure if they’re real or purely from his imagination. And they get a bit more outrageous but possible as the night goes on. These three stories are like that— bringing these characters to life for a few pages, balancing an ease and a danger all at the same time. None of them are 100% satisfying and they aren’t meant to be. These aren’t stories but taste samples— think about walking around a warehouse store like a Costco where you get to try a little of this and a little of that for free so that you end up actually buying it and taking it home. This issue isn’t free but functions like those Costco samples.
But Bunn feels like he’s at home here; like this is where he belongs. The wild crossroads of reality and magic at the edge of the frontier create this environment where Bunn can show knights fighting snake-like witches or Marshalls can track warlocks. Or maybe his blending of frontier adventures with supernatural powers plays to his natural strengths. More likely, the comfort level here is due to sharing the page with Brian Hurtt again.
Like Bunn, Hurtt brings together all of these different elements, the frontier to ground us and the macabre to shake us out of that comfort. His characters are hard— they’ve seen some stuff— but they’re not impenetrable. They carry their adventures and their battles on their faces and their posture bears that weight. He’s not a heavy artist; he’s almost cartoony, but there’s just something sinister enough behind his characters to make you a bit wary of them. One of the great things about *The Sixth Gun* was that most of the characters had a depth to them that both Bunn and Hurtt were able to explore together. No one was 100% who they appeared to be; that was the central premise behind Becky Montcrief, the central hero of the original series. She was an innocent farm girl pulled into this grand and dark adventure. Bunn and Hurtt showed her surprising strength when faced with the ultimate danger. There are hints of that here as they set a mystery of how these three stories are related.
This isn’t a comic book where you should expect to know what’s going on. It’s not a story but an invitation to a story. In **The Sixth Gun: Road to the Six #0**, Bunn and Hurtt are returning to a story that most of us thought had ended and they’re showing us that there is something more here, that there’s another story to tell or maybe that the first one didn’t end quite as tidily as it seemed. And read that way, this is a promise from Bunn and Hurtt that you can trust them. You can sit down at that bonfire and get ready for them to spin a tale of men and women, of love and danger. And of six mystical weapons, thought long destroyed, that may still be a danger to all existence.
### RIP Peter David, Eisner Noms, Living in a Post-Diamond World and more... The Comic Bookmarks— June 1st, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-june-1st-2025/
Last updated: 2025-06-01T11:40:30.000Z
Our summer season started this week. You may remember that last year, our [2024 summer season](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-summer-season-2024-comic-bookmarks-sept-1st-2024/#gsc.tab=0) included posts (almost) every week between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I'm not too sure if we're going to be that ambitious this year but I do have plans for it as well as a theme to it just to help me keep things running around here for the next couple of months. It helps that almost all of the professional sports that I enjoy are finally entering their championship tournaments or still a couple of months away from really beginning their summer camps.
## Previously on FC2C
[More Than Just Another Crisis— a look at Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki’s Assorted Crisis Events #3This comic is not apologetic about being a bit preachy.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-than-just-another-crisis-a-look-at-deniz-camp-and-eric-zawadzkis-assorted-crisis-events-3/)
## Headlines
> ...and more sad news. Writer Peter David passed away last night per his wife, Kathleen. Writer of The Incredible Hulk, Star Trek and too many others to list. Definitely one of the best creators of the 80s and 90s. Condolences to his family, friends and fans from around the world.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qycmqtp4mx4cgayjb32lkft/post/3lpzbhijztk2s?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — BACK ISSUE! Magazine ([@backissuemagazine.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qycmqtp4mx4cgayjb32lkft?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 25, 2025 at 1:18 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qycmqtp4mx4cgayjb32lkft/post/3lpzbhijztk2s?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Peter David was a really good writer and has always sounded like a good, stand-up kind of guy. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.
[2025 Eisner Awards Nominees Announced: See The Full List | Comic Book ClubThe 2025 Eisner Award Nominees are here, as comic book creators and companies compete for comics’ highest honor. Read the full list.Comic Book ClubAlex Zalben](https://comicbookclublive.com/2025/05/15/2025-eisner-awards-nominees-announced-see-the-full-list/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The 2025 Eisner nominations are up. If you're a professional, you still have about a week to vote in it. We've covered a few of the comics that are nominated and collected them together under an [Eisner 2025 tag](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/eisner2025/#gsc.tab=0).
I'll admit, the only category that I really get worked up for is the Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism one, which for the last couple of years has been left off the initial list of categories but has still made it into the nominations.
- The Beat, edited by Heidi MacDonald and others, [https://www.comicsbeat.com](https://www.comicsbeat.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- ICv2: The Business of Pop Culture, edited by Milton Griepp, [https://icv2.com](https://icv2.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- INKS, The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, edited by Susan Kirtley (Ohio State University Press) [https://comicsstudies.org/inks/](https://comicsstudies.org/inks/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- SOLRAD: The Online Literary Magazine for Comics, edited by Daniel Elkin, www.solrad.co (Fieldmouse Press)
- Zdarsky Comics News, edited by Allison O’Toole (Chip Zdarsky) [https://www.zcnmagazine.com](https://www.zcnmagazine.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I'm thrilled to see The Beat and Solrad on this list, recognizing the work that those two sites do. I'm a bit perplexed by Zdarsky Comics News, partially because I've only ever seen one issue of it. It just seems more like a self-promotion vehicle that just has a brand name behind it and I'll admit that I've never quite gotten into that brand. Where's the SKTCHD? The Bubbles zine? Broken Frontier? I could name a number of sites and periodicals?
And when will The Eisners recognize that there's journalism and criticism happening on Youtube or in podcasts? I'm not too sure who would be nominated there but I'm partial to \\[Challenger Comics and Conversations](https://challengers.libsyn.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) weekly show as a living document about the ins-and-outs of running a comic shop.
[‘Charlie Hebdo’ files complaint over fake covers, blaming ‘pro-Russian propaganda’The satirical magazine filed a complaint for counterfeiting with a Paris court after mock front pages disparaging Ukraine were shared on social media.Le MondeLe Monde with AFP](https://www.lemonde.fr/en/police-and-justice/article/2025/05/26/charlie-hebdo-files-complaint-over-fake-covers-blaming-pro-russian-propaganda%5F6741691%5F105.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It's been a bit since news of Charlie Hebdo made its way here. Now it sounds like pro-Russian forces have been creating and posting fake covers to make it look like the magazine is in favor of Russia's actions in Ukraine.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[“We Have Been Feeling the Pressure Like Never Before” - The Worrying Disappearance of Comics Commentary and Journalism Sites from a Broken Frontier/UK Small Press Perspective – Broken FrontierBroken Frontier’s Andy Oliver takes a look at the bleak landscape for indie/small press comics commentary and journalism in the UK.Broken FrontierAndy Oliver](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/comics-journalism/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Broken Frontier is a very particular site and the opening paragraph of this piece explains it perfectly. I admire their focus on small press and the UK comic scene. This piece is continuing the recent discussion on the importance of supporting and encouraging sites that you like.
## **Business**
[TILTING AT WINDMILLS #301: Figuring out the basics of ordering comics nowBrian Hibbs offers practical advice for his fellow comics retailers on the basics of ordering comics in a post Diamond worldThe BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-301-figuring-out-the-basics-in-a-new-world/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I'm not a comics retailer so there's an awful lot about that side of the business that I don't understand. But as a Monday-morning quarterback of that side of comics, it's a bit difficult to see how the changing landscape of comics distribution is creating a new world now as opposed this is the path that they've been on for five+ years. Continuing to write about a post-Diamond world like it's something new as opposed to being able to see the dam breaking years ago and preparing for it feels like a business holding onto the old ways and kicking & screaming into the present (let alone the future.) But this is a good primer on how to start adjusting after Diamond's implosion.
As a 30 year retail veteran, there are ways that I observe the direct market is mired in an idea of their business that is at least that old. It's a market-segment that has appeared very resistant to change over the years even though general retail has gone through substantial changes in those times. And part of that is a matter of curation, especially in shops that feel like they need to cater to every mainstream fan so are trapped in a particular way of doing business.
## **The Funny Pages**
> Frank Jacobs was instrumental in the formation of my class consciousness
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2nfqzujpfwz5pybgxwcuoy6e/post/3lpyswjn4rc2c?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Jack Feerick ([@jackfeerick.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2nfqzujpfwz5pybgxwcuoy6e?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 25, 2025 at 8:58 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2nfqzujpfwz5pybgxwcuoy6e/post/3lpyswjn4rc2c?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Pile and Ren
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:t2i6mrflec2lsnnesonn7c3v/post/3lpykg6eyts2j?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Michael DeForge ([@michaeldeforge.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:t2i6mrflec2lsnnesonn7c3v?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 25, 2025 at 6:26 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:t2i6mrflec2lsnnesonn7c3v/post/3lpykg6eyts2j?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Manga translators walk a fine line between meaning and mayhemManga translators face linguistic puzzles, cultural minefields and online backlash — all for the love of a perfectly written speech bubble.The Japan TimesEric Margolis](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2025/05/23/language/manga-translation-japanese/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A look at the processes and concerns of translating manga for an English reading audience. One of the reasons I've started trying to credit translators when reviewing international works is for the work and choices that they need to make in conveying the story, the culture, and the character of a work.
[An Empty Room: The Existential Perils of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy (The Graphic Adaptation) - The Comics JournalPaul Auster’s The New York Trilogy: The Graphic Adaptation (Pantheon, 2025), was not terribly well-received by Greg Hunter.The Comics JournalGreg Hunter](https://www.tcj.com/an-empty-room-the-existential-perils-of-paul-austers-the-new-york-trilogy-the-graphic-adaptation/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I've actually gone back and forth on checking this book out. I've got the Mazzucchelli-drawn Cityof *Glass* but have never read the other two parts in this collection. And it's been so long since I read it that I really have no memory of it. This is a fascinating piece about how this book adapts literary genres and traditions as well as a fascinating comparison of the structure of these three books.
##
##
### More Than Just Another Crisis— a look at Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki’s Assorted Crisis Events #3
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-than-just-another-crisis-a-look-at-deniz-camp-and-eric-zawadzkis-assorted-crisis-events-3/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:52:44.000Z
Deniz Camp has obviously read a lot of superhero comics and it seems like he thinks that most of them have done it wrong. *The Ultimates #12* which just came out last week is built around that idea; this collection of superheroes who were trying to save the world hadn’t developed the right strategies. They had approached their world-saving like it was one kind of problem that they were tackling but it was another one. **Assorted Crisis Events #3** is a lot like that; this issue seems to be an issue of alternate universe doppelgängers and one world invading another (read “invading” there in the light of the 2024 elections and what invading meant then) but that’s the wrong way to read it. That assumes that this is just another crisis event, like a *Secret War* or a *Crisis on Infinite Earths*. Those are the kinds of crises that we think about in comics— the kind that usually involve fisticuffs and someone winning. In comic book crises, someone always has to win. Right?
This issue is the tale of two cities; Hearth-One and Hearth-Two. If you’ve read any superhero event comics, that alone should start setting off some bells of what is going on here. Both Hearths are small towns, with 788 citizens, on two different earths. Describing Hearth-One, Camp writes “… like many towns across America, Hearth-One was stuck on a planet that was dying fast.” Camp and artist Eric Zawadzki recognize the damage that we’re doing to this planet’s climate and how we’re killing it. And for the other Hearth, Camp writes, “Heath-Two, like Hearth-One,” was stuck on a planet that was dying fast… but Hearth-Two was stuck on a planet that was dying faster.” So there’s no Doctor Doom or Anti-Monitor involved here. No Time Keeper or Beyonder. Just global warming, a crisis of our own making and it was happening on both Hearths. So through a magical door (both Hearths were founded by a traveling door-to-door door salesman) the residents of Hearth Two escaped their dying world and escaped to Hearth One, exchanging one dying world with another one.
For the second issue in a row, Camp and Zawadzki build a very formal structure to their story. They establish the rules for telling these stories from multiple points of view (issue #2 exploring time and issue #3 exploring space) and adhere to them as ways of exploring their characters and the personal crises they are experiencing. In this latest issue, as they explore the lives of the people on Hearth-One and Hearth-Two, so alike because they are the same people but so different because their varying environments had so much effect on how they lived and survived, they use this a mirrored approach, with every other page alternating the viewpoints of Hearth-One citizens and Hearth-Two survivors. So we see one page from the perspective of a small-town family, successful and relatively safe. But then the next page is from the same family but from the dying world, survivors and refugees from a dead world. The panel layout and even the narration both mirrored as well.
Bouncing back and forth between the Hearth-One and Hearth-Two perspectives, Zawadzki repeats the panel layouts of the alternating points of view. He’s drawing the same characters but having to tell the story through these small changes in attitude and appearance. It feels like it could be gimmicky storytelling but Zawadzki, colorist Jodie Bellaire, and lettered Hassan Ostmane-Elhaou create this rhythm through this give-and-take storytelling. This mirroring and repetition establish a backbeat for the story, a groove that you can lose yourself in as you give yourself over to the story.
On both Earths, the town motto is “Love Thy Neighbor” and that sounds easy enough when your neighbor is going through the same things that you are, when you can relate to them through shared circumstances. While the Camp and Zawadzki don’t do it in this issue, you can trace that saying back to the Bible and the New Testament as Jesus was asked by his disciples what was the greatest commandment. In Mark 12: 30-31, Jesus answers, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” There’s a bit of an implication that the people of both Hearths Are good (the school, post office, grocery store, and the non-denominational church were all in a row on the same street.) “Love thy neighbor” was the town motto but what does it mean when your neighbor is yourself?
Like the first two issues, **Assorted Crisis Events #3** isn’t about the external crisis— both worlds are dying due to climate change— but the internal crises we experience on a personal level in the face of external challenges. Yes, the world is dying but how do we react to it? And how do we react to it when we are personally challenged by that reality? This story is a refugee story as people are displaced from their homes for fear of their lives. The people of Hearth-Two come to Hearth-One looking for asylum and safety. And that’s where Hearth-One fails them.
Camp and Zawadzki are calling all of us out. “Love Thy Neighbor” sounds all well and fine but we all fall short of it when it comes to the practice of it. The irony of things is that Hearth-One’s neighbors are themselves in this crisis, or at least alternate universal versions of themselves. You would imagine being able to care for the refugees would be so much simpler when you know them but familiarity doesn’t make it any easier and both Hearths suffer for it.
This comic is not apologetic about being a bit preachy. It’s not like Camp or Zawadzki are trying to hide behind metaphor or symbolism to disguise the fact that they’re writing about our real-life failures to love our neighbors. It’s all there on the page, the challenges that face us as a society and just how inadequately we’re prepared for them on a practical and a personal level. This issue is more a fable or a warning tale about the path we’re on. This series has been exploring these fantastical end-of-the-world scenarios in its first three issues. It then transforms them into personal stories about how we are grappling with this time of uncertainty and losing faith in the world around us.
### RIP Butch Guice, Jenny Blake's First Comic Book Credit, the Diamond Soap Opera and More... The Comic Bookmarks-- May 11th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/rip-butch-guice-jenny-blakes-first-comic-book-credit-the-diamond-soap-opera-and-more-the-comic-bookmarks-may-11th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-05-11T13:45:48.000Z
We're playing a bit of catch up here from the past couple of weeks. We took a week off but that doesn't mean that everyone else did.
## Previously on FC2C
[Superheroes, Aliens, and Cartoons, Oh My!!! - a review of Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Chris Weston’s Paranoid GardensGerard Way and Shawn Simon doing their obscure Vertigo book, just for Dark Horse. So who better to get to draw than Chris Weston?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-of-gerard-way-shaun-simon-and-chris-westons-paranoid-gardens/)
## Headlines
[Jackson “Butch” Guice, Comic Book Artist, Dead At 63 | Comic Book ClubJackson “Butch” Guice, an artist best known for his work on everything from New Mutants, to Micronauts and The Flash, has died at age 63.Comic Book ClubAlex Zalben](https://comicbookclublive.com/2025/05/01/jackson-butch-guice-dead-age-63/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think I've loved Butch Guice's art since I first saw it in a b/w comic called Southern Knights. There's just something about his work that I've never really been able to articulate that just gives me so much pleasure. Our condolences to his wife and daughter.
[The co-creator of Black Lightning returns to DC (and comics) with their true story in June’s DC Pride 2025 special issueJenny Blake’s ‘Master Planner’ follows in the footsteps of autobio stories from Batman Kevin Conroy, and DC writer/artist Phil Jimenez.PopverseGraeme McMillan](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-jenny-blake-dc-pride-2025-black-lightning?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I'm so happy for Jenny Blake (formerly Tony Isabella,) that she's getting to live the life that she wants and that DC asked her to contribute to their annual queer anthology.
[Sentry co-creator Rick Veitch calls Marvel “the House of Stolen Ideas” after his stake in the character overlooked for past 25 years - including in Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts\* movie“Cut out” and “thrown under the bus”: Marvel Comics’ Sentry co-creator Rick Veitch opens up about his omission for the past 25 years and in the Thunderbolts\* movie.PopverseJoshua Lapin-Bertone](https://www.thepopverse.com/movies-comics-marvel-studios-thunderbolts-the-sentry-creators-creator-paul-jenkins-rick-veitch-cast-aside?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The Sentry has always felt like a Rick Veitch character to me. It's amazing how many stories there are like this one out there.
[Ann Telnaes, Who Resigned From The Washington Post After Trump Cartoon Was Rejected, Wins Pulitzer PrizeAnn Telneas quit the Washington Post after it rejected a cartoon depicting tech and media executives trying to curry favor with Donald Trump.DeadlineTed Johnson](https://deadline.com/2025/05/pulitzer-prize-winners-washington-post-1236385814/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So, how did that work out for The Washington Post?
[TV Producer Gets 18 Months for Fraud, Embezzlement on Multiple ShowsDavid Ozer, president of Strong Studios, stole funds meant for ‘Safehaven’ and duped investors out of over $200,000 by saying he was developing a show called ‘Endangered.’The Hollywood ReporterWinston Cho](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/tv-producer-david-ozer-fraud-embezzlement-1236210154/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Former IDW exec David Ozer sentenced in embezzlement caseFormer IDW Entertainment exec David Ozer has been sentenced to jail after embezzling money on a TV show that was based on a nonexistent comic bookThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/former-idw-exec-david-ozer-sentenced-in-embezzlement-case/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Heidi MacDonald makes the connection (with a [hat tip to Graphic Policy](https://graphicpolicy.com/2025/05/07/former-idw-entertainment-president-david-ozer-sentenced-to-18-months-for-fraud-and-embezzlement/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) between a TV producer being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement to his past as being an executive at IDW.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Polygon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Mass Layoffs \[Update\]One of the biggest gaming sites around was just blown upKotakuHome](https://kotaku.com/polygon-sold-vox-media-valnet-layoffs-digital-gaming-1851778655?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Polygon’s new owner says it will ‘do what’s right for Polygon’Valnet wants to ensure that Polygon has the “deepest” coverage of the gaming space.The VergeJay Peters](https://www.theverge.com/games/660635/polygon-valnet-vox-media-new-owner-interview?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This article focuses on Polygon as a gaming site but they had also developed a pop culture side and a comic side (thanks to the great work by Susana Polo.) The news of Valnet who purchased Polygon was understandably met with concern as we've seen Valnet-bought sites become just content mills. CBR (the site formerly called by its full name Comic Book Resources) was once one of the biggest and best sites for comics coverage until they were taken over by Valnet. And now you can easily see their strategy of just churning out content.
I can believe that Polygon's new owner thinks it will "do what's right for Polygon" but how long is that going to last until the site becomes unreadable?
Here's a [great listing of Polygon's laid off writers](https://haunts.neocities.org/polygon?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and how to support them.
[“They Deserve to Get More Support”: The Comics Courier’s Tiffany Babb on Building a New Space for Comics Criticism - SKTCHDTiffany Babb is the most passionate advocate for comics criticism I know. Part of that is because it’s her job, to some degree, as she previously was one of the editors at the Eisner Award-winning digital comics criticism magazine PanelxPanel and the deputy editor of comics and pop culture site Popverse. But she truly loves … ContinuedSKTCHDDavid Harper](https://sktchd.com/interview/tiffany-babb-comics-courier-interview/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Tiffany Babb's The Comics Courier is one of the most exciting comics criticism outlets right now.
## **Business**
[Alliance Entertainment Sues Diamond, AgainAlong with the Investment Bank, Restructuring Consultants, and Alliance Game Distributors ExecutivesICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59432/alliance-entertainment-sues-diamond-again?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Universal Gets Alliance, Ad Populum Gets Diamond Comic et. al.Bankruptcy Court RulesICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59443/universal-gets-alliance-ad-populum-gets-diamond-comic-et-al?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Diamond Bankruptcy Fees MountOver $1.9 Million in Fees for MarchICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59503/diamond-bankruptcy-fees-mount?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Someday someone will be able to write a tell-all book about Diamond's bankruptcy and it will be a doozy.
[Quimby’s New Owners Pledge To Keep Wicker Park Bookstore Going For Years To ComePeter Miles Bergman and Cody Kasselman have bought the beloved bookstore, which has sold self-published zines, comics and graphic novels for three decades.Block Club ChicagoQuinn Myers](https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/01/quimbys-new-owners-pledge-to-keep-wicker-park-bookstore-going-for-years-to-come/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
As a Chicago- area suburbanite, I don't get to Quimby's as much as I would like to but the news of Eric Kirsammer selling the shop and longtime manager Liz Mason also leaving did cause a bit of concern. So this Block Club Chicago profile on the new owners was a welcome relief.
[Eve L. Ewing And Friends Unite To Buy South Side Cafe Build CoffeeAuthor and scholar Eve L. Ewing, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist trina reynolds-tyler and media-based organizer Andrea Faye Hart will take over the shop in June. It is being rebranded to Build Coffee and Books.Block Club ChicagoMaxwell Evans](https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/05/05/eve-l-ewing-and-friends-unite-to-buy-south-side-cafe-build-coffee/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And in more local Chicago news, it's great to see Eve L. Ewing and her partners buying into a local business in a great neighborhood.
[The Prana Bullet for May 9th](https://us8.campaign-archive.com/?e=a7d1d87d2c&u=fcf336c115dd96a297e1a9460&id=d16ebda5db&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
After years of not having sales reports, I'm surprised just how under-the-readar Prana DMS's reports really are. This latest newsletter from them contains links to their April comic rankings, which are actually forward looking as it's based on subscriptions and pre-orders instead of any kind of sales and doesn't include any numbers, just rankings.
But honestly, there's nothing here that's a big surprise other than Ultimate Spider-Man is the 3rd biggest comic? Is there something going on in that issue? That seems like an oddity because you just don't see that much chatter about that book.
## **The Funny Pages**
## **Interviews**
[Long London, Magic & the future of HumanityDetail from a portrait by Francesca Ciregia . Omar, Francesco & I are really, really excited & honoured to present an exclusive interview w…Posted by smoky man](https://alanmooreworld.blogspot.com/2025/05/long-london-magic-future-of-humanity.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This might be the most Alan Moore thing and maybe the best way to read his work:
> In *From Hell* we suggested the late Victorian period, 1888, and specifically the Whitechapel murders as, metaphorically, the birth-cries of the 20th century. Meanwhile, in *Lost Girls*, Melinda and I posited the late Edwardian era, 1913/1914 and the outbreak of the First World War, I think just as legitimately, as the beginning of the modern world. I suppose the ultimate truth is that every decade, every year, potentially every sunrise is the end of one world and the start of a new one, although over the course of the Long London quintet I want to see what happens when that truism comes up against the currently popular adage that the old world refuses to die and so the new world cannot be born.
### Superheroes, Aliens, and Cartoons, Oh My!!! - a review of Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Chris Weston’s Paranoid Gardens
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-of-gerard-way-shaun-simon-and-chris-westons-paranoid-gardens/
Last updated: 2025-05-08T13:12:49.000Z
Paradise Gardens is not your normal care facility. The lead nurse is an alien, the head doctor worships at the altar of an entertainment company, and they have their own drugged-up superman as a newly admitted resident. That just scratches the surface of what makes Paradise Gardens a different type of facility. Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Chris Weston’s **Paranoid Gardens** is almost a fairly straightforward workplace drama, showcasing the people who live and work at the center as it fights off a corporate takeover. But the story is never quite that simple; early on we’re introduced to Loo (short for Louise,) one of the caretakers who has to help the aliens but you quickly realize that there’s something else going on with her. Is she an employee or a resident of the facility? And what does she have to do with fighting the takeover by a Disney-like conglomerate?
Way and Simon’s writing is infused with trauma, the ways that we experience it, and the ways we try to heal from it. Like the facilities’ residents, that trauma ranges from the mundane (aging, having a boss that just doesn’t understand you) to the fantastic (not remembering anything before four months ago, being transformed into something that is out of your experience). While everyone has their issues to deal with, Loo bears the brunt of the trauma and she bears it for all of the others as well. In her, Way and Simon show these reflections of what everyone else is going through in Loo’s journey as she tries to understand just who she is and why she’s at Paradise Gardens.
And nothing can just be normal. Take Doctor Zerc, the head doctor who sells out the facility and everyone in it for immortality by bartering the facility to the highest bidder, Cheeky Monkey Films. Zerc’s motivations are fairly simple to understand; he’s afraid of dying. But really, who isn’t? But to gain immortality, he sells his soul to an entertainment company. He sells his soul to a corporation to get more time on this earth. The comic opens with Zerc praying at a homemade shrine to Cheeky Monkey, to toys, film strips, and an old black-and-white TV, waiting to get a message from Cheeky Monkey himself.
Instead of Cheeky Monkey showing up, a superman is wheeled into the emergency entrance of Paradise Gardens, strapped to a gurney. This superman (lowercase “S” as we’re never given his actual superhero name) knows Loo but she has no idea why. After he’s brought in, this superman shuffles around the gardens, robed and sedated enough to be unable to coherently answer Loo’s questions. This hero is numbed and effectively useless when Cheeky Monkey eventually shows up for the facility— the emasculation of the superhero at the company that was built upon a cartoon animal.
Chris Weston’s artwork flattens out the story as if we are the sedated ones but in a good way, a thematic way. There’s not much difference between highs and lows thanks to Weston’s very matter-of-fact approach to drawing and storytelling here. It’s reminiscent of his work years ago with Grant Morrison on *The Filth* ([reviewed once upon a time here](https://www.popoptiq.com/the-filth-grant-morrison-chris-weston/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) before Morrison identified as non-binary) where Weston brings the sacred and the profane together on the page. He’s doing the same thing here but it functions very differently.
Weston’s work strives to not call attention to the weirdness of the story; it’s played very matter-of-factly. Very quickly, Weston introduces you to this world and you experience this synthesis of the fantastic and the mundane. And the fantastic just comes as part of the mundane because the story treats the fantastic that way. The story introduces these out-of-this-world ideas but treats them like they are all part of our normal life. Of course, there would be aliens in a care facility. Of course, orderlies work side-by-side with ghosts. Of course, a very traditional-looking vampire is conducting a group therapy session. These things are normal because the story and the art treat them that way. Weston isn’t drawing some kind of superhero power fantasy; he’s drawing this drama of people trying to hold or piece their lives together.
This is an adventure comic so it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that this is a story about Loo saving Paradise Gardens and in the process, having to save herself. Way and Simon are trying to show the way to self-healing and toward a better world for all. There are the forces of uncertainty and greed at work, trying to subjugate everyone and everything but this story is trying to push back against those forces. Loo has a past, a painful one that has been taken away from her. It’s a bit too much of the real world in this story but it is Loo’s story. Loo possesses agency in her story but she’s not allowed to have it in the story. Way follows in the footsteps of his hero Grant Morrison, who in books like *The Filth*, *The Invisibles*, and even *The New X-Men* was trying to wake us up as much as trying to entertain us.
Let’s be honest, this is a book about the Disneyfication of everything. That’s who Cheeky Monkey is, just an avatar for Mickey Mouse and Disney’s acquisition of the world. There’s where the weirdness of aliens and superheroes comes in as Disney has just gobbled up everything from T*he Avengers* to *Alien* and turned it into content. Just more and more content. While weirdly wonderful and fantastic in a hazy drugged kind of way, Way, Simon, and Weston aren’t showing us anything but the world that we already live in. But without **Paranoid Gardens**, is it a world we could see or would even want to see? Or would it just be better to live numbed out by the endless stream of streaming shows, legacy reboots, or sequels to bought-and-sold intellectual property?
### Neil Gaiman Just Won’t Go Away, Not So Fast Alliance, and more… The Comic Bookmarks— April 27th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-april-27th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-04-27T12:30:14.000Z
A lot of news but not too much commentary or reviews this week.
## Previously on FC2C
[Living Outside of the Law in Inio Asano’s Mujina Into the Deep Volume 1The opening is action-packed, a thrill ride that gets us into Inio Asano’s book but it’s not the story that Asano is telling.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/inio-asanos-mujina-into-the-deep-volume-1-review/)
## Headlines
[Alliance Entertainment Terminates Diamond Purchase AgreementWhat Next?ICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59418/alliance-entertainment-terminates-diamond-purchase-agreement?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So, something is happening here and it seems to be inline with what Diamond wanted a week or two ago. Alliance Entertainment pulls out from its agreement to purchase Diamond Comics Distributors, leaving things open for the back-up bidder to step in.
At the end of this article, Milton Griepp through in some interesting speculation that maybe a lot of this is due to the uncertainty around trade and tariffs, which appear to be having a big impact on games and merch, which are the basis of Alliance Entertainments’s current business model.
[Neil Gaiman Stoops Even LowerGaimain should crawl into obscurity and stay there.PajibaDustin Rowles](https://www.pajiba.com/news/neil-gaiman-stoops-even-lower.php?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Neil Gaiman sues one of the women who came forward claiming that Gaiman had assaulted them for $500,000, alleging that accuser Caroline Wallner violated her NDA. [Lila Shapiro at Vulture initially reported this move by Gaiman](https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-nda-caroline-wallner.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) but that article is behind a paywall. A piece of information from Shapiro’s piece that I’m not seeing reported elsewhere is that Wallner had filed a claim for arbitration last winter, claiming that Gaiman had breached his part of the NDA.
Gaiman has previously denied the abuse accusations.
> It's Independent Bookstore Day, so remember that red states are pushing bills that would force booksellers to cover displays related to pride, hide books like "1984" and effectively ban "Banned Book" sections — all under the guise of protecting minors from "pornography" www.msn.com/en-us/news/u...
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> — Mike Stabile ([@mikestabile.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:34ydeurdtukrpzjjelklch4y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 26, 2025 at 12:01 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:34ydeurdtukrpzjjelklch4y/post/3lnq7np6tdc2k?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And speaking of book bans…
[A literary Streisand effect: Bans on books like Gender Queer lead to increased readership, according to a new studyA new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and George Mason University found that the circulation of the top 25 most banned books increased after they were bannedPopverseJules Chin Greene](https://www.thepopverse.com/literary-book-bans-libraries-readership-circulation-study?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
*Gender Queer* is a great book and really made an impact on me when I read it when it originally came out. It should be required reading.
[Warner Bros. Discovery Beats Lawsuit Over Superman RightsThe lawsuit from estate of Superman co-creator Joseph Shuster threatened ‘Superman’s’ rollout in several countries ahead of its release. The court found that the case doesn’t belong in federal court.The Hollywood ReporterWinston Cho](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/warner-bros-discovery-beats-lawsuit-superman-rights-1236200839/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
On Thursday, a U.S. District Judge ruled to dismiss a lawsuit From the Shuster estate but on Friday the lawsuit was refiled in New York state court.
I didn’t even know that there was another lawsuit around the rights to Superman, brought on by the family of Joe Shuster. It makes sense that they would try to do this before the movie this summer.
[Megaton Man: Multimensions Now Live!Kickstarter Reconsiders, Reverses Decision, Approves ProjectDon Simpson Comix and StoriesDon Simpson](https://donaldsimpson1713.substack.com/p/megaton-man-multimensions-now-live)
It was quite a couple of weeks for Megaton Man creator Don Simpson. At the beginning of the week, [an April 19th post from Simpson’s Substack newsletter](https://donaldsimpson1713.substack.com/p/kickstarter-censors-megaton-man-multimensions) started making the rounds. The post announced that Kickstarter cancelled his project because one of the contributors, Milo Trent, lived in Iran for “safety and trust” issues. But this week, Kickstarter reversed the decision, claiming that the project was “potentially prohibited under \[U.S.\] trade restrictions, and rejected on that basis. However, after further review, we’re able to approve your project.”
[Simpson’s project is now live on Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ghostagents/megaton-man-multimentions?ref=project%5Flink) and 2/3rd funded of its goal.
[Francis Ford Coppola Unveils ‘Megalopolis’ Graphic Novel (Exclusive)The filmmaker gave his blessing to Abrams Books to craft the book, which he says is “a sibling of the film, rather than just an echo.”The Hollywood ReporterAaron Couch](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/francis-ford-coppola-unveils-megalopolis-graphic-novel-1236199383/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Okay… this is certainly publishing news for sure but a weird movie to suddenly adapt. I’m actually interested to see what Jacob Phillips could do with a story like this.
> Sad news. Pioneering comic artist Jack Katz (b. 1927) passed away. I never got to meet Jack, but was lucky enough to get to know him through his work, now preserved in the archives at Rice University. Through Aug 10, you can see a modest show exhibition about him: moody.rice.edu/exhibitions/...
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> — PinkoJoe.com ([@pinkojoe.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dglfm6gbqb2p6tidmatmgpne?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 24, 2025 at 3:37 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dglfm6gbqb2p6tidmatmgpne/post/3lnlkqvgodc2z?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Business**
[Bookscan 2025: End of the TrailDue to internal changes at Circana BookScan, we will no longer be able to do our annual analysis of comics salesThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/bookscan-2025-end-of-the-trail/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The Bookscan report that Brian Hibbs has published annually has always been the best indicator of the health of comics, looking at more than just to direct market to identify where and what comics are being sold. It’s one of the sources that I think gave us the earliest indications of the strength of both the manga and children’s markets for comics and it really established that comics were more than just Superman and Spider-Man. So it’s a shame that changes at Bookscan have made these numbers inaccessible to Hibbs and The Beat.
> In case anyone missed our wave of manga announcements yesterday, you can check out the full recap on our news site! And don’t fret, we have more news to come soon! 👀 mangamavericks.com/2025/manga-m...
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> — Manga Mavericks ([@mangamavericks.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6evtzu2rf2s3kbnm4whdmqlg?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 25, 2025 at 3:46 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6evtzu2rf2s3kbnm4whdmqlg/post/3lno3r3ju4r26?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **The Funny Pages**
> Never meet your heroes
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e75hwzyjfjwkgoopdseewkl3/post/3lniephago22n?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
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> — Kate Beaton ([@katebeaton.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e75hwzyjfjwkgoopdseewkl3?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 23, 2025 at 9:10 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e75hwzyjfjwkgoopdseewkl3/post/3lniephago22n?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> new graphic novel comin Oct 7th!!!!
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> — Ben Passmore ([@benpassmore.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d6vhvelt7zsnryac2hniigtq?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 20, 2025 at 9:25 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d6vhvelt7zsnryac2hniigtq/post/3lnau5eo2hs2l?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
New Ben Passmore books are always a good thing.
## **Interviews**
[U.K. cartoonist Rebecca Burke on her ICE detainment: ‘No one should be here’ - The Comics JournalOn Feb. 26, 2025, Rebecca Burke became a prisoner of the United States immigration system. Burke, a 28-year-old comic artist from Wales, had come to the U.S. on a tourist visa on Jan. 7, in the waning days of the Biden administration, with a backpacking itinerary that entailed staying with friendly homeowners in exchange for... Read more »The Comics JournalZach Rabiroff](https://www.tcj.com/u-k-cartoonist-rebecca-burke-on-her-ice-detainment-no-one-should-be-here/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> I had a visitor visa waiver, which — from talking to my hosts and other people, and looking online — seemed to be all I needed for this work. It's what I used previously in America. We've since talked to an ex-ICE lawyer, and he said that what I did did not count as employment under their own definition.[2](https://www.tcj.com/u-k-cartoonist-rebecca-burke-on-her-ice-detainment-no-one-should-be-here/?ref=fromcovertocover.com#easy-footnote-bottom-2-178298) So I get the impression that \[US immigration authorities\] didn't want to let someone in \[to the United States again\] that Canada had refused, because they're supposed to be tougher than Canada. They figured if Canada has determined that she was working, she must be working here. Or this is just part of them really going to town on the numbers for people that they're deporting and interning. It was just very bad timing on my part.
There’s a lot here to digest, particularly when you consider that this is just someone caught up in a bad but unfortunate circumstance. She wasn’t trying to illegally immigrate to any country; Burke was just in the U.S. and trying to enter Canada as part of her trip. She wasn’t planning to stay.
## **Reviews & Features**
> I made this ad nearly 40 years ago for Marvel. It was intended to make you think about a fictional world where such horror could exist, not make you realize you were actually living in that world.
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:t2thjv3wcdj3cnqkfgphuxe7/post/3lnlx2y3lvk2b?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
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> — Fabian Nicieza ([@fabiannicieza.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:t2thjv3wcdj3cnqkfgphuxe7?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 24, 2025 at 7:17 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:t2thjv3wcdj3cnqkfgphuxe7/post/3lnlx2y3lvk2b?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> The ethos of #SupermanDay is helping those who need it when you can. I made a list of 75 trans & nonbinary comics creators, with links for where to support them. I've also listed notable works, and a bookshop.org author link. Please consider support if you can! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
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> — Comic Book Herald ([@comicbookherald.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:46klusydwpuqdj264nmf5yza?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 18, 2025 at 9:03 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:46klusydwpuqdj264nmf5yza/post/3ln3rxk7ees2b?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Living Outside of the Law in Inio Asano’s Mujina Into the Deep Volume 1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/inio-asanos-mujina-into-the-deep-volume-1-review/
Last updated: 2025-04-23T22:00:36.000Z
The world doesn’t love you. It won’t care for you or even try to protect you. It will make you believe that the best thing for you is to give up your basic human rights to survive and to live outside of society. The world just doesn’t care for you and it is up to you and I to be there for each other. That’s the harsh introduction in Inio Asano’s first volume of **Mujina Into The Deep**, a book about our changing times and the need to adapt to them. At just 40-some years old, Terumi Morgan once worked at a prominent game design company but now labors as a contractor in a small game studio, struggling to connect with his much younger co-workers. Much of his life revolves around the disconnect he feels with young adults and children like his stepson, who is caught up in the turmoil of his mother and Terumi’s divorce.
Additionally, there are the Mujina, a stratum of society who have given up basic human rights and the rule of law. These are (largely) young people who have forsaken their citizenship rights to live outside the confines of normal society. They thrive beneath the feet of “lawful” society, acting as assassins for hire and influencers. Mujina like the popular online influencer Tenko have become the new heroes for generations younger than Terumi, experiencing a freedom that those confined to the boundaries of society yearn for. Even Terumi finds himself longing for that freedom or something akin to it.
The book opens with an adrenaline-filled sequence with a woman jumping around Tokyo’s rooftops hunting down her prey as another girl gets off the bus in the big city, running away from home. The runaway doesn’t realize the danger in the man who greets her at the train station; she’s that innocent. This opening is large, exciting, and a bit of a Trojan horse for a different story that we’ll get in the second half of this book where the action leads into reflection. The opening is action-packed, a thrill ride that gets us into Asano’s book but it’s not the story that Asano is telling.
Through these people, Asano expresses a restlessness with the way that the world has changed around him and the direction it’s going in. Or maybe it’s the direction that Asano going in as Terumi’s discontent could be a reflection of the artist’s own longings. Terumi looks at the world around him and one part of him wants to yell at his younger co-workers “Get off my lawn” but there’s another side of him that is intrigued by the youthful Mujina movement, even if he doesn’t want to admit it or maybe doesn’t realize it. He’s a man who has remained frozen in a moment as the world has shifted around him. And that shift has opened up a new society free of the rules that bind you and me. And all you have to do is sign away any rights you have to a normal life to step into this new society. Those younger game designers see a kind of freedom in that life, a freedom that Terumi can’t wrap his head around.
Note: read right to left
Ubume, the assassin we encountered at the beginning of the book, lives by a Mujina code that’s enforced by the sword. Even though she lives on the rooftops, her world is the Tokyo underground. Asano doesn’t reveal that much about Ubume, not nearly as much as he does about Terumi or the runaway Juno Oshima, Ubume and Tenko, the influencer Mujina, are storms tearing through normal people’s lives; they’re alike but so different and we get a taste of the Mujina life through them. So when you have this new kind of society developing, where does that leave the rest of us?
Ubume rescues Juno from her predators and suddenly Juno finds herself in this liminal space between Terumi’s ordered world and Ubume’s chaotic existence. Terumi may be looking at the Mujina world from the outside but Juno finds herself accidentally thrust into it without being a true member of it. Asano establishes these competing ways of just getting through this world and then explores them by having the characters move back and forth through them.
Note: read right to left
In his storytelling, Asano has never shied away from the cruelty of the world (see *A Girl on the Shore*, *Goodnight Punpun,* or even *Solanin*.) Juno is the receiver of that cruelty here, revealing the reasons why she ran away. Her story begins almost comically cliche-ish— the runaway picked up at the bus stop and then exploited into sex work. But it turns out that her story isn’t about what happens when she runs away but what she is running from. And what she’s running away from is a cruelty that only people who should care for you can inflict on you. What she finds in Tokyo isn’t necessarily a family but the beginnings of a community.
That’s what this book is— a beginning. It’s hard, a bit cold, and it’s not all that interesting in making things easy for the reader. Asano rarely wants to make it easy for us; he wants his stories to confront us. **Mujina Into The Deep Volume 1** brings us into a lived-in city that doesn’t care for us but that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for empathy or even love in this city. That’s what Asano is searching for in his manga— those connections that help us realize that we’re not alone in this world. This volume lays the groundwork for these people to make those kinds of connections that have been missing in their lives, whether they live in an orderly society or a messy anarchy.
### Think Twice Before Traveling to the States, FIBD Boycott, Star Wars Kickstarter and More-- The Comic Bookmarks April 20th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/think-twice-before-traveling-to-the-states-fibd-boycott-star-wars-kickstarter-and-more-the-comic-bookmarks-april-20th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-04-20T12:15:43.000Z
The pop culture show C2E2 was in town last week and instead of going to it, I headed out to western Illinois and bopped around the countryside for a few days. It's still weird to me just how unimportant this show has become to me. I realize that it's a big pop culture show now and not so much a comic one, even though there's still comic stuff happening here. But where was the big news or the hot book of the con? Remember when that stuff used to happen?
## Previously on FC2C
[The Big Tease That Is Summer of Superman Special #1Sometimes, you just want to read a Superman comic. It’s a bit surprising how hard that is to do without getting pulled into all kinds of other drama.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-big-tease-that-is-summer-of-superman-special-1/)
## Headlines
[Eisner Nominated ‘Banned Book Club’ Creators Speak Out on Canceled Book TourWhy Ryan Estrada and Kim Hyun Sook Won’t Be Coming to the U.S. in 2025ICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59338/eisner-nominated-banned-book-club-creators-speak-out-canceled-book-tour?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It's taken less than 100 days and people are concerned and cancelling plans to travel to the United States. It's completely understandable and let's be honest, the American immigration policy has never been good but it's also never been this bad.
[FIBD 2026 : pourquoi Emil Ferris, Art Spiegelman, Posy Simmonds, Chris Ware et 400 professionnels de la BD appellent au boycott du festival | COMICSBLOG.frL’heure est à l’orage pour le Festival International de la Bande Dessinée (FIBD) d’Angoulême. En ce vendredi 18 avril 2025 doit se tenir une réunion du conseil d’administration de l’Association du FIBD pour décider de la dénonciation ou no.…COMICSBLOG.fr](https://www.comicsblog.fr/50109-FiBD%5F2026%5F%5Fpourquoi%5Femil%5FFerris%5Fart%5FSpiegelman%5FPosy%5FSimmonds%5FChris%5FWare%5Fet%5F400%5Fprofessionnels%5Fde%5Fla%5FBD%5Fappellent%5Fau%5Fboycott%5Fdu%5Ffestival?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
ComicsBlog.FR is reporting that a number of cartoonists are calling for a boycott of next year's Festival International de la Band Desinnée d'Angoulême. This article goes into a number of issues with the festival's organizer 9eArt+.
> In a text published for the **L'Humanité** website, the union of workers, artists-authors and authors (STAA CNT-SO) and the collective MeTooBD ask, in the company of signatories, the **FIBD** association to "*denounce \[the\] contract \[with 9eart+\] in due form and to make a call for projects for the management of the festival*", otherwise they will call for a "*massive boycott of the next edition of the festival in 2026*".
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[The one about comics journalism...againIt’s my semi-annual screed about comics journalism: it may be dead but was it ever alive? An investigationThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/the-one-about-comics-journalism-again/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So this is a weird one. I kind of cringe whenever the concept of comics journalism is declared dead (something which the Beat likes to do on a semi-regular basis as they state in this article) but I really appreciate MacDonald's perspective on the changing dialogue about comics and where it's happening.
> Part of the reason, as I discussed with Atom, is that The Discourse™ has moved to Reddit – where it’s hard to kick things off because (IRONICALLY™) many subreddits prefer LINKS TO PUBLISHED STORIES – and Discord, which is a big secret mystery land, like a Casper David Friedrich painting.
I was very surprised about 3/4ths of the way through the article to see **From Cover To Cover** included in a list of sites and writers who "deserved attention." The inclusion was one thing but it was the company that we were included with. With a few exceptions (and those exceptions are getting added to the reading rotation,) these are all sites and writers that I check out regularly and who I really look up to. These are the sites I think of when I ask myself what do I want this site to be when it grows up– not so much in the different models for how a site could be set up but for how they've developed voices and point of views.
And there's a nice Swamp Thing analogy buried in this piece. Check it out.
And speaking about comics journalist...
> Old bodies, new Mindlessness. Weekly broadcasts start here.
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> — Mindless Ones ([@mindlessones.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pdxsvukh766gl4lq624doust?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 12, 2025 at 3:12 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pdxsvukh766gl4lq624doust/post/3lmndreosb22c?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Business**
[Bankruptcy Court Approves Diamond Sale, Price, TermsTo Alliance Entertainment, LLCICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59306/bankruptcy-court-approves-diamond-sale-price-terms?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So for all of the drama around the acquisition of Diamond, it sounds like nothing changed and Alliance Entertainment is still who is going to get Diamond. It will be fascinating to see if or how this changes the business of comic books. I really can't tell yet if this is a game changer or if Diamond still has some clout for its history even though its importance to comics have diminished over the past 5 years.
[Dark Horse to Publish Original Art of 1st Star Wars MangaAlso: Disney Publishing adapts Jedi: Fallen Order game, Thrawn novelAnime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2025-04-18/dark-horse-to-publish-original-art-of-1st-star-wars-manga/.223691?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It feels like when we have to have a Kickstarter for a Star Wars book that something is wrong with the systems that have been set up for publishing.
## **The Funny Pages**
>
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mkpuo34xdfpcozicvpbtaluu/post/3lmt52fixtc2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — arpad okay ([@arpadokay.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mkpuo34xdfpcozicvpbtaluu?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 14, 2025 at 10:27 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mkpuo34xdfpcozicvpbtaluu/post/3lmt52fixtc2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[Walkin’ the Streets with R. Crumb: PW Talks with Dan NadelPioneering counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb finally gets his due in Crumb (Pantheon, Apr.), a new biography from the Picturebox Comics founder and former Comics Journal editor.PublishersWeekly.comTobias Carroll |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/97406-walkin-the-streets-with-r-crumb-pw-talks-with-dan-nadel.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Comic Books Are Burning In Hell: His Friends Call Him Bobby (w. Dan Nadel)On this very special episode, Make-A-Wish kid Dan Nadel makes his fondest dream come true: a podcast with Joe McCulloch, Chris Mautner, Tucker Stone and a very special surprise guest! The topic: Dave Sim! Unfortunately, professional obligations ultimately demand that all individuals also discuss young Daniel’s newly published biography of Robert Crumb, the famed cartoonist. No punches are pulled, but really, are any punches thrown? It’s comic book time!](https://comicsinhell.libsyn.com/his-friends-call-him-bobby-w-dan-nadel?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Two very different Dan Nadel interviews.
## **Reviews & Features**
[What’s your favorite Superman story?To celebrate Superman Day this year, The Beat’s DC Round-Up crew answers the question: what’s your favorite Superman story?The BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/whats-your-favorite-superman-story/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
As I was looking for a Superman story to read this week, this headline from The Beat jumped out at me but I don't know if anything here is what I'm looking for. So here I am, still on the search for a good Superman story to read.
> Reagan had a joke about Ed the Happy Clown, but he sure was a dick about it.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hrvfqacrd5mtlkqtuhnia53t/post/3ln4uxemhwc2q?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Mike Sterling, Comics Guy ([@mikester.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hrvfqacrd5mtlkqtuhnia53t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 18, 2025 at 7:29 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hrvfqacrd5mtlkqtuhnia53t/post/3ln4uxemhwc2q?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
We have simple rules here, such as always repost an Ed the Happy Clown post!
[It’s the perfect time to get into Saga—even though it’s only halfway doneIt’s the perfect time to get into Saga—even though it’s only halfway doneAV ClubSamantha Nelson](https://www.avclub.com/saga-brian-k-vaughan-fiona-staples-comic-books-perfect-time-to-read?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It's an interesting take to say that *Saga* flies under the radar but honestly, it probably does nowadays. Listening to a local comics retailer podcast, it sounds like it still sells well but Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staple's series doesn't seem to generate much discussion anymore, at least not in the circles that I'm part of. And why does an article about the comic need to devolve into a piece about the best way to adapt *Saga*? Can't it just celebrate the book for what it is instead of saying that it's unlikely that we'll get a good adaptation so may as well check out the book.
[Krakoa is for all mutants: How the X-Men might have saved my mental health - The Comics JournalJacob Walhout looks at the not-so-long-ago Krakoan X-Men saga and details his own personal connection to it. Also: A TCJ editor learns the word “requel.”The Comics JournalJacob Walhout](https://www.tcj.com/krakoa-is-for-all-mutants-how-the-x-men-might-have-saved-my-mental-health/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I kind of love that there's a whole subgenre of criticism developing around the Krakoa era of the X-Men. I've got a couple of ideas bouncing around here but what I see a lot of is people who have internalized Krakoa in really fascinating and personal ways that you don't see developing out of a lot of comics. There's something that happened here that I think (and hope) that we'll be unpacking for a long time to come.
### The Big Tease That Is Summer of Superman Special #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-big-tease-that-is-summer-of-superman-special-1/
Last updated: 2025-04-17T13:00:47.000Z
For some reason, I’ve been in the mood to read a Superman comic lately. Maybe it’s some early anticipation for the movie that’s coming out this summer but I think it’s more because I haven’t read a good Superman story for some time now. Now, I’m not talking about another monthly issue of *Superman* or *Action Comics* which are fine I guess (via my perusal of them through DCs’ Infinite app or whatever it’s called.) And I’m not talking about *Absolute Superman* which I have been reading but that feels so far removed from the mainstream Superman, much further away than either *Absolute Batman* or *Absolute Wonder Woman* do from their more standard versions. And sure, there’s Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s classic *All-Star Superman* but I feel a bit been-there/done-that with going back to that book. Maybe the closest to what I’ve been hankering for is Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch’s *The Last Days of Lex Luthor* but that book just feels so distant and uninviting, largely thanks to Hitch’s art. It should be thrilling but it just feels so 2001\. No, none of that. Give me a good, old-fashioned Superman book, whatever that may be. So maybe it’s a good thing that the **Summer of Superman Special #1** (as if there’s going to be an issue 2 at some point?) came out on a relatively light week at the old comic shop.
But it still wasn’t a given that I was going to pick it up but there was one huge thing on the first few pages that grabbed me— Lana Lang in Smallville. As girlfriends of Superman with the initials L.L, goes, here’s my ranking of them:
3.) Lois Lane— yes, I’m the one who never really understood the marriage thing. I guess the will-they-or-won’t-they thing thing of the 1970s and 1980s can only get you so far and what do you do after you kill and resurrect Superman in the 1990s?
2.) Lori Lemaris— the doomed portion of this relationship always got to me— she’s a mermaid and can only really live underwater. Now that’s romantic, much more so than the office romance with Lois ever was.
And coming in at #1…
1.) Lana Lang— Come on, she’s the childhood sweetheart, the best friend, and the one who got Clark Kent. They were meant to be together so the opening of this book, in a chapter written by Mark Waid, flashes back to when they were still just awkward teenagers sitting on the Kent’s porch and Clark about to tell Lana his secret… I don’t know but for some reason, I just wanted to see where this was going.
Ultimately **Summer of Superman Special #1** is a fairly standard teaser comic that DC is so apt to do these days. It’s a sequel to that *DC All-In Special* from months ago, the one that killed Darkseid but had some really nice Wes Craig artwork in it. These specials are meant to get you excited for what’s coming but not for what’s in front of you. And this one features some nice Jorge Jiménez artwork. As house-styles go right now, DC is in a fairly good place having Jiménez and Dan Mora (who drew the epilogue) as the two artists who are defining how their mainline books should look and trying to get other artists to follow them. Jiménez’s art, finished by Belen Ortega for a third of the book, is a lot of fun, bouncing back and forth between human moments like two kids sitting on a porch swing wanting to tell each other their secrets and the action scenes of Superman punching a big bad guy through time and space. There’s plenty of both of those types of sequences in this book and Jiménez seems to be having a lot of fun that comes through in every drawing.
The story is split into three parts, written by Mark Waid, Dan Slott, and Joshua Williamson. There’s nothing distinctive about the stories, nothing that makes you think that three different writers were contributing to the issue. Lana is getting married to John Henry in Smallville and like all comic book weddings, the ceremony is attacked by a major threat. Oh, and Lana is a superhero now so I guess that’s a thing. I guess if you hang around an alien for too long you’re just going to get superpowers. So three writers, one super-powered best friend, one super-powered wife (yes, Lois has powers too,) and the Legion of Super-Heroes villain Validus. That’s a bit going on in one issue.
If I was jonesing for a Superman story to read, this isn’t a bad read as it caught me up with where Superman is circa April 2025 and teased what’s coming. Waid, Slott, and Williamson play up the unknown threat aspect of this story; from the beginning, Superman knows that Validus isn’t any kind of mastermind so there has to be something or someone manipulating him in these attacks on Smallville. This special ends up being a whole issue of someone pulling the strings and sending Superman on wild goose chases trying to find out what’s going on. And when you get to the end of this issue, you realize that this is the follow-up to another teaser comic that is also trying to tease the next big thing on some conglomerate’s publishing plans. It just has better artwork than most of these things usually have. But maybe it’s an indication of something that when I got to the end of it, I got more excited by an advertisement for an upcoming book than I was by this book itself.
### Everything’s Broken, From Immigration to Tariffs, but the Comics Are Still Good— The Comic Bookmarks April 6th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/everythings-broken-from-immigration-to-tariffs-but-the-comics-are-still-good-the-comic-bookmarks-april-6th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-04-06T12:00:37.000Z
> This is unfair to those of us Larry Hama turned into lefty anarchists.
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lmieio72lgit7a5ts43iiyks/post/3llzmjneld22h?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Jason ([@jason1749.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lmieio72lgit7a5ts43iiyks?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 4, 2025 at 6:55 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lmieio72lgit7a5ts43iiyks/post/3llzmjneld22h?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think/hope that Jason speaks for a lot of us right now.
## Previously on FC2C
[It’s Time to Wake Up- Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 by Deniz Camp & Javier RodriguezDC’s Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 delivers a radical reimagining with Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez creating a mind-bending sensory experience that transcends traditional superhero storytelling.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-martian-manhunter-1-by-deniz-camp-javier-rodriguez/)
[Trying to Escape the Past in Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook‘s Out of AlcatrazIt’s the American dream told through the dream of freedom but struggling through the morals of its time.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/trying-to-escape-the-past-in-christopher-cantwell-and-tyler-crooks-out-of-alcatraz/)
## Headlines
[I was a British tourist trying to leave America. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centreGraphic artist Rebecca Burke was on the trip of a lifetime. But as she tried to leave the US she was stopped, interrogated and branded an illegal alien by ICE. Now back home, she tells others thinking of going to Trump’s America: don’t do itThe GuardianJenny Kleeman](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/05/i-was-a-british-tourist-trying-to-leave-america-then-i-was-detained-shackled-and-sent-to-an-immigration-detention-centre?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> The deportation paper Becky signed bans her from the US for the next 10 years. Paul tells me they are going to try to appeal it, but Becky says America isn’t the country she thought it was. Her advice to anyone planning to travel to the US is simply not to go. “First, because of the danger of what could happen to you. And, secondly, do you really want to give your money to this country right now?”
Becky Burke’s story is just one of many that are going on right now. It’s horrific to think of what people are going through because of mistakes. And we’ve got a government right now that continually demonstrates that it just doesn’t care.
[New ‘Fantastic Four’ Phineas and Ferb variant cover revealedJust in time for the new season of the hit animated series coming this summer, PHINEAS AND FERB VARIANT COVERS are here.AIPTDavid Brooke](https://aiptcomics.com/2025/04/03/phineas-and-ferb-variant-covers/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I usually hate variant covers but I may need to check out these Phineas and Ferb ones.
[Viz Media Leadership Transitions: Brad Woods CEO, Ken Sasaki ChairmanToday, manga publisher Viz Media announced a major leadership transition appointing their former CEO, Ken Sasaki, into the role of Chairman & Executive Advisor. Brad Woods has been appointed as the new CEO.“What we’ve built at VIZ Media is nothing short of extraordinary,” said Sasaki. “Manga and anime have become global phenomena, and VIZ is at the center of this movement. With Brad Woods taking the lead, VIZ is poised to expand its influence in ways the industry has never seen before.”“Anime anBehindTheMangaWinterVenom](https://www.behindthemanga.com/post/viz-media-leadership-transitions-brad-woods-ceo-ken-sasaki-chairman?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It’s weird that after being enthralled by American comics for so long and knowing the in-and-outs of the publishers that the structure and organization of Viz remains a bit of a mystery to me. So this change up for Viz seems interesting, getting a new CEO who seems to be more from the entertainment world than the manga world.
[Comics Writer MIKE W. BARR Needs Your HelpThe Bronze Age Batman scribe and co-creator of Camelot 3000 is having serious health issues…13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, CultureDan Greenfield](https://13thdimension.com/comics-writer-mike-w-barr-needs-your-help/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Mike Barr wrote a lot of great comics in the 1980s. I’m glad that it looks like this GoFundMe is well funded but it’s another thing wrong with this country that we need to crowd source our medical care.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[What Killed Comics Journalism?Column by Rob SalkowitzICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/59211/what-killed-comics-journalism?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Last week, I linked to the Prana interview with Heidi MacDonald so this week, Rob Salkowitz offers up his own thoughts that were spurred by that interview.
And Salkowitz has an interesting answer to the question posed in the headline.
And again, I honestly don’t like the idea that the problem is with the readers and the idea of ad blockers killing the monetization of sites, which both the interview and this piece ultimately advocate for. That makes it sound like the problem is with the consumer and not with the business of journalism.
[“The Comics Courier is Really a Love Letter to Comics Criticism” - Tiffany Babb on Bringing Comics Commentary Back to Print in the Acclaimed Newspaper-Style Publication – Broken FrontierTiffany Babb talks to Broken Frontier’s Andy Oliver about the work of the Comics Courier and the thinking behind its newspaper-style format.Broken FrontierAndy Oliver](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/the-comics-courier-tiffany-babb/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I really like this answer to the question of what critical faculties does Babb look for?
> I think what I’m always looking for in a writer is someone who can draw our attention to something and justify our time with that topic. That seems really simplistic, but it’s hard to capture someone’s attention in our online age. Being able to come up with an article pitch that gets someone to go “Oh, I’ve got to read this,” is a challenge. Then, putting together a piece that makes it worth it for the reader, that’s the tough follow through.
## **Business**
The story of the week is tariffs.
[Worst Case Tariffs Announced WednesdayAffect Imports from China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, the EU, and Dozens of OthersICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59232/worst-case-tariffs-announced-wednesday?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Retailer op-ed: Trump vs. the American comics industryRetailer Jacob Shapiro takes a look at how the comics industry is reacting to tariffs, and how local politics could affect his storeThe BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/retailer-op-ed-trump-vs-the-american-comics-industry/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> First few minutes features Jacob from @fantomcomics.bsky.social in Washington DC talking about tariffs and their impact on comic book stores: youtu.be/E0Jl7WWyxfk?...
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:roi7e3ncrzxuyq2pq6r4lguc/post/3lm2umaecr22r?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Comic Book Couples Counseling ([@cbccpodcast.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:roi7e3ncrzxuyq2pq6r4lguc?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 5, 2025 at 6:52 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:roi7e3ncrzxuyq2pq6r4lguc/post/3lm2umaecr22r?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Andrew Chen, co-founder of one of my favorite denim brands, 3sixteen, breaks down how the tariffs affect his company IG 3sixteen
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ks3gpa6ftoyaq7hmf6c4qx4c/post/3lm2uavncwk2w?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — derek guy ([@dieworkwear.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ks3gpa6ftoyaq7hmf6c4qx4c?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 5, 2025 at 6:46 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ks3gpa6ftoyaq7hmf6c4qx4c/post/3lm2uavncwk2w?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Steve Jackson Games posted this to their blog and the post is getting so many hits their site is effectively crashed but the point is worth repeating
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qskjixp5mozj4ex76h3eyxnc/post/3llwr5h5hg223?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Christopher Bird ([@mightygodking.com](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qskjixp5mozj4ex76h3eyxnc?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 3, 2025 at 3:39 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qskjixp5mozj4ex76h3eyxnc/post/3llwr5h5hg223?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
These last couple aren’t comics but does talk about how a small business (at least relatively small) have to rethink nearly everything to deal with these tariffs.
[TFAW.com to close down April 30TFAW.com, which billed itself as the third largest comic book retailer, is closing at the end of the month.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/tfaw-com-closing-down-april-30/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think I only ever bought anything from TFAW once or twice, probably during some damaged good sale.
And for some good business news…
> 17 years ago today, on a cold, gray, wet Monday, March 31st morning, Challengers Comics + Conversation opened for business! Thank you to anyone who has been a part of these 17 years. Let’s keep it going, shall we? KEEP READING COMICS!!! ChallengersComics.com
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d6zlvcxwdktrhpgsqrd7vuyu/post/3llnuqrq3xs2o?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Challengers Comics ([@challengers.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d6zlvcxwdktrhpgsqrd7vuyu?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [March 31, 2025 at 2:50 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:d6zlvcxwdktrhpgsqrd7vuyu/post/3llnuqrq3xs2o?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **The Funny Pages**
> SOLD!!! You're in the trolley problem! @alexkrokus.bsky.social
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yi332eknh2ceouqi42g6u5ux/post/3lm2ykpyk5k2c?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Athenaeum Comic Art ([@athenaeumcomicart.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yi332eknh2ceouqi42g6u5ux?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 5, 2025 at 8:03 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yi332eknh2ceouqi42g6u5ux/post/3lm2ykpyk5k2c?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e72cwu7fen37hzzzhwy6mkxp/post/3llray3w2mk25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Haus of Decline ([@hausofdecline.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e72cwu7fen37hzzzhwy6mkxp?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [April 1, 2025 at 11:07 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e72cwu7fen37hzzzhwy6mkxp/post/3llray3w2mk25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[An interview with Paul Pope: ‘You can be your own audience’ - The Comics JournalJean Marc Ah-Sen talks to Pope about his new PulpHope2 collection, as well as what’s coming up for THB and Battling Boy.The Comics JournalJean Marc Ah-Sen](https://www.tcj.com/an-interview-with-paul-pope-you-can-be-your-own-audience/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
With the publication of *PulpHope2*, TCJ has an interview with Paul Pope talking about the design and evolution of this new book.
And about halfway in this interview is the news (at least news to me) that we’ll finally be getting *THB* released again. And new *Battling Boy*, which I wasn’t all that excited about the first time around.
[Affiche et expositions pour la venue de Naoki Urasawa à Amiens, 02 Avril 2025Annoncée il y a deux mois, presque jour pour jour, la venue de Naoki Urasawa aux Rendez-Vous de la Bande Dessinée d’Amiens se précise !L’auteur de 20th Century Boys, Monster,…manga-news.com](https://www.manga-news.com/index.php/actus/2025/04/02/Affiche-et-expositions-pour-la-venue-de-Naoki-Urasawa-a-Amiens?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I don’t see too many interviews with Naoki Urasawa so this one on a French manga site caught my eye, as did that great poster. It’s short and not really too informative but it’s worth it just to look at Urasawa artwork.
[WonderCon ’25: Todd McFarlane talks about that Diamond rumorAt Wondercon Todd McFarlane stopped by to talk about those Diamond rumors, what’s cool in toymaking and how he keeps having funThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/todd-mcfarlane-talks-about-that-diamond-rumor-wondercon/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ll admit that sometimes I forget just how savvy Todd McFarlane is.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Baby Blue - Bim Eriksson’s Dystopian Graphic Novel, the Swedish Underground in Translation from Fantagraphics – Broken FrontierBim Eriksson and Fantagraphics Books take us to a future Sweden where unhappiness is outlawed in ‘Baby Blue’.Broken FrontierGary Usher](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/baby-blue-fantagraphics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I need to get more familiar with the growing Swedish alternative scene.
[Absolute Martian Manhunter’s mind-bending finale stunt only works in physical copiesDo you know how to activate your Martianvision?PolygonSusana Polo](https://www.polygon.com/dc/549992/absolute-martian-manhunter-1-final-page-combined?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I didn’t touch upon this in my review of the book but the last pages of this comic are something that really only works in the physical format because it makes you work for it a bit as well. There’s a different kind of payoff in this comic that requires you to actively participate in the act of reading.
[Marvel Rundown: DAREDEVIL: COLD DAY IN HELL #1 burns brightDaredevil: Cold Day In Hell is just superhero comics at their best. Plus, our reviewers check in with Miles Morales, Immortal Thor, and more!The BeatD. Morris](https://www.comicsbeat.com/marvel-rundown-daredevil-cold-day-in-hell/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[DC Round-Up: ABSOLUTE GREEN LANTERN #1 and RESURRECTION MAN #1 are as great as they are differentAbsolute Green Lantern #1 is the joint headliner for DC this week, along with the new Black Label series, Resurrection Man.The BeatZack Quaintance](https://www.comicsbeat.com/dc-round-up-absolute-green-lantern-1-and-resurrection-man-1-are-as-great-as-they-are-different/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This pair of The Beat’s weekly DC and Marvel review columns caught my eye because of the focus in both of them on the art. Both reviews place their focus first and foremost on the work of the artists and on how that drives the storytelling.
[6 Amazing Western Graphic Novels from Image Comics - Comics BulletinToday, we look at and spotlight 6 of the best western graphic novels published by Image Comics, from East of West to Pulp!Comics BulletinAshley Hurst](https://comicsbulletin.com/6-amazing-western-graphic-novels-from-image-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
We always need more western-themed comics but one thing this piece highlights is just how many of them there have been over the past 10 or so years. And how many of them have come from Image.
[Confession – The Manga Critic](https://mangacritic.mangabookshelf.com/2025/04/01/confession/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Always glad to see Katherine Darcey out there with her reviews.
### Trying to Escape the Past in Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook‘s Out of Alcatraz
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/trying-to-escape-the-past-in-christopher-cantwell-and-tyler-crooks-out-of-alcatraz/
Last updated: 2025-04-02T13:33:46.000Z
Christopher Cantwell and Tyler Crook’s **Out of Alcatraz #1** is not an innocent book. Sure, it’s set in 1962 and evokes an innocence that is connected to the remnants of the 1950s but that’s a surface-level charm. Once upon a time, this would have been a movie starring Paul Newman or James Dean, the rugged Everyman escaping prison to find his destiny. It would have been hopeful, dreaming of a better life only to turn tragically dark. Newman or Dean would either end up back in jail or killed while on the run. **Out of Alcatraz** is that kind of story; it’s the American dream told through the dream of freedom but struggling through the morals of its time. As Cantwell and Crook’s story begins, we don’t know anything about these three men in the San Francisco Bay other than they’ve escaped the one prison no one escaped from— Alcatraz.
In real life, we don’t know what happened to these men. It’s assumed that they died in the icy waters and their bodies were swept out to sea. Cantwell and Crook build their story around the idea that at least two of them survived and were able to carry out their plan of crossing the bay, stealing a car, and getting out of the city. The third, the brother of one of the survivors, fell out of the raft and was presumed dead by the two who made it to shore. So for Frank Morris and Clarence Anglin, escaping may have been the easy part but now they have to deal with the people who helped them escape in the first place.
**Out of Alcatraz** then becomes of story about trying to hide our true selves. The two convicts are obviously trying to hide who they are from any authorities. The black woman who helps them might not be trying to hide strictly, but her fair skin could pass as white in a time still grappling with civil rights And then there’s the FBI agent and the US Marshall, two old friends who use the escape to catch up. And it’s strongly suggested that there’s something more than just friendship between these two men. Here the story is being suggestive but is still hiding the true nature of their relationship. Cantwell uses the repressive early 1960s to explore how people couldn’t be themselves back then and how they still need to hide parts of themselves today.
Crook’s art paints this image of Americana that clashes with these characters’ struggles. But it’s also an Americana that needs this kind of exploration. It’s easy to look at Crook’s golden, small-town streets and think everything is perfect there. It’s got the warm glow of nostalgia but he and Cantwell are shrouding so much pain and brokenness behind these American streets. Crook’s art radiates warmth in the daytime but chills you to the bone when the shadows of the night come out.
Beneath the suspenseful story that Cantwell and Crook are weaving, a rich layer of subtext exists. This is a gripping what-if story— what if the men who escaped Alcatraz survived? The narrative draws inspiration from real-life events which is speculative fun, to begin with, but they layer these questions and mysteries over the plot that make this an old-fashioned page-turner. Prison escapes are fun; they’re captivating. **Out of Alcatraz** captures all the essence of a great prison escape story. However, Cantwell and Crook take it a step further by exploring the characters’ inner demons and unraveling their doubts, making the story not just about escaping Alcatraz but also about America itself.
### It’s Time to Wake Up- Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 by Deniz Camp & Javier Rodriguez
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-martian-manhunter-1-by-deniz-camp-javier-rodriguez/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:52:51.000Z
**Absolute Martian Manhunter #1** starts with a bang, both literally and figuratively. The very first image by Javier Rodriguez shows a man (our hero John Jones) caught in an explosive blast. A cup of coffee, a cup saucer, a spoon, and some of the hot beverage hang in the air around him. Jones’s head tilts to one side because of the blast, teeth clamped together, one eye squeezed shut while the other is wide open. A mixture of three colors- orange, yellow, and blue— encircle his iris. His collar is ripped apart by the force. The one question on this page that writer Deniz Camp asks us is “*Why do people do the things they do?*” So far, we’ve seen four Absolute titles— *Batman*, *Wonder Woman*, *Superman*, and *Flash* (with *Green Lantern* coming right up) but at the start, none of them have felt like Camp and Rodriguez’s premiere issue. None of them have announced themselves with a bang like this issue does. As reimaginings of old characters go, this update of the Martian Manhunter feels quite radical. This feels like something new.
This story has a familiar feel to it. An FBI agent gets caught in a blast; his superiors and his wife don’t want him anywhere near the developing case. “You’re a witness, not an investigator,” his boss tells him. And if you’ve seen any kind of cop show or procedural, you know how ineffective that kind of warning can be. So of course Jones starts investigating, talking to the suspected bomber’s mother, neighbor, and best friend. He’s an agent trying to figure out why people do the things that they do. He’s trying to put it together. But there’s something else; there are these nagging thoughts in the back of his mind, almost like he’s reading other people’s minds. He knows that the doctor who examines him is distracted because he’s thinking about his cheating mind. He knows that a rival agent calls Jones “the Martian” behind his back. He knows that the bomber’s neighbor isn’t lying about her near-daily cannabis use. And then there’s the colorful smoke that’s hanging everywhere in the air and coming out of people’s bodies that only Jones notices.
It’s as if that blast knocked Jones out of synch with the world around him. Rodriquez uses that to draw the world around Jones not as it is, but as he’s sensing it. Comics are visual; we see the page, the words, and the drawings to take in the story but Rodriguez and Camp are trying to overwhelm our visual senses to get us to experience this comic with our other senses. Rodriguez is a masterful storyteller but his use of color here takes his storytelling to another level. As Jones moves through his life, most of the colors are muted, darker, and duller colors to signify the duller and mundane portions of this life. But there are these intrusions of color that now invade his senses, in the smoke that’s hanging everywhere and follows Jones around. Eventually, even the sound that accompanies the smoke that overwhelms Jones. These colors have texture, smell, sound, and even taste to them. It’s like the blasts shook something in Jones that’s slowly waking up and making him experience the world in a way that he’s not ready for yet.
Other Camp books like *20th Century Men*, *The Ultimates*, and *Assorted Time Crisis* ask us how we see the world around us. *20th Century Men* and *The Ultimates* explore the differences between what we’re told the world is and what the world actually is. And there are elements of that in **Absolute Martian Manhunter #1** but this issue treats it more as an awakening that’s fighting Jones. “I stay awake all night, trying not to think… of the smoke… of what’s waiting for me in it…”. Jones senses there’s something not right here, that the world is changing around him and he’s fighting it even while he’s trying to figure it out. It’s not that he can’t sleep; he doesn’t want to. So instead, he’s standing outside in his yard, sucking on a cigarette and breathing out green smoke into the night air.
This comic book wants to break you down and overwhelm you. Thanks to those previous Absolute books, you may think you know what this one is but Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez make those other books look like they’re not even trying to do anything new or fresh. Camp and Rodriguez’s mission with this first issue is to knock you out of your comfort zone just as John Jones is knocked out of his. Each page of this comic comes from someplace than just another old DC comic that featured a big, green Martian. Rodriguez reshapes the world around Jones, opening new doors of perception even as Jones tries to keep his head down and just shuffle through his life. But that’s not what the voice in the back of his head is telling him to do or what his senses are letting him do. And as superhero comics go, that’s not what Camp or Rodriguez want us to do either. Why keep reading the same old stories over and over again of the rich kid, the princess, or the farm boy? The Martian Manhunter is an old character but that doesn’t mean he can’t be new again. This isn’t a superhero comic. It’s a wake-up call.
### Diamond Saved(?), The Beat Interviewed, and a Casanova update— The Comic Bookmarks March 30th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/diamond-saved-the-beat-interviewed-and-a-casanova-update-the-comic-bookmarks-march-30th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-03-30T11:27:27.000Z
Let’s just jump into the links this week, starting out with the news about Diamond Comics being acquired out of bankruptcy.
## Headlines
So let’s follow this trail.
[Alliance Entertainment to Acquire Diamond AssetsIncluding Diamond Comic Distributors, Alliance Game Distributors, Diamond Select, and CGAICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59164/alliance-entertainment-acquire-diamond-assets?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
On Tuesday, it was announced that [Alliance Entertainment](https://www.aent.com/?gad%5Fsource=1&gbraid=0AAAAADmB94GAe3jX29SxXquwnUWKLMrYg&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtJ6%5FBhDWARIsAGanmKekCDLNI6Rs18-kJ09e4Fva7DSK8v9RtDUWbWfDQlLvsS6nNOO4Y5YaAuKjEALw%5FwcB&ref=fromcovertocover.com) was set to acquire Diamond Comic Distributors through the bankruptcy auction process. Alliance Entertainment is primarily a pop culture and toy distributor. [Alliance posted a news release](https://ir.aent.com/alliance-entertainment-wins-bid-to-acquire-key-assets-from-diamond-comic-distributors/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) to their investor site which stated the following:
> “This is a transformative opportunity to expand our leadership in the world of gaming and physical collectibles and deepen our reach into thriving fan-driven categories,” said Jeff Walker, CEO of Alliance Entertainment. “With their legacy of exclusive titles, deep retail relationships, and strong presence in comics, tabletop games, and collectible merchandise, these businesses are highly complementary to our existing distribution and fulfillment model. We see powerful cross-selling potential between our product lines and customer bases, expanding the reach of our expanded product portfolio across both mass retail and specialty channels.”
[Introduction to Alliance Entertainment History, Operations, FinancialsAnd a Look at What’s NextICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59167/introduction-alliance-entertainment-history-operations-financials?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
At his site ICv2, Milton Griepp provided a nice into to the new kids on the block. Here’s an interesting nugget from that piece:
> In terms of independent stores, Alliance Entertainment currently sells to over 2,500 independent retailers, while Diamond and Alliance together service around 5,000, so with limited overlap, the acquisition can roughly triple the number of independent retailers the company services.
Pure speculation but I wonder if this means that we could see more distribution possibilities instead of less for comics? Trying to be optimistic here.
[Back-Up Bidders in Place; Comic Suppliers Absent from Contracts Assumed; MoreDiamond Bankruptcy Round-UpICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/59178/back-up-bidders-place-comic-suppliers-absent-contracts-assumed-more?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Image Comics Files an Objection to Diamond’s Acquisition - Graphic PolicyAs we said, there’s a long way to go before things are completely settled.Graphic PolicyBrett](https://graphicpolicy.com/2025/03/26/image-comics-files-an-objection-to-diamonds-acquisition/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And then things started to get really interesting on Wednesday. Image Comics filed an objection to this acquisition for reasons (still owed money by Diamond seeming to be one of the key reasons.)
It’s been fairly quiet since then, at leaset as far as I can see. It‘s still a few weeks until the acquisition is scheduled to be finalized so we’ll see what happens between now and then.
[Giants of UK Comics Industry join forces to build UK into a ‘Global Comics Superpower’ through Comic Book UK a new trade associationNew trade association to promote British comic industry launchesdownthetubes.netJohn Freeman](https://downthetubes.net/giants-of-uk-comics-industry-join-forces-to-build-uk-into-a-global-comics-superpower-through-comic-book-uk-a-new-trade-association/?ref=fromcovertocover.com#google%5Fvignette)
An interesting move by a number of UK publishers. It will be interesting to see what this group can accomplish.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
I don’t know if I’ve quite wrapped my head around who or what Prana: Direct Market Solutions is but I’ve enjoyed the industry view that Atom! Freeman presents of all aspects of comics, including comics journalism.
In one interview with her, Freeman covers everything that’s great about MacDonald and The Beat and some of my own personal frustrations with The Beat. Now obviously, it operates in a different stratosphere than I do but I always bristle a bit when the conversation about comic journalism slides into being a discussion about comics marketing and the role that journalistic sites play into that. Again, it’s more of a personal thing, a discussion about scale, reach, and aims of what journalism needs to be. And also what journalism needs to do to survive in today’s environment. The Beat is one of the best sites out there and gets held to a high standard.
> 📢 So excited to announce the amazing recipients of 2025's Comics Criticism Mini Grant Award! A big round of applause to @silenttt.bsky.social Matt Ledger, @hecuba.bsky.social @JSeanHarrison.bsky.social @bjkicks.bluesky.social @lydiaturner97.bsky.social @arpadokay.bsky.social @cacomixpod.bsky.social
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v5p6r3xrhqzuaq5pqh3umobv/post/3ll5gwtaqsm2k?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Tiffany Babb @ AWP/Ontario Book Fair/WonderCon ([@explodingarrow.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v5p6r3xrhqzuaq5pqh3umobv?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [March 24, 2025 at 2:01 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v5p6r3xrhqzuaq5pqh3umobv/post/3ll5gwtaqsm2k?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Business**
Getting back to the news of the week, Alliance‘s chairman Bruce Ogilvie appeared on a retailer YouTube show this week. If you don’t want to watch 2 hour video, Heidi MacDonald reports on the video over at The Beat.
[Alliance chairman Bruce Ogilvie on the Diamond purchase: this wasn’t about the comicsAlliance Entertainment chairman Bruce Ogilvie spoke with a panel of retailers and gave the whys and hows of their Diamond Comics purchaseThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/alliance-chairman-bruce-ogilvie-on-the-diamond-purchase-this-wasnt-about-the-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And my previous optimism died a bit by reading this quote in MacDonald’s piece:
> “I haven’t spoken with the \[Diamond\] team yet because we’re not allowed to but I want to hear what they say and what we can do to fix this business. I just know how it is currently being run is not working. From everything I’ve read and been hearing, there’s just not enough volume for the labor involved. We don’t like to sell $5 cds and dvds. We can’t make any money on it. We want to sell $20 products. That’s the challenge because the labor cost and the freight cost just sucks all the profit out of it. We have a 95 cents rule – if we can’t make 95 cents moving through our warehouse, we have to make a minimum because that’s what it costs to move things through.”
Not that things can’t get better, particularly as Diamond has been a much smaller piece of the Direct Market now than they were even 5 years ago.
## **The Funny Pages**
[Oh, I’m Just a $5 Bill and Other ComicsComics by Eli Valley and more about the times we’re in.In These Times](https://inthesetimes.com/article/comics-art-eli-valley-jen-sorensen-mutual-aid?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[Off Panel #492: No Rain with Matt Fraction - SKTCHDWriter Matt Fraction joins the show to chat about the past few years of his life as a writer and storyteller. Fraction discusses what exactly happened to Matt Fraction, how we perceived creators, the Monarch: Legacy of Monsters experience, what he missed about comics, collaboration and control, what made their approach on AdventureMan the right … ContinuedSKTCHDmark1](https://sktchd.com/podcast/off-panel-492-no-rain-with-matt-fraction/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Over at SKTCHD, David Harper interviewed Matt Fraction on his seeming return to comics even though he never really went anywhere. It’s a good interview even if Fraction sounds kind of tired through the whole thing.
When I saw that Harper had published this interview, I really hoped that there would be something about my favorite Fraction book *Casanova* in there somewhere. And there was but it made me just a bit more sad.
> “But also, I was never not working on Casanova when I was at Marvel, and I would get that thrown at me, like, when are you going to do more Casanova? I'm always doing Casanova. When are people going to buy it?
> We've never made money on that book. I love it. We have never made a fucking dime on that book.
> I'm sorry, I have kids that need to- and that's the reality of, we were never not doing it. It's just how much can you focus on or whatever, right?”
(transcript from Apple’s Podcast app.)
[Interview: Kieron Gillen on the Ethics of Superpowers in THE POWER FANTASY - FreaksugarWhat if there was a cold war not of weapons, but of extra-powered people? Not of Superpowers as countries, but Superpowers in the form of a handful of people? How would their very existence impact the world? What would happen if these Superpowers collided? To what ends would these beings go to avoid conflict? What …FreaksugarJed W. Keith](https://www.freaksugar.com/interview-kieron-gillen-on-the-ethics-of-superpowers-in-the-power-fantasy/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Interviews with Kieron Gillen are almost as much fun as books written by Kieron Gillen.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Murderers’ Row - Dwayne Turner - The Comics JournalThe Ballad of Dwayne Turner, researched, written and performed by Tegan O’Neil.The Comics JournalTegan O’Neil](https://www.tcj.com/murderers-row-dwayne-turner/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
O’Neil profiles a comic artist from a different age. I really remember him from *Sovereign Seven*, the first ongoing series Chris Claremont wrote after his less-than-austere book from the X books.
> TUSK! solrad.co
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6yyv4zirfae6hq2yyska4qjn/post/3ll3b6g7cbc2a?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — SOLRAD Magazine ([@solrad.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6yyv4zirfae6hq2yyska4qjn?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [March 23, 2025 at 5:12 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6yyv4zirfae6hq2yyska4qjn/post/3ll3b6g7cbc2a?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> I came for the comics but stay for the Buckingham.
>
> — Scott Cederlund ([@scottcederlund.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qw7jyy2f77ebyozco2tvvyu?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [March 23, 2025 at 5:41 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qw7jyy2f77ebyozco2tvvyu/post/3ll3crffd6k2s?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Support the type of journalism that you want.
### The Disappearing Web, Top Selling Comics that I’ve Never Heard Of, and NFTs Are Still a Thing (?)— The Comic Bookmarks March 23rd, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-march-23rd-2025/
Last updated: 2025-03-23T11:30:15.000Z
So, it’s been a while. Over a month since the last one of these link posts but almost a month between published reviews as well. Not the track record that I really want for this site but it was probably needed. I was reading books and have stuff written down in the Notes app but for some reason, I just couldn’t sit down and hammer away at my keyboard in any kind of productive way and I just couldn’t figure out why. And then YouTube showed me the way.
Or more specifically, craftsman philosopher (there’s got to be a better description for him but I just can’t think of it right now) [Van Neistat](https://www.youtube.com/@vanneistat/videos?ref=fromcovertocover.com) published a video last month after the L.A. fires about procrastination. He talks about the tinkering state of activity (easy flow) and sitting down and writing state (hard flow) of productivity.
So I think I’ve been in the tinkering state of things for the past month and probably actually longer than that. It’s easy to read and ponder about things (Ram V‘s approach to gods or what the shifting cast of Jaime Hernandez’s stories means) than it is to sit down and actually make those ideas into something concrete. Easy vs. Hard. And then Neistat drops this knowledge toward the end of his video:
> “… tinkering helps me avoid unpleasant realities but writing helps enable us to confront unpleasant realities.”
I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of weeks. “The easy and the hard.”
I don’t know if I 100% agree with this Neistat but I like the idea of confronting unpleasant realities in the writing state. It’s there where I feel like I really make connections with a lot of the works I write about, diving into what they mean and what my experience with them is.
But then there’s the external factors of the past few months (both in the world at large and on more personal levels) where I’ve just needed to exist in that easy state, that tinkering work flow, for health and sanity. Now the question is how to find a balance in 2025 between these work flows?
## Previously on FC2C
[Back in the Day, We Used To Be Punk — on Jaime Hernandez’s Life DrawingsIs this Love and Rockets: The Next Generation or the continuation of an ongoing story that started over 40 years ago?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jaime-hernandez-life-drawings/)
[Ram V, Riccardo Federici, and Evan Cagle Build On Jack Kirby in The New Gods #3Ram V, Riccardo Federici, and Evan Cagle’s The New Gods #3 is another attempt to go back to Kirby, firmly planted in the original source, being true to it while pushing in new directions.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-new-gods-3-by-ram-v-riccardo-federici-and-evan-cagle/)
## Headlines
[British tourist detained at US border over visa released, family sayRebecca Burke, 28, was denied entry into Washington State after US immigration officials accused her of travelling on the wrong visaEvening StandardMegan Howe](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/british-tourist-rebecca-burke-detained-by-us-immigration-released-b1217295.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
You want to know what’s wrong with our immigration system? When you read about the detention that cartoonist Rebecca Burke went through after not being able to cross the U.S./Canada border, you get some idea just how the U.S. government is willing to treat people it clearly doesn’t care about.
[Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney comics are being ‘burned’ digitally as the NFT component of VeVe’s digital comics app becomes clearerYes, in 2025, someone is using the term book burning as a thing we should be happy about.PopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-marvel-star-wars-disney-veve-burning?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So much what Marvel, Disney, and VeVe are doing here is just so tone deaf to the realities of today. NFTs? Comic book ”burnings”?
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
As of Saturday afternoon, this is what you get when you go to Tom Spurgeon’s [The Comics Reporter](https://www.comicsreporter.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi?ref=fromcovertocover.com) site. I’m hoping that this is just one of those issues that happens with websites now and again. I believe Tom’s brother said that the site was going to remain up but it’s been over 5 years since passed away. At best, this is just one of those hosting blips— something going wrong that can be easily fixed and the site back up and running soon. At worst, it’s more evidence of the disappearing internet. It would be awful if The Comics Reporter and all of the writing that Tom did no longer existed.
## **Business**
[Derek Kolstad’s Sci-Fi Comic Book ‘Planet Death’ Sells 655K CopiesDerek Kolstad’s Sci-Fi Comic Book ‘Planet Death’ Sells North Of 655K CopiesDeadlineAnthony D’Alessandro](https://deadline.com/2025/03/derek-kolstad-planet-death-comic-book-sales-1236326682/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Please tell me that I’m not the only one who has never heard of this comic before this article calling out how many copies it’s set to sell to comic shops?
And then can someone explain to me why some shops are ordering so heavily on it?
Over at [SKTCHD](https://sktchd.com/column/comics-disassembled-ten-things-i-liked-or-didnt-like-from-the-past-week-in-comics-led-by-spaaaace-marvel/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), David Harper takes a stab at what’s happening here:
> It’s also a bit of gamesmanship, if only because the methods taken to get there. It’s only coming in bundles of 25, and from what I understand, those bundles are, uh, pretty deeply discounted at times. The hook for retailers is it’s a fancy book at a super low price that arrives right before Free Comic Book Day, giving them something substantial to push to folks who stop by.
## **The Funny Pages**
> Blind Alley No. 357
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v727iydwpap6tnvces2bo4gx/post/3lkvikvaixc2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — adam ([@kumerish.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v727iydwpap6tnvces2bo4gx?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [March 21, 2025 at 10:08 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v727iydwpap6tnvces2bo4gx/post/3lkvikvaixc2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[‘Almost everything I’ve done to this point has led me into this project’: An interview with Anders Nilsen - The Comics JournalIn his 2015 Comics Journal interview with Marc Sobel, Anders Nilsen said, “I am just embarking on a new graphic novel which I expect to be a long-term project. … I don’t really know where it’s going yet, but I expect it’s going to be a pretty long process, though hopefully not fifteen years again... Read more »The Comics JournalJason Bergman](https://www.tcj.com/almost-everything-ive-done-to-this-point-has-led-me-into-this-project-an-interview-with-anders-nilsen/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’m currently reading Nielsen’s **Tongues Volume 1**. Somehow, he’s an artist that I haven’t engaged with much even though he’s got quite a notable library of books.
[Emma Rios : « Je ne veux pas croire que l’homme soit violent par nature » | BoDoï, explorateur de bandes dessinées - Infos BD, comics, mangasEt si un autre monde post-apo était possible, qui rejetterait la violence et la peur de l’autre comme seules alternatives au désespoir ? C’est un des sujetBoDoï, explorateur de bandes dessinées – Infos BD, comics, mangasGuillaume Regourd](https://www.bodoi.info/emma-rios-je-ne-veux-pas-croire-que-lhomme-soit-violent-par-nature/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
An interview with Emma Rios about her excellent book **Anzuelo**.
> “As I was trying to create something very dark, the watercolor offered a very interesting contrast by the softness it brings. This **sweetness** sticks with the kindness of children. **But it also makes it possible to make violence, when it arises, even more noticeable**. When I pop pressed reds, they stand out all the better in the middle of an unsaturated general palette.
> Watercolor also agrees with water as the main theme in the book. I wanted a very free style, with very untied double pages, a work that is also more permissive, which requires less precision than the one I can impose on myself when I work with ink. **But watercolor is a very difficult technique, which can be very treacherous. It creates an illusion of control but it actually requires a lot of training.** It's a whole learning process and that's why I say this book has changed me. **When I finished it, I compared the first and last pages, and I completely panicked.**”
(translated via Safari’s built-in translator)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Absolute Batman #6 wraps the first arc and leaves us wondering about the baby suit - COMICSXFBruce lays siege to Black Mask’s yacht to try to stop the chaos he has started in Gotham in DC’s Absolute Batman #6.COMICSXFMatthew Lazorwitz and Will Nevin](https://comicsxf.com/2025/03/21/absolute-batman-6/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think I’m a bit surprised at the tone of this review from Matt Lazorwitz and Will Nevin. I’m still processing this first arc of the story and a bit of that is trying to wrap my head around what Snyder and Dragotta are doing here. I actually wasn’t that thrilled when the series first came out so I feel I’ve had a bit of the opposite trajectory than they have had with this series.
> Now that the Nice House by the Sea #6, our mid season finale, is out and we are taking a small break I wanted to put together a thread about narrative choices, hope you find it interesting! Of course, it’s filled to the brim with SPOILERS, so be aware!
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ggdy2y5uxhvuwq5kdbo6rfrf/post/3ljtd6k7dyk2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Álvaro Martínez Bueno ([@amartinezbueno.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ggdy2y5uxhvuwq5kdbo6rfrf?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [March 7, 2025 at 7:02 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ggdy2y5uxhvuwq5kdbo6rfrf/post/3ljtd6k7dyk2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A fantastic thread by Álvaro Martínez Bueno on the narrative decisions he makes as a storyteller. Remember, the artist is also the co-author of the comic.
[In The Doom Patrol, Nobody Is Only One ThingBy Steve Morris In the hands of writers like Grant Morrison and Rachel Pollack, The Doom Patrol were turned from a forgotten Silver Age comic serial into an aggressively progressive Vertigo Comics …ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2025/03/19/in-the-doom-patrol-nobody-is-only-one-thing/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
If all you know if more modern runs of The Doom Patrol (anything Morrison and after,) you need to check out these original comics.
[Trade Rating: THE DALGODA OMNIBUS revives a forgotten ’80s sci-fi gemThe Dalgoda Omnibus is an excellent restoration of these comics, which are among the best sci-fi stories of the 1980s.The BeatZack Quaintance](https://www.comicsbeat.com/trade-rating-the-dalgoda-omnibus-revives-a-forgotten-80s-sci-fi-gem/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I love seeing 1980s comics like Dalgoda getting collected. These are part of the history of comics.
### Back in the Day, We Used To Be Punk — on Jaime Hernandez’s Life Drawings
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jaime-hernandez-life-drawings/
Last updated: 2025-03-21T03:12:57.000Z
After many years of Gilbert Hernandez using his *Love and Rockets* pages to tell the multi-generational story of Palomar and its descendants, his brother Jaime appears to be following a bit in his path as teenager Tonta crosses path with Maggie and steps fully into the *Locas* stories (i.e. the Maggie and Hopey ones) in Jaime’s newest book, **Life Drawing**. Tonta is a mixed-up kid, the sister of Maggie’s ex/rival Vivian Solis (the Frogmouth) and their mother who may have killed a couple of her past husbands, including Tonta’s father. Because of that, she’s bounced around between her two older sisters, neither of whom are great role models for the young girl. Tonta has started to make friends at a new school but it’s the drawing class taught by Maggie’s longtime boyfriend Ray Dominguez where she finds a spark of life as she develops a crush on the teacher. And hey, Vivian once dated Ray as well. Welcome to the messed up world that Tonta lives in.
It’s not like Hernandez is moving on from Maggie and Hopey but he’s exploring more of the world around them. Tonta is the bull in the China shop when it comes to how she reacts to anyone who isn’t family. The first time she meets Maggie outside of drawing class, she accuses Maggie of stealing a summer hat that Tonta gave to a second-hand store and she wants it back. Tonta and her protective friend Judy Fair assault this poor woman who’s sitting on the lawn, just trying to read a book under a hat that she bought. But Tonta’s anger shifts into this truly frightening gear as she tries to bully Maggie to give her the hat. “… and then all of a sudden, I’m being threatened by these two teenage gun molls all because they thought I stole their stupid fucking beach hat…!” Maggie tells Hopey over the phone later on. It’s easy to see that for Tonta, this was an attempt to control her environment the way that she’s seen her sisters try to do and poor Maggie just happened to be in Tonta’s way.
From that first encounter though develops a really sweet friendship between Maggie and Tonta. For Tonta, it’s shifting a bit of her crush from Ray to Maggie but for Maggie, it’s being able to be protective of Tonta in a maternal way. She sees it as an older sister/younger sister relationship, but much healthier than Tonta’s relationship with her real sisters. On one level, you could see this story as the new generation (Tonta, Judy Fair, and their other friends) taking over the story and there is some truth there. But a lot of it is just Hernandez’s flair for character; no one is ever a bit character in a Jaime Hernandez story. So Tonta, Judy, and all the rest get real personalities and development whenever they show up on the page. Hernandez has always had these kinds of characters around Maggie and Hopey, ones who are deep enough to be the main characters in their own stories (such as Penny Century) but who are so tied into Maggie’s overarching narrative that they can’t help but be supporting characters. It’s ultimately Maggie’s story but there’s room for other rich characters around her to have their time to flourish.
But Tonta is so much more than just a supporting character in someone else’s life and maybe, just maybe, she’s the new center of Hernandez’s comics; the new focus of the *Locas* cycle. It’s still a bit too early to tell. Whether this is a reorienting of his comics or just a different turn in Maggie’s life, Hernandez’s storytelling still feels like the continuing adventures of this area of Southern California that he chronicling for over 40 years. It’s just the continuing life of these stories. It seems fairly effortless on his part to just move in this direction but after[*The Love Bunglers*](https://www.panelpatter.com/2014/05/third-verse-different-than-first-love.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*,* it just felt like a certain era of Maggie’s life had closed. What was there left to tell in the multi-decade ballad that was Maggie’s life? That’s not to say that there aren’t stories still there but Maggie exhibited a sense of stability in life that had never been there before. There are still some weird things happening (the Frogmouth getting married and essentially becoming part of the family) but Maggie had grown up. Maybe the *Love and Rockets* stories should be about growing up and not about being grown up. Enter Tonta and her friends.
After 40 years of telling these stories, there’s an ease to Hernandez’s artwork. His lines and his drawings appear effortless as they tell these gripping and often crushing stories. Every line in every panel is part of the story, establishing the tone of the scene. The artist Jaime doesn’t get in the way of Jaime, the storyteller. No mark on the page is wasted because Hernandez is so focused on the story. In the recently released *Love and Rockets #16*, Jaime’s contribution is his sci-fi story “Animus” and in that story, we see the artist having fun with his story, leading the story more than in **Life Drawing** where the storyteller is leading the artist. Both are pure but in “Animus,” Hernandez’s drawings lean heavily on the spectacle whereas in **Life Drawing**, the art is about the characters and their acting, the ways that they bring the story to life.
When he’s in this mode of storytelling, his focus is on the characters, their weight, their movement, and their relationships in the space they occupy. That’s why we fell in love with Maggie and Hopey all those years ago and that’s why we learn to care for Tonta and her friends. You have a character like Vivian, who is this wall of anger and jealousy. She’s been a foil for Maggie in the past. In many ways, she’s the villain tormenting both Maggie and Tonta. But Hernandez draws out of her a vulnerability that can pop up now and again. In this book, he uses Vivian sparingly but when she’s on the page, she commands your attention like almost no other character does. It’s like she’s not of this world so when she shows up, you can’t help but be mesmerized by her presence. And Hernandez somehow pulls this off without obviously calling attention to what he’s doing. You only realize it afterward.
After forty years, we know these characters. We know Maggie, Hopey, and Ray; what more is there to learn about them? Jaime Hernandez’s **Life Drawings** shows us that he has so much more to do with these characters and the city they live in. There’s always some new damaged soul that can get pulled in by Maggie’s unexplainable gravity. And there’s something about those souls that gets to Maggie. Years ago, we saw it with Vivian and now we’re seeing it with her sister Tonta. A way to read both Jaime and Gilbert’s work is to see that life moves on. There’s no such thing as staying static in these comics; there’s always someone new to turn up and turn the world upside down.
### Ram V, Riccardo Federici, and Evan Cagle Build On Jack Kirby in The New Gods #3
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-new-gods-3-by-ram-v-riccardo-federici-and-evan-cagle/
Last updated: 2025-02-21T04:20:35.000Z
Often, The New Gods comics feel like they’re trying to outdo Jack Kirby, to one-up the King. But they try to do this by imitating Kirby. John Byrne has taken a couple of runs at Kirby’s creations but when you look at his *Jack Kirby’s Fourth World*, it reads more like the work of an acolyte instead of a creator. Somehow that approach worked when Byrne took on *The Fantastic Four*, taking on a back-to-basics approach (where the basics were named Lee and Kirby,) building something fresh out from the seeds planted long before him. But when he tried that with *The Fourth World*, his work ended up being derivative, never able to rise above his influences.
Grant Morrison tried to redefine the New Gods for the 21st century in *Final Crisis* but nothing he did ever seemed solid enough to have any permanence. The past 45 years are littered with tepid attempts to revitalize Kirby’s most esoteric creations. Walter Simonson’s *Orion* and Tom King and Mitch Gerard’s *Mister Miracle* showed the richness of these mythical beings, taking everything that Kirby did and finding new stories for these characters. They showed that new things could be done with these creations.
Art by Riccardo Federici
So in many ways, Ram V, Riccardo Federici, and Evan Cagle’s **The New Gods #3** is another attempt to go back to Kirby, firmly planted in the original source, being true to it while pushing in new directions. With Federici on art, Ram V tells a whole new myth about the last days of the Second World and the gods who were there for that ending. These sibling gods are so much more alien than Kirby’s gods but so much more human as well. Ram V leans into Federichi’s austere visuals to expand on the old stories and create the mythology that characters like Darkseid, Orion, and Mister Miracle come out of. It’s additive to Kirby’s storytelling, building on it rather than trying to rebuild it.
This story of these elder gods of the gods that we know sets up the new conflict that V and Cagle have been slowly introducing since the first issue. And like Kirby, V and Federici tap into the humanity of these Second World gods., almost religious, The reason that Kirby’s original stories worked is that his cast was full of colorful, intriguing, and relatable characters. They were gods but they had daddy issues or were trying to find a new life away from their fate or destiny. They were high and lofty but they were down in the gutters with us. V and Federici can find that equilibrium between godhood and relatability with these new gods.
Art by Evan Cagle and Francesco Segala
Cagle only has a couple of pages in this issue but his sequences bring this cosmic story back down to earth, focused on Mister Miracle, Big Barda, their daughter Liz, and Oberon, one of the best sidekicks in all of comics. Where the Federici pages are lofty, Cagle’s pages are personable, full of warm banter, and live between these characters. V writes these sequences for both artists to show the scope of this story. The parts of the Second World gods are mythic, almost religious, while the story of Mister Miracle is a blending of superheroics and married life dramedy. Cagle also gets to like both parts of the story as the descendants of those Second World gods invade the Darkseid-less Apokolips.
Now in three issues, one of the most impressive things this series has done is to be both grand and personal. V writes on both a grand scale and simultaneously an intimate one and that’s when these characters work best. They may fight for the sake of all creation but they’re also fighting for each other. That was apparent from the first issue when Orion met Mister Miracle on a bench and Orion asked the closest thing he has to a brother to save him from himself. Each issue has just built on this, using small, personal moments to provide an emotional anchor for the grandiosity of these god-like beings. The introduction of Oberon to this issue as a sweet and caring third wheel to Mister Miracle and Big Barda is a welcome contrast to the machinations of the three Second World gods.
And then there’s Metron. He’s usually written either as an enigmatic riddle or a Greek chorus always part of but apart from the rest of the characters. He’s the observer or the one playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers. He’s doing a bit of that in this issue but he also hints at an agency in the story that he rarely possesses. Remaining true to the character, V tweaks his dialogue just enough to hint that he may be the wildcard of whatever this story turns out to be. That’s just another way how this incarnation of **The New Gods** is faithful to Kirby while trying to move forward with Kirby’s characters.
With its main artist Evan Cagle limited to only a few pages, **The New Gods #3** takes some time to provide a backstory for Ram V and Cagle to continue to build on. It introduces new elements to the New Gods’ story while it is firmly rooted in Jack Kirby’s spirit. Ram V, Riccardo Federici, and Evan Cagle's work in this issue feels new and old, grand and personal, apocalyptic but optimistic.
Cover by Nimit Malavia
### This Week in Gaiman, Diamond, Book Banning, and Joe Casey— The Comic Bookmarks February 9th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-february-9th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-02-09T12:58:55.000Z
It’s a bit of a quiet week so let’s just dive into some of what happened.
## Previously on FC2C
[“The music of the future needs a future to exist in.”— Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard’s The Power Fantasy Volume One: The SuperpowersThe question in The Power Fantasy isn’t if the world is going to end but how is it going to end?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/kieron-gillen-and-caspar-wijngaards-the-power-fantasy-volume-one-the-superpowers/)
## Headlines
[Neil Gaiman Hit With Rape & Human Trafficking Suits After Months Of Allegations; Estranged Spouse Amanda Palmer Also Named In Multi-State Filings‘Sandman’ author Neil Gaiman has been hit with rape and trafficking lawsuits months after allegations against the author arose.DeadlineDominic Patten](https://deadline.com/2025/02/neil-gaiman-rape-lawsuits-amanda-palmer-filings-1236277339/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
From everything that’s been reported, the rape lawsuit makes sense but I don’t know if we’ve talked about this from the human trafficking aspect even though it’s all right there and is equally horrifying. More and more, it looks like there are actual consequences that could take place here against Gaiman and Palmer.
[Children’s Book Council Launches Graphic Novel Advocate AwardThe inaugural CBC Graphic Novel Advocate Award has named four winners whose efforts help to maintain this format in schools, libraries, and bookstores across the country.PublishersWeekly.comPamela Brill |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/97037-children-s-book-council-launches-graphic-novel-advocate-award.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is a great way to highlight the work of people who are supporting comics in libraries and doing a lot to fight for them.
> Authors Against Book Bans responds to the DOE statement supporting book banning in American public schools
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jg7lcnh7lnlrase7v4bnbwhi/post/3lgl2ic32zx25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Authors Against Book Bans Rhode Island ([@aabbri.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jg7lcnh7lnlrase7v4bnbwhi?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 25, 2025 at 7:49 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jg7lcnh7lnlrase7v4bnbwhi/post/3lgl2ic32zx25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
In case, like me, you missed the DOE’s statement supporting book banning, here it is…
[U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban HoaxThe U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced that it has dismissed 11 complaints related to so-called “book bans.”U.S. Department of Education](https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-ends-bidens-book-ban-hoax?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A hoax? Like it isn’t happening?
## **Business**
[Dark Horse downsizesDark Horse has reportedly laid off more than a dozen staffers, as troubles at their parent company may have caught up with them.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/dark-horse-rumored-to-be-downsizing/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[UPDATED: Layoffs at IDW this week confirmedIDW Media Holdings has confirmed yet another round of layoffs, as the comics industry continues to downsize in these challenging timesThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/layoffs-at-idw-this-week-confirmed/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Two from The Beat about a couple of stalwarts of the Direct Market facing issues. IDW seems like they’re been barely hanging on for years now. And there’s been a doom-and-gloom perception of Dark Horse ever since they lost the *Star Wars* franchise that they’ve just never really been able to shake.
[A New Chapter (11) for Diamond - The Comics JournalA follow up to Diamond’s January 14, 2025 chapter 11 filing.The Comics JournalBrigid Alverson](https://www.tcj.com/a-new-chapter-11-for-diamond/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Brigid Alverson provides a thorough accounting of Diamond’s bankruptcy. What I really haven’t seen in any of the reporting around Diamond is the perspective of retailers who have stayed with Diamonds almost exclusively over the past couple of years. I know that they’re out there (or at least, they were out there,) buying wholesale as much stuff as they could but I don’t think I’ve seen any of those stores included in pieces like this.
## **The Funny Pages**
> Preacher #10\. Written by Garth Ennis, drawn by Steve Dillon (RIP), and colored by me. Vertigo. 1996\. This is a color guide, and is how most comics were colored then. Dyes & gouache. #comics #colors #vertigocomics #preacher #colorguide #chickenfucker
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p7766jagaetiipdy2pqkrj4x/post/3lhc4vusbds2y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Matt Hollingsworth ([@matthollingsworth.com](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p7766jagaetiipdy2pqkrj4x?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [February 3, 2025 at 12:04 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p7766jagaetiipdy2pqkrj4x/post/3lhc4vusbds2y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Hourly Comic Day 2025 — Lucy KnisleyLucy Knisley](https://www.lucyknisley.com/hourly-comic-day-2025?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Top Ten Comics Bill Hader Should ReadSuggestions for Bill Hader to add to his getting-back-into-comics reading list, from inside our virtual Criterion Closet.The BeatArpad Okay](https://www.comicsbeat.com/top-ten-comics-bill-hader-should-read/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Honestly, we need more pieces like this. Hader is one of those guys who seems really thoughtful on what he watches and I’d enjoy hearing him talk about some of the comics listed here. Dreaming now about him talking about Ronald Wemberly’s *Prince of Cats* as Okay suggests here.
[Pacifists of Steel: On The Final Year of Joe Casey’s Adventures of Superman and The Limits of Superheroics in the 21st Century20 years ago today, this blog launched . It started as a group blog, but, quickly, became smaller and bigger with me taking over as the even…Chad Nevett](https://graphicontent.blogspot.com/2025/02/pacifists-of-steel-on-final-year-of-joe.html?m=1&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Congrats to Chad Nevett on 20 years of Graphic Content. I don’t think I’ve ever read Joe Casey’s Superman. Maybe I need to go back-issue diving to find it.
### “The music of the future needs a future to exist in.”— Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard’s The Power Fantasy Volume One: The Superpowers
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/kieron-gillen-and-caspar-wijngaards-the-power-fantasy-volume-one-the-superpowers/
Last updated: 2025-02-07T05:14:03.000Z
It’s the end of the world and I don’t know how I feel about that.
In **The Power Fantasy Volume One: The Super Powers** the world probably ended somewhere around 1966 but we’re all playing catch up to it. That’s when two young, super-powered beings met to discuss the fate of the world over slices of pizza. The man, around 20 years old, tells an angel “Of course, the ethical thing to do is take over the world.” That’s the kid’s great idea— take over the world to save it. Luckily, the angel Valentina talks the would-be-world-ruler Etienne into a kind of detente. Ultimately if either took a step in the wrong direction, it would most likely end in some kind of mutually assured destruction, and who knows how much of the world they would take with them. In Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard’s new book, that’s when the superpowers made their first ruling on the future of humanity and it was a thumbs up. Since that meeting over a couple of slices, the world has been living under the good graces of these two and the four other superpowers like them. But now, the world is just holding its collective breath, waiting for one of these powers to decide that they’ve had enough.
**The Power Fantasy** begins in a similar thematic range as Gillen’s *The Immortal X-Men* did a few years ago. In the final days of Jonathan Hickman’s x-reign, the mutant “utopia” Krakoa was revealed to be a lie that only the Quiet Council, the mutant rulers, knew. They kept the truth hidden rom the rest of the mutants to keep everything together. Both books have this idea of a small group with all of the power and then everyone else just living under their good graces. So on that day in 1966, the two superpowers Etienne and Valentina set themselves (and the few other superpowers) up as the true deciders of the world’s future. Like Nixon and Brezhnev, in real life, they had their fingers on the proverbial button and could press it at any moment.
Even the face of this chilling opening, Gillen and Wijngaard are trying to put forward an optimistic face. Etienne and Valentina aren’t bad guys. They’re like you and me; they like pizza. Valentina is a bit irked that she’ll be late for The Loving Spoonful (and who wouldn’t be) but hopes that she can get out of this conversation in time to catch The Beach Boys. Just like normal people. But there’s also a tiny chance that Gillen and Wijngaard aren’t being entirely optimistic. Are they just trying to ease us into what will inevitably be a tragedy? In these opening pages, we’re presented two people who might be the heroes but they could just as easily turn out to be villains of the story.
Gillen often collaborates with artists who don’t look like they’re drawing the end of the world even as the world falls apart around their characters. Wijngaard falls into this category as **The Power Fantasy Volume One** is a very stylish comic. Gillen wrote a story for Marvel comics called “Style>Substance” (the first five issues of his and Jamie McKelvie’s *Young Avengers*) and that’s a trick that he pulls off with many of his artistic partners. He hides these dark stories behind the visual sheen of pop. There’s a strong desire to compare **The Power Fantasy** with *Watchmen* and that may work on some thematic level but Wijngaard is not Dave Gibbons. He’s not working at the density that Gibbons had to so that alone makes this different., Gibbons’s art was deeply rooted in Alan Moore’s pessimism, while Wijngaard’s art reflects Gillen’s optimism.
Wijngaard’s art isn’t all sunshine and puppies and we’re all going to live through this with the promise of no scars. Wijngaard takes us to some dark places in **The Power Fantasy Volume One**. Just the way that we see these superpowers lash out when they feel threatened makes clear the hierarchy of control in this world. The United States acts on a threat and suddenly a large chunk of the government is killed without ever being physically touched, just to preserve some kind of equilibrium over the world. Or was it to remind humanity who’s the boss while the adults work take care of everything? Etienne acts like a man of principles; he talks about ethics, regrets, and missed chances. But when push comes to shove, his actions wipe out any agency that humanity has. And the other superpowers support those actions.
Since that night in 1966 when Etienne and Valentina discussed the fate of humanity, Gillen and Wijngaard focus on that power that these people have held onto for ages. There are people with lesser powers in the world and even they live in the shadow of six people. It’s not like these superpowers are the best of us— other than Valentina and Etienne, the other superpowers demonstrate at least some small bits of humility and self-awareness but everyone still knows the position they possess in the societal ladder. A philosopher, an angel, a demon, an artist, an anarchist, and a hippie (weirdly I don’t know if the final superpower lends himself easily to a one-word descriptor so we’ll go with “hippie”) are what stands in for governments in this story. Don’t piss any of them off or else.
The fourth chapter focuses on the artist Masumi. In some ways, she’s the most delicate- the soul of an artist and all that. But under that surface dwells a monster. Even the other superpowers tread carefully around her, afraid to disappoint her by missing an exhibit opening. Etienne, the most wanted man in the world, crosses the globe to be there for her. He, Valentina, and the hippie Brother Ray put aside their differences for one night because of her. Masumi’s girlfriend Isabella is right by her side the whole time, sharing the exciting news of a great review. All this to try to contain and protect one of the six superpowered beings who could control (or end) the world.
And that’s just one of them. They’re scared of each other so imagine how the rest of the world must feel. That’s just the surface that Gillen and Wijngaard’s **The Power Fantasy Volume One: The Superpowers** scratches. They are building this story in layers, with each layer being a revelation about one of the characters or about an event that they’ve experienced in the world. That’s a balance that they’re trying to find, feeding their audience information in bits and pieces. It’s a way to keep that audience engaged with every few pages offering some new tidbits about a person or an event. It’s also letting the audience live in this world a bit, finding out something and then being able to sit with it for a while before the next revelation. Every chapter and every few pages adds another layer; even by the end of the book, we’ve still only seen the top layers and it feels like there’s so much more room in this story for us to discover new things in future books.
Collects ****The Power Fantasy** issues 1-5
### On Substack, Diamond, AI, and Decentralized Comic Events- The Comic Bookmarks February 2nd, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-february-2nd-2025/
Last updated: 2025-02-02T13:37:54.000Z
[The fight for free speech in 2025 and beyondOn Substack’s ongoing commitment to freedom of the pressSubstack ReadsChris Best](https://read.substack.com/p/the-fight-for-free-speech-in-2025)
When we launched FC2C back in 2021, I was looking for a platform to publish on and Substack seemed to be one of the ones to use but I just couldn’t get beyond some of the choices of who they decided to compensate to help highlight their system. It never seemed to be a “freedom of speech” decision for them but who had the audience that they could bring with them to Substack.
Remember when a couple of years ago all of those comic creators launched Substacks and that was going to be the next great revolution in comics?
That’s not to say that there aren’t good writers (both morally and stylistically) on Substack but when the co-founder and CEO of Substack says Elon Musk “deserves a lot of credit for advancing freedom of speech on X…” you do just have to laugh a bit at that statement.
As far as I can tell, there are still a lot of comic creators and fans on Substack and on X. You do have agency on there and do send messages to those owners every time you check into their systems. They see that engagement and check it as a positive whether or not you see it that way. That’s why I left X and Facebook last year.
Right now, there’s only one Substack that I check out on the regular and that’s historian Heather Cox Richardson‘s. Occasionally I’ll also click on a link from there but that’s about it. There are so many other alternatives to the digital media that appear to be kowtowing to the current administration. Find them. Use them.
## Headlines
[OpenAI trying to contain major media copyright suit in IndiaOpenAI trying to contain major media copyright suit in IndiaAV ClubEmma Keates](http://bit.ly/42COQbh?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
All AI news is probably worth linking to right now so here’s a piece from the AV Club about a copyright lawsuit in India. As the article opens with, this is a global issue as these training modules are essentially just gobbling up anything in their way to feel their AI.
> OpenAI right now
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qvzn322kmcvd7xtnips5xaun/post/3lgvsj6aqd22i?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — John Scalzi ([@scalzi.com](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qvzn322kmcvd7xtnips5xaun?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 29, 2025 at 2:26 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qvzn322kmcvd7xtnips5xaun/post/3lgvsj6aqd22i?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Why Simon & Schuster’s Flagship Imprint Won’t Require Blurbs AnymoreIn a decision some might call “stunning” or a “tour-de-force,” new S&S publisher Sean Manning has decided to no longer require authors to obtain blurbs for their books. Here’s why.PublishersWeekly.comSean Manning |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/96957-why-simon-schuster-s-flagship-imprint-won-t-require-blurbs-anymore.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Have you ever looked at blurbs for comics in press releases or on the back covers of collected editions? They’re often meaningless. “The type of comic that good comics want to be.” “A fantastic cross between White Lotus and Caillou.” Things that could be said about any number of books.
[Angoulême 2025 : le palmarès | BoDoï, explorateur de bandes dessinées - Infos BD, comics, mangasEt le Fauve d’or est…BoDoï, explorateur de bandes dessinées – Infos BD, comics, mangasBenjamin Roure](https://www.bodoi.info/angouleme-2025-le-palmares/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I love that “Fauve d’honneur” is being translated into “Beast of Honor” by iOS‘s Safari translation and that John Romita Jr. Is being called a “beast.”
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
## **Business**
[BOOM! Studios Accelerates Move to PRH for DistroIn Wake of Diamond Chapter 11ICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/58688/boom-studios-accelerates-move-prh-distro?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This was already in the works after [Penguin Random House acquired Boom! Studios](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/57809/random-house-completes-boom-acquisition?ref=fromcovertocover.com) last fall but PRH has moved up their distribution plans from July to April. This week was full of some other publishers (see next link) announcing distribution plans due to the Diamond Chapter 11 filings.
[More publishers announce changes after Diamond bankruptcyBlack Panel Press, Coffin Comics and Antarctic Press announce changes in the wake of the Diamond bankruptcy and proposed sale.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/more-publishers-announce-changes-after-diamond-bankruptcy/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
In many ways, I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen just without Diamond’s demise. We’ve all known that the direct market has been broken since the 1990s but it has zombie-like rambled on, held up largely by Diamond. Now that Diamond is fighting for its own life, it seems irrelevant as market forces have already changed and severed their reliance on Diamond.
[Diamond warns of layoffs and Hunt Valley headquarters closure by April 1 - Graphic PolicyThe April 1 deadline feels like a new piece of information.Graphic PolicyBrett](https://graphicpolicy.com/2025/01/28/diamond-warns-of-layoffs-and-hunt-valley-headquarters-closure-by-april-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It’s getting a bit hard to see how Diamond comes out of this in the next 2 months. This has been something that’s been building for at least 4+ years, since DC left Diamond for Lunar. It also sounds like they’ve been in the process of trying to find a buyer since last September or October and, to date, there has been no news about their U.S. services being sold off.
There’s still time for something to happen here but it seems clear that the direct market is going to look different by the 2nd half of the year than it does now, or even a few months ago.
## **The Funny Pages**
> A small reminder that Paul Kirchner's THE BUS strip is one of the finest examples ever of the possibilities of the language of comics as a form and you should absolutely try and hunt down the two collections.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:thna256vkp54x4l7czr2gamg/post/3lgsqgeetr22o?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Andy Oliver ([@andywpoliver.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:thna256vkp54x4l7czr2gamg?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 28, 2025 at 9:10 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:thna256vkp54x4l7czr2gamg/post/3lgsqgeetr22o?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve never seen these before but will be taking on Andy’s advice and trying to find them.
## **Interviews**
## **Reviews & Features**
[Comic Events and Neurodivergence by Samuel Edme - SOLRADToday on SOLRAD, we feature an essay by SOLRAD newcomer, Samuel Edme, on attending comic events as a neurodivergent person on the autism spectrum.SOLRADSamuel Edme](https://solrad.co/comic-events-and-neurodivergence-by-samuel-edme?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This article by Samuel Edme explores the benefits of a comic convention that’s not limited to just one space or location, looking at how CXC in Columbus, OH, features a decentralized plan for its events.
[Rachel Johnson: I broke the Neil Gaiman story, but I never wanted him cancelledWhen I got first an Instagram message, then a long email, from a young Kiwi called Scarlett back in October 2023, alleging an unnamed British author was a “predator “and “despot”, only one man’s name came to mind.Evening StandardRachel Johnson](https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/neil-gaiman-accusations-new-york-magazine-article-scarlett-pavlovich-b1207406.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Recently I’ve usually had anything related to Gaiman under the ***News*** heading but this piece by by Rachel Johnson, one of the hosts of [The Master: the Allegations against Neil Gaiman](https://lnk.to/NG-Master?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (the podcast that originally contained the allegations against Gaiman) feels less like news and more like something else. As far as I know, this is the first time anyone from the podcast or related to Tortoise Media has really said anything about their reporting from the summer of 2024\. But it is strange how she tries to backpedal from all of the backlash that Gaiman is now facing, isn’t it?
> Our intention with Master was to probe the greyest of grey areas – allegations of [sexual abuse](https://www.standard.co.uk/topic/sexual-abuse?ref=fromcovertocover.com) within an otherwise consensual relationship.
And maybe there’s something to that intention but you used one of the most popular authors of modern fantasy to do it? What did you expect?
[Absolute Wonder Woman #1-3 - The Comics JournalSo, yes, I have wrestled with the Wonder Woman. Not a pastime I’ve sought, over the years. It seems I am only ever interested in Wonder Woman when she’s someone other than Wonder Woman. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to wake up on the shores of middle age encumbered by the realization that I was... Read more »The Comics JournalTegan O’Neil](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/absolute-wonder-woman-1-3/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think I come to Wonder Woman from the same direction as O’Neil does. I’ve just realized lately that I love Wonder Woman stories but don’t know if I love the character or any of her series. But I am a fan of O’Neil’s writing.
[Spawn de Replay #10: IgnoringBy Steve Morris Personal choice: I’ve never read any of Cerebus, and I don’t see why I’d ever bother with it. By all accounts – in particular accounts from liberals and left…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2025/01/29/spawn-de-replay-10-ignoring/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I keep on meaning to do a reread of Cerebus, maybe just the good parts (and I’ll leave it to you to define what those are.). But it’s also hard to argue with pieces like this. Why should people care? We’ll be saying the same thing (if we already aren’t) about Sandman and Planetary. Cerebus walked so that DMZ could run. And DMZ even got a television season long after it should have.
> Commit the sin of empathy.
>
> — Evan Dorkin ([@evandorkin.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:af3pkeo47zrhiyk3tx7jgaf4?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 24, 2025 at 8:40 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:af3pkeo47zrhiyk3tx7jgaf4/post/3lgjv3cguck2z?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Be like Evan Dorkin.
### Jules Fieffer, more on Diamond’s Bankruptcy, Angoulême Pre-Reads, and More— The Comic Bookmarks January 26th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-january-26th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-01-26T12:05:46.000Z
I’ve got a head cold so not in the headspace to ramble on here so lets’ just dive into the links for the week. Hopefully, I’ll be back next week with the usual rambling.
## Previously on FC2C
[Taking the Plunge into Paul Chadwick’s Concrete: DepthThe story of a man whose brain has been put into an alien body is the stuff of B-level science fiction, the b/w movies that we used to be able to watch on Saturday afternoons. And there’s plenty of that in Concrete: Depth but it’s not the only type of story that Paul Chadwick wants to tell.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/paul-chadwick-concrete-depth-review/)
## Headlines
[Writer, cartoonist Jules Feiffer dies at 95 - The Comics JournalAfter drawing and writing everything there was to draw and write, Jules Feiffer passed away at the age of 95.The Comics JournalMichael Dean](https://www.tcj.com/writer-cartoonist-jules-feiffer-passes-away-at-95/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
One of the truly great cartoonists of 20th century has passed left us.
> I recently participated in this @fastcompany.com roundtable interview about political cartooning in a broken media landscape. I have to say, the sample art that they chose from my comic for the feature image is perfectly timed. (Paywalled, but you can view intro) www.fastcompany.com/91262247/i-w...
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ro3ei2p7enbhdksdkcyzwtxf/post/3lgbqi4dcwk2u?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Jen Sorensen ([@jensorensen.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ro3ei2p7enbhdksdkcyzwtxf?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 21, 2025 at 2:56 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ro3ei2p7enbhdksdkcyzwtxf/post/3lgbqi4dcwk2u?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A fantastic interview with Barry Blitt, Josh Ohman, and Jen Sorensen about the current state of the business of editorial cartooning.
> Dark Horse takes seriously the allegations against Neil Gaiman and we are no longer publishing his works. Confirming that the Anansi Boys comic series and collected volume have been cancelled.
>
> — Dark Horse Comics ([@darkhorse.com](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3jppdbsku7tv2gznttxs3uzn?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 24, 2025 at 8:50 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3jppdbsku7tv2gznttxs3uzn/post/3lgjvoljqp227?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
That’s to be expected.
[Angoulême 2025 : l’organisation du Festival à nouveau sur la (...) - ActuaBDÀ quatre mois du renouvellement de son contrat avec l’association qui en détient la licence d’exploitation, 9eArt+, la société qui gère le Festival International d’Angoulême de la bande dessinée (FIBD), dirigée par son délégué général Franck (...)ActuaBD](https://www.actuabd.com/Angouleme-2025-l-organisation-du-Festival-a-nouveau-sur-la-sellette?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Grand Prix d’Angoulême 2025 : Catherine Meurisse, Alison Bechdel et Anouk Ricard en lice | BoDoï, explorateur de bandes dessinées - Infos BD, comics, mangasQui succédera à Posy Simmonds ? Réponse le 29 janvier.BoDoï, explorateur de bandes dessinées – Infos BD, comics, mangasBenjamin Roure](https://www.bodoi.info/grand-prix-dangouleme-2025-catherine-meurisse-alison-bechdel-et-anouk-ricard-en-lice/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Angoulême 2025, retour sur une très belle sélection pour la 52e édition du 30 janvier au 2 févrierOn ne va pas bouder notre plaisir. On a suffisamment dit que la sélection officielle des albums en lic au Festival d’Angoulême ne reflétait pas vraimentLigne ClaireJean-Laurent Truc](https://www.ligneclaire.info/angouleme-2025-691377.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A trio of Angoulême stories, including the 3 finalists for this year’s Grand Prix. That festival kicks off this week.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
## **Business**
[The OTHER Diamond Comics is going strong in IndiaThere is ANOTHER Diamond Comics and it’s India’s largest comics publisher, I learned this week, among other thingsThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/india-diamond-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Never knew that there was another Diamond Comics in the distribution business.
And speaking of Diamond…
[The rise and fall of a Maryland-based comic distributor monopolyHunt Valley’s Diamond Comic Distributors had a monopoly in the industry, yet slip-ups during the pandemic and delayed deliveries pushed it into bankruptcy last week.Baltimore BannerHayes Gardner](https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/economy/diamond-comic-distributors-bankruptcy-CO3B257F4FGQFFRQFBCRZV6PFY/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And I know that there’s any number of places I could go to get Brian Hibbs’ thoughts on this but to bring him into this piece at the end and have him drop a bomb like Diamond’s bankruptcy is “cataclysmic” and then not to into the whys and wherefores of that statement really feels like hit-and-run journalism.
## **Interviews**
[HELLBOY Creator Mike Mignola Talks His Creepy New Graphic Novel, BOWLING WITH CORPSESHellboy creator Mike Mignola talks about creating an all-new supernatural world in Bowling with Corpses and Other Strange Tales from Lands Unknown.NerdistEric Diaz](https://nerdist.com/article/mike-mignola-interview-bowling-with-corpses-hellboy-creator/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Considering that Mignola “retired” a number of years ago to paint and do whatever, I’m thrilled there’s a new and fresh book from him.
[A Chat with Lena Atanassova, Editor-in-Chief of TOKYOPOPRebecca Silverman talks to Atanassova about her history with TOKYOPOP, the publisher’s LGBTQ+ imprints, and how they’re trying to maintain readers’ trust.Anime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2025-01-24/a-chat-with-lena-atanassova-editor-in-chief-of-tokyopop/.219230?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Honestly, Tokyopop isn’t on my radar right now— too much had history surrounding the brand. But I do like that Atanassova addresses that in this piece.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Reflecting On My Relationship with Comics In 2024A reflection upon comics, politics, and just where I’m atRitesh BabuJoe McCulloch](https://riteshbabu.net/2025/01/20/reflecting-on-my-relationship-with-comics-in-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This piece is written by Ritesh Babu, not Joe McColloch (although McColloch is referenced so maybe there’s where this bookmark is picking up his name.
Here’s a tough read by Ritesh Babu. Not tough as in it’s not well written but tough because it‘s making us (particularly those of us in the United States, I think) examine the damage we’ve done in the world. And Babu brings that up because it has impacted his connection to comics in the past year.
I just reread the piece as I’m writing this. Trump talks a lot about how eduction is teaching kids not to like America. He’s wrong that it’s not the education system that’s doing it but it’s our actions that are doing it.
[Proud American: Preacher, reconsideredPart oneStephen’s SubstackStephen Pellnat’s Webzone](https://stephenpellnat.substack.com/p/proud-american-preacher-reconsidered?utm%5Fmedium=ios)
This has been a series I’ve been thinking of revisiting, only ever having read through the whole thing once in trades years after it concluded. My memory of Preacher is there is a lot of stuff I liked in it and a lot of stuff I didn’t care for. And I always felt like the stuff I didn’t care for was what other people really liked the series for.
I also like how Pellnat, a cartoonist himself, has traced Steve Dillon’s images on tracing paper instead of using images directly from the books. He talks about how he wanted to get a feel for Dillon’s line more than just a photocopy reference to it. This is something that I’ve thought about for a long time and wondered by there aren’t more critics trying to do something similar (myself included.) It’s one of the reasons that when time permits it, I like to use actual pictures of the books I’m reading than grabbing images off some digital preview of the books. It’s more tactile that way. Of course, sometimes it’s just easier to do a Google Image Search and find the preview images.
[Mister Miracle #7: The Form of FreedomBy T. Trewhella Mister Miracle #7 is a comic by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer. A flat thing of paper and ink. But it is also, as with so many great pieces of art, a window – not only to “The Worl…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2025/01/22/mister-miracle-7/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think these Jack Kirby comics may read a bit differently now than they did 10 or 20 years ago. Maybe even differently than they did a month ago.
[Classic Comic Compendium: ETERNITY GIRL is a deeply personal story built with metaphysical ideasEternity Girl spun out of DC’s Young Animal Milk Wars crossover, combining a personal story with metaphysics.The Beatd. emerson eddy](https://www.comicsbeat.com/classic-comic-compendium-eternity-girl-is-a-deeply-personal-story-built-with-metaphysical-ideas/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
d. emerson eddy has been diving into DC’s Young Animal’s imprint. I don’t think I lasted much beyond the Milk Wars crossover (which [I wrote about here](https://www.panelpatter.com/2018/07/DCMetalMilkWars.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) but have wanted to revisit Vissagio’s work in that line.
[The Legend of Kamui Manga Review | Yatta-TachiThe Legend of Kamui is a grand work of historical comics that will give you back as much as you’re willing to put in.Yatta-Tachiwendeego](https://yattatachi.com/the-legend-of-kamui-review?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve started this book and wow! I’m not too far in it but the storytelling in it is mesmerizing. And I don’t really think I’ve gotten to the main story yet— just still in set up for it.
### Taking the Plunge into Paul Chadwick’s Concrete: Depth
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/paul-chadwick-concrete-depth-review/
Last updated: 2025-01-24T05:00:36.000Z
Concrete is a superhero. He has a secret identity. He has an origin involving body-swapping with aliens. He goes on adventures. Imagine Marvel’s The Thing, but instead of Ben Grimm being an adventurer, he is a slightly overweight speech writer for a congressman and you’ll get the basic concept behind Concrete. Back in 1986, super-heroes ruled comics; there were a few offshoots like *Love And Rockets* but the publisher Dark Horse was trying to find ways to expand that in the wake of the black & white comic explosion birthed by *The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*. Dark Horse’s most obvious attempt to get into the conversation was James Dean Smith’s fun but forgotten-to-age *Boris The Bear*, which was a parody of *TMNT*, which itself was a parody of Frank Miller’s original *Daredevil* run. *Boris the Bear*’s first cover was a parody of another Frank Miller book, *Elektra Assassin*. So *Boris the Bear* was on Dark Horse’s frontlines as they snuck Paul Chadwick’s Concrete onto comic shop shelves through the first issue of their anthology *Dark Horse Presents*.
Paul Chadwick started out doing storyboards for movies ([Strange Brew](https://letterboxd.com/film/strange-brew/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*,* anyone?) and did a handful of *Dazzler* comics for Marvel before *DHP #1*. The first Concrete story, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” started right in the middle of things. Concrete and his assistant Larry dig through fan mail he received after an appearance on the Carson Show (remember, this was back in 1986.) On that show, Concrete asked the television audience to send him ideas of what he could do with his amazing body. One of the letters invites him to a fancy party, offering him $1,500 to mingle with the rich and famous for a few hours. Easy money, right? The “exclusive party” turns out to be a kid’s eighth birthday party, thrown by a suburban mother who was just trying to make her son’s birthday extra special. There was no $1,500 and no fancy hobnobbing. Welcome to the world of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete!
While the 2005 collection **Concrete: Depths** includes “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” it begins instead with **Concrete #1**, which came out in 1987\. This story sets up some of Concrete’s “backstory,” the public story that he was a declassified military experiment. In that first issue, he’s called upon by his former boss to help rescue miners trapped in a collapsed mine. **Concrete: Depths** began a series of books that collected Chadwick’s story in chronological order instead of publication order. It wouldn’t be until **Concrete #3** (also in this collection) that we would get the real story of Ron Lithgow, the speech writer abducted by aliens.
The stories in **Concrete: Depths** are still some of Chadwick’s earliest Concrete stories, with one or two late 1990s stories also included here. In Concrete, Chadwick uses the language of superheroes, adventure stories, and science fiction to explore the world of an ordinary man who becomes something extraordinary. This is a few years before Kurt Busiek’s *Marvels* or *Astro City*, which would explore some of the same themes- ordinary people in an extraordinary world. Or maybe Concrete is more of a reaction to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's *Watchmen*, with its what-would-superheroes-be-like-in-the-real-world approach, tracking along a less sensationalistic path than *Watchmen* does.
The stories in this collection are largely focused on the idea of a man navigating a new life. Whether it’s Concrete’s daring attempt to swim across an ocean or his struggles with his alien body, Chadwick explores the journey of a man embracing these changes. It’s a very human story, the type of story that seems like a natural extension of the comics of the time yet still in very short supply. In both his writing and his art, he has this natural voice where the story is about a man discovering that he has these incredible opportunities so he takes them.
Sometimes, you can forget about Chadwick’s body-swapping situation, and then Chadwick hits you on the head with it, making you confront it just like Concrete has to. This is a man who would prefer to do what he wants to without much fanfare; he just wants to live his life while taking advantage of the opportunities that come his way. He doesn’t really want the body but as long as he has it, may as well do with it what he can. And then you realize that it is the body that’s giving him these opportunities, taking him on these adventures. He gets the life he wants because of something as crazy as an alien encounter.
So Chadwick has to walk this line between that fantastic element, the superhero-ness of it all, and the desire for both adventure and privacy. It fits nicely into an underserved niche of the time, somewhere between the aforementioned *Watchmen* and *Love And Rockets*, offering a little bit of something for everyone. It’s got one foot firmly in genre and the other in slice-of-life stories in ways that not much before or since has. The stories in **Concrete: Depth**establish this equilibrium between those poles that Chadwick will adhere to in his future stories. Sometimes the stories will tilt one way or another but it always comes back to this middle ground that allows it to live in both worlds.
In one of the stories, Concrete recalls the summer when he was 15 years old. He went cave exploring with some friends. It’s a story about young Ron Lithgow (when he had just a normal 15-year-old body and not the incredible one) facing his fears and trying something that he wouldn’t normally do. “Orange Glow” shows us a glimpse of the man that Ron would become. He learned to push himself a bit out of his comfort zone and attempt new things. But it’s also the story of one of the boys he was with getting lost in the caves and never being found. Without calling attention to itself, Chadwick sets this story (one of the later created stories in this collection) up as a mirror to Concrete’s origin from earlier in this collection where Lithgow and a friend explored a cave while on a camping trip and were abducted by the aliens, both Lithgow and his friend get body swapped. Only Concrete escaped, but he never saw his friend again.
The alien origin story is wild and imaginative; it’s good but leans so far in the direction of superheroes. It’s an origin story worthy of anything that Stan Lee or Roy Thomas ever wrote. So it stands out from most of Chadwick’s other storytelling here because it is so fantastic and external to Ron; it’s dealing with a change in his body. “Orange Glow,” the story about a summer years ago, is so similar but also the opposite of the origin story. It has an internal focus to it where the origin is all about the world changing. “Orange Glow” is about Ron changing internally as he experienced those original caves and the tragedy in them. In both caves, Ron lost something and those losses stay with him. But “Orange Glow” is a much more personal story, it speaks to something more spiritual and primal in Concrete’s existence. That makes “Orange Glow” one of the stronger stories here because it is about an internal struggle as opposed to the external challenges most of these early stories are about.
As an introduction to Concrete, **Concrete: Depth** doesn’t take us into a new world but gives us a different perspective on our world. Paul Chadwick’s stories are just these humane tales. And sure, there are differences when you’re a giant being made of rock but by telling those stories, Chadwick focuses on the humanity of Ron Lithgow, helping us see the man behind those alien eyes.
### More on Neil Gaiman, the State of Diamond and Comics Journalism, Remembering David Lynch, and More— The Comic Bookmarks for January 19th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-for-january-19th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-01-19T13:15:24.000Z
[RIP David Lynch (and links to help LA)Oh, this one hurts. This hurts a lot. A lot of things in the world are terrible, so it takes something major to burst through and occupy the center of my mind. No one could do that like David Lynch. With the death of Lynch, we’ve lost one ofBurner AccountMaureen Ryan](https://burner-account.ghost.io/rip-david-lynch-and-links-to-help-la/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Of all the news this week (and there’s a lot of it here,) the news of David Lynch’s death was the most difficult one. I was at lunch with a friend on Thursday when we got this news via text from another friend and we both just sat there, stunned by it. I think I commented that encountering Lynch changed the way that I view the world.
I’ve just been sitting here since Thursday, a bit stunned by this news on top of everything else that’s been happening this year (and 2025 is not even 3 weeks old yet.) David Lynch died of emphysema, which is very similar to the COPD that my father suffered during his last years. When Lynch told the world that he could barely even go outside anymore for fear of catching something fatal, you just knew it wasn’t good.
Thank you, David, for making life strange. You were one of the good guys.
## Headlines
[There Is No Safe WordHow the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.VultureLila Shapiro](https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Lila Shapiro’s lengthy and in-depth piece about the women who are accusing Neil Gaiman of abuse is a difficult one to get through but and important one to read. It follows up on the podcast reporting that [The Tortoise](https://www.tortoisemedia.com/listen/master-the-allegations-against-neil-gaiman?ref=fromcovertocover.com) conducted earlier this year that first gave voice to these allegations. The Vulture‘s copy of it is behind a paywall (if you’ve used your free Vulture/NY Mag) views for the month. There is a copy of the story archived at [archive.today](https://archive.is/HJtxW?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
[Breaking the SilenceOver the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now,…Neil Gaiman](https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2025/01/breaking-silence.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The Vulture’s article was released on Monday. A day later Gaiman publicly responded to these accusations. I believe this is the first time he has had any kind of public word about this and, like most men in this situation, he attempts to say “It’s not me. It’s them.” There’s much to pick apart in his statement, from just the idea that he’s “always tried to be a private person” to this one…
> I was obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings, and that's something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's.
Careless with their hearts and feelings? But not their bodies? Or their health? Or their wellbeing?
At no point does he think that their experience was any different than his? At my day job, we have annual training around how not to abuse other people and we stress that abuse isn’t about intent (which seems to be all Gaiman can focus on here) but the experience of the people being abused. Gaiman was obviously using his status and power in these relationships and it doesn’t matter that he thought nothing about what he was doing to these women.
> Comic book fans hated Alan Moore for only delivering them blunt truths and a rigorous ethical code, instead of toying with cutesy public personas and playing ball with greedy publishers. But it turns out he's one of the only members of his cohort who's a decent human being. Huh.
>
> — Chase Magnett 🇵🇸 ([@chasemagnett.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bw7j2ffllt6wbwqosaiftvl5?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 13, 2025 at 8:35 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bw7j2ffllt6wbwqosaiftvl5/post/3lfo7ojnrss23?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
---
Moving on…
[Meta just flipped the switch that prevents misinformation from spreading in the United StatesThe company built effective systems to reduce the reach of fake news. Last week, it shut them downPlatformerCasey Newton](https://www.platformer.news/meta-ends-misinformation-enforcement-zuckerberg/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Not necessarily comics but Facebook and Instagram are still important tools in comics marketing so it’s worthwhile to understand what is happening behind the scenes at Meta.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Are We Not Talking About Gaiman?Sean Kleefeld’s daily thoughts about comics and the comic industry.Sean Kleefeld](http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2025/01/are-we-not-talking-about-gaiman.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Related to the above but Sean Kleefeld writes on Wednesday about what he sees as a lack of coverage about Neil Gaiman on comic sites. I do believe that since then I’ve seen[ The Beat](https://www.comicsbeat.com/gaiman-ny-mag/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [Popverse](https://www.thepopverse.com/movies-tv-comics-literary-neil-gaiman-mourning-ravens/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) publish pieces regarding The Vulture’s article. And The Beat’s piece is dated on Tuesday, a day before Kleefeld’s post.
And maybe this isn’t quite the place for it but there probably is need for the continuing discussion of “where is comics journalism?” I do believe it’s still there but it’s morphed and changed over the years, from print to websites to bulletin boards to social media and then too… We may be entering a post-social media phase so is there the need to re-examine the need and methods of comic journalism?
[The Future of WWAC - WWAC %Dear WWAC fam, A few years ago I took on the responsibility of being the publisher of WWAC. I believed that WWAC still provided something special, something important, to the world of pop culture criticism and journalism, and comics criticism and journalism specifically, and I wanted to keep the lights on, and the doors open,…WWACKate Tanski](https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2025/01/the-future-of-wwac/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I feel like this is the week of writing about one thing and going “and then there’s this…”
This week, multiple Eisner-winning Women Write About Comics has announced that they are going on hiatus to “pause, reflect, and plan for radical change.” WWAC is an important site when it comes to comics journalism, providing voices and viewpoints that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have been heard. I look forward to seeing how they come back in a way that works for them.
[Women Write About Comics (WWAC) is going on hiatusWomen Write About Comics (WWAC) is ending its run as a website but hopes to return as a non-profit in the futureThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/women-write-about-comics-wwac-is-going-on-hiatus/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And then there’s this…
Not so much the news about WWAC but the news a bit further down in this article that once again, The Eisner appear to have [eliminated the award for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism](https://www.comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) from their nomination process. Now they did this last year as well at this stage and ended up having the category on their final ballot. The list up on the Eisner site is called the “tentative categories” so I guess we’ll have to wait and see what their final category list is.
And maybe someday they’ll actually think about including comic podcasts and video shows somewhere in there.
## **Business**
[Diamond Comic Distribution files Chapter 11 bankruptcy, plunging the comic industry into an uncertain new yearMultiple parties have already expressed interest in purchasing parts of the comics and gaming distribution giant.PopverseGraeme McMillan](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-diamond-comic-distributors-bankruptcy-2025?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think this news may have been a bit of a surprise but I can’t say that it’s been a shock. Things would be different if this was about 6 years ago when Diamond was the only distributor in town but that business has diversified since 2020\.
[Diamond Files for Bankruptcy | News and AnalysisYesterday, Diamond Comics Distributors, a pillar of the comics retail system, filed for Chapter 11 bankrupcy. Here’s a look at the implications for readers and publishers.Good Comics for KidsBrigid Alverson](https://goodcomicsforkids.slj.com/2025/01/15/diamond-files-for-bankruptcy-news-and-analysis/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Brigid Alverson breaks down what this means at Good Comics for Kids, an offshoot of the School Library Journal.
> In the long run, the most significant factor may be that Diamond is the distributor that handles most small, independent publishers, such as Ablaze, Fairsquare, and Storm King. Before they were graphic novels, Jeff Smith’s *Bone,* Jimmy Gownley’s *Amelia Rules,* and more recently, *Lumberjanes* got their start as comic-shop comics distributed by Diamond. If Diamond’s reorganization results in dropping its smaller customers, those creators and publishers will lose their connection to the market. This in turn may have a ripple effect, with fewer opportunities for emerging creators to hone their work and build an audience in the world of periodical comics.
Hat tip to Heidi MacDonald for pointing out this video on Bluesky.
On Wednesday night, [Prana Direct Market Solutions](https://pranadm.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) hosted a livestream with a handful of retailers to discuss what this means and they were fairly chill about the whole thing. There’s no “the sky is falling,” doomsday scenario tearing of cloths about this news. But then again, the retailers who were part of the discussion all seem to have already de-emphasized the Diamond portion of their business in favor of PRH and Lunar. It would have been interesting to have heard from a retailer who still primarily uses Diamond for their books. But even then, some anecdotal evidence suggests that those retailers are sticking with Diamond and think they’ll pull through.
So, nothing to see here?
But is there something to see over there instead?
[What will potential tariffs mean for comics publishers in 2025? ‘We’ll likely have less customers’ - The Comics JournalGina Gagliano talked to a host of comics publishers to get a sense of what the potential effects of increased tariffs from the new Trump administration could be.The Comics JournalGina Gagliano](https://www.tcj.com/what-will-potential-tariffs-mean-for-comics-publishers-in-2025-well-likely-have-less-customers/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
We’re hours away from Trump 2.0 and possibly the tariffs he promised during the campaign. For TCJ, Gina Gagliano talks to a number of small press publishers to discuss how those tariffs could impact comics. And this does feel like, if Trump isn’t just blowing smoke, it could be a huge blow to the comics (and the whole economy on a larger scale.) The article goes into the choices that the publishers have to make and it’s obviously not just as easy as “publish in the States” as their are obvious infrastructure concerns there as well.
> Avi Ehrlich, the publisher of[ Silver Sprocket,](https://www.silversprocket.net/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)said, “The decision to print overseas isn't just about cost (though they are cheaper), but really about quality and options. We haven't been able to find domestic printers able to offer the quality and options available from printers overseas, such as the high quality interesting paper stocks, binding options, and unique foils that make our books stand out. We used to print primarily in Canada and finally moved most of our printing overseas after a series of very frustrating quality issues and delays due to North American printers simply not having all of the resources available under one roof to efficiently and correctly make books with the quality we want to be producing.”
The coming weeks will tell us a lot about how committed this administration is to the promises/threats they made over the past two years and just how much they really care about the people they are supposed to be governing for. If they do half of what they said, their concerns will be more for their own pockets than for your or my wellbeing.
[“A Huge Rebound”: Retailers Share Their Thoughts on a “Much Busier” Year in Their Comic Shops - SKTCHDIt’s easy for fatalism to take hold in conversations about the direct market, or the side of the comics industry comprised of a couple thousand comic shops from around North America. It and its most famous product — the single-issue comic book — have been said to be dying since each was born, with those … ContinuedSKTCHDDavid Harper](https://sktchd.com/longform/january-2025-retailer-feature/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Below is a fascinating statement to bury in the 2nd half of the article, especially this week and looking ahead to this year:
> The unfortunate thing is 2024 reinforced that comics really aren’t the problem. It’s everything else, with what that entails being varied and unpredictable. Wallace said it’s “usually the unknowns that come up and cause problems,” while King said it seems like “each shop might have completely different struggles,” many of which have more to do with non-comics difficulties like staffing and rent increases. Even the most concerning ones on the horizon are things like the threat of tariffs rather than the quality of the material.
## **The Funny Pages**
> Human Altitude xkcd.com/3039
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/post/3lfynp5lpo22h?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Randall Munroe ([@xkcd.com](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 18, 2025 at 12:12 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/post/3lfynp5lpo22h?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> This is the comic. The only comic.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zbczxxlfhdyh3cf6cu43aajj/post/3lfsuq2euns2y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Michel Fiffe ([@michelfiffe.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zbczxxlfhdyh3cf6cu43aajj?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 15, 2025 at 5:02 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zbczxxlfhdyh3cf6cu43aajj/post/3lfsuq2euns2y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Who am I to argue with Michel Fiffe?
## **Interviews**
[A LIFE IN COMICS p 1 - John WagnerA LIFE IN COMICS 1 John Wagner’s life in his own words. 1969\. Greenock. My aunt comes to me with a clipping she’s cut from the Glasgow evening newspaper. “Here, John, you’ve always been good at your writing. Why don’t you give this a try?” It’s an advert for ‘Editorial Assistants’ at DC Thomson inJohn Wagner - The official website of John Wagner, comic book and graphic novel writer.](https://johnwagner.co.uk/a-life-in-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I would love to read a collection of John Wagner’s horoscope writing.
> Then there are horoscopes. One of my first tasks in Fiction Department is to write the daily horoscopes for the Dundee Courier. “A chance encounter with a crazed axeman may have unexpected consequences for future plans. Lucky colour red.”
[The Far Corners of This World: PW Talks with Mike MignolaThe creator of Hellboy returns to comics on January 22 with the debut anthology volume in a series called Lands Unknown, published by a new Dark Horse Comics imprint, Curious Objects. Mignola spoke with PW about folklore, worldbuilding, and more.PublishersWeekly.comMichael Seidlinger |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/96848-the-far-corners-of-this-world-pw-talks-with-mike-mignola.html?oly%5Fenc%5Fid=0562E9093834H0E&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Looking forward to this one to dive into a new world with Mignola and to see how his unique storytelling continues to evolve.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Dread, guilt and a clearer picture in DC’s New Gods #2 - COMICSXFProphecies and destinies rear their ugly heads, as skies darken and declare the end of everything the New Gods hold dear.COMICSXFArmaan Babu](https://comicsxf.com/2025/01/15/new-gods-2/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
There’s [one page in this issue](https://bsky.app/profile/scottcederlund.bsky.social/post/3lfvr5ukwm224?ref=fromcovertocover.com) that is a strong contender for my favorite page of the year (and yes, we’re only a few weeks into the year.) So far, there’s a lot to really like about this new New Gods series and a lot for it to still reveal about itself.
[Manga Review: THE CONCIERGE AT HOKKYOKU DEPARTMENT STORE is a pilgrim in the castle of consumptionTHE CONCIERGE AT HOKKYOKU DEPARTMENT STORE puts a pilgrim in the castle: dream world, real problems, pleasingly twee solutions.The BeatArpad Okay](https://www.comicsbeat.com/manga-review-the-concierge-at-hokkyoku-department-store/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## Mood of the Day
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6dyzbifnnwhehwj7uykppi5k/post/3lfxfg5sais2l?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — John Porcellino ([@johnporcellino.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6dyzbifnnwhehwj7uykppi5k?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 17, 2025 at 12:11 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6dyzbifnnwhehwj7uykppi5k/post/3lfxfg5sais2l?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And…
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:h7bvrvu4vjk2mmntlemlpy7p/post/3lfuvuwyaek22?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Diego Nicolás Argüello ([@diegoarguello.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:h7bvrvu4vjk2mmntlemlpy7p?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 16, 2025 at 12:28 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:h7bvrvu4vjk2mmntlemlpy7p/post/3lfuvuwyaek22?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### The Comic Bookmarks— January 12th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-january-12th-2025/
Last updated: 2025-01-12T13:19:37.000Z
This week, I deactivated my Facebook accounts, including Instagram and Threads. It’s something that’s been coming for a while now as the whole Facebook experience has just su
cked for at least the past few years. When you take recent moves Meta has made, it just made sense that now was the time to do it. Or else I would just be stuck in an endless cycle of going over there and being assaulted by groups and ads that I never signed up for and never seeing anything from people I knew. I hadn’t had any meaningful interaction over there for a long time anyway so it was fairly easy in the end. So in the past couple of months, Xwitter, Facebook, Instagram, and the barely-used-other-than-self-promotion threads have gone bye-bye.
>
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lmieio72lgit7a5ts43iiyks/post/3lfeck2olrc25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Jason ([@jason1749.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lmieio72lgit7a5ts43iiyks?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 9, 2025 at 9:59 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lmieio72lgit7a5ts43iiyks/post/3lfeck2olrc25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
But a day later, I’m feeling a weird sense of disconnection. Honestly, Facebook was the last connection I had to a lot of people from high school and college. Have I just cut them out of my life for good? What do I feel about that beyond anything more than a sense of nostalgia? But here I am, a bit adrift because that line to the past isn’t there anymore.
There was this one guy I knew in high school. We ran track and cross country together. I don’t know if I would say we were friends but we were definitely more than acquaintances; we were teammates. I still remember one of our first Facebook encounters, when we reconnected about 20 or 25 years after we graduated. One of the first things he did was accuse me of stealing his copy of **The Dark Knight #1** and that kind of floored me.
It wasn’t his copy of **The Dark Knight** that I stole but that’s a story for another time.
## Previously on FC2C
[Imaging Space and Silence in Oscar Zarate’s Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter“Oscar Zarate is telling a story about art and the ways that it’s a life choice by making these characters face several other choices that may or may not be related to art. But with every challenge faced, with every decision made, it always comes back to Art.“From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/oscar-zarate-thomas-girtin-the-forgotten-painter-review/)
## Headlines
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:y24gcrfugd3wnhzvl7or5ft5/post/3ldlcwvwd322o?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
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> — Eric Roesch, Rude Law Dog ([@esghound.com](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:y24gcrfugd3wnhzvl7or5ft5?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [December 18, 2024 at 6:05 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:y24gcrfugd3wnhzvl7or5ft5/post/3ldlcwvwd322o?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It feels way too late to stop this because everything has already been strip mined to feed the AI machine.
[Ram V resurrects one of DC’s hardest-to-kill characters this April“This is a story I’ve wanted to tell since I first started writing for DC,” says Ram VPolygonSusana Polo](https://www.polygon.com/comics/505686/dc-ram-v-resurrection-man-2024-1?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Thrilled and intrigued to see another Ram V and Anand RK collab and how their new series uses the old series as its basis.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
> Happy New Year, pals. It's time for the (hopefully annual) comic critics mini grant. My family and I are giving four mini grants of $250 to comics critics. Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v5p6r3xrhqzuaq5pqh3umobv/post/3lf24uu57h22u?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Tiffany Babb ([@explodingarrow.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v5p6r3xrhqzuaq5pqh3umobv?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 5, 2025 at 8:51 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v5p6r3xrhqzuaq5pqh3umobv/post/3lf24uu57h22u?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
If you’re a writer about comics, apply for this grant!
[Welcome to SOLRAD! - SOLRADEditor in chief Daniel Elkin introduces SOLRAD and the vision for the new comics journalism website which launched on January 1st, 2020.SOLRADDaniel Elkin](https://solrad.co/welcome-to-solrad?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It was 5 years ago that Solrad launched! Congrats to them!
## **Business**
[Report: Comics Sales in 2024It’s time to start looking at the sales charts and best sellers in comics and graphic novels for 2024, so here’s a round-up of resources.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/report-comics-sales-in-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Is anyone calling the lack of sales data a “crisis” other than The Beat or people actually in the industry? But that also says something about The Beat’s place as an industry rag (as we used to call them.) It’s in a place where it’s the industry record as well as serving a more general audience. There are not a lot of other sites out there serving those dual functions.
[#144: Writer’s GuidelinesHappy Holidays, folks!Man With A HatTom Brevoort](https://tombrevoort.substack.com/p/144-writers-guidelines?utm%5Fcampaign=post&utm%5Fmedium=web&triedRedirect=true)
Lumping this in under business since it’s Marvel High Muckety Muck talking about what he’s looking for from a writer. I wonder if he has something similar for artists? A lot of this seems to amount to his version of “every issue is someone’s first issue” The points about how much text is on the page is fascinating. I kind of want to go back to some of his books (maybe early Bendis Avengers) and see how these guidelines apply to those books.
## **The Funny Pages**
> Put the first 13 pages of DROME up on my website. Hitting stores in August from @01firstsecond.bsky.social www.jesselonergan.com/drome
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:77qdefn5idvmefya2t5tzsv3/post/3lfb2qee2bk2i?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
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> — Jesse Lonergan ([@jesselonergan.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:77qdefn5idvmefya2t5tzsv3?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 8, 2025 at 3:02 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:77qdefn5idvmefya2t5tzsv3/post/3lfb2qee2bk2i?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Hi. Is your refrigerator running? “Running” is a new eight-page collage comic written and drawn by me, based on photos from friends and willing participants. .pdf version available on a PWYW basis — Itch.io: hagaipalevsky.itch.io/running Gumroad: 5987842792553.gumroad.com/l/running Enjoy:
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j2husnta5rvtahgzdylxwhal/post/3lf5wv2vbxs2m?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
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> — Hagai Palevsky (he/him) ([@dialhforhagai.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j2husnta5rvtahgzdylxwhal?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 7, 2025 at 9:15 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j2husnta5rvtahgzdylxwhal/post/3lf5wv2vbxs2m?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> From @deadder.bsky.social in support of @anntelnaes.bsky.social 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:l2xfyt7alpsl37tdwkhfpreg/post/3leynllwkrk2e?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Jamie Schler ([@lifesafeast.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:l2xfyt7alpsl37tdwkhfpreg?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 5, 2025 at 6:45 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:l2xfyt7alpsl37tdwkhfpreg/post/3leynllwkrk2e?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[Interview: Bryan Talbot discusses his new graphic novel THE LEGEND OF LUTHER ARKWRIGHTInterview: Bryan Talbot discusses his new graphic novel THE LEGEND OF LUTHER ARKWRIGHTThe BeatD. Morris](https://www.comicsbeat.com/interview-bryan-talbot-discusses-his-new-graphic-novel-the-legend-of-luther-arkwright/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The U.S. release of this book was just so weird considering that it was released in the U.K. a year or two ago now.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Cutting Season - Discover the Achingly Beautiful in the Bleakly Grotesque in Bhanu Pratap’s Collection from Fantagraphics Underground – Broken FrontierBhanu Pratap’s ‘Cutting Season’ showcases his unique vision and angular, twisting visuals from Fantagraphics Underground.Broken FrontierAndy Oliver](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/cutting-season/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Bhanu Pratap is an artist I only recently found, mostly due to Bluesky (social media is still good for something) and his art just fascinates me.
> “We’re seeing a way of life disappear, to be replaced with something else—who knows what. There will be rebuilding and regrowth, but what’s gone can never be replaced.” www.rogerebert.com/mzs/whats-go...
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7jay7nelegipdr7ic2dlumol/post/3lfdv6cnjuk2l?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Matt Zoller Seitz ([@mattzollerseitz.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7jay7nelegipdr7ic2dlumol?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 9, 2025 at 6:00 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7jay7nelegipdr7ic2dlumol/post/3lfdv6cnjuk2l?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Choosing to be an Apprentice: Tom Shapira’s Gou Tanabe’s H.P. Lovecraft’s THE CALL OF CTHULHU - SOLRADToday on SOLRAD, it’s Tom Shapira’s Gou Tanabe’s H.P. Lovecraft’s THE CALL OF CTHULHU, translated by Zack Davisson, published by Dark Horse ComicsSOLRADTom Shapira](https://solrad.co/choosing-to-be-an-apprentice-tom-shapiras-gou-tanabes-h-p-lovecrafts-the-call-of-cthulhu?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Another one of those “I really need to get to this one” books, that’s sitting in a pile right now. I‘m thinking that I need to figure out a way to tackle that pile in 2025\.
[Drunks – The Manga Critic](https://mangacritic.mangabookshelf.com/2025/01/04/drunks/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Akira is a very calm, relaxing, decompressed book. No action at all. It just sort of soothes, just look at the pictures. Don't community notes me.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dgu6zqh2uq5omd77534pl5hz/post/3lf737i75w22i?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — CHAOS AND COMICS ([@chaosandcomics.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dgu6zqh2uq5omd77534pl5hz?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 7, 2025 at 8:05 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dgu6zqh2uq5omd77534pl5hz/post/3lf737i75w22i?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Imaging Space and Silence in Oscar Zarate’s Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/oscar-zarate-thomas-girtin-the-forgotten-painter-review/
Last updated: 2025-01-09T16:00:01.000Z
Oscar Zarate’s **Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter** opens with two people, lying naked on a bed. Some fleshy bulges and folds are the result of age and living. They lay with her body turned slightly away from his but her head tilted slightly to catch a glimpse of him over her shoulder. It’s both a provocative opening but it’s also just so matter of fact, like they’ve been in these positions many times before. The narration over these images is from a man and a woman, each recounting their intimate knowledge of these two figures. They talk about their time together, how well they know these bodies, and how dissatisfied they are with themselves that you think at first you’re reading the thoughts of these two lovers (?) but Zarate is playing a bit of a trick on us, or at least practicing some narrative sleight of hand.
That’s his way of preparing us to read his book. He is prepping up to pay attention, to understand these characters but to be ready for thoughts and actions to conflict with each other. What the characters say may not be what they do and vice versa. So why do that in a book about an obscure English watercolorist from the late 1700s? Why set us up this way, until this isn’t a book bout an obscure English painter?
Girtin, a friend, contemporary, and rival of the far more renowned William Turner, exists both in the past and present tense here as three current-day friends, Fred, Arturo, and Sarah, discover this overlooked artist and develop a fascination with him. Zarate uses this friendship to explore the life and times of a man who lived 200 years before the present-day events of their own life. These three friends aren’t just guides to Girtin’s story but co-leads in this book about these people who may feel like their lives are just as forgotten as Girtin’s were before they rediscovered him.
While all of these people have a lot going on in their lives (Girtin vs. patrons, Fred pressured to not be a whistleblower, Sarah confronting an abandoned friendship, and Arturo confronting his past as an Argentinean rebel,) Art (capital “A”) is a way of life for them. That’s what connects them, binding them with a shared language. Zarate is telling a story about art and the ways that it’s a life choice by making these characters face several other choices that may or may not be related to art. But with every challenge faced, with every decision made, it always comes back to Art. The way that other people’s lives revolve around the local football team or work, or any other obsession, Art here is more than just an object to be appreciated; it’s a way of living. Girtin functions as a sort of mentor for Arturo, Fred, and Sarah. Learning about Girtin, they begin to look at their life differently.
“Funny how you can go through life and hardly notice \[clouds.\]. You need Thomas Girtin in your life to open your eyes and look at them…” Arturo muses standing on a London bridge, looking out over the Thames. It’s more than using art as an escape, although there are elements of that in Zarate’s story. Arturo is not talking about a surface-level appreciation of art when he thinks “You need Thomas Girtin in your life”; he’s looking at it more on a spiritual level, using Girtin to learn how to appreciate life and live it. Other people look to religion but Zarate’s characters look to art to find meaning and ways to understand life.
Like Girtin, Zarate works in watercolors, creating a link between the cartoonist and the artist. Their art is so different- Girtin works in landscapes while Zarate is long-form cartooning. By working in the same medium, Zarate is a bit like his characters, trying to plumb the spiritual through his artwork. He’s searching and wrestling with Girtin’s legacy just as much as his characters are. There’s a version of this book that’s just about Girtin, a dry and factual biography about the man’s life and times.
As the characters learn to experience Girtin (“He’s painting time,” Arturo thinks while Sarah concludes “he has painted silence” while looking at the same painting,) Zarate is trying to bring these same lessons into his work here. Zarate is trying to take the spirit of Girtin’s landscapes and apply it to a narrative work. He has to simplify his approach a bit but he also embraces the language of comics to build on that spirit. Zarate’s art adapts to his story, his colors reflecting an emotional palette as well as a natural palette. The deep, dark blues of the night creates connections between the characters, whether they’re together or apart. The sense that they are occupying the same time is enforced by the colors. Or the simple, warm colors provide safe spaces for Girtin and the trio.
Zarate builds these very human connections between all of the characters. While it’s separated by two centuries, Fred, Arturo, and Sarah find in Girtin a similar soul, someone who they can learn about and learn from through his artwork. But even without the focus on Girtin, Zarate would be telling a story about three friends in modern times supporting each other through their struggles and hardships. The camaraderie between the trio is strong to begin with but only gets stronger through this story because they are there for each other. Zarate throws in all of these scenes of the trio in crowds, surrounded by people living their own lives but they form a bond that is missing in Girtin’s life. He could have had it with Turner but events happened that caused them to grow apart and follow their paths.
**Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter** is a wonderful tale about the discovery of art, self-discovery, and discovering more about friends and loved ones. It’s a story about the importance of these personal connections, and how they feed and sustain us. It feels like that was something that Girtin was searching nature for but Arturo, Fred, and Sarah found in each other. They were able to share as well as support the others as needed, finding this great bond that gives each of them what they need out of it. Zarate brings all of this together in this book that bounces around in time but never loses sight of its soul.
### WaPo Cartoonist Quits, Scholastic Earnings Short, Best Of Lists, and more— The Comic Bookmarks January 5th, 2025
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-january-5th-2025-2/
Last updated: 2025-01-05T13:15:18.000Z
Welcome to another year at FC2C. Hope you had a great New Year.
So after the holidays and everything, it’s time to get back to business as normal around here, meaning it’s time to link blog. Since it’s been a few weeks, here’s what‘s been piling up since right before Christmas.
## Previously on FC2C
[From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2024Scott’s favorite books of 2024From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-favorite-comics-of-2024/)
## Headlines
[Why I’m quitting the Washington PostDemocracy can’t function without a free pressOpen WindowsAnn Telnaes](https://anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-quitting-the-washington-post?utm%5Fcampaign=post&triedRedirect=true)
[Washington Post Cartoonist Quits After Jeff Bezos Cartoon Is KilledThe cartoon, by Ann Telnaes, depicted the owner of The Post, Jeff Bezos, and other billionaires genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.The New York TimesMore about Benjamin Mullin](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/business/media/washington-post-cartoonist-quits-after-jeff-bezos-cartoon-is-killed.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.mk4.6%5Fzx.YOY8uSvF1m7i&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&tgrp=ctr&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So much is happening here but the main takeaway is that the Washington Post can’t point out the hypocrisy of Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post. In case you missed it, Bezos’ Amazon is [donating $1,000,000 to the Trump Inauguration committee](https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2024/12/12/jeff-bezos-amazon-planning-1-million-donation-to-trump-inauguration-matching-meta/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
[Ils nous ont quittés en 2024 - ActuaBDChaque année, nous faisons le bilan des disparus. Les plus connus, bien sûr, ont fait l’objet d’un hommage conséquent sur ActuaBD. Comment ne pas regretter l’immense perte cette année d’auteurs comme Akira Toriyama, l’auteur de “Dragon Ball”, (...)ActuaBD](https://www.actuabd.com/Ils-nous-ont-quittes-en-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
An international-focused look at some of the great comic creators who passed away last year. (sc)
[Top 24 Graphic Novels, Comics & Manga | PAUL GRAVETTExplore the ever-changing worlds of Comics, Graphic Novels, and Manga, with the author of ‘Comics Unmasked″ and ‘Comics Art,’ Paul Gravett!PAUL GRAVETT](http://paulgravett.com/articles/article/top%5F24%5Fgraphic%5Fnovels%5Fcomics%5Fmanga8?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Paul Gravett gives us the a guide to books coming out in March, 2025\. (
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Read More Comics In 2025 With Our Latest Reading Tracker SpreadsheetOur Comics Reading Tracker has been given a big boost with new features to help you read more comics on 2025.How To Love ComicsTrevor Van As](https://www.howtolovecomics.com/2024/12/29/comics-reading-tracker-spreadsheet-2025/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’m really not one to track what I’ve read in a year (but strangely, I love Letterboxd for movies) but I keep playing with the idea of setting up a spreadsheet. If you’re one who likes wants to keep track of your reading, this looks like a fairly good sheet. (sc)
[The Video Pipeline - PIPELINE COMICSAt last, Pipeline goes video! Here’s a breakdown of why, how, and what.PIPELINE COMICSAugie De Blieck Jr.](https://www.pipelinecomics.com/the-video-pipeline/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think it was on BlueSky but I’ve seen Augie talk somewhere about trying to explore putting out more of his stuff via video and Youtube. But here’s a post where he breaks down some of his experiences trying that. (sc)
> Every critic - and everyone who does the job of a critic but calls themselves something else - should have this emblazoned on a parchment somewhere. If you refuse to give negative reviews, your positive reviews mean nothing, because your audience has no idea what you think the difference is.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rr67nxlydsgw7gwws56bnp6y/post/3lerupctzy22m?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — William Bibbiani ([@williambibbiani.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rr67nxlydsgw7gwws56bnp6y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 2, 2025 at 2:04 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rr67nxlydsgw7gwws56bnp6y/post/3lerupctzy22m?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And let’s be honest, sometimes bad reviews are just more fun to write.
I know that I’ve said this to my peers before but I do think it’s been a while since I’ve just wanted to spend time with something that was that bad. Maybe in 2025 I need to look out for bad books. (sc)
## **Business**
[Scholastic Sales, Including Book Fairs, DeclineDespite Growth in Number of FairsICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/58515/scholastic-sales-including-book-fairs-decline?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Scholastic has been the backbone of the comics industry for (I’d guess) 20 years even if it’s not recognized regularly as such. It’s been developing the next generations of readers one way or another during that time, whether through the comics that it produces or through its book fairs which get so much out there. This may be one of those things that we should be paying more attention to in 2025\. (sc)
## **The Funny Pages**
> I was able to finish and publish Anzuelo this year, which was quite an insane level to clear 🪸 If only, for that I'm grateful.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jn6rkvmk46xteyvuhtzncd4j/post/3lelt6hq5hk2j?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — beluga's kin ([@emmartian.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jn6rkvmk46xteyvuhtzncd4j?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [December 31, 2024 at 4:20 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:jn6rkvmk46xteyvuhtzncd4j/post/3lelt6hq5hk2j?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I really want to spend some time with this book and get my thoughts out about it but let me just say right now that this was one of the most beautiful books of 2024\. Rios’ images just slayed me with how open and raw they were. (sc)
## **Interviews**
[Behind the lines of ‘Dawnrunner’: An interview with Evan CagleA little inside scoop as the ‘Dawnrunner’ hardcover hits shelves.AIPTDavid Brooke](https://aiptcomics.com/2024/12/24/dawnrunner-qa-evan-cagle/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Evan Cagle is quickly turning into an artist to pay attention to. Between his evocative covers of Ram V’s *Detective Comics* run and now doing (most of) the artwork in the new *New Gods* series, he’s an artist who can shift his tone to match what the story needs. **Dawnrunner** is both this big mech story but also a story about parents fighting for their kids. It works on this huge, apocalyptic level as well as a much smaller, more intimate one as well. This interview offers some nice insights into how Cagle approaches his work. (sc)
[How Alan Moore’s new novel builds on his iconic comicsAlan Moore discusses his latest novel ‘The Great When’ and how it builds on his classic comics like ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.’Entertainment WeeklyEW’s editorial guidelines](https://ew.com/how-alan-moores-new-novel-builds-on-his-iconic-comics-8769123?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A short interview from Entertainment Weekly, but a notable one in that Moore seems more willing that usual to talk about his comics writing in connection to his prose fiction. That Holub focuses the discussion specifically on **League of Extraordinary Gentlemen** certainly helps. (mb)
## **Best Of Lists From Around the Internet**
There are a lot of Best Of lists out there. I don’t agree with everything on these lists (*Beneath the Trees Where No One Sees* shows up on one or two of them and it would be on my list for most disappointing books of 2024) but I love the breadth and depth of comics that these lists highlight. There really is something for everyone out there and it’s just a matter of helping people find the right book for them. (sc)
[James’ Favorite Comics of 2024Comic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterJames Kaplan](https://www.panelpatter.com/2024/12/james-favorite-comics-of-2024.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[The best comics of 2024, as chosen by TCJ contributors - The Comics JournalWhat were the best comics of this past year? No idea, but here’s some stuff our contributors really liked.The Comics JournalThe Editors](https://www.tcj.com/the-best-comics-of-2024-as-chosen-by-tcj-contributors/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[The 15 Best Comics & Graphic Novels of 2024 | The Mary SueIn another banner year for comics and graphic novels, especially from independent publishers, these are the 15 best titles of 2024.The Mary SueSamantha Puc](https://www.themarysue.com/best-comics-and-graphic-novels-of-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[These are the best comics of the year2024 was the year for beguiling, introspective, and gnarly adventures.DoomRocketJarrod Jones](https://doomrocket.substack.com/p/these-are-the-best-comics-of-the-513)
[Best of 2024 - my top 15by Sara Smith Welcome back to another edition of My Top 15! This year, my picks are a bit darker and a bit more more mature than they have been in the past, but that may be a indictment on my…The Graphic Library](https://www.graphiclibrary.org/info-postings/best-of-2024-my-top-15?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Best Manga 2024 | SLJ Best BooksAs the medium continues its meteoric rise, 2024 marked the debut of SLJ’s first-ever Best Books committee dedicated exclusively to manga. From shock-charged action and celestial fantasy to eco-horror and edutainment, these 22 standout titles offer something for readers of all ages and interests, redefining what belongs on K-12 shelves—and why.School Library JournalJasmine Amiri, Rachel Forbes, Joe Pascullo, Lisa Rowland, Sara Smith](https://www.slj.com/story/best-manga-2024-slj-best-books?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Pick of the Year: Favorites from 2024SEAN: Ah, the pick everyone dreads as we try to remember things we enthused about months ago. I think my pick this year, mostly as it was SO hyped up by the publisher and bookstores and, when it wa…Manga BookshelfSean Gaffney](https://mangabookshelf.com/2024/12/30/pick-of-the-year-favorites-from-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[‘Wonder Woman’, ‘Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees’, ‘The Road’ and More: Heat Vision’s Best Comics of 2024Comics that remix popular superheroes, a graphic novel memoir about taking care of a parent, and a manga featuring an organ-hunting cybergirl make the hot list. And so do those giant robots in disguise.The Hollywood ReporterBorys Kit](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/best-comic-books-graphic-novels-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[24 for ’24: CXF’s favorite comics of the year - COMICSXFThe ComicsXF team picks 24 books that made our team laugh, cry, pump our fists and generally feel something this year.COMICSXFDan Grote](https://comicsxf.com/2024/12/31/best-comics-of-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
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## **Reviews & Features**
[Ashita no Joe: Fighting For Tomorrow Volume 1 Manga ReviewWhile it would be a lie to say that Ashita no Joe doesn’t show its age, it’s still a solid story, and one that’s very much worth reading.Anime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/ashita-no-joe/fighting-for-tomorrow/volume-1/.218918?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
**Ashita no Joe** is currently sitting on the to-read pile, waiting for a free week to read it. (sc)
[Okazu » The Moon On A Rainy Night, Volume 6](https://okazu.yuricon.com/2024/12/27/the-moon-on-a-rainy-night-volume-6/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I had seen Erika Friedman talking about this series on BlueSky a week or two ago, saying if you liked *The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All*, that you needed to check out this series. I picked up a digital version and see I have 6 volumes to catch up on. (sc)
[The 5 Best Krypto the Superdog Stories - Graphic PolicyKrypto has been flying, barking, fetching, and biting in comics since he was co-created by Otto Binder and Curt Swan in 1955Graphic PolicyLogan Dalton](https://graphicpolicy.com/2024/12/30/the-5-best-krypto-the-superdog-stories/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Get ready for 2025 to be the year of Krypto. And this is a far better Krypto than that other version could ever been. (sc)
[The comic book industry has nearly died before. Some artists fear AI will kill it | CNN BusinessIt may surprise some people unfamiliar with the US comic book industry, with its multibillion-dollar movie tie-ins, that it’s been on death’s door multiple times over the decades. Now AI tech tools are adding new fears of a grim reaping.CNNMichael Nam](https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/31/business/comic-books-ai/index.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It's not comics fandom if we're not perpetually panicked that our entire world might come crashing down at any given moment, but this certainly resonates a lot more that the typical handwringing, to be fair. (mb)
[Ram V’s comics highlight the power of human (and superhuman) connectionRam V’s comics highlight the power of human (and superhuman) connectionAV ClubOliver Sava](https://www.avclub.com/ram-v-comics-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’m catching up on some of these books now, like *Dawnrunner*, *Detective Comics*, and *The One Hand And The Six Fingers*, and slowly coming around to the realization that Ram V may be my favorite writer right now. He’s definitely up there and any book that has his name on it is worth checking out. (sc)
[A 2000 AD x Prog Report Year in ReviewThe Beat’s Dean Simons and Zack Quaintance take stock of the year for 2000 AD, including selecting favorite stories.The BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/a-2000-ad-x-prog-report-year-in-review/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Somewhere in-between a list and a retrospective of Zack Quintance's first year reading 2000AD week-t0-week, this is a very thorough recap of what amounted to an incredibly strong year for the Galaxy's Greatest Comic. Moreover, Zack and Dean provide some good advice for how (and why) to get into the world of 2000AD beyond just Judge Dredd. (mb)
[Absolute Superman and the power fantasy of a working-class hero - COMICSXFJason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval’s Absolute Superman is tackling the moral bankruptcy of global corporations.COMICSXFJake Murray](https://comicsxf.com/2025/01/01/absolute-superman-1-2/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The Absolute line seems to be hitting with people but I really just fear that DC is going to take something that’s working good on a small scale and ruin it by trying to scale it up. I’m already concerned that in a few months, the size of this line is going to double.
But with these 3 books, it’s interesting to see what people are connecting with and what they’re taking away from each of them. How many times has DC tried to reboot Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman at the same time where maybe only 1 out of the 3 really clicked? Now they’ve got 3 strong main titles with these characters. (sc)
> The best selling comics of last year, aside from X-MEN and UNCANNY X-MEN, were all alternate universe versions of iconic heroes. Ultimate and Absolute. I've been thinking about this. On the one hand, it seems kind of sad. The 'official' versions should be represented more. BUT. 1/
>
> — Gail Simone ([@gailsimone.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dwt2ntmuye3zb3w3ie3b5zgu?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [January 1, 2025 at 12:18 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dwt2ntmuye3zb3w3ie3b5zgu/post/3lep6dfzf6s23?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
To go with the above, this thread from Gail Simone was interesting to read. As someone who’s taken more of a back to basics approach with her X-Men run, it’s revealing to see her work out why thing like the Ultimate and Absolute lines are so popular right now.
But I also think there’s something to how these new lines are speaking to our times more than the more mainline takes of the characters are. Like these are the takes for 2024/2025 on these characters that we need right now. (sc)
[Tegan O’Neil (@teganoneil5000.bsky.social)advertisements from Weird War Tales #121, 1982Bluesky Social](https://bsky.app/profile/teganoneil5000.bsky.social/post/3leos5ytrzk2q?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
On the other hand, we could just need more old comics. And thank goodness we have Tegan O'Neill for that. Revisiting the advertisements in old single issues is like opening a time capsule. (mb)
[Tegan O’Neil on Instagram: “Today Tegan looks at Weird War Tales #121, from 1982 and DC Comics, by Robert Kanigher, Fred Carrillo, and Paris Cullins. #comics #comicbooks #comicbookreviews #dc #dccomics #weirdwartales #creaturecommandos #robertkanigher #fredcarrillo”10 likes, 2 comments - whenwillthehurtingstop on January 1, 2025: “Today Tegan looks at Weird War Tales #121, from 1982 and DC Comics, by Robert Kanigher, Fred Carrillo, and Paris Cullins. #comics #comicbooks #comicbookreviews #dc #dccomics #weirdwartales #creaturecommandos #robertkanigher #fredcarrillo”.Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DESRnTHp02k/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fweb%5Fcopy%5Flink)
And of course, there is an issue in-between the ads as well. (mb)
### From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-favorite-comics-of-2024/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:51:31.000Z
I’ve got a confession to make, I don’t like doing these year-end lists. I love reading other people’s lists but I hate putting my own out there even though I’ve done it most years. In fact, you can see below a portion of my spreadsheet that goes back to 2003 documenting what I’ve considered the best books each year, although I’ll admit that my memory of a few of these books is a bit fuzzy.
Before we dive into my favorite books of 2024, let’s quickly walk down memory lane with From Cover To Cover’s favorite books of 2021, 2022, and 2023.
[From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2021Here are our favorites from 2021, a year that saw a lot of great books.Please know this post serves to celebrate our favorites, and while we read a bunch, we certainly don’t read everything. Really, there’s just too much out there.From Cover to CoverMike Baxter](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-year-in-review-2021/)
[From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2022Scott and Mike take a look at their favorite comics from 2022.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comics-of-2022/)
[From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2023James, Mike and Scott take a look at our favorite comics of 2023.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-favorite-comics-of-2023/)
And on to 2024\.
---
## The Top 11 Comics of 2024 (according to one person)
### The Books That Started to Linger In My Thoughts Before I Even Got To The Last Page
- **Barda** by Ngozi Ukazu, published by DC Comics (reviewed [here)](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/barda-by-ngozi-ukazu-review/#gsc.tab=0)
- **Tokyo These Days V1-3** by Taiyo Matsumoto, published by Viz (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/taiyo-matsumoto-tokyo-these-day-review/))
- **Final Cut** by Charles Burns, published by Pantheon Graphic Library
These books lodged themselves into my brain, even while I was reading them. Ukazu’z **Barda** took a character and a story that I’m very well versed in and gave a new perspective on them, completely indebted to Kirby but going off in a different direction, starting with a school-girl like crush on Orion but giving Barda and the Furies an agency that they don’t often get. **Tokyo These Days** feels like Taiyo Matsumoto approaching a certain point in his life and reflecting on what it means to be working in manga after a long and fruitful career. And no cartoonist is working these days who captures that 70s-ish teenage ennui like Charles Burns. His **Final Cut** works because of the tone it sets— Burns may filter his comics through a reminiscence of his own teenage/early 20s years but he keys in on universal feelings of isolation and disconnection that perfectly set the spiritual flavors of his comics.
### The Books That Have a Vibe That I Just Dug
- **Rare Flavours** by Ram V & Filipe Andrade, published by Boom! Studios (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-ghost-of-bourdain-haunts-ram-v-and-filipe-andrades-rare-flavours/))
- **G.O.D.S.** by Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti, Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo, published by Marvel Comics (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gods-by-jonathan-hickman-valerio-schiti-marte-gracia/))
- **Hirayasumi V1-3** by Keigo Shinzō, published by Viz
**Rare Flavours**, **G.O.D.S.,** and **Hirayasumi** are books that you need to give yourself over to a bit, synch up with their wavelengths to ride the waves with them. Shinzō’s **Hirayasumi** is the surprise book of the year, one that wasn’t on my radar until late in the year; it’s like if *Scott Pilgrim*was written by Kiyohiko Azuma (*Yotsuba&, Azumanga Daioh.*) It’s such a sweet book that’s about being sweet without ever becoming sickening so. **G.O.D.S.** almost didn’t need to be a Marvel book but it provides so much flavor to Hickman and Schiti’s story that’s basically about a guy trying to find some kind of work/life balance. And in **Rare Flavours** V and Andrade take you on a culinary tour of India, with your guide being a man-eating demon. Each of these books has a vibe to them, a tone and voice that you give yourself over to to see where they can take you.
### The Books That Move Around In Their Space
- **Return to Eden** by Paco Roca, published by Fantagraphics (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/return-to-eden-by-paco-roca-review/))
- **Search and Destroy V1** by Kaneko Atsushi, published by Fantagraphics (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/atsushi-kaneko-uses-action-to-reveal-character-in-search-and-destroy-vol-1/))
- **Precious Metal #1-6** by Darcy Van Poelgeest & Ian Bertram, published by Image Comics
Beyond the characters, each of these books takes you someplace, whether it’s pre-World War II Spain, a dystopian Russia, or the future where forces are trying to manufacture the next god. This group creates a setting for their characters to live in, to fight in and for. Paco Roca’s biography of his mother and her upbringing is so tied to the Spain of her childhood, the sites, smells, and experiences that happened in that place and that time. Atsushi’s **Search and Destroy** takes place in a neo-Soviet Russia that you have to believe would give itself over to the corruption and violence that comes in the future. Van Poelgeest and Bertram’s prequel to *Little Bird* is a futuristic space opera that takes place on Earth, even if you would hardly recognize it. These books make use of their settings; they’re a force that acts upon the men and women of these stories.
### The Books That Make Me Look At Them A Bit Differently Each Time
*The books that make me look at them differently*
- **Absolute Wonder Woman #1-3** by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, and Jordie Bellaire, published by DC Comics (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-wonder-woman-1-mini-review/))
- **Anzuelo** by Emma Ríos, published by Image Comics
I don’t know if I have a great handle on these books yet. With each issue of **Absolute Wonder Woman**, Thompson, and Sherman have revealed a bit more of their story. This Diana is different than the mainstream DC Wonder Woman. She’s had a different upbringing but still seems the rebel, a characteristic often overlooked by creators. Sherman and Bellaire feel like just the right art/color team for this book. Their work is a revelation, full of storytelling choices that make them co-authors of the book with Thompson. Rios’ **Anzuelo** is probably the most emotionally raw story I read all year, telling the story of a group of kids who survive the end of the world. There are a lot of stories like that right now but Rios’s storytelling is so raw and so exposed that it’s almost painful to read. But it’s a good pain, a needed pain.
### The Books that Deserve An Honorable Mention
I’m trying to think about what these all these books say about 2024\. The big thing that stands out to me is that there’s a lot of Marvel, DC, and Image here. That’s not to say that I think those are the best publishers but that the good stuff was really, really good. But I also think it says that my reading habits were fairly conservative this past year. Part of that is that my glasses weren’t that good and reading was a bit hard. My wife would laugh at me when I’d take my glasses off and hold a book 4” away from my face to read it but that was the best way to read until a couple of weeks ago. So the actual act of reading wasn’t that much fun for a chunk of 2024\. I bought a good amount of books that are on other “best of 2024” lists that are sitting in one of my to-read piles. I started Emma Rios’ **Anzuelo** multiple times but didn’t read the whole thing until a week or so ago when I had new glasses and could focus on her lettering.
But more than that, let’s go back to the idea that when the mainstream publishers were good, they were just that much better than everything else. **Absolute Wonder Woman** and **Barda** are two of the best things from 2024 that anyone put out. The ways that these creators tackled familiar stories but from different angles opened up a lot of space to explore the characters. **G.O.D.S.** could easily have been stripped of all the Marvel trappings and published as a creator-owned book from Image and it probably would have still been good. But the ways that Hickman and Schiti staged this love story with a background of the Marvel cosmic universe just added a depth to it that pleased this old Jim Starlin/Steve Englehart fan.
So in the end, 2024 was a good year, a strong year. But that’s more on me than on the books themselves. I read a lot but did I read enough books or the right books? For some reason, that question lingers in the back of my mind more than it has before. I look at the table at the top that shows my spreadsheet that goes back 15+ years and other than a few things here and there, these are mostly all books that I can still think about or grab off the shelf and read. I wonder if in a couple of years, I’ll look back fondly on my 2024 list or wonder what in the world was I thinking.
### The 2024 In Reviews and News— Comic Bookmarks December 29th, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-2024-in-reviews-and-news-comic-bookmarks-december-29th-2024/
Last updated: 2024-12-29T14:59:36.000Z
While I’m working on pulling together my favorite books of 2024, let’s look back what we did here at the site this year. 34 reviews and 23 link posts. That’s not too bad.
I’ll have more about my thoughts on 2024 in my favorites post (currently planned to go up on Tuesday, although it may be pushed until Wednesday.)
And if you’re reading this on the website, did you know that you can get From Cover To Cover in your email inbox? Just click the subscribe button in the lower right hand corner of the screen.
## Criticism
[From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2023James, Mike and Scott take a look at our favorite comics of 2023.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-favorite-comics-of-2023/)
[Tekkonkinkreet by Taiyo MatsumotoTekkonkinkreet, now 30 years old, is this story of aging, growing old, and trying to preserve the innocence of youth.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tekkonkinkreet-by-taiyo-matsumoto-review/)
[It’s the End of the World-- a look at Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century BoysIt’s weirdly prophetic to read 20th Century Boys in 2024, looking back on the last decade and wondering how we missed Urasawa’s possible warning of all of this.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/20th-century-boys-by-naoki-urasawa/)
[My Claremont Year- The EndChris Claremont’s X-Men were rarely about the costumes or their super-heroicsFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-the-end/)
[Comics Sure Are Expensive and Other Curmudgeonly ThoughtsDoes this difference in price and presentation align with a hierarchy of comics?From Cover to CoverMike Baxter](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comics-sure-are-expensive-and-other-curmudgeonly-thoughts/)
[Lost Reflections on a Photograph in Paco Roca’s Return to EdenIn Paco Roca’s new book, each generation just wants to see their mothers smile.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/return-to-eden-by-paco-roca-review/)
[From the Archives: The Micronauts #1-12 by Bill Mantlo and Michael GoldenAs Akira Kurosawa is to Star Wars, George Lucas is to The Micronauts, Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden’s 1979 comic series that was based on a toy line.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-micronauts-1-12-by-bill-mantlo-and-michael-golden/)
[Igort’s ‘How War Begins’: A Poignant Portrait of Ukraine’s Struggle, Echoing Global Calls for CompassionIgort’s “How War Begins” shows the human toll of the Russian invasion on Ukraine through personal narratives, urging readers to empathize with the individuals worldwide affected by conflict.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/how-war-begins-by-igort-review/)
[Gaiman and Buckingham write the new gospel of Miracleman in The Silver AgeYou’ve got to wonder what Miracleman: The Silver Age would have read like if it had come out in the 1990s instead of the 2020s.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gaiman-and-bucking-ham/)
[Feeling Gravity’s Pull in Melissa Mendes’ The Weight #13 & 14This is one of those rare comics that makes you feel something deep and heart-wrenching. It’s painful to read; that’s part of why it’s so good.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weight-13-14-by-melissa-mendes/)
[Barda IS — a look at Ngozi Ukazu’s new comic book BARDA.It’s a meet-cute story set in the torture dungeons of Darkseid’s Apokolips.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/barda-by-ngozi-ukazu-review/)
[The 1990s speak to 2024 in Peter Bagge’s Hate Revisited #1It’s 2024\. Do we really need more HATE in our lives? (Answer: Yes)From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hate-revisited-1-b/)
[Finding the Truth in Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips’ The Enfield Gang MassacreThe title gives away what’s going to happen but The Enfield Gang Massacre is about stories as much as it is about the massacre.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/finding-the-truth-in-chris-condon-and-jacob-phillips-the-enfield-gang-massacre/)
[When Richard Corben met HellboyThe humanity of Richard Corben’s Hellboy work is that it doesn’t try to spare the reader of anything.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/when-richard-corben-met-hellboy/)
[Sidestepping the Event to Tell the Story in Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti’s G.O.D.S.Hickman and Schiti pull away from telling the huge story that we expect and find another way to tell a character-driven story between the context of those loud battles.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gods-by-jonathan-hickman-valerio-schiti-marte-gracia/)
[One Last Dose of Joe Matt’s Self-Deprecating Humor in Peepshow #15Joe Matt is the target of the ridicule and jokes but he’s also the one telling the jokes.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/one-last-dose-of-joe-matts-self-deprecating-humor-in-peepshow-15/)
[Atsushi Kaneko Uses Action To Reveal Character in Search and Destroy Vol. 1Search and Destroy is a revenge thriller you feel in your bones.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/atsushi-kaneko-uses-action-to-reveal-character-in-search-and-destroy-vol-1/)
[It’s About The Ethics of Super Powers in Gillen and Wijngaard’s Power Fantasy #1Relaxed but always on edge until the narrative bomb drops, you can see how far Gillen and Wijngaard are willing to go with this story.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the/)
[A Great Comic for the Dog Days of Summer- King-Cat Comics & Stories #83 by John PorcellinoCartooning as a worldview, as therapy, as confession, and as autobio.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-great-comic-for-the-dog-days-of-summer-king-cat-comics-stories-83-by-john-porcellino/)
[Not Just One of the Boys-- thoughts on Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s Wonder Woman Earth OneMorrison and Paquette challenge the power structures that are inherent to our world to try tot show a better way forward.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/not-just-one-of-the-boys-thoughts-on-grant-morrison-and-yanick-paquettes-wonder-woman-earth-one/)
[The Ghost of Bourdain Haunts Ram V and Filipe Andrade’s Rare FlavoursThis tale itself is a feast as we travel with the demon and the filmmaker. Andrade’s art tickles all of your senses even as it only interacts with one of them.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-ghost-of-bourdain-haunts-ram-v-and-filipe-andrades-rare-flavours/)
[All New Collectors’ Edition #56: Superman Vs. Muhammad AliNeal Adams’ artwork demands that you enjoy it now the way you would have in 1978.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/all-new-collectors-edition-56-superman-vs-muhammad-ali/)
[With Great Power, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda... thoughts on Jonathan Hickman and Macro Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 1.It’s the small changes that say the most about Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jonathan-hickman-macro-checchetto-ultimate-spider-man-volume-1/)
[The Form Is the Story in Kevin Huizenga’s Fielder #3Huizenga’s playful pages lead to the truth of his cartooning.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/kevin-huizenga-fielder-3/)
[On Junji ItoI discovered Juni Ito’s manga about 9 years ago, when Viz started rereleasing his work again, starting with Uzamaki. At Panel Patter, I jumped on his stuff, getting sucked into Uzamaki and GYO. Other books followed and there are some that I need to still catch up with (ReminaFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/on-junji-ito/)
[Transformers Volume 1: Robots in Disguise— Mini ReviewDaniel Warren Johnson makes you feel something for these toys.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/transformers-volume-1-robots-in-disguise-mini-review/)
[Hate Revisited #4 by Peter Bagge- Mini ReviewNostalgic without the nostalgia.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hate-revisited-4-by-peter-bagge-mini-review/)
[The Power Fantasy #3– Mini ReviewIn this issue, we learn so much but realize that we know so little about this world.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-power-fantasy-3-mini-gillen-wijngaard-review/)
[Absolute Wonder Woman #1— Mini reviewThis isn’t quite the hero that we know but it is the woman who inspires everyone.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-wonder-woman-1-mini-review/)
[Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theater #1– Mini ReviewAn idea in search of a story.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/monsterpiece-theater-1-mini-review/)
[The Nice House On The Sea #4 by Tynion IV, Bueno, and Bellaire— Mini ReviewÁlvaro Martinez Bueno and Jordie Bellaire’s artwork enhances James Tynion IV’s The Nice House stories, highlighting the contrast between the two houses and the characters’ evolving relationships.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-nice-house-on-the-sea-4-by-tynion-iv-bueno-and-bellaire-mini-review/)
[The Fight for Justice in Absolute Superman #1What does Truth, Justice, and the American Way mean after November 5, 2024?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-superman-1-jason-aaron-rafa-sandoval-review/)
[A Life Formed by Manga: a look at Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tokyo These DayTokyo These Days isn’t a travelogue or a how to but it wants to let the reader know about the spirit of Tokyo and manga, how they’re intertwined, and how they weigh down on the artists and editors who create them.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/taiyo-matsumoto-tokyo-these-day-review/)
[The Breaking of a Good Man— a look at Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov’s The Punisher: Valley Forge, Valley ForgeMaybe it’s not the right time to be writing about a lone gunman prowling the streets of NYC. Or maybe it is as Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov are less focused on the exploits of Frank Castle the man and more dialed into the symbol that is The Punisher.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/garth-ennis-and-goran-parlov-the-punisher-valley-forge-valley-forge/)
## Comic Bookmarks
[The Comics Debrief-May 3rd, 2024’97 pic.twitter.com/l7daKt2f5r — Michel Fiffe (@MichelFiffe) April 29, 2024 Consider this a soft-launch of a semi-regular link post- the .1 issue of you will allow us to use some comic parlance. For the next couple of weeks, we will be testing out ways to collect links as wellFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-world-is-a-link-post/)
[The Weekly Debrief- May 10th, 2024But until we meet again, read about the goings and comings in the comic journalism realm, a poetry comic by Hagai Palvesky and Danielle Taphenel, and some thoughts on Lynda Barry, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman. And John Oliver.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weekly-debrief/)
[The Weekly Debrief- May 17th, 2024A Cake fundraiser, musings on comic culture, thinking about Don Perlin and cooking comic books.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weekly-debrief-may-17th-2024/)
[The Comic Bookmarks- VanCAF, Emil Ferris @ CPL, new Manga Awards, Marvel fumbling Pride comic, a couple of returns to the blogosphere and more…It’s the end of Krakoa and I feel fine.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-june-7th-2024/)
[300,000 copies sold, Ping Pong, selling comics or produce, and more on Van CAF— Comic Bookmarks June 15, 2024Comics link for the second week of June.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks/)
[How do you mess up Superman’s S symbol? Bad AI artwork I guess —Comic Bookmarks 6/22/2024An AI focused week.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-6-22-2024/)
[Maus banned, The Beat Covers SDCC, My Hero Academia ending, and more— Comics Bookmark 6/30/2024Maus ban. Who created Wolverine? The best selling comic of 2025 already announced. New Mignola!!!!! All that and more in this week’s links.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-6-30-2024/)
[Gaiman accusations, Ukazu’s next book, manga announcements, French rights to Dan Clowes, and more — Comic Bookmarks 7/7/2024It’s July. That means all the sites start running SDCC announcements- who’s going to be there, what big signings they’ll be having, and what “major” releases they’ll be hawking. Let’s see if we can survive this month together, shall we? This week on the site,From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gaiman-accusations-ukazus-next-book-comic-bookmarks-7-7-2024-2/)
[More on Neil Gaiman, lots of manga news, and a killer X-Men #1 review— Comic Bookmarks 7/14/2024The comic news you need to know for July 14, 2024.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-on-neil-gaiman-lots-of-manga-news-and-a-killer-x-men-1-review-comic-bookmarks-7-14-2024-2/)
[Manga awards, Samnee and some other guy on Batman, and a bunch of reviews— Comic Bookmarks 7/21/2024Things to read from the past week in the world of comics.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/manga-awards-samnee-and-some-other-guy-on-batman-and-a-bunch-of-reviews-comic-bookmarks-7-21-2024/)
[More Jay Stephens’ comics, the classic DC Logo, Inoue’s Slam Dunk and more — Comic Bookmarks 7/28/2024Comics news from the last weekFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-jay-stephens-comics-the-classic-dc-logo-inoues-slam-dunk-and-more-comic-bookmarks-7-28-2024/)
[The launch of K-ComicsBeat, the fight against AI comics, and more— The Comic Bookmarks 8/4/2024Your links for the post-SDCC week.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-launch-of-k-comicsbeat-the-fight-against-ai-comics-and-more-the-comic-bookmarks-8-4-2024/)
[Human Trafficking at SDCC, Original Art Market, the Stolen Art Market — Comic Bookmarks 8/11/2024Let’s start off with usual with what was happening around here this week before diving into the news and reviews of the week. It’s About The Ethics of Super Powers in Gillen and Wijngaard’s Power Fantasy #1Relaxed but always on edge until the narrative bomb drops, you canFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/human-trafficing-original-art-market-the-stolen-art-market-comic-bookmarks-8-11-2024-2/)
[The Apple Tax Hits Patreon, Comics’ Award Season Continue, a Zoe Thorogood Poetry Comic on Instagram, and more -- The Comic Bookmarks Aug 18th, 2024The summer must end but not yet. There’s still a few weeks left to it. This week on the site, I explored John Porcellino’s latest issue of King-Cat Comics & Stories. A Great Comic for the Dog Days of Summer- King-Cat Comics & Stories #83 by John PorcellinoCartooning as a worldview, asFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic%5Fbookmarks%5Faug%5F18%5F2024/)
[The Summer Season 2024– Comic Bookmarks Sept 1st, 2024A look back on the reviews and news of the summer.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-summer-season-2024-comic-bookmarks-sept-1st-2024/)
[Dragotta’s Batman, Kirby Commerials, Scott Pilgrim and more— Comic Bookmarks- September 22, 2024It’s been a few weeks as I’ve taken a brief break from the site so now it feels like having to get back to using some muscles that have already been forgotten a bit. And maybe it’s just that it’s the end of the summer but happenings around the internetFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/dragottas-batman-kirby-commerials-scott-pilgrim-and-more-comic-bookmarks-september-22-2024/)
[A look at Banned Comic Books, Award Season Never Ends, Kieron Gillen Speaks, Reviews, and More — Comic Bookmarks September 29, 2024I’ve had a review I’ve been wrestling with all week so nothing new from this site but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t all kinds of good, interesting, and thoughtful things happening this past week. Hopefully I’ll get this review done this week and be able to be aFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-look-at-banned-comic-books-award-season-never-ends-kieron-gillen-speaks-reviews-and-more-comic-bookmarks-september-29-2024/)
[A Tribute to Bernie Mireault, Shortbox Comics Festival is Live, Kurtzman, Toxic Fandom and more- Comic Bookmarks- October 5, 2024Some great news, interviews, and reviews from the last week.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-tribute-to-bernie-mireault-shortbox-comics-festival-is-live-kurtzman-toxic-fandom-and-more-comic-bookmarks-october-5-2024/)
[A follow up on Desert Island Comics, The Comics Courier, An Appreciation of a Letter and More— Comic Bookmarks October 13, 2024The week that was in link form.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic%5Fbookmarks%5Foctober%5F13%5F2024/)
[The Return of the Monthly Sales List, Remembering Bernie Mireault, and An Appearance by Alan Moore— Comic Bookmarks October 26, 2024I was sick last week so didn’t get one of these out so there’s interesting reads from the last couple of weeks here to catch up. Do not obey in advance. Lesson 1, first page, of my pamphlet “On Tyranny” https://t.co/C3857ouRzO pic.twitter.com/FWIDPecberFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-return-of-the-monthly-sales-list-remembering-bernie-mireault-and-an-appearance-by-alan-moore-comic-bookmarks-october-26-2024/)
[How Do We Respond to Trump? “God of Horror” Passes Away and a lot of reviews— The Comic Bookmarks November 10th, 2024O.k. So I missed last week. In my defense, it was a busy weekend (two concerts and a wedding to attend) and then this past Tuesday just knocked the wind out of everything else that was happening. The Nice House On The Sea #4 by Tynion IV, Bueno, andFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-november-10th-2024/)
[Off To Blue Skies, Amos on Gaiman, Best Of 2024 Lists, and more — The Comics Bookmarks December 15th, 2024So it’s been a month or so since we did one of these. It felt like we were rolling along pretty good there since we started doing these link posts in the early summer but then we hit November and let’s just say, things happened in November. ButFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/off-to-blue-skies-amos-on-gaiman-best-of-2024-lists-and-more-the-comics-bookmarks-december-15th-2024/)
[Reader’s Polls, Angouleme’s American invasion, Content Mills Strike Back, and More— Comic Bookmarks December 22, 2024From the Archives The holidays caught up with us and nothing got finished this week so hereare two pieces by Mike and myself from our days at Panel Patter. A Compassionate Time of Mourning in Jiro Taniguchi’s A Journal of My FatherComic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterScott CederlundWhy Do HumansFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/readers-polls-angoulemes-american-invasion-content-mills-strike-back-and-more-comic-bookmarks-december-22-2024/)
### Reader’s Polls, Angouleme’s American invasion, Content Mills Strike Back, and More— Comic Bookmarks December 22, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/readers-polls-angoulemes-american-invasion-content-mills-strike-back-and-more-comic-bookmarks-december-22-2024/
Last updated: 2024-12-22T13:32:25.000Z
##
From the Archives
The holidays caught up with us and nothing got finished this week so hereare two pieces by Mike and myself from our days at Panel Patter.
[A Compassionate Time of Mourning in Jiro Taniguchi’s A Journal of My FatherComic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterScott Cederlund](https://www.panelpatter.com/2021/03/review-jiro-taniguchis-journal-of-my-father.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Why Do Humans Need Stories? A Conversation about Genius Animals? with Vali Chandrasekaran and Jun-Pierre ShiozawaComic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterMike Baxter](https://www.panelpatter.com/2020/09/Vali-Chandrasekaran-Jun-Pierrre-Shiozawa-Genius-Animals.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## Headlines
[TCAF announces 2025 dates and a new venueTCAF has announced its 2025 dates, June 6-7, and a new venue, the Mattamy Athletic Centre, a larger venue that will allow more exhibit spaceThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/tcaf-announces-2025-dates-and-a-new-venue/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
TCAF is one of those shows that’s on my list of shows I’d still like to get to someday. But part of that was the charm of having a show inside of a working library. It would be cool to see a show where the Maple Leafs play but I don’t know if there’s someone of the mystique now gone from the show. At least in my mind.
[The Best Comics of 2024: Readers’ poll highlights the year’s top creators and comicsFrom breathtaking artwork to spine-chilling horror, these fan-voted awards celebrate the very best comics and creators that defined 2024.AIPTDavid Brooke](https://aiptcomics.com/2024/12/17/2024-best-of-fan-reader-poll-comic-books/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think this poll is both worthless and fascinating, and that’s probably just me. In each of its categories, “Others” apparently dominates everyone’s best books of 2024, speaking to the diversity of tastes, styles, and voices that are currently available in comics.
But then taking “Others” out of the results, some of the top 3 selections here are just baffling. Look, I like Ariel Olivetti as much as the next guy (ok, that may be a lie) but it just boggles my mind that he’s one of the best artists of 2024\. Did he even have a book out last year? The article’s writer David Brooks can’t even list something by Olivetti. Josh Gad was one of the best writers? Panels from Flash or Moon Knight really “represent the sheer power of the medium, delivering emotions and spectacle that stay with readers long after the page is turned.”
Part of me wants to think there’s some serious ballot stuffing going on here but there’s another part of me that’s willing to believe that I’m just that out of touch with the mainstream comic fan.
## On Comic Sites
But Valnet is a content mill, isn’t it? You know it. I know it. You don’t think that there’s a chance you don’t know it, do you?
## **Business**
[Tilting at Windmills #299: The State of Comic Book Sales 2024Retailer Brian Hibbs gives the state of comic book sales in 2024: it’s good! But storm clouds are on the horizon.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-299-the-state-of-the-periodical-market-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
To be honest, I felt a bit of like this was Brian Hibbs being very Hibbsian (can I pen that word?) about his views of the comics industry. It almost reads like a greatest hits of his but then in the 2nd half, it takes a compelling turn as he starts to talk abut Diamond Distributors and what Diamond means for fostering a diversity of publishers that can participate in the direct market. Diamond has been having a lot of issues lately but Hibbs explores their place in distribution in comparison to the limits of Penguin Random House and Lunar Distribution.
> REMINDER: I will continue to order and shelve this book, for anyone who may need it.
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hrvfqacrd5mtlkqtuhnia53t/post/3ldkal24xuc2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Mike Sterling, Comics Guy ([@mikester.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hrvfqacrd5mtlkqtuhnia53t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [December 17, 2024 at 7:50 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:hrvfqacrd5mtlkqtuhnia53t/post/3ldkal24xuc2t?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Mike Sterling of [Sterling Silver Comics](https://sterlingsilvercomics.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) is one of the good ones.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Angoulême 2025: A closer look at this year’s official selectionsThe 2025 Angoulême Festival’s Official Selection has arrived! Here’s a deep dive analysis into this year’s selections.The BeatDean Simons](https://www.comicsbeat.com/angouleme-2025-a-closer-look-at-this-years-official-selections/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Look, I just read and enjoyed the first two volumes of Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo de Felicia’s **Void Rivals** but it seems weird that ends up being a representative book among the Official Selections for a French show. Like there’s nothing else in all of American comics that met the French’s high standards like **Void Rivals** did?
[WHY COMIC LETTERING IS STORYTELLINGComic readers typically don’t think about the look and format of the letters in their books unless there’s a glaring issue. Partially, this is by design, as a skilled typographer’s work should go unnoticed, not impeding the reading experience in the slightest.Innovative book printer and designer, Jon Ryder even went as far as to say, “The typographer’s art should be invisible. The hand which seeks perfection, but which is never actually seen.” It is from this quote that this field became colloquComic Book YetiLuke Henderson](https://www.comicbookyeti.com/post/why-comic-lettering-is-storytelling?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think we’re in a bit of a golden age for lettering in comics and probably don’t even realize it. I wonder if as lettering became a digital process over the last 20 years if it’s taken letterers that long to realize what they can really do with digital lettering. I really like when we can look at the elements of the comic page and see these artists making choices and we’re seeing a lot more of that lately in lettering.
[Books in Bites 26: What Matters? - SOLRADSOLRAD’s Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Elkin, returns with his capsule review column, Books in Bites, looking at work from Silver Sprocket, University Press of Mississippi, and Rutgers University PressSOLRADDaniel Elkin](https://solrad.co/books-in-bites-26-what-matters?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I really wish Elkin wrote more stuff.
> When people say that kids aren’t reading
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3vljawfjd54pkjjwurqk3336/post/3ldg6s6djmk2v?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — RAMZEE™️ ([@ramzee.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3vljawfjd54pkjjwurqk3336?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [December 16, 2024 at 5:07 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3vljawfjd54pkjjwurqk3336/post/3ldg6s6djmk2v?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I don’t know who this woman is but she’s a hero for saying this aloud. When my son was younger, it was tough to get him to read anything but he eventually discovered manga and as a junior in college, he’s an avid reader, often suggesting things to me that I should check out.
### Off To Blue Skies, Amos on Gaiman, Best Of 2024 Lists, and more — The Comics Bookmarks December 15th, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/off-to-blue-skies-amos-on-gaiman-best-of-2024-lists-and-more-the-comics-bookmarks-december-15th-2024/
Last updated: 2024-12-15T13:30:51.000Z
So it’s been a month or so since we did one of these. It felt like we were rolling along pretty good there since we started doing these link posts in the early summer but then we hit November and let’s just say, things happened in November. But one of the big ones that impacted what I was doing was the great Twitter/X exodus of 2024, of which I was part of. Sometime in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I decided to deactivate both my personal account and this site’s account on the Elon Musk hellsite and it was for the best.
Now I didn’t have the same experience that a lot of people did on TwXtter. And my secret was that honestly, I didn’t engage with my following list or the algorithm that much. Years ago, I discovered the joy of Tweetdeck and lists, the ability to curate Twitter accounts into different lists based on topics or just people I wanted to group together. Also, I didn’t necessarily follow individuals but news and entertainment sites to follow their headlines. In many ways, this replaced the long lost Google Reader (2005-2013 — it doesn’t seem like it’s been 11 years since we lost one of the best things that Google ever did.) Tweetdeck and lists took me out of all of the algorithms and advertising that seemed to sour everyone’s else experience on the site. But then, things changed.
When Musk bought Twitter, somewhere along the lines he put Tweetdeck behind a paywall— you had to pay Musk money to use it. So that was the first strike against Twitter/X. The second was easily Musk himself, inserting himself into everything that was happening. In far too many ways, he became Twitter or Twitter became him. Using the lists to curate the experience still helped to shelter my experience but it just wasn’t the same. And then the third strike was November 4th, 2024 and the days/weeks after, especially the ways that X now was posed to become even more of a propaganda machine for the incoming administration. (Let’s not even talk about the updated ToS and the AI training that X was being used for.) I held out hope far longer than I should have but a week or two before Thanksgiving, I started going through the steps to download and delete my accounts on X.
So to bring it back to these Comic Bookmark posts, getting away from X stalled any momentum I had because I had really figured out how to use that system to aggregate a lot of different comic/manga sites and feeds. To replace X (because I did really enjoy my sheltered experience there,) I’m like a lot of other people and moved to BlueSky. Now, it’s taken a bit but I’ve been working on setting up that place to mimic Twitter at it’s best— setting up lists, putting people where I want to follow them, getting it to see the world the way that I wanted to and not the way some algorithm wanted me to. Is BlueSky an echo chamber? Maybe but I don’t really care because I have other ways to engage with news (Google News is actually pretty good for that.).
https://deck.blue
So for now, you can find me, Mike, and From Cover To Cover over at BlueSky.
[Scott Cederlund (@scottcederlund.bsky.social)I write the reviews that make the whole world sing. Reviewing comics at www.fromcovertocover.com Previous bylines include Panel Patter and Newsarama.Bluesky Social](https://bsky.app/profile/scottcederlund.bsky.social?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[mccann (@triggercut.fightins.online)Celtic | Phillies and Philadelphia sports in general. Northeast Philly➡️Annapolis, MD Reading is my favorite thing to do He/him www.fromcovertocover.com “I never understood the frequency, uh huh”Bluesky Social](https://bsky.app/profile/triggercut.fightins.online?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[From Cover To Cover (@fromcovertocover.com)Comic book review, commentary and news. www.fromcovertocover.comBluesky Social](https://bsky.app/profile/fromcovertocover.com?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So I’m back with these link posts. With the holidays coming up, I’ll see what we can get done but I figure right now it will be January before things get back to regular service. But with that said, here are some articles for you to check out.
## Previously on FC2C
[A Life Formed by Manga: a look at Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tokyo These DayTokyo These Days isn’t a travelogue or a how to but it wants to let the reader know about the spirit of Tokyo and manga, how they’re intertwined, and how they weigh down on the artists and editors who create them.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/taiyo-matsumoto-tokyo-these-day-review/)
[The Breaking of a Good Man— a look at Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov’s The Punisher: Valley Forge, Valley ForgeMaybe it’s not the right time to be writing about a lone gunman prowling the streets of NYC. Or maybe it is as Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov are less focused on the exploits of Frank Castle the man and more dialed into the symbol that is The Punisher.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/garth-ennis-and-goran-parlov-the-punisher-valley-forge-valley-forge/)
## Headlines
[Trump’s Fans Are Suffering From Tony Soprano SyndromeSome conservatives are embracing the villains in what are supposed to be cautionary tales.The AtlanticAdam Serwer](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/elon-musk-judge-dredd-autocrat/680881/?gift=Je3D9AQS-C17lUTOnl2W8CBSmuV2OiRdoa9ckmQzxaU&utm%5Fsource=copy-link&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fcampaign=share)
> [One undecided voter told](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/04/opinion/trump-verdict-focus-group.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) a *New York Times* focus group earlier this year that Trump is “the antihero, the Soprano, the ‘Breaking Bad,’ the guy who does bad things, who is a bad guy but does them on behalf of the people he represents.”
Exactly who did Tony Soprano or Walter White represent? This article tries to explain it as a way to just show how media illiterate people are.
Adam Serwer invokes Judge Dredd, The Punisher, and The Boys (even if it is the TV version) in this article so it counts as a piece about comics.
[Tori Amos on trauma, Trump and Neil Gaiman: ‘It’s a heartbreaking grief’The musician is back with a live album and as passionate as ever. She discusses fans, failure, muses, misogyny – and why she won’t tolerate bad behaviourThe GuardianKira Cochrane](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/dec/03/tori-amos-on-trauma-trump-and-neil-gaiman-a-heartbreaking-grief?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> I ask Amos how she felt when she first heard the allegations. “Shocked,” she says. A long pause. “And if the allegations are true, that’s not the Neil that I knew, that’s not the friend that I knew, nor a friend that I ever want to know. So in some ways it’s a heartbreaking grief. I never saw that side of Neil. Neither did my crew. And my crew has seen a lot.”
I’ve been chewing on this one a bit. “… that’s not the Neil that I knew…” seems like a canned answer to these kind of questions. I’m really glad to see Amos talking about this, knowing the friendship they seemed to have back in the 1990s and learning in this that Gaiman is the godfather to one of her children. I kind of admire her for at least talking about it when most of the comic industry seems to have forgotten Gaiman’s name. Neil who?
## **Business**
> "Yotsuba &!" by Azuma Kiyohiko will finally release new volume 16 on Feb 26, 2025 in Japan (four years after the last volume) Slice of Life about a cheerful, energetic young girl finding joy in the smallest daily adventures together with her dad & her neighborhood Image © Kadokawa, Azuma Kiyohiko
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:fr3llthxguvlv4e2dzxynyg3/post/3ld6bkb7soc2z?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Manga Mogura (Anime & Manga News) ([@mangamogura.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:fr3llthxguvlv4e2dzxynyg3?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [December 13, 2024 at 1:35 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:fr3llthxguvlv4e2dzxynyg3/post/3ld6bkb7soc2z?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Quickly becomes on of the most anticipated books of 2025\. I actually just read the 15th volume a week or two ago and forgot just how delightful this series is.
[Top 10 best-selling manga of 2024Oricon revealed Jujutsu Kaisen as the best-selling manga series of 2024 in Japan, followed by One Piece and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.The BeatMatias De la Piedra](https://www.comicsbeat.com/top-10-best-selling-manga-of-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
At the end of this column, De la Piedra has a link to his analysis for 2023\. Reading the 2023 and 2024 pieces together offers a really fascinating glimpse into the Japanese manga business and how it breathes, expands, and contracts from year to year.
## **The Funny Pages**
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/DDhxFCjuXek/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Ben Passmore (@daygloayhole)](https://www.instagram.com/p/DDhxFCjuXek/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
## **Interviews**
[INTERVIEW: Emma Rios Talks Sea Monsters, Isolation, & Trauma in Anzuelo - WWAC %An interview with writer and illustrator Emma Rios about her recently released graphic novel Anzuelo.WWACJenna Ledford](https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2024/12/interview-emma-rios-talks-sea-monsters-isolation-trauma-in-anzuelo/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve been sitting on **Anzuelo** for a few weeks now for a really weird reason— I was waiting for a new pair of glasses to show up so I could really enjoy this book and I just got this week. So guess what I’ll be reading tonight?
> Alex Toth getting the last word.
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> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:otlhvherlegf5ewb6di6b7yb/post/3kh5kfhiein23?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Scott Gray ([@scott1gray.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:otlhvherlegf5ewb6di6b7yb?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [December 22, 2023 at 10:55 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:otlhvherlegf5ewb6di6b7yb/post/3kh5kfhiein23?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Aztek: The Ultimate Man #10: The Send-Off Issue That Wasn’tBy Tim Stevens The final issues of a short-lived (as in, cancelled early) comic book series have a fairly well-established format. The hero typically tangles with a supervillain, wins, and spends s…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2024/12/04/aztek-the-ultimate-man-10-the-send-off-issue-that-wasnt/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Aztek is not a series that I’ve really spent a lot of time with. I may have to catch up with it on the DC Universe app.
[50 Best Comic Books of 2024!Your guide to the 50 best comics & graphic novels of the year, updated monthly throughout 2024!Comic Book HeraldDave](https://www.comicbookherald.com/the-best-comics-of-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So many comics.
[The best graphic novels of 2024Arthurian legend, dark family secrets, monsters, princesses and a Russian detective in this year’s picksThe GuardianJames Smart](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/dec/02/the-best-graphic-novels-of-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So, so many comics.
[The Beat’s 50 Best Comics of 2024The Beat’s Best Comics of 2024 list features our a wide range of books that span genres, audiences and publishers.The BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/the-beats-50-best-comics-of-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So, so, so many comics.
## Book I’m Most Looking Forward To Reading This Week
I’m a sucker for The New Gods. I know it and I own it.
### The Breaking of a Good Man— a look at Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov’s The Punisher: Valley Forge, Valley Forge
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/garth-ennis-and-goran-parlov-the-punisher-valley-forge-valley-forge/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T16:55:53.000Z
Maybe it’s not the right time to be writing about a lone gunman prowling the streets of NYC. Or maybe it is as Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov are less focused on the exploits of Frank Castle the man and more dialed into the symbol that is The Punisher. **The Punisher: Valley Forge, Valley Forge** (2008) isn’t the story to go to if you want to know what makes Frank Castle who he is: there are plenty of other comics (most of them written by Ennis) or that. **Valley Forge, Valley Forge** isn’t a story about Frank Castle and his adventures. It’s something deeper and more meaningful than that. Ennis and Parlov, an Irishman and a Croatian, instead are digging into power in this book, particularly American power and the people who wield it. And ultimately, it comes down to this isn’t a war story or a superhero story or even a vigilante story— it’s a story about business.
Threatened by secrets that Frank Castle could expose, a group of military generals tasked the one good man, Colonel George Howe, and his special forces on a mission to bring down Frank Castle once and for all. Howe is a good soldier who sees Castle as the army’s responsibility to bring to justice but the general’s vision for this mission is that Howe’s soldiers will kill Castle and take their secrets with him. Interspersed throughout the story of the hunt for Castle are excerpts from a book about Firebase Valley Forge, an American camp that was slaughtered during the Vietnam War; the only survivor of that attack was Frank Castle. Ennis had previously told this story in the book *The Punisher: Born* (2004) but brings it back up in this book to create a dialogue between the war that created The Punisher and the war that Frank Castle is still fighting decades later.
Parlov and colorist Lee Loughridge’s work in this book is very understated. So much of the story is dialogue-driven, which has always been a joy when it comes to reading Ennis’ writing. So that leaves Parlov to draw men moving through the shadows, hunting the ultimate prey, and going through their own moral battles. Well, men other than Frank Castle. Ennis and Parlov know who and what Frank Castle is; that’s been well established in other books so this story is more about what Frank Castle means to so that’s what Parlov is drawing. It’s like he’s drawing a portrait of The Punisher but reflected in the faces of these other soldiers. We see the fear that The Punisher brings out, the anger, the sadness, and the resignation of these characters as they look upon one of their own as their own personal weakness or failures. And we see that in Howe’s sunken eyes, a proud career military man faced with the truth of what is at the heart of the American military.
That’s not to say that when they need to, Parlov and Loughridge can’t turn it on for some juicy action. This isn’t an action story but it does have its moments where Howe’s soldiers think they have Castle cornered and can take him down. These scenes are played just to show how much Castle is in control of everything that is happening. The first confrontation with two of Howe’s men is a cat & mouse game that Parlov and Loughridge just sink into. One portion if it is just a stare down to see who will blink first and you’re just waiting for something to break the tension. Another moment is a showdown in a cemetery where Castle faces down Howe’s whole team. It’s a strong sequence that shows where Castle seems outgunned and outmanned. The art is loose but each line is just the right line for the moment.
Ennis’ story forces us to ask just who are the good guys. An aged Nick Fury plays a small but pivotal part in this story. At a meeting in a bar, Fury watches television of war in Baghdad and philosophizes on his and Castle’s part in the ongoing wars that America fights and the death of innocents. “Sounds like you’re losing faith,” Castle says. “… Maybe I’m getting to be like you,” Fury answers back. It’s that cynicism of the good men, like Fury and Howe, that drive this story— the idea that there’s maybe something righteous that these men are doing even as they know that their actions are anything but righteous.
Howe genuinely is a good man. He’s a career soldier not because he’ll get something out of it. He’s a soldier because he believes in what he’s fighting for. Even his acceptance of the mission to hunt down Castle is tied to that righteousness. The men giving him the orders are just trying to save their own lives but Howe believes he can do some good by pulling Frank Castle out of his own war. That goodness even carries over to Howe’s men. They’re soldiers following orders from a man that they believe in. Ennis never comes right out and says this but his writing and the ways that Parlov draws them express that these are good men who are doing this because they believe in the necessity of the mission.
But someone in this story needs to face up to reality. And it’s not the generals, it’s not Castle, and it’s not Howe’s men. There’s a good man at the center of this story who has to face the ugliness of the world that he’s operating in. Even if the spirt of the orders that Howe is given is small and petty (basically, it’s self-preservation by some scared men,) Howe accepts it because he believes that he can save Castle. As the story progresses, we discover that Howe has his reasons for believing in Castle more than his commanders but he eventually ends up caught between the generals and Castle. He himself is ultimately powerless against either, a hard truth that he needs to face. Much like Fury in that bar, Howe has to wrestle with the idea that maybe he’s a bit more like Castle than he thought.
After an almost 8 year run on The Punisher that began in 2000, 2008’s **The Punisher: Valley Forge, Valley Forge** wraps up Garth Ennis’ time chronicling the life and times of Frank Castle. And instead of going out with guns blazing, Ennis and Parlov tell a meditative story, an earnest and moral story about the injustices of American war and the American military industrial complex. And just like Howe and Fury, Ennis and Parlov are challenging us to reflect on our own roles in these wars. We may not be soldiers or generals, but these wars are supposedly there to protect us and our interests. But it’s fairly obvious that Ennis doesn’t think our self interests are in anything more than protecting our wealth.
### A Life Formed by Manga: a look at Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tokyo These Day
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/taiyo-matsumoto-tokyo-these-day-review/
Last updated: 2024-11-22T15:35:11.000Z
Taiyo Matsumoto ends each chapter of **Tokyo These Days** with a full-page image of a Tokyo street— twenty-four such images in total across the three volumes. There are other drawings of Tokyo in these books, many of them also full-page images but they’re interspersed with the story, part of the ongoing narrative. These chapter-ending pages act as a punctuation mark— a period, an exclamation point, a question mark, and even sometimes an ellipsis. They are signifiers from Matsumoto to tell us to pause, to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve just read.
In manga, there often will be illustrations between chapters. For instance, Matsumoto’s *Teckonkinkreet* has a title page for each chapter, practically a cover illustration for each chapter of his story. In other manga, the creator will use the chapter break page for a drawing, maybe loosely connected to the chapters around it but often just a separation between the chapters to let you know that you’re moving from one chapter to another. To keep the grammar comparisons going, those other manga’s pages function more like a paragraph break than a punctuation mark.
In **Tokyo These Days**, Matsumoto uses solid black pages for the chapter breaks- two pages in between the chapters to control where they end and begin. They lead you out of the chapter— a strong and definitive fade-to-black approach for each narrative chapter. These black pages serve as the transition marker from one chapter to another, from one narrative thought to another. So the drawings of Tokyo that conclude each chapter have another function in this story; they are not there to move us from one part of the story to the next. They are the punctuation that makes us stop and pause for however long we need to take before we move forward in this story.
Reading **Tokyo These Days**, you get to experience that exhilaration of being in this world, the work a relationship (whether personal or professional) takes, and even the pain of closure at the end of that relationship. It’s this relationship with manga that Matsumoto is trying to work through and it’s not just as an outside observer of it like a reader but as one in those Tokyo trenches, working to keep the dream of manga alive. These books are a love letter to both manga and Tokyo. One doesn’t exist without the other. And if we read into it a bit, Matsumoto can’t or doesn’t want to live without either.
Matsumoto understands the pressure of both forces; the art and the city. And that is what Tokyo and manga are in Matsumoto’s life- forces. There’s this push-and-pull between the two of them; they’re rivals that complement but also agitate each other. The story opens with Shiozawa retiring from editing manga in a bit of disgrace. The magazine he poured his heart and soul into was canceled due to low sales after less than two years— a failure in his (and others') estimation. When it comes to manga, you can tell in these opening pages that Shiozawa is a lifelong aficionado but he’s questioning himself after this perceived failure. He quits his job, goes home, and contemplates selling his large manga collection. His confidence in himself is shaken.
But he can’t let go of manga as easily as he could leave his job. Out of this crisis of confidence comes the desire for one last attempt to make the best manga magazine, judged not by its market appeal but by its artistic integrity. He’s not chasing after what a publisher wants but what he thinks is needed to make a manga magazine that lives up to his high standards. At one point in the story, a one-time peer of Shiozawa’s who has risen higher in the corporate structure describes Shiozawa as “a dyed-in-the-wool manga fan.” He’s a lifer and an enthusiast. We see Shiozawa chasing a dream of what a magazine could be, chasing down the artists he admired to get their finest work out of them.
Shiozawa is a fascinating man to watch in this story. He is Matsumoto’s central character— most of the plot circles around him— but **Tokyo These Days** isn’t necessarily his story. Any conflict that he faces is relatively low stakes; he isn’t challenged in any significant way on his journey. He has this vision and he pursues it, never wavering in his belief in the art or the artists. We get to witness a manga editor in action and that alone is worth this story, to see a manga purist interact with these artists and with the business to see this behind-the-scenes perspective.
Through the artists and editors Shiozawa works with, we get a taste of the struggle and cost of manga creation, the pressure of it but also the thrill of it that makes those hard times worth it. Maybe it’s because an artist like Matsumoto can identify more with the artists that in them we see the cost of this work. We never really learn much about Shiozawa’s personal life other than he has an apartment and a bird (who seems to talk with him but it’s never really addressed in the story) so he’s more of an anchor point for all of these other characters who struggle with their work, struggle to find fulfillment with it even as they’re compelled to make this their life. That’s where Tokyo comes into the story.
In the final pages of each chapter, Matsumoto gives these images of Tokyo, often from a distance and always from a bird’s-eye vantage point. Shiozawa and these artists are mostly based in Tokyo, living in Tokyo, and moving through Tokyo. The story of manga has to be told from a Tokyo point of view as it’s so unique and cultural. Matsumoto’s drawings tell the stories of these Tokyo streets, apartments, offices, restaurants, and bookstores. We see batting cages and train stations. In those closing pages of the chapters, Matsumoto expands the story to be so much more about these editors and artists. As these closing pages are a punctuation point, they’re signaling to the reader to stop for a moment, to reflect on its role in these lives and this business.
Chosaku, one of the artists, has been in the game a long time, so long that maybe he’s coasting a bit in the latter part of his career; no one but Shiozawa challenges him. Through these three volumes, Chosaku is just one of the artists we follow and witness their struggles. He seems like a good guy but his devotion to producing manga has cost him a marriage and he’s trying to be the best father he can be for his daughter.
One chapter where he takes his daughter to a gallery show of one of her favorite manga creators ends with the two on a commuter train at night, heading home. Chosaku’s daughter talks about her struggles at school with other girls who were once her friends. She says as long as she has one friend, then she’s okay. That one friend is Chosaku’s manga character, a baseball player that she always carries a small toy of with her. It’s a great bonding moment as you realize how manga ties together a father and a daughter in meaningful and unexpected ways. This is just one example of the types of connections that Matsumoto explores around Tokyo with the many artists that Shiozawa reaches out to.
The last page of that chapter focusing on Chosaku and his daughter is an almost impossibly dark page, with only a few street lights and the train lights breaking through the darkness. In the background, you can also see the dim lights of Tokyo breaking through the darkness. In this chapter, we’ve gone through all of this doubt, pain, reflection, and maybe even some healing as both Chosaku and his daughter fall asleep on the train as it speeds down the tracks. And then we get to this last page, just showing some light breaking through the darkness. It’s a comforting image, a period on this thread that Matsumoto has been following trying to figure out just what kind of father and artist Chosaku is. He’s not the best father but he’s given his daughter something and that has to count for something. This final page, this final punctuation mark offers a conclusion to those questions and provides a certain amount of peace to be found in the night.
That’s how these final chapter pages function— bringing the city into the story as a character to comfort, to prod, or to encourage the characters. In this period of uncertainty for these characters as their art and their lives are challenged, the city is a constant there, never pitted against these people but there to push them and when needed, to comfort them. In **Tokyo These Days**, Taiyo Matsumoto writes and draws his love letter to Tokyo and to manga. His work is always full of passion but this one feels more personal, an artist looking back at a lifetime spent drawing and ruminating on what was and what is to come.
### How Do We Respond to Trump? “God of Horror” Passes Away and a lot of reviews— The Comic Bookmarks November 10th, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-november-10th-2024/
Last updated: 2024-11-10T13:30:22.000Z
O.k. So I missed last week. In my defense, it was a busy weekend (two concerts and a wedding to attend) and then this past Tuesday just knocked the wind out of everything else that was happening.
---
[The Nice House On The Sea #4 by Tynion IV, Bueno, and Bellaire— Mini ReviewÁlvaro Martinez Bueno and Jordie Bellaire’s artwork enhances James Tynion IV’s The Nice House stories, highlighting the contrast between the two houses and the characters’ evolving relationships.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-nice-house-on-the-sea-4-by-tynion-iv-bueno-and-bellaire-mini-review/)
[The Fight for Justice in Absolute Superman #1What does Truth, Justice, and the American Way mean after November 5, 2024?From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-superman-1-jason-aaron-rafa-sandoval-review/)
## Headlines
[On waking up on November 6Post-election thoughts, on pop culture in difficult times.PopverseGraeme McMillan](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-op-ed-v-for-vendetta-superman-election-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
McMillan’s piece here isn’t so much about specific comics even as it uses **V For Vendetta* as a touchstone but about how in past periods, culture has driven the creation of art. But something that has lived in my head for 7 or 8 years ago now is a line from the the propaganda machine in V saying “… make Britain great again.”
[Legendary “god of horror” manga artist Kazuo Umezu dies at 88He was the creator of The Drifting Classroom, Cat Eyed Boy, and many other classic worksGamesRadar+Will Salmon](https://www.gamesradar.com/comics/kazuo-umezu-obituary/?utm%5Fcontent=newsarama&utm%5Fsource=twitter.com&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fcampaign=socialflow)
Kazuo Umezu’s artwork is some of the first images that come to mind when I think about manga.
[This Vermonter amassed a legendary comic book collection. Some of the rarest ones are up for saleChristine Farrell, who owned Burlington’s Earth Prime Comics, is believed to be the first person to have a complete collection of everything published by DC Comics. Her collection starts in 1935 and includes the first appearances of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, as well as more obscure comics.Vermont PublicLiam Elder-Connors](https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-10-25/vermonter-christine-farrell-legendary-comic-book-collection-for-sale?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A great story about how Christine Farrell built one of the largest comic book collections.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[The End Of Independent Publishing And Giant Freakin RobotAfter relaunching GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT in 2019, the site grew to a readership of more than 20 million a month, … Continue reading “The End Of Independent Publishing And Giant Freakin Robot”GIANT FREAKIN ROBOTJoshua Tyler](https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/independent-ends.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Classifying this here as GFR has done some comic writing in the past but reading this, it’s kind of scary to realize just how much power Alphabet (the parent company of Google and YouTube) has over publishers and creators right now. Google Search is such a big way that this site gets eyes on it but it’s just at the mercy of our technological overlords, isn’t it?
## **Business**
> SB Fair 2024 sales: £491,194\. Especially happy considering we had fewer exhibitors/comics this year (than in 2023). Thank you so much for all your support 🌷✨ •Average sales in 2022, 97 exhibitors: £1521 •Average sales in 2023, 135 exhibitors: £2249 •Average sales in 2024, 117 exhibitors: £4198
>
> — ShortBox Comics Fair ([@shortboxcomicsfair.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mqttix475vom4ql4agfligrk?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [November 7, 2024 at 7:34 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:mqttix475vom4ql4agfligrk/post/3laeespfenc2h?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
ShortBox Comics Fair gives us a glimpse of their sales and it’s fascinating to see the results and the growing success of this online model.
> Good tip. Done.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ylfu4f4oxg2nhxuvlka7nozt/post/3lajc4z7rf227?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Derf Backderf ([@derfbackderf.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ylfu4f4oxg2nhxuvlka7nozt?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [November 9, 2024 at 6:29 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ylfu4f4oxg2nhxuvlka7nozt/post/3lajc4z7rf227?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Some thoughts on the Absolute line, FOC, and fomo. The timing of how we have to order comics and what comics get picked by the spec sites can lead to some frustration balancing orders. Absolute Batman #1 was on FOC first, obviously. We were going in mostly blind, but lots of good incentives by...
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:fibn64hvfq2ljbettzdq6k4c/post/3lahjkncoxs2y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Ryan Higgins ([@ryanhiggins.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:fibn64hvfq2ljbettzdq6k4c?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [November 8, 2024 at 1:37 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:fibn64hvfq2ljbettzdq6k4c/post/3lahjkncoxs2y?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Ryan has a whole thread on this where this is just the start of it. Click on the link and check out everything he has to say about FOC and the current speculation market for comics.
> Thousands of creators are getting hurt by Apple's greed. I am one of them. www.patreon.com/posts/115213...
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wb5hqujq6hht5qwseflspbgf/post/3l7xkghmhiu26?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Mathew Buck ([@filmbrainbmb.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wb5hqujq6hht5qwseflspbgf?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [November 2, 2024 at 6:10 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wb5hqujq6hht5qwseflspbgf/post/3l7xkghmhiu26?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **The Funny Pages**
> Trump-Lucy (Trucy?) prob one of the most horrifying things i’ve seen this week so now you gotta see it too
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2kbkozqo63fxdqm5yj3qlwvs/post/3lai4zynpj524?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — David Chen ([@davechen.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2kbkozqo63fxdqm5yj3qlwvs?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [November 8, 2024 at 7:25 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2kbkozqo63fxdqm5yj3qlwvs/post/3lai4zynpj524?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Alan Moore Beckons Readers Into a Rich New Fantasy WorldWith the first volume of a new series and an instructional book on magic, the “Watchmen” author wants an imaginary revolution.The New York TimesBy](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/26/books/review/alan-moore-the-great-when-bumper-book-of-magic.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ll admit— ****The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic** just intimidates me. It’s been sitting on the to-read pile for a few weeks now and I almost feel like I’m going to need to sit with that one for a year or so.
[The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic: Incantations of the present day - The Comics JournalIn which the new illuminated manuscript on magic practice by Alan Moore & Steve Moore is considered, on top of the state of things.The Comics JournalJoe McCulloch](https://www.tcj.com/the-moon-and-serpent-bumper-book-of-magic-incantations-of-the-present-day/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Luckily, Joe McColloch is a much braver and wiser man than I am and dove headfirst into Moore’s book.
[Outracing the Collapse of the Galaxy: Ian Cordingley on THE HARD SWITCH by Owen Pomery - SOLRADIan Cordingley on THE HARD SWITCH by Owen Pomery, published by Avery Hill PressSOLRADIan Cordingley](https://solrad.co/outracing-the-collapse-of-the-galaxy-ian-cordingley-on-the-hard-switch-by-owen-pomery?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I like reading reviews of Owen Pomery’s ****The Hard Switch** because it is a book that I have a hard time connecting with. I keep meaning to give it another go because I loved his **Victory Point* but my general feel of this book was that it was just the beginning of something and that something felt like it could have been much more interesting than its beginning was.
[‘Jessica Farm’ is a manic, absurd document of artistic growthTwenty-four years of unscripted fantasy.AIPTColin Moon](https://aiptcomics.com/2024/10/31/jessica-farm-review/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I hope I’m around to see the conclusion of ****Jessica Farm** in 2050\.
[The Ultimates #6 spills the tea on death, destiny and empire - COMICSXFThe entire roster of the Ultimates unites for the first time in this high-octane, climactic conclusion of the first arc.COMICSXFJake Murray](https://comicsxf.com/2024/11/06/ultimates-6/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is another one of those mainstream comics that feels very much of its time.
### The Fight for Justice in Absolute Superman #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-superman-1-jason-aaron-rafa-sandoval-review/
Last updated: 2024-11-08T04:48:26.000Z
However unintentional it may be, there are things to say about a new Superman that debuts the same day that Donald Trump wins his second Presidential term. Jason Aaron, Rafa Sandoval, and Ulises Arreola’s **Absolute Superman #1** show us a Superman born out of recognizable political climates, both on Krypton and on Earth. There’s almost no difference between their Krypton and their Earth, two distinct planets governed by class and more than willing to use up their lower classes to make sure that the upper classes have the lives that they feel that they deserve. These are both worlds of the rulers and the ruled and it feels like a world that we’re entering into in real life.
While it’s not addressed directly in this book, the basic premise of this new *Absolute* line is to show us a DC Universe formed and influenced by Darkseid (as seen in the *DC All In* special last month.). This is a universe that is a reflection of its creator. This comic is a reflection of this darkened view of the DC universe, much as Donald Trump has turned the United States into a reflection of himself. Sure, we’ve gone through this before in 2017 through 2020 and been able to live the past few years in a more stable world influenced by President Joe Biden but we witnessed that stability overturned this week by a majority of Americans preferring the view of the future that Trump promised than what the Democrats wanted to deliver.
It’s after that election that we see this new Krypton. Gone is the scientific but doomed utopia that we’ve seen before and in its place one ruled by oppression and the gods of business. It’s a Krypton where Lara-El and Jor-El fall from grace by challenging their world’s complacency and disregard for the climate. It’s a Krypton where you either live in the “sprawling centers of advanced science and ancient law” or the arid field where the farmers have to pay for the privilege of getting a rain shower for their crops. Even though this was written long before the November 5th election, Jason Aaron knows exactly what he was doing by turning Krypton into a technocracy as we see Elon Trump and Peter Thiel buddy up to Trump, hoping to use him to jumpstart the world that they want.
Earth becomes another reflection of Krypton, where a powerful corporation mines the Brazilian mountains for diamonds and their riches. This is the kleptocracy that Lara-El and Jor-El’s son Kal-El finds himself fighting the thuggish security forces of the Lazarus Corp. Even as asbestos is discovered in those mines, the wheels of business still need to grind away at the mine’s employees and their families. This Kal-El is the son of his parents even if this isn’t his world. (It’s not shown here but I think we all know what’s going to happen to this Krypton.) This is a Superman who is going to fight for the oppressed and the workers against the corporations and fat cats who get rich off of them.
Between Nick Dragotta (*Absolute Batman*,) Hayden Sherman (*Absolute Wonder Woman*,) and Rafa Sandoval, Sandoval is the more grounded of the three initial artists on the Absolute line and that’s what this title needs as it jumps around between locations and characters. The visual tone he sets isn’t so much about heightening the visual experience like Dragotta’s visual acrobatics or Sherman’s emotionally charged work. Instead, Sandoval brings this interpretation of Superman to a level of realism that we know. Krypton is an alien world but Sandoval’s interpretation of it makes it a place that we understand how it works. We understand the interplay of the classes and recognize the differences in life between them. When the story shifts to Brazil, we can practically feel the pressure of all of the bodies and shacks of the favela in this tight space. The three Absolute books are coming to this line from different visual angles, each one of them revealing something a bit more about how these books are different and how we should be reacting to them.
As this book is so much more about oppression, Aaron and Sandoval are turning Superman into a political figure. This has been done before to reflect the times of some stories. Look at Mark Millar’s *Red Son* or Grant Morrison’s *Action Comics* and you can see Superman being used as more than just a superhero but as a narrative that can be political and have something to say. Even going back to his origin, there’s something to be said about two Jewish men creating a character that was about truth, justice, and the American way (yes, that saying wasn’t used until later but Siegel and Shuster’s original stories still embody those words.) Aaron and Sandoval are following that same path, giving us a Superman for 2024 as it looks like we’re about to enter a dark age of what it means to be American or even a citizen of this world. **Absolute Superman #1** is very much a comic of late 2024, a warning about what could come but also potentially a path forward in this, part story, part guidebook on how to fight the battles that are in front of us.
That’s an awful lot to put on one book and most of this is probably just trying to draw weak correlations between the release date of the book and the historical events that just happened to have occurred on that same date. But it’s not too hard to see how both DC and Marvel through its new Ultimate line are telling stories about how to fight for justice in worlds molded by malevolent forces. And even if Trump hadn’t been elected this year, those same forces that are empowering him would still be trying to remake the world in their image. No election was going to destroy the desire of the rich and powerful to make the world in their image as if they were our gods. These comics are about the heroes in these imperfect worlds. And what better hero to show us how to fight for justice than Superman?
### The Nice House On The Sea #4 by Tynion IV, Bueno, and Bellaire— Mini Review
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-nice-house-on-the-sea-4-by-tynion-iv-bueno-and-bellaire-mini-review/
Last updated: 2024-11-01T03:00:10.000Z
James Tynion IV’s **The Nice House** stories wouldn’t work without the humanity that Álvaro Martinez Bueno and Jordie Bellaire bring out through the artwork. This story of the survivors of the apocalypse spending their end times in luxurious vacation homes where every desire is catered to them is horrifying not because of the apocalypse itself, but because of being trapped with other people—ones you know and love, and others who simply instill fear. In this second series, we find out that there’s another house by the sea, governed more by ambition than the love that characterized the house on the lake.
In **The Nice House By The Sea #4**, Tynion structures the story to draw out comparisons and contrasts of the two houses as Bueno and Bellaire’s artwork and colors make you feel those differences. Bueno stages each scene, paying attention to the relationships on display. In the house by the sea, those housemates are ambitious and looking for the opportunity to dominate others. You can tell that just in the way that they look at each other, hungry for something more than just food. And then in the house on the lake, these are old friends, relaxed and at ease around one another but still uncomfortable with the situation. Characters in both houses smile but those smiles mean completely opposite things.
And then there’s the lighting in the house, the naturalistic but revealing hues that bathe the scenes. There’s a warmth to the scenes but depending on the emotions of the characters, that warmth is either inviting and comforting or threatening to heat up to unbearable temperatures.
It’s hard to tell how much the location is shaping the characters or how the characters are defining the house they’re in. Tynion’s story suggests it’s a bit of both that’s happening as we get to know the cast of the new house by the sea, their connection to the lake house, and a bit more about the forces that “saved” them from the end of the world. In the sea house, the actor Oliver is the wild card on both sides, a man who was wanted in the first house of friends but somehow ended up in the second house of the ambitiously successful.
If he had never known about the lake house, everything would probably have been fine for the residents of both houses. But he did and now everything is in danger. Bueno and Bellaire infuse Tynion’s story with vibrant energy, captivating emotions, and a touch of suspense, drawing us into the characters’ journeys. The artwork invites us to immerse ourselves in the narrative, making us feel as though we are experiencing it alongside them.
### The Return of the Monthly Sales List, Remembering Bernie Mireault, and An Appearance by Alan Moore— Comic Bookmarks October 26, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-return-of-the-monthly-sales-list-remembering-bernie-mireault-and-an-appearance-by-alan-moore-comic-bookmarks-october-26-2024/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T02:06:30.000Z
I was sick last week so didn’t get one of these out so there’s interesting reads from the last couple of weeks here to catch up.
> Do not obey in advance. Lesson 1, first page, of my pamphlet "On Tyranny" [https://t.co/C3857ouRzO](https://t.co/C3857ouRzO?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/FWIDPecber](https://t.co/FWIDPecber?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) [October 25, 2024](https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Not comics but something to remember as we enter the last two weeks of the 2024 Presidential Election, particularly as major newspapers are refusing to endorse a candidate in this election.
Enough with the politics. Part of being sick recently was that I kind of lost the drive to work on a longer review. I’m about 700 words into a review of Taiyo Matsumoto’s **Tokyo These Days** but lost the thread of it thanks to a head cold. And when I was a bit better, I just didn’t feel like writing any long pieces. So, instead, I did a week of short reviews. These were all written on my phone with the guideline that they had to fit into one screen of the phone. The conceit was to have one or maybe two ideas that I really looked at. That didn’t leave a lot of room to dive into anything (something I’m kind of sorry for when it comes to the **Monsterpiece Theater #1** review.) But these were meant to be quick, short, and more how I felt about the book and not dragged out or really planned. If I’ve been spamming your feed or email this week, I’m sorry for that. But I enjoyed doing these reviews and need to figure out some way to work them into the regular rotation.
[Transformers Volume 1: Robots in Disguise— Mini ReviewDaniel Warren Johnson makes you feel something for these toys.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/transformers-volume-1-robots-in-disguise-mini-review/)
[Hate Revisited #4 by Peter Bagge- Mini ReviewNostalgic without the nostalgia.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hate-revisited-4-by-peter-bagge-mini-review/)
[The Power Fantasy #3– Mini ReviewIn this issue, we learn so much but realize that we know so little about this world.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-power-fantasy-3-mini-gillen-wijngaard-review/)
[Absolute Wonder Woman #1— Mini reviewThis isn’t quite the hero that we know but it is the woman who inspires everyone.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-wonder-woman-1-mini-review/)
[Monsterpiece Theater #1– Mini ReviewAn idea in search of a story.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/monsterpiece-theater-1-mini-review/)
## Headlines
[Remembering Bernie Mireault: 1961-2024 - The Comics JournalMireault was never the sort of artist likely to make the front of a Previews catalog, but it is wholly possible to imagine the sort of alternate world where he might have been, and where anyone with verve, talent and tenacity for the art form might do the same.The Comics JournalZach Rabiroff](https://www.tcj.com/remembering-bernie-mireault-1961-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve been looking at **The Jam* a lot since Mireault’s passing. He was always a cartoonist that I appreciated and wish had been able to do more. This piece by Zach Rabiroff offers a remembrance and history of Mireault that is insightful to the artist he was.
[‘Fandom has toxified the world’: Watchmen author Alan Moore on superheroes, Comicsgate and TrumpEnthusiasm can be a productive force for good, but our culture has rapidly become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living inThe GuardianAlan Moore](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/26/fandom-has-toxified-the-world-watchmen-author-alan-moore-on-superheroes-comicsgate-and-trump?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Alan Moore pops his head up. Not to say anything of if he’s right or wrong here, there’s a sense that he’s been saying some form of this for 40 years now. And maybe he has and fandom just hasn’t listened to him yet.
## **Business**
[The comics industry hasn’t had an actual health check in five years - but Prana is aiming to change thatFor the first time in 5 years, fans, publishers, and everyone will have an idea of just how healthy the comic industry actually isPopverseGraeme McMillan](https://www.thepopverse.com/live-new-york-comic-con-nycc-2024-prana-direct-market-solutions-fan-confidence-rating?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I go back and forth on how much I think sales matter but usually land on the side of “it’s been 6-8 years since sales data has meant anything to the audience.” It used to be a barometer of what people were reading, that along with Twitter (and other social media) reflected general tastes. But since the mid-aughts, mostly since Marvel and DC really started flooding the market with books, that general audience has felt more fractured than ever so I’m not too sure what this will accomplish. Hopefully it has good information for specialty shop retailers.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Date Book, Volume 3Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Date Book series, which collects highlights from his sketchbooks, has been a fascinating look into the working pr…Rob Clough](http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/10/chris-wares-acme-novelty-date-book.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It’s been a while since I checked out the first two **Acme Novelty Date Book*s but this one sounds like it contains a lot of interesting little strips and stories in it.
[Who Did What? Marvel’s Attempt to Contextualize Stan LeeChris Schillig](http://cschillig.blogspot.com/2024/10/who-did-what-marvels-attempt-to.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
There’s a new version of **Origins of Marvel Comics* out? This piece by Chris Schillig looks at how this updated edition tries to contextualize Stan Lee’s hucksterisms and misconceptions.
[Teenage Dreams | Dustin IllingworthThe graphic novels of Charles Burns contort the bildungsroman into shapes both fantastic and fascinating.The BafflerZachariah Webb](https://thebaffler.com/latest/teenage-dreams-illingworth?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I still need to read **Final Cut*. It’s one of those books that I feel like the anticipation of it bigger than the actual act of reading it. While I expect it to be excellent, I also expect to be disappointed that I don’t have more new Charles Burns to read.
[Manga Review: THE GUY SHE WAS INTERESTED IN WASN’T A GUY AT ALL pitch perfect feel good inkIn THE GUY SHE WAS INTERESTED IN WASN’T A GUY AT ALL, Sumiko Arai’s girl crush manga heart moves to the DGC beat.The BeatArpad Okay](https://www.comicsbeat.com/manga-review-the-guy-she-was-interested-in-wasnt-a-guy-at-all/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Add another one to the list of books to track down.
[Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre #1 is a delight for your inner snob and your inner child - Graphic PolicyGodzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre #1 is a delight and truly a marvelous piece of sequential storytelling, old sport!Graphic PolicyLogan Dalton](https://graphicpolicy.com/2024/10/23/godzillas-monsterpiece-theatre-1-is-a-delight-for-your-inner-snob-and-your-inner-child/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And I’ll let Logan have the last word on ****Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theater.**
### Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theater #1– Mini Review
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/monsterpiece-theater-1-mini-review/
Last updated: 2024-10-26T20:44:33.000Z
How many issues is this going to be?
Jay Gatsby’s life was built around his love for a woman. It was a careless love that pulled other people into its orbit to chew them up and spit them out. Maybe you’ve read the book or seen one of the movies starring Robert or Leo. And maybe you thought that there was something missing from Gatsby’s story. Maybe something like a fire-breathing kaiju.
Tom Scioli has made a career of taking established characters and properties and turning them into his toys, playing with them for a bit, and then putting them back into the toybox. This time, he gets out his Godzilla toys and his set of *The Great Gatsby* action figures, smashing their stories together as Godzilla attacks Long Islands. He does this without any real purpose other than to see how far he can take it.
A mashup for the sake of a mashup isn’t a story. It’s just an idea thrown out into the world. And Scioli’s idea seems to be what if Jay Gatsby’s formed the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to fight Godzilla. There are things you could do with that but in this first issue, Scioli doesn’t take it any further than that. Scioli has done this kind of thing before, whether it’s *Fantastic Four: Grand Design* or *American Barbarian* where he remixes stories and concepts but he has a point of view that adds something to those stories. In this issue, there’s no evidence of depth or insight beyond a surface-level thought of “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” It’s a fun idea but a thin concept for however many issues of this that we’re going to get.
### Absolute Wonder Woman #1— Mini review
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/absolute-wonder-woman-1-mini-review/
Last updated: 2026-08-02T21:01:18.000Z
**Absolute Wonder Woman #1** may be best defined by what it’s not. It’s not a reboot. It’s not about building a better Wonder Woman. It’s not even a reimagining of the Wonder Woman story as all of the traditional elements are still somewhat present, just shuffled around a bit. But it is the ways that Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, and Jordie Bellaire shuffle the deck here that define this Wonder Woman, the elements they remove from her life, and the mythology of the character that they recontextualize in this new and darker world.
This isn’t about a warrior raised in Paradise but about a miracle child raised in Hell. This relocation is another defining piece of this Wonder Woman as it shows the goodness and strength inherent in the character even as her circumstances change. Thompson writes a m This isn’t quite the Wonder Woman you know but it is the Diana you do. other/daughter relationship that sings with truth and honesty in Diana’s relationship with her adopted mother Circe.
Sherman and Bellaire draw this harsh world with so much warmth. Sherman captures the power, majesty, and fierce compassion of Diana. Her life may be different but she isn’t. And Bellaire colors each page as if a fire burns beneath its surface. Sometimes that fire is just embers, projecting warmth and light against the darkness. But on other pages, that fire is a raging inferno, burning down everything in its path.
Thompson, Sherman, and Bellaire remain faithful to Diana’s story through the changes that they make as those changes are built on top of a faithful understanding of the character’s core.
### The Power Fantasy #3– Mini Review
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-power-fantasy-3-mini-gillen-wijngaard-review/
Last updated: 2024-10-23T16:30:37.000Z
**The Power Fantasy** has been revealing itself bit by bit, pulling back layers since it started. In the first two issues, those layers were mostly character-based, showing us who these men and women are based on their words and actions. With the third issue, Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard peel back layers of history, showing us what has happened in this world since 1945 and how those events have shaped this ensemble. Even as they’ve revealed more of this world, Gillen and Wijngaard have asked more questions that they’ve left unanswered for the time being.
Wijngaard’s artwork is a mask over the darkness of this story. This issue's central character Valentina is quite literally an angel on Earth and he draws her as an angel who is one of us. As Gillen and Wijngaard show us her actions throughout the second half of the 20th century, Wijngaard uses bright, airy colors that show us a world without boundaries. Those colors shift to darker hues, constricting the world until the pressure pushes Valentina to a breaking point. Then those bright, airy colors become a show of her power and its nearly infinite expanse.
This issue shows us so much of the history that has formed these characters but also shows that there are many layers yet to go. Like the first two issues, **The Power Fantasy #3** is still unveiling to us what this story is and what it is capable of from both the characters and the creators. Altogether, we’re ninety-ish pages into this story. We’ve learned so much and yet barely broken the surface of this world and these characters.
### Hate Revisited #4 by Peter Bagge- Mini Review
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hate-revisited-4-by-peter-bagge-mini-review/
Last updated: 2024-10-22T13:00:57.000Z
With **Hate Revisited #4**, there’s the sense that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Peter Bagge has been revisiting Buddy Bradley, his family, and his friends, catching up with them in 2024 just as Buddy is doing on a trip back to New Jersey. As a longtime reader of Bagge, there’s the sense of familiarity here but there’s also the sense of surprise, discovering that Buddy’s brother Butch is practically (and unknowingly) in a right-wing militia or finding out that his sister has a new boyfriend, someone from Buddy’s past.
While Bagge is playing with nostalgia in this series, counting on his audience’s relation to this cast, **Hate Revisited #4** is not a nostalgic book. Bagge and Buddy aren’t melancholic for “the good old days” Both look back on their past with a sober realization of it’s the past— it’s where and who they were while recognizing growth and change. There are a couple of moments in this issue where Buddy demonstrates how he’s changed over the years. He’s still Buddy, Lisa is still Lisa, and Butch is still Butch but they’re also the culmination of their experiences and we just don’t know what they’ve been up to or done since we last spent some time with them. It’s noticed by his sister and wife in small but meaningful ways.
Returning to **Hate**, Bagge captured that feeling of catching up with someone after years of not really staying in touch. There are the memories of time spent together (or in our case, reading their misadventures) and the realization that we all have changed over the years. The memories bring us together but there’s still that distance created by time. And eventually, we part, promise to call or write, and return to our normal lives. Things changed but they also stayed the same.
### Transformers Volume 1: Robots in Disguise— Mini Review
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/transformers-volume-1-robots-in-disguise-mini-review/
Last updated: 2025-02-01T20:58:00.000Z
Daniel Warren Johnson is a creator whose medium is energy. His comics and art are all about the energy (high or low) of the moment which is appropriate in a comic about a space-faring robotic robot race trying to find energy to revive their dormant species. And if you’re looking for a comic about robots doing wrestling moves on other robots, then Johnson is the artist for that because he can make you feel the pressure of a chokehold and the boom of a metallic figure being body slammed on the ground. When he draws a fight, there’s all kinds of chaotic energy spilling out of the page.
But where **Transformers: Robots in Disguise** stands out are the moments where Johnson has to find the inner energy of the characters as they have to deal with the trauma that they are caught up in. Whether it’s a father who is lost after the death of one son and the inability to connect with another son or a good guy robot realizing how fragile the world is as he cradles the body of a deer he accidentally killed, Johnson’s story comes together in these smaller, quieter moment. All of these characters have lost something (even the bad robots) and Johnson gives them their time of grief and pain in this story about an alien invasion.
Johnson finds this engaging rhythm between the exciting physical action and the quieter, inner turmoil that moves you through the story. There’s the robot on robot fighting which is fun in a big, dumb kind of way and then there’s the moments of grief and reflection. Johnson intertwines these moments, skillfully balancing the diverse energies to tell an action-packed and emotionally charged story.
### A follow up on Desert Island Comics, The Comics Courier, An Appreciation of a Letter and More— Comic Bookmarks October 13, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic_bookmarks_october_13_2024/
Last updated: 2024-10-13T21:14:42.000Z
I was really debating on whether or not to write about **Absolute Batman** this week. I even purchased the digital copy of it Tuesday night with the idea of trying to bang something out late in the night but quickly realized that I didn’t want to play that game. After another issue or two, I may have something to say about this comic bigger than the below, a post to Bluesky that basically can be summed up by saying that this first issue is “meh.”
> So Absolute Batman is just another Batman comic. That’s a bit of a disappointment. Dragotta and Martin’s artwork is pretty enough but Snyder’s story tries hard but feels empty. The book feels like it’s trying to fill its space but doesn’t have the form to define that space.
>
> — Scott Cederlund ([@scottcederlund.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qw7jyy2f77ebyozco2tvvyu?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [October 8, 2024 at 11:52 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qw7jyy2f77ebyozco2tvvyu/post/3l62k5fg77p2p?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’m trying to think a bit more about the shape of this issue and I just don’t see it other than trying to define this Batman by what he isn’t in comparison to how we usually see him. Maybe there’s more there and I‘m missing it (based on other‘s reaction to this book, it seems like this is a “me” thing) but I’ll stick around this for a few more issues to see what it ends up becoming.
[On Junji ItoI discovered Juni Ito’s manga about 9 years ago, when Viz started rereleasing his work again, starting with Uzamaki. At Panel Patter, I jumped on his stuff, getting sucked into Uzamaki and GYO. Other books followed and there are some that I need to still catch up with (ReminaFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/on-junji-ito/)
## Headlines
[More on the future of Desert Island Comics from Gabe FowlerDesert Island Comics has raised more than $80,000 in three days to stay open, and owner Gabe Fowler reactsThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/more-on-the-future-of-desert-island-comics-from-gabe-fowler/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Following up from something called out in last week’s post, Gabe Fowler launched a [GoFundMe to try to raise funds for his shop Desert Island Comics](https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-sustain-a-creative-community-resource?ref=fromcovertocover.com) to stay in it’s current location or to move to new location. Heidi MacDonald talks to Fowler about his successful campaign (currently over $93,000 on goal of $79,200) and what his next steps are.
[Introducing our Artists in Residence ProgramTiny Onion keeps growing…The Empire of the Tiny OnionJazzlyn Stone](https://jamestynioniv.substack.com/p/introducing-our-artists-in-residence)
This is interesting and I wish that there was a bit more explanation here about this. What does this mean for Jordie Bellaire and Aditya Bidikar? It sounds like only good things which is great because both of them deserve the work and recognition.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
> It took me many many takes to get this video done and dusted, but if you want to hear/see me talk about The Comics Courier instead of reading about it - here's the video for you! [pic.twitter.com/SvG8X3F42p](https://t.co/SvG8X3F42p?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Tiffany Babb 🔜 Thought Bubble (@explodingarrow) [October 9, 2024](https://twitter.com/explodingarrow/status/1844150938476609845?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[You can support The Comics Courier now at Kickstarter. ](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiffanybabb/the-comics-courier?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> This whole Wordpress disaster has been mostly under the radar - which is frankly an uninformed take. Wordpress powers 40% of the internet and probably nearly ALL of the independent web. That it stayed beneficial and open source as long as it did is maybe the real miracle. [https://t.co/w4FReYikBk](https://t.co/w4FReYikBk?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Heidi MacDoom (@Comixace) [October 12, 2024](https://twitter.com/Comixace/status/1845189827597308290?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Not comics specifically but I suspect that there are many sites that run on Wordpress and rely on their plugins for functionality. I know that I’ve used it for other sites and the flexibility you have because of the plugins allows for so much great functionality and individuality in sites. But I haven’t paid much attention to it in 5 out 6 years as it sounds like Wordpress has either been taking a lot of this functionality in house or predatorily just taking over that functionality to squeeze out developers.
## **Business**
> Also reiterating I’m donating all profits until the end of the year from my book IT’S LONELY AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH to mental health charities, and my Italian, French, and Spanish publishers are also joining the initiative so all those respective editions count also. [pic.twitter.com/FwX6lZIUoO](https://t.co/FwX6lZIUoO?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Zoe Thorogood (@zoethorogood) [October 10, 2024](https://twitter.com/zoethorogood/status/1844434213304725749?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> We're so excited to be announcing the next step in Silver Sprocket's journey to truly be an independent press with our first fundraiser! [pic.twitter.com/OcVG6Frg6W](https://t.co/OcVG6Frg6W?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Silver Sprocket (@silversprocket\_) [October 9, 2024](https://twitter.com/silversprocket%5F/status/1844053552005853413?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
You can contribute to the Silver Sprocket fundraiser [here](https://store.silversprocket.net/pages/fundraiser?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
## **The Funny Pages**
> Yep, this is how painstaking and tedious shading work in manga used to be...lots of pasting, cutting and shaping, scraping to get gradations. Pouring one out for all the manga artists & assistants who used to do this manually by hand 🥲🍷-[pic.twitter.com/SlCHicNo0r](https://t.co/SlCHicNo0r?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — blauereiter (@blauereiter) [October 5, 2024](https://twitter.com/blauereiter/status/1842650983337537576?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[FINAL CUT by Charles Burns graphic novel review - Comics GrinderCharles Burns new graphic novel, FINAL CUT, reviewed at Comics Grinder.Comics GrinderHenry Chamberlain](https://comicsgrinder.com/2024/10/05/final-cut-by-charles-burns-graphic-novel-review/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It sounds like Charles Burns is still trying to work through the awkwardness and the pain of growing up. It’s so interesting to see just how this time period of growing up still has so much meaning and questions for him.
[The Letters of Absurd Realities: On The Lettering Of Aditya BidikarAn examination of the art of lettering across multiple comics–looking at the craft employed by letterer Aditya BidikarRitesh Babu](https://riteshbabu.net/2024/10/10/the-letters-of-absurd-realities-on-the-lettering-of-aditya-bidikar/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Ritesh Babu has a great examination of Aditya Bidikar’s lettering, and how Bidikar’s work is part of the storytelling and not just a necessary tool of it. It’s the considered approach of an artist, choosing the right approach to the individual work.
[A Guest in the House - The Comics JournalEmily Carroll’s quiet horror graphic novel, A Guest In The House, reviewed by Sadia Bies.The Comics JournalSadia Bies](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/a-guest-in-the-house/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I really need to reread this book. It was one of my favorite books last year and does feel like one that should be returned to over and over again.
[Absolute Batman #1 delivers a Dark Knight that’s civically minded while also having the best extended action sequence in yearsBuy!Graphic PolicyLogan Dalton](https://graphicpolicy.com/2024/10/09/absolute-batman-1-delivers-a-dark-knight-thats-civically-minded-while-also-having-the-best-extended-action-sequence-in-years/?ref=fromcovertocover.com#google%5Fvignette)
I opened with my thoughts about Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s ****Absolute Batman** and end with Logan Dalton’s, a review who I really appreciate as he comes to comics from a different angle than I do, with different reference and anchor points which make realize that we can all see something different and (hopefully) still be right in those differences.
### On Junji Ito
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/on-junji-ito/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T02:07:22.000Z
I discovered Juni Ito’s manga about 9 years ago, when Viz started rereleasing his work again, starting with Uzamaki. At [Panel Patter](https://www.panelpatter.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), I jumped on his stuff, getting sucked into **Uzamaki** and **GYO**. Other books followed and there are some that I need to still catch up with (**Remina** is still on the to-read pile.).
With **Uzamaki** hitting Max as an animated show, here are the three pieces I’ve written about Ito and you can check out the full reviews over at Panel Patter.
[The Maddening Spirals of Junji Ito’s UzumakiComic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterScott Cederlund](https://www.panelpatter.com/2015/05/the-maddening-spirals-of-junji-itos.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
“To make those physical manifestations of bodily mutations have any kind of impact, Ito has to build up the suspense to those moments, which he does masterfully. **Uzamaki** is a page turner as Kirie and Schuichi’s investigations into the strange spirals out slowly but continues to get more and more dangerous with each occurrence. As clouds and dust whirl into spirals, as people start going mad, as their bodies begin turning into snails and as the food runs out and the snails are the only meat available, Ito’s madness worms its way into the reader’s mind. It’s the Alfred Hitchcock method of horror where the really scary stuff isn’t in the horrific images but it’s in the moments leading up to those twisted and monstrous bodies that jump out at you. There are many such reveals throughout the book where Ito builds up and teases out the tension and each next one keeps multiplying on top of the last. ”
[Click here to read the rest of my review of **Uzamaki**](https://www.panelpatter.com/2015/05/the-maddening-spirals-of-junji-itos.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
[Halloween Horror: Junji Ito’s GyoComic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterScott Cederlund](https://www.panelpatter.com/2015/10/halloween-horror-junji-itos-gyo.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
”Ito’s artwork makes it impossible not to be both repulsed and fascinated by these invading creatures. As more of these fish hybrids swarm onto land, overtaking first Japan and then the rest of the world, Ito’s horror creates a dizzying experience. [Like his *Uzumaki*](http://www.panelpatter.com/2015/05/the-maddening-spirals-of-junji-itos.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), the terror Ito creates is intensified by his unwillingness to play coy with his story. His vigor for the portrayal of the unnatural creates images that makes you confront his brand of terror. He doesn’t hide the way that the world is changing but the tension he creates by constantly dreaming up new horrors to draw make you hesitant to turn the page because you just don’t know what new abomination you’re going to see next.”
[Click here to read the rest of my review of **GYO**](https://www.panelpatter.com/2015/10/halloween-horror-junji-itos-gyo.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
[The Horror of Being Alive in Junji Ito’s No Longer HumanComic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterScott Cederlund](https://www.panelpatter.com/2020/05/the-horror-of-being-alive-in-junji-itos.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
“So where his horrors have been something other than human before (even Tomie was a supernatural terror,) **No Longer Human** focuses on the horrors of being human. In this book, Ito casts us into a pit of our own ridiculously shallow view of our own worth. At a young age, Yozu Oba tries to be the clown of his school. He finds that role to be easy but also to be free of responsibility so it fits him. If he can be a clown, it’s all that he needs to be. At a young age, he recognizes a futility in trying to amount to anything grand so why even try. He definitely doesn’t have the ambition to follow in his father’s footsteps so really all that’s left is to be the clown and skate through life. He even studies Buster Keaton, understanding what Keaton did without ever comprehending the why. He wasn’t being the clown to bring joy to others but to try to escape the watchful and judging eyes of everyone.”
[Click here to read the rest of my review of **No Longer Human**.](https://www.panelpatter.com/2020/05/the-horror-of-being-alive-in-junji-itos.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### A Tribute to Bernie Mireault, Shortbox Comics Festival is Live, Kurtzman, Toxic Fandom and more- Comic Bookmarks- October 5, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-tribute-to-bernie-mireault-shortbox-comics-festival-is-live-kurtzman-toxic-fandom-and-more-comic-bookmarks-october-5-2024/
Last updated: 2024-10-06T12:15:56.000Z
Let’s just dive into this week’s links that you should check out.
[The Form Is the Story in Kevin Huizenga’s Fielder #3Huizenga’s playful pages lead to the truth of his cartooning.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/kevin-huizenga-fielder-3/)
I’m always excited for a new Kevin Huizenga book. One of the things I really like about his is that with every new comic, it feels like you need to relearn how to read his stuff. The lessons of the last issue were just for the last issue and this is a new one.
## Headlines
[ShortBox Comics FairShortBox Comics Fair is a unique and innovative digital comics fair, where every exhibiting artist debuts a brand-new comic!ShortBox Comics FairSkip to Content](https://www.shortboxcomicsfair.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It’s the ShortBox Comics Fair, the only comics fair for the whole month of October. I haven’t had a chance to dig into anything yet but I’ve been seeing a lot of good stuff about the books featured in this year’s fair.
[Toxic Fandom: How Hollywood Is Battling Fans Who Are ‘Just Out for Blood’ — From Social Media Boot Camps to Superfan Focus GroupsThe threat of toxic fandoms — from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to Bridgerton and Game of Thrones — has become an intractable headache for almost every studio.VarietyAdam B. Vary](https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/star-wars-lord-of-the-rings-bridgerton-toxic-fans-hollywood-response-1236166736/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is more comic adjacent than directly about comics but it seems like once again, comics where ahead of the pop culture curve as this was happening in mainstream fandom 10 or so years ago, whenever Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America were replaced in their comics. Another reminder that the loudest parts of fandom are always the smallest and angriest parts of fandom.
[Viz Media Summer 2025 License Announcement RecapViz Media is back again with their Quarterly License Announcements on X (Formally Twitter) today with a whopping twenty-six announcements! There were Twenty-one print titles announced and five digital only titles. Let’s take a look at what they announced!Viz Media Summer 2025 License Announcement RecapAnnouncementsTokyo Fears Rhapsody by Akira SugitoPublisher Summary: Mighty monster Hachiro just wants to eat human sweets in peace, but between fighting ghoulish foes and evading his mad scientistBehindTheMangaManga Alerts](https://www.behindthemanga.com/post/viz-media-summer-2025-license-announcement-recap?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A lot of Viz announcements for next summer. I never have a sense with manga about what’s the next big thing to look for. There’s some stuff in here that looks like it can be fun but I’m just not a great judge of knowing what to look for in these announcements this far ahead. I really need to be in the store, flipping through the books to get a good idea about them.
A good tribute to a cartoonist who should have gotten a lot more attention than he did.
## **Business**
> Such horrible news. Maybe if this city and state weren't governed by the real estate lobby, this wouldn't happen. [pic.twitter.com/1Oy1kybLW0](https://t.co/1Oy1kybLW0?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Domino Books (@DominoComics) [October 3, 2024](https://twitter.com/DominoComics/status/1841958382099476740?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> We're closing out our summer with a bang by bringing new comics from [@Fishelle](https://twitter.com/Fishelle?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com), Ruby Carter, and Tinguu to [@Crowdfundr](https://twitter.com/Crowdfundr?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)! [pic.twitter.com/zojm5mdTFo](https://t.co/zojm5mdTFo?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Fieldmouse Press (@FieldmousePress) [October 2, 2024](https://twitter.com/FieldmousePress/status/1841522078450651234?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **The Funny Pages**
[ComicConnect - Davis, Alan - EXCALIBUR (1988-98) #66 Cover - VF: 8.0ComicConnect is The Online Marketplace for Comic Buyers & Sellers. The Online Marketplace for Comic Buyers, Sellers, Games, & More. Online Comic Auctioneer.Home](https://www.comicconnect.com/item/1054033?tzf=1&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
O.k. So this image doesn’t look like much but follow the link and see all the steps that Alan Davis had to go through to make what looks like on the surface a fairly simple, if colorful, cover that had to be incredibly complex to fixture out every layer that was needed for this one. Davis is a bit under-appreciated for just how good of a cover artist he is.
> SLUGGO SATURDAY [pic.twitter.com/80PQsinXOs](https://t.co/80PQsinXOs?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Nancy Comics by Ernie Bushmiller (@JohnnyCallicutt) [September 28, 2024](https://twitter.com/JohnnyCallicutt/status/1840032113938047011?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[Harvey Kurtzman on the big comic cleanup of 1954 - The Comics JournalIn 1972, Patrick Rosenkranz talked with Harvey Kurtzman and his wife, Adele, about the Senate Comic Book Hearings of 1954 and the subsequent establishment of the Comics Code.The Comics JournalPatrick Rosenkranz](https://www.tcj.com/harvey-kurtzman-on-the-big-comic-cleanup-of-1954/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
To celebrate Harvey Kurtzman’s 100th birthday, it’s been Kurtzman week over at The Comics Journal. This interview from 1972 is a great take on the Wertham hearings when it wasn’t too far in the distant past. It’s a bit weird reading this— I grew up in the 1980s when Wertham was still the bogey man. It’s this weird bit of nostalgia to read this and remember the days when his spectre still hung over everything.
[Jeff Lemire Teases His DC All In Run On JSA, Absolute Flash | Comic Book ClubWriter Jeff Lemire discusses what to expect from his DC Comics All In series Justice Society of America, and Absolute Flash.Comic Book ClubAlex Zalben](https://comicbookclublive.com/2024/10/03/jeff-lemire-justice-society-of-america-dc-comics-interview/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
What’ this I feel? Optimism about DC books? That **DC All In* special this week wasn’t anything groundbreaking but was fun. I haven’t heard a negative thing about this week’s **Absolute Batman* launch. And I’m willing to give Jeff Lemire a bit of leeway with this **JSA* book.
## **Reviews & Features**
[A (somewhat) forgotten gem: Rocketo ⋆ Atomic Junk ShopA glimpse into a wonderfully imagined retro-future post-catacylsmic EarthAtomic Junk ShopEdo Bosnar](https://atomicjunkshop.com/a-somewhat-forgotten-gem-rocketo/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
For you kids not old enough to remember, Frank Espinosa’s **Rocketo* was all the rage back in the mid-Aughts. Coming out of the animation world, Espinosa was probably a bit ahead of the game with this type of style and story. If this had come out like 10 years later, it wouldn’t have been “memory holed” like the article describes. And it needed a publisher like Oni or Dark Horse behind it. Instead, it was published by an outfit called Speakeasy that didn’t last all that long. And it looks like Image picked it up at the end there but it feels like this was at a time when Image was publishing anything and everything so that most books just got lost in the shuffle.
[Early Review: We Called Them Giants is expansive, yet intimate stories about finding friends and families at the end of the worldEven though it’s a fantasy story, We Called Them Giants is different from much of Gillen’s previous outputGraphic PolicyLogan Dalton](https://graphicpolicy.com/2024/10/01/early-review-we-called-them-giants-is-expansive-yet-intimate-stories-about-finding-friends-and-families-at-the-end-of-the-world/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Logan compares it to both **The Iron Giant* and Cormac McCarthy’s **The Road*? That’s an interesting comparison
> whoever at Canada Post who said "yes absolutely our stamps reach their highest expression when they feature great Canadian comics and cartoonists": I SIMPLY COULD NOT AGREE MORE [pic.twitter.com/6jdo2Kbd5W](https://t.co/6jdo2Kbd5W?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Ryan North 🦖 🪄 🐶 💪 4️⃣ (@ryanqnorth) [September 28, 2024](https://twitter.com/ryanqnorth/status/1840064751252001220?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
##
##
### The Form Is the Story in Kevin Huizenga's Fielder #3
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/kevin-huizenga-fielder-3/
Last updated: 2024-10-04T16:27:51.000Z
There’s a thrill in finding a comic that can’t be adapted into a TV show or a movie. That means that comic does something so unique with story, art, and form that it can only be told on the page with words and pictures. Those are rare comics— always have been, always will be. It’s the way the system works, especially during the last twenty years or so. Whether it’s a stab at IP or using comics to launch into other media, too many comics just read like a pitch document. They’re designed to get into a few people’s hands but constructed to sell their soul to Hollywood. That’s not Kevin Huizenga’s **Fielder #3**. This is one of those thrilling comics that is exciting because it is a comic book and it could not ever be anything but a comic book. The stories that Huizenga writes and draws here are comics, could only be comics, and are a celebration of comics.
As a flip book, one of the first things you’ve got to realize is that you can’t trust Huizenga. Flip books themselves are always suspect to begin with; there’s a clear beginning but is there really an end to them? Or do you get trapped in this cycle of just constantly flipping the book over and over again, caught in an infinite loop? More than that, there’s a question of how much we can trust Huizenga’s storytelling. This is more than an unreliable narrator- it’s an unreliable creator. As a flipbook, turn to either cover (there is not front cover and no back cover) and you’ll be at the beginning. And at either end of the flip book and you get a story about Glenn Ganges.
Pages from **Alla Prima* and **You And Me*
Now if you’ve read much Huizenga before, you’ll recognize Ganges as a veiled stand-in for Huizenga in his semi-autobiographical comics like *Curses* or [*Ganges*](https://www.panelpatter.com/2017/05/the-endless-night-of-kevin-huizengas.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Glenn is to Huizenga what Alec is to Eddie Campbell (hopefully you’ve read *The Years Have Pants* or any other Campbell to get that reference to Campbell’s autobiography comics that began as a story about a man named Alec but clearly became autobio as Campbell eventually changed Alec’s name to “Eddie,”) but maybe just a little bit less so. Maybe Ganges is going in the opposite direction from Alec; where Alec eventually became Eddie in the comics, Ganges seems to be moving farther and farther way from being a direct avatar for Huizenga in his comics.
From one of the covers, the comic opens with a story about a 19th-century American-in-Paris painter named Glenn Ganges, trying to learn his craft at the foot of a master. This is loosely based on a true story. Start on the flip sIide and you’ll read a story about “Grandpa” Ganges, a 1959 modern man trapped in a prehistoric past. Both stories are presented as authentic comics but one is a piece of historical fiction while the other is a riff on Sam Glanzman-drawn adventure comics from the 1960s. Both stories are Huizenga inserting his character Glenn Ganges into these stories, inserting himself into these stories that he knows about but wasn’t actually a part of.
Page from **Segar’s Wimpy*
None of these strips have the same narrative structure. In each one, Huizenga finds a form and a rhythm unique to the story. It could be the more traditional panel structure of “Bona” or the “You And Me” strips that feel like Huizenga just started noodling in his notebooks and before you knew it, he had pages and pages of these strips. He modifies the language he uses for each story, all the way down to the syntax of the page. Each of these stories requires their own identity and Huizenga is excellent at finding different ways to tell his stories. This is where we can find the truth in his comics.
Under Huizenga’s pen, the comic page is a living, breathing canvas. These pages possess their agency and their reason for being. That agency is unique to each story. For the stories that he’s telling, Huizenga finds ways to fit the form of the story to its function. It’s the formalist in him. We’ve seen him experiment with this many times before— his mini fight comics are as close as you can get to abstraction while still having a narrative. But they’re as real and true as his autobiography stories which are far more linear and traditional. He’s always played with form as another tool that he could use. And so much of his comics are finding the right tool for the job.
Pages from **Meta Modern* and **Bona Chapter 3*
When he wants to do an appreciation piece about E.C. Segar’s character Wimpy, he rotates the pages to a landscape orientation, cramming as much as he can into four pages. It’s like he has so much to say about Segar and Wimpy and he doesn’t think he’s ever going to get a chance to again so he’s got to get it all out. Even in these pages, he subdivides the pages into four or more subsegments, each one with its specific focus. So here, the function is to get as much of his thoughts out on the page as possible. Those four pages are followed by a piece about a collaboration with University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign art professor Conrad Bakker to create a piece for an exhibition catalog about furniture designers Charles and Ray Eames. As described in the piece, this is a “comic/visual essay on the Eames studio…”. For as free-flowing as the Wimpy piece is, this piece is a flowchart of storytelling where the form is the function.
Throughout **Fielder #3**, Huizenga practices a purity of cartooning. In this drawing, there’s an honesty implicit in each image that captures something of the human experience uniquely and confidently. Even if a few of the stories challenge the boundaries of “truth” just a tad bit, it all becomes true as Huizenga has found this blend of storytelling through story and through drawing that finds its truth through that mixing. Huizenga may not be a reliable, truthful storyteller but is that anything to hold against him when he’s telling these rich, complex, and heartfelt stories? Within these pages, you have a fairly traditional action strip, an appreciation of an old comic strip character, an almost abstract rumination on a design house, a quasi-historical tale of a 19th-century expat artist, and a concentrated collage of strips. The connective tissue of all of this is Huizenga’s playfulness with the structures of these stories. In the end, the only rule to follow when reading these comics is that there is no truth or untruth to these stories because it’s only the comics that matter.
### A look at Banned Comic Books, Award Season Never Ends, Kieron Gillen Speaks, Reviews, and More — Comic Bookmarks September 29, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-look-at-banned-comic-books-award-season-never-ends-kieron-gillen-speaks-reviews-and-more-comic-bookmarks-september-29-2024/
Last updated: 2024-09-29T13:00:05.000Z
I've had a review I've been wrestling with all week so nothing new from this site but that doesn't mean that there wasn't all kinds of good, interesting, and thoughtful things happening this past week. Hopefully I’ll get this review done this week and be able to be a small part of the discourse next week.
## Headlines
[The state of comics and censorship during Banned Books Week - The Comics JournalThere’s been a troubling rise in challenged and banned books in recent years- why are comics being targeted?The Comics JournalGina Gagliano](https://www.tcj.com/the-state-of-comics-and-censorship/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Gina Gagliano dives into what book banning means to comics in 2024.
---
[Harvey Awards Reveal 2024 NomineesHarvey Awards](https://www.harveyawards.com/en-us/about/news/harvey-awards-reveal-2024-nominees.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Award season never ends– it just jumps from comicon to comicon.
---
> Profits made from sales of my book from the day my brother left us till the end of the year will be donated to mental health charities. Mental health is so underfunded and misunderstood, and I’m not going to pretend this will make much of a difference, but it is a start. ❤️ u boy [pic.twitter.com/fKx8BGD6b6](https://t.co/fKx8BGD6b6?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Zoe Thorogood (@zoethorogood) [September 24, 2024](https://twitter.com/zoethorogood/status/1838531563631308973?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Off Panel #466: The 2024 Superhero State of the Union with Oliver Sava - SKTCHDIt’s time, folks! Comics critic Oliver Sava returns to the show for the seventh annual Superhero State of the Union! Sava joins for a discussion about his return to The AV Club, why we read superhero comics, leaning towards art, superhero comics outside the Big Two, following creators, art and arcs, where DC is right … ContinuedSKTCHDThe](https://sktchd.com/podcast/off-panel-466-the-2024-superhero-state-of-the-union-with-oliver-sava/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
David Harper talks with the A.V. Club's Oliver Sava about superhero comics, which annually is a fun podcast to listen to but it opens with an interesting question– why in 2024 are you still reading superhero comics?
---
> The comics industry wants to read sites like BC rather than actual journalism, so this is how things ended up here
>
> — Steve Morris ([@stevewmorris.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cp6oacrgubvruk6tveqx34re?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [September 19, 2024 at 9:16 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cp6oacrgubvruk6tveqx34re/post/3l4jacx3vis24?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
He's not lying.
## **Interviews**
[Ooooooh Atomics!: Kieron Gillen on the Past, Present, and Future of The Power Fantasy - SKTCHDKieron Gillen is always building. Building on his ideas. Building on his previous work. Building on what his collaborators bring to the table. You name it. And The Power Fantasy — his new Image Comics series with artist Caspar Wijngaard, letterer Clayton Cowles, and designer Rian Hughes — might be the biggest thing he’s built … ContinuedSKTCHDkevin2](https://sktchd.com/interview/kieron-gillen-power-fantasy-interview/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Thankfully, David Harper has made this piece open to non-subscribers of his site. And whenever I read a Kieron Gillen interview it's like listening to a podcast because I can hear his voice even as I read his words.
---
[Interview: Deb Aoki and the American Manga Awards | Yatta-TachiYatta-Tachi spoke to Deb Aoki, who oversaw the Planning Committee of the American Manga Awards, about the industry’s first big night.Yatta-Tachiwendeego](https://yattatachi.com/interview-deb-aoki-american-manga-awards?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Great interview with Deb Aoki about what it tbook to launch the American Manga Awards.
---
[The graphic novel adaptation of post-apocalyptic classic The Road is one of the most frightening and beautiful comics you will read this yearInterview | Artist and writer Manu Larcenet on adapting Cormac McCarthy’s famous novelGamesRadar+Will Salmon](https://www.gamesradar.com/comics/the-road-graphic-novel-manu-larcenet-interview/?utm%5Fcontent=newsarama&utm%5Fsource=twitter.com&utm%5Fcampaign=socialflow&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fcampaign=socialflow&utm%5Fcontent=newsarama&utm%5Fsource=twitter.com&utm%5Fmedium=social)
The art samples used in this interview are so evocative and make you feel the weightiness of this story.
---
> The Mizuki Shigeru Manben episode, featuring former assistant Ikegami Ryoichi, is must-watch: [https://t.co/YWWpJJ23Ti](https://t.co/YWWpJJ23Ti?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Ryan Holmberg (@mangaberg) [September 27, 2024](https://twitter.com/mangaberg/status/1839459832698409014?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[mini-kus #112: Gina Wynbrandt’s You’re The Center Of AttentionAs I’ve said before, when it comes to humor, punching up can feel pretentious, punching down is unseemly, but punching yourself is always fu…Rob Clough](http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/09/mini-kus-112-gina-wynbrandts-youre.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
"Comedy of self-humiliation." Such a simple concept for Clough to articulate but it speaks so much to Gina Wynbrandt's comics.
---
[Okazu » The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t A Guy At All, Volume 1](https://okazu.yuricon.com/2024/09/22/the-guy-she-was-interested-in-wasnt-a-guy-at-all-volume-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Erika Friedman talks about this book as being "gentle and kind-hearted" and those are the kind of books I'm trying to look for right now.
---
[Search and Destroy, Volume 1: A cyberpunk cover of a manga classicIf you’re going to update a story by a master of the form, making it cool and exciting is the way to go.Warren Peace - Reviewing Comics, Film, TV, and More!Matthew Brady](https://matthewbrady.substack.com/p/search-and-destroy-volume-1-a-cyberpunk)
Matt Brady talks about how **Search and Destroy* is a cover version of Osamu Tezuka's **Dororo,* which is [a line of thought that I avoided](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/atsushi-kaneko-uses-action-to-reveal-character-in-search-and-destroy-vol-1/) because I haven't read **Dororo* yet (even though a huge copy of it is sitting on my kitchen table right now.)
---
> I have seen an increasing amount of debate both within fandoms and between fans and creators about the popularity of low-conflict stories about superheroes (what I shall refer to as "cozycore") and I believe a lot of the disagreement comes from misunderstanding.
>
> A short 🧵 [pic.twitter.com/Wue0fk0Fvm](https://t.co/Wue0fk0Fvm?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Comrade\_Bullski (@Comrade\_Bullski) [September 25, 2024](https://twitter.com/Comrade%5FBullski/status/1839072350572106200?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
If you're willing to go to the social-platform-formerly-known-as-Twitter, this is a good thread on the idea of low-stake moments in comics. Comrade Bullksi refers to it as "cozycore" but I've seen it also called "hangout comics" recently.
---
[Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter - The Comics JournalIn lesser hands, Oscar Zárate’s graphic work would be nothing more than a biography about a contemporary of William Turner, whom, as the subtitle implies, most people have not heard about. Such a work would be useful, of course, if it pointed people to Girtin’s work, and his reputation during his life, possibly even resurrecting... Read more »The Comics JournalKevin Brown](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/thomas-girtin-the-forgotten-painter/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The structure of this biography sounds fascinating.
---
[Kommix - Charles Burns Asks Us to Consider 80 Comics Covers that Never Were in this Haunting Fantagraphics Release – Broken FrontierCharles Burns invites us to consider 80 comics covers that never were in the pages of ‘Kommix’ from Fantagraphics Books.Broken FrontierAndy Oliver](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/kommix-charles-burns/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I haven't had a chance to write about it but Charles Burns' **Kommix* is an engrossing book, particularly if you miss the thrill that a good cover can give you. This collection of covers for books that never existed triggers your own imagination as you try to figure out just what the actual comic books behind these covers would have been like.
A nice, if brief, rundown on what MAD magazine has meant over the years.
### Dragotta’s Batman, Kirby Commerials, Scott Pilgrim and more— Comic Bookmarks- September 22, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/dragottas-batman-kirby-commerials-scott-pilgrim-and-more-comic-bookmarks-september-22-2024/
Last updated: 2024-09-22T12:30:42.000Z
It's been a few weeks as I've taken a brief break from the site so now it feels like having to get back to using some muscles that have already been forgotten a bit. And maybe it's just that it's the end of the summer but happenings around the internet feel very light even after being gone for a couple of weeks.
So let's just dive into it and take a look at a few of the things that we've looked at since our break started.
[All New Collectors’ Edition #56: Superman Vs. Muhammad AliNeal Adams’ artwork demands that you enjoy it now the way you would have in 1978.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/all-new-collectors-edition-56-superman-vs-muhammad-ali/)
[With Great Power, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda... thoughts on Jonathan Hickman and Macro Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 1.It’s the small changes that say the most about Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Ultimate Spider-Man.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jonathan-hickman-macro-checchetto-ultimate-spider-man-volume-1/)
## Headlines
[The Design of Absolute DC: Nick Dragotta on Building a Bigger (and Maybe Better) Batman - SKTCHDDC is launching its new Absolute Universe this October, and a trio of titles in Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman, and Absolute Superman are leading the way. Each is an intriguing reimagining of those characters from strong creative teams, and a lot of digital ink has already been spilled about how these projects came together … ContinuedSKTCHDDavid Harper](https://sktchd.com/longform/absolute-batman-nick-dragotta-feature/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I don't know how but all of the hype around these Absolute comics has worked on my and I've ended up adding them to my pull list. I don't know if I need another Scott Snyder Batman comic in my life but I would like a Nick Dragotta one. And reading about Nick Dragotta's process of designing a new Batman is part of that hype but it's nice to undestand some of the thought that's going into this new version of an old character.
> Google and Microsoft recently admitted their emissions are soaring as they build data centers to power AI.
>
> But analysis from The Guardian suggests the data center emissions of Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple are 662% higher than they’re reporting. [https://t.co/IXoYFAP6Rw](https://t.co/IXoYFAP6Rw?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Paris Marx (@parismarx) [September 16, 2024](https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1835719836497838462?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This isn't necessarily comic related but as we live more and more in a digital culture, I think we need to understand all of the impacts of that including the climate impacts.
## **The Funny Pages**
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/DAJ25s7PAyO/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Whit Taylor (@whitltaylor)](https://www.instagram.com/p/DAJ25s7PAyO/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
New Whit Taylor books coming soon? Just what I've been waiting for.
> A few more 1980s Crest commercials, designed by The One and only JACK KIRBY co-creator of almost every Marvel superhero you can think of! [pic.twitter.com/G8bCLm75ic](https://t.co/G8bCLm75ic?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Hollywood Horror Museum (@horrormuseum) [September 19, 2024](https://twitter.com/horrormuseum/status/1836865372970270765?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Review: The SCOTT PILGRIM 20TH ANNIVERSARY BOX SET has arrived, and we have thoughtsThe Scott Pilgrim 20th Anniversary Box Set has arrived, and we recently sat down to discuss this new edition along with the comic’s legacy.The BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/review-the-scott-pilgrim-20th-anniversary-box-set-has-arrived-and-we-have-thoughts/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
**Scott Pilgrim** is one of the best comics of this century but is also such a relic of the time it was created. Both things can be true. I've got the original b/w books plus the 3-volume color set from a handful of years ago so I'm not jumping out to get yet another set of these but Zack Quaintance and Samantha Puc's rundown of this new set makes me slightly question my resolve not to get another set of these books. Once they talk about the story, I do wonder how we'll continue to discuss older works that reflect the attitudes and language of their time in our more culturally conservative era. Yes, there are things in the series that are cringy now but it would be really glossing over them by just saying "wow, I wish these weren't there."
[To Say Nothing of the Horse: Hagai Palevsky on KEN PARKER: THE BREATH AND THE DREAM - SOLRADHagai Palevsky reviews THE BREATH AND THE DREAM, the first in a planned series of translations of the Italian KEN PARKER series of western comics by writer Giancarlo Berardi and artist Ivo Milazzo, published by Epicenter ComicsSOLRADHagai Palevsky](https://solrad.co/to-say-nothing-of-the-horse-hagai-palevsky-on-ken-parker-the-breath-and-the-dream-by-giancarlo-berardi-and-ivo-milazzo?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Hagai Palevsky's look at these wordless westerns is a fascinating look at how these kinds of stories can function and also a look at how these kinds of works can fail.
[Prophet and Loss: Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Terok Nor #0By Leo Healy What’s this? Issue #0 of a licensed tie-in comic with two colons in the title? Several red flags there, it must be said, but let me explain. Let’s start at the beginning for the non-Tr…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2024/09/18/prophet-and-loss-star-trek-deep-space-nine-terok-nor-0/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I just really appreciate where Shelfdust is willing to go and what they're willing to cover. Leo Healy's look at an old, obscure Star Trek comic is a good reminder about the little-seen corners of comics.
[Moe’s in Love with a Manga Character - A Cautionary Tale for Obsessive Comics Fans in Olly Telling’s Debut Horror Comic – Broken FrontierOlly telling presents a debut comics short with the horror story ‘Moe’s in love with a Manga Character’. Also on Tapas.Broken FrontierAndy Oliver](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/moes-in-love-with-a-manga-character/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Looking at the pages for this comic on [Tapas](https://tapas.io/episode/3221451?ref=fromcovertocover.com), you can see Olly Telling use the structure and architecture of comics to tell this story.
[Underrated: Superman/Batman: World’s Finest - Graphic PolicyUnderrated: Superman/Batman: World’s FinestGraphic PolicyAlex K Cossa](https://graphicpolicy.com/2024/09/21/underrated-superman-batman-worlds-finest-2/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It's easy to rag on Jeph Loeb but this run of Superman/Batman was actually pretty solid in a don't-take-it-too-seriously kind of way.
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C%5Fyz2fyPUsl/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by TOTHcentric (@tothcentric)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C%5Fyz2fyPUsl/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
### With Great Power, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda... thoughts on Jonathan Hickman and Macro Checchetto's Ultimate Spider-Man Volume 1.
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jonathan-hickman-macro-checchetto-ultimate-spider-man-volume-1/
Last updated: 2024-09-20T03:30:36.000Z
On the surface, this looks like another Spider-Man origin story, just with a thirtysomething Peter Parker instead of a teenager, hence the name of this volume “*Married With Children*.” Already an adult, married to Mary Jane, and father of two children May and Richard, this Peter is given a choice— stay the way that you are or become the hero you were meant to be. Here, Peter’s origin isn’t an accident but a decision. This Ultimate world has superpowers but it doesn’t have any superheroes; those were taken from it by the Maker, a sociopathic Reed Richards who twisted this world toward his own ends. Jonathan Hickman and Marco Checchetto’s Spider-Man is a different Spider-Man, not driven by tragedy but motivated by an emptiness that he feels. This isn’t a teen superhero but a midlife crisis one.
This Peter makes quips like the Peter Parker we know. He sounds and acts like the Spider-Man we know and love but this time, that patented Parker luck may have worked in his favor— he’s a family man, with a beautiful wife and wonderful children. The superhero union suit didn’t get in the way of Peter Parker living his life, a life full of love that he’s happy with until he’s told by a hologram of teen Tony Stark that his real life was taken away from him. There was no spider, no powers, and no costume when he was just a kind figuring out who he was in high school. We all wish in high school to have something that sets us apart, with sets us above, the other kids in school. It’s the teenage dream and it’s what Peter Parker lived when he was Spider-Man. So you’ve got to wonder for him what it would be like to grow up and never have that wonderful secret that he kept from his classmates.
Hickman and Checchetto think that he would have grown up to be a decent father, husband, and nephew. Their Peter is a good guy (not like a heroic good guy but just a guy who is generally good); even J. Jonah Jameson likes him in this world. And even without the tragedy of Uncle Ben’s murder, Peter already knows what great responsibility is. His family is his great responsibility so he’s already got that part of the Spider-Man mythos down. In this case, that great responsibility came well before any kind of great power. That’s the difference between this Spidey origin; not age but the responsibility that Peter has in this world. It maybe doesn’t seem like much but it’s a pretty big deal— Spider-Man is defined by tragedy and his response to it. His life is both power and responsibility.
That’s not to say that Peter doesn’t know tragedy. On the day he decides to accept the powers being offered to him by teen Tony, he attends a memorial with his family and his Uncle Ben to honor those killed in a terrorist attack on New York City, including his own beloved Aunt May. The world believes that Tony Stark and his cohorts blew up part of NYC. Peter and his uncle are picking up their lives after the death of May so it makes sense that Peter thinks that something is missing from his life- his Aunt May is. But in this world, both Uncle Ben and Aunt May got to watch Peter grow up, become a man, get married, have children, and learn to be a father. It was a perfectly normal life for all involved until the terrorist attack took away that normality.
Art by Marco Checchetto
Marco Checchetto, Matt Wilson, and David Messina (who fills in for Checcetto in two chapters) give this story a lived-in feel. Their NYC is modern but it’s built on the bones of an old city. While the experiences that Peter is going through, the city he’s going through them in is harsh and challenging. They create this setting that challenges this novice hero but it’s also a great urban environment that like Peter is looking for something it’s missing— it’s heroes. There are these voids in the city such as a news outlet that realizes if it can’t always tell the truth, at least it can try not to tell lies. That’s a void that Jameson and Uncle Ben are trying to fill and their journey is filled with these visually wonderful places that help anchor you in the story you’re reading. But it’s also a city that feels like it’s always right on top of you, trying to keep you in it, making sure that you can’t escape it. So putting a character who can swing his way through the steel canyons feels like a way of trying to break free of the powers that control the city.
Like all of its predecessors, Hickman and Checchetto’s story is still a fantasy story but it’s recontextualized for those of us who maybe have a few more years behind us than Peter Parker does. It’s for people who look back on their life with thoughts of things not quite being the way that they should have been. So it’s easy to identify with this Peter who’s looking back at his life and learning that what could have been was stolen from him. It’s taking the high-school drama that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko imagined and substituting it with the mid-life crisis of a man questioning what he’s done with his life. Usually, we go out and buy a sports car or get a new girlfriend who’s 20 years younger than us to fill that longing. Those are the ways that we try to find some relief from our insecurities- not by getting superpowers and swinging around New York City like some wild stuntman.
Amazing Fantasy #15 (1963,) Ultimate Spider-Man #4 (2000,) and Ultimate Spider-Man #4 (2024)
And that’s where Harry Osborn comes in to offer an interesting contrast to Peter. In this life, these two men are strangers but have so much in common, including losing a loved one in that terrorist attack. While Peter wonders what to do with his life, Harry forges on, taking over his father’s business empire and being handed the secrets of this world, including his own super-powered suits developed by Howard Stark. Harry much more decisively knows what to do with the power he discovers; he thinks he understands what “with great power comes great responsibility” means as he delivers that line to Peter as the two discuss what they should do with their powers. In *Amazing Fantasy #15* when we first read that line, it’s obvious that the emphasis lies on the idea of responsibility. It’s not so much reliant on the power but what Spider-Man learns in that original story is that he has responsibility because of his abilities. Honestly, those abilities could have been great or they could have been average but based on his upbringing, he understood what that responsibility was because of how he was raised.
So in this telling, that line is delivered by Harry Osborn, who’s so much more driven by the power to take the ruling power from the evil men who bear it. His view of that line isn’t so much a moral statement as it is an ambitious and righteous statement. This Peter knows what responsibility is before he was ever given power. But this Harry is a bit too caught up in his world to recognize and understand the words that he’s saying. In other tellings of this story, Peter learns this lesson as a part of his upbringing; they’re the values that his aunt and uncle instilled in him as he was growing up even as he couldn’t quite understand them until the tragedy that’s as much a part of his origin, if not more than, the spider bite. The spider was just the mechanism of the origin; the tragedy is the spirit of it.
When Harry says those words, it’s important to see Peter’s reaction to it, how he’s shocked and thrown off by the statement. As we see his uncle crusade to do what’s right because it’s his responsibility to be a good journalist, we know that Peter’s worldview is completely different than Harry’s. They both may have the same tragedy in their background but it’s what they do with that tragedy and how they channel their pain, their fear, their anger, and their uncertainty that makes them different. The villains often think that they have the responsibility because of their power but it’s the hero who accepts the responsibility first and the power is then a manifestation of the responsibility. Peter Parker is a hero whether or not he has powers. But what would this Harry be if he hadn’t stumbled upon a cache of already-built super suits?
It’s intriguing to see how Hickman and Checchetto are twisting elements of the story without completely twisting the story itself. In this new Ultimate Universe retelling, they have moved around the furniture of the narrative room, refreshing the layout and introducing a few new decorative touches here or there but it’s still the same four walls that it was before. This is an older Peter Parker but it’s still Peter Parker. It’s great to see what kind of man he would have grown into if that spider never dropped on his hand and it’s also intriguing to see this older, more established Peter get his powers for the first time.
### All New Collectors’ Edition #56: Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/all-new-collectors-edition-56-superman-vs-muhammad-ali/
Last updated: 2024-09-03T17:01:48.000Z
*Note– This review is from* [*February, 2011*](https://popdose.com/comics-review-superman-vs-muhammad-ali/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*, when DC first republished this oversized comic*. *They've just released a new* facsimile *edition of the comic and have it on the DC Universe app so it seems like a good time to revisit this book*.
Let’s tell it like it is. Out of all the superheroes, only Superman can say he has gone against the greatest of all time. It wasn’t Lex Luthor. It wasn’t Brainiac or Doomsday. It wasn’t even Mxyzptlk or Bizarro. The matchup to end all matchups featured the big blue boy scout from Krypton entering the ring to practice the sweet science against one Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., better known to the world as one Muhammad Ali. Originally brought to you in 1978 (and recently reprinted in late 2010 (*and again in 2024*)) by Dennis O’Neil, Neal Adams, and the fine folks at DC Comics, the story was too big to be contained in a mere 22-page comic book. The historic meeting of Superman and Muhammad Ali was one of DC’s great Treasury editions, an oversized 72-page comic that sold for a whopping $2.50\. Superman #321, out the same month as *Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali*, was a mere $0.35\. Truly *Superman vs. Muhammad Ali* was a comic book for the ages.
Hopefully, you’ve read that last paragraph in your best Howard Cossell voice. If you haven’t, go back and try to channel your inner Cossell. Everyone has one of those.
So, here’s the story: alien invaders come to planet Earth looking for a champion to fight their top warrior. Their choices, found on a basketball court in Metropolis’s down-town ”inner city ghetto,” end up being Superman (natch) and Muhammad Ali (floating like a butterfly as he teaches inner-city ghetto kids how to dunk a basketball because that’s what a boxing champion does- he plays basketball.) To test their mettle, the two potential champions of Earth are forced to have their boxing match to determine who will face an intergalactic warrior. After Ali trains Superman, who constructed a ring at the fringes of space where time moves much slower so they could get a lot of training done in the span of hours, Ali whups Superman’s butt in the real match, proving that he is the greatest and is truly the Earth’s champion.
And that’s just the first half of the story.
And it just gets more absurd and more wonderful from there.
*Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali* is simply an incredible and outlandish story, beginning with the cover by Adams that features drawings of 170 celebrities, writers, artists, DC staffers, and even DC characters. It’s nice to know that if this fight ever occurred in an arena like Madison Square Garden, Lex Luthor, and Batman could get ringside seats next to Sonny Bono and President Jimmy Carter. But the cover isn’t all just superheroes, villains, and Presidents. It also has Sweathogs on it. And not the cool Sweathogs like Vinnie Barbarino or Freddie ”Boom Boom” Washington. No, Neal Adams included Horshack and Epstein in it. (I’m sure that Epstein has a note from his mother getting him out of school for this fight of the century.) The cover has an ”everything and the kitchen sink” aspect to it, as there’s no detail too small or insignificant for Adams to leave out of his likenesses.
The level of detail in O’Neil and Adams’ story isn’t quite as meticulous as the cover but it’s there, from the training montage to the different alien races that Adams creates to the explanations of boxing (real) and intergalactic ringside announcing (not real) that fills this story. With only 73 pages, O’Neil and Adams make sure that there’s some kind of odd half-real/half-fictional logic to this thing, filling it with so many facts and explanations that you eventually just get overwhelmed with them and sucked into the story, shrugging your shoulders and accepting everything that the creators have to say. From race relations to boxing strategies, it’s all there in this book.
Honestly, this is one damn silly comic book but, while there’s a sense of a nudge and a wink from O’Neil and Adams, they never really let on that there’s any part of this book that’s a joke. It’s actually a pretty straightforward team up. After all, Superman has over time met everyone from Jerry Lewis to Don Rickles so why couldn’t he meet the heavy-weight champ? O’Neil and Adams may have known that this was a bit silly but the story never did. While it is played almost totally seriously, O’Neil and Adams show us how everything can and should be able to happen in a superhero comic book. Even as this book was coming out, and certainly since, superheroes have gotten too conservative and too serious. There’s a gimmicky-ness to it when Spider-Man meets President Obama that even the story has to acknowledge as it tries to figure out why and how that could happen and how to keep it slightly plausible. That practicality doesn’t exist in this comic as once Superman and Ali are together on the page, the story just takes off like it’s any other teamup.
In many ways, this was a last hurrah for Adams, as his commercial artwork with Continuity Studios would lure him away from a lot of comic work. While there would be his own short-lived Continuity line of comics, for the past couple of decades, new artwork from Adams has been few and far between. But if this was how he was going out, he went out in style as his work has never looked better. Inked by Dick Giordano and Terry Austin, Adams must have had the larger size of DC’s tabloid editions in mind as he was drawing this comic book. He opens the book with a two-page spread of inner city Metropolis, with Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen walking down a street, hunting for a story. These three characters are only a minuscule part of the spread as Adams just illustrates a 1970s-era city street with all kinds of people, cars, buildings, and activities happening on it. It’s not the clean, stylized, and generic Metropolis that exists today; this is a street out of New York or Chicago that existed only on warm summer days, where you could buy your fresh fruit and vegetables on the sidewalk in front of the store.
With as much care and detail as Adams puts into drawing the downtown streets of Metropolis, he puts into almost every page and panel of this book. For a man who has had a great career but is known in superhero comic circles as the man who changed Batman from the campy Adam West Batman of the late 1960s into the dark detective of the 1970s, *Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali* may be the best-looking comic that he has done. Taking advantage of the larger size of the book, Adams uses the page, filling every possible inch of it with wonderful drawings. Whether it’s a page packed with panels of Superman and Ali walking through an alien ship, a massive splash page of Ali teaching Superman how to box, or an awesome 2-page spread of Ali knocking aliens out of the boxing ring, Adams lets his full energy loose on every page, producing some of the most realistic-looking superhero comics.
If you’re looking to get this book, DC has republished it recently in two editions; a facsimile edition that matches the original size of the book and a smaller, deluxe edition (*note– the 2024 edition matches the size and format of the 1978 version of this comic book*.) Honestly, I can’t imagine experiencing this story in any way other than at its original size. Neal Adams’ artwork almost demands that you enjoy now the way you would have in 1978.
Even if it is older than 30 years, *Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali* is everything that I want and everything that is missing in superhero comics today: giant characters, pages crammed with ideas and concepts that I can’t see anywhere else, and almost need to have a real semblance of reality. For two creators who pulled Batman out of the campy 1960s, this book may be O’Neil and Adam’s last hurrah of the Silver Age, that period in comics where Superman could have a lion’s head one issue and be turned into two versions of himself, one red and one blue, the next. None of the heavy realism or pessimism of 70s or 80s-era comics exists in this book. O’Neil and Adams created a book that celebrated the larger-than-life Muhammad Ali by teaming him up with the only superhero who could match his grand persona; Superman. Once you have these two characters together, anything and everything should be possible. A book that wasn’t as outrageous and grand as *Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali* turned out to be would not have lived up to everything that the man and the fictional character stood for.
### The Summer Season 2024– Comic Bookmarks Sept 1st, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-summer-season-2024-comic-bookmarks-sept-1st-2024/
Last updated: 2024-09-01T19:08:52.000Z
So that’s a wrap on the (stealth) Summer 2024 season here at From Cover to Cover. In the fourteen weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I managed to write something every week– thirteen reviews and eleven Comic Bookmark link columns.
I first tried to do something similar at [Panel Patter back in 2021](https://www.panelpatter.com/search/label/sc?ref=fromcovertocover.com). I remember coming close to doing a post a week that summer but plans got derailed at some point that August and didn't finish it. For some reason this past May, this year must have seemed like a good time to try to do it again. Starting the week of Memorial Day, I skipped a review just on one week in July (needed a quick break) and started the review links a week or two into June. I also missed last week for a link post but had a memorial service to go to, moved my son into college, and spent a day at CAKE.
This was almost just a test to see if I could do it— if I could get to the end of the summer having put something out there in the world every week like I used to be able to do. And it’s something to look at these links and see just what I wrote this summer. It’s not 100% successful and doesn’t cover everything that I want to write about but it feels good to be on this side of the work.
With that said, I’m taking a break for the next couple of weeks from publishing any new stuff. Consider this my late-summer break. But the site won’t be going dark during this time. I’ll be pulling out stuff from my archives and uploading a couple of old pieces a week.
So let’s take a look at what the summer looked like here at From Cover to Cover.
## Reviews
[Gaiman and Buckingham write the new gospel of Miracleman in The Silver AgeYou’ve got to wonder what Miracleman: The Silver Age would have read like if it had come out in the 1990s instead of the 2020s.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gaiman-and-bucking-ham/)
[Feeling Gravity’s Pull in Melissa Mendes’ The Weight #13 & 14This is one of those rare comics that makes you feel something deep and heart-wrenching. It’s painful to read; that’s part of why it’s so good.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weight-13-14-by-melissa-mendes/)
[Barda IS — a look at Ngozi Ukazu’s new comic book BARDA.It’s a meet-cute story set in the torture dungeons of Darkseid’s Apokolips.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/barda-by-ngozi-ukazu-review/)
[The 1990s speak to 2024 in Peter Bagge’s Hate Revisited #1It’s 2024\. Do we really need more HATE in our lives? (Answer: Yes)From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hate-revisited-1-b/)
[Finding the Truth in Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips’ The Enfield Gang MassacreThe title gives away what’s going to happen but The Enfield Gang Massacre is about stories as much as it is about the massacre.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/finding-the-truth-in-chris-condon-and-jacob-phillips-the-enfield-gang-massacre/)
[When Richard Corben met HellboyThe humanity of Richard Corben’s Hellboy work is that it doesn’t try to spare the reader of anything.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/when-richard-corben-met-hellboy/)
[Sidestepping the Event to Tell the Story in Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti’s G.O.D.S.Hickman and Schiti pull away from telling the huge story that we expect and find another way to tell a character-driven story between the context of those loud battles.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gods-by-jonathan-hickman-valerio-schiti-marte-gracia/)
[One Last Dose of Joe Matt’s Self-Deprecating Humor in Peepshow #15Joe Matt is the target of the ridicule and jokes but he’s also the one telling the jokes.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/one-last-dose-of-joe-matts-self-deprecating-humor-in-peepshow-15/)
[Atsushi Kaneko Uses Action To Reveal Character in Search and Destroy Vol. 1Search and Destroy is a revenge thriller you feel in your bones.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/atsushi-kaneko-uses-action-to-reveal-character-in-search-and-destroy-vol-1/)
[It’s About The Ethics of Super Powers in Gillen and Wijngaard’s Power Fantasy #1Relaxed but always on edge until the narrative bomb drops, you can see how far Gillen and Wijngaard are willing to go with this story.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the/)
[A Great Comic for the Dog Days of Summer- King-Cat Comics & Stories #83 by John PorcellinoCartooning as a worldview, as therapy, as confession, and as autobio.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-great-comic-for-the-dog-days-of-summer-king-cat-comics-stories-83-by-john-porcellino/)
[Not Just One of the Boys-- thoughts on Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s Wonder Woman Earth OneMorrison and Paquette challenge the power structures that are inherent to our world to try tot show a better way forward.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/not-just-one-of-the-boys-thoughts-on-grant-morrison-and-yanick-paquettes-wonder-woman-earth-one/)
[The Ghost of Bourdain Haunts Ram V and Filipe Andrade’s Rare FlavoursThis tale itself is a feast as we travel with the demon and the filmmaker. Andrade’s art tickles all of your senses even as it only interacts with one of them.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-ghost-of-bourdain-haunts-ram-v-and-filipe-andrades-rare-flavours/)
## News
[The Comic Bookmarks- VanCAF, Emil Ferris @ CPL, new Manga Awards, Marvel fumbling Pride comic, a couple of returns to the blogosphere and more…It’s the end of Krakoa and I feel fine.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-june-7th-2024/)
[300,000 copies sold, Ping Pong, selling comics or produce, and more on Van CAF— Comic Bookmarks June 15, 2024Comics link for the second week of June.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks/)
[How do you mess up Superman’s S symbol? Bad AI artwork I guess —Comic Bookmarks 6/22/2024An AI focused week.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-6-22-2024/)
[Maus banned, The Beat Covers SDCC, My Hero Academia ending, and more— Comics Bookmark 6/30/2024Maus ban. Who created Wolverine? The best selling comic of 2025 already announced. New Mignola!!!!! All that and more in this week’s links.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-6-30-2024/)
[Gaiman accusations, Ukazu’s next book, manga announcements, French rights to Dan Clowes, and more — Comic Bookmarks 7/7/2024It’s July. That means all the sites start running SDCC announcements- who’s going to be there, what big signings they’ll be having, and what “major” releases they’ll be hawking. Let’s see if we can survive this month together, shall we? This week on the site,From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gaiman-accusations-ukazus-next-book-comic-bookmarks-7-7-2024-2/)
[More on Neil Gaiman, lots of manga news, and a killer X-Men #1 review— Comic Bookmarks 7/14/2024The comic news you need to know for July 14, 2024.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-on-neil-gaiman-lots-of-manga-news-and-a-killer-x-men-1-review-comic-bookmarks-7-14-2024-2/)
[Manga awards, Samnee and some other guy on Batman, and a bunch of reviews— Comic Bookmarks 7/21/2024Things to read from the past week in the world of comics.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/manga-awards-samnee-and-some-other-guy-on-batman-and-a-bunch-of-reviews-comic-bookmarks-7-21-2024/)
[More Jay Stephens’ comics, the classic DC Logo, Inoue’s Slam Dunk and more — Comic Bookmarks 7/28/2024Comics news from the last weekFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-jay-stephens-comics-the-classic-dc-logo-inoues-slam-dunk-and-more-comic-bookmarks-7-28-2024/)
[The launch of K-ComicsBeat, the fight against AI comics, and more— The Comic Bookmarks 8/4/2024Your links for the post-SDCC week.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-launch-of-k-comicsbeat-the-fight-against-ai-comics-and-more-the-comic-bookmarks-8-4-2024/)
[Human Trafficking at SDCC, Original Art Market, the Stolen Art Market — Comic Bookmarks 8/11/2024Let’s start off with usual with what was happening around here this week before diving into the news and reviews of the week. It’s About The Ethics of Super Powers in Gillen and Wijngaard’s Power Fantasy #1Relaxed but always on edge until the narrative bomb drops, you canFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/human-trafficing-original-art-market-the-stolen-art-market-comic-bookmarks-8-11-2024-2/)
[The Apple Tax Hits Patreon, Comics’ Award Season Continue, a Zoe Thorogood Poetry Comic on Instagram, and more -- The Comic Bookmarks Aug 18th, 2024The summer must end but not yet. There’s still a few weeks left to it. This week on the site, I explored John Porcellino’s latest issue of King-Cat Comics & Stories. A Great Comic for the Dog Days of Summer- King-Cat Comics & Stories #83 by John PorcellinoCartooning as a worldview, asFrom Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic%5Fbookmarks%5Faug%5F18%5F2024/)
### The Ghost of Bourdain Haunts Ram V and Filipe Andrade's Rare Flavours
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-ghost-of-bourdain-haunts-ram-v-and-filipe-andrades-rare-flavours/
Last updated: 2024-08-31T16:05:34.000Z
There are things that we forget. Whether you’re some ancient demon known for eating people (and maybe the chances are pretty good that this is you) or a 20-something wannabe filmmaker, life is long and hard. There are things we want to put behind us and forgetting them is the easiest way to accomplish that. Unfortunately, memory isn’t a precise instrument like a surgeon’s scalpel, aimed and directed. It’s more like a wrecking ball, tearing down everything in its path. That’s where Ram V and Filipe Andrade’s **Rare Flavours** begins and ends—with a demon and a young man trying to remember connections that were important to their lives.
This tale itself is a feast as we travel with the demon and the filmmaker. Andrade’s art tickles all of your senses even as it only interacts with one of them. There’s no sound, taste, smell, or touch involved but there aren’t many artists who can trick you into hearing all of the background noises or smelling the scents of a pot on the stove. Andrade sculpts these environments to be a sensory experience. This is a story that you don’t just read but you get to live in for a brief time. He’s drawing a story about travel and fool that leaves you hungry and with a wanderlust. Ram V can write about the preparation of a dish on a starry night but Andrade makes you think that you’re sitting next to the fire, taking in all the smells and sounds that the characters are. He needs to do this with different food and different settings; he needs to convince you that you’re in the kitchens, stilling at the food carts, and walking through the markets. This is largely a comic about those moments in life and what they mean so Andrade has the hefty job of taking you out of your comfort zone and spiritually moving you into other places and other lives.
Rubin Baksh, the large demon who has lived as a man for a long time, enlists the struggling filmmaker Moran to make a film about travel and food. The two begin a Quixotic-like journey across India to find meaning in a world that is missing it. Writing a letter to a woman that he left behind for this journey, Rubin tells her “\[Anthony Bourdain\] was my videotape window into this world. A man who had found a way to bind together its many disparities through the things he loved. And here I was with all eternity at my doorstep— a coward, brewing tourist coffee and selling overpriced pastries in fucking Somarah. No, Mansi, I have something yet to say. Even after all this time.” V and Andrade are working within that Bourdain spirit (the man who introduced his show about travel and food with the line “and I’m hungry for more…” of needing to rediscover a connection to this world that they once had. It’s this longing sense for a connection, a belonging, and some kind of unity that Rubin and Mo both recognize doesn’t exist in their broken worlds.
Mohan, a lanky, shaggy-haired young man, gets drawn into Rubin’s inescapable orbit. Well, there’s one way to escape it that we’ll get to in a moment. Rubin, usually hiding his eyes behind round-rimmed glasses, wants to go off and have this grand, romantic quest but it’s not enough to just have it. He feels the need to document it— a bit of hubris thinking he could fill the void left by Anthony Bourdain’s suicide. Bourdain had the adventures that Rubin wanted but in the end, Bourdain still felt like something was missing which drove him to his final decisions in this world. In hindsight, we should be able to see that Bourdain’s travels were about the search as much as they were about the destination but it was all too easy to get caught up in the exotic locals and cuisine. But inspired by Bourdain, Rubin recognizes that something is missing but is it in the world or him? In his old demonic days, Rubin was the demonic Bakasura, known for eating people. That’s a part of himself that he’s hidden for a long time but this journey brings it out of him again as he begins secretly eating people that they encounter along this journey. It’s another way of trying to satiate his hunger but he keeps his secret from Mohan and the story that they’re trying to create together.
Mo is a young man, who knows what he wants to do but has his own demons that get in his way. Not demons like what Rubin is but the kind of demons that we all have, those nagging doubts and feelings that stand between us and happiness, contentment, fulfillment, or meaning in our lives. He’s young and directionless, needing someone or something to show him a path forward. He’s pulled into Rubin’s story and it’s a question of whether his part of it is a coming-of-age or a horror story. Is he going to be the next one that Rubin eats? V and Andrade answer that one early for the audience if not the character. It’s not too much of a mystery for us but it is a question for Mohan even as he decides to continue with Rubin once he learns the truth about his companion.
And then there’s the two sinister men hunting down Rubin— Dilshan and Dilkush. They have a sense of purpose and direction that our “heroes” don’t have— a surety and righteousness in their mission. They even have relationships and a partnership that Rubin and Mohan lack but there’s a depth of being that’s missing from them. We see these two pairings and each of their contrasts to the other is practically the story itself. One pairing shows the quest that the other pairing is truly on— there are the obvious quests (i.e. the plot) but then there is the journey for meaning that drives the quest (i.e. the story, the characters, and their development.). It’s easy to see Dilshan and Dilkush as the bad guys, as the villains of the piece but V and Andrade come at them from a Hayao Miyazaki-like perspective where the antagonists aren’t always the villains.
In Miyazaki stories, there’s usually our hero and then the “bad guys” whose aims run counter to our protagonist’s. Throughout the story, we usually find out that just because their goals in perspective are different, that doesn’t make them evil or a villain. Their point-of-views are different and maybe even in conflict with the heroes but Miyazaki’s characters are more nuanced and complicated than just being able to call them “good guys” and “bad guys.” For instance, in **Rare Flavours**, our protagonist is an ancient demon who frequently eats people. That sounds kind of villainous and hardly a “good guy” but he’s one of the two characters we’re meant to empathize with.
Rubin begins his journey remembering Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain seemingly found a culinary home anywhere— eating in the fanciest of fancy restaurants or in someone’s home, a guest for the night but given a king’s feast. Through his writing and television shows, Bourdain taught us about more than food and travel. After watching one of his shows, do you know any more about how to get to Vietnam or how to make a gourmet masterpiece? Those were entry points into his storytelling but maybe that’s what Rubin focuses on a bit too much and what he thought drove the emptiness that he felt. But that was rarely the focus of Bourdain’s storytelling.
Rubin, Moran, Dilshan, and Dilkush are all trapped in their lives, in their wants, and even in their grief. While they can recognize the trap, they can’t quite overcome it. Ram V and Filipe Andrade tell this story in ways that fill all the senses as each of these characters looks to satiate their hunger. For life, for love, for revenge, for purpose, for someone to understand, this story is about people asking for compassion but also having to give it. And that’s what a relationship is— a connection between people that’s both giving and receiving. In the end, **Rare Flavours** is a fulfilling feast that pushes us to be a bit kinder and more patient with ourselves and others as we stumble our way through this world.
### Not Just One of the Boys-- thoughts on Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette's Wonder Woman Earth One
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/not-just-one-of-the-boys-thoughts-on-grant-morrison-and-yanick-paquettes-wonder-woman-earth-one/
Last updated: 2024-08-24T18:24:19.000Z
It may seem like an obvious thing to say but Wonder Woman is not Superman and she’s not Batman. Those characters are boys and that’s in more than just the obvious ways. They’re children and are dealing with childhood trauma. But that’s not Wonder Woman. She doesn’t have the issues and hangups that the other two members of DC’s trinity do and that couldn’t be any more obvious when you read Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s **Wonder Woman: Earth One** (now out as one of DC’s nifty Compact Comics) and look at Morrison’s handling of Diana compared to his work with Clark or Bruce. That’s not to say that Diana doesn’t have her issues to deal with but she’s not defined by her childhood or past tragedies the way that the boys are. In **Wonder Woman: Earth One**, Morrison and Paquette show us a woman who is about moving toward a better world and defining the future. Morrison and Paquette are rebellious, are having fun, and are getting the tell the kind of story that you just can’t do with the Man of Steel or the Dark Knight Detective.
Diana does start as a child in this story. She’s sheltered and pampered in the ways that a princess usually is. She’s practically a Disney princess, given this dreamy life but dreaming of something more. Morrison and Paquette begin Diana’s story with all of the traditional elements— a girl being set apart from the world who dreams of being a part of it and then sets out on an adventure to see what there is outside of the protected life that is all she knows. It’s one of those lives that you wonder why she wants to leave the loving care that she has while also completely recognizing how much that longing to experience more can drive a person. She’s Elsa, she’s Snow White, she’s Cinderella. She’s living a fairy tale life until she realizes that her life isn’t reality. As Morrison and Paquette dive into Diana’s story, it’s clear that they don’t want to change it but to show that her story has meaning in the 21st century.
Morrison and Paquette are challenging the power structures that are inherent to our world and are even a bit ahead of the curve of what we were heading into in 2016 when the first volume was originally published.
For Morrison, the DC superheroes are modern gods and myths. His stories of Batman and Superman have grown into our modern legends and the stories that we share to explain the world to others, what it is, and what it could be. And here in **Wonder Woman: Earth One**, they’re telling the story of a woman who is the child of myth and legend. But that doesn’t mean that she’s some kind of untouchable goddess. Morrison and Paquette’s Diana is an exciting woman, discovering the world in exciting and frightening ways. She’s not from a distant world or a rich kid who never grew up beyond his trauma (but even there, Morrison tries to show both of those men finding new and better ways to engage with their worlds.). Their Diana is a rebel and a fighter who doesn’t just want to live in the world but to transform it. Her very nature is rebellion, of doing what she’s told by her mother or the world what she can’t do.
So the first chapter (originally Volume One when it was published in individual books) is a rebellion story— the princess getting a taste of the world outside her home and wanting more of that. It’s the story of the princess wanting to be a young woman. There are little changes that Morrison and Paquette make that are probably considered “woke” by some but that open up the world of these comics in wonderful ways— Steve Trevor is a black man, the Amazons are clearly sapphic, Etta Candy is more full figured than she usually is and even Diana manages to be as buff as she is feminine—- but these don’t change Wonder Woman’s story. They’re not subtractive changes but additive ones, broadening the story and the character’s world in ways to better represent our own. The basics of the origin are still there— Diana’s mother is doing everything she can to protect her and shelter her from the world when the child wants to we what there is beyond the streets and fields that she’s known for her whole life.
When she does discover the outside world, Diana rushes headlong into it. The second chapter shows a world that is threatened by the message that Diana brings. The powerful men (and make no mistake, it is men here) who hold onto their power and wealth thanks to a rigged status quo, view Diana and her messages of empowerment and love as a danger to the world, meaning a threat to the machinery that gives them that wealth and power. Morrison and Paquette are challenging the power structures that are inherent to our world and are even a bit ahead of the curve of what we were heading into in 2016 when the first volume was originally published. Men in power holding onto power is nothing new but this before is a Presidential candidate on a bus made bold declarations about what he could do to worsen or #metoo where some powerful men started to see consequences for their actions. This is a Wonder Woman story that tried to warn us of what the years ahead would bring.
In this book, Diana has to take on both the matriarchy and the patriarchy. The fight with the outside world (the patriarchy) is obvious but she also fights her mother’s rule, the isolationism that these Amazons want to hold on to for as long as they can. Paquette portrays both sides of these conflicts just so confidently. His bold, expressive layouts find ways to pull us into these stories. Neither side knows what to think about Diana and where she’s trying to lead so they fight to keep their way of life. Paquette draws these two worlds as separate things and then brings them together in the final chapter, having them meet head-on to either overpower the other or find some kind of synthesis between these forces.
For Morrison, this is one of their more fanciful superhero stories. Diana is a superhero to us but within the boundaries of her story, she’s an agent of change in ways that her male counterparts in DC’s trinity can never be. Her rebellion from her mother is the same as her rebellion against the values of the world. This is her nature in **Earth One**. She wants to love and nurture but she also wants and sees the need for change. And sometimes those wants and needs blind her to what’s happening around her. Morrison and Paquette’s Diana is not just fighting for what she knows but she’s fighting for the future. **Wonder Woman: Earth One** is a book for 2024, as we’re on the precipice of a new Presidential election, with this year’s possibilities about taking a cautious step backward into a President that we know and can predict what his actions will be or taking a hopeful step into a future of hope, change, rebellion, and love.
### The Apple Tax Hits Patreon, Comics’ Award Season Continue, a Zoe Thorogood Poetry Comic on Instagram, and more -- The Comic Bookmarks Aug 18th, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic_bookmarks_aug_18_2024/
Last updated: 2024-08-18T12:00:10.000Z
The summer must end but not yet. There's still a few weeks left to it.
This week on the site, I explored John Porcellino's latest issue of **King-Cat Comics & Stories**.
[A Great Comic for the Dog Days of Summer- King-Cat Comics & Stories #83 by John PorcellinoCartooning as a worldview, as therapy, as confession, and as autobio.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-great-comic-for-the-dog-days-of-summer-king-cat-comics-stories-83-by-john-porcellino/)
## Headlines
> Enshittification, wiping out indie comics creators one by one.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ylfu4f4oxg2nhxuvlka7nozt/post/3kzkbrj3whn2a?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Derf Backderf ([@derfbackderf.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ylfu4f4oxg2nhxuvlka7nozt?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [Aug 12, 2024 at 2:59 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ylfu4f4oxg2nhxuvlka7nozt/post/3kzkbrj3whn2a?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Patreon warns creators: Get ready to pay Apple’s 30% taxThe new fees kick in on November 1.MacworldMichael Simon](https://www.macworld.com/article/2425126/patreon-warns-creators-get-ready-to-pay-apples-30-tax.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
As usual, Apple wants their cut of any transaction that uses their systems. Remember that you can always just go to the Patreon website, support creators there instead of through an app, and use PayPal or a credit card to pay without having Apple eat 30% of the creator’s incomes.
[San Diego Police Investigate Fights, Theft and More at 2024 Comic-ConSan Diego Comic-Con got pretty rowdy ... ’cause TMZ obtained a record of police activity from around SD’s convention center last month -- and it looks like officers have had their hands full.TMZTMZ Staff](https://www.tmz.com/2024/08/11/police-investigate-comic-con-crime/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
TMZ covers the con as only they can…
[Nominees announced for the 2024 Ignatz AwardsThe Ignatz Awards, given out annually at SPX, honor outstanding achievement in independent comics and cartooning.SMASH PAGESJK Parkin](https://smashpages.net/2024/08/13/nominees-announced-for-the-2024-ignatz-awards/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[And the nominees for the 2024 Harvey Awards are...As if you needed a reason to read more comics, here are the best comics of the past 12 months in the Harvey Awards nomineesPopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/live-harvey-awards-2024-nominees-winners-nycc-2024-new-york-comic-con?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Awards season just keeps on rolling along.
## **Business**
> DC's most iconic stories—portable and only $9.99! The first six DC Compact Comics are available now, with more titles to come through October and beyond. [https://t.co/8bGehPFQym](https://t.co/8bGehPFQym?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/yOvRoCUa0S](https://t.co/yOvRoCUa0S?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — DC (@DCOfficial) [August 15, 2024](https://twitter.com/DCOfficial/status/1824204508106199431?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’m currently reading the Compact edition of Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette’s **Wonder Woman Earth One** and it’s a great experience- a fantastic format that really works to make things easily available. It’s great to see DC’s official social media account putting this out there in the world. As of Saturday afternoon, this post has over 694K views, which looks to be huge for them.
> Over the next few weeks you're going to see changes on social posts over at [@thevaultcomics](https://twitter.com/thevaultcomics?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> Images are going to start to look /different/ here's why:
>
> — Britta Buescher (@britta\_buescher) [August 14, 2024](https://twitter.com/britta%5Fbuescher/status/1823854927032037663?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
There’s a whole thread here about how Vault Comics’ social presence is changing as more social media companies are using art from posts to train their AI.
> What comics sites do you read? Doesn’t have to be huge? Or do you just watch YouTube videos about comics? Who do you watch?
>
> — Heidi MacDonald (@Comixace) [August 12, 2024](https://twitter.com/Comixace/status/1823078258327597087?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Another good thread that fills me with both hope and dread about just how much of an audience there is out there for sites that cover comic books. I’ve found one or two sites in this thread that I didn’t know about but there’s still just a lot of the old guard sites listed here, as if we haven’t developed anything post 2010\.
## **The Funny Pages**
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-xoltgRjFP/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Zoe Thorogood (@zoethorogood)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-xoltgRjFP/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-vTXVRPPjW/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Whit Taylor (@whitltaylor)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-vTXVRPPjW/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Still in Search of a New DatabaseSean Kleefeld’s daily thoughts about comics and the comic industry.Sean Kleefeld](http://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2024/08/still-in-search-of-new-database.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Comicbookdb.com was such a great site. It’s still disappointing that all of that data is lost. This is a reposting of an older piece by Sean Kleefield but talks about the need for some kind of cataloging solutions for collections.
[Who Gets Saved? - SOLRADCo-published alongside Rob Kirby’s review of RESCUE PARTY, Alex Hoffman discusses the messy labor questions that stem from the project and its resulting book.SOLRADAlex Hoffman](https://solrad.co/who-gets-saved?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Freak Flags & Flights of Fancy: Rob Kirby Reviews RESCUE PARTY, edited by Gabe Fowler - SOLRADToday on SOLRAD, Rob Kirby looks at RESCUE PARTY, published by PantheonSOLRADRob Kirby](https://solrad.co/freak-flags-flights-of-fancy-rob-kirby-reviews-rescue-party-edited-by-gabe-fowler?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Two fascinating and complementary pieces about **Rescue Party**, a collection of work that was originally meant to just be online pieces, then was a controversial Kickstarter, and now is a book published by Pantheon.
[Spiral & Other Stories: by Aidan Koch - Spectrum CultureSpiral & Other Stories is a record of both memory and amnesia, and it shows how the world creates itself out of the meeting of the two.Spectrum CultureReed Jackson](https://spectrumculture.com/2024/08/11/spiral-other-stories-by-aidan-koch-review/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I just love the question that leads off this piece— does Aidan Koch do a lot with a little or a little with a lot?
### A Great Comic for the Dog Days of Summer- King-Cat Comics & Stories #83 by John Porcellino
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-great-comic-for-the-dog-days-of-summer-king-cat-comics-stories-83-by-john-porcellino/
Last updated: 2024-08-17T11:00:34.000Z
John Porcellino’s **King-Cat Comics and Stories #83** isn’t making some kind of big and bold statement. This isn’t some kind of grand manifesto about life; that’s not what **King-Cat**is about. Porcellino’s comics are less stories and more like journal entries, capturing a brief flicker of time that means something to Porcellino. It could be recalling some suburban woods that he walked through when he was a kid, the common elements of a tire shop (his one-pager on this instantly bringing up the sense-memory of the smell of new tires,) or even a remembrance of a recently passed but much-loved dog, Porcellino uses comics as memory. Reading his stories is to experience his life through his memories, the good ones, and the bad ones. This is him holding onto these happy and painful experiences and we get to share those memories as well, finding direct and indirect connections to our memories.
Through his regular sharing of the letters he’s received and his Top 40 lists, a highlight of every issue, we get to witness these direct connections. Whether it’s other people who grew up in Chicago’s western suburbs sharing their recollections of the Schaumburg area 7-11s (I was a south-side kid and we just had White Hens where I grew up) or him calling Noah Van Sciver’s *Joseph Smith and the Mormons* a “true comix masterpiece,” there’s hopefully these experiences are our experiences or he’s reading the same stuff as we are. For this south-side kid, two pieces in this comic take me back to my childhood— “The Little Red Schoolhouse” and “Demolition Derby.” Both of these stories recall places that were practically rites of passage for a generation of suburban Chicago kids. In both of these pieces, Porcellino revisits specific places of his childhood. While his memories are of specific times and places, his recollections of the sights, smells, and sensations are much broader and more universal.
Porcellino walks this line between specificity and generalities in this comic. He draws some very specific comics about growing up in the Chicagoland area but he also has strips, practically visual poems, that are about sensations and brief instances of time. The initial one-pager in this issue is a memory from over 10 years ago, a low point in Porcellino’s life. Instead of giving some grand exposition of his emotions and experiences, it’s impressionistic storytelling, something Porcellino excels in. Whether it’s the sinking feeling of being alone, the small pleasures of being a cartoonist, or a memory of *Highlight* magazine, Porcellino can relate so much to and with his audience in the most economical and poetic ways.
By sharing these memories, Porcellino gives us these communal experiences. They trigger and unlock something in our memories. It’s the way that he helps us (or at least, me) to connect with these things, the shared and unshared recollections of our lives. It’s almost like a game of association; he says something and we react to it with our own complementary or contradictory experiences. On a specific level, he talks about family trips to an old dirt race course out in Willow Springs, IL, and it brings up my memories of summer nights spent out at that same race course watching races and demolition derbies there. I haven’t thought about this place in years but it’s now been on my mind quite a bit lately, the memories of being overpowered and overjoyed by all of these cars. That’s a very specific memory that Porcellino has drawn out of me and hopefully, you have your own experience that this comic helps you recall.
All of these stories, the quick impressionistic hits as well as the longer exploratory pieces offer glimpses into Porcellino’s life and his thoughts. The letters he receives and the top 40 lists just add to this menagerie of thoughts and impressions of a life. Through these two different modes of storytelling, he finds a rhythm and a balance in all of these different expressions of just what goes in John Porcellino’s mind. The spontaneity of **King-Cat #83**gives his stories a unique shape in that each story almost gets to be shapeless on its own but then all comes together under the *King-Cat* banner to be some kind of updated statement about Porcellino’s headspace since the last issue of his comic.
In **King-Cat** comics, we see a way of using storytelling to process life. It’s practically cartooning as a worldview, as therapy, as confession, and as autobio. He brings it all together and distills it down to a way where you, for the time you’re reading his comic, get to see the world as John Porcellino sees it. **King-Cat Comics & Stories #83** is our semi-regular dose of John Porcellino’s thoughts and musings, a welcomed chance to step outside of our own lives for a bit and connect with something and someone else.
### Human Trafficking at SDCC, Original Art Market, the Stolen Art Market — Comic Bookmarks 8/11/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/human-trafficing-original-art-market-the-stolen-art-market-comic-bookmarks-8-11-2024-2/
Last updated: 2024-08-11T13:00:58.000Z
Let's start off with usual with what was happening around here this week before diving into the news and reviews of the week.
[It’s About The Ethics of Super Powers in Gillen and Wijngaard’s Power Fantasy #1Relaxed but always on edge until the narrative bomb drops, you can see how far Gillen and Wijngaard are willing to go with this story.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the/)
## Headlines
[S4 Ep2 - Claire “I Ignored It and I Believed Him Because He’s the Storyteller \[Neil Gaiman\]” - Am I Broken: Survivor StoriesClaire (she/her) uses a pseudonym to share her story about being groomed and sexually coerced and manipulated by world-renowned author Neil Gaiman. We discuss the power of stories and fame, and she shares how journaling, therapy, and friendships h…Buzzsprout](https://amibroken.buzzsprout.com/763742/15488615-s4-ep2-claire-i-ignored-it-and-i-believed-him-because-he-s-the-storyteller-neil-gaiman?t=0&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
As I posted last week about the site Tortoise having two more women step forward with accusations against Neil Gaiman, it was pointed out to me that the podcast *Am I Broken: Survivor Stories* recently published an episode talking to another woman who talks about being sexually manipulated by author Neil Gaiman.
Writing for PennLive.com, [Chris Mautner provides a summary](https://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/2024/08/bestselling-author-of-fantasy-novels-childrens-books-faces-multiple-sex-assault-accusations.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) of all of the allegations against Gaiman.
[Attorney General Rob Bonta, San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force Target Human Traffickers at Comic Convention in San DiegoAs part of a joint investigation through the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force (SDHTTF), California Attorney General Rob Bonta today announced the results of a human trafficking sting, aimed at recovering victims of sex trafficking and targeting sex buyers using the San Diego Comic-Con Convention to seek out potential victims.State of California - Department of Justice - Office of the Attorney General](https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-rob-bonta-san-diego-human-trafficking-task-force-target-human?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Thinking about just how much these kind of pop culture events are so huge and beloved, it’s off putting to read an Attorney General stating “Unfortunately, sex traffickers capitalize on large scale events such as Comic-Con to exploit their victims for profit.”
> Since Initial D Omnibus was nominated for the American Manga Award for Best Publication Design, I wanted to offer some insight as to how the whole thing comes together; basically how it goes from interior black and white pages to the final cover. [pic.twitter.com/Nqdkp8E9MG](https://t.co/Nqdkp8E9MG?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Phil Balsman of Odin Star Industries (@ballsybalsman) [August 3, 2024](https://twitter.com/ballsybalsman/status/1819812907452109172?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Paramount Sells ComicBook, PopCulture Sites to Nashville-Based Savage Ventures | ExclusiveSavage has been investing in the media industry recently, creating a joint venture with Vice Media to relaunch its digital propertiesTheWrapNatalie Korach](https://www.thewrap.com/paramount-sells-comicbook-popculture-savage-ventures/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It always seemed kind of weird that Paramount bought these in the first place, didn’t it?
## **The Funny Pages**
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-bOt21PLWe/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Joshua W. Cotter (@joshuawcotter)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-bOt21PLWe/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-a9DjDvbey/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Keiler Roberts (@keilerroberts)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-a9DjDvbey/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
## **Interviews**
[‘When it comes to art, I think it’s very special if we can let it be free to exist however it wants’: An interview with Ian Bertram - The Comics JournalIan Bertram speaks with Jean Marc Ah-Sen on shutting the door on pretension in the limitless world of comic-making.The Comics JournalJean Marc Ah-Sen](https://www.tcj.com/when-it-comes-to-art-i-think-its-very-special-if-we-can-let-it-be-free-to-exist-however-it-wants-an-interview-with-ian-bertram/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
There’s a lot in this review to chew on but one thing that really jumped out at me is when Bertram talked about how selling his original art has basically subsidized his work in comics. It seems kind of obvious in hindsight but when he mentions that selling his artwork has allowed him to spend years working on only a handful of comics, it makes you realize just how important the original artwork market can be.
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C-fwAlBPIpR/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
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## **Reviews & Features**
[“As Fans, We All Knew the Artwork Was Important, Even if The Professionals Didn’t”- On The 1968/69 Original Art Theft Inside Job (UPDATED)(BAYCON 1968, Berkely CA- photographs of this show taken by Jay Kay Klein) Everything I’m going to compile and cover in this entry has been helpfully researched and discussed by other histori…Four Color SinnersView all posts by fourcolorsinners](https://fourcolorsinners.com/2024/08/03/as-fans-we-all-knew-the-artwork-was-important-even-if-the-professionals-didnt-on-the-1968-69-original-art-theft-inside-job/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The site Four Color Sinners pulls together a lot of documentation around two conventions in 1968 and 1969 related to allegedly stolen original artwork that was on sale at these conventions years before the comic publishers ever returned artwork to the artists.
[SDCC ’24: “Our Air BNB is burning down. Call me.”How a fire in the Gaslamp during SDCC left two cartoonists homeless....and how the comics community came through for them.The BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/sdcc-24-our-air-bnb-is-burning-down-call-me/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Now that’s a barcon story.
[Korean Comics Used to Be Burned; Now It Teaches ChildrenAs the child of a famous manhwa artist, Park was especially aware of how government censorship affected her family’s livelihood.Anime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2024/all-the-announcements-from-otakon/korean-comics-used-to-be-burned-now-it-teaches-children/.213850?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
When we think about Frederick Wertham, it’s important to remember that there are people all over the world who launched attacks on literature.
[Classic Comic Compendium: WONDER WOMAN HISTORIA - THE AMAZONSWonder Woman Historia - The Amazons is a fable that works as a compelling, beautiful origin story for the warrior women of DC.The Beatd. emerson eddy](https://www.comicsbeat.com/classic-comic-compendium-wonder-woman-historia-the-amazons/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It’s weird but I feel like this is a book that we’re already forgetting about. Glad to see d. emerson eddy taking a loot at it in his Classic Comics Compendium series.
### It’s About The Ethics of Super Powers in Gillen and Wijngaard’s Power Fantasy #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the/
Last updated: 2024-08-06T11:00:51.000Z
Following *Immortal X-Men*, **The Power Fantasy #1** feels like the next logical step for Kieron Gillen. *Immortal X-Men* was a story about a group of super-powered beings trying to hold a nation together. **The Power Fantasy #1** is about a group of super-powered beings trying to hold the world together. Gillen and artist Caspar Wijngaard take the idea of super-powered nations (nations with nuclear arsenals) and imagine all that power in the hands of six super-powered people— superheroes and supervillains if you will. T**he Power Fantasy #1** explores what it means to rule over the world as if that kind of power would put all of our fates in those few hands. It sets up super-beings as autocrats, which in many ways is what we see rising throughout the world (just without the powers) and thankfully, we can find evidence of a world pushing back against these would-be rulers. This rise of wannabe dictators, fascists, technocrats, and so many other labels are the things comics have been trying to warn us about for years. Particularly when you look at the rise of super-heroes in the post-World War II years (more around the 1950s and 1960s,) created by men and women who fought in that war and by the children of those wars, it’s not too hard to see the lines from WWII to Doctor Doom, Magneto, or even Lex Luthor (a pre-war creation but a character so resonate with the 70s, 80s, and 90s.). Maybe it’s time to be reminded of those lessons and how they need to still ring out today. They’re still needed as in many ways, we’re no better off now than we were then.
That’s a lot to put on **The Power Fantasy #1** but after books like *The Eternals* and *The Immortal X-Men*, Gillen feels primed to explore what it means when the power to destroy the world is concentrated on a handful of men and women. In this first issue, it’s hard to even tell who the good guys and the bad guys are. Wijngaard draws all of these beautiful people whose moral compasses don’t quite point to the same true north as yours or mine does. Their north is shifted somewhat by the powers that they possess. There’s a mixture of benevolence and self-preservation to their motives. As a dialogue-heavy narrative, Gillen and Wijngaard introduce us to characters like Etienne Lux, Valentina, and Brother Ray, as well as a couple of others who get just a page here and there, and set up the personal dynamics of this group of Atomics as they’re called here— the super-powered beings. Much like *The Wicked + The Divine*, this is a new modern pantheon but here these gods are cultural beings more defined by personal aesthetics than *The Wicked + The Divine*’s pop aesthetics.
So is Etienne Lux, the Atomic we spend the most time in this issue, a hero or a villain? Or is there room in this world to be both? It’s practically a given today that we see and define things as good and evil, black and white, us or them as if everything falls into some kind of binary 0 or 1 logic. Gillen and Wijngaard leave a lot of room in this issue for the possibility of multiple things to be true for these characters. Maybe their moral compasses need to point to a different north than ours does. As an introduction to these characters, these show that there can be different readings of each of them. Etienne Lux ethically looks at the world but that also leads him to the possible need to kill millions to maintain some kind of peace and order. When Valentina challenges him, “In what universe are you a ‘good person?’” Lux’s answer is an easy “This one.”
There’s a warmth and largesse to these characters that are capable of great things for humanity- that much is clear this early. They’re harbingers of a new and better tomorrow. They also know the power that they possess and what they could do both for us and to us if pushed to. And they do get pushed in this first issue. Wijngaard sets up this forced chilled vibe for most of this issue— the characters are trying to be calm, cool, and collected but you just know it’s a facade. Wijngaard takes Gillen’s dialogue that’s full of all of these concealed threats and plays with the emotional mask these characters wear as they talk about ifs and hypothetical possibilities, knowing all along that it wouldn’t take much for them to turn these discussions into action. And when all of the talk gets challenged by the people that these gods look down on, Wijngaard’s storytelling drops those masks and becomes this brutal show of power and revenge committed by the stories’ “heroes.”
This first issue is full of as much terror as it is hope, which is a delicate balancing act to perform while we’re still getting to know these characters. It’s hard to get a handle on just where Gillen and Wijngaard are going to go with this series. There’s so much promise and so much threat which could be whiplash-inducing inducing but these creators make it exhilarating. At the end of the issue, someone asks Lux “… is everyone safe now?” and that’s the real question. Whether it’s super-powered beings or super-powered nations, is there a world where any of us are safe? It’s a stinging note to leave the audience with at the end of the first issue. We want to think that Doctor Doom, Magneto, and Lex Luthor will always be defeated by the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and Superman. It’s nice and safe, making it easier to sleep at night with the fantasy of good guys and bad guys. **The Power Fantasy #1** doesn’t view the world that simply. In this issue at least, there’s no absolute good and no absolute evil. It acknowledges that we just don’t know what the people we think are good or bad are capable of doing.
### The launch of K-ComicsBeat, the fight against AI comics, and more— The Comic Bookmarks 8/4/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-launch-of-k-comicsbeat-the-fight-against-ai-comics-and-more-the-comic-bookmarks-8-4-2024/
Last updated: 2024-08-04T12:00:37.000Z
It’s the week after SDCC so things are expected to be a bit quiet but our headlines are just depressing, dealing with abuses of power, overstepping the role of an editor or creator, or just being completely deaf to the fallacies of AI.
But before we get to the headlines, here’s what we’ve been up to on this site for the past couple of weeks.
[One Last Dose of Joe Matt’s Self-Deprecating Humor in Peepshow #15Joe Matt is the target of the ridicule and jokes but he’s also the one telling the jokes.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/one-last-dose-of-joe-matts-self-deprecating-humor-in-peepshow-15/)
[Atsushi Kaneko Uses Action To Reveal Character in Search and Destroy Vol. 1Search and Destroy is a revenge thriller you feel in your bones.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/atsushi-kaneko-uses-action-to-reveal-character-in-search-and-destroy-vol-1/)
## Headlines
[Exclusive: Two more women accuse Neil Gaiman of sexual assault and abuse - TortoiseFirst on-the-record allegations against the author allege abuse going back to 1986 and reveal another non-disclosure agreement, this one with a $275,000 settlement.TortoisePaul Caruana Galizia](https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/08/01/exclusive-two-more-women-accuse-neil-gaiman-of-sexual-assault-and-abuse/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
There’s a pattern of abuse here in these narratives, of a powerful man abusing that power to have his way with women. And now it goes back to the 80s and establishes that this is who Gaiman has always been.
I would still love to see reports that corroborate these reports just because Tortiose is a bit suspect. But it’s also telling that no one has some forward to support Gaiman either. I wonder when Disney, Netflix, or Amazon are going to be forced to either make a statement in support of Gaiman or disaffiliate themselves with him.
[Wolverine Co-Creator Roy Thomas on His ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Credit: “My Name Should Have Come First”The former Marvel editor-in-chief shares his thoughts after seeing the movie — and responds following a controversy surrounding him getting co-creator credit on the popular character.The Hollywood ReporterRoy Thomas](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/wolverine-co-creator-roy-thomas-deadpool-and-wolverine-1235962212/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
How long until Roy Thomas thinks he should have the sole credit for Wolverine? And what a smug, self-congratulatory piece of self-promotion this is.
[Colin Kaepernick lost control of his story. Now he wants to help creators own theirs | TechCrunchThousands of stories have been written about former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. If anyone knows a thing or two aboutTechCrunchMaxwell Zeff](https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/colin-kaepernick-launches-ai-startup-help-creators-storytelling/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
So the latest is that Colin Kaepernick is now a tech-bro, singing the praises of AI to create stories? It’s just a whole, weird turn to take by completely glossing over revealing what sources were used to train their AI to be storyteller.
Below is Khary Randolph’s response to Kaepernick’s AI endeavors. [The Beat has many more responses like this one.](https://www.comicsbeat.com/colin-kaepernicks-ai-based-comics-company-angers-comics-creators/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
> Welcome to KComicsBeat with [@debaoki](https://twitter.com/debaoki?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [@Comixace](https://twitter.com/Comixace?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — KComicsBeat (@KComicsBeat) [August 1, 2024](https://twitter.com/KComicsBeat/status/1819067756542623957?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Congrats to Heidi and Deb. I’m excited to see what they do with this new site!
## **The Funny Pages**
> Who thinks this should be the next Batman cover?
>
> John Stanley colors over my inks [pic.twitter.com/r3erSa3lgh](https://t.co/r3erSa3lgh?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Matt Lesniewski (@MattLesniewski) [August 1, 2024](https://twitter.com/MattLesniewski/status/1819108305387561198?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I have Lesniewski’s newest book from Oni Press and it just kind of intimidates me. His art reminds me of Tradd Moore’s recent stuff in how it just brings in such a unique design sense to create captivating images like this one.
> Turkish Olympic shooting star Yusuf Dikeç has gone viral on Japanese social media, inspiring a spate of fan art like the one below showing him both with his gun ("on" mode) and with his cat ("off" mode). [https://t.co/pMwRkc4qZ1](https://t.co/pMwRkc4qZ1?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Unseen Japan (@UnseenJapanSite) [August 1, 2024](https://twitter.com/UnseenJapanSite/status/1819110319664615538?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Of all the things I expected could become viral moments out of the Paris Olympics, a Turkish shooter was not on my bingo card.
## **Interviews**
[Lale Westvind and Aidan Koch in Conversation: ‘Creative Energy Is a Holy Thing’ – The Comics Journal #310 Preview - The Comics JournalAidan Koch (Spiral and Other Stories) and Lale Westvind (Grip), moderated by Austin English, have a conversation about self-publishing, inspiration, process, and more.The Comics JournalThe Editors](https://www.tcj.com/lale-westvind-and-aidan-koch-in-conversation-creative-energy-is-a-holy-thing-the-comics-journal-310-preview/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Artists talking to artists about art. We need more of this kind of stuff.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Legacy Comics: Two New Alternative Funnybooks - The Comics JournalIt’s funnybook o’ clock and you’re just in time: Helen Chazan discusses Joe Matt’s final installment in Peepshow #15 and what is not even close to the first issue in the series of Caroline Cash’s PeePee PooPoo #1.The Comics JournalHelen Chazan](https://www.tcj.com/legacy-comics-two-new-alternative-funnybooks/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Helen Chazan explores to comics with a good old-fashioned alternative comic viewpoint around them.
[SDCC ’24: Say it ain’t so! Chainsaw Man named one of the worst on Best and Worst Manga of 2024Deb Aoki goes into the best and worst in Manga for 2024, with a surprising nomination for Chain Saw Man! All in San Diego Comic-Con 2024.The BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/sdcc-24-say-it-aint-so-chainsaw-man-named-one-of-the-worst-on-best-and-worst-manga-of-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I always love to see what ends up on these lists.
##
##
### Atsushi Kaneko Uses Action To Reveal Character in Search and Destroy Vol. 1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/atsushi-kaneko-uses-action-to-reveal-character-in-search-and-destroy-vol-1/
Last updated: 2026-08-07T23:50:12.000Z
There are two sides to Atsushi Kaneko’s **Search and Destroy Volume One**. One is about a brutal warrior, waging a war in a Russian city against the robots who control the city’s crime. This wild child, herself more robotic than human due to the prosthetics that she bears, brings a frenzied chaos to these epicurean crime lords who try to experience the best sights and tastes that this world has to offer them. This girl is a true wild child, untamed by society as she wages her war. The other side of this story focuses on a girl out in the wilderness with only one person, an older man Tsukumo, to look out for her. This girl is that same wild girl, but much younger and sheltered from a world that has taken from her more than it should ever have.
When we first encounter her in the city, that first side is alone and on her own but in the second part, a flashback to her youth, she has someone, a father figure who feels responsible for Hyaku. In these two parts of this first of three books, Kaneko wants us to understand these two facets of Hyaku, a young woman on her mission of revenge. First, he shows us what she’s capable of, her ruthless drive to hunt down these robots while in the second part, he gives us the reason for this. He shows us what she can do and then he shows us why she’s doing it in an engrossing way that opens up this story and this character to us.
The brutality of this book hits on both a physical and emotional level. Kaneko’s line work, drawn on an iPad, possesses a boldness that matches the character Hyaku. As she attacks her robots, Hyaku is pulling human organs from them— eyes, a tongue, and a liver— that Kaneko makes you look at and witness. There’s no turning away from her actions short of just closing the book and putting it down. The way that he draws Hyaku is all about her character— her physicality is a reflection of her spirit— wild, untamed, and patched together. And that’s contrasted with Doro, another young child abandoned by society, forced into the role of looking like a good, young Leninist when you can just tell that she chafes at that. Doro sees Hyaku in action and comes to idolize her.
Kaneko visually shows us who these people are before we ever hear a word from them or see them in action. It’s the same for their world— the ugliness and loneliness of it. Perfectly, this is set in Russian because you can sense the freezing temperatures of the Russian nights and days. It’s all part of how Kaneko shows what this world is without ever having to tell you about it.
Even when he does explain it— what happened to Hyaku, why she is the way she is, and why she’s tracking down these criminals—it still brings up this physical dread and revulsion at what this Russia has made this young woman into. His storytelling is compelling and evocative. He knows that he’s dropping you into this world where he needs to keep you on the edge of your seat to stay with him. He asks enough questions during the action scenes to keep you turning the pages and then when he goes into explanation mode, he flips the script and dives into the background of this character while using action and suspense to show you just who and what Hyaku is.
Hyaku’s story is about her loss and search for her own agency. As we come to understand what happened to her, and what was taken away from her, Kaneko takes on this search to find what was taken from her and what is lost to her. Her body parts are only a portion of that search. We can see the prosthetic blades that have replaced her arms and legs. Those are the obvious things that have been taken from her. It’s the missing parts of her that we can’t see which makes her the terror that she is. It’s the things that she can’t even recognize that she lost that make her this wild child raging through this Russian city.
That’s really what this story looks to be about— the unseen missing things and what they mean to us. What doesn’t it mean to have essential parts of you ripped away before you could even recognize that they were parts of you? And what kind of world does Hyaku live in that allows these things to be ripped from a young girl? Hyaku is the main character but Kaneko is telling a story about a society that places the values of the powerful above everyone else. It’s a story of the haves and the have-nots. It’s a warning about that kind of society and does end up striking a little too close to home as we have to fight for the body autonomy of women in our society.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### More Jay Stephens’ comics, the classic DC Logo, Inoue’s Slam Dunk and more — Comic Bookmarks 7/28/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-jay-stephens-comics-the-classic-dc-logo-inoues-slam-dunk-and-more-comic-bookmarks-7-28-2024/
Last updated: 2024-07-28T18:25:45.000Z
I can’t say that these links are 100% SDCC free but they’re close to it this week. That said, this will probably be a shorter list of bookmarks this week, not because of the con but because of life in general.
## Headlines
[‘Dwellings’: Charmingly Terrifying Comic Series Returns This Halloween \[Exclusive\]Journey back to Elwich this Halloween with Jay Stephens’ ‘Dwellings: All Hallow’s Eve Special’, a delightfully disgusting journey.Dread CentralMary Beth McAndrews](https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/506942/dwellings-charmingly-terrifying-comic-series-returns-this-halloween-exclusive/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Really glad to see that Jay Stephens is doing more comics and that the first *Dwellings* wasn’t just a one-time thing.
[DC Brings Back Classic Milton Glaser-Designed LogoThe logo graced comics and other works for nearly 30 years before being retired in 2005.The Hollywood ReporterBorys Kit](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/dc-classic-milton-glaser-designed-logo-1235959100/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It’s a classic. Glad it’s back.
## **Business**
[Ike Perlmutter Has Sold His Entire Disney StakeIke Perlmutter, a major Disney stockholder who lent his shares to support a shakeup on the company’s board, has now sold all of them.DeadlineJill Goldsmith](https://deadline.com/2024/07/ike-perlmutter-sells-entire-disney-stake-1236019211/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Ike Perlmutter’s name has basically become of the stuff of legend for comic fans just for the stingy ways that we ran Marvel Comics.
[Le groupe Delcourt-Soleil en passe d’être racheté par Editis - ActuaBDOn s’en doutait. Après une prise de participation du fonds d’investissement Florac en 2018, il y a six ans, où Guy Delcourt cédait 49% de ses parts, on devait s’attendre à ce que ces purs financiers cèdent leur participation quelques temps (...)ActuaBD](https://www.actuabd.com/Le-groupe-Delcourt-Soleil-en-passe-d-etre-rachete-par-Editis?var%5Fmode=calcul&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Just a reminder that there’s a whole comic book market that doesn’t revolve around the American houses.
[Tilting at Windmills #298: The Problem With ExcessThe Big Two are leaning more and more on “superfans” to support their lines, and that’s not good for long term growthThe BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-298-the-problem-with-excess/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Last week, we linked to articles talking about 2023 sales and how to read them optimistically. Well, here’s a retailers less-than-optimistic view of the current direct market.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Playing the Long Game - The Story of Slam Dunk in North AmericaSlam Dunk has been wildly popular across Asia—first in the 90s and once again with the release of The First Slam Dunk last year. But in North America, this hasn’t exactly been the case.Anime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2024-07-22/playing-the-long-game-the-story-of-slam-dunk-in-north-america/.212632?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I read some of Inoue’s other works like *Vagabond* and *Real* before *Slam Dunk* so the different tones of *Slam Dunk* really threw me off. This is an interesting read about the long game of this series plus some insight into the challenges of bringing sports manga to a North American audience.
And in my one bit of movie talk, go out and find *The First Slam Dunk* on Blu-ray or digitally. It’s one of the best basketball movies I’ve ever seen.
[‘You either take my word for it or you don’t’: Revisiting Darwyn Cooke’s Parker - The Comics JournalAre Cooke’s Parker adaptations the best Parker adaptations? Tom Shapira investigates.The Comics JournalTom Shapira](https://www.tcj.com/you-either-take-my-word-for-it-or-you-dont-revisiting-darwyn-cookes-parker/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Tom Shapira digs into Darwyn Cooke’s *Parker* adaptations and wrestles with Cooke’s own fascination with the Parker stories.
### One Last Dose of Joe Matt’s Self-Deprecating Humor in Peepshow #15
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/one-last-dose-of-joe-matts-self-deprecating-humor-in-peepshow-15/
Last updated: 2024-07-25T14:23:25.000Z
Joe Matt is one of the patron saints of autobiographical comics. Throughout the 1990s, Matt chronicled his life- the best parts of it and the worst parts of it. In **Peepshow #15** the last issue published posthumously after his passing in 2023, we see Matt just as he always showed us before— the humor, the self-deprecating honesty, the always-the-underdog mentality that defined his comics. But there are differences in this final issue as well- Matt moved from Toronto back to Philadelphia and then to Los Angeles, he tried to put his obsessive porn video collection behind him, and he tried to get an HBO show made. If not growth, there are at least signs of a different kind of momentum here than he has exhibited before. Even just the fact that Matt had nearly an entire issue of **Peepshow** completed before his death (Chester Brown stepped in and completed inking a few pages of this issue to finish it) exhibits him moving beyond a creative block that existed for nearly 20 years. **Peepshow #15** is an autobio comic like all the ones from the 1990s sent forward to us in 2024\. It’s a relic of a past time but instead of feeling old or outdated or even just stale, it shows a cartoonist who is open and honest about his image of himself. Maybe a bit too honest.
Today so much of what we consume is considered “content.” Even some of the better comics out there feel like they could have been produced off of some assembly line that used algorithms to give their audiences what they want. There’s a sameness to comics, mainstream and indy, that makes it hard to find voices of the writers, artists, and cartoonists. Even when comics today claim to be autobiographical, there’s often a construction or facade to them that feels like a barrier to protect either the creator or the audience. You get access to only so much of the creator, no less and definitely no more. It’s part of the world today where we’ve got more comics getting created than ever before— it’s great because we get all kinds of access to what these creators have to say but it kind of sucks because so many of them don’t have anything to say. (And if by chance you’re a comic creator and wondering if I’m talking about you, I think that says more about you than it does me.)
Matt’s 6-panel or (mostly) 8-panel pages give him a solid framework to build on. Reading these short stories, there’s very much a steady build-up, from the scene setting of the story to the punch line. It could be a panel or a couple of panels But that setup leads to this practically cathartic burst of energy followed by a panel or two of being able to nod our heads at Matt’s conclusion or to think “Yup, that’s Joe Matt, alright.”
One of the funnier pieces in this issue (among many funny pieces,) is Matt recounting cartoonist Seth’s 2003 farewell speech for Matt when he was preparing to move back to the States with his then-girlfriend. It’s 4 pages of Seth waxing nostalgically over his, Chester Brown, and Matt’s friendship. The speech itself practically feels like a Matt comic (apropos of Matt turning it into a comic) that describes their meeting, their friendship, and their butting heads. “We became brothers,” Seth said. “And that group of friendship has been one more of the most important things in my life.” It’s sweet and touching and buried amongst jabs at Matt like “Chet and I often joked that we wished we could trade Joe in for someone more normal— like perhaps Joe Sacco.” That kind of brotherly shot-taking where they could seem to be a big part of their friendship, particularly between Seth and Matt.
It’s a great speech but this being a Joe Matt comic, it can’t just end on a nice beat, with Matt thanking Seth and asking for his notecards so he could make this comic. Of course, there has to be one last jab hidden in those cards at Matt’s expense that he sees in the last couple of panels. “This part is totally wrong” he fumes at Seth. “I’m not like a grain of sand… YOU are! You’re the grain of sand! I’m the fuckin’ PEARL!” It’s a great 4 page comic, really kind of touching, extolling what his friends saw in Matt but he has this great timing to undercut all of that at the end in a way that’s a perfect example of the friendship that Seth described.
Matt is making fun of himself in these comics. He knows who people think he is, mostly because that’s how he’s shown himself to be over the years. Our image of him is based on his own image of himself. In his comics, he both accepts and rejects that self-image, struggling against it even as he’s putting these confessions down on the page. If there’s any ego in Matt’s comics, it’s an ego that drives him to be open, honest, and even kind of brutal with the audience and himself. It gets to the point where we have to ask are we laughing with him at all of this or at him? He’s the but of his own jokes, always setting himself up to be the one we all laugh at. We don’t laugh at Seth or any of Matt’s girlfriends or any of his other friends. Those last panels of these short stories deliver their comedic release at Matt’s expense.
This is Joe Matt but it is also his perception of himself. It’s a true-to-life caricature of the cartoonist that feels so real and so honest that we believe it’s the man himself on display here and not his memories filtered through both 20 years (most of the events of this comic take place around 2003) and his self-perception. And who among us is the best judge of themselves? He gets to be the jokester and the butt of the jokes in his comic. When he’s giving a rundown of all of his past girlfriends, the approach isn’t about how crazy his exes are but his own lack of growth and maturity, as so many of his comics are. He recognizes in all of these relationships that he is the problem but lacks the wherewithal to change.
**Peepshow #15** feels like the end of something but it’s more than the end of a body of work or the life of a cartoonist. This may be his last testament but it’s unfinished. Joe Matt’s life was a work in progress and this final issue demonstrates some kind of forward movement in his life, trying to put some things like porn and even Toronto behind him as he looked to the future. And now, we won’t see what the last 20 years of Joe Matt’s life were like— how he may have changed and grown or how he may have stagnated and just fallen back on his old ways of being. Honestly, having this book now feels optimistic; we can see him wanting to and trying to change. He shows us these glimmers of hope for approaching something new in this issue. It almost doesn’t matter whether or not any of this came to fruition. For most of us, this last issue of **Peepshow** leaves us with both the comfort of Joe Matt (who probably is never going to change) and the promise of Joe Matt (who was trying to change.)
### Manga awards, Samnee and some other guy on Batman, and a bunch of reviews— Comic Bookmarks 7/21/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/manga-awards-samnee-and-some-other-guy-on-batman-and-a-bunch-of-reviews-comic-bookmarks-7-21-2024/
Last updated: 2024-07-21T11:00:54.000Z
‘Since starting this, I’ve had a section for manga, kind of a catch all for all business, review, and features of articles pertaining to manga. As of this week, I’m removing that section but not our linking to pieces about manga. Personally, I’ve never liked separating manga out from the rest of the comic discussion or the comic discussion out from manga. While there are different flavors to all of it, it’s all comics and we should be having our discussions that way as well. I don’t really think that at this site we’re at a point in all of this where we should be maintaining the walls of superhero comics, Indy comics, manga, YA books, zines, digital comics, and whatever else you have. Though my personal taste may be narrower, I like the idea that this is all comics and that we should be discussing it as a whole rather than as silos.
Anyways, here’s what we were up to this week:
[Sidestepping the Event to Tell the Story in Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti’s G.O.D.S.Hickman and Schiti pull away from telling the huge story that we expect and find another way to tell a character-driven story between the context of those loud battles.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gods-by-jonathan-hickman-valerio-schiti-marte-gracia/)
## Headlines
[1st American Manga Awards Announces NomineesCeremony celebrating manga creators, publishers slated in NYC on August 22Anime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2024-07-17/1st-american-manga-awards-announces-nominees/.213301?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Also, go to [Anime NYC’s site to see the nominees](https://animenyc.com/american-manga-awards-nominations/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) as well as some discussion by the judges. These nominees are just adding to the list of books I need to look for in bookstores.
[Mark Waid and Chris Samnee reunite for BATMAN AND ROBIN: YEAR ONEWaid and Samnee’s 12-issue BATMAN AND ROBIN: YEAR ONE series will tell the definitive story of the dynamic duo’s earliest days.The BeatJoe Grunenwald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/batman-and-robin-year-one-waid-samnee-dc-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’m torn on this one. Samnee doing a good Batman and Robin story would be at the top of my list of books to get. Even if I still feel incredibly burned out on Batman stories, ones with good art can get me excited.
But I’m just not a fan of Mark Waid. Sure, he’s done some good stuff but I don’t connect with him books on any kind of level. I mean that I get that he’s a good writer but I barely feel anything from his stories. They’re just kind of there.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Off Panel #457: Brave New World with Heidi MacDonald - SKTCHDThe Beat’s Heidi MacDonald returns to the podcast to talk about Penguin Random House’s acquisition of BOOM! Studios and our expectations for San Diego Comic Con. MacDonald discusses the big PRH/BOOM! news, why the former may have wanted to acquire the latter, the big news ahead of San Diego Comic Con, where things are right … ContinuedSKTCHDmark1](https://sktchd.com/podcast/off-panel-457-brave-new-world-with-heidi-macdonald/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A great pre-SDCC podcast with The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald, where she and Harper touch on a lot of the news that’s happening leading up to that show.
## **Business**
[North American Comics and Graphic Novel Market Down 7% in 2023ICv2 Market Size Estimates by Format and ChannelICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/57351/north-american-comics-graphic-novel-market-down-7-2023?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The big story here is that sales are still well ahead of pre-pandemic numbers. Over at the Beat, [Heidi MacDonald has some good commentary on these numbers](https://www.comicsbeat.com/report-comics-sales-down-7-in-2023/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
## **The Funny Pages**
[Angoulême 2024: Moto Hagio!Yeah, Angoulême was six months ago, but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna post a few pics from the amazing Moto Hagio show! Shows of original manga pages are rarer than the proverbial hen…Ben Towle: Comics, Cartooning, TeachingBen](https://www.benzilla.com/?p=7911&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Ben Towle plays some catch up from Angoulême and shares some art from the Moto Hagio exhibit there and it’s all just stunning. There’s some really impressive art that was part of this show. And I love that Towle talks about what it was about each of these pieces that really caught his eye.
## **Interviews**
[Smash Pages Q&A | Jordan Morris on ‘Youth Group’The writer of the new graphic novel from First Second talks about his comic book origins, character playlists, collaborating with Bowen McCurdy and more.SMASH PAGESJK Parkin](https://smashpages.net/2024/07/15/smash-pages-qa-jordan-morris-on-youth-group/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve seen this book pop up all over the place and I love the cover of it. It’s really striking and tells you what the book is about without you having to open it up. I haven’t gotten it yet but I’ll probably pick it up when I see it out in the wild.
[Charles Burns Still Has Something to SayAfter struggling with writer’s block for years, the comics artist returns with a new graphic novel.PublishersWeekly.comChris Barsanti |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/95485-charles-burns-still-has-something-to-say.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Hopefully you’re not like me and have at least one more free article to read on PW. I’m starting to get really excited for the fall of Charles Burns.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Continuity doesn’t matterI’ll prove itPolygonSusana Polo](https://www.polygon.com/24196694/dc-marvel-superhero-continuity?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This looks to be part of Polygon’s ”Spicy Take Week” but I really don’t think it’s all that spicy but it’s just incredibly true. Once I learned to look past trying to track down continuity and just start accepting each story for what it was and what it was using, things became so much better.
[Pulp Homage and Art-School Laughs Brighten July’s Graphic NovelsAn unlovable heroine, a cyborg in search of missing parts, the restoration of a classic work and a series that is always worth the wait highlight four new volumes.The New York TimesBy](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/books/review/new-graphic-novels.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.700.8d%5Fy.Bd1bL%5FlJUCyH&smid=url-share&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I really need to get that *Wendy* book.
[Read The Room: Violence and Commitment in Stray Bullets: Killers #7By David Brothers There are a lot of “best” comics. For most of us, I’ll bet it changes on the hour. Stray Bullets is one of those best comics ever. The original run of 41 issues …ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2024/07/17/read-the-room-violence-and-commitment-in-stray-bullets-killers-7/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
David Brothers doesn’t write enough about comics nowadays so it’s always great to see him popping up on Shelf Dust.
[Existing Within A Shared Human Context: Hagai Palevsky Reviews PEEP #1 - SOLRADHagai Palevsky spends some time with the recent inaugural issue of PEEP MAGAZINESOLRADHagai Palevsky](https://solrad.co/existing-within-a-shared-human-context-hagai-palevsky-reviews-peep-1?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This book is sitting on top of the pile right now. Actually, it’s been there for a month or two and I just feel intimidated by it. I love Palevsky’s conclusion that “… emotionally speaking, *Peep* is a hungry book.”
[After 8 years and more than 30 volumes, one of my favorite slice of life manga is entering its final arc and I don’t know how to feelKomi Can’t Communicate is approaching the endGamesRadar+Austin Wood](https://www.gamesradar.com/comics/after-8-years-and-more-than-30-volumes-one-of-my-favorite-slice-of-life-manga-is-entering-its-final-arc-and-i-dont-know-how-to-feel/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It’s news of another long-running manga getting towards the end but I kind of wish this article had delivered the story it promised with the author working through his feelings about the ending of it. Really this falls under the news but I find the headline of this piece so fascinating and just wish it had been followed up a bit more in the piece.
[Arrivals and Departures- July 2024 - The Comics JournalRJ Casey read way too many anthologies, so now you have to, too.The Comics JournalRJ Casey](https://www.tcj.com/arrivals-and-departures-july-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
R.J. Casey with a bunch of thoughts on comics. Always interesting to see what books and ideas he latches onto.
### Sidestepping the Event to Tell the Story in Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti’s G.O.D.S.
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gods-by-jonathan-hickman-valerio-schiti-marte-gracia/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:53:00.000Z
> “JONATHAN HICKMAN RE-INVENTS THE COSMOLOGY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE! WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE-POWERS-THAT-BE MEET THE-NATURAL-ORDER-OF-THINGS? The infinite détente between THE-NATURAL-ORDER-OF-THINGS and THE-POWERS-THAT-BE nears an end. Old acquaintances are reunited during a Babylon Event. The Lion of Wolves throws the worst parties. Don't look under the table. There's a John Wilkes Booth penny on the ground. This ENORMOUS EXTRA-SIZED first issue features DOCTOR STRANGE, who, while not boring at all, is easily the most boring person in the book.”
[The solicitation text for **G.O.D.S. #1**](https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/103958/gods%5F2023%5F1?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti, and Marte Gracia’s **G.O.D.S.** is not the book you want it to be. From *SHIELD*to *Fantastic Four,* through to *Secret Wars* and even *Inferno*, Hickman’s writing is largely about how the Marvel Universe operates. With healthy doses of comic book science, Hickman’s standard mode of operation is to pick apart the machinations of a superhero universe and **G.O.D.S.** looks like it will continue that exploration as it opens with a Babylon Event. You know what a Babylon Event is, don’t you? Well, if you don’t know, don’t worry; it doesn’t really matter. All you have to know is that it’s the end of the world and everyone, good guys and bad guys, have to team up to save all of reality. It’s another day so it’s just another apocalyptic event. It’s Marvel, after all.
The craft on display in **G.O.D.S.** tricks you into thinking that this could be simply another event comic. Between Hickman, Schiti, and Gracia, they’ve all been involved in several recent Marvel events, telling “big” and “important” stories,” ones that “matter” to the Marvel universe. After *HOXPOX* or *Judgment Day*, it’s a given that Marvel would use these guys as their big guns to help steer the Marvel Universe in a new and exciting direction. The opening chapter, where characters like Reed Richards, the Black Panther, Doctor Doom, and Doctor Strange all have to team up, feels big and a perfect place to introduce Wyn, the next power player in this world. Think of a slightly less damaged John Constantine and you would have Wyn, the man ready for all occasions and prepared to walk a different path than the heroes or the villains to save the universe. This is establishing a big stage to tell a huge, meaty story.
From ****G.O.D.S. #1** by Hickman, Schiti, and Gracia (Marvel Comics)
Hickman, Schiti, and Gracia play into those expectations in this book, setting up the opening chapter to make you think that this is going to be that kind of story. The comic opens in the aftermath of the big battle (but on first read, we don’t know that yet,) with the implication that our hero Wyn and his ally Doctor Strange just barely survived the end of the world. They talk about weighty things like good and evil, and which one applies to them after their recent experiences. “And you, Wyn?” Strange asks. “Are you ***good***,or are you ***evil***?” Wyn looks coyly over his shoulder; “Stephen, my boy… who can tell the difference anymore?” That’s our introduction to Wyn, the hero and the cynic all rolled up in one.
The first chapter is a whole event in itself— a Babylon Event threatening reality would normally lead to a big crossover. You can almost picture what all of the tie-in issues would look like with Reed Richards leading the scientists in one series and another book following Doctor Voodoo tackling the problem from a magical perspective (maybe like the *Swamp Thing* issues that side-stepped *Crisis on Infinite Earths*) while Doctor Strange and Wyn have parallel books showing them following their own and eventually converging paths. Probably something like 30 issues altogether before everything collides in a big Omega issue where the heroes win.
Well, the first issue is a bait and switch for something more interesting and far more unexpected— a love story. **G.O.D.S.** starts with a big bang but only gets smaller, more intimate, and more personal as it moves through the story towards its ending. But that first issue is important because Hickman and Schiti show how Wyn operates; he goes the route less traveled to come at the conflict from a different angle. He doesn’t join in the obvious fight as he has his own approach. Like John Constantine, Wyn is not a warrior; we barely see him throw a punch or use a weapon. He’s a lover, not a fighter.
But this is still a Hickman-written comic so it’s got to have the appearance of being interested in how a superhero universe works. Wyn works for the Powers That Be, who are locked in a Cold War-like conflict with The Natural Order of Things. Think of it as magic versus science with Wyn on the side of magic and his ex-wife a key player on science’s side. Is this book the story of magic versus science or the tale of a husband versus a wife or maybe a little bit of all of the above? In a lot of ways, this is the foundation of The Marvel Way of Creating Comics, these personal stories interwoven with life and death battles. It’s the question of whether the hero does what they want or what they *need* to do (see any early issue of *The Amazing Spider-Man*.) It was good enough for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; it’s good enough for Hickman and Schiti.
From ****G.O.D.S. #1** by Hickman, Schiti, and Gracia (Marvel Comics)
Wyn’s ex-wife Aiko is introduced early in the first chapter, along with Wyn’s sidekick Dimitri, himself an envoy for The Natural Order of Things. In a flashback to 10 years ago, Wyn and Aiko meet in a bar to discuss their future. They’ve been together six years, five good ones she tells the bartender. She’s been offered a new position at work that’s in direct conflict with his responsibilities for The Powers That Be. She asks Wyn if he would give up his life so she could have hers. That’s the question that hangs over this entire series— when does responsibility for everything outweigh the responsibility for the love two people share? It’s asked early in the book and when Wyn tries to have it both ways, Aiko shoots him in the face, making her decision and choosing her side. (Don’t worry, he gets better.).
Back around 2008, when Grant Morrison’s *Final Crisis* was a thing, Morrison talked about how their approach to writing that story was to focus on the big beats of the event. They cut out all of the small, quieter moments to create a story that was only told in loud and major beats. All propulsion and no rest. But that means that *Final Crisis* sacrificed a personal connection with the reader to wow them on every page. With **G.O.D.S.** Hickman and Schiti pretty much take the opposite approach. The Babylon Event that kicks off this book is big and loud, but pretty much meaningless. Have you ever heard of a Babylon Event before? Me neither. Sounds impressive but that’s what the story is counting on— us being impressed enough to think that this is an end-of-the-world type story.
So instead of telling a story through the big, loud moments, Hickman and Schiti seed big beats throughout the story mostly to frame moments for these characters to live in, to share with, and protect one another. **G.O.D.S.** is largely a talking head comic where Schiti and Gracia get to show Wyn and the others having to make decisions and then live with them. Right or wrong, those decisions are what define Wyn, Aiko, Dimitri, and Mia, Aiko’s rookie protege. Wyn is defined by his choices but he’s also shaped by the decisions that the others make; Aiko’s ambition, Dimitri’s searching, and even Mia’s naivety. The real conflict isn’t against the gods of the Marvel Universe; that’s all just set dressing. The real conflict is just how we live up to the idea of right and wrong that we share with each other. In the beginning, when Doctor Strange asks Wyn whether he’s good or evil, it probably should have been if he’s right or wrong with the sides he’s chosen.
From ****G.O.D.S. #4** by Hickman, Schiti, and Gracia (Marvel Comics)
At the end of it all, Wyn is given the same choice he had at the beginning— love or responsibility. The last chapter jumps 100 years into the future, opening up on the aftermath of the big cosmological battle. The final boss battle happened off panel and Hickman and Schiti drop us into the aftermath. We’ve seen what Hickman and Schiti can do in those kinds of big climaxes in other books so do we need to see them do another one here? They drop enough little visual hints to spark our imagination about what could have happened. Instead, we’re left with the characters asking themselves “Now what?” “How do we live after everything that we’ve experienced?” Those weren’t questions that Morrison was interested in with *Final Crisis* so **G.O.D.S.**acts a bit like the Marvel answer to Morrison’s work 16 years later. It’s a book of the moments in between the big, brash battles. It’s Hickman and Schiti pulling away from telling the huge story that we expect and finding another way to tell a character-driven story between the context of those loud battles.
The end of the book set some 100 years later than the beginning of it, comes right back around to where it began thematically. The characters are a bit older, not much wiser, and have to ask themselves the same questions, kind of implying they didn’t get it right the first time around. Do you choose love or responsibility? The first time each chose (or had the decision made for them) to follow responsibility. Hickman’s writing is surprisingly tender here, walking a different path than his X-Men, Avengers, or Ultimate stuff has done. Schiti and Gracia are great artists for this story, able to have an expansive scope for such an intimate story. **G.O.D.S** looks, feels, and sounds important in relation to every other Marvel comic but that’s just all scene-setting for the story of a number of people just trying to navigate their way through life. Just like the rest of us.
### More on Neil Gaiman, lots of manga news, and a killer X-Men #1 review— Comic Bookmarks 7/14/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/more-on-neil-gaiman-lots-of-manga-news-and-a-killer-x-men-1-review-comic-bookmarks-7-14-2024-2/
Last updated: 2024-07-14T11:49:48.000Z
A lot of links from social media this week. As we get closer and closer to SDCC, I expect most of the comic news sites to be covering SDCC announcements, which I really plan to stay away from unless there’s something earth shattering.
## Headlines
Looking forward to this show
[Manufacturing consentUntangling the Neil Gaiman sexual assault allegations, and the Tortoise Media investigation that is both flawed and importantThe Politics of DancingAnnabel Ross](https://politicsdancingxyz.substack.com/p/manufacturing-consent?r=bsqt&utm%5Fmedium=ios&triedRedirect=true)
For all that I've read about the Gaiman assault allegations so far, this is a fairly measured response to them, really exploring what they mean from many different angles without downplaying the weightiness of the accusations at all.
It's probably behind the Patreon paywall but [I also appreciated Ryan C's exploration of this as well](https://www.patreon.com/posts/connective-2-and-107836699?ref=fromcovertocover.com), looking at some of Gaiman's Sandman books and background to make some connections to Gaiman's Scientology background.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Popverse is taking a much-needed break before San Diego Comic-Con (but we’ll be back!)It’s time to rest up before a big summer!PopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/live-popverse-site-migration-july-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
There's a lot of interesting things in this announcement from Chris Arrant over at Popverse, not the least of which is that I hope that crew has a good break and is taking plenty of vitamins before SDCC.
But what's really interesting is the news that they're getting a new platform as the one they were one was sold off earlier this year.
## Manga
> 🌟 Excited to launch my new blog, Manga in Libraries Monthly! 🎉 Dive into the world of manga with me! 🌟 I just returned from an unforgettable weekend at Anime Expo! Excited to share my experience with you all! 🎉 [https://t.co/kd9VCttheR](https://t.co/kd9VCttheR?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [#MangaInLibraries](https://twitter.com/hashtag/MangaInLibraries?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)[https://t.co/0tZI3QYhQ0](https://t.co/0tZI3QYhQ0?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Jillian Rudes 🔜 SDCC (@JRLibrarian) [July 11, 2024](https://twitter.com/JRLibrarian/status/1811477650835198038?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Update on the Shonen Jump Leaker Court Trial:
>
> \- Leaks of "Kagurabachi", "Sakamoto Days" and "Eden Zero" are now part of the investigation
>
> \- Defendants claim that its the fault of a foreign individual who approached them for the leaks in exchange for promoting their company.…
>
> — MangaReporter (Manga & Anime News) (@MangaReporter) [July 11, 2024](https://twitter.com/MangaReporter/status/1811348505430237592?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Junji Ito x Hello Kitty New Collab Illustration Reveal!
>
> Junji Ito x Sanrio Characters Special Pop-Up Store will open in Tokyo (August 23 - Sep 9, 2024) & Osaka (Sep 27 - Oct 14, 2024)
>
> Image © JI, Asahi Shimbun Company / © Sanrio Co. Ltd. [pic.twitter.com/4DeG5qbC20](https://t.co/4DeG5qbC20?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Manga Mogura RE (Manga & Anime News) (@MangaMoguraRE) [July 7, 2024](https://twitter.com/MangaMoguraRE/status/1810015560903856344?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> One takeaway from [#ax2024](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ax2024?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) is how many people desperately want to draw manga, but don’t know how to get to the level where they’ll get published / can go pro. When i tell them that if they want to work in Japan, they should learn to speak/read Japanese, they’re so sad. [pic.twitter.com/h1MUQa0428](https://t.co/h1MUQa0428?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Deb Aoki (@debaoki) [July 7, 2024](https://twitter.com/debaoki/status/1809932358394744850?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
‘
This Twitter thread from Deb Aoki from last weekend has been making the rounds and that’s because it’s really good.
## **Business**
[23rd Street Books Hits the Road at MacmillanThe grown-up sister imprint of Macmillan’s eclectic graphic novel powerhouse, First Second Books, will launch next year with graphic novels from Gene Luen Yang, Damon Wayans Jr., Saul Williams, Ben Hatke, and more.PublishersWeekly.comJohn Maher |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/95468-23rd-street-books-sister-imprint-to-first-second-launches-at-macmillan.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Someday I hope that someone can do a retrospective of First Second because this new imprint sounds a lot like was First Second was when they first turned up on the scene. They weren't the YA powerhouse that they are now but had a wide line of different types of books in their early catalog.
[“I Have Nothing but High Hopes”: Retailers on the Surprisingly, Quietly, Maybe Positive First Half for Comic Shops - SKTCHDWhenever the subject of the direct market’s health comes up, the conversation tends to focus on extremes. The moment is always an epic disaster or huge success, with little attention paid to anything in-between those poles. That makes for scintillating conversations and thinkpieces while inspiring a sea of YouTube videos that declare this point to … ContinuedSKTCHDDavid Harper](https://sktchd.com/longform/july-2024-retailer-feature/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Sorry to be hitting you with another paywalled piece but David Harper's look into the comics retail business is always a fascinating read. And it looks like you can still read a good chunk of this piece before you hit the portioned that's paywalled.
> You know what makes this a better day? Swampthing and Beetlejuice on a cover makes it a better day!
> House of Secrets special out this September! [pic.twitter.com/m4Fxzxd9Zf](https://t.co/m4Fxzxd9Zf?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Kelley Jones (@kelleyjonesart) [July 11, 2024](https://twitter.com/kelleyjonesart/status/1811515610976956546?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I'll be honest, I'm kind of thinking about picking up these Beetlejuice variants. Out of the whole batch, this one is probably the best and the most fun one.
## **The Funny Pages**
[The Agonies of IntimacyTwo new graphic books by Charles Burns capture the pleasures and discomforts of human connection and self-expression.The New YorkerCondé Nast](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-agonies-of-intimacy?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
You know they're prestige releases when The New Yorker has a preview of two upcoming Charles Burns releases, *Kommix* and *Final Cut.*
> Superheroes destroying alarm clocks, a short thread ⏰
>
> Kitty Pryde [pic.twitter.com/y8CVsA4nFU](https://t.co/y8CVsA4nFU?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Now: Marvel80sCovers (@XMen90sCovers) [July 7, 2024](https://twitter.com/XMen90sCovers/status/1810030272970203599?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Follow the thread. It's proof that Twitter is still good for something.
> hahaha I'm awesome www.gocomics.com/nancy/2024/0...
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sxwinzaivb2bfddzo7z3ovwa/post/3kwzy6zs34c2q?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Shaenon K. Garrity ([@shaenon.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sxwinzaivb2bfddzo7z3ovwa?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [Jul 11, 2024 at 4:35 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sxwinzaivb2bfddzo7z3ovwa/post/3kwzy6zs34c2q?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Okazu » An Error Occurred ( 오류가 발생했습니다), by Lee SanhwaPatricia B. says:](https://okazu.yuricon.com/2024/07/07/an-error-occurred-%ec%98%a4%eb%a5%98%ea%b0%80-%eb%b0%9c%ec%83%9d%ed%96%88%ec%8a%b5%eb%8b%88%eb%8b%a4/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Erika Friedman reviews a Korean book that she used Google Lens to translate. The book sounds good but I'm really fascinated by using online translation tools to read books in other languages. I do it regularly for websites and have tried to use it to read some French comics that haven't been translated yet. It's certainly a different reading experience.
[The Internet Archive Rescues MTV News’ Web Site, Making 460,000+ of Its Pages Searchable AgainImage via Internet Archive Last month, MTV News’ web site went missing. Or at least almost all of it did, including an archive of stories going back to 1997.Open CultureColin Marshall](https://www.openculture.com/2024/07/the-internet-archive-rescues-mtv-news-web-site-making-460000-of-its-pages-searchable-again.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I honestly don't know if MTV's Splashpage was a victim of the recent take down of MTV News or (as I kind of remember now) taken down years ago but as news of the Internet Archive capturing MTV News,[ I quickly used it to see that Splashpage is archived at the Wayback Machine.](https://web.archive.org/web/20120501100939/http://splashpage.mtv.com/)
[The Wendy Award - The Comics JournalWendy often feels to me like a missing link of comics history. In terms of aesthetic and general happenstance (drinks and drugs galore), it feels much like a natural continuation of the 1990s alt-scene, the kind of lo-fi comics that were all about how crappy their protagonist are and reveled in the terribleness of people... Read more »The Comics JournalTom Shapira](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/the-wendy-award/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[REVIEW: Trying to Care About X-Men (2024) #1 - WWACWWAC reviews X-Men 2024, after Fall of the House of X.WWACNola Pfau](https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2024/07/review-trying-to-care-about-x-men-2024-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
For some reason against my better judgement, I picked up this new X-Men comic. I thought I was done with them after whatever just happened but there was some kind of pull by a new shiny #1\. I wish I had read Nola Pfau's takedown of the issue before I bought the comic.
### Gaiman accusations, Ukazu’s next book, manga announcements, French rights to Dan Clowes, and more — Comic Bookmarks 7/7/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gaiman-accusations-ukazus-next-book-comic-bookmarks-7-7-2024-2/
Last updated: 2024-07-07T10:59:44.000Z
It’s July. That means all the sites start running SDCC announcements- who’s going to be there, what big signings they’ll be having, and what “major” releases they’ll be hawking. Let’s see if we can survive this month together, shall we?
This week on the site, I spent some time thinking about Richard Corben’s Hellboy stories.
[When Richard Corben met HellboyThe humanity of Richard Corben’s Hellboy work is that it doesn’t try to spare the reader of anything.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/when-richard-corben-met-hellboy/)
## Headlines
[Author Neil Gaiman Accused of Sexual Assault by Two Women; New Zealand Police Investigating — GeekTyrantAuthor and series and film creator Neil Gaiman , known for the comic book series The Sandman and the novels Good Omens and American Gods , has denied sexual assault allegations made against him by two women with whom he had relationships with at the time, Tortoise Media reports (via RolliGeekTyrantJessica Fisher](https://geektyrant.com/news/author-neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault-by-two-women-new-zealand-police-investigating?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
We can't ignore this one as Gaiman doesn't deny the relationships but denies the allegations of abuse. I’ve been having discussions with some friends- the usual can we still like the art even if we don’t like the artist— and I think this one is harder so far (which maybe explains some of the lack of coverage on comic sites but that could also be due to the fact that these podcasts dropped just in time for a major American holiday and elections in England) because his audience believed that his art was a reflection of him and now this makes us go back and rethink the artwork. Do these accusations now change that artwork?
And as of now, these are just accusations. It sounds like New Zealand police have an investigation open but the podcast that released news has a questionable reputation (Boris Johnson’s sister?) and I haven’t seen any other source do anything but report on the allegations from the podcast itself.
[Monsters by Claire Dederer: 9780525564188 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: BooksA NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timely, passionate, provocative, blisteringly smart interrogation of how we make and experience art in the age of cancel culture,…PenguinRandomhouse.comClaire Dederer](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/589194/monsters-by-claire-dederer/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Above is a link to a 2023 book by Claire Dededer that explores how we engage with art by problematic people.
[MariNaomi - Queer graphic novelist confronts censorshipConfronted with censorship, queer graphic novelist advocates for freedom of expression, visibility for comics and artistic rights. Their efforts have made them a significant figure in the fight against book banning, inspiring others as well.Bay Area Reporter](https://www.ebar.com/story.php?ch=Arts%20&%20Culture&sc=Books&id=334147&title=marinaomi%5F-%5Fqueer%5Fgraphic%5Fnovelist%5Fconfronts%5Fcensorship&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
MariNaomi organized a protest against censorship at a local library and writes about her experience doing it.
She also has [good news about this protest on her Instagram post](https://www.instagram.com/p/C88nFupxFA8/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) about this article. (See her first comment for the good news after you read her article.)
[DC’s Orion is “the new emo king” in Ngozi Ukazu’s upcoming sequel to BardaCheck, Please! artist/writer Ngozi Ukazu is working on a second New Gods book called Orion, after the success of Barda.PopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-orion-ngozi-ukazu-ala-2024-barda?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I was actually hoping for a Barda trilogy, with Ukazu's second book being more about Barda's time on Apokalips after Scott Free escaped but I'll take an Orion book from here.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Meet Popverse’s new staff writer, Grant DeArmittPopverse is entering year 2 with a new staff writer (and old face): Grant DeArmittPopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/other-popverse-staff-writer-july-2024-grant-dearmitt?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Congrats, Grant!
## Manga
[Kodansha USA Reveals 12 New Print Manga, 2 Digital MangaDEAD ROCK, Hauntress, Tower Dungeon, Toxic Daughter: Chi-chan, more licensedAnime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2024-07-04/kodansha-usa-reveals-12-new-print-manga-2-digital-manga/.212812?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Oh, new Tsutomu Nihei. Over at Anime News Network, they’ve got a number of the publishing announcements that are coming out of this week’s Anime Expo 2024\.
## **Business**
[Cornelius lance une ″opération tirelire″ suite à une altercation judiciaire avec Delcourt autour des livres de Daniel Clowes | COMICSBLOG.frSur le marché des comics, tout est souvent affaire de droits. Et plus particulièrement depuis la France, où les enseignes locales ont pour objectif de propager des œuvres produites depuis les Etats-Unis, à coups de signatures, de traductions, de.…COMICSBLOG.fr](https://www.comicsblog.fr/48389-Cornelius%5Flance%5Fune%5Fopeeration%5Ftirelire%5Fsuite%5Fe%5Fune%5Faltercation%5Fjudiciaire%5Favec%5FDelcourt%5Fautour%5Fdes%5Flivres%5Fde%5FDaniel%5FClowes?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Use the built-in translator function of your browser and check out this interesting French article about the trickiness of foreign rights. There's some reading between the lines to figure out who may have been involved here
> Why does Jim Lee charge $20k for original 11x17's? Because people are taking smaller pieces by him and selling them on eBay for much more.
>
> Crazy how the machinations of capitalism has us thinking that the last person who should be paid for their art are the artists themselves. [pic.twitter.com/Oa0tTLYAlr](https://t.co/Oa0tTLYAlr?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Joe Scott (@JoeXScott) [June 29, 2024](https://twitter.com/JoeXScott/status/1807183459397644677?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This feels like people who can't afford a Jim Lee commission complaining that they can't afford a Jim Lee commission. Last week there was a whole hubbub raised about how much I costs to get a Jim Lee drawing but obviously there are people who have that kind of money around. It's just not you or me and that's alright.
## **The Funny Pages**
> This is what it means to be alive.
>
> New short comic, drawn by [@mopedcow](https://twitter.com/mopedcow?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) (one of the greats) and written by me. It’s called “Diaphanoids.”
>
> (Free to read here, hi-res version and additional process .pdf available on Gumroad.) [pic.twitter.com/eJ3C2HzU9N](https://t.co/eJ3C2HzU9N?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Hagai Palevsky (he/him) (@DialHForHagai) [July 2, 2024](https://twitter.com/DialHForHagai/status/1808228772564386145?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[A Visual Form of Poetry: Eliza Harris in Conversation about Haiku Comics with Shin Yu Pai and Justin Rueff - SOLRADEliza Harris in Conversation about Haiku Comics with Shin Yu Pai and Justin Rueff and their book LESS DESOLATESOLRADEliza Harris](https://solrad.co/a-visual-form-of-poetry-eliza-harris-in-conversation-about-haiku-comics-with-shin-yu-pai-and-justin-rueff?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Shin Yu Pai and Justin Rueff talk about their poetry comics. It's a fascinating discussion about how Rueff takes Pai's poetry and turns it into comics.
## **Reviews & Features**
[July comics preview: an ode to EC Comics and a follow-up to an Eisner Award-winning DC Black Label miniseriesEpitaphs From The Abyss, The Nice House By The Sea, You And A Bike And A Road, and more comics you need to read this monthThe A.V. ClubHome](https://www.avclub.com/july-2024-comic-books-new-releases-preview-1851567306?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Oliver Sava is back at the AV Club (where he belongs,) highlighting some books to look forward to in July.
[The Best Comics of 2024 (So Far) - Comic Book HeraldListen, I appreciate that you’re taking the time to read this intro, but every second you waste here is a second you could have spent reading one of the many great new comic books in 2024\. So, again, thank you for considering that I might be able to write something here worth reading, but in \[…\]Comic Book HeraldDave](https://www.comicbookherald.com/the-best-comics-of-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
That's quite a list of books in this mid-year review of what was. I don't think I've even read as many books this year as are on this list.
### When Richard Corben met Hellboy
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/when-richard-corben-met-hellboy/
Last updated: 2024-07-06T02:04:05.000Z
Opening up a Richard Corben **Hellboy** story is like stepping into another world. There’s our world, Hellboy’s world, and then Richard Corben’s world. It’s a progression away from the safety of reality into the sublime, fantastic, and horrific vision of what the world could be and then into what it probably really is. Corben doesn’t allow us to hide behind our ideas of what is or even behind Mike Mignola’s stylized shadows that suggest something more powerful hidden where we can’t see it. Corben pulls back those protective shadows and shows us just what is hidden in them. Reading Richard Corben’s work is to look into the heart of horror and to allow yourself to be washed over by it.
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is there to protect us. From the beginning, Hellboy was the darkness that pushed back against even worse darkness. Behind all of his almost innocence and bluster, MIgnola’s Hellboy is just another working-class hero, a guy punching a clock to go and fight demons even though he physically was one of those demons. That’s the great misstep of those Mignola stories; how much of Hellboy was human and how much of it was demon?
From ****Hellboy: Makoma** (2006)
And then in 2006, Mignola got to work with one of his heroes, Richard Corben. Mignola’s writing went to a completely different level of horror. The first few stories, *Makoma* (2006) and *The Crooked Man* (2009,) show Mignola doing his best Corben impersonation. These two very different stories feel like they could have been in *Creepy* or some other 70s horror anthology. Hellboy acts more as a guide or an avatar in these stories that take him into ancient and rural mythologies. *Makoma* is an ancient hero story where Hellboy is a stand-in for the hero of legend but not the hero of legend himself. Both of these stories, apart from the larger Hellboy cycle drawn by Mignola or Duncan Fegredo (the third-best Hellboy artist,) expand on the world as Corben brings his unique textures to Mignola’s story. Those textures are both visual but also tonal; these are different kinds of stories than Mignola was used to telling. Both stories are 100% Corben as Mignola’s writing here is so informed by the Corben comics that he loved.
Corben’s characters have a presence to them. This allows him to go from the ancient dusty landscapes of *Makoma* to the rural backwoods of *The Crooked Man* as his characters anchor them in the worlds that he draws. In Mignola’s artwork, we never lose sight of the fantastic as that is his focus but Corben’s attention is on his characters and how they tell the story. As Hellboy tracks across Appalachian trails, Corben expresses this weary fear that exists in these woods. You can see in their faces that these regular people have lived with this horror for most of their lives even as they fight to protect themselves from evil forces. Corben’s Hellboy is actually out of place in this story because he’s pretty much just a tourist as he finds people who face temptation and corruption daily.
From ****Hellboy: The Crooked Man** (2008)
The fleshiness of Corben’s characters gives him room to have them act on the page. Corben’s faces have always told us so much about his characters and Mignola uses that to tell a story like *The Crooked Man* that relies so much on these characters having a past and a history to them. Mignola’s artwork is great at taking us to worlds where ancient powers lie in the shadows but Corben takes us to a lived-in world, where men and women struggle against evil. As seen in every Corben face, the struggle is real.
So when Corben gets to *Hellboy in Mexico* (2010), it feels like Mignola is finally ready to write not just a Corben story, but a Hellboy story. *Hellboy in Mexico* is the first Mignola/Corben story that feels like it has actual stakes and meaning for Hellboy. This story and its follow up *House of the Living Dead*, are truly Hellboy stories. Focused on a couple of drunken lost months Hellboy spent in Mexico, Corben is given the room to apply his character work to Hellboy, showing the character at first having the time of his life with 3 luchador brothers fighting during the day and then drinking and partying all night. There’s a life the character has when he’s the main character and not a supporting character that Corben gets to portray. It’s a fun story about Hellboy being Hellboy until the tragedy of the story sets in.
From ****Hellboy In Mexico** (2010)
In the short 25-page *Hellboy in Mexico*, Corben and colorist Dave Stewart move between worlds filled with bad things and worlds filled with evil. Mignola writes a story about finding and losing friendship and Corben’s artwork turns the story into a tragedy that ends up being about the loneliness of the title character. Even as he’s surrounded by fantastical beings, there’s a sense that he’s one of the loneliest people in the world so Corben brings a melancholic tone to this story. From Corben in previous stories, we’ve seen action and horror but now we’re seeing personal drama layered on top of those elements.
A year later, *House of the Living Dead* (2011) shows a Hellboy running away from the events of *Hellboy in Mexico*. This book starts where *Hellboy in Mexico* ended, with Hellboy remaining drunk and wrestling in Mexican bars. Mignola and Corben show a man even more isolated and alone as he’s surrounded by crowds chanting his name. There’s wrestling, drinking, a wrestling Frankenstein, and Hellboy in this story and Corben makes it all believable and unbelievably sad as he shows these people and creatures fighting against their natures.
The humanity in Richard Corben’s Hellboy work is that it doesn’t try to spare the reader of anything. He can take Mignola’s stories and be faithful to the work that Mignola has already done while charting his path with this character. Corben’s Hellboy is a character searching for his place in the world. There’s a loneliness to these stories as Corben shows a character meeting the supernatural and rejecting it to protect humanity. He’s a man out of phase with the world around him even as he’s completely tied to the supernatural forces that shape it.
### Maus banned, The Beat Covers SDCC, My Hero Academia ending, and more— Comics Bookmark 6/30/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks-6-30-2024/
Last updated: 2024-06-30T11:48:21.000Z
I've really been digging Chris Condon and Jacob Phillip's That Texas Blood (briefly talked about [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/screenshot-reviews-hellboy-bprd-night-of-the-cyclops-that-texas-blood-14-aquaman-andromeda-1/#gsc.tab=0)) and while **The Enfield Gang Massacre** serves as a prequel to their series, you can read it by itself easily. It's a great western tale about how our stories change over time and I wrote a bit about it this week.
[Finding the Truth in Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips’ The Enfield Gang MassacreThe title gives away what’s going to happen but The Enfield Gang Massacre is about stories as much as it is about the massacre.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/finding-the-truth-in-chris-condon-and-jacob-phillips-the-enfield-gang-massacre/)
## Headlines
[Sarah Becker Dies: MTV’s ‘The Real World: Miami’ Alum Was 52Sarah Becker, best known for appearing in MTV’s The Real World Season 5, has died. She was 52.DeadlineArmando Tinoco](https://deadline.com/2024/06/sarah-becker-dead-mtv-the-real-world-miami-1235981235/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I'm so sorry to hear about this. While most of the headlines highlight Becker's time on MTV's The Real World, she was also involved in the early day of Wildstorm back in La Jolla, CA.
I think it's also important to say that if you're having any suicidal thoughts, try to seek help right away. There's a lot of different ways you can do that, starting with calling 998.
---
[Logan’s Run: Roy Thomas, Len Wein, and the curious case of the Wolverine - The Comics JournalWho really did create Wolverine? And just as importantly, why should any of the rest of us care?The Comics JournalZach Rabiroff](https://www.tcj.com/logans-run-roy-thomas-len-wein-and-curious-case-of-the-wolverine/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
There’s a lot here in this fairly comprehensive read by Zach Rabiroff. One thing we probably won’t get for years, if not decades, is what drove Marvel /Disney to make this change to how it documents the ownership of Wolverine. Right or wrong, I can see what drove Thomas to pursue this but what was the argument that won the corporation over to now giving Thomas co-creator credit on Wolverine? And what kind of doors does this open for other editors to pursue having their names added as co-creators to other characters?
And I haven’t seen it anywhere before (and if this has been called out elsewhere, I apologize in advance,) but the way that Rabiroff makes this part of the continuing issue about creator credit, tying what’s happening here back to the controversies of the creation of Superman and Batman, shows just how this has been a part of the fabric of the business of comics.
---
[MTV News takes down 30-year digital archive with no advanced warningMTV News has taken down its digital archive, removing thousands of news stories, profiles, interviews, and other editorial features from the web.ConsequenceAlex Young](https://consequence.net/2024/06/mtv-news-archive-offline/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is a bit related to comics because somewhere in MTV News' run, they started covering comics pretty good, looking to take on the likes of Newsarama and CBR at the time. It feel like it only lasted maybe a year or two before they shut it down but I remember their coverage being pretty good and expansive. Was the comic coverage taken down years ago? I don't remember it even still being accessible.
But this also speaks to how large chunks of articles and information is lost when sites like this just wipe out their content (and that's all it is to them) rather than trying to figure out some way to archive it.
---
[‘Smile’ Author and Illustrator Raina Telgemeier Announces New Kids Graphic Novel with Scott McCloud (Exclusive)The writer and illustrator is teaming up with author Scott McCloud to publish a new graphic novel for young readers, ‘The Cartoonists Club,’ which will publish in spring 2025.PEOPLEPeople Editorial Guidelines:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/Raina-Telgemeier-Scott-McCloud-062424-8a3a02cfe4c54401b27ee78d6b799830.jpg)](https://people.com/raina-telgemeier-new-graphic-novel-scott-mccloud-exclusive-8668067?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Well, I think we have a front runner for best selling book of 2025\. I'll be curious to see how this collaboration works. Both are great storytellers (even if I don't always like McCloud's stories– any *The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln* stans out there– but his *Zot!* and *Understanding Comics* are still pivotal comics even if we don't talk about them as much.) And it's great to see that Telgemeier continuing to be a creative artist and mentor for these younger generations.
---
[Texas school district agrees to remove ‘Anne Frank’s Diary,’ ‘Maus,’ ‘The Fixer’ and 670 other books after right-wing group’s complaint - Jewish Telegraphic AgencyThe district in the Rio Grande Valley immediately agreed with activists who said the books were “filthy and evil.”Jewish Telegraphic AgencyAndrew Lapin](https://www.jta.org/2024/06/26/united-states/texas-school-district-agrees-to-remove-anne-franks-diary-maus-the-fixer-and-670-other-books-after-right-wing-groups-complaint?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
*Maus*? Filthy and evil? Maybe in what it depicts but not in the character of the book itself. More and more, you can tell that these people don’t read the books that they’re banning and, even worse, are trying to suppress the stories and histories contained in those books.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Comic-Con: Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment Teams with Heidi MacDonald’s Comics Beat for Daily News Show (Exclusive)The ‘Independence Day’ scribe and the respected comic book journalist will help offer a behind-the-scenes look at the convention each day.The Hollywood ReporterBorys Kit](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/comic-con-dean-devlin-electric-entertainment-1235934684/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is an interesting team up. I can't wait to see how it works out for MacDonald and Comics Beat. A long time ago, when there was a SciFi channel, they had a couple of years where they really covered San Diego (and this was before nerd culture became pop culture) and for those of us not there, it was a great way to experience it.
## Manga
[Jujutsu Kaisen manga’s current hiatus will be extended as mangaka recovers from “strange illness”Not even Gojo could see that coming.PopverseTrent Cannon](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-jujutsu-kaisen-manga-hiatus-extended-one-week-july-8-shonen-jump-strange-illness?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[As the My Hero Academia manga comes to a close after 10 years, Kohei Horikoshi shows what it means to write a superhero story with a definitive endingOpinion | Kohei Horikoshi is bringing his long-running story full circleGamesRadar+Daniel Dockery](https://www.gamesradar.com/comics/as-the-my-hero-academia-manga-comes-to-a-close-after-10-years-kohei-horikoshi-shows-what-it-means-to-write-a-superhero-story-with-a-definitive-ending/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Both of these stories make me feel like I‘m out of touch with a whole, popular section of manga. I didn’t even realize that *My Hero Academia* was that old.
## **Business**
[Marvel Studios & Marvel Comics are now working “much more closely” this year to get MCU fans into comic stores says publisherThe House of Ideas has a good idea - selling Marvel Comics to fans of the Marvel Studios movies & TV shows.PopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-marvel-studios-mcu-partnership-sales-dan-buckley?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ll believe it when I see it.
[WEBTOON’s updated SEC filing opens up the booksWEBTOON’s updated SEC filing opens up the books on the business, revealing the size and the extent of the business, with some surprisesThe BeatHumberto Saabedra](https://www.comicsbeat.com/webtoons-latest-sec-filing-opens-up-the-books-with-some-surprises/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Talking about feeling out of touch with whole segments of comic fandom…
## **The Funny Pages**
> Richard McGuire's "Here" was originally published in 1989, and later expanded into a graphic novel in 2014.
>
> But there's a little-known, intermediate version that was published in Strapazin #59 (2000). Here's the complete 4-page story. [pic.twitter.com/fUAMBmYX7m](https://t.co/fUAMBmYX7m?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Rodrigo Baeza (@rodrigo\_\_baeza) [June 27, 2024](https://twitter.com/rodrigo%5F%5Fbaeza/status/1806453215803605401?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I think I knew about this version of Richard McGuire’s Here ([I wrote about the RAW version last year](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/here-1989-richard-mcguire/#gsc.tab=0)) but I’ve never seen it before. I know they’re making a movie out of it but that trailer for it looked awful. Go track down any of the comic versions of it and be prepared to loose yourself in this timeless story.
> .[@io9](https://twitter.com/io9?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) has the first preview of Bowling with Corpses. [https://t.co/typRmL2mAh](https://t.co/typRmL2mAh?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/YqH4FMyy1H](https://t.co/YqH4FMyy1H?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Mike Mignola (@artofmmignola) [June 25, 2024](https://twitter.com/artofmmignola/status/1805625571281666149?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C8nRZppvoWG/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
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## **Interviews**
[The Krakoan era of the X-Men between politics, deaths and rebirths: interview with Kieron Gillen – The White SpaceAfter Al Ewing, Lo Spazio Bianco hosts another of the writers that forged the Krakoan years of Marvel mutants, Kieron Gillen.The White SpaceEmilio Cirri](https://www.lospaziobianco.it/en/the-krakoan-era-of-the-x-men-between-politics-deaths-and-rebirths-interview-with-kieron-gillen/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
First off, I love the graphic image of this one, with Gillen the center seat of the *Immortal X-Men #1*.
This is also a good interview about Gillen's time back at Marvel, with a particular focus on his X-Men time but also diving a bit into his Eternals run. Is it weird that before the next X-era really beings, I'm already starting to feel a bit nostalgic for Krakoa? I think a large part of that is due to Gillen's involvement in bringing this most recent large story to an end.
## **Reviews & Features**
##
[The Wicked + the Divine #1 - 10 Years Later - Graphic PolicyThe Wicked + the Divine #1 uses fandom and one’s favorite music and art to explore what it feels like to think that you’re immortalGraphic PolicyLogan Dalton](https://graphicpolicy.com/2024/06/23/the-wicked-the-divine-1-10-years-later/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I would love to see Logan do an issue-by-issue breakdown revisiting *The Wicked + The Divine* all these years later to see what his continuing thoughts on it are*.* When we were both writing (and he editing) on the now sadly defunct Sound on Sight site (now some weird zombie site under a different name,) I could see his love for the book. I really liked it but he connected to it on a whole different level than I did. Once at Panel Patter, [I wrote "Some people are W+D people..."](https://www.panelpatter.com/2015/08/phonogram-immaterial-girl-1-is-it-life.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and I was thinking of Logan here.
[Books in Bites 25: Who’s That Up There Who’s Asking Who’s That Down Here? - SOLRADSOLRAD’s Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Elkin, returns with his capsule review column, Books in Bites, looking at work by Kit Anderson, Simon Moreton, S. Meralli, and PF RadiceSOLRADDaniel Elkin](https://solrad.co/books-in-bites-25-whos-that-up-there-whos-asking-whos-that-down-here?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Always like it when Daniel is sharing his thoughts on books. I haven't read any Simon Moreton in a while and think I need to rectify that.
[The best comics of 2024 so farIncluding Tokyo These Days, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, and, yes... even Transformers!PolygonSusana Polo](https://www.polygon.com/24185731/best-comics-2024-graphic-novels-manga-books?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is a pretty good list from the fine people at Polygon. While I haven't read this *Newburn* story yet, I think they picked the right Zdarsky there.
And that *Doom* comic may be the most underrated book of the year, at least the most underrated Marvel book. Sanford Greene killed it on that book.
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[Destro Supplies Another Great Joe Comic: Single Minded for June 19th, 2024Comic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterRob McMonigal](https://www.panelpatter.com/2024/06/destro-supplies-another-great-joe-comic.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Rob liked this book a bit better than I did but I'm kind of intrigued by this whole GI Joe revival (I refuse to call it Energon or anything like that; I'm way more of A GI Joe guy than a Transformers guy) so I've been dipping into most of the series. This one left me a bit cold and I really didn't make any connection to it. The news this week that the team behind the *Duke* miniseries are taking on the main GI Joe comic actually has me a bit excited. *Duke* was a good action comic (not as good as *Scarlett #1*) so hopefully it gets to be its own story and not just an adjunct to the Transformers story.
### Finding the Truth in Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips’ The Enfield Gang Massacre
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/finding-the-truth-in-chris-condon-and-jacob-phillips-the-enfield-gang-massacre/
Last updated: 2026-08-07T23:44:31.000Z
**The Enfield Gang Massacre** is one complete story but you can read it as three different stories that are in dialogue with each other. The largest story is the titular massacre, the last days of a late 1800s western gang that “terrorized” a small Texas town. They robbed banks by day and drank in bars by night but that’s about the extent of their lawlessness that we bear witness to. They were outlaws in every realistic and romantic sense of the word as we see in the early pages of Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips’ latest book (a sort of prequel to their *That Texas Blood* series.). But that’s not actually the first story we experience in the book; the first story (also the shortest) is a 1906 carnival sideshow, where a huckster displays the decayed corpse of Montgomery Enfield, some 30 years removed from this life. “Of his dark deeds I shall remind you. If’n you’ve the belly for it,” Doc Malady promises to those gathered in his tent. There’s the story and then there’s the story of the telling of the story which Malady promises to deliver. On top of that, there’s a third story in 1986– an article from the Texas Reporter trying to find out the truth about the massacre. Through this article, we see how the events of the bloody massacre became legend in Texas as the journalist tries to find out the truth of those events and the true extent of the Enfield’s Gang guilt in the events that led up to the massacre.
Three stories across the years— 1875, 1906, and 1986– all come together to create this great western tale. It’s got all of the pulpy and outlaw elements of what we expect from something like a Sergio Leone or a John Wayne western; it’s a story of the good guys versus the bad guys. But it’s also a story where the lines of good and bad get crossed and confused, deconstructing the myths of the western hero and the western villain. The last days of Montgomery Enfield and his gang is the heart of this book and in those pages is this questioning and confusion of good and evil. Enfield wouldn’t argue that he wasn’t and outlaw but he wouldn’t call himself evil either. He was a part of the fabric of the west, part of its ecosystem engaging in the roles of the time. When the townspeople are pushed to their limits after the vicious murder of the banker, the Enfield Gang is the sacrificial lamb for their outrage. In those fine and respectable townspeople, Condon and Phillips show other aspects of good and evil at work. In some very personal ways, everyone in this story is touched by evil.
Phillips artwork remains true to the drama of the story but almost remains neutral in its expression of who’s good and who’s evil. There’s no real distinguished visual elements like a black hat or a white hat that show which western role each character fits. The art more interested in who is in control of the situation and who isn’t (which maybe is its own way of speaking to “good” and “evil”) as Phillips sets the pages to show the desperation in these events. His artwork shows the power dynamics at work in the story; who has power, who doesn’t, and who wants it. There are three men who are hunting down the Enfield gang: a local businessman John Mowbray, Sheriff Hardesty, and a Texas Ranger named Captain Aloysius Ely.
These four men— Enfield, Mowbray, Ely, and Hardesty— could make up the four corners of one of those moral alignment charts from D&D that tracks how lawful or good a person could be.
| Lawful Good | Lawful Neutral | Lawful Evil |
| ------------ | --------------- | ------------ |
| Neutral Good | True Neutral | Neutral Evil |
| Chaotic Good | Chaotic Neutral | Chaotic Evil |
Take out the neutral boxes and this is a good chart to view the struggles within **The Enfield Gang Massacre**. Whether intentional or not, Condon and Phillips set up these four men within these roles and it’s interesting to see how that plays out, particularly with the two “good” characters, Enfield and Ely, and even how their roles kind of flip in this book depending on your own point of views about the characters. While an outlaw, Enfield seems to have his own moral code which could be described as “moral;” he’s “good” at least in his own eyes (or at least not that bad.). And Ely, a Texas Ranger who’s just passing through on his way to greener pastures, is *the law* in this book; he’s a man who sees an injustice in front of him and is driven to see apply justice to the situation. He’s driven by this need for justice to the point where he’s the true chaotic wildcard in this book. He has the power to stop this but never sees that as a possibility.
Then there’s the stories we tell ourselves about this people, the myths and legends that develop around them. The Texas Record articles, written over a hundred years after the massacre, is a story about how the story of the Enfield Gang has been passed down over the years as a story about true good (the law) versus evil (the Enfield Gang.). This is the story kids are taught in school and grow up celebrating. But we saw in the story of the massacre that there was more that happened than just the black and white viewpoint that Texas students were taught over the decades. If this book was just the massacre, it would still be a really good western tale prodding us to question our concepts of good guys and bad guys.
These text pieces explore how stories and histories change over the years, how life becomes legend. They prod us to always be questioning our stories, asking questions especially when they seem a bit too simplistic and cut-and-dried. And they also challenge us not to just accept the simplistic assumption of right and wrong. Text pieces in comics often feel superfluous to the story, a shortcut for world building or barreling through the plot the the text pieces in this book make us view the massacre and the carnival sequences in a much broader sense of events while also enforcing just how tight and personal a story **The Enfield Gang Massacre** is.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### How do you mess up Superman’s S symbol? Bad AI artwork I guess —Comic Bookmarks 6/22/2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-6-22-2024/
Last updated: 2024-06-22T23:00:45.000Z
It’s been a week on a very personal level that I won’t go into here but that has caused me to think about the things that I do and why I do them. So I haven’t paid lot of attention to what’s happening online (so this may be a bit smaller than usual) but I’ve been thinking about why I write what I write. It’s my way of engaging with the world, with being a part of it and hopefully in some small way, a voice that while maybe not transforming it, is hopefully pointing out that we could be better. I think that’s why my review for **Hate Revisited #1** went in the directions it did.
I’m not too sure where I was going on this when I started writing—my notes have a lot on the Muppet-like quality of Bagge’s cartooning (a byproduct of recently watching the Jim Henson documentary?) but as I was writing it, I felt the need to go more in a direction of exploring why now and how is it different than the **Hate** that Bagge created in the 1990s.
[The 1990s speak to 2024 in Peter Bagge’s Hate Revisited #1It’s 2024\. Do we really need more HATE in our lives? (Answer: Yes)From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hate-revisited-1-b/)
## Headlines
[Marvel’s “reset” of its comics division includes a new logo, new social media, and bad typeface decisionsLet’s all celebrate the return of Marvel Comics as an official brand, and wonder why the logo doesn’t fit.PopverseGraeme McMillan](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-marvel-brand-logo-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
How have DC and Marvel just managed to botch it anytime that they try to reimagine their logos? Honestly, the DC Bullet and the blocked MARVEL logo are pretty good classics and maybe just shouldn’t be messed with.
[Rest in peace, Peter B. GillisThe co-creator of ‘Strikeforce: Morituri’ and writer of ‘Doctor Strange,’ ‘Defenders’ and ‘Micronauts’ has passed away at the age of 71.SMASH PAGESJK Parkin](https://smashpages.net/2024/06/20/rest-in-peace-peter-b-gillis/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve read a lot of Gillis over my years and he was one of those stalwarts of the 1980s, producing largely readable books. His work on First Comics *Warp* still remains some of my favorite comics as it was some of the first independent comics I discovered at a small used bookstore where I grew up. Marvel needs to put out a nice **Strikeforce: Morituri** collection.
[Adi Granov calls out DC cover artist for alleged use of AIAdi Granov pulled no punches calling out artist Francesco Mattina for allegedly using AI-generated elements in a DC variant coverThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/adi-granov-calls-out-dc-cover-artist-for-alleged-use-of-ai/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
See the top of this post for just how badly the S symbol is botched.
[Bleeding Cool is reporting](https://bleedingcool.com/comics/dc-comics-junks-all-covers-by-francesco-mattina-over-a-i-accusations/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) that DC is scrapping all of the planned-but-unpusblished Francesco Mattina covers in their pipeline.
## **Business**
[Adobe Says It Won’t Train AI Using Artists’ Work. Creatives Aren’t ConvincedAdobe has issued new wording to explain how users’ content will be treated, after a backlash earlier this month from artists who believed their work will be used to train AI.WIREDCondé Nast](https://www.wired.com/story/adobe-says-it-wont-train-ai-using-artists-work-creatives-arent-convinced/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Caught in the [crossfire of intellectual property lawsuits](https://itsartlaw.org/2024/02/26/artificial-intelligence-and-artists-intellectual-property-unpacking-copyright-infringement-allegations-in-andersen-v-stability-ai-ltd/?ref=fromcovertocover.com#:~:text=for%20Art%20Law-,AI%20and%20Artists'%20IP%3A%20Unpacking%20Copyright%20Infringement%20Allegations%20in%20Andersen,Stability%20AI%20Ltd.&text=On%20January%2013%2C%202023%2C%20three,of%20themselves%20and%20other%20artists.), the ambiguous language used to previously update the terms shed light on a climate of acute skepticism among artists, many of whom overrely on Adobe for their work. “They already broke our trust,” says Jon Lam, a senior storyboard artist at Riot Games, referring to how award-winning artist Brian Kesinger [discovered](https://www.instagram.com/p/C762fA2JrTC/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) generated images in the style of his art being sold under his name on Adobe's stock image site, without his consent. Earlier this month, the estate of late photographer [Ansel Adams publicly scolded Adobe](https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170285/adobe-stock-ansel-adams-style-ai-generated-images?mc%5Fcid=ab24418ccb&mc%5Feid=0c27abf164&ref=fromcovertocover.com) for allegedly selling generative AI imitations of his work.
We’re still in the early days of AI so this is not the end of of this discussion (see the news about DC Cover artist above.). It’s a shame that artists have to be the ones who are policing this.
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## **The Funny Pages**
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## **Reviews & Features**
[NEAL ADAMS AND ALAN DAVIS: Two Similar Artists Who Couldn’t Be More DifferentA NEAL ADAMS CHRONICLES birthday tribute to the British illustrator, who was born 68 years ago, on June 18, 1956…13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, CultureDan Greenfield](https://13thdimension.com/neal-adams-and-alan-davis-two-similar-artists-who-couldnt-be-more-different/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve felt for a long time that there’s some connection between Neal Adams and Alan Davis. This article focuses more on their approach to aging and approaching retirement but there’s something about Davis’s figure work that has elements of Adams to it. I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on what it is though.
[The Power Rangers will meet Usagi Yojimbo in a one-shot this fallRyan Parrott, Shawn Daley and James Fenner send the POwer Rangers back in time to meet Stan Sakai’s samurai rabbit.SMASH PAGESJK Parkin](https://smashpages.net/2024/06/20/the-power-rangers-will-meet-usagi-yojimbo-in-a-one-shot-this-fall/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Last Monday if you had asked me to dream up the wildest crossover I could think of, I don’t know if I would have come close to Usagi Yojimbo and The Power Rangers. I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought a Power Rangers comic before so I guess that there’s a first time for everything.
[Underrated: Autumn Lands: Tooth And Claw - Graphic PolicyUnderrated: Autumn Lands: Tooth And ClawGraphic PolicyAlex K Cossa](https://graphicpolicy.com/2024/06/22/underrated-autumn-lands-tooth-and-claw-2-2-2/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Kurt Busiek is one of those writers I constantly underestimate. I had ignored The Autumnlands when it first came out but picked up the trades somewhere during the pandemic and just loved the books. His writing and Benjamin Dewey’s artwork made me remember why I used to like these kind of fantasy stories more than I do now.
### The 1990s speak to 2024 in Peter Bagge’s Hate Revisited #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hate-revisited-1-b/
Last updated: 2024-06-22T14:12:06.000Z
Stinky.
Poor, sweet, stupid, beautiful Stinky.
Some wounds just never heal.
It’s 1994 and I’m reading Peter Bagge’s **Hate**. Already I feel like I’m late to the party as Bagge had been doing comics about Buddy Bradley’s family since sometime in the 1980s. Discovering the comic in a great little shop in Downers Grove, Illinois, where so many of my tastes developed because of the great alternative comics they carried there, I can still picture the rack where they shelved **Hate**, kind of off in the corner of the store. Back then, it felt like Bagge was the chronicler of our age, capturing a Gen-X angst and disillusionment with Buddy Bradley, the slacker’s slacker. It feels like it should have been obvious that Buddy was a self-loathing misanthrope but Bagge’s skewering of 1990’s culture made us feel like we were in on the joke rather than maybe a part of that culture that he was trying to warn us about.
But that was the 1990s. It’s 2024 now; surely we’re more enlightened today than we were 30 years ago.
O.k. So maybe we’re not nearly as progressive today as we want to be and Peter Bagge realized that in this election year, we needed to return to **Hate**. This new **Hate** comic in 2024 opens up back in 1990 Seattle (remember grunge?) in an untold story about how Buddy met and slept with Lisa, his eventual (somewhere down the road after another failed Buddy relationship) wife. It, as well as all of the 1990s sequences, is in black and white, a throwback to those old comics but also a great device to set this about then and now, how the times are different, and how they are the same. One of the things that we don’t recognize enough in **Hate** is that it’s a great hang comic— we’re just hanging out with Buddy Bradley, a part of the crowd. It’s kind of like the Brothers Hernandez and *Love and Rockets*, where so much of the joy of it comes from being in the same space as those characters. The Buddy Bradley stories are like that, like we’re just hanging out with Buddy and his friends, practically there in the room with them, standing in the corner with our beer in hand (probably a cheap one) and just spending time with these guys and gals.
As part of that crowd, we have some secrets that we share with these characters. We have a shared history with Buddy and Lisa so we truly are revisiting them, getting together with them after all of these years to catch up and share some stories. If these are people that we once knew, I can’t say that they’re people we missed. Buddy is more a relic of our past, maybe we could look at him as a fundamental piece of our development but he’s also a limited piece of that development. As Bagge shows in this new comic, we’ve moved on but Buddy has largely stayed the same as he was when we knew him.
Even if you weren’t there back in the day (as we olds say,) Bagge structures this comic with segments that take place in the early 1990s and 2024\. Bouncing back and forth between the periods, he gives us a then-and-now view of Buddy and his friends. There’s this image of them 34 years ago and now, where we see Buddy and his relationships with his wife, his ex, and his old roommates as they were and as they are. For a comic like this that has an old history that a few of us are familiar with, Bagge’s effort to not rely on that old familiarity but present a compare-and-contract story helps us see how much can and can’t change over that period. It introduces tensions between the past and the present, mostly seen when Buddy’s ex Valerie asks what ever happened to his old roommate Stinky.
As Bagge’s Muppet-like characters move through these stories, there’s this charge of self-loathing hanging in the air. His cartoonish abstraction of the human body gives Bagge room to have his characters act and overreact to everything. They can be larger than life in the way that they relate to each other. Bagge’s characters perform on the page and that’s the way that he creates drama in this comic that’s largely a talking-head comic. This isn’t an action comic where we're riveted to Buddy’s every move. This is a book that is largely about people talking to each other, having to be in the world with each other; it’s relatable that way and Bagge keeps us locked in it by the over-the-top physical acting of his characters.
Bagge is a cartoonist who is interested in the ways that we know one another, the ways that we communicate with one another, and the ways that we communicate with one another (or don’t communicate.). By revisiting **Hate**, Bagge confronts us with all of this, trying to show us all of these connections that we’re probably taking for granted in our own lives. There was a self-obsession in his original run of **Hate** that has now given way to a weariness, a disconnection to basic relationships that we need to work to maintain.
That disconnection may have been a cool aloofness once upon a time, a rejection of our parent’s Reaganomics and trickle-down theories of the 1980s. And maybe that’s led us to today, where we face a seemingly unending assault by MAGA conservatives (who Buddy voted for is a question asked a couple of times in this book.). **Hate Revisited #1** is a political book even if Buddy is apolitical. Bagge has his characters living in and talking about this political world. The first issue establishes that this should be a story about how we live in this world and about how we do it together. Buddy Bradley may not see that but maybe we need to reconnect with Buddy every now and again to be reminded of it.
### 300,000 copies sold, Ping Pong, selling comics or produce, and more on Van CAF— Comic Bookmarks June 15, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comic-bookmarks/
Last updated: 2024-06-16T01:12:24.000Z
Seems like it was a bit of a quiet week but there’s still plenty of stuff in the world of comics this past week that’s worth checking out.
let’s start out with our entry into the discussion this week.
[Barda IS — a look at Ngozi Ukazu’s new comic book BARDA.It’s a meet-cute story set in the torture dungeons of Darkseid’s Apokolips.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/barda-by-ngozi-ukazu-review/)
This was the book that made me start by “best of 2024” list. Let’s see if it stays on there until the end of the year. I have a feeling it will.
## Headlines
[Comings and Goings at Image, D&Q, IDW, Zenesope and moreLots of people on the move, as IDW, Image and D&Q have made hires, and some other folks have left their positions; and a new company!The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/comings-and-goings-at-image-dq-idw-zenesope-and-more/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Heidi MacDonanld on the latest moves at Image, D&Q, IDW and a whole lot more.
[The TMNT comic revamp by Paramount & IDW is doing double Last Ronin’s numbers, leading to calls for pizza partiesLast Ronin was the best-selling TMNT comic in decades, and now the TMNT relaunch is doing twice that comic’s early numbersPopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-comic-revamp-idw-sales-numbers-june-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
300,000 in sales for a TMNT comic? It's like 1984 again. I remember how long it took me to track down a copy of the Mirage first issue and even when I finally did, that was the third printing. I'll admit to being interested in this because of the creative team (Jason Aaron and Joëlle Jones) but I just noticed at the end of Chris Arrant's article he slips in a note that there will be different artists on future issues. Not too sure what to think about that...
[How DC is reviving The Authority’s Jenny Sparks with the September 11 attacks (and how its personal for writer Tom King)When Jenny Sparks died, she told us if we didn’t “Save the world” she’d return and “kick our heads in” and now she is.PopverseChris Arrant-copy-header.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp)](https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-jenny-sparks-origin-september-11-2001-9-11-dc-comics-black-label-tom-king?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
No. Just no.
When King used *Sheriff of Baghdad* to work out any issues he had, that wasn't bad. But this just sounds icky. Very, very icky.
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Off Panel #452: Speed(ball) Run with Graeme McMillan - SKTCHDPopverse’s Editor Graeme McMillan joins the show to talk about his new role at the comics and pop culture site before we dig into an array of hot topics and trends in the world of comics. McMillan discusses his new role at Popverse, how it came together, the evolution of the comics journalism space, the … ContinuedSKTCHDChip](https://sktchd.com/podcast/off-panel-452-speedball-run-with-graeme-mcmillan/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I'm at a point in life where I really don't care about interviews with creators. Been there, listened to that. But give me a good interview with a comics journalist and I'm there.
And this interview really made me miss What, What?
> Starting in July, I'm teaching a class for SAW called From Story To Pitching!
> Week 1: Narrative Questions In Building A Story
> Week 2: Memoir Is A Genre
> Week 3: Tips & Ideas For Getting Back To The Drawing Board
> Week 4: How To Write A Pitch
> You can do 1 session, or bundle them!
>
> — Rob Clough (@RobCloughHighLo) [June 13, 2024](https://twitter.com/RobCloughHighLo/status/1801041946774732836?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Not so much to know how to create a comic but I would love to join one of these classes sometime just to get a glimpse about Rob's approach to these as well as just to sponge a bit of knowledge off of him.
> I’m one of those familiar writers! 👋 Find me back at [@TheAVClub](https://twitter.com/TheAVClub?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) in the coming weeks with some new comic recs. ☺️ [https://t.co/vFeZsMwhro](https://t.co/vFeZsMwhro?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Oliver Sava (@OliverSava) [June 11, 2024](https://twitter.com/OliverSava/status/1800646144487260622?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Good for the AV Club and good for Oliver. I've really missed reading criticism by him.
## Manga
[Japan Association of Translators condemns AI manga translationFew topics are quite as divisive these days as trying to use AI to replace a human doing professional work. Some say taking carbon-based lifeforms out of the equation makes work processes faster, more accurate, and more affordable, while others contend that there are things that just can’t be done by…Japan Todaysakurasuki](https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan-association-of-translators-condemns-ai-manga-translation?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Translating one language into another is a type of art, one that needs to understand the nuances of multiple cultures to recreate an experience that may be foreign to an audience. I'm grateful for all of the excellent translators of the books I've read.
[The Dread of Table Tennis: Ping Pong, Volume OneBy Shaenon K. GarrityIn manga, anything can be a no-holds-barred, blood-sweat-and-tears competition. Cooking (Iron Wok Jan). Bread baking (Yakitate! Japan). Wine tasting (Drops of God). Gambling (G…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2024/06/12/the-dread-of-table-tennis-ping-pong-volume-one/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
"The story unspools with such intensity and sincerity that it’s easy to forget all this *sturm und drang* is over, well, ping-pong. The characters care about the sport, and their passion carries the reader along. At the same time, *Ping Pong*‘s offbeat visual style provides a constant reminder that, despite hitting familiar narrative beats, this is no run-of-the-mill sports story. "
This is just reminding me that I never finished reading *Ping Pong*. I need to correct that this summer.
## **Business**
[Contest of Challengers: “SUPERHERO BURGER”“SUPERHERO BURGER” •CRIME! Crime? •Spam. •No single issues; the future? •Sponsorships!! •Maybe there’s something to that burger idea…? •Comics talked about in this episode: TMNT #1 SCARLETT #2Contest of Challengers #688](https://challengers.libsyn.com/superhero-burger?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Somewhere in the first half of this podcast, co-owner Dal Bush compares selling single-issue comics to selling produce, where the merchandise only has a limited shelf life before it goes bad. When he talked through that comparison, it just unlocked all kinds of understanding about what trying to sell in comic‘ direct-market is really like. I heard one local shop a year or two ago describe new issues as a loss leader just to get people in the store but that his real business was back issues.
## **Interviews**
[In Defense of Comic Books: PW Talks with Jeff TrexlerThe interim director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund offers an update on the challenges libraries are facing in keeping comics on the shelf.PublishersWeekly.comBrigid Alverson |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/95241-in-defense-of-comic-books-pw-talks-with-jeff-trexler.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I seem to have ran out of my free articles at PW for the month but this short interview with Jeff Trexler offers some good insight to the strategy of people who want to ban books in libraries. Hopefully you either have a PW subscription or haven't used your free article views for the month.
[Miriam Libicki on VanCAF, bannings, and political protests - The Comics JournalLibicki talked to the Comics Journal about the incidents at VanCAF that led to her being banned as an exhibitor at the show and the festival’s subsequent apology.The Comics JournalZach Rabiroff](https://www.tcj.com/miriam-libicki-on-vancaf-bannings-and-political-protests/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Another great piece following up on the VanCAF fiasco. It was good to hear from the cartoonist affected by it.
## **Reviews & Features**
[Lettering, the Marcinelle School Way - PIPELINE COMICSWhile the Ames Lettering Guide was a standard in comics, Franquin and Morris had their own unique ways of lettering their comics…PIPELINE COMICSAugie De Blieck Jr.](https://www.pipelinecomics.com/lettering-the-marcinelle-school-way/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It will be weird to see that lettering on modern comics.
[Lawful-ly Good: Single Minded for June 12, 2024Comic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterRob McMonigal](https://www.panelpatter.com/2024/06/lawful-ly-good-single-minded-for-june.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Two reviews from Rob this week– *Lawful #1* and *Godzilla Skate or Die #1.*
### Barda IS — a look at Ngozi Ukazu’s new comic book BARDA.
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/barda-by-ngozi-ukazu-review/
Last updated: 2024-06-14T22:02:24.000Z
When it comes to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, we usually see these stories from the perspective of Orion and Mister Miracle, the sons of the gods. Kirby’s New Gods is largely the story of these two boys, exchanged when they were young to live on the other’s planet, under the watchful eye of the other’s father— Orion on New Genesis and Scott Free on Apokolips. The Fourth World story is largely about how these two men remain true to their natures while also finding a path that’s different from their biological and adopted fathers. Around these two men, Kirby imagined much bigger worlds occupied by other gods and demons to support Orion and Scott’s stories. In the fourth issue of *Mister Miracle*, Kirby introduced Big Barda, a giant warrior woman from Apokolips, into Scott Free’s world. Barda would go on to become Scott’s wife, a marriage of New Genesis and Apokolips, and their marriage would be one of the greatest and most stable ones in superhero comics. In Ngozi Ukazu’s (*Check, Please!)* new book **Barda**, Ukazu returns to the beginning of that relationship, staying true to Kirby’s original text. But by shifting the story from Scott Free’s story to Barda’s story, Ukazu turns this familiar story into something new and exciting. By giving Barda her own agency, Ukazu makes this a heartfelt story about a young woman trying to find her way instead of just following the paths of her elders.
Orion and Scott are characters of fate and destiny. That’s how Kirby framed them and what nearly every writer from Steve Englehart to Tom King has stuck with. Barda was neither; she was there to be the companion and wife. As much as the men had legacies to live up to, Barda’s was “big” and she was a warrior. In some ways, that was all she was— filling an important role in Scott’s story. That doesn’t mean that she hasn’t grabbed people's imagination as much as it means that she’s never really had her *own* story In the opening pages of **Barda**, we get a very different and almost unsettling view of Barda as a young woman infatuated with Orion, not Scott Free. Meeting Orion on the battlefields, Barda narrates, “We do not speak of love on Apokolips.” That’s the first line of the book and pretty much tells you what you need to know going into this book. They “do not speak of love” yet Barda knows what it is enough to think about it and to think that maybe she’s in love with her battlefield rival, Orion. She practically has a school-girl crush on the Big Man on Campus and is trying to show him that she’s as tough as he is.
Ukazu’s reimagining of the story around Barda makes it something different than Kirby’s story. Ukazu starts with Kirby’s basic story engine but by shifting the focus to Barda, she makes this epic story a smaller and more personal one. She doesn’t take anything away from Kirby but she adds to the Fourth World story. By being additive, the story of Barda and Scott Free’s initial encounters becomes much more emotionally gripping. Barda is assigned by Granny Goodness to be Scott’s jailer and torturer. That’s Granny trying to establish her dominance over both of these young people who are trapped in her grip. A lot of that is present in Kirby’s original story. The difference here is that by seeing it from Barda’s point of view, Ukazu makes this a story about people finding themselves and discovering who they are more than people trying to avoid a destiny set for them.
That largely stems from Ukazu treating Barda as a person, with wants, fears, and needs of her own. She isn’t here to serve someone else’s story but to be in her own story. Barda is much more than Scott Free’s future wife or a warrior in this book. She’s actually on a path of self-actualization under Ukazu’s pen, growing into who she is. If Scott Free is a character of destiny (and Ukazu hints at that in her book,) Barda is a character who’s discovering that she has free will and what that means. For as great as free will is, it’s accompanied by pain, doubt, and mistakes. Barda could just be the good little soldier, a slave doing what Darkseid and Granny Goodness tell her to do; that’s the life her fellow Furies lead- the good little soldiers never questioning orders no matter how horrible and atrocious they may be. But Barda’s different; she longs and questions.
The artwork portrays an innocence in this story that’s hidden beneath the exterior of Apokolips. Ukazu’s body language shows us the many sides of Barda that play against the setting and the legend of Darkseid’s domain. She’s a complex character going through these different experiences that are forcing her to explore what she’s been taught about who she is. Ukazu mostly shows Barda moving through all of these stages and emotions— this is a woman falling in love while also questioning everything she was trained to believe. She’s at this crossroads of being extremely tough physically but also very vulnerable emotionally in ways that no one else in this book is experiencing. In that way, she’s very alone; there’s no one that she can go to except for this boy whom she sees is also alone in an actual prison cell.
The only other character who comes close to experiencing Apokolips in similar ways that Barda does is Auralie, a minor character who catalyzed Scott’s escape from Apokolips in Kirby’s story. In this story, she’s friends with Barda, someone for Barda to protect from being changed by the world around her. But Barda fails in that and ultimately, Auralie’s fate drives Barda’s rebellion. Auralie’s still the catalyst to everything that happens but she means something more personal and integral to Barda’s story here than she has ever been before. Even though she’s one of the Furies with Barda, Auralie represents a different way to live that Barda doesn’t understand but longs for. As Barda’s great failure, Auralie becomes the tragedy that drives Barda to act on her initiative for the first time.
“Darkseid is.” It’s one of Grant Morrison’s greatest lines that Ukazu echoes here. This idea that Darkseid is everything provides his minions a freedom from self-determination but it traps them in him. If he is everything, then everything is a part of him even as he’s so much more than the sum of the parts. That’s the great lie that Barda believes. Darkseid is. That’s it. That’s all there is to this life. Ukazu’s **Barda** shows us that there’s more, so much more like friendship and love. “We do not speak of love on Apokolips” but that’s exactly what Barda is discovering in this book- love. Barda is this young woman who is so full of love even if she doesn’t know it. By using Jack Kirby’s original stories as her template, Ngozi Ukazu pulls these feelings and emotions out of the characters in ways that they haven’t been displayed before. The story of Scott Free and Big Barda has always been a love story but Ukazu shows us just how love grows and thrives in this harsh world.
### The Comic Bookmarks- VanCAF, Emil Ferris @ CPL, new Manga Awards, Marvel fumbling Pride comic, a couple of returns to the blogosphere and more…
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-comic-bookmarks-june-7th-2024/
Last updated: 2024-06-09T12:00:15.000Z
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Comic Bookmarks, our regular link post. Since I started this site, I’ve been searching for ways to to this kind of thing on a consistent basis. Since the earliest days of the comics blogosphere, I think our biggest currency has been sharing what other people are doing. That started with link posts. Dirk Deppey’s Journalista at The Comics Journal and Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter were the two big writers who shared links to others‘ posts. Clark Burscough‘s [weekly link columns at TCJ](https://www.tcj.com/topic/this-weeks-links/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) continue in the fine tradition of Deppey and Spurgeon and is a Friday-morning must read. Eventually social media took over that responsibility, where we would Hope that a tweet with a link in it would go viral, helping to promote a piece of news, an interview, or a review. But we all know where social media is today. It’s still there but it’s lost its reach as the social media companies attention has wandered and they’ve tried to get into other stuff.
If social media is going to abdicate any responsibility or function to help promote good writing, maybe it’s time for sites like this one (as small and tiny as it may be) to take it back.
## What We’re Up To
[Gaiman and Buckingham write the new gospel of Miracleman in The Silver AgeYou’ve got to wonder what Miracleman: The Silver Age would have read like if it had come out in the 1990s instead of the 2020s.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gaiman-and-bucking-ham/)
[Feeling Gravity’s Pull in Melissa Mendes’ The Weight #13 & 14This is one of those rare comics that makes you feel something deep and heart-wrenching. It’s painful to read; that’s part of why it’s so good.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weight-13-14-by-melissa-mendes/)
## Headlines
[Trans employee slams Marvel’s ‘allies’ Pride series for ‘erasing’ LGBTQ+ voices (exclusive)Marvel said it would celebrate Pride this year “by looking beyond those of us in the LGBTQIA+ community and focusing on those who support them: the allies.”Advocate.comRyan Adamczeski](https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/marvel-allies-pride-backlash-employee?ref=fromcovertocover.com#toggle-gdpr)
Ryan Adamdzeski writes about how Marvel's Pride comic this year is focusing on "allies." An unnamed Marvel employee is quoted saying, "I thought, ‘they're really erasing us,’” and later in the article stated, “I'm trans in November. I'm trans in December. If you're only working with me in the month of June, there's a huge problem." And the book is weird too- it doesn’t seem as focused around these theme as DC’s Pride book this year does. Marvel’s is more of a short story collection that happens to have some queer characters in it. And Wolverine. It has Wolverine.
[VanCAF resignations follow controversial ban of Miriam LibickiAfter a week of outcry, VanCAF has issued an apology to cartoonist Miriam Libicki, after she was banned from the festival.The BeatDean Simons](https://www.comicsbeat.com/vancaf-resignations-and-board-change-follow-controversial-ban-of-miriam-libicki/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Over at the Beat, Dean Simons has an comprehensive rundown of the VanCAF's ban of cartoonist Miriam Libicki at their most recent show, as well as the fallout that happened after it, including changes in the VanCAF organization. This is probably the most in-depth view of these events and definitely worth the read.
[Comics Are Ready to Get RetroGraphic novel publishers are capitalizing on nostalgia with titles that tie into decades-old media properties, both rebooted and rediscovered.PublishersWeekly.comShaenon K. Garrity |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/95130-comics-get-retro.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I recently saw or heard something about the film business and its recycling of properties– that it was easier to sell something as "The Fall Guy" than it was to try to sell a new, original film about a stuntman. It talked about how there's an audience that knows and understands what "The Fall Guy" is so you don't have to explain it to them. Half of the sell is done with because they know the concept just from the title. This article seems a bit less cynical about rehashing concepts since it just seems to be good business nowadays.
[Cartoonist Caroline Cash Lined Up as One of the Interim Artists on ‘Nancy’ as Olivia Jaimes Takes a Break from the Strip – Broken FrontierCaroline Cash of Silver Sprocket/PeePee-PooPoo fame is one of the cartoonists stepping in on the Nancy strip as Olivia Jaimes takes a break,Broken FrontierBroken Frontier Staff](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/nancy-caroline-cash?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Love this. Can't wait to see what Caroline Cash does with Nancy and Sluggo.
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C70l2VDRxDm/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Cara (@cara\_artists)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C70l2VDRxDm/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
## Comic Sites on Comic Sites
[Multiversity Says Goodbye: “In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night”Senior editor Brian says the oath one last time.Multiversity ComicsBrian Salvatore](http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news-columns/in-brightest-day-in-blackest-night/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I can't say that I was ever a consistent follower of Multiversity. Not because of quality or anything– they just focused on an area of comics that I wasn't as interested in anymore. But you've got to hand it to them for everything that they accomplished.
[Not a Hoax! Not an Imaginary Story! Panel Patter is Back!Comic Reviews and commentaryPanel PatterRob McMonigal](https://www.panelpatter.com/2024/06/not-hoax-not-imaginary-story-panel.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I'm thrilled to see the return of Panel Patter and Rob & James entering the fray again. James already has a [preview of this past week's books up](https://www.panelpatter.com/2024/06/im-back-baby-catch-it-at-comic-shop-for.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com). I'm coming around on the importance of these kind of posts, highlighting work that's coming out any week that you should pay attention to. I almost missed that **Precious Metal** was out this week and had to take a run back to the comic shop to pick it up. And Rob has [a review of the latest G.I. Joe spinoff **Scarlett**](https://www.panelpatter.com/2024/06/promising-start-for-scarlett-single.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), a surprisingly swell action comic. I loved what Kelly Thompson and Marco Ferrari did in that comic and it sounds like Rob liked it a lot too.
And speaking of returns to the arena...
[Warren Peace - Reviewing Comics, Manga, Film, and More! | Matthew Brady | SubstackRegularly publishing reviews and commentary on pop culture, focusing on comics, but also including movies, TV, anime, books, video games, and whatever else I feel like discussing. Occasional reposts from my blog, Warren Peace Sings the Blues. Click to read “Warren Peace - Reviewing Comics, Manga, Film, and More!”, by Matthew Brady, a Substack publication. Launched 16 days ago.SubstackMatthew Brady](https://matthewbrady.substack.com/)
Another friend is back at it. Matt ran the always enlightening [Warren Peace Sings the Blues](https://warren-peace.blogspot.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and is now back with a newsletter that you can subscribe to in the link above. If the first week is any indication, he'll be covering a wide range of topics and mediums.
## Manga
[Japan Society, Anime NYC Announce 1st American Manga AwardsEvent commemorating manga creators/publishers takes place in NYC on August 22Anime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2024-06-03/japan-society-anime-nyc-announce-1st-american-manga-awards/.211492?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is an award program to pay attention to. Looking at the judges, it’s being run by people with extensive knowledge of manga so I’m looking forward to seeing what wins here.
[VIZ Blog / VIZ Launches New One-Shots ProgramBe the first to read the manga hits of tomorrow, exclusively on VIZ Manga!VIZ](https://www.viz.com/blog/posts/viz-launches-new-one-shots-program?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is an interesting move. It will be interesting to see what goes through this program to become full series.
> Announcement: From the Eisner Award-winning creator of Goodnight Punpun comes a new world where human rights are for sale and without them, you’re nothing—a mujina. Mujina into the Deep, by Inio Asano, releases Spring 2025\. [pic.twitter.com/KHAgdmQEtB](https://t.co/KHAgdmQEtB?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — VIZ (@VIZMedia) [May 31, 2024](https://twitter.com/VIZMedia/status/1796584431584493596?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Just a month or so ago, my son was mocking me for being at the bookstore and flipping though any Inio Asano book just because I was waiting for something new from him. This one is already on the Viz app and is pretty good.
## **Business**
[Top 20 Graphic Novels - May 2024Sales Rankings Based on Comic Store POS DataICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/57049/top-20-graphic-novels-may-2024?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
ICv2 is just using data from the ComicHub point-of-sale system for this? Only 125 stores are now driving this kind of analysis? Honestly, I'm not interested in talking sales but this just seems like a way of trying to hold on to an outdated way of talking about the business of comics.
## **The Funny Pages**
> FRITZI RITZ. APRIL 1952
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wceu42no3rogognhbm2yxdql/post/3ktwueipk3h2z?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — NANCY COMICS BY ERNIE BUSHMILLER ([@nancycomics.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wceu42no3rogognhbm2yxdql?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [Jun 2, 2024 at 6:33 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:wceu42no3rogognhbm2yxdql/post/3ktwueipk3h2z?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C70A6gwx6QG/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Mike Dawson (@mikedawwwson)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C70A6gwx6QG/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
We've all been there, Mike.
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C74VvxVI2x2/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Tula Lotay (@tulalotay)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C74VvxVI2x2/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
## **Interviews**
[‘I don’t know if many people do a graphic novel the way I did this one’: Talking with Rick Altergott about Blessed Be - The Comics JournalThere has been a lot of anticipation for Blessed Be, Rick Altergott’s first graphic novel, which, of course, stars his comical goofballs Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss.The Comics JournalJohn Kelly](https://www.tcj.com/i-dont-know-if-many-people-do-a-graphic-novel-the-way-i-did-this-one-talking-with-rick-altergott-about-blessed-be/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I remember reading Altergott's strips in the pages of Pete Bagge's Hate and wondering what was up with this guy? I haven't gotten my hands on this book yet but looking forward at some point to catching up with Doofus.
I missed this event last Wednesday at the Chicago Public Library. I need to watch this and then sit down with the book.
## **Reviews & Features**
[45 Comic Book Insiders Share Their Favorite Comic Books of All TimeFinding a great comic can be tough. We got help from the best writers and artists in the industry to make it easier.Men's HealthMilan Polk](https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a60583768/best-comics-graphic-novels/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Men’s Health?
They almost had me and then Mark Waid picked Strange Adventures. The pick and the picker count for a double strike to me.
But honestly, there’s some great stuff in this list.
[Marvel’s X-Men Krakoan Age 2019 - 2024: An ObituaryTaking a look back at the X-Men on Krakoa: 2019-2024.PopverseGraeme McMillan](https://www.thepopverse.com/marvels-x-men-krakoan-age-2019-2024-an-obituary?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Krakoa Was for Lovers: How the last 5 years of X-Men stories helped save one writer - COMICSXFJude Jones reflects on the last five years of X-Men stories - how they saved him, how they varied in quality - and why it’s time to move on.COMICSXFJude Jones](https://comicsxf.com/2024/06/06/krakoa-was-for-lovers/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’ve been thinking a lot lately on what the end of this X-Men era means to me but I don’t know if I really have my head wrapped around it. In some ways, I’m surprised that it lasted 5 whole years and in other ways, I‘m disappointed that it only lasted 5 years. There was always going to be a shelf-life to this concept but the upcoming return to a status quo just feels like a lack of imagination. Maybe I’m wrong there but I probably won’t be sticking around long enough to find out.
[Shelfdust’s Column, Jimmy Olsen: Prologue“Everything round these parts is largely consequence-free, if I’m being honest” By Steve MorrisJimmy Olsen races through a hotel lobby, covered head-to-toe in blood. Don’t worry – it’s not hi…ShelfdustSkip to content](https://shelfdust.com/2024/06/05/shelfdusts-column-jimmy-olsen-prologue/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Love to see this excellent series get some attention.
## Mood of the Day
> My current sexual orientation is “Marvin Gaye.” [https://t.co/nDYTwjWYBh](https://t.co/nDYTwjWYBh?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Scott Cederlund (@ScottCederlund) [June 5, 2024](https://twitter.com/ScottCederlund/status/1798149151630487575?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Feeling Gravity’s Pull in Melissa Mendes’ The Weight #13 & 14
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weight-13-14-by-melissa-mendes/
Last updated: 2024-06-07T17:00:40.000Z
In her series **The Weight**, cartoonist Melissa Mendes delivers gut punch after gut punch. Since she began telling this story back in 2015, Mendes’ mini-comics trace the life of a young woman, Edie, from her birth in the first issue to the latest issue where she’s given birth to her son and is living in a trailer with her resentful and harsh husband. Each new issue in this series is a proverbial slap in Edie’s face as she faces a hard and cruel life, with no real example to show her what her life could be. Edie’s grandparents raised, giving her a good life, but tragedy after tragedy continues to knock her down. And now she’s trapped by a loveless marriage that exists only because of an unplanned teen pregnancy. Married with a newborn, she is still a child herself as the world continues to beat her down at every opportunity it has.
Even with that recap, it’s almost too painful to describe each of those beatdowns that occur issue after issue. It’s one event after another that shows the cruelty of this life. The latest two issues begin shortly after the birth of Edie’s son, Calvin Jr. After an unplanned teenage pregnancy, Edie and the father Calvin got married more out of obligation than out of love. Calvin seemed like a decent kid back when he was just a farmhand but again, that’s all he was— a kid. He was not prepared to have to be an adult, let alone a father and a husband. Living in a trailer and working at a carnival running the rides and games, Edie seems doomed to be in the same kind of marriage that her mother was- a loveless relationship punctuated by brutality. When she was just a young child, Edie’s father beat her mother to death. That’s the past that Edie has lived with, the shadow constantly over her entire life.
From issue 13
So much of Mendes’ story has been about Edie having the opportunities to avoid the painful life that her mother lived, right down to being raised by her maternal grandparents and even there following in her mother’s footsteps while hopefully avoiding mistakes made. But now issue 13 feels like a repeat of the earliest issues of this series as we see a mother trapped by her circumstances. Mendes shows Edie on the same path that her mother was on, causing us to worry for Edie because we’ve already seen where this could lead. We’ve seen this happening before with Edie’s mother. Mendes doubles back on her story and it makes it clear just how much this is a cycle that needs to be broken.
The cycle becomes so apparent to the audience when Edie, working at the carnival one night, realizes that someone in line for one of the rides is her childhood friend Gloria. Back when they were both young children, Gloria’s mother tried to protect and help Edie’s mom, taking them into her home when they needed protection from Edie’s father. Now both young women, Gloria sees history repeating itself in Edie. She recognizes the bruises and Edie’s deflection from wanting to talk about it. It’s two childhood friends finding each other ten years later but also the memories of what those days were like as well as the recognition of those events echo into the present day. “I can’t save you,” Gloria tells Edie. “My mom tried to save your mom. It ate away at her that she couldn’t.” You can see Edie in that moment trying to be strong but realizing the rejection she’s facing; she’s alone in this struggle. Gloria isn’t being cruel or heartless; she’s just being honest with what she can and can’t do.
From issue 14
In issue 14, Edie takes the baby, leaves Calvin, and returns to her grandparent's farm. This is one of those issues that juxtaposes joy with pain— her grandfather is one of the best characters in comics, so kind, warm, and loving. Just to see how he greats his granddaughter and great-grandson makes you believe in this life. But he immediately realizes why she’s back and recognizes what she’s running from because he’s seen it before with his daughter. He wasn’t able to protect her the way a father should. He’s in the same cycle of events as Edie, trying to break away from the repeating ugliness that will most certainly follow.
Mendes’ simple and clear storytelling creates a lot of room for her artwork to be charged and emotional. Mendes’ characters are actors on the page, conveying emotions and feelings that draw us into their lives. Edie becomes so much more real because we can see the pain, the fatigue, and the occasional joy in her face. There’s an immediateness and openness in Mendes’ pages that allows us to have an intimate entry into Edie’s life but it’s painful in ways that few comics can pull off. It’s not asking for sympathy so much as it’s drawing empathy out of us. This is one of those rare comics that makes you feel something deep and heart-wrenching. It’s painful to read; that’s part of why it’s so good.
You can read Melissa Mendes’ **The Weight** on her [website](http://www.mmmendes.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) or subscribe to her [Patreon](https://www.patreon.com/melissamendes/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) to get physical copies of it.
### Gaiman and Buckingham write the new gospel of Miracleman in The Silver Age
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/gaiman-and-bucking-ham/
Last updated: 2024-05-31T04:59:56.000Z
It’s 2024 and maybe we need superhero deconstruction stories now more than ever before. In comics, we experienced deconstructionist stories both in the 1980s and 2000s, in cycles that explored not just what the fantasy of superheroes meant but what our fascination with superheroes meant at those times. In the 1980s, Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Rick Veitch, and their compatriots first started pulling apart superheroes. Looking back at those times, there’s a bit of a feeling of a dog chasing its tail; superhero comics commenting on superhero comics but who else was going to do it? It was “adult,” “dark,” and “cool” when Rorschach killed his enemies during a prison escape or when Batman took on the mutant gang. [*Watchmen*](https://www.panelpatter.com/2017/11/Watchmen1-AlanMoore-DaveGibbons.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and *The Dark Knight Returns* are key texts that defined those times and popularized the idea of text commenting on text in comic books. But even before *Watchmen*, Alan Moore tugged at the superman’s cape beginning in the early 1980s with his [**Miracleman**](https://troublewithcomics.tumblr.com/post/137197308156/men-of-steel-and-miracles-scott-cederlund-on-alan?ref=fromcovertocover.com), the story of a powerful superbeing who had forgotten that he was powerful or a superbeing. (This is two decades before Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee would use that basic idea for Marvel’s *The Sentry.*)
Flash forward to the 2020s as Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham finally return to their continuation of the Miracleman story. Moore and John Totleben wrapped up Moore’s story with Miracleman reshaping the world in his image. He was a new god walking the earth and making it a reflection of himself (for the betterment of humanity he would have argued.) In Gaiman and Buckingham’s first story arc, “[The Golden Age](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archive-miracleman-the-golden-age/#gsc.tab=0)” (originally done in 1990/1991,) they explored this brave new world that Moore had left them. Imagine living in a world of superheroes, aliens, and shamans where nothing seemed impossible and the world was so much the better for it. They showed us people living their lives in the world that Miracleman created through multiple points of view; each chapter looked at another aspect of the world through someone else’s eyes.
And now, after 30 years between issues, Buckingham and Gaiman return to explore “The Golden Age,'' but this time they narrow their point of view to one person– the resurrected Dickie Dauntless, aka Young Miracleman. For him, one day it was the early 1960s and along with his pals Miracleman and Kid Miracleman, he was flying to space to battle some aliens or something. And then the next day, it’s 2003 (that’s when this story takes place) and he’s waking up to a completely changed world. This is a superman seeing the world molded by the vision of a superman for the first time. And as he finds out, this was not the future that he was fighting for all those decades ago.
The story of Young Miracleman is the story of an angel. Or maybe it is the story of a ghost. Mark Buckingham’s Young Miracleman is a throwback to an earlier time when our heroes could be earnest, pure, and simply beautiful. If this was a movie or a television show, the character would always be shot with a soft light to give him a hallowed glow. That glow is part of the innocence of the character that Miracleman and Miraclewoman have seen dulled over time. Even by the end of Moore’s run, those two older characters had lost some of their angelic sheen as they had to make the tough decisions about how to remake the world. But Young Miracleman never made those decisions. He was killed in the 1960s and resurrected in 2003\. But in his resurrection, is he more of a Lazarus or a Christ? Is he a believer or a messiah? Dickie Dauntless is brought back into this world to provide an anchor for this world’s god Miracleman.
Ultimately, he’s [brought back to give an old man redemption](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/miracleman-the-silver-age-1-by-neil-gaiman-and-mark-buckingham/#gsc.tab=0). After seeing how the world changed after the terrorized reign of the third member of the Miracle family, Kid Miracleman, Miracleman is lost. Gaiman doesn’t come right out and say it but it’s there in the subtext of this story. Miracleman only appears for a few pages here and there, mostly searching for Young Miracleman who ran away after Miracleman forces this confused kid to confront his own sexuality. But instead of dealing with the events in front of him, Young Miracleman runs away to the Himalayas (as superpowered beings do) and encounters other superpowered pilgrims there, including Meta Maid.
Young Miracleman is a recreation of a dead boy but he’s also a potential bomb in this brave new world. Gaiman and Buckingham underlie **The Silver Age** with an unspoken religious tone. This world that Miracleman has created is some kind of new Garden of Eden but is Young Miracleman the messiah of this world, part of the trinity of gods ruling over it along with Miracleman and Miraclewoman? Or is he the devil, determined to destroy paradise? After his travels to see the world, Dickie confronts Miracleman saying “This world sucks. And it sucks because it’s a bloody utopia. **Your** utopia.” And in the end, the subtext becomes the text: “If this is Eden, I’m going to be the serpent.”
So there’s a sense that Young Miracleman going forward into the next storyline “The Dark Age” will be the adversary, the serpent in the garden. But there’s another possible reading— he’s the Messiah overturning the moneychanger’s table in the temple. He’s been fed the line that Miracleman is this world’s new god so why shouldn’t he believe that means that he would be the serpent trying to overturn the work of the god? But as we read this book, Gaiman and Buckingham haven’t exactly set us up to believe that this is the way that the world should be. That it shouldn’t be in the image of superpowered beings who have placed themselves above normal people.
The difference between a superhero and a supervillain (between god and devil?) is thin, possibly just a matter of perspective. Miracleman has been the hero before. Alan Moore wrote him as a being who loved the world and almost couldn’t help but influence it in ways that he never intended to. The final issue of Moore’s run reads more like a man being swept up by events than setting out to remake the world in his image. And even with all of his allies, he never had anyone to tell him if he was wrong or right. Is it possible that for this story, Miracleman is the villain who thinks he’s the hero? And if that's the case, does Young Miracleman think he’s the villain even though he’s the hero? Is he here to redeem more than just Miracleman? Is he here to redeem the world? It kind of looks that way.
Since Gaiman and Buckingham first started telling this story back in the 1990s, we’ve seen our world reshaped by the idea of the superhero thanks to movies like *Iron Man*, *Captain America*, and *The Avengers*. Starting in 2008, superheroes became the language of pop culture so my son basically lives in a post-superhero world. There are elements of *The Silver Age*, where kids play dress up in superhero costumes and fight to save humanity that resemble the ways that kids used to play. For my son, superheroes have been a part of his world in a way that they’ve become just part of the natural fabric of it. So it’s fascinating to read Gaiman and Buckingham’s **Miracleman**, fictionalizing and fantasizing this aspect of the changes in culture that we’ve lived through.
Is this the same story that Gaiman and Buckingham would have told in 1993? And how has our view of superheroes in the world changed since they’ve become such a part of our culture’s DNA? They were once fringe but are now mainstream. That’s another part of the story that these creators are telling. In some ways if we’re old enough, are we Miracleman or Young Miracleman? Are we seeing the new world of superheroes through new eyes, seeing the changes, and wondering how the old world became this? Or have we grown so accustomed to how the world is now that we don’t recognize the superhero malaise that’s all around us?
Welcome to the future. Please tell me that it’s better than the past.
### The Weekly Debrief- May 17th, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weekly-debrief-may-17th-2024/
Last updated: 2024-05-17T17:00:20.000Z
I’m on vacation this week so this is the last week of the soft launch of this link post test. I think next week we’ll just dive into this whole thing, including possibly a name change when this becomes a regular column.
Next weekend is an art auction fundraiser for Chicago’s CAKE show. You can find more details on it [here](https://www.cakechicago.com/blog/cake2024artauction?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6wrwcrv-jV/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Love and Rockets Bonanza! (@loveandrocketsbonanza)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6wrwcrv-jV/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
I didn’t get a chance to read the new issue of L&R before I left on vacation. Need to get to that once I get home this weekend.
## On Comics Journalism
[Deanna Destito promoted to Managing Editor at The BeatDeanna Destito has been promoted to Managing Editor at The Beat, among more staff changes and additions.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/deanna-destito-promoted-to-managing-editor-at-the-beat/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Promotions at The Beat. I don’t know of Heidi MacDonald gets enough credit for just how smoothly that place is run or how she has set up the place to run. She’s still the primary voice of the site but the site has so many strong writers and editors. I wonder if we should pay attention to these editors and the kind of stories that they publish the same way that we used to pay attention to who was editing *The Comic’s Journal*?
> More sad news on the review site front. Know what would really help all of us in comics coverage? REPOSTING/RETWEETING REVIEW POSTS. If you like something you've read for free then spread the word and share it. Otherwise the community is going to lose even more review outlets. [https://t.co/8S8by9jLNl](https://t.co/8S8by9jLNl?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Broken Frontier (@brokenfrontier) [May 16, 2024](https://twitter.com/brokenfrontier/status/1791090128691024045?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I’m really not familiar with Comic Book Yeti but that Broken Frontier retweeted this caught my eye. Is CBY saying that they will no longer accept submissions for books to be reviewed? And is that because reviews just don’t generate the traffic? I kind of get that as FC2C is primarily a review site. It’s interesting how the basic audience for these kind of sites is so scattered right now and so unfocused. That’s part of the evolution of the comic culture over the last 10 or so years (is there even a comics culture anymore?) as it is just the breakdown of social media as the primary traffic driver.
Speaking of comic culture, there’s a lot to chew on in Kieron Gillen’s latest newsletter. I’m book marking this here but will probably return to it next week with more thoughts.
[285: hiring SteHullo. Forever Changes Ex Crawling Hashtags Links War Bye The end of X-Men Forever, so the end of Immortal X-men. Also my last issue with Luca, who jumped…Kieron Gillen's Wordmail](https://buttondown.email/KieronGillen/archive/285-hiring-ste/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> The stuff Kieron is saying in this about hashtags and building communities and online marketing being broken resonated: I think the pop polls ended up being directly responsible for more music buying than anything else I’ve done because they were a community, but good communities don’t often scale
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bggab7w7uwpp3cj6gg2djw5b/post/3kslul2jxac25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Tom Ewing ([@tomewing.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bggab7w7uwpp3cj6gg2djw5b?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 16, 2024 at 4:12 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bggab7w7uwpp3cj6gg2djw5b/post/3kslul2jxac25?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Eisner Awards - Comic-Con InternationalNominees Announced for 2024 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Comic-Con is proud to announce the nominees for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards 2024\. The nominations are for works published between January 1 and December 31, 2023 and were chosen by a blue-ribbon panel of judges. Once again, this year’s nominees in 32 categories reflect \[…\]Comic-Con International](https://www.comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Hey, look. There’s a comics journalism category after all. And there’s some great nominees there. Glad to see that the category survived another year. And waiting for all of the think pieces about what it means that the Eisner Awards are recognizing comic journalism in 2024\.
## Manga
[Kakao to sunset European Piccoma app operation in SeptemberKorean conglomerate Kakao to end Piccoma’s French-language service after two years of declining popularity and initial surge at 2022 launch.The BeatHumberto Saabedra](https://www.comicsbeat.com/kakao-piccoma-to-shutter-french-webtoon-app-operations-in-europe/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
This is a whole side of comics that I’m just oblivious to. I probably should pay attention to it.
## The Funny Pages
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6y2gqbLKe%5F/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Jillian Tamaki (@jilliantamaki)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C6y2gqbLKe%5F/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C5VqTuFsI1e/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by kuš! (@kushkomikss)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C5VqTuFsI1e/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
This is from a month or two ago but I just saw this book is available again. [Pick it up.](https://kushkomikss.ecrater.com/p/28887664/fearless-colors-samplerman?keywords=Fearless+colors&ref=fromcovertocover.com) It’s great.
## Reviews & Features
> Don Perlin has passed away. Don was a wonderful collaborator, passionate about the work, enthusiastic, always willing to learn and grow. And, more important, he was an incredibly nice man. Doing DEFENDERS with Don was a highlight of my early days at Marvel. Heartfelt condolences to Don's family.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zui23vvod6hylmly6d5yfdgg/post/3ksm6jom4qa2g?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — J.M. DeMatteis ([@jmdematteis.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zui23vvod6hylmly6d5yfdgg?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 16, 2024 at 7:10 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:zui23vvod6hylmly6d5yfdgg/post/3ksm6jom4qa2g?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I don’t know if Don Perlin was ever anyone’s favorite artist but he sure did a lot of work that had a huge impact on me. This run from Defenders with J.M. DeMatteis is a personal favorite run. I know all of the cool kids dig on the Steve Gerber stuff (and don’t get me wrong- that’s also great) but I loved this run between issues #90 to 100\. Perrin was just a solid storyteller.
[Miracleman Silver Age gets a trailer, reviews, attentionMiracleman by Gaiman and Buckingham: The Silver Age came out this week and actually people noticed, and it even got a trailer.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/miracleman-gaiman-buckingham-silver-age-gets-a-trailer-reviews-more/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Heidi’s followup on the piece linked to last week about why isn’t anyone talking about new Miracleman.
[CRAM, Part 4: CRAM #3CRAM #3 has one of the funniest covers I’ve ever seen for an anthology. In an image that encompasses both front and back covers, artist Lau…Rob Clough](http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/05/cram-part-4-cram-3.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Rob Clough is one of my personal fave critics. Always love to see him putting more stuff out there.
[Tom King returns to Batman as the Caped Crusader teams up with Jenny Sparks of The Authority in a new Black Label titleWriter Tom King and artist Jeff Spokes are launching a new Black Label series focused on Jenny Sparks of The AuthorityGamesRadar+George Marston](https://www.gamesradar.com/comics/dc-comics/tom-king-jenny-sparks-black-label-dc-the-authority/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Am I the only one weirded out about how DC is trying to reclaim and recycle Warren Ellis’s work? The Outsiders is pretty interesting but I’m still not convinced that there’s anything there as it retreads Ellis and John Cassaday’s Planetary. And plenty of creators have taken on The Authority over the years but Jenny Sparks is such an Ellis character and concept that I’m not too sure what Tom King would have to say about here.
[Meet Marvel’s original first choice to write Ultimate Spider-Man: Chip ZdarskyChip Zdarsky explains how and why he said no to Ultimate Spider-Man, and why he likes Jonathan Hickman’s version betterPopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/spider-man-ultimate-marvel-comic-book-chip-zdarsky-jonathan-hickman-writer?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Am I the only person who doesn’t get Chip Zdarsky and his popularity? Probably.
I’m also not to sure that “Chip Zdarsky doesn’t write Ultimate Spider-Man” is really all that much of a story.
[LET’S MAKE BREAD! book review - Comics GrinderComics Grinder Let’s Make Bread! book review on Comics Grinder.Comics GrinderHenry Chamberlain](https://comicsgrinder.com/2024/05/15/lets-make-bread-book-review/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I need to catch up on these Sarah Becan books. I love that cooking comic books is a thing right now.
## Current Mood
> I can’t lie— this cover makes me want to check out that JLA/Godzilla/King Kong book. The greatest Green Lantern?
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qw7jyy2f77ebyozco2tvvyu/post/3ksm4qj44i42b?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Scott Cederlund ([@scottcederlund.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qw7jyy2f77ebyozco2tvvyu?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 16, 2024 at 6:38 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qw7jyy2f77ebyozco2tvvyu/post/3ksm4qj44i42b?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### The Weekly Debrief- May 10th, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-weekly-debrief/
Last updated: 2024-05-10T17:00:37.000Z
It’s week 2 of this soft-launch experiment. There may or may not be a post next week. We’ll have to see.
## On Comics Journalism
At Popverse, one editor leaves as another one rises from the ranks. And it's time to say goodbye to another long-running comic site.
[Farewell, Popverse - signed your deputy editorA farewell letter to PopversePopverseTiffany Babb](https://www.thepopverse.com/farewell-popverse-deputy-editor?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Meet Popverse’s new editor, Graeme McMillanWait, what? Graeme McMillan is becoming a bigger part of PopversePopverseChris Arrant](https://www.thepopverse.com/popverse-editor-hiring-promotion-graeme-mcmillan?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Multiversity Comics: May 2009-May 2024The end is nigh for Multiversity Comics.Multiversity ComicsMultiversity Staff](http://www.multiversitycomics.com/news/multiversity-comics-may-2009-may-2024/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
“After 15 years, this will be the final month that Multiversity Comics will be in active operations. This decision was not made lightly, and has been a result of months of conversations with our editorial team.”
## **For Your Eyes or Ears**
John Oliver discusses the effort to ban books at public libraries and includes clips of Maia Kobabe talking about their great book **Gender Queer.*
## **Manga**
> Tezuka Osamu, the father of modern Japanese manga, created this political cartoon opposing the US war in Vietnam for the January 29, 1967 edition of Akahata (Red Flag), the newspaper of the Japan Communist Party. \[[@Edo\_Granpa](https://twitter.com/Edo%5FGranpa?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)'s tweet shows Tezuka at a JCP meeting\] [https://t.co/4ON8lmDIIz](https://t.co/4ON8lmDIIz?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/5LT59Qh9qb](https://t.co/5LT59Qh9qb?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Jeffrey J. Hall 🇯🇵🇺🇸 (@mrjeffu) [May 3, 2024](https://twitter.com/mrjeffu/status/1786276423344566329?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **The Funny Pages**
> New poetry comic, written by me and gorgeously drawn by @treelet.bsky.social (one of my faves). One of my favorite things I’ve written. It’s a love poem, after a manner of speaking.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j2husnta5rvtahgzdylxwhal/post/3kroki7gxvf22?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Hagai Palevsky (he/him) ([@dialhforhagai.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j2husnta5rvtahgzdylxwhal?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 4, 2024 at 12:24 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:j2husnta5rvtahgzdylxwhal/post/3kroki7gxvf22?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> The variant cover I did for UNCLE SCROOGE #1, gorgeously colored by [@KikinhoJ](https://twitter.com/KikinhoJ?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) . I think I've never drew him before, and took me a couple of attempts to get the likeness, but it was a really fun one to do. Thanks for the confidence you put on me, [@Disney](https://twitter.com/Disney?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/4NgRnGvRUm](https://t.co/4NgRnGvRUm?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — PepeLarraz (@PepeLarraz) [May 2, 2024](https://twitter.com/PepeLarraz/status/1786137314034381282?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> I'm told the first next thing from [@StipanMorian](https://twitter.com/StipanMorian?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) & I will be announced this week! Yee!! [pic.twitter.com/aIMN2qySai](https://t.co/aIMN2qySai?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Deniz Camp (@DenizCamp) [May 6, 2024](https://twitter.com/DenizCamp/status/1787505242252234911?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Interviews**
[Dwellings Interview: Jay Stephens On New Oni Press Collection | Comic Book ClubJay Stephens discusses the newest collection of Dwellings, his dark Harvey Comics riff, coming from Oni Press in this interview.Comic Book ClubAlex Zalben](https://comicbookclublive.com/2024/05/03/dwellings-jay-stephens-interview-oni-press/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Thierry Joor (éditeur chez Delcourt) : « Non, il n’y a pas trop de (...) - ActuaBDThierry Joor est éditeur chez Delcourt. Il a été interloqué par la chronique qu’ActuaBD a pu faire de l’ouvrage « Quand la nuit tombe – Lisou » de Marion Achard et Toni Galmés dans laquelle, nous faisions le constat d’une inflation d’ouvrages (...)ActuaBD](https://www.actuabd.com/Thierry-Joor-editeur-chez-Delcourt-Non-il-n-y-a-pas-trop-de-livres-sur-le-sujet?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Use your translation service of choice (I just use the built-in Safari translator) to read this interesting response from a publisher to a French website. "From the hat of this one, your journalist says "**A beautiful album, delicately staged* \[...\] **but which has a taste of déjà vu...* This "already-seen", I found it hard and unfair. And this is what we remember because the journalist ultimately does not say much about the content in the body of the article."- Thierry Joor
[Interview: Matt Wagner chats about GRENDEL: DEVIL’S CRUCIBLE-DEFIANCE #1Matt and Brennan Wagner are adding another tale to the Grendel mythos with Grendel: Devil’s Crucible-Defiance and we have the detailsThe BeatDeanna Destito](https://www.comicsbeat.com/interview-matt-wagner-chats-about-grendel-devils-crucible-defiance-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
## **Reviews & Features**
[Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself.neilgaiman.com)It’s interesting seeing the comics press going “Why isn’t there more talk of Miracleman: The Silver Age”? Meanwhile, we get the kind of review that those of us who made comics in the dawn times dreamed of as a kind of grail. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/books/review/neil-gaiman-miracleman-silver-age.html?unlocked\_article\_code=1.qE0.H9Yk.y2ojoS5b8ec4 Gift LinkBluesky Social](https://bsky.app/profile/neilhimself.neilgaiman.com/post/3krvlb7xaxs24?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[What It Is – Lynda Barry’s Eisner Award-Winning Book is Now in Paperback, Still Impossible to Describe, But Incredibly Vital – Broken FrontierLynda Barry’s Eisner-winning book ‘What It Is’ returns in a new softcover edition, published by Drawn & Quarterly.Broken FrontierLindsay Pereira](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/what-it-is-lynda-barry/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
“To say that it is aimed at people who create, or those interested in creating something, is arguably to miss the point.”- Lindsay Pereira on **What It Is.*
[Grant Morrison’s Manifesto for the X-Men Is a Fascinating ReadAs Deadpool & Wolverine and X-Men ’97 alike draw inspiration from Grant Morrison’s work on New X-Men, it’s worth revisiting their pitch bible for the series.GizmodoGizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/grant-morrison-new-x-men-pitch-bible-marvel-x-men-97-1851455467?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
“Beyond a feeling of contemporary cool that had defined the Claremont era of the franchise, mutant stories that still reflected these heroes less inwardly as superheroes, but people of the modern world, it was also important to them that **X-Men* felt less like a superhero comic, and more like a sci-fi epic, something that resonates in **New X-Men*’s eventual approach to things [like the Sentinels](https://gizmodo.com/x-men-97-every-sentinel-explained-marvel-mcu-trask-1851436914?ref=fromcovertocover.com) or its grasp on the Shi’ar Empire, but also how it divided mutant culture as something distinct from humanity, on both a societal and evolutionary level.”.— James Whitbrook on Morrison’s X-Men manifesto.
[Who reads Miracleman? and other thoughts on graphic novelsAfter 30 years, Neil Gaiman’s Miracleman is finally getting a collected edition, but the muted reaction says a lot about the current market.The BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/who-reads-miracleman-and-other-thoughts-on-graphic-novel-publishing/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
“In 1982 dystopian superheroes who take over the world was a radical new approach. In 2024, that’s Tuesday, or whenever the new season of **The Boys* comes out.”-- Heidi MacDonald on the relative quiet around the return of **Miracleman*.
## Current Mood
> Always remember, kids.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:af3pkeo47zrhiyk3tx7jgaf4/post/3krntz3ehpl2k?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Evan Dorkin ([@evandorkin.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:af3pkeo47zrhiyk3tx7jgaf4?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 4, 2024 at 5:42 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:af3pkeo47zrhiyk3tx7jgaf4/post/3krntz3ehpl2k?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### The Comics Debrief-May 3rd, 2024
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-world-is-a-link-post/
Last updated: 2024-05-03T17:00:56.000Z
> '97 [pic.twitter.com/l7daKt2f5r](https://t.co/l7daKt2f5r?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Michel Fiffe (@MichelFiffe) [April 29, 2024](https://twitter.com/MichelFiffe/status/1785049607426244755?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Consider this a soft-launch of a semi-regular link post- the .1 issue of you will allow us to use some comic parlance. For the next couple of weeks, we will be testing out ways to collect links as well as formats for these kind of posts.
[Igort’s ‘How War Begins’: A Poignant Portrait of Ukraine’s Struggle, Echoing Global Calls for CompassionIgort’s “How War Begins” shows the human toll of the Russian invasion on Ukraine through personal narratives, urging readers to empathize with the individuals worldwide affected by conflict.From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/how-war-begins-by-igort-review/)
## Manga
[Endnotes: ‘Search and Destroy Vol. 1’ by Atsushi KanekoAn inside look at the publication process for the English translation of a punk update on a classic manga.PublishersWeekly.comPW Staff |](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/94921-endnotes-search-and-destroy-vol-1-by-atsushi-kaneko.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix Manga Marks 70th Anniversary With 1st Picture BookOsamu Tezuka’s memory rises from the ashes. // Osamu Tezuka is heralded as the god of manga in Japan, a patron to the medium. It’s almost no wonder why, as…Anime News Network](https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2024-04-29/osamu-tezuka-phoenix-manga-marks-70th-anniversary-with-1st-picture-book/.210325?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
---
## Business
[Bookscan 2023: comics sales sag but Scholastic was a powerhouseMarvel and DC had tough years in 2023, while Scholastic made up nearly 40% of book store comics sales, according to Brian HibbsThe BeatBeat Staff](https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-at-windmills-297-bookscan-2023-comics-sales-sag-but-scholastic-was-still-a-powerhouse/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[By the Book: Dollar Signs or Danger Signs for Comics in the Latest BookScan Figures?Column by Rob SalkowitzICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/56803/by-book-dollar-signs-danger-signs-comics-latest-bookscan-figures?utm%5Fsource=dlvr.it&utm%5Fmedium=twitter)
---
## The Funny Pages
[New Comics: Fascist Zygotes, Electric Hummers and MoreInvestigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, analysis of national and world affairs, and cultural criticism that matters.In These Times](https://inthesetimes.com/article/the-founding-fetus-society-comics?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Cartoonists for PalestineIn front of our eyes, we are witnessing the genocide of the Palestinian people. This is an online archive of cartoonists responding to the ongoing violence.Cartoonists for PalestineSolomon Brager](https://cartoonistsforpalestine.org/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
---
## Interviews
[“I Think After All These Years I Finally Accepted That Comics is Actually my Calling”: Talking with Jay Stephens - The Comics JournalJason Bergman interviews Jay Stephens, a longtime indie comics practitioner enjoying a new wave of appreciation for his throwback horror series Dwellings.The Comics JournalJason Bergman](https://www.tcj.com/i-think-after-all-these-years-i-finally-accepted-that-comics-is-actually-my-calling-talking-with-jay-stephens/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[ICv2 Interview: Marvel President Dan Buckley, Part 1On the State of Comics, Marvel and Kids, Superheroes’ Declining Share, Improving PublishingICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/56816/icv2-interview-marvel-president-dan-buckley-part-1?utm%5Fsource=dlvr.it&utm%5Fmedium=twitter)
[ICv2 Interview: Marvel President Dan Buckley, Part 2On Direct Market Distribution, Marvel’s Publishing Plans, Including a New Program for Kids, MoreICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/56815/icv2-interview-marvel-president-dan-buckley-part-2?utm%5Fsource=dlvr.it&utm%5Fmedium=twitter)
[Marvel President Dan Buckley’s ComicsPRO Keynote AddressTranscript of Speech at Pittsburgh MeetingICv2](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/56814/marvel-president-dan-buckleys-comicspro-keynote-address?utm%5Fsource=dlvr.it&utm%5Fmedium=twitter)
---
## News
[Jay Stephens, Jesús Hervás, Daniel Clowes, Darren Bell + more nominated in this year’s NCS divisional awardsThe National Cartoonist Society has announced the divisional nominees for the 78th Annual NCS Reuben Awards.SMASH PAGESJK Parkin](https://smashpages.net/2024/04/29/jay-stephens-jesus-hervas-daniel-clowes-darren-bell-more-nominated-in-this-years-ncs-divisional-awards/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
---
## On Comics Journalism
> For those of you who don't know, The Gutter Review has pivoted to print! The website will be archived, and all future installments will be available via downloadable PDF or -- and this is my favorite part -- mailable physical copies.
>
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uu7mbolhg23hctujts3xw3yu/post/3krgvvcqvre2q?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — The Gutter Review ([@thegutterreview.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uu7mbolhg23hctujts3xw3yu?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [May 1, 2024 at 11:27 AM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:uu7mbolhg23hctujts3xw3yu/post/3krgvvcqvre2q?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Subscribe to The Gutter ReviewOn GumroadGumroad](https://thegutterreview.gumroad.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[My Last Sigh - The Comics JournalHaha, what if I just stopped editing this site? That would be crazy.The Comics JournalJoe McCulloch](https://www.tcj.com/my-last-sigh/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[A letter from the building’s new superintendents - The Comics JournalHello all, welcome and thank you for joining us on this latest junket of the Comics Journal website.The Comics JournalThe Editors](https://www.tcj.com/a-letter-from-the-buildings-new-superintendents/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
---
## Reviews & Features
[City of Glass: It Was a Phone Call That Started It - The Comics JournalA special, first-time-online transcript of a momentous meeting between four major talents: Paul Auster, Paul Karasik, David Mazzucchelli and Art Spiegelman discuss the making of the graphic novel of City of Glass, at it happened at Comic Arts Brooklyn in 2013.The Comics JournalBill Kartalopoulos](https://www.tcj.com/city-of-glass-it-was-a-phone-call-that-started-it/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[What Ever Happened to...Frank Miller PresentsFrank MIller Presents has been taken under the wing of Abrams, with deluxe editions of Ronin Rising and Pandora slated for the fallThe BeatHeidi MacDonald](https://www.comicsbeat.com/what-ever-happened-to-frank-miller-presents/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[What It Is – Lynda Barry’s Eisner Award-Winning Book is Now in Paperback, Still Impossible to Describe, But Incredibly Vital – Broken FrontierLynda Barry’s Eisner-winning book ‘What It Is’ returns in a new softcover edition, published by Drawn & Quarterly.Broken FrontierLindsay Pereira](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/what-it-is-lynda-barry/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Igort's 'How War Begins': A Poignant Portrait of Ukraine's Struggle, Echoing Global Calls for Compassion
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/how-war-begins-by-igort-review/
Last updated: 2026-08-02T20:59:17.000Z
In his latest book **How War Begins: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Invasion**, Italian cartoonist Igort shows the weight of the current war on the Ukrainian people. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, thinking that they would be able to quickly overrun the country which had been independent since the fall of the Soviet Union. Igort’s wife is Ukrainian so he has many connections with the people of that country. When the invasion happened, “my phone started ringing, and it just didn’t stop. Those phone calls were full of distress, disbelief, fear” [Igort told *The Comics Journal*](https://www.tcj.com/my-purpose-is-simply-to-tell-peoples-stories-a-visit-with-igort-and-a-look-at-his-new-ukrainian-notebook/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)in August of that year. He started sharing those phone calls on Facebook, sharing the details of those calls and the stories of those people affected by the invasion.
These stories aren’t about soldiers or politicians; they’re about the people who are just trying to live their lives even as they’re under siege. As he says in the opening pages of the book, these are the “testimonies of women and men under siege. People who never would have dreamed of being in the limelight. People who led regular lives.” By telling his stories, Igort takes these people who are on the other side of the world from many of us and makes them our neighbors even as he makes us witnesses to the horror that they are still living with over two years later.
Igort’s book reads like a journal of those calls, down to the lined notebook-like pages that the entries are written on. Beginning on February 25th, 2022, Igort captures those daily phone calls for the first 98 days of the war. One of the first stories is about Maksim, a 27-year-old who lived in Belgium but had been visiting home in Ukraine to visit family after his mother’s death. “The situation changes by the hour,” Igort writes. “Tens of thousands of cars are already on the roads.” He writes about how martial law went into effect on that day and that men between the ages of 18 and 60 were not allowed to leave the country. On the second day, people were turned away from grocery stores after waiting in line for three hours. “The old folks say: during the war, all they had were staples, and food had no flavor. This time around, they want salt.”
As he’s telling these tales, Igort places these personal tales in context with the greater political and tyrannical forces that had shaped this conflict, tracing the present-day events back to 2014\. As much as this is a story of 2022, it’s a story of the last 100 years and tensions between Russia and Ukraine that stretch back to World War 2\. He places what’s happening today within the context of history, showing how we got to where we are in Ukraine and how this has been a struggle that’s been brewing for most of the last century.
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Igort’s book covers just the first 90 or so days when life quickly went from normal to a wartime existence. Through his recollections, we get to be side by side with these men and women who are seeing their lives turned completely upside down by this war. Thanks to his evocative artwork, we travel the night roads trying to make our way out of the country without arousing any notice. We move through the bombed-out cities, seeing the machines and relics left behind as if we’re in some kind of post-apocalyptic world only it’s not; it’s the reality for these people who mean so much to Igort. We live with the fear, the uncertainty, the anger, and the desperation that sets in and feels like it becomes the norm all too quickly. These things shouldn’t be the way that our brothers and sisters have to live but Igort shows just how much we can adapt to these situations.
**How War Begins: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Invasion** is a very specific story but it’s also a very broad story of war. Since February 2022, another well-documented war has broken out between Israel and Hamas, where we see these same bombed-out images of Gaza and see people driven out of their homes by an invading force. Igort’s stories of Ukraine are about a specific time and place but are very much a much broader examination of the cost of these wars on our societies. He’s asking us to have empathy for people, to see them not just as victims but as our neighbors and even family. And this is only one war; there are many others where people are experiencing the same horrors daily. Igort is both admonishing us and encouraging us to think of all of these brothers and sisters who are just trying to survive these wars.
### From the Archives: The Micronauts #1-12 by Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-micronauts-1-12-by-bill-mantlo-and-michael-golden/
Last updated: 2024-04-19T00:00:57.000Z
This week, a book that I never thought I would see has been released– **The Micronauts Omnibus Volume 1**, collecting the first third of Bill Mantlo's epic but derivative sci-fi adventure based on a toy line from Marvel Comics. As a licenced comic, this series has bounced around over the past 40 years, starting at Marvel then going to Image for a bit and then ending up at IDW. With this and the recent *ROM Omnibus*, Marvel has at least the ability to reprint their original work again.
Back in 2013, I wrote about the first 12 issues of the series, still some of my favorite comics from my childhood, mostly thanks to the magic of Michael Golden's art. With the release of this first omnibus, it seems like a good time to check back in with 2013 me and see what I thought of those issues.
---
As Akira Kurosawa is to *Star Wars*, George Lucas is to **The Micronauts**, Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden’s 1979 comic series that was based on a toy line. The story goes that Mantlo saw the toys in a store and somehow convinced Marvel’s Jim Shooter to pursue the license for them. The toys, whose gimmick was that all the parts of the figures and sets were interchangeable, were also pretty free of any backstory. A Japanese import, the Micronaut toys really had no story beyond that there were good guys and there were bad guys and they fought. That combined with the swapability of parts was everything they had before Mantlo and Golden got their hands on them. With this blank slate, Bill Mantlo was determined to recreate *Star Wars* while Golden tweaked the designs of the toys to recast *Star Wars* as superheroes and supervillains.
Arcturus Rann, an explorer who has spent 1,000 years in space exploring the cosmos, returns to Homeworld only to find it under the despotic rule of Baron Karza, an ebony armored despot (sound familiar) who rules through fear and offers the privileged classes immortality through his body banks. Karza is actually Rann’s old mentor who killed Rann’s parents after he left on his journey and took over their world and the galaxy. Teaming up with the princess Marionette, the stoic warrior Acroyear, the goofy warrior Bug, and the robotic duo of Biotron and Microtron, Rann escapes from Karza. As they approach the fringes of space and the Spacewall, the team of rebels find themselves thrown into our world, Florida to be exact. The catch is that they were 3.75 inches tall, exactly the size of the toys. Under Mantlo and Golden’s creative hand, the Micronauts spend their first 12 issues fighting to get back to their world to overthrow Karza.
From ****The Micronauts #1**, art by Michael Golden & Joseph RubensteinThe
Mantlo had to have wanted to write *Star Wars* and when he didn’t get that gig, Micronauts ended up as his runner-up prize. The only thing that the toys had in common with *Star Wars* originally was spaceships and a villain who was in black armor. Mantlo and Golden graft the story of rebellion onto these characters and instead of setting the story in a galaxy far, far away, they bring it closer to home. The tagline for the series was “They came from inner space.” Their worlds were the molecules that make up everything around us so they could be anywhere and everywhere. In 1979 following the burgeoning science fiction/space opera craze, drawing spaceships and aliens fighting around NASA’s Cape Canaveral facilities was pretty awesome to most 9-year-olds at the time (speaking from a bit of personal experience here.)
Mantlo takes almost everything he can from *Star Wars* and repackages it. Rann is both Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi rolled into one. Marionette equals Princess Leia while Acroyear and Bug are a recasting of Han Solo and Chewbacca. There’s even an Enigma Force, an all-powerful but unseen force that’s wielded by the hero. Heck, the twelfth issue opens with a victory celebration, echoing the final scene of Lucas’s movie. All that was missing from all of this was a John Williams score. But Han and Chewie never got to fight the Man-Thing which makes The Micronauts cooler in some ways. Setting The Micronauts in the Daytona Beach of the Marvel Universe instantly makes these comics that much cooler than they would have been if this was any old space opera.
From ****The Micronauts #2**, art by Michael Golden & Joseph Rubenstein
Golden never was the most productive artist in comics. **The Micronauts** #1-12 is only the first of two twelve-issue runs he ever did (the other being *The Nam* #1-11 and #13) but he would influence artists for the next couple of decades. Look at almost any of the original Image artists and you can trace their influences directly or indirectly back to Golden. In an age where Marvel’s house style was still heavily influenced by Jack Kirby’s power and Neal Adam’s realism, Golden brought a flourish to that style. His expressive and acrobatic figures had a bounce to them that wasn’t present in many comics. His characters looked like they were ready to spring into action at any moment. And when they did finally fight, their bodies moved in ways that looked more like dancing than fisticuffs. There’s a gracefulness to Golden’s characters, whether he was drawing Batman, soldiers in Vietnam, or microcosmic adventurers, that he achieved with these flowing lines and limbs.
The other thing about Golden’s art that really made those first issues of **The Micronauts** so special was the sense of scale he brought to the book. In the first issue, his artwork and Mantlo’s story were about creating new worlds. Golden seemed less interested in recreating the toy designs and instead built new alien cultures. Like Lucas was able to do in the with all of the aliens in *Star Wars*, Golden built an otherworldly look but figured out ways to make it believable by incorporating some consistency into it. It is in the second issue, where the Micronauts escape to our Earth, that really establishes what Golden is capable of as he has to play with the sense of scale of the 3½” Micronauts figures interacting with the full-sized world that we see everyday. It’s where Golden makes a small yapping dog into a giant monster and an old lawnmower into a giant metal machine of death. And then he and Mantlo introduce a battle with spaceships into the backyard of a Florida home.
Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden’s **The Micronauts** #1-12 is *Star Wars* but it’s even cooler than the *Star Wars* series that Marvel was publishing at the same time because it took place in the Marvel universe (the Man-Thing made an appearance and later issues in the serieswould guest star Nightcrawler, Ant Man, Shield and the X-Men.) Putting it in the Marvel universe meant that it was only one or two steps away from taking place in our world, the "real world." *Star Wars* may have been “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” but Micronauts was happening in the here and now. These twelve issues built a mythology around this toy line that’s been gone for decades but still reverberates today. Mantlo and Golden created Captain Universe and a form of that character is playing a big role in Jonathan Hickman’s *The Avengers*. Bug was up until recently a regular cast member of *Guardians of the Galaxy*. The characters created by Marvel, including Commander Rann and Marionette, still pop up now and again but it’s never been as good as those space opera comics that Mantlo and Golden produced. It’s a derivative comic based on a short-lived toy line but Mantlo and Golden created a comic that would live on past the shelf life of the toyline and be one of the most visually captivating science fiction comics of its time.
s
### Lost Reflections on a Photograph in Paco Roca's Return to Eden
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/return-to-eden-by-paco-roca-review/
Last updated: 2026-08-07T23:54:18.000Z
More towards the end of her life than the beginning of it, Antonia moves in with one of her adult children. Once a child of post-Civil War Spain, her parents and most of her siblings have already died; all Antonia has is a picture of her, her mother, one of her sisters, and her two brothers taken at a Spanish beach back in late 1946 at lunchtime. Her older sister Amparín insisted that they have the picture taken as she was about to tell her family that she was engaged to get married. It was a way to commemorate the moment, a nice keepsake of the day at the beach. And then 75 years later, as Antonia moves in with one of her sons, she can’t find the photograph; it was lost or misplaced in the move. Since the picture was taken, Antonia always kept it on the nightstand by her bed, protected under a pane of glass. Paco Roca’s **Return to Eden** uses that missing picture to explore his mother’s childhood, her relationship with her parents, and with her brothers and sisters. It’s the story of a son trying to understand his mother but even more to understand the moment of that picture and what it meant to his mother.
A companion piece to *The House*, the book where Roca tried to figure out his late father as they cleaned out his house after his father’s death, there’s a mystery about his mother and her attachment to this photo. Out of everything that his mother could long for as she moves out of her own home and in with one of her children, it’s this picture that means everything to her. This was one of the earliest pictures of her that was ever taken. The first was from when she was a young girl with her oldest sister and her fiance, a “typical studio portrait, in which the betrothed pose in their nicest outfits, gazing with feigned interest at a point outside the frame.” The second photo was years later when Antonia was working as a nanny, together with the girl she was caring for on a toy horse. Interestingly, Roca includes both pictures in his comic (as well as the eventually found missing one.). His mother had kept both of those all that time but they weren’t treasured nearly as much as the one from that day at the beach. They didn’t sit on the nightstand by her, watching over her as she slept.
There’s a story behind this photo, a meaning to it. When it was lost, Roca didn’t understand what it meant or why his mother shut down the way that she did. To Antonia’s son, it was nothing more than a photo, a memento of a day at the beach like so many others that his mother must have had in her childhood. But for his mother, it was her life reflected in that picture, it was her family. **Return to Eden** isn’t telling a parent’s story the same way that something like Art Spiegelman’s *Maus* did, where that book and its story existed both in the present and the past. It was about Spiegelman learning about his father as much as it was about his father’s story. In Roca’s story, we don’t see the investigative portion of it; Roca isn’t actively trying to find out about his mother’s life as he is telling us about it.
We don’t know how Roca learns the meaning of this picture; his mother isn’t telling the story of it. It’s some omniscient narrator that’s telling us about Antonia's Life. So **Return to Eden** isn’t investigating the story here as Spiegeman showed in *Maus.* Antonia’s life *is* the story here. It has a beginning and ending that’s encapsulated in this photograph of a family spending a day at the beach. It was where she came from. It was the life she led. It’s where she went with her own family. It’s the dreams that she had for herself, her sisters, her children, and her mother.
So then the pain of **Return to Eden** becomes something different- it becomes more personal and direct as we develop this relationship with Antonia and live this childhood with her. (That’s not saying that there isn’t pain in something like *Maus* but we experience it in a different way than we do in this book.). Roca doesn't put up any barriers between the reader and Antonia. The story is told from this omniscient perspective, able to see through time and even space, as she has these family relationships and the breakdown of them. Starting with Antonia’s parents, Roca just shows this crumbling through a couple of generations of a family and the bonds that connect them. This picture though is the unbreakable bond between these generations, tying Antonia’s parents to her children as a continuity of blood and pain. Roca shows his mother as a woman surrounded by pain. The photo is practically the epicenter of her pain and yet it means everything to Antonia.
The cover of this book then becomes an interesting portion of this story, showing a moment either just before or just after the picture was taken that doesn’t line up with the sequence of events as shown in the story. Within the narrative, the picture-taking is tense; the father isn’t there (and hardly missed,) the sister wants to share some good news and is emotionally cut down by one of her brothers before she can, and Antonia’s mother just looks tired through the whole thing. But that’s not the image on the cover; while the brothers look like they want to be elsewhere, Antonia has stepped back from the table, viewing her sister and mother turning towards her with smiles on their faces. It’s hard to find any image in the book where her mother was smiling but there it is on the cover– a blink-and-you'll-miss-it smile.
In the story, Roca revisits what that day could have been. A day where after the picture was taken, the family enjoyed the day and laughed together. He reflects on how that imaginary day could have impacted Anatonia when she had her own family at that beach, where she was the mother enjoying the day with her husband and children and having their picture taken. It’s a moment where you can see what was and what could have been in that moment. For Antonia, that picture from a day at the beach was the world to her, a relic of that family as well as a reminder of what a family should be.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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### Comics Sure Are Expensive and Other Curmudgeonly Thoughts
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comics-sure-are-expensive-and-other-curmudgeonly-thoughts/
Last updated: 2025-02-01T20:58:15.000Z
Over the past few years, I have noticed that I’ve been purchasing more expensive comic books. In the fall of 2023, I shelled out ten dollars for **G.O.D.S**, nine dollars for two **DSTLRY** books (***Gone*** and ***Somna***), and seven for **Superman: The Death of Lex Luthor**. More than just the market moving and adjusting for inflation, there is something else at play, and I contend it has to do with the audience of a certain brand of comics.
Within the realm of what I would term **mainstream comics\*** \- comics that, regardless of the size of the publisher, tend to lean towards genre fiction and the direct market - there still seems to be a **post-Vertigo** vacuum. I think this stands to reason considering the monumental impact **Vertigo** had on the world of comics and the associated fandom for the better part of three decades. **Vertigo** was synonymous with the “mature readers” label, and I’m certain no rational observer would leap to contend there isn’t a dearth of comics for the *mature* reader.
However, I would argue what made Vertigo special was not its focus on the mature reader, but the *discerning* reader - maturity not just in content, but in style and execution. There are plenty of *mature* readers books that are heavy on violence and sex and light on ideas and literary execution. Vertigo books, and the various descendants thereof, positioned themselves - correctly or incorrectly - as *smarter* books, more literate offerings than the typical Marvel and DC fare. And certainly, there are smart and literate books on the stands, but perhaps not at the same rate there once were, and certainly not with a veritable stamp of approval from an established name like Vertigo.
SST represented both a specific sound and a certain taste profile, as did many independent record labels of the American Underground heyday. Vertigo occupied a specific realm of taste and aesthetic for comic fans. Does any publisher lay claim to such a distinction today?
I often liken the notion to a line from Michael Azerrad’s book [*Our Band Could Be Your Life*](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/michael-azerrad/our-band-could-be-your-life/9780316247184/?lens=little-brown&ref=fromcovertocover.com) in which he explains the impact of [SST Records](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SST%5FRecords?ref=fromcovertocover.com) as being a sort of clearing house for a specific taste of quality level. Fans bought SST releases because they trusted the label to give them good content in a time before the ability to easily preview music was but a fantasy. That notion might be what we’ve lost most with the demise of Vertigo, a publisher to act as a vanguard for both taste and quality. The books that owe their debts to the imprint are scattered across the shelves under various publisher banners like languages from the Tower of Babel. There would be no way for someone to compare the **Vertigo** brand to, say, **BOOM! Studios**, **Image Comics**, or even the Vertigo-successor, **Black Label**.
But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t trying. There seems to be a growing emphasis for a brand of comics that connotes a different level of taste or aesthetic, and I think the calling card for those comics is the *price tag*.
Does that mean all comics above six dollars are positioned for the discerning reader? Certainly not. A higher price tag doesn’t necessarily connote a higher quality product, but the combination of a higher price tag with a more formal presentation - prestige format, cardstock covers, magazine sizing, perfect binding, as well as increased page counts and heavier interior paper stock compared to the typical “floppies”- provides a physical sense of quality to these books before content even comes into question. Not that most comic fans dispose of their single-issue comics the way that the average American would dispose of their newspapers or magazines (*National Geographic* readers excepted, of course), but this type of book feels more *permanent*, less fleeting if not wholly disposable. (Of note, DC regularly produces cardstock variants for the upcharge of $1 a month). DSTLRY essentially confirmed such a[ philosophy a few weeks ago via Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/C3YrJX4NiAx/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/C3YrJX4NiAx/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by DSTLRY (@dstlry\_media)](https://www.instagram.com/p/C3YrJX4NiAx/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
But the question is, *why*? I don’t know of anyone who would assert that the overwhelming amount of mainstream/direct market comics/floppies is aimed at anyone besides adults, nor do I think anyone aside from adults would have the appropriate disposable income to regularly purchase single-issue comics every Wednesday. The question for me then would be, does this difference in price and presentation align with a *hierarchy of comics*. It’s difficult to debate that there is a pecking order of sorts around the artistic merits of some comics, but generally, those debates or put downs come between the different modes of comics (i.e. small press vs. mainstream), and often those opinions are based on taste and preference. Not everyone wants the latest X-Men book. Not everyone wants to read Werewolf Jones. Certain people like both, and they are generally named [Scott Cederlund](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/author/scott/#gsc.tab=0). But the omnivorous tendencies of the FC2C team notwithstanding, the rise of more expensive and thereby more adult-oriented comics essentially establishes a hierarchy within a particular subculture of comic fans.
Does price matter in that context? Does it send a subliminal message to the reader that the product is more refined in its nature, that it is a thinking person’s book and not another cape and cowl affair? And, if so, does the price tag send a bigger message than the format alone? I would contend it might, and I believe some of that data below supports that point. Because it isn’t merely format or subject matter that makes for one of these subgenre books. Perhaps I’m belaboring a point. Perhaps the very notion of a prestige format issue sends all these connotations and the price tag is merely a feature that comes with the territory. But I don’t think that’s the case. In my mind, the price of the issue is the final cherry on top that sends the signal the publisher wants. No one is attempting to sell a kid a nine-dollar comic book, or at least, they aren’t banking on that kid representing their core audience. But **DSTLRY** is certainly expecting a certain type of reader to shell out nine bucks an issue for something of ostensibly higher quality. And therein lies the rub. While there are certainly Marvel and DC mainline books that reach the seven-eight-nine dollar range, those tend to either be one-shots, specials, anniversary issues, or first issues. What **Black Label**, **DSTLRY,** and other publishers who dip their toes into this area have wagered on is that the price and format *won’t* be a novelty. They will be an expectation. So, while two comic fans will enter the store on Wednesday, each of them purchasing a book that totals $8.99, only one expects that they will pay that same price in one month’s time.
However, the prestige format-mature readers concept is only half of this.
If you can convince yourself to read the next line in an Andy Rooney voice, that would be delightful. If you don’t know who Andy Rooney is, God bless you. Hold onto your youth, sweet child. Nonetheless, as Andy,
“Gee, comic books are sure becoming expensive.”
Yes, for all my hand-wringing, it isn’t just the prestige format books that are breaking the bank. At the risk of conjuring “get off my lawn” old man status, I’ve noticed by both perusing the weekly releases and analyzing my cash flow that there has been an uptick in the price of comics over the past few years. Price point is always a concern for an industry that has convinced us it is perpetually on a brink of some sort. (Was 2023 the only year in recent memory we didn't suffer a “DC is going to stop publishing single issues” rumor?)
Nonetheless, it is hard not to consider the individual economics behind the industry while we’re celebrating $2 billion in sales from last year, three years in a row totaling over a billion, and likely anticipating another monster number again when the 2023 figures roll in. I always wonder how much of that massive increase over the past few years can be directly attributed to the rise of comic cost? In a world where we are perpetually debating inflation vs. profits, that would stand to reason. I’m curious about what has to do with the intended audience and aesthetic, but I think I’ve got a handle on that. We know about **Black Label** readers and the expectation of a premium on their purchase, but what about the average comic reader? Is that person getting a raw deal?
While it’s never been uncommon to find expensive one-shots, the amount of single-issue books regularly topping $7.99 seems to be growing. It’s difficult to discern 2023 statistics because the distributor variance doesn’t give the esteemed John Jackson Miller the proper data, but one thing did stick out to me: **DSTLRY** comics have made an immediate impact as evidenced by advance reorders. What that means in the grand scheme is a little bit beyond me. Nonetheless, Jock’s *Gone* [topped August reorders](https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2023/2023-08.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), while Hickman’s [G.O.D.S. topped October reorders](https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2023/2023-10.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (his *Ultimate Invasion* was high in June), and the most recent re-orders see no book totaling less than $5.99 hit the top 13, with the aforementioned **Somna** notching two rungs in the top 11\. The end of November advance reorders saw books like a second printing of the new **BZRKR** top the list with a $9.99 price tag followed two spots below by **Savage Dragon** 167 at the same price (I have no idea why that's an expensive issue, but I'm not the man to ask about Savage Dragon).
It's hard to believe the death of Superman would carry a regular price tag, but it was only a buck twenty-five thirty-one years ago.
Now, we don’t necessarily know how many of those books were ordered, just that they were reordered in larger quantities. That could indicate the book got hot post-FOC, or that retailers underestimated their customer base. And while it seems like the price of books has been gradually on the increase, even as recent as ten years ago, not a single book in the top 100 yearly sales was priced over 3.99\. Compare that to five years ago when the top two books of the year would run you close to twenty bucks total. 2021 saw comic sales top the billion-dollar mark for the third straight year, falling just short of $2 billion. That estimate includes each part of the market, so it’s hard to put a definitive number of what comes directly from single issues and comic shops. Nonetheless, Diamond’s estimate, which would not include DC Comics at this point, is 705 million for an estimate of 94 million comics sold. It’s probably safe to assume that at least half that dollar figure, if not more, is Marvel Comics. One could then assume that DC comics would account for something slightly lower, say around 250-300 million. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to assume the direct market accounts for half of American comic says and thus close to, if not more than, a billion dollars in sales.
There are important things to consider here. Namely, how much of that increase is a result of market growth compared to inflation? And, perhaps more specifically, how much of that is a result of increased consumer costs not adjusted for inflation.
I’ve put together this little chart to analyze the cost of a comic book in 1993, 2003, 2013, 2018, and 2023, with one off kilter consideration. The theme is simple - comic hover prior to 2013\. If you recall, around that time, there was ample discourse about the price of comics and the page count. There was a ton of hubbub about Marvel and DC dropping to 20 pages, with DC implementing a standard 20-page count with the somewhat sad ad campaign, “Drawing the Line at $2.99.” Marvel didn’t care and kept charging whatever it wanted, and DC eventually abandoned the entire concept a year or so later when they rolled out the New 52.
I tried to stick with what I felt were bread-and-butter books - Batman, Superman, X-Men - supplemented with some other hot books. Starred books have a premium cardstock cover.
| Year | Title | Pages | Size | Binding | Price | Price/Page |
| ---- | ---------------------------------------------- | ----- | -------- | ------- | ----- | ---------- |
| 1993 | New Teen Titans Annual 9 | 68 | Comic | Perfect | 3.50 | 5 cents |
| 1993 | Superman: Man of Steel Annual 2 | 64 | Comic | Perfect | 2.50 | 4 cents |
| 1993 | Batman 496 | 32 | Comic | Staple | 1.25 | 4 Cents |
| 1993 | X-Men 25 (Hologram Cover) | 48 | Comic | Staple | 3.50 | 7 cents |
| 1993 | X-Men 26 | 48 | Comic | Staple | 1.25 | 2 cents |
| 1993 | X-Men 27 | 32 | Comic | Staple | 1.25 | 4 cents |
| 1993 | Batman 500 (Regular Cover) | 64 | Comic | Staple | 2.50 | 4 cents |
| 1993 | Batman 500 (Die-cut Cover) | 64 | Comic | Staple | 3.50 | 5 cents |
| 1993 | Spawn 9 | 36 | Comic | Staple | 1.95 | 5 cents |
| 2003 | Batman 619 | 32 | Comic | Staple | 2.25 | 7 cents |
| 2003 | New X-Men | 32 | Comic | Staple | 2.25 | 7 cents |
| 2013 | Batman/Superman | 32 | Comic | Staple | 3.99 | 12 cents |
| 2013 | X-Men 1 | 32 | Comic | Staple | 3.99 | 12 cents |
| 2018 | Action Comics 1000\* | 80 | Comic | Perfect | 7.99 | 10 cents |
| 2018 | Amazing Spider-Man 800 | 80 | Comic | Staple | 9.99 | 12 cents |
| 2018 | Batman: Damned 1(First Black Label Book)\* | 48 | Magazine | Perfect | 6.99 | 15 cents |
| 2018 | X-Men: Red 1 | 28 | Comic | Staple | 3.99 | 14 cents |
| 2020 | Detective Comics 1027\* | 144 | Trade | Perfect | 9.99 | 7 cents |
| 2023 | Somna 1\* | 56 | Magazine | Perfect | 8.99 | 16 cents |
| 2023 | Gone 1\* | 48 | Magazine | Perfect | 8.99 | 19 cents |
| 2023 | G.O.D.S. 1 | 64 | Comic | Staple | 9.99 | 16 cents |
| 2023 | G.O.D.S. 2 | 28 | Comic | Staple | 4.99 | 18 cents |
| 2023 | X-Men 28 | 28 | Comic | Staple | 3.99 | 14 cents |
| 2023 | Batman 136 | 40 | Comic | Staple | 4.99 | 12 cents |
| 2023 | Spawn 344 | 24 | Comic | Staple | 2.99 | 12 cents |
| 2023 | Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor\* | 48 | Magazine | Perfect | 6.99 | 15 cents |
| 2023 | Return of Superman: 30th Anniversary Special\* | 80 | Comic | Perfect | 9.99 | 12 cents |
| 2024 | Savage Sword of Conan 1 (Titan) | 80 | Comic | Staple | 6.99 | 9 cents |
| 2024 | Ultimate X-Men 1 | 40 | Comic | Staple | 5.99 | 15 cents |
Other takeaways:
- One can’t examine book price in a vacuum, and that’s why I broke down the price per page, a component that tells a different story altogether. In recent years, Marvel expects readers to pay slightly more than DC per page. Some of that is exacerbated by Hickman’s G.O.D.S., which was mighty pricey at $9.99 for its debut issue. It dropped to 4.99 for the second issue, but the price per page skyrocketed to 18 cents/page, making it the priciest book Marvel would produce that month.
- What's to be said of permanence? Of structure? It's hard to compare page cost between **Marvel** or **DC** with **DSTLRY**, or even DC Imprint, **Black Label**. No reader would be able to honestly argue that both the paper and cover stock are not superior on books from **DSTLRY**. One of the other intriguing components to consider is cover stock difference between books published by the same publisher at the same price. Reading the latest issue of **G.O.D.S.**, it's noticeable that there is a thicker cover stock for it compared to the most recent Thunderbolts.
- There is a jump in the ten-year period between 2003 and 2013, and then by another roughly 5 cents between '13 and '18\. However, it seems relatively stable between '18 to now, though **Detective 1027** and the latest incarnation of **Savage Sword of Conan** are both best buys for price per page in the past five years.
- All of this analysis entirely ignores small press and self-published books. Both situations tend to result in a higher per page cost, but it's also worth noting that these books don't have behemoth media companies or private equity behind them, and that creators often have to personally fund print costs before a single book is sold.
- None of this takes into account trades, which often - but not always - have a better cost-per-page rate. For instance, the second volume of the current **Detective Comics** run, **Gotham Nocture Act 1** pops in at $29.99, a 13 cent/page cost, slightly down from the 14 cent per page cost of **Detective** floppies. If one is willing to wait until July for the trade paperback version of the same collection, though, the price plummets to 9 cents a page. A funny quirk of the collected editions is the omnibus edition. The latest **52** omnibus, published in 2022, runs about 14 cents a page, whereas the upcoming first volume of the new trade paperback collection runs only 9 cents a page. Worth noting, of course, is the fact that the 2016 version of the same TPB runs a paltry 5 cents (!) per page.
- A fact that will likely surprise no one, **Archie** digests, albeit about a third the page size of a traditional comic, run a meager 5 cents per page, though who knows how many of these ship a month. Are they still available in grocery stores? I haven't been in a regular check out line in a while, but I've not seen one dangling in the self-checkout arena. Now I have a new mission next time I brave the isles of my local Giant.
### My Claremont Year- The End
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-the-end/
Last updated: 2024-03-11T14:15:14.000Z
I spent 2023 reading Chris Claremont’s **Uncanny X-Men** run. It started when I was six years old, but I probably didn’t find it until I was closer to ten or eleven, and ended when I was 21\. That alone probably explains my fascination with this book, these stories, these characters, and this writer. But I don’t know if I ever really thought about the book or revisited it. Did I just have rosy memories of the comic because I was young and didn’t know better or was Chris Claremont that good?
And the answer is that he actually was pretty good.
While it’s a bit later than I wanted, here’s my final post (for now maybe) about Chris Claremont’s X-Men run, and the ups and downs of it.
And for those of you catching up, here are the previous installments of “My Claremont Year,” highlighting the issues I read for each installment:
- [**Uncanny X-Men #94-128**](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-january/)(Second Genesis)
- [**Uncanny X-Men #132-166**](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-january/) (The Dark Phoenix Saga)
- [**Uncanny X-Men #167-188**](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-january/)(God Loves/Man Kills)
- [**Uncanny X-Men #189-209**](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-may-june-2023/)(Cyclops Versus Storm)
- [**Uncanny X-Men #210-227**](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-july-august/)(Fall of the Mutants)
- [**Uncanny X-Men #228-243**](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-inferno-sept-oct/)(Inferno)
And for this final installment, here are all of the comics that I read at the end of 2023:
- Uncanny X-Men #244- 280
- Uncanny X-Men Annual #14 & 15
- X-Men #1-3
- Excalibur #8-34
- Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem
- Wolverine #1-10
- New Mutants #81
- X-Factor #64-70
And now, let’s look at the end of Chris Claremont’s time with the X-Men.
---
From ****Uncanny X-Men #277** Claremont, Lee, and Williams
> “The end of our elaborate plans
> The end of everything that stands”
> The Doors, “The End”
Chris Claremont’s 15-year run on The X-Men ends with neither a bang nor a whimper. It just kind of ends. And that’s no small feat when the ending started with the biggest-selling comic of all time– 1991’s **X-Men #1,** which reportedly sold over 8 million copies. Claremont’s last two years, following [*Inferno*](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-inferno-sept-oct/), feel a lot like they’re marking time as Claremont dismantles the team after the crossover, scattering them all across the globe. Most of these two years are then spent following each member into a new life; Storm is regressed to being a young girl, Dazzler ends up famous in Hollywood, Colossus gets to live as an artist in NYC, Havoc becomes a soldier in Genosha, and Wolverine ends up in the far east, nearly dying as his powers fail while he tries to rescue Psylocke and reassemble the team. Claremont is trying to do his version of super-hero deconstruction like Alan Moore and Frank Miller were doing over in Watchmen and The Dark Knight but he just doesn’t have the cynical streak in him that Moore and Miller did. He didn’t see the darker side of his heroes so his take on deconstruction was quite literally deconstructing the team and putting them back together as they were, a few pieces moved around or introduced but that’s basically what he had been doing with this team since 1975\.
While he was doing this, it felt like Claremont was lining up all of the pieces for one last big hurrah, a showdown with the Shadow King. The Shadow King had been introduced back during John Byrne’s run on **Uncanny X-Men**, in a flashback issue that showed the first showdown between Charles Xavier and the Shadow King. It was practically a one-and-done battle, something to provide some insight into Xavier’s past before Byrne and Claremont dove into a bit before the heart of their run, *The Dark Phoenix Saga*. The Shadow King was truly Xavier’s opposite, even more than Magneto, but was a one-and-done villain. At least Xavier and Magneto shared a goal in the safety of mutants even if they came at it from opposite directions. In The Shadow King, Xavier had an adversary who didn’t care about anything other than himself. The Shadow King would eventually show up again in **The New Mutants** before Claremont’s *Asgardian Wars* but following *Inferno*, the Shadow King became the background puppet master of the X-Men, manipulating them and their allies as he gained power.
This could have been Claremont’s big story, one final grand statement about Marvel’s X-Men but before he could get into this X-Men/X-Factor crossover that would see them go up against the Shadow King, he was replaced on **Uncanny X-Men** for two issues by Fabian Nicieza and the whole story, the defeat of the Shadow King and the reunification of the X-Men and X-Factor into one team just limped along to an ending, barely registering as anything as Chris Claremont’s run on **Uncanny X-Men** came to a close. One month, Chris Claremont was writing **Uncanny X-Men** and the next month he wasn’t.
And then came **X-Men #1** by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee, still the biggest-selling comic book of all time.
During the previous two years, Jim Lee had been one of the artistic voices on **Uncanny X-Men**, doing a handful of issues here and there, alternating with the likes of Marc Silvestri, Bill Jaska, Rick Leonardo, and Mike Collins. Lee was a throwback to the Byrne/Austin days of the book, establishing a new pre-Image Comics coolness in his artwork. With Lee, Claremont’s stories had an energy to them that was missing from a lot of the other artists (sorry, Jaska and Collins, but it’s true) and is maybe the artistic saving grace of *Extinction Agenda*, a visual and narrative hodgepodge of artists (who thought pairing Jon Bogdanove and Al Milgrom was a good idea?). Lee shines in the storylines after that which sees a newly reformed X-Men team kidnapped to space to save the Shi'ar empire from Charles Xavier. Claremont seemed to be embracing the exciting tone that Jim Lee brought to his stories so a relaunched title should have been a wonderful sign of what was to come.
**X-Men #1** brings together the original X-Men team as well as a revamped Uncanny-era team into one team, which they would then split into an X-Men Gold and X-Men Blue team. This issue kicks off another battle with Magneto, now apparently a villain again after having been an X-Men ally for several years. Claremont’s goodbye to The X-Men is basically a resetting to some kind of status quo that never really existed, where the X-Men were a team of superheroes that operated in a mansion somewhere outside of New York City. And that almost sounds like what the team under Claremont largely was but it also ignores almost everything that Claremont tried to make this book be, how he tried to subvert the idea of the X-Men as heroes to make them human instead.
Claremont’s X-Men were rarely about the costumes or their superheroics. Looking over his fifteen-year run, the costumes were just a facade for these characters; the action was the setting for Scott, Jean, Logan, Ororo, Kurt, Peter, Kitty, and Rogue to act against. If Claremont was just writing superhero stories, the (first) death of Jean Grey wouldn’t be so painful or Ororo’s search for meaning when she lost her powers wouldn’t have been as engaging. Logan became the breakout character of this run and was pegged as the “kewl” character but Claremont wrote him as a person trapped between the man he was and the man he knew he could be. These characters weren’t just secret identities, incredible powers, and colorful costumes. His 15-year story (that crossed over into *New Mutants, Wolverine,* and *Excalibur*) lived and breathed in ways that few comics did at the time or have been able to since, including nearly every other version of X-Men books since.
“What’s the saying, Jean- ‘plus ce change, plus ce meme chose?’” Xavier asks Jean Grey in **X-Men #1**. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Jean conveniently translates for the non-French readers among us. **X-Men #1** both acknowledges everything that has happened in the past 16 years, including the reformation of Magneto, and then tosses it all out the window, as if resetting everything to 1963’s *X-Men #1*. For one reason or another (and that reason’s name is often hypothesized to be Jim Lee) **X-Men #1-3** offers retrograde storytelling, resetting this franchise (and that’s what it is at this point) back to some imaginary point in time when all mutants lived happily together at Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters.
The biggest-selling X-Men comic of all time doesn’t celebrate all the accomplishments of Claremont; it tears them down to enter the 1990s and begin a phase of corporate-produced books with journeymen writers and artists picking up the reins to carry us into the hologram and foil cover era of comics. **X-Men #3** ends with one final and small caption on the last panel of the issue— “CSC- 1976-1991- FIN”— reading more like a headstone message than a writer signing off from a historic run on the comic.
And that’s a disappointing ending to such a great run of comics. Kind of like [how people learned the wrong lessons from Alan Moore](https://troublewithcomics.tumblr.com/post/137197308156/men-of-steel-and-miracles-scott-cederlund-on-alan?ref=fromcovertocover.com), the writers and artists who came after Claremont learned the wrong lessons from him. They saw the surface of what he was doing and thought that was what was great about X-Men comics. And mostly that equated to Wolverine was cool and everything else was all surface-level faking it until they made it. It’s not like Claremont had to leave behind a map for anyone to follow; his work speaks for itself. Reading his work all these years later, he was always moving forward, trying to follow the characters where they lead, letting them have their lives. Once he left, the X-Men calcified, trapped in some idea of what they were for now and forever. Claremont wasn’t trapped by a legacy that he needed to sustain; he was telling stories with no expectations of what they should be. And that led him, his readers, and his characters down so many great and unexpected paths.
That’ll do, Chris. That’ll do.
### It's the End of the World-- a look at Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/20th-century-boys-by-naoki-urasawa/
Last updated: 2026-07-30T00:35:16.000Z
*“If you ever feel your own life is in danger… just turn around… and run like hell. Please… don’t any of you die tonight.”* Kenji, Dec. 31, 2000.
Naoki Urasawa’s **20th Century Boys** is the story of a bunch of 1970s kids who grew up to ruin the world. And they started out just doing what kids do— they formed friendships with the kids that they liked and just kind of ignored the other kids in their grade. Most of us would just call that elementary school but to Urasawa, it’s the root of everything we do with our lives from then on. Those childhood days, the decisions we make, the things and people we ignore, and the bonds we form stay with us through our whole lives, for better or for worse, even as people move in and out of our lives. These things echo from our youth into our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, the unseen chains of our childhoods that drag behind us.
Urasawa’s story begins in 1970, with a rebellious Kenji Endo sneaking into the school office and blasting T. Rex’s [*20th Century Boys*](https://genius.com/T-rex-20th-century-boy-lyrics?ref=fromcovertocover.com) over the PA system, hoping with that one action to change the world. It’s this optimism that you can change the world through music that carries Urasawa through this whole story as Kenji finds successes and failures through his own musical aspirations. Urasawa uses rock and roll, to chart where Kenji is in his life. Rock and roll, particularly one of Kenji’s songs called [*Bob Lennon*](https://flashtrigger.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/bob-lennon-lyrics-translation/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), becomes a touchstone throughout this series, one that Kenji and his niece Kanna use to remember themselves and to remember how the world should be. It’s an anchor to a better time, which exists both in the past and in the future. It’s hope in a world and a story that needs it.
Naoki Urasawa performs **Bob Lennon* at the Japan Expo 2012
But Urasawa’s tale is an end-of-the-world story as the villain, the so-called Friend who has mysterious ties to Kenji’s childhood and family, is out to either rule the world or to burn it to the ground. A terrorist attack on Japan on December 31st, 2000, Bloody New Year’s Eve, by a giant robot sets the Friend up to be the savior of the approaching 21st century. That act sets the Friend up to be the hero and Kenji and his friends to be the villains, at least in the public’s eyes. Throughout the series, you see all of these groups come together to fight the Friend. It starts with Kenji and his childhood friends in 2000 but over the next 18 years, this group splinters off into several different offshoots, all with ties to Kenji but each fighting and rebelling against the Friend in their own ways. Urasawa develops these groups and communities that reflect the bonds Kenji and his childhood friends had. Even when Kenji disappears for over fifteen years, just vanishing after that New Year’s Eve attack, he’s never far from the hearts of the people who mean something to him, his niece, his friends, or even people who just hear the legend of Kenji Endo.
Urasawa began this story in 1999 and didn’t finish it until 10 years later. Reading it in 2023, there’s a lot to look at and wonder just what did Urasawa see in the world all those years ago. Starting with the fin de siècle paranoia of the time, saying goodbye to the 20th century and stepping into the future, Urasawa taps into the trepidation that ran through the world back in 1999 (more Y2K fear in the United States but still being trapped in a liminal time between centuries.). He could probably see all that in the world around him when he began telling this story. But could he have seen the rise of a demagogue in the world, a world leader who fed on the desires and prejudices of a society? What about a pandemic that spread rapidly over the world, changing life as we know it? Or a giant wall built to divide countries (in this case Japan) to control who gets in and who doesn’t? Urasawa saw all of this as being a possibility years before Trump or COVID-19 but so many elements of this series that seemed like fiction once now read as a reflection of our current world. It’s weirdly prophetic to read **20th Century Boys** in 2024, looking back on the last decade and wondering how we missed Urasawa’s possible warning of all of this.
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Ultimately this series isn't a prophecy. It isn’t warning us of a future of false leaders or worldwide illness even though those elements are there. But maybe it is a warning of the divisions and isolation that we’ve experienced because of those things. For many of us, the world seems smaller than it was four or eight years ago. It’s more lonely as we’ve experienced mostly conflict, division, and isolation for almost a decade now. Urasawa is a great storyteller; every character, no matter how seemingly insignificant, has their own story within this larger story, and somehow or another, they all trace back to Kenji, his friends, and their childhood. It’s from that childhood starting point that we follow seemingly small slights that turn into decades of pain, oppression, and fear.
Kenji with a final order for his friends.
That’s a lot to take in; **20th Century Boys** can seem daunting (and that’s before you even realize that after many volumes, the series’ title changes to **21st Century Boys** and there’s even more that you need to read.). All of these characters come into and move out of this story at different phases of their life, over 20 years. Urasawa juggles the scope of this story by never making his storytelling too dense; there’s room for all of these characters and story ideas because Urasawa creates the narrative space for this large story. He allows it to live, expand, and contract as the story requires it to. So when he leaves one plot thread dangling in Tokyo to suddenly jump to Germany to bring in new characters, you don’t feel lost or even anxious to get back to the previous thread because Urasawa has created the room for this story to have all of these tangents and offshoots that still come back to the central themes and plots of his story.
At various points throughout the story, when Kenji or Kanna are about to lead their comrades into battle with the Friend, they don’t deliver a “give me liberty or give me death” speech. They tell their friends, their family, and their soldiers “If you ever feel your own life is in danger… run like hell.” On one level, the stakes of **20th Century Boys** is the whole world but that almost seems like a secondary one to making sure that all of these people and friendships survive. Kanna views her uncle Kenji as a hero and the legend of Endo Kenji builds that up but the story here is not about winning- it’s about surviving. It’s about being alive when the fighting is over to be who you once were and can be again. As much as Kenji is fighting the Friend to save the world, he’s fighting for the life that he wants. That’s what Kanna is doing as well even if she doesn’t know what a life without fighting the Friend is like. She remembers her uncle and to her, that’s the promise of what life should be.
Kenji with the only weapon he needed.
### Tekkonkinkreet by Taiyo Matsumoto
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tekkonkinkreet-by-taiyo-matsumoto-review/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:53:53.000Z
Taiyo Matsumoto’s **Tekkonkinkreet** lives by its own rules. Two young boys, Black and White, live on their own in an old city, fighting for the spirit of the city that they love but struggling against all of these forces that want to change it into something unrecognizable and without its own agency. Matsumoto, just 26 years old when this originally came out in 1993, is almost trying to create his own *Akira*, following Katsuhiro Otomo’s lead in exploring what it means to be young in a world designed to chew up its children. Like Otomo’s school-age biker gang, Matsumoto dials into the rebellious outlaw nature that is being a kid, believing you own the world even while the powers that be barely recognize that you exist. It’s the question of how you learn to understand an indifferent world and then grow to change it that Matsumoto tries to answer as Black and White fight their way through an uncaring city and its cruel power brokers.
**Tekkonkinkreet**, now 30 years old, is this story of aging, growing old, and trying to preserve the innocence of youth. Matsumoto’s Black and White are threatened to be corrupted just as their city, Treasure Town, has already been infected by crass wants and needs. Black and White, two young boys on their own in an old city, only have each other for companionship and protection. They run the city, or at least they think they do. From their perch high on buildings and telephone poles, these 10-year-olds watch over the city, looking for the criminals and gangsters who want to burn the city down to remake it in their image. The boys think of themselves as guardians but Taiyo Matsumoto has a much more compassionate view of his characters; he wants these kids to be kids and not vigilantes.
From the start of the book, Black and White have their freedom; they are free spirits in a city that is changing into something different right before their very eyes. The criminals want to gentrify Treasure Town, turning it into Disneyland, their profitable playground. Think of the transformation of NYC from the seedy Times Square of decades past to the tourist attraction that it is now; that’s the future for Treasure Town and the future for the criminals to just get richer and richer. The problem is that it is not the Treasure Town that Black and White love or what the streets of this city even want to be. And the criminals can’t even agree on what the future should be; it’s the new up-and-comers who have the desire to change the city. The old guard criminal, the true Treasure Town hoodlum will go along with their bosses’ wishes even if they don’t quite believe in it themselves. On the other side of the law, you have the cops who are just trying to preserve order. The cops are just there, stuck in this cycle of just trying to maintain some kind of control in the streets.
This is the world these two kids are caught up in, trapped between the gangsters and the cops, and caught up in these battles for control as they just treat the city as their giant playground. Black and White are the chaos agents in this book, the wildcards who keep everyone on their feet but they are also the characters most in need of protection. From the beginning, there is something different about White; he’s slightly out of tune with the world around him so Black is his guardian. Black looks out for White even as White anchors Black in this world. While at first, it seems like White needs Black, Matsumoto shapes the story so that these kids equally need each other in different ways.
Drawing this story, Matsumoto fills every panel and space with so many details, whether it’s just a closeup of a scarred face or a wide shot of the city with the fantastical monuments and buildings that inhabit it. This comic is full of life; Matsumoto’s artwork moves and vibrates in ways that so few cartoonists can bring to their work. Black and White dance through this city, injecting it with youthful naivete that’s exhilarating and even a bit frightening. There are these fantastically designed characters that show up to challenge Black and White, sometimes looking like they stepped out of a different book but still fitting in with the catch-all aesthetic of **Tekkonkinkreet**. The buildings lean ever so slightly to the left or the right, defying gravity as they work subconsciously to make everything feel just slightly more dangerous like everything is going to collapse into itself any minute now. Matsumoto shows that this is a world that lives on the edge without ever even needing to come out and say it. It’s all of these visual cues of the city and its people that perfectly set up a feeling of inevitability that Black and White are struggling against.
Black and White represent purity and darkness but nothing is ever that clear cut; Matsumoto is operating in shades of gray with them. Sometimes the book leads more towards the light but other times, it gets quite dark, particularly when the two boys are separated from each other by the cops. Without the other to balance them out, their worlds and equilibriums are all thrown off. These two boys are individuals but there are also ways that they are a single whole, stronger together than apart. Together, they take on the world, fighting anyone who comes along challenging them. They’re scrappers but they’re also ferocious and that’s something that they’ve learned from this city.
But apart, each boy is lost in the world, unable to operate. This system that Black and White form is a protection of the innocence that each possesses but has been buried deep down. Matsumoto expresses a deep desire to hold onto childhood through these boys, to hold on to that innocence that we lose as we grow up. Maybe even more than a struggle of good versus evil, **Tekkonkinkreet** looks at the fight between staying young and growing old. There are all of these adults around Black and White who feel like they’ve succumbed to the city for better and for worse. The criminals and the cops have made compromises as part of growing old and that’s something that the two youths just can’t do. Like their names, they have a very black-and-white view of the world that youth allows kids to have that we lose as we grow up to time and age just wearing us down.
### From Cover to Cover’s Favorite Comics of 2023
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-favorite-comics-of-2023/
Last updated: 2025-02-01T20:58:27.000Z
It's time to engage in that year-end/year-beginning practice of looking back at some of our favorite comics of 2023\. Let's just dive right into our favorite comics of the past year, presented to you in stunning alphabetical order!
---
**20th Century Men** by Deniz Camp, Stipan Morian, and Aditya Bidikar (Image Comics)
*20th Century Men* is a fantastic *realpolitik* take on the idea of superheroes. What if America had a super-soldier? And he became President? And what if the Soviet counterpart was deeply enmeshed in the war in Afghanistan in the 1980's? This fantastic comic takes the *Watchmen*\-esque approach that rather than be out there doing general vigilante activity, superheroes would be a pure extension of the state and the military-industrial complex. Within the world of the story where superheroes and iron men are real, the story itself feels very real and the dialogue from Deniz Camp is naturalistic and subtle. The art from Stipan Morian is just fantastic - emotive and dynamic and at points quite brutal. This is a clever, thoughtful, emotional series that will reward repeat readings. (jk)
**Blood of the Virgin** by Sammy Harkham (Pantheon Books)
Reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/blood-of-the-virgin-by-sammy-harkham/).
On the surface, this book about the last holdouts of the old movie studio system making their exploitative horror movies is a great look at the behind-the-scenes happening of the fictitious movie *Blood of the Virgin* but Harkham makes it about so much more than that as a married immigrant couple, Seymour and Ida, struggles to find their piece of the American Dream. Harkham shows just how elusive happiness can be because we don’t even know what happiness is. It’s an idea that we think we understand but is it something that we’ve really experienced? And if we haven’t experienced it, how can we recognize it? Seymour is a man longing for something to make him happy, for something to fulfill him and he just is not able to see his wife, his child, and his career in front of him. He’s blind to the things that he wants. Harkham’s story frames this longing for the things that America promises against the immigrant experience of leaving their past to find their future. (sc)
**Golden Record** by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Silver Sprocket
Golden Record is different than most books you’re going to encounter on the stands this year, or any year for that matter. Less a graphic novel or comic than an illustrated collection of poems, Golden Record is as opulent as it is surreal. Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s poetry would be enough for me to pick up the book alone. Her playful couples, and dare I say, hendecasyllabic line structure coupled with layered, occasionally distorted, incredible, surreal, and often paisley-punctuated illustrations convey this minimalist-maximalist dynamic that is simply sublime. Is it a comic? I don’t know. But it’s my favorite thing I’ve read this year of any form or genre. (mb)
**A Guest in the House** by Emily Carroll (First Second)
Emily Carroll’s tale of a marriage haunted by the past was one of the most breathtaking reads of the year, as a young wife Abby has to deal with the ghosts of her husband’s first marriage, including a step-daughter who has not been able properly to mourn her mother. Abby builds up this fantasy around her husband’s first wife, a woman she never met but whose responsibilities she bears. Carroll builds her gripping and thrilling narrative around these dreams of a ghost that we can’t help but get pulled into. We experience Abby’s imaginings with a mixture of thrill and reluctance as nothing in this story feels as solid as it should. Like Abby, we have one foot in reality and one foot in fantasy, and neither world provides any solid foundation and as a reader, that’s a fantastic place to be to give yourself over to Carroll and her comic. (sc)
**The Gull Yettin** by Joe Kessler (NYRC)
[I wrote about this book around its time of publication](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-gull-yettin-joe-kessler/) and I was still equally transfixed by it when I returned to it before composing my year-end favorites. Kessler’s pages are vivid and bombastic, and, despite the lack of words, I’d find myself continually “re-reading” each page to take everything in. Kessler’s ability to portray character acting and pinpoint emotions while using stick-figure drawings is utterly remarkable. And balance - there is such a sense of balance within this book. Kessler allows it to be touching and emotional without becoming overwrought or melodramatic. It’s a tender book of tragedy. (mb)
**Hexagon Bridge** by Richard Blake (Image Comics)
In writing about *Hexagon Bridge*, I'm struggling to exactly describe Richard Blake's art style. This is a sign that something feels entirely original to me - the fact that I feel like I lack the vocabulary to describe what I'm looking at. Blake's art is a revelation, as is this comic. This story takes place several thousands of years in the future, as a husband and wife who are cartographers who have traveled into another dimension to map it and have gone missing. Their daughter, along with her grandfather and a team of scientists, have spent years searching for a way to navigate into this other dimension. They're now doing so with the help of the help of a highly advanced robot built for this purpose and linked telepathically to the daughter. That's the plot of the story, but none of that serves to describe how original, weird, and beautiful this story looks. Blake's art style feels vaguely evocative of Moebius, but only in the intricate and complex nature of the worlds, not so much in the specific linework. He uses delicate lines for his work, and the worlds he is building are remarkable. The story is often a blend of what look like old classical European cities, mixed with impossibly complicated futuristic geometric shapes and towers. Blake himself notes that his work is full of experimental, abstract elements. Maps and cartography are a great way to further understand this series, as so much of the art here feels very "designed" and "mapped". It feels a lot like puzzle pieces, as sometimes the art on the page feels like a selection of the pieces of a puzzle floating in nothingness. It's otherworldly. Blake's background is in fine art and film, and remarkably *Hexagon Bridge* is his very first published comic artwork. That's incredible but in some ways not surprising - having spent so much time doing something other than drawing comics, Blake's style is much less bound by traditional comic art norms, and is more influenced by images and by the language of film. This is a remarkable, special comic and I highly recommend you pick it up. (jk)
I**n Limbo** by Deb JJ Lee (First Second)
*\*Note: This is a memoir about Deb JJ Lee’s high school years, and in the book, Deb uses she/her pronouns. However, Deb identifies with they/them pronouns.*
I eagerly anticipated this book at the beginning of the year but only read it a week ago. It was worth the wait. Deb JJ Lee’s control of their narrative structure via their cartooning prowess leads to a book I can describe no better than *complete*. Memoirs are a tricky genre, and those about high school years are among the hardest to pull off without injecting too much of one’s current self into the story or leaning too far into the melodrama that is teenage life. Lee achieves this balancing act with nimble precision. It is clear this is a serious book; it is a tight narrative, focused and clear. Lee is both thoughtful and economical in their storytelling. The Deborah Jung-Jin Lee we encounter is an honest character, and In Limbo chronicles four years of high school as Lee pulls back their/her layers. She is honest and vulnerable. At times, you’re enraged for her, other times you are rooting for her, and still other times you are frustrated by her. I found Lee’s ability to convey all of these feelings about their teenage self to be both impressive and touching. More importantly, they don’t fall into the trap of fixing everything for Deborah. Things get better, yes, but they’re not perfect. This story doesn’t have a happy ending as much as a satisfying one. Lee captures loneliness in a way that is precise and unique to this story, with tones of tragedy and failure punctuated by just enough of their own retrospective analysis and tacit understanding that the four years of high school are simply that. But it isn’t pollyanna. It’s not an “it gets better” redux. No, it’s very much a picture of a young person navigating adolescence and realizing the nature of both the world and their part in it. Deborah encounters racism both directly and indirectly. She struggles with identity, friendship, and self-image. Lee’s depiction of their relationship with their mother is brutally honest and at times honestly brutal. Deborah experiences pressure from both within and without amidst cultural stereotypes and typical ignorance. But nowhere in the book does Lee let Deborah descend to victim status. Artistically, this book is magnificent. Lee’s soft lines and textured shading pair with intricate backgrounds that absolutely mesmerized me. Lee illustrates digitally, and I honestly cannot tell if they hand-illustrated on top of real images of New York City streets, or if they captured these backgrounds with a level of absolutely unparalleled verisimilitude. I strained my eyes squinting at these pages. I obviously don’t know enough about the creation of art to figure it out, but I was blown away either way. (mb)
**The Incredible Hulk** by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Nic Klein, Travel Foreman, and Matt Wilson (Marvel Comics)
I love the Hulk as a character but I am hit or miss on actual Hulk comics. *The Immortal Hulk* was a series I really loved, and I felt a loss when it ended (it's really one of the best superhero comics of the past decade). The *Hulk* series that followed was not really for me. However, I'm thrilled to say that the current run of *The Incredible Hulk* is very much for me. What I like about the Hulk comics is that there are so many ways the story can go. They can be scary stories, they can be action stories, they can be big, epic, and can also be intensely personal. This current story is very rooted in Hulk's origins as a horror comic creature, exploring Hulk's ties to some of the other "monsters" of the Marvel Universe. Hulk is a loner, and he and Banner are very much at odds and they've picked up a sidekick in a troubled teen who sees the strength of the Hulk and wants to be strong like him. The art duties have been split between Nic Klein and Travel Foreman. They have very different styles from one another but both of them are incredibly skilled storytellers, and both of them excel at drawing some of the most HORRIFYING things you'll see in a mainstream superhero comic. Like when Banner turns into Hulk - yikes, it's pretty terrifying. But that's awesome. I love seeing Hulk explored as a monster among monsters; it's an incredible read. (jk)
**Monica** by Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics)
There’s something about trying to find our own story even as we’re living it that Clowes recognizes as a universal experience in this excellent book. Abandoned by her mother when she was a young girl, Monica spends her life trying to figure out who she is in relationship to that missing mother even as she’s living her own life and defining who she is without her mother. Clowes tells this story through EC-like stories, creating a book that’s both a one-man anthology as well as a rich novel. (sc)
**Okinawa** by Susumu Higa (Fantagraphics)
Continuing a theme of honest and thorough accounts, Okinawa is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. Published in Japan in installments, there is a tangible benefit to reading the entire tome as one publication. Higa constructs a multigenerational epic replete with tragedy and perseverance. It’s a hard book in that one cannot sit and read it with that familiar feeling developing in the pit of one’s stomach, that awful feeling of oppression and injustice. The Okinawan/Ryukyuan people are caught in between the conflict between the American and Japanese armies during World War I. They suffer differently at the hands of both armies, but perhaps the last third of the book, if not more, is devoted to the ongoing American military occupation of the island of Okinawa. The beauty of this book is the way Higa imbues a sense of grace amidst the profound tragedy. Despite the heartache, Higa aims his focus at resilience and, dare I say, empathy. As touching as it is informative, I can’t think of a book that was harder to put down this year. (mb)
**River’s Edge** by Kyoko Okazaki (Kodansha)
Reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/rivers-edge-by-kyoko-okazaki-review/).
This brutal story of teenage alienation still haunts me months after reading it. Okazaki's artwork is like raw, exposed nerves and her story is the shocks that stun the body when those nerves are touched and prodded. Okazaki isn’t gentle about how she treats her characters or her readers, showing friendship and companionship as something desired but less than real in this high school story of kids just trying to survive the year. (sc)
**Roaming** by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly)
*Roaming* was such a delight of a graphic novel, as it told such a specific, personal, yet entirely relatable story. *Roaming* tells the story of 2 Canadian friends (Zoe and Dani) who are now freshmen at different colleges, that meet up in NYC in 2009 to spend Spring Break together. Dani brings along her friend Fiona from college. So...that leads to all sorts of consequences, as this was going to just be a "2 best friends together" trip and it turns into something very different. There are all sorts of awkward dynamics and so many of them are incredibly true to life. I absolutely \*knew\* several "Fionas" in college; they were both such a trip to be around and reading this story brought all of those memories to life for me. Mariko and Jillian work brilliantly together. Jillian's art is wonderful; the characters are done in an exaggerated style, but everything about their environment is brought to life in a very real way. Her attention to detail is unmatched, and I really \*feel\* the streets of NYC circa 2009\. I absolutely adore this book and would recommend it for anyone looking for a great story of relationships, and trips gone awry, and what it's like to be young and uncertain and make dumb mistakes and to think you're much smarter than you are. (jk)
**Sandman Mystery Theatre Compendium V1** by Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle, and Guy Davis (DC Comics/Black Label)
Since the 1990s when this series first came out, there have been on-again/off-again efforts to collect it but each time it’s been abandoned somewhere short of completion. DC’s new compendium collection (about 30+ issues or half of the series) reveals a timeless collection of pulp stories that contain so much more than any possible genre limitations. Matt Wagner kicks off this collection with some of his best and richest writing where we see a real relationship between Wesley Dodd and Dian Belmont grow, flourish, and stumble as they fall in love. Steven T. Seagle steps in as co-writer after a dozen or so issues and this writing duo along with Guy Davis’s gorgeous and intriguing art write one of the most adult stories that ever came out of the Vertigo line. There’s a romance that’s nurtured against all of these tales of depravity and brutality. (sc)
**Spy Superb** by Matt and Sharlene Kindt (Dark Horse)
I am here for any new content from Matt and Sharlene Kindt, particularly if it is drawn by Matt and colored by Sharlene. I love Matt Kindt as a comics writer, but I particularly am a huge fan of when he and Sharlene go full cartoonist. One of Kindt's earlier series, *Super Spy*, is a favorite of mine, as it has many different interconnected spy stories set in the same universe (and was rereleased by Dark Horse in a beautiful hardcover). *Super Spy* tells a complex, interconnected story. 52 of them, in fact. Each one is numbered as a “Dossier” and they’re included in the book out of sequence. If you want, you can choose to read the Dossiers in numerical order in order to read the story in chronological sequence. I’ve never done this, as I prefer to read the story as a series of puzzle pieces that come together over time as I read the story. *Spy Superb* is the new series from the Kindts and it seems to be set in the same universe as *Super Spy*. It concerns the delightful premise of a "non-traditional" spy who is the greatest spy ever. The way this spy functions as the greatest spy ever is that they do not know they're a spy; or, rather, they think they're a spy but have no idea what their actual missions are or what they're doing. The main spy in this story is a memorable idiot that you'll hate, love, and pity all at once. The story has twists and turns and the art from the Kindts has never been better. (jk)
**Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created Nancy** by Bill Griffith (Abrams Comicarts)
Popular discourse around the majesty of Nancy, and thereby her legendary creator, Ernie Bushmiller, reaches a zenith with fellow master cartoonist Bill Griffith’s comprehensive and thoughtful biography. Griffith‘s analysis of Bushmiller is both scholarly and personal. At times, Griffith, he of *Zippy the Pinhead* fame, feels like he is directly communicating with the soul of Ernie Bushmiller. More than just a biography of Bushmiller, or of Nancy as a character, it is an exegesis of the entire history of the strip from an insider’s perspective. Griffith’s credibility as a renowned cartoonist creates a specific authority for how he breaks down Bushmiller’s genius. As a result, components lean into a literacy biography. But there is also love and fondness. I’d contend Griffith mostly tempers his sentimentality, but it certainly creeps in from time to time. However, part of that fondness is why the book resonates with a particular charm. There is a dichotomy to Bushmiller and, by default, Nancy as both a strip and a character, governed by the fundamental questions surrounding *what is art*. Is Nancy a serious strip that doesn’t take itself seriously? Is it high art for the low brow, or the reverse? Griffith’s characterization of Bushmiller is that of an Everyman, and he might be the truest definition of that term in that Nancy touches both the scholar and Bushmiller’s “gum-chewers” with a similar power. Griffith’s coup in this book is presenting Bushmiller’s strip philosophy for the average reader, one he punctuates beautifully by rearranging Bushmiller’s own strips to tell a large chunk of the story. The feat amazed me as I was certain Griffiths was endlessly redrawing Nancy and Sluggo to tell their story until I read the author’s note at the end of the book and immediately started paging backwards in disbelief. (mb)
### The Devil Redux in Matt Wagner's Grendel Devil By The Deed Master’s Edition
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/grendel-devil-by-the-deed-masters-edition-by-matt-wagner/
Last updated: 2023-12-08T14:36:17.000Z
The story of Hunter Rose is a man’s life bookended by two women: Jocasta Rose and Stacy Palumbo. Both live in intimate closeness with Rose even while those relationships are completely different- one as a lover and the other as an adopted daughter. One builds up Rose and the other destroys him. One remains a mystery while the other is a tragedy. Matt Wagner first told the complete story of Hunter Rose, Jocasta, and Stacy back in the 1980s in the backup to his Mage: The Hero Discovered series. Told as a biographical book written about Rose’s mysterious crime lord identity Grendel, **Devil By The Deed** was a tight, concise story that focused on another triangle that involved two of these characters- Grendel, Stacy, and the wolf-like Argent. That original version of **Devil By The Deed** revolves around this trio of characters, threading a story of corruption among the complicated relationships between them.
So here it is 2023 and Matt Wagner feels the need to revisit and redo **Devil By The Deed** with a *Master’s Edition*. It almost feels like he’s trying to do the comic equivalent of a “Taylor’s Version” but he goes much further than just trying to recreate an older work— he retells it and expands on it. Almost since the original publishing end of **Devil By The Deed**, Wagner has been returning again and again to Hunter Rose, filling in the blanks of his life that the first book left unseen. We’ve seen crossovers with Batman and the Shadow, short stories told with black & white & red colors, and miniseries that tied Hunter Rose’s story with the Grendel legacy that followed his life. Wagner has told a lot of Hunter Rose’s story but here he returns to doing that in the original format; as a true-crime biography about a mysterious costumed crime lord.
The Matt Wagner of 2023 is not the person he was in 1986 and the **Devil By The Deed** of 2023 is not the same as the 1986 version either. With the 30+ years has come more pages, a more pulp flavor, and a boldness to the storytelling that comes with age and experience. This new retelling of the story incorporates elements from those other Hunter Rose stories that Wagner has told over the years (except for really ever mentioning anything involving Batman or the Shadow.). “Adapted from Hunter Rose’s journals kept during his life, **Devil By The Deed Master’s Edition** gives a broader survey of the life and times of Hunter Rose but it loses the impact that the original story still has today.
All of the Grendel stories are about this corrupting force on individuals and societies, even if that wasn’t necessarily apparent in this first incarnation. So as Wagner expands **Devil By The Deed** here, we get a view of the larger crime world of Grendel and his iron grip on New York City. That’s something that Wagner gains with more pages- more space to explore the reach of Grendel. There are more details about Grendel’s empire and the work needed to hold it together. We’ve seen this in subsequent Hunter Rose stories such as *Grendel: Behold the Devil* as well as many many other short stories but this new edition of **Devil By The Deed**brings them all together to draw a more complete timeline of Rose’s life.
But what’s not expanded on is the fall of Grendel or even the general hubris of the character. The original telling is about this crime savant who grows to think he’s untouchable. Hunter Rose is this child prodigy in many different ways whose boredom ultimately leaves him to satisfy his hunger through crime. The story of Hunter Rose is not how great of a criminal he was or how powerful he was; it’s how blind he was to the devil he let into his own home. Sure it was great in other stories to see Grendel duke it out with Batman and the Shadow but those stories feel like Matt Wagner getting to play with others’ toys to see how they interacted with Hunter Rose. They were stories about Hunter Rose but not THE Hunter Rose story.
A page from the original ****Devil By The Deed** and a page from the new ****Master’s Edition**B
The story of Hunter Rose is about how powerful he thought he was to the point of letting his guard down. That’s the story that gets lost in this **Master’s Edition**. This new book doesn’t have the focus that the original does and that focus was Stacy. She appears on nearly every page of the original telling and if she’s not on the page, then Grendel’s arch-enemy Argent is. This triangle forms the heart of Hunter Rose’s time as Grendel as Stacy becomes the one humanizing element for Grendel and therefore his weak point. She’s the weak spot in the Grendel armor.
Stacy is also such a tragic character, having lost two sets of guardians before becoming Rose’s adopted daughter at the young age of 10\. She’s pulled into this world as an innocent and allows Hunter Rose these human moments until she discovers the truth about who her beloved father is. That’s all there in this new edition but it’s watered down by everything else because there’s not much expansion to the Hunter/Stacy story. Wagner doesn’t use these extra pages to tell more about how a young girl ultimately outmaneuvers the oh-so-great Grendel to bring down his empire. Stacy’s story remains in this static state as Hunter’s story has been allowed to breathe and expand over the decades.
Over the years, Wagner’s art has become more bold and that’s obviously another change in this new edition. He’s kept some of the art deco motives from the original story and carries through the art as being more illustrative than narrative but he’s lost the wispy anime-inspired touches of the original (which was inked by Rich Rankin.) Wagner has grown into an extremely confident artist and each image is a story in itself. This is a highly structured story where Wagner has to sell each moment through the visual impact, whether it’s a moment of violence or a moment of vulnerability. That’s where Wagner’s new edition improves on the original; in 1986, the art was servicing the story whereas in 2023, the art is the story.
**Grendel: Devil By The Deed Master’s Edition** misses an opportunity to show us something new about Hunter Rose and Grendel. Matt Wagner gets to approach his story with older eyes and do more than he was in the 1980s but this new update to an old story ultimately feels more like a rehash than a re-exploration about the nature of Grendel. Wagner has excelled in that exploration in the past, following the idea of Grendel through different characters and time-periods, digging into what the idea of Grendel means through different perspectives. But he keeps coming back to Hunter Rose, a story that was nearly perfect in the original **Devil By The Deed**. This return to that story is only looking back without providing anything new to Wagner’s grand story.
### My Claremont Year- Inferno (Sept/Oct)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-inferno-sept-oct/
Last updated: 2023-12-01T05:53:36.000Z
Around the end of 2022 a thought struck me; have I ever read all of Chris Claremont’s X-Men? I think I’ve collected it all in one form or another (or even multiple forms) but there’s a point in the mid-1980s where a lot of it becomes fuzzy in my memory. I probably read it when it was coming out but more out of the inertia of collecting than any love of it. So armed with several omnibuses, Marvel Unlimited, and whatever back issue diving I need to do, I’ve set the goal to read his 16-year run on X-Men, New Mutants, and other related books, probably also eventually including some Louise Simonson New Mutants and X-Factor here as well since the series are so tied together.
As much as this is to check out these stories again, I want to see if there’s a completeness to the story that Claremont was telling, starting with his first issue, *X-Men #94* (1975), and extending all the way through *X-Men #3* (1991). Maybe by the end of 2023, I’ll have some kind of grand unified theory of Chris Claremont’s time on the book or maybe I’ll just have read a lot of comics that range from “not bad” to “what were they thinking?”.
- Uncanny X-Men #228-243
- New Mutants #62-73
- X-Factor 27-40
- X-Terminators 1-4
- Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn
- Excalibur #1-7
- X-Men Annual #12
- Marvel Comics Presents #1-10
- Wolverine #1-10
---
*Inferno* is a story that feels like it shouldn’t have to exist because its lead character Madelyne Pryor shouldn’t exist. Maybe it was clearer when Chris Claremont created her as a potential love interest for Scott Summers as she filled in this Jean Grey-shaped hole in the narrative, right down to her red hair that she conveniently shared with the one-time Phoenix. Madelyne was this character about legacy who had none of her own. Her legacy was going to be the future that she built with Cyclops, including their newborn son Nathan Christopher Summers. It made sense to try to move Cyclops into a different role in the X-Men story. And then someone at Marvel got the bright idea that Jean Grey was never the Phoenix and that they could bring Jean back from the dead (or maybe it’s from the mostly dead.) So if the original was back in the pages of *X-Factor*, what purpose did the almost carbon copy of her fill anymore?
So Chris Claremont turns her into a villain but let’s get back to that a bit later.
Following *Fall of the Mutants*, Claremont has a clean slate— a new headquarters, a team of still-fresh characters as well as a few of the old guard hanging around, and a break from most of the other X books that seemed to be everywhere at the time (or maybe it just feels that way looking back 30+ years.) And this is what everything from the *Mutant Massacre* through *Fall of the Mutants* had been working towards, some kind of freedom from the mutant machine that he had started. Claremont could start introducing new villains like the Reavers and new concepts like the country of Genosha to the story. He wasn’t tied to the old school, the old villains, or even the same old struggles anymore. Except there was still one dangling thread out there from the old days— Madelyne Pryor.
From ****Uncanny X-Men #239**
During the Outback era that preceded *Inferno*, Madelyne becomes this weird wildcard. She was introduced as a love interest for Scott Summers, discarded when Jean Grey returned from the dead, and then recast as some kind of wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing antagonist, slowly seducing Scott’s brother Alex. Harkening back to the [soap opera-like days of the book](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-january/), all the characters seem as horny as they are heroic now. This period of Claremont’s run plays with this sexual tension between the team, their enemies, and all of the supporting characters as well. Madelyne goes from the nice girl to the all-powerful femme fatale as Hell comes to NYC.
Running through *New Mutants, X-Factor, and* **Uncanny X-Men**, *Inferno* is this story of three women: Jean Grey, Madelyne Pryor, and Illyana Rasputin. Claremont and fellow X-writer Louise Simonson use this story of all hell breaking loose to take these Claremont characters (and yes, by now Jean Grey counts as a Claremont character as much as she does a Lee/Kirby character) to the conclusions that their stories need. In *New Mutants*, Simonson’s Illyana story acts as a fitting bookend for Claremont’s *Magik* miniseries, giving the character a resolution to the lost years that were stolen from her in limbo. It’s a deserved satisfactory ending for the character who both Claremont and Simonson spent so much time exploring her struggles between being an angel and a demon. Her story is central to Inferno, the story of a young woman torn between these opposite aspects of her life.
Claremont and Simonson then mirror that story in Madelyne and Jean through *X-Factor* and **Uncanny X-Men**, looking at how these two women are the living embodiment of opposite aspects of a singular life. These aspects are depicted in the angel/devil dialectic that Claremont explored in Jean Grey back in [*The Dark Phoenix Saga*](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-february-2023/). *Inferno* is practically that older story revisited. In the original, Claremont used Jean Grey to explore both abuse and power and that’s pretty much what he and Simonson are doing here. Exchange *The Dark Phoenix Saga*’s Mastermind with Inferno’s Mister Sinister and you can see that these stories are essentially stories of men manipulating women for their own desires and needs. That’s even what Illyana’s story is. Whether it’s Mastermind, Mister Sinister, or the Limbo demons S’ym and N’Astirh, these are stories about manipulation and abuse.
From ****Uncanny X-Men #240**
You can trace these themes back to the early days of Claremont’s writing on the X-Men, such as **Uncanny X-Men #111** when the villain Mesmero manipulated the team into thinking that they were carnival workers. From that point on, Claremont starts focusing on his female characters, building his stories around them that challenge their place in this world, threatening them with power, knowledge, and even identity in stories about their place in a world that fears them. His stories are about Jean Grey, Ororo, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Madelyne Pryor, Alison Blaire, and Elizabeth Braddock (and you could even throw in villains like Emma Frost and Mystique to this list) and what this life does to them, how it forges them and even how it twists them. And Inferno is all about the twisting of these characters. Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler hardly go through the emotional gauntlets that Claremont’s female characters do.
But his stories are also about the power, the grace, and the strength of these characters. Illyana Rasputin overcomes the demonic part of her soul to triumph. Jean regains a part of her that she wasn’t even aware was taken from her (just one part taken from so many parts that had been stolen from her.) And even Madelyne gets something, whether it’s peace or release or maybe even revenge. She gets a conclusion to her story- something that is hers and not just a mirror of Jean Grey’s life. That is what Claremont’s time guiding these books has done— given the women of this era the spotlight. He’s challenged them to look at the world outside of themselves in ways that the men just don’t or can’t. It’s not that he’s forced them to do it but he’s given them an agency and roles in his stories that are more than just the mother or the girlfriend.
From ****Uncanny X-Men #242**
Even with that, Madelyne ends up being the most tragic character because ultimately her agency sort of becomes just not being Jean Grey. That’s a role that was cast for her the moment the higher-ups at Marvel passed on the edict that Jean Grey needed to return to life. Out of that, there’s this “love” triangle between Madelyne, Jean, and Cyclops that leaves all three of them out of sorts for a couple of years. Madelyne is a character who’s had her purpose stripped from her, Cyclops uncharacteristically abandons his wife and newborn son, and Jean Grey is a homewrecker. Claremont and Simonson spend a couple of years before *Inferno* trying to make something out of all of that but *Inferno* finally addresses all of that head-on, turning everything that happened into some nefarious scheme of Mister Sinister.
*Inferno* almost reads like a thesis statement for Claremont’s run with the X-Men, his chance to tell the story of these mutants one more time hoping that this time you’ll see what he’s doing. It’s one of his more complicated and nuanced stories that operates on a broad canvas but his portions of this storyline try to bring all of these strands and themes that he’s been weaving since 1975 back together. And maybe that’s something that you only see on a massive rereading like this— how this large story stretches forward and backward through the years, picking up long-forgotten discussions with his readers that they had thought dropped ages ago. But Claremont never forgot them; he’s just been weaving other topics and points into the discussion that build upon everything that he’s been doing in **Uncanny X-Men** since he started writing the book.
### Thinking About Darwyn Cooke's Parker 10 years after Slayground
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/parker-by-darwyn-cooke/
Last updated: 2023-11-03T03:46:32.000Z
In **The Outfit**, Darwyn Cooke’s second full-length adaptation of a Richard Stark’s Parker book, there’s a character that’s the perfect stand-in for the audience and they only appear for a few pages. It’s not Parker, the titular hardened criminal. It’s not Wycza or Grofeld, two of Parker’s “professional” associates. It’s not even Bronson, the syndicate boss whom Parker is gunning for. Reading through Cooke’s adaptations of these novels, what you’re struck by is how much Parker lives in and moves through a different world than you or I do; it’s a world with its own rules and codes. It’s governed by the struggle between power and honor. On one hand, you have the cruel men in power, who fight just to keep a strong hold on their power. On the other end, you have men like Parker who know this world, and understand the rules about it, but are the rebels, fighting not to bring the power down but to live outside of it even as they have to acknowledge that those powerful men are there. They get their cut of everything. While it may look familiar, it’s not our world, yours or mine. So while you can find things in Parker and his accomplices to like, maybe even admire, where as a reader can you latch onto a character in these books?
**The Outfit** opens quite literally with a bang— a woman screaming and a pillow where Parker’s head was just a moment before exploding from a bullet ripping through it. It’s a hell of an introduction: “When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled off the bed.” The next couple of pages are Parker reacting to and taking care of the gunman sent to kill him. For two of the pages, you don’t even see that there’s someone else in the hotel room other than Parker and the gunman. Cooke focuses on just these two men and the precision (or attempted precision) of their work at this moment. It’s only in the final page of this four-page sequence that you’re reminded of the witness to these events. It’s a full-page shot of Parker, the first we see of him out of shadow, standing in the room, with a woman still in the bed behind him, clutching the hotel sheets to her chest, looking on with a mixture of fear, excitement, and fascination.
From ****Parker: The Outfit**
And that’s us through Cooke’s Parker adaptations, watching the tales that Stark and Cooke are weaving with that same mixture of fear, excitement, and fascination. After she collects herself in the moment, Bett quickly puts together what’s going on and realizes the world that she’s found herself in. When Parker explains what he needs to do to the gunman (forcing names out of him and tying and gagging him so she doesn’t holler for help,) she finds herself wanting a taste of this life. “I’ve never done anything like that. I’d like to try,” she offers. And then minutes later she slips out of the room when Parker isn’t paying attention to her, taking the gunman’s gun with her.
That intoxication due to the taste of the illicit is what we get out of Cooke’s versions of these stories. The four Parker books he got to adapt (**The Hunter**, **The Outfit**, **The Score**, and **Slayground** as well as a couple of shorter stories) are this glimpse into another life that Cooke is dangling in front of us. His Parker is honorable but vengeful, tough but strangely compassionate when needed, cruel and calculating as we watch him move through every situation. He’s not always in control of what’s happening but he knows how to adjust his plans when chaos strikes. He’s just cool even as he’s trying to rob every safe in town in the middle of the night or looking for revenge on the man who betrayed him on the last job and left him for the cops. Parker is Parker and that’s something that you’ll never be. Cooke captures the allure of the character; you know why men fear him, friends follow him, and women fall for him. We’re Bett in the hotel room that way.
Through Parker, Cooke is getting to live a bit of that outlaw life. After DC’s *New Frontier* and his run on *The Spirit*, he could have done anything that he wanted to; any Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman story. But instead of following the easy money, he commits to a multi-year project of adapting these stories that Donald Westlake wrote under the name Richard Stark. The four books came out between 2009 and 2013, the last major works from Cooke before he died in 2016\. (Note: The two *Before Watchmen* series *The Minutemen* and *Silk Spectre* came out during this time as well during 2013 and probably also need to be examined as some of the final words on the superhero genre that Cooke had but that’s for another day.) These Parker books retroactively become a last testament for Cooke, a look at this outlaw life that you can tell that the artist finds so enchanting. You could almost imagine that the men telling these stories (Westlake as well as Cooke) could have been Parker in another life and that they would have loved it.
A fitting description of Parker from ****Parker: The Score**
The storytelling in each book is so smooth and solid and that’s probably 50% Stark and 50% Cooke. Cooke’s visuals match the mood and swagger of Parker. His bold lines, ability to set the scenes, and confidence in his characters are carried over from Parker himself. If there were going to be books about Parker, this is the way that he would have wanted those stories told. Cooke doesn’t try to tone down the violence or intensity of Stark’s stories; they’re driven by a need to match Stark’s character’s ferocity. The first two books are about drive and revenge but the last two books are about momentum and tension in jobs that go sideways. They’re about the chaos that’s caused by wildcards, both people and events. But it’s in these stories that we see Parker’s ability to improvise and adapt. And that’s what Cooke does as he moves through these stories. He weaves and adapts to the story that Stark laid out for him in the original novels.
But let’s be honest here, these are men’s stories about how great this man is. In Stark and Cooke’s books, the men are men and the women (maybe other than Bett) are just there for the men. They’re something there to take the edge off at the end of a job. These stories aren’t the deepest but they’re good yarns, strong stories to take a break from everyday life with. If anything, they’re character studies. It’s almost like Cooke, channeling Stark, is trying to find something out about this character- what drives him and what breaks him? It’s looking to the past to maybe find some control over the present but that’s more looking for motivation in the books than finding something in them. The Parker stories are focused on a man who focuses his anger and his rage back into the job; they’re the fuel that drives him more than money or women. What is it about a man like that that makes a successful cartoonist want to spend a significant chunk of his life with this character? And to do that at the end of his life leaves so many questions unasked and unanswered.
Three years after the last book, **Slayground**, was released, Cooke died after a battle with cancer. Was control of the moment like Parker displayed something that Cooke felt like he didn’t have at the end? With hindsight and a very incomplete understanding of Cooke’s illness, the Parker books almost read like that last gunfight at the OK Corral, a last stab at glory and relevance that the artist already had even without these books. His reputation and legacy were already established before these books but the Parker books offer even more understanding about the man, his passions, and his skills than what had come before. And they ask questions about what could have come after this if Cooke remained healthy. [He had announced an original series from Image Comics](https://imagecomics.com/news/darwyn-cooke-delivers-a-psychological-thriller-and-dark-comedy-in-revengean?ref=fromcovertocover.com). You have to wonder just what he learned from Stark and what he had discovered about himself in the Parker stories that he would have brought to his original work.
And in the end, we’re the Bett of this story, watching a professional at work with a mixture of awe and trepidation. We bask in the warmth of Cooke/Parker’s presence. This is the doorway to a new life and new experiences that we want a taste of. We’re not part of Parker or Cooke’s world, not intimately at least (even with all of the close contact) but it excites us. We want more of it and we’re sadly left wanting, having had our time together but in the end, we leave having been changed by the exposure to all of these men- Parker, Stark, and Cooke.
Cover of IDW’s latest omnibus collection (2023). Art by Darwyn Cooke
### One Panel- The Actress and the Bishop Throw a Party by Brian Bolland
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-actress-and-the-bishop-by-brian-bolland/
Last updated: 2023-10-27T00:41:22.000Z
It starts innocently enough, a couple trying to escape their doldrums by hosting a party for their friends and neighbors. But the past has an ugly way of popping up at these things; old lovers suddenly mingling with the neighbors in the living room and potentially bumping into the current significant other to expose long-forgotten secrets. Even as one past is being avoided, another is being discussed in hushed tones in the garden, memories touched and fondly rekindled.
For me, I first encountered Brian Bolland’s *The Actress and the Bisho*p like most people did in the pages of Atomeka Press’ **A1 #1**, still one of the greatest anthologies ever. That first issue contains work by Barry Windsor-Smith, Alan Moore, Garry Leach, Eddie Campbell, John Bolton, Dave Gibbons, Ted McKeever, Steve Parkhouse, and Brian Bolland. Honestly with every anthology since then, I feel like I’ve been chasing the high that **A1** gave me. All of the stories were great but some of them were just truly strange. Windsor-Smith’s contributions to this series weren’t like anything that he had done at Marvel; his line was unmistakable but the looseness of his rendering was a revelation from someone who always seemed so fussy. I’ll just say if you’ve never seen any issue of **A1**, head to the nearest comic shop with a back issue collection and start digging through those long boxes.
Brian Bolland offered up two *The Actress and The Bishop* stories in this series (issues #1 and #3.). In an interview in a [recent collection of The Actress and the Bishop](https://theshift.store/en-us/products/shift-presents-brian-bollands-the-actress-and-the-bishop?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Bolland describes his characters this way:
> Well- they’re this oddly mismatched couple living in a semi-detached house in Rayners Lane, a suburban district in the London Borough of Harrow. He’s a former man of the cloth. She a former exotic dancer and occasional sex worker. They’ve given all that up but, out of habit, still wear the costumes of their trade at all times… They live a simple blameless life that’s known to very few.
Most of that comes out in the story (maybe not the “former” part for either of them,) it’s the sheer dissonance of this couple being together that catches your attention. In typical Bolland fashion, the Bishop is drawn in his vestments in wonderful detail and she in a tight, short black skirt, sitting together on a couch, bored as any urban couple could be on a typical night. In the two 3-page stories in **A1**, the couple looks to escape that civilized boredom, first with a road trip and then by throwing a party.
Most of “The Actress and the Bishop Throw a Party” from **A1 #3** focuses on the Bishop and an early love of his who broke his heart. But Bolland throws in the above panel, one of two panels of the Actress having her own dalliance with past out in the garden. Somehow even in setting it largely in the shadows, the drawing has that level of detail that we expect from Bolland, perfectly telling us everything. Inside the Bishop recovers from his unexpected encounter while she’s touched by this chance meeting. The closeness of The Actress and the man suggests an intimacy that’s otherwise missing from her life.
This one panel could be split into two, one focused on the garden meeting and the other focused on the man inside but Bolland would have lost the mystery of this panel by separating the Actress and the Bishop. The darkness between them connects them in this moment of either affirmation or betrayal. Just as he faced his past, she is now doing the same thing and the moment is fraught with peril. Is her gaze on the man or looking just past him? Her hair flows toward the Bishop, reaching out to the stability, security, and love that she knows.
The man himself is a mystery, a one-night stand from the first story when the Bishop was searching for and questioning God. He was lost but she was possibly having the most intimate relationship ever with his absent God. And now he’s back, still absent from the Bishop’s life but trying to re-enter hers. Bolland’s story about the past intruding on the future is almost purely focused on the Bishop and if this wild-haired man is his god, even more so.
It almost feels like a throwaway panel in this 3-page story but Bolland practically boils his whole story down to this one, magical panel. The whole story is fun- Bolland exhibits a flair for humor in these stories— but this panel is weighty in the middle of a flighty story. It’s quiet and emotional in a story that’s trying to be brash and humorous. And it’s mysterious because, at this moment, you don’t know what’s going to happen. What’s she going to say and do? Is the Bishop going to experience more heartbreak or will everything work out in the end? In another world, maybe a better world, Bolland would have kept on doing these 3-page stories that would have continued to wow us with the range and depth of his storytelling.
“The Actress and the Bishop Throw a Party” first appeared in ****A1 #3** (Atomeka Press, 1990)
### Daniel Warren Johnson Gets To Play With Some Cool Toys in Transformers #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/transformers-1-by-daniel-warren-johnson/
Last updated: 2023-10-04T16:00:22.000Z
It’s a story as old as time, or at least 1984- warring factions of a robotic alien race get stranded on Earth. But it’s time for another reboot of this story, this time written and drawn by Daniel Warren Johnson so you know that it’s going to include action and wrestling. But if you’ve read other things from Johnson like [*Wonder Woman: Dead Earth*](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/01/review-wonder-woman-dead-earth-Daniel-Warren-Johnson.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), *Do A Powerbomb*, or *Space Mullets*, you also know that you can expect some heart and gut punches from his storytelling. His new **Transformers #1** (spun out from some Robert Kirkman book or another) moves at a breakneck pace, establishing characters and conflicts that more hint at where his comic is going than pave any new ground for these more-than-meets-the-eye characters.
This issue functions not as a reimagining of the Transformers story but as a reestablishing of it. There are the familiar elements of Autobots versus Decepticons, of the survivors of this far-off war being revived on Earth to continue their fighting, and of regular humans being drawn into these battles. Whether it’s been in comics or movies before this, these are the standard elements of a Transformers story— the price of admission that any creator has to pay. Johnson steps up excitedly to take his shot at this narrative championship belt, knowing the beats he has to hit to satisfy either some vocal fandom and/or corporate overseers. There’s little room for deviation or originality here; this is far from some great reconceptualization of this robotic story. If you squint enough, this looks like the same story we’ve always gotten, just with a new paint job.
Johnson layers in a few surprises, a few unique notes that hint at some grander story possible here. The first page alone, recalling the opening of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s *All-Star Superman*, tries to tell a big backstory in just a handful of wordless panels. It’s big, ambitious storytelling that’s exciting to see in this comic because it promises what we’re going to see more of in this comic and this series. It is the kind of big swing that you want and expect from Johnson when he’s got an audience like this series is going to get.
After that one-page recap/introduction, Johnson pulls back from the big story, focusing on a father and a son who have experienced trauma in their past. The old man spends his day drinking to forget a tragedy while his son Spike tries to figure out how to tell his father that he wants to go to school at Berkeley. Even in this big, cosmic story, there is still room for this human to balance out the robot-on-robot action. This is a move out of the Bill Mantlo manual for writing books based on toys. Look at his *Rom* or his *Micronauts* and there was always a more personal story being told amid a much larger and fantastical canvas. He did it in his *Incredible Hulk* run as well- finding a grounded human perspective in these stories about monsters and aliens.
This story about a boy wanting to leave home is then contrasted against the story of a race who has lost their home and cannot go back. Spike and his friend Carly, who’s having her struggles figuring out how to leave home, discover an ancient spaceship buried in a mountain. Making their way inside the spaceship, they find the inert bodies of the Transformers. Also making that discovery is one of the aliens’ own, Jetfire, who has found his people after his own time of being lost. He was on a quest to find an energy quest for his people but after he left, the Transformers fell into a civil war, with warriors from both sides being on this ship. As he revives them, he unknowingly revives their war and fighting.
With that, here comes part of the problem with stories about giant robots— how do you make them anything other than the mechanical constructs they are? Whether they change into semi trucks, fighter planes, or a boom-box, these big, bulky creatures are just that. Johnson struggles with making them something other than the inanimate toys that they’re based on, with body parts becoming indistinguishable in battle. There’s a point where one of the good robots (Optimus Prime) is wrestling with one of the bad robots (Starscream) that should play perfectly to Johnson’s interests and strengths. His last comic was all about wrestling. But the fight falls flat because the big move (after several rereads, you can figure out that it’s a backward bodyslam) just becomes a jumble of shapes and lines that don’t mean anything. It should be this cool and fun moment but it instead reads as confusing and weak.
But there are still some intriguing moments between the robots here, mostly fueled by Jetfire’s disorientation at the moment. His relationship with these fighting sides, his mission that took him away before the big conflict, and his guilt for not being able to do more feel like a story in and of itself. It’s a given that at some point this series is going to have to explore the events that led up to this issue and Jeftire’s perspective of events would be fascinating, far more fascinating than alien robots just punching and shooting each other.
Daniel Warren Johnson’s **Transformers #1** is built on promise and potential. It ends up being more intriguing than it is good which isn’t a bad thing for a first issue. It gives you reasons to check out the next issue. Johnson puts so much into this issue, showing all of these conflicts, both personal and alien, that maps out where this story could go. Hopefully this series will be able to live up to that potential.
### The Kids Aren’t Alright in Kyoko Okazaki's River’s
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/rivers-edge-by-kyoko-okazaki-review/
Last updated: 2026-04-11T12:54:34.000Z
In the field next to a high school, there’s a decomposed dead body that’s been there for a while but only known by two or three students. That should almost tell you all you need to know about the environment that Haruna Wakakusa, Ichiro Yamada, and their classmates are coming of age in. Kyoto Okazaki’s **River’s Edge** is an odd coming-of-age story, focused on the tragedy and heartbreak of realizing how cruel the world is. Now these are high schoolers and cruelty is a natural part of high school. So when Yamada gets stuffed in a school locker by Haruna’s bully boyfriend Kannonzaki, it feels like something out of a John Hughes film like *Sixteen Candles* or *The Breakfast Club* or one of those sanitized views that hold that the kids are alright and it's everyone else that’s screwed up. Okazaki tells the story about an environment- that’s why the field and dead body are so important- that’s built up to prepare these kids to accept a world that will fight them at every turn. And it seems to be doing its job extremely well.
This is a high-school story but it isn’t the kind that we’re largely programmed to accept: there’s no brain, no beauty, no jock, no recluse, and no rebel. Those labels are too easy for Okazaki to accept or to fall into. None of these kids are any one thing. Haruna is this girl who crosses the social boundaries set up in high school; she’s got a good group of friends (who all have their crosses to bear) but for some reason is dating the school bully and drug dealer. Yamada is this shy, sensitive, and gay boy who’s struggling to find acceptance which is something that Haruna gives to him when she rescues him from Kannonzaki’s cruelty. Haruna’s best friend Lumi looks for outside validation of her wealth, often finding it in older men who shower her with gifts. Okazaki shapes her cast to embody the insecurities and fears that too often we let have power over who we are. Even Kannonzaki, for how repulsive of a kid he is, exhibits moments of vulnerability that only Haruna can recognize.
So while there’s recognition of what other people are going through, no real connections are being made- no one really knows anyone else. They think they do; they have their ideas of who their friends, boyfriends, and classmates are but at best, it’s only a surface-level knowledge of who the other people are. When Yamada repays Haruna’s kindness and shows her his “secret treasure” in the field, the dead body initially shocks her but that also is only a surface-level reaction to it. “But it didn’t feel real,” she tells us once she’s processed it a bit. For Yamada, it’s something meaningful; “I never know whether I’m dead or alive,” he tells her. “When I look at it, it gives me courage.” It’s an odd confession coming from a kid she barely knows while she feels nothing because she can’t acknowledge the reality of the moment. Or maybe it’s the need Yamada has to hold onto something that she can’t relate to. She knows that she should feel something here- fear, disgust, fascination, or something else- but for her, it’s almost like this is something else completely outside and separate from her.
This disconnectedness is how Haruna largely experiences the world. Explaining the first time she had sex with Kannonzaki, she describes her reasons as “… not because I loved him or anything. I think it was more that I wanted to just see what sex was like.” She then goes on to say that it’s “easy to have special emotions for your partner” but doesn’t dive into what those emotions could be. And it’s not like Kannonzaki is a great boyfriend or anything; while Haruna is in the field with Yamada and the dead body, Kannonzaki is in a love motel with Haruna’s friend getting high and screwing her. These kids live in this tight community but can’t see the world beyond themselves.
Okazaki lets these kids live their messed-up lives. It’s a bit of tough love she has for them as you can see her letting them make mistakes but hoping that they’ll learn from them. They’re all on the same journey are Haruna, just at different endpoints of it. Haruna is the one who begins to see beyond herself to develop some true connections with others. The first time she slept with her boyfriend, it was just for an experience, to see what it was like. The second time she sleeps with him happens after she apologizes to him for not being there when his family was having some trouble. “As for why, I don’t think it was motivated by like or dislike, or love or longing. It was more like I wanted to say thank you and I’m sorry, or something like that.” These characters take small steps toward growth and occasionally step back again.
**River’s Edge** is a mass of raw, exposed nerves from the first pages through the end. Watching these kids is both recognizable and painful. Haruna is the source of this story as everything flows through her. She’s the gravity that brings all of these kids and their stories together so we see everyone’s story through her. Okazaki is honest and raw in her storytelling, letting us live through these characters and see how we could make the same choices and mistakes that they do. In the end, this story is about empathy and how it develops in us (or maybe even how it doesn’t.).
### The American Dream at the End of Old Hollywood in Sammy Harkham’s Blood of the Virgin
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/blood-of-the-virgin-by-sammy-harkham/
Last updated: 2023-09-22T03:50:49.000Z
In Sammy Harkman’s **Blood of the Virgin**, there are two fascinating interludes inserted into the story. The first is about a young man in 1915 Arizona, a journey that eventually leads him to Hollywood and an old age of petty rivalries. The second follows a young woman in 1942 Budapest and her life as a mother, her struggles with the emerging World War, and eventually her escape from a Nazi concentration camp. There are connections to Harkham’s larger story about a movie editor, his wife, and the humdrum life that they live but these interludes contrast with that couple Seymour and Ida’s lives, showing that something is missing from them, a void that the couple can’t even identify because they barely recognize that something is even supposed to filling that void.
In 1971, the last vestiges of the old Hollywood studio system were the B-movie exploitation houses, the production line assembly outfits that shot movies quickly and cheaply but still with an eye on craft that could only work in this kind of system. These people weren’t creating *Bonnie and Clyde* or *The French Connection*. They were following more in the footsteps of the Hammer horror films, creating horror movies to thrill a specific audience that they knew would turn out for their stuff. Maybe by today’s standards, we’d call them “schlock” but this was still a business and these people were still professionals. Well, at least a lot of them were. Seymour, an Iraqi Jewish immigrant, was one of those professionals, a film editor for one of the going-out-of-style production houses. He’s got a wife and a newborn at home and he’s just sold his first script to his boss. Life should be good but none of this is going the way he thought it would have.
A wife, a kid, a steady job, and the opportunity to tell his story should be the American dream. It’s as American as apple pie but Harkham peppers his stories with the subtle (and a few not-so-subtle) reminders that both Seymour and Ida are immigrants. They’re not strangers to this country but it’s important to recognize that they’re coming at this dream from a different point of view, a foreign one that’s colored by its own unsaid biases and perspectives. It’s the American Dream circa 1971 from the point of view of immigrants. Harkham weaves these perspectives throughout the story, rarely making them the main throughline of the book but having them be present just enough to remind you of the outside viewpoints at work.
Seymour seems to be searching for something but if you asked him, I don’t know if he would be able to articulate what it is. Ida may be better at defining her longings but maybe those would be more defined by opposites of her life now. Some opportunities open up for both of them, maybe to the detriment of their marriage but good for their own mental health and wellbeing. There’s a view of true happiness just within reach for both of them but the other isn’t in that view. Call them dalliances or affairs or maybe even true love but there’s something just outside of Seymour and Ida’s reach that leaves them stuck in place in a marriage that’s more driven by responsibility and proximity than by love.
Early in the book, Harkham has these two sequences where he just really gets into the moment— one of Seymour cooking dinner and another describing how a special effect of a melting head works. He dials into these sequences in great detail fairly suddenly, creating two tiers of 1”x1” panels to practically give the readers a how-to. I think I may make Seymour and Ida’s chicken & rice recipe next week just for a good, easy meal. While he doesn’t return to this kind of detail anywhere else in the book, they demonstrate perfectly just how Harkham is willing to allow the story to show him just how dense each page needs to be.
Some panels are filled with only 4-5 big, expansive panels to create different emotional beats. These pages often show the size of Seymour’s world and just how small he is in it or at least how small he feels in it. Other times, they open up the world and show how much of it there is for Seymour and Ida if only they would open their eyes. There are other pages that he packs with panels, creating the tension of a world closing in on Seymour or showing the flow of time and how much life is happening around this couple. When you flip through other comics, the pages look the same— the same number of panels, the same layout, the same pace happening page after page after page. Harkham knows how to measure out the page for the greatest emotional impact while measuring out how the readers experience time with Seymour and Ida.
Going back to those interludes about the film industry and World War II, you can see Harkham doing the same thing narratively that he’s doing with the visual structure of his story. He dives into these experiences and then pulls out of them, offering this rich story that extends beyond Seymour and Ida but is explicitly about them and their lives. But in these interludes, we see a drive and need to live that’s not present in Seymour or Ida’s life. As they’re the benefactors of these interludes, they settled into a complacency in 1971 which is a luxury not allowed to these people during the first half of the Twentieth Century.
In **Blood of the Virgin**, Harkham tells this very human story of two people looking for some kind of contentment; it’s not necessarily happiness that’s part of this dream but more like a sense of peace or even comfort in their marriage. But even that may be something different for both of them; Seymour and Ida’s peace aren’t necessarily the same thing or even compatible things. As the two have opportunities to embrace change, to move on with their lives, Harkham recognizes how hard that is to do. We may say we want change but do we want to put in the work for it? I don’t think that Seymour or Ida want to put that much effort into moving on with their lives.
### My Claremont Year- July/August 2023
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-july-august/
Last updated: 2023-09-12T13:00:45.000Z
Around the end of 2022 a thought struck me; have I ever read all of Chris Claremont’s X-Men? I think I’ve collected it all in one form or another (or even multiple forms) but there’s a point in the mid-1980s where a lot of it becomes fuzzy in my memory. I probably read it when it was coming out but more out of the inertia of collecting than any love of it. So armed with several omnibuses, Marvel Unlimited, and whatever back issue diving I need to do, I’ve set the goal to read his 16-year run on X-Men, New Mutants, and other related books, probably also eventually including some Louise Simonson New Mutants and X-Factor here as well since the series are so tied together.
As much as this is to check out these stories again, I want to see if there’s a completeness to the story that Claremont was telling, starting with his first issue, *X-Men #94* (1975), and extending all the way through *X-Men #3* (1991). Maybe by the end of 2023, I’ll have some kind of grand unified theory of Chris Claremont’s time on the book or maybe I’ll just have read a lot of comics that range from “not bad” to “what were they thinking?”.
- Uncanny X-Men #210- 227
- New Mutants #45-61
- X-Factor 9-26
- Fallen Angels #1-8
- New Mutants Annual #3
- X-Men Annual #11
- Firestar #1-4
- Fantastic Four Vs. The X-Men #1-4
- The X-Men Vs. The Avengers #1-4
- Thor #s 373, 374, 377, 378
- Daredevil #s 238 &252
- Power Pack #s 27, 33, 35
- Incredible Hulk #s 336, 337, 350
- Captain America #339
- Fantastic Four #312
---
---
The closest in this run that we get to an actual X-Men/X-Factor crossover (from ****Uncanny X-Men #215** (art by Alan Davis & Dan Green)
This run from 1986 through 1988 demonstrates just how little Chris Claremont was interested in creating a franchise, opting instead to focus on walling off his little empire from the greater desires of Marvel Comics. Marvel launched **X-Factor** during this time from a completely different editorial office. Ann Nocenti had been Claremont’s longtime editor on both **Uncanny X-Men** and **The New Mutants** but **X-Factor** was launched out of Bob Harris’s office, a curiosity at the time that would come to have much larger ramifications in the upcoming years as Harras’s influence at Marvel would grow. By 1988, Louise Simonson was writing both **The New Mutants** and **X-Factor**. It’s still a bit before the launch of *Excalibur* or the ongoing *Wolverine* series, which are still largely Claremont protecting the things that are his as long as he could. But during this time, which includes **Uncanny X-Men #210** through **#227**, you can almost see Claremont trying to burn the bridges behind him as he tries to free the X-Men from being what they previously were or what Marvel wanted their top seller to be.
Somewhere around Cyclops leaving the team after being defeated by a depowered Storm in a trial-by-combat, the idea for X-Factor started to percolate in someone’s money-grubbing hands. You can almost hear Bob Harras saying, “We’ve got a whole team of X-Men, the original band, that we could get together as a team. What do you mean that Jean Grey is dead?” So let’s have Scott leave his wife and newborn son to follow a newly resurrected Jean and their old friend in some hair-brained idea of saving mutants by posing as mutant hunters. There’s something to be said for trying to replicate the drama that Claremont had established with the X-Men but let’s be honest that original **X-Factor** writer Bob Layton was no Chris Claremont. So after a few issues, Layton was swapped out with Claremont’s one-time editor Louise Simonson.
**X-Factor** becomes some kind of weird high school drama, with love triangles and quadrangles happening, angst about the team’s weird dual life as mutant heroes and persecutors, and weirdly trying to redefine the non-Cyclops and Jean characters. Iceman needs to be powered up, Beast needs to be de-furred and then lose his intelligence, and Angel needs to have his wings cut off and become a much more aggressive version of himself. All of this just reeks of them trying to create a Claremont book without Claremont needing to be involved. Simonson does the best she can with **X-Factor**, ably aided by Walt Simonson and Bob Wiacek on art, but unfortunately, a lot of this stuff reads like X-Men for people who don’t like X-Men.
So what’s Claremont doing during all of this? The answer is his best to avoid it. This in itself is weird because this period kicks off the age of X-Men-related crossovers, starting with “Mutant Massacre” and “Fall of the Mutants.” For “Mutant Massacre,” Claremont’s **Uncanny X-Men** acts as the spine of this series as a band of Marauders attack the sewer-dwelling Morlocks and the X-Men. Claremont uses this series to continue his tear down and rebuild of the X-Men, removing Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, and Colossus from the team through injuries to make room for Psylocke, Dazzler, Longshot, and Havok. Storm, Rogue, and Wolverine stay on as the connective tissue between the past and the future as Claremont uses all of the chaos of this time to revamp the team whose membership had been fairly static for 100 issues, give or take a character here and there.
****Uncanny X-Men #226** (art by Marc Silverstri and Dan Green)
When I was a kid first reading these comics, my favorite characters in order were Wolverine, Cyclops, everyone else, and then Storm. I accepted Storm as a member of this cast but I don’t think I paid any attention to her. She was like that one chair in the corner— you know it’s there and it’s sturdy enough that you don’t need to worry about it falling apart when someone sits in it but other than that, you don’t care about it one way or the other. Now some 40 years later, Chris Claremont has finally convinced me that his **Uncanny X-Men** story is Storm’s story and everyone else is just a supporting character in the tale of her life and times.
Storm is introduced in **Giant-Size X-Men #1** as a goddess; she’s recognized as divine but with nothing but her powers to back it up. She’s given a reputation to live up to from the start but those early stories feel like all tell and not much show about who and what Store was. For 40-odd issues, she’s a supporting character in the love story of Cyclops and Jean Grey, as are the rest of the X-Men. But after “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” Claremont almost immediately starts messing with Storm, first in a battle with Doctor Doom where she potentially unleashed Phoenix-like power. During this period, she’s established as the leader of the team as Cyclops has gone on a walkabout to find who he is without Jean. Once he returns though, there’s this on-again/off-again tension of who is really the leader. Throw in Storm almost getting turned into a vampire, and then a Brood, and you can see the shape of the journey from goddess Storm to punk-rock Storm when she gets the Mohawk in Tokyo right before Wolverine’s wedding.
None of the other new X-Men get worked over the same way that Storm does during this same period. Once it’s established who Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Colossus are, Claremont may nudge them in different directions but with Storm he takes years to explore her, throwing new things at her, and seeing how she reacts. There’s a way that the character is driving her own story in these pages as she struggles with and even chafes against the situations that Claremont puts her in. This all leads to **Uncanny X-Men #185** (Aug 1984) when she loses her power trying to protect the same thing from happening to Rogue. That issue begins an almost 4-year journey for the character of her trying to establish her own agency on this team, stripped of what made her a “goddess” but not what made her a hero.
This is 9 years into Claremont’s X-Men run, 9 years of character development, including her strengths and insecurities. And then he still takes another 4 years to follow who and what Storm is, leading to **Uncanny X-Men #227** (March 1988,) during the “Fall of the Mutants” event to reveal a Storm who’s been to hell and back and is so much stronger for it. In this whole run, Storm wasn’t always the focus of the story but you can trace so much of the growth of the title to the development and growth of the character. Wolverine may have been the hot character but Storm is the character who exemplifies the heart and soul of this team.
****Uncanny X-Men #227** (art by Marc Silvestri and Dan Green)
So compare that whole run from **Giant Size X-Men #1** to **Uncanny X-Men #227** and how Claremont played the long game here to **X-Factor #1** to **X-Factor #26**, with its two writers and how quickly it rushes through all of its so-called character development and growth, where none of the characters share any similarities with who they were before X-Factor. Once she takes over, Simonson tries to course correct but it takes her a while to do that, working largely on her own during “Mutant Massacre” and “Fall of the Mutants” to follow Claremont’s lead without getting in his way. And where Claremont narrows his focus on what character he’s focusing on (often to the detriment of Nightcrawler and Colossus,) Simonson takes this odd scattershot approach to her writing, giving us little chunks of each team member without really being able to focus on the growth of any single one of them; they change during this run but do they develop at all?
By the end of **Uncanny X-Men #227**, Claremont could have (and maybe the next few months will show that he should have) left the X-Men. He told the story of a novice team of mutants becoming true heroes and Storm was the character who lived and breathed this in nearly every issue. But he probably also saw the future of these characters without him, looking to books like **X-Factor** and miniseries like **Fallen Angels** (ostensibly a *New Mutants* spinoff) as a kind of unchecked expansion that the line would face as Marvel would value quantity over quality. So he stays, even launching two more books following “The Fall of the Mutants” (*Excalibur*and *Wolverine*,) two books that still existed in their own corners as Claremont would start to scatter his characters around the world, far away from the likes of the Fantastic Four or the Avengers. Claremont wanted to tell his own stories with his characters. And as they became more and more popular, it became obvious that Marvel had other plans for this franchise.
### The Spy Who Could Be You (But Hopefully Isn't)— Matt Kindt’s Spy Superb
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/spy-superb-by-matt-kindt-and-sharlene-kindt/
Last updated: 2023-09-01T03:30:15.000Z
Matt Kindt is a master of deception. His **Spy Superb** is hidden under a plain brown bag dusk jacket. If you’re of a certain age (i.e. old by the kids’ standards,) this book probably looks like one of your old textbooks, when your teachers made you make covers for your textbooks at the beginning of the school year out of the bags you got from the grocery store. But even then, Kindt is secretly sending messages through these bags, covers, and chapter breaks:
- “Spy Superb is a TRADER…”
- “Spy Superb is not SAFE…”
- “Spy Superb - but at what COST…”
Even the spine of the book gets in on the joke/secret:
- “Spy Superb is Matt Kindt + Sharlene Kindt”. (“*Is*,” not “*By*”)
If you know your grocery stores, you can probably guess which chain names are getting cut short there. But these are messages sent through secretive means, passed on if you know where to look and can decipher the clues that Kindt is leaving pretty much in plain sight.
In this book, Kindt imagines the Spy Superb- a spy whose reputation is so great that every other power lives in fear and awe of the Spy Superb. “Created during World War II. They combined forces to create the ultimate super spy. The best secret agent the world had known. The ‘Spy Superb.’ Perfect physical specimen. IQ off the charts. Master of disguise. Fluent in every language. Genius tactician.” Think about every great spy movie you’ve seen and every spy story you’ve read and Spy Superb is better than all of them.
“Also? Spy Superb is a lie” the book tells us in the opening pages. The first Spy Superb was killed before his mission began, when his belt exploded, killing him. So the Spy Superb became something more— a legend who could be anyone. Spy agencies would use the myth of the Spy Superb for decades after, manipulating ordinary, innocent people into being their great spies. They didn’t even know and were just used. That is until the latest one ended up dead in the trunk of a car where he’d been for weeks. The next spy superb in line is his brother Jay Bartholemew III, a wannabe writer who’ll get to actually writing tomorrow, the next day, or the day after that.
And with that, Matt Kindt hides what may be the greatest Spy Superb in plain site of everyone— someone who is so bad at everything that he may actually be good at being a spy. Jay is the type of guy that only a true friend could stand and most people wish would just shut up and get on with his life and out of theirs. He thinks just because he’s seen the same movies and read the same books that we have that he can be the world’s spy once he recognizes that there’s something afoot here. The way that Kindt writes Jay is both empathetic and tiring. You can see this in everyone whose path crosses his and it’s a true and honest depiction of the character; he’s just so into his own world that he doesn’t see everything that’s happening around him. Only, in this case, when pulled into world espionage, somehow he does see it. It’s like he’s manifested his dreams into the reality of him being the absolute greatest.
More than a lot of other cartoonists and colorists, when Matt and Sharlene Kindt team up on the art, the books feel like they are a piece of a larger tapestry of Kindt’s stories. **Spy Superb** works in dialogue with their *Super Spy* and *Mind MGMT*, exploring this world of secrets and espionage. In these stories, there’s the world that we see and the world just behind it pulling the strings. *Mind MGMT* is about learning to recognize the secret worlds while in **Spy Superb**, it’s practically something that Jay and us trip over while telling us he knew what he was doing the whole time.
Kindt’s artwork is very focused and straightforward here. There are few, if any, real visual tricks or diversions here because Jay doesn’t know any tricks or spycraft. If any of the real spies in this story were the main character, Kindt would be doing all kinds of visual magic and misdirection like he did in *Mind MGMT*. We see it here a few times as Jay encounters true spies; it’s used to showcase their specific sets of skills. But as Jay has no skills, Kindt focuses on his posturing and his pride. In *Mind MGMT*, Kindt was convincing you that you had to watch his right hand even as his left was picking your wallet to get to your I.D. or credit cards. Here we’re watching the spies trying to pick Jay’s wallets and him somehow either with skill or luck, evading their nimble fingers.
Matt Kindt is a really good writer for other writers but when he’s creating a story that he’s drawing as well, the pages crackle with potential energy. His drawings and storytelling have become more polished over the years but keep an edginess that drives you to keep turning the pages of his stories. He sets up this clash between the audience’s expectations and the story he’s telling. With **Spy Superb**, that clash becomes the text of the story as Kindt builds this conflict between Jay’s expectations of the world and what it is. In the end, Jay kind of wins, and his expectations are transmuted into reality.
### Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise by Tradd Moore and Heather Moore
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/doctor-strange-fall-sunrise-by-tradd-moore-and-heather-moore/
Last updated: 2023-08-25T01:15:03.000Z
*Note: [I wrote about the first issue here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/doctor-strange-fall-sunrise-1-by-tradd-moore-and-heather-moore/) and while some of the speculation of the story turned out to be inaccurate, my estimation about the artwork has just grown with the whole story and the lovely oversized collection that Marvel recently published.)*
Sometimes I think we forget about the power of cartooning. Week in and week out, you’re probably reading all kinds of comics that are produced largely in the unspoken assembly line of mainstream content. One issue after another after another, so on and so forth for months and years and decades. It’s easy to become numb to it. A lot of us (myself included) are probably guilty of this. Reading comics becomes a habit in every sense of the word. Sure, there are occasional standouts, those adrenaline blasts that keep you coming back for more and more even if they’re fewer and farther between. And probably even worse, those hits are just a bit duller every time. But every now and then, there’s a book about art and energy and excitement. Something that screams “This is what we should be doing!”
Tradd and Heather Moore’s **Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise** is the latest book to do that, especially in the recently released oversized treasuring edition format.
Tradd Moore’s artwork and Heather Moore’s colors in **Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise** doesn’t just show us a different reality; they transport us to a different plane of existence. Flip to any page in this book (particularly if you have the wonderful recently released Treasury Edition) and prepare to see sights and experience things you’ve never seen on a comic page before. Tradd Moore has synthesized the vocabulary of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko with Mike Mignola and Jim Woodring’s sense of time, space, and movement to pull us into Strange’s nightmarish adventure. But for as much action and fantasy as there is in this book, T. Moore uses it to explore a family’s drama and Strange’s role as a healer more than his role as a Sorcerer Supreme.
In the pages of **Fall Sunrise**, magic becomes this physical, emotional force, unrelenting in its oppressiveness. The weight of this surreal atmosphere presses on us from all sides. T. Moore keeps up this attack on us, creating these overwhelming images that become a reflection of Strange’s consciousness, and his feelings of being unrooted and lost. In his drawings, T. Moore shapes this environment that’s always aware of us and is watching us (see the below page for all of the eyes just looking out of the picture plane.).
T. Moore draws the human form at its most beautiful and its most twisted. The body becomes not just the form of the characters but a representation of the ways that this reality has become corrupted by an angry god. When a pregnant goddess from another dimension named Sophia calls on him in his Sanctum Sanctorum demanding that he deliver her child, it can’t be that easy as this birth takes place on two levels- the Marvel Universe that we know and the goddess’ dimension that she abandoned and left to the angry and bitter god Bythos (let’s call them “gods” and “goddesses” for now due to the lack of a better term.). She is a being of shapes and he is a being of ideas. She left and his ideas ran unchecked to shape this reality around his wrath.
The characters have their bodies but T. Moore draws an environment that’s built around the human form. Eyes are everywhere and the prison that Strange and his allies need to escape from is a giant human body. Their escape is quite literally through the bowels of this Body Machine and out of its ass. For all of the highfalutin sorcerer concepts, T. Moore keeps this story very physical, giving it a solid base as we recognize all of these figures and eyes turned toward Strange.
The ambition of this art leads to sensory overload as there’s so much to take in on every page. Where do you start and where do you finish reading each panel and page? The layers intentionally uproot the reader from any feeling of safety as much as the story uproots Strange from his own complacency. Thrust into this mystical family drama, Strange is actually out of his element most of the time and rather than just being told it, Moore expresses it through the artwork, in creating this new world of familiar yet alien shapes and figures. All of these images are overpowering to both Strange and us as we get pulled further and further into this story.
But even in the most mind-bending imagery, the combination of art and colors creates these gorgeous pages that you do want to get lost in and never pull out of. T. Moore’s lines and shapes are so seductive that you just want to linger on them forever, taking in how all of these seemingly disparate marks come together in these images that tickle dormant parts of our imaginations.
Heather Moore’s hallucinogenic colors are a guide for the reader that Strange himself doesn’t have. She provides the heat of this story and the relief from it. Her colors are either fiery reds, yellows, and oranges, or cool blues and greens, others side by side in the same images. It’s her use and balance of these colors that control how we read this story— the largely red pages are action and speed, while she uses blues to slow us down and allow us to catch our breath. Tradd Moore’s art is the engine of this story while Heather Moore’s colors are the gas pedal and the brake, regulating just how fast we go through this book.
**Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise** is a horror book. When you allow yourself to spend time with each image, Tradd Moore is drawing all of this sensory horror but Heather Moore’s colors obscure a lot of it. Not in a way that overpowers but in a way that feels more protective and nurturing. That’s the voyage that Strange is on in this story, trying to find a newborn child in a harsh and brutal environment. Stephen Strange is a man who’s brought into the center of a dysfunctional family environment where he’s asked to possibly sacrifice himself to deliver a child from an emotionally abusive father. In the end, Strange gets nothing but he gives everything in this hopeful and beautiful book.
### Too Cute to Be Scary or Too Scary to be Cute?— Jay Stephens’ Dwellings #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/dwellings-1-by-jay-stephens/
Last updated: 2023-08-15T14:03:42.000Z
Imagine a world where today’s comics weren’t shaped exclusively by the comics of the Marvel and DC books of the 1960s and 1970s. Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Carmine Infantino could still have done the work that they did just without the endless imitators that followed. In this hypothetical world, instead of Marvel and DC dominating the market, we all would have been reading Disney, Harvey, and Archie comics that would have cemented what we thought about comics and cartooning. Comics would continue to evolve into the 1980s, maybe with Frank Miller trying to be Warren Kremer instead of Jack Kirby. Deconstruction of Archie Andrews and Casper the Friendly Ghost could have still come during that time, followed by the Image Revolution but all based around the look and feel of a Richie Rich comic. Got that picture in your head? Good.
Cartoonist Jay Stephens’s new book **Dwellings #1** comes from that imagined world. But in this world, the stories in the comics have not remained stagnant kid stuff. Just like in our world, new writers and artists have come along in this dreamt-of world to push comics so we would get crime comics, romance comics, action comics, and yes, even horror comics where the stories have developed to match the growing tastes of their audiences and creators. Back in the 1990s, Jay Stephen’s already had one foot in this world; during the Image Age of comics when everyone tried to look like the bastard child of Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee, Stephens was giving us wonderfully retro books like *Tales of Atomic City* and *The Land of Nod*. Before he abandoned us for presumably a better-paying gig, Jay Stephens’s stories harkened back to a different mode of comics than the grim-and-gritty zeitgeist that was the 1990s.
Both stories in this comic take place in the fictional town of Elwich, Ontario, which seems from the outside like a normal, bucolic Canadian town but both stories quickly reveal a darker side to Elwich’s character. The first story features a young man, who after accidentally killing someone, is haunted by crows until in his madness he becomes a killer. In the second story, a psychiatry student visits the town, hoping to gain insight into another dark secret that the town hides from the outside. Like the first story, the student Dawn finds herself caught up in the horrors she’s trying to research. In the two stories, Stephens follows these characters who become trapped by forces that are trying to pull them into the town’s frights.
Somehow, these stories manage to be disturbingly dark but adorably cute. Stephens navigates this tension between his images and his plot, drawing these creepy and suspenseful stories in a clear and bouncy style. But it’s almost scarier this way because there are none of the usual ways to hide what’s happening- no shadows or visual misdirections. After all, that’s just not built deeply into the vocabulary of this kind of cartooning. In the first story, after 19-year-old Jordan kills a man in a park, his descent into madness is almost worse because he looks like any other precocious kid. It’s like Richie Rich had a psychotic breakdown and killed everyone in his family; it seems like most versions of that today would be drawn in a more realistic style (see [Archie Comics’ recentish attempts at horror](http://www.panelpatter.com/2016/10/halloween-horror-chilling-adventures-of.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) as if bringing the characters more into a world that we would expect those horrors to occur in. Stephens keeps the style and the visual rules of these kids’ comics firmly in place but he unleashes a spiritual darkness on them that seems even more insidious because of our perceived innocence of these child-like characters.
Stephens is operating on what we would think to be two different levels— a visual one that speaks to our childhood and our innocence and a plot level that’s a reminder of just how cruel and broken the world is. As we see take in his approach, Stephens doesn’t act as if there is a disconnect here. Or at least he is using these stories to show that those disconnects aren’t really there. He’s telling these psychologically twisted stories that are frightening no matter what the visuals are. Stephens is diving into these dark stories of these broken and hurting souls that match any horror story on the big screen today. And it’s all there; it’s all right up front on the page because his art doesn’t try to hide from the audience. This kind of cartooning is really all about the character and the emotions of these people. It’s actually kind of refreshing to read these kinds of stories and be able to experience them on this child-like level because that’s what the art allows us to do. Scooby Doo is one of the things that comes the closest to this in terms of mingling stories and genres but Jordan’s madness would permanently scar Shaggy, Thelma, and the rest of the gang.
### Advance Review: We Will No Longer Have To Cover Each Other’s Wounds by Siyuan Wen
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/advance-review-we-will-no-longer-have-to-cover-each-others-wounds-by-siyuan-wen/
Last updated: 2023-07-28T04:22:17.000Z
*Disclaimer: [Fieldmouse Press](https://www.fieldmouse.press/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) provided a review copy of this book. Even before they did that, I had supported this book through their [Kickstarter campaign](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fieldmousepress/we-will-no-longer-have-to-cover-each-others-wounds?ref=fromcovertocover.com) which runs until August 9th.*
*I have also been a supporter of Fieldmouse Press through [their Patreon for their online literary journal Solrad](https://www.patreon.com/solrad/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com).*
---
There’s a push-pull happening in Siyuan Wen’s **We Will No Longer Have To Cover Each Other’s Wounds**. Actually, there are a lot of different types of pushing and pulling happening in this book as a man wrestles with the memories of his late mother. There’s the back and forth between the past and the present, between a mother and a son, between what is happening and what is a memory of what happened. On nearly every page, Wen crafts this tension between what is and what was, either through his text (his drawings and words) or through something just below the text, something unseen but felt through the images. Call it empathy or just a collective response to loss but Wen’s pages draw you into Anna and Wayde’s presences to create a triangular bond between the two characters and the reader. But maybe it isn’t triangular but more linear, with Anna and Wayde being the two endpoints and the reader acting as an outside force that mediates how close or how far apart those points are depending on their reading of this story. So maybe we’re the ones doing that pushing and pulling.
We read this story as Wayde’s story, the son left by his mother to go through her belongings and his memories just trying to make some sense of everything. Sitting in his mother’s apartment and playing her piano, Wen brings Wayde’s memories to the foreground as a young Anna stands over her young son’s crib, holding her hand out to tickle Wayde as he’s tickling that piano’s keys in the present. “Say it,” she coaxes her son. “Wayde. Say ‘mama.’” It’s such a motherly thing to ask but the boy just stares up impassively, eyes wide taking in the world around him but not giving her mother what she asks for. She picks her one up and dances around the room with him as decades in the future he plays the piano just for her. The words “I love you so much,” hang in the air, between the gutters of the page but who said it- the son or the mother? Or both?
This opening sequence of a mother and son being so present for the other but not getting what they want or need from the other speaks so much to this relationship. In life and in death, Anna and Wayde seem to be there for one another when needed without being present for the other as they would be looking for from their mother or their son. They occupy the same spaces and memories but for Wen, there’s always a gulf between them, whether it’s a physical space or it’s the time between memories. So after his mother dies, Wayde is left alone to close that space with the memories.
Filling in that emptiness, we’re left to figure out what kind of mother Anna was and what kind of son Wayde was. The answer to that seems to be that they were mysteries to one another. We move through this book with Wayde witnessing the remains of his mother’s life— an apartment filled with years of relics of a life and fragments of memories that a mother passed down to her son. It’s through these fragments and memories that we get to know both of them as much as they and Wen allow us to. Wen manages to be both open with these characters and protective of them as well. We only know them through what Wayde remembers. So we see Anna through his memories but we also see him through what he remembers. What we see is what’s important to Wayde at the moment; what’s important to him as he uncovers and curates his mother’s life.
Wen creates this visual poem for his explorations. There’s a rhyme and meter to his pages that are told through specific narrative movements that require us to spend the time with them, trying to see beyond the text to get to an interpretive reading of this story. He uses different drawing tools, everything from pencil to paint to draw us into this poem. Nearly every drawing and word in this book has some meaning beyond the surface level. And he knows what he’s doing. “You locked the spinning ceramic dancer forever in a worn music box,” Wayde reflects about his mother. “I was too young to understand what metaphor was, to comprehend that kind of mental divergence, relentlessly attributing strong signs to ordinary objects.” That’s what Wayde and Wen are both going through now, finding the artifacts of a life but trying to decipher their meaning and significance. Wayde was looking for his mother to offer some cipher in her belongings just as we explore these pages to find the guideposts that Wen is laying for us to follow him.
Anna is the void in this book that we’re all trying to fill. She’s a mystery not to be solved but to be put to rest. At one point, Wayde talks about how there was no funeral when his mother died and even how he didn’t understand her death until he found a photo of her in a drawer. He moves into her apartment as if to fill that void. Anna’s name is scratched out of the mailbox label and Wayde’s is written above hers. It’s as if the only way to understand her is to inhabit the spaces that she did. Wen’s characters, both the son and the mother, are looking for a connection in death that they couldn’t find in life. She has left these things for him, curated a story for him through these knickknacks she accumulated, and now he has to read them and figure out what her life and her death mean to him.
And we’re here to both witness this and to come to our own understanding of these lives and Wen’s work here. We’re placed in this odd role of being a mediator as well as an audience for Wayde and Anna. Wayde may be trying to understand his mother but we’re trying to understand both of them. Wen pulls us into these lives to the point where they both haunt us even after we get to the back page. You’ll want to immediately flip back to the first page, rereading this with the knowledge of these people that you’ve picked up on the first read. You’ll want to use the gained knowledge to go back and see what you missed the first time around. And then when you get to the end of the book for a third time, you’ll go back to the first page and want to dive right back in. Siyuan Wen’s **We Will No Longer Have To Cover Each Other’s Wounds** starts to work on you, transferring both its wounds and its healing to you. And it’s something that you’ll want to experience over and over again.
---
For more preview art, check out the [Kickstarter campaign](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fieldmousepress/we-will-no-longer-have-to-cover-each-others-wounds?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [also their announcement on Solrad](https://solrad.co/announcing-we-will-no-longer-have-to-cover-each-others-wounds-by-siyuan-wen-live-on-kickstarter-on-july-10th?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for this book.
---
### “… So Film Me Until My Dying Breath.”- Goodbye, Eri by Tatsuki Fujimoto
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/goodbye-eri-by-tatsuki-fujimoto-review/
Last updated: 2023-07-24T16:06:44.000Z
Tatsuki Fujimoto’s latest book **Goodbye, Eri** functions as a sort of sequel to last year’s *Look Back* (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/look-back-by-tatsuki-fujimoto/)*,*) thematically picking up from where that book left off. In the earlier book, we got to experience the growth of a great friendship and partnership, watching two young women bond over a love of manga and storytelling until a tragedy cut that relationship short. Fujimoto took us through an emotional rollercoaster in that book. **Goodbye, Eri** follows a similar pattern— two school-age kids bond over their shared love of movies and their outsider status in school. But the tragedy in this book is there for both kids, Yuta and Eri— one explicitly experiencing it while the other hides it from her friend and the audience.
A boy is given a smartphone for his birthday. Yuta is just starting middle school so getting a phone at that age isn’t all that odd. But what is odd is the request that comes with it: his dying mother asks him to start making videos of her with his new phone. “On video, you can hear my voice and see me move,” she says. “That way, even if I’m gone, you can still remember me.” Through his phone’s camera lens, he captures the final days, weeks, and months of his mother’s life, filtered by the love a son has for his mother. After she dies, he takes that footage (about 100 hours of it,) and turns it into a movie to show to his school. But he couldn’t capture it all; when his father told him that this was it and his mother wanted him to film her dying breath, he couldn’t and ran away from the hospital. In his film, which up to this point has been told through his point of view, the pov shifts away from Yuta. We see him running away from the hospital as any child would want to do at that moment just as the hospital behind him blows up. Spectacular special effect explosions punctuate this film that’s about the last days of his mother. Yuta called the film “Dead Explosion Mother.” One of his teachers asks him why did he have an explosion at the end. “That was awesome, right?” is his only answer. His schoolmates are just as puzzled. One girl, whose mother also died in the last year, tells him that she can’t forgive him. Repeating the teacher, she asks “Why’d you add the explosion at the end? That’s the question here.
And that’s only the beginning of the book.
The whole of **Goodbye, Eri** is told through the screen of Yuta’s phone. Using a fairly static structure (four landscaped panels on most pages,) we’re experiencing this story through Yuta’s eyes and his phone. So when he meets Eri, the one person in his school that connects with “Dead Explosion Mother,” we’re experiencing it in this odd liminal space, removed from the events themselves. We’re watching this as it happens but also watching a movie of the events, distanced from the events themselves. This is what art, whether it’s comics, movies, television, or novels, is- a space between what is and what’s happening next. Yuta’s eyes are our eyes but with the movie and its exploding hospital, he early on establishes himself as a bit of an unreliable narrator. While he may have run away from the hospital as his mother was dying in it, it didn’t blow up like he was in some cool action movie. After his movie is rejected by the school’s audience, he films a suicide note on the stairs leading to the hospital's roof. That’s where he meets Eri and everything changes.
Yuta describes his movie to Eri
This feels like a very personal story of friendship, sickness, death, and memories but Fujimoto keeps his audience at a distance through the smartphone camera. *Look Back* was similarly emotionally charged but was much more intimate because Fujimoto placed us in the room with the two young women; we were there with them as they created their stories. The structure of **Goodbye, Eri** doesn’t allow us that intimacy with Yuta and Eri. They’re often in the same space, watching movies, planning out Yuta’s next one, trying to discover what the story is and it feels like we’re there with them but we’re not. Whether it’s to protect himself or his characters, he sets up this distance, holding his audience back from being there with these two.
We’re constantly viewing Yuta and Eri through the construct of a camera that’s being operated by someone (Fujimoto?) who almost from the start of the story disguises portions of the truth with fiction. Are we watching Yuta and Eri or just a movie about them? Are these events real for the two of them or are they a fiction crafted by someone behind the camera? Fujimoto repeatedly forces us to ask if we’re experiencing these characters or watching these characters. And it’s not that a movie can’t be intimate; it’s more like Fujimoto doesn’t want us to get that close to this story as if he’s protecting his characters in a way that he couldn’t in *Look Back*.
After seeing Yuta’s film about his mother’s illness and death, Eri helps guide him in making his next movie. She acts as a muse, a dream, a benefactor, and a subject for Yuta’s movie which is about a boy having to process the grief of his mother’s death through the making of a movie. It’s life imitating art imitating life. But this way of dealing with loss through imaginative acts harkens back to the last portion of *Look Back*, where Fujino fantasizes about a world where she was able to save Kyomoto from a random, deadly attack. Fujimoto is processing something deeply personal in these two books, exploring loss and how we try to contextualize our feelings about it. And he does this through artists and acts of art. It’s looking for ways to protect ourselves from the depths of grief through our ability to create stories about it.
Together, **Goodbye, Eri** and *Look Back* have this complicated dialogue going on between them about the ways we experience loss. **Goodbye, Eri** is more guarded than in the earlier book, keeping some secrets to itself as Fujimoto sets up a WIzard Of Oz-like veil of the camera lens but never quite lets us see what’s behind it. And it’s not to mislead us but to protect himself and his characters. They never become our characters the way that the two in *Look Back* do. There’s a warmth in that and in *Look Back* that’s missing from **Goodbye, Eri.** In the place of warmth, there’s an ambiguous longing for past connections where Fujimoto trusts his audience to understand what’s missing without telling them how they should grieve those losses.
### Learning To See the Unseen in Jenna Cha and Lonnie Nadler's The Sickness Chapter One
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-sickness-chapter-one-by-jenna-cha-and-lonnie-nadler-review/
Last updated: 2023-07-12T14:30:06.000Z
> *“I don’t know… Maybe the world shakes different now. There are things hiding in the air, waiting to come alive.”*
In Jenna Cha’s artwork in **The Sickness, Chapter One**, something is happening in it that we can’t see. It’s just outside of our sight; maybe it’s happening on a different frequency than our vision can adjust to or it’s something that our brains are trained to filter out of our perceptions for the sake of our own sanity. Set in Minnesota in 1945 and Colorado in 1955, Cha and writer Lonnie Nadler’s first issue constantly hints at things that most of us can’t see. Whether it’s Danny, sitting in an Indiana diner, so focused on the building across the street and its windows which don’t provide anything more than a surface glimpse into what’s happening in the building, or a Colorado mother who saw things in and on her family before she took an ax to them, Cha and Nadler lay the groundwork of unseen horrors. Dale, the son who somehow survives the brutal, murderous attack by his mother, describes her visions from this hospital bed; “Mom… she… she said there were… holes everywhere. And bumps and… teeth and… she said they were crawling on me,” and then adds “… and she kept saying there was someone else in the house.”
Danny and Dale’s mother’s perceptions function on a level that ours simply can’t at the start of this story. Cha lays in these brief and shocking moments where our perceptions start to match theirs, as we see people with their eyes as if we’re adjusting to this new reality. We see the holes, the bumps, and the madness as if the narrative is rewiring our brains to align with these characters. **The Sickness Chapter One** isn’t trying to exist in our world; it’s pulling us into its world. This world looks and feels a lot like ours; it’s recognizable and easy to mistake for the real world. But on the first page, Cha and Nadler are already taking us outside of the norm.
The Sickness Chapter One, page 1
The issue opens with an extreme closeup of an eye and then slowly pulls out over 4 more panels to reveal Danny’s face, overlaid with the building that he’s watching from across the street. We move from an extremely internal state of being to a state that’s in tension between the internal and external. This is the beginning of the readjustment that Cha and Nadler are performing on our perceptions, trying to force us into a kind of synchronicity with the narrative before ejecting us from it by placing us on a seemingly normal street, with four panels of relative normality, circa 1945.
The Sickness Chapter One, page 2
But then there’s that kid, doing what a kid does, probably looking at his reflection in the window, unaware of his appearance to anyone on the other side of the diner’s window. There’s nothing sinister in the action but everything sinister in the timing of it. This is how Cha and Nadler keep us riveted to the story, by being so vivid in their depiction of 1945 that we’re looking for the shadows obscuring what we can’t see. In these moments, there’s a literalness to Cha’s artwork that makes it difficult to look away from them. She creates a realism in the things that we can’t see.
The Sickness Chapter One, page 3
That’s what makes **The Sickness Chapter One** so much more suspenseful. We can immediately sense through the art that there’s a reality these characters can see that we can’t. Cha and Nadler then show us that only Danny is tuned into whatever exists outside of our sight; his friends chide him and laugh at him in the cruel way that friends can, also unable to catch a glimpse of what he sees and what haunts him. Only Danny can see it but slowly our perceptions start to line up with his and that’s maybe the scariest thing in this issue as we can begin to see the world behind the world here. So when the story jumps 10 years and half a country away in the second half of the issue, maybe we begin to understand what a suburban housewife sees, the holes and the bumps and the teeth crawling on people.
There’s no place for the reader to hide in this story. Whether it’s Minnesota in 1945 or Colorado in 1955, there’s this disease that permeates these times and these places. Jenna Cha and Lonnie Nadler maybe aren’t carriers of this disease but they are practitioners of it, using this comic to turn it into a viral system that’s just starting to worm its way into our consciousnesses.
### My Claremont Year- May/June 2023
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-may-june-2023/
Last updated: 2023-07-05T14:36:07.000Z
Around the end of 2022 a thought struck me; have I ever read all of Chris Claremont’s X-Men? I think I’ve collected it all in one form or another (or even multiple forms) but there’s a point in the mid-1980s where a lot of it becomes fuzzy in my memory. I probably read it when it was coming out but more out of the inertia of collecting than any love of it. So armed with several omnibuses, Marvel Unlimited, and whatever back issue diving I need to do, I’ve set the goal to read his 16-year run on X-Men, New Mutants, and other related books, probably also eventually including some Louise Simonson New Mutants and X-Factor here as well since the series are so tied together.
As much as this is to check out these stories again, I want to see if there’s a completeness to the story that Claremont was telling, starting with his first issue, **X-Men #94* (1975), and extending all the way through **X-Men #3* (1991). Maybe by the end of 2023, I’ll have some kind of grand unified theory of Chris Claremont’s time on the book or maybe I’ll just have read a lot of comics that range from “not bad” to “what were they thinking?”.
This month, we're covering 1984 to 1986, a bridging period in ****Uncanny X-Men** be coming.
- Uncanny X-Men #189- 209
- New Mutants #22-44
- Uncanny X-Men Annual #8, 9, & 10
- X-Men /Alpha Flight #1 & 2
- Marvel Fanfare #40
- New Mutants Special #1
- New Mutant Annual #2
- Nightcrawler #1-4
- Power Pack #40
- Web of Spider-Man Annual #2
- Longshot #1-6
---
Before we begin, it was [The Claremont Run](https://twitter.com/ClaremontRun?ref=fromcovertocover.com) on Twitter that really sparked my interest in revisiting Claremont's X-Men. For the last couple of years, that account was daily exploring aspects of Claremont's run, mostly diving into Claremont's own work regarding characters, identity, and gender. It really dove into the 16-year run and peeled back the richness of the text.
Two weeks ago, project lead J. Andrew Deman announced that [The Claremont Run](https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477325452/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) is now going to be a book published later this year from University of Texas Press.
> ****A data-driven deep dive into a legendary comics author’s subversion of gender norms within the bestselling comic of its time.**
>
> By the time Chris Claremont’s run as author of *Uncanny X-Men* ended in 1991, he had changed comic books forever. During his sixteen years writing the series, Claremont revitalized a franchise on the verge of collapse, shaping the X-Men who appear in today’s Hollywood blockbusters. But, more than that, he told a new kind of story, using his growing platform to articulate transgressive ideas about gender nonconformity, toxic masculinity, and female empowerment.
> J. Andrew Deman’s investigation pairs close reading and quantitative analysis to examine gender representation, content, characters, and story structure. *The Claremont Run* compares several hundred issues of *Uncanny X-Men* with a thousand other Marvel comics to provide a comprehensive account of Claremont’s sophisticated and progressive gender politics. Claremont’s X-Men upended gender norms: where female characters historically served as mere eye candy, Claremont’s had leading roles and complex, evolving personalities. Perhaps more surprisingly, his male superheroes defied and complicated standards of masculinity. Groundbreaking in their time, Claremont’s comics challenged readers to see the real world differently and transformed pop culture in the process.
I'm looking forward to checking this out when I'm close to the end of my time with these books.
And now, onto your regularly scheduled programming:
---
So I think I’m somewhere around halfway through my reread of Claremont, give or take a year or two, having read over 100 issues of Claremont’s **X-Men** run and most of his **New Mutants** run (there’s only about a half year left to go of **New Mutants** after this.). The next major storyline to get into after these issues is the “Mutant Massacre” arc, where the X-Men get pulled into a cycle of crossovers (Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, Inferno, Days of Future Present, X-Tinction Agenda, and Muir Island Saga) that define and shape Claremont’s remaining years chronicling Marvel’s mutants. These issues of **Uncanny X-Men**, covering #189 to #209 feel like a transition point for Claremont.
By this time, **Uncanny X-Men** has become a big success for Marvel. Claremont has seen these characters go from newcomers that no one knew to be the most popular book thing on the comic racks so Claremont starts to see just how far he can push this book before Marvel and Jim Shooter try to take it over. Storm has been robbed of her powers, Rogue is still a bit of a wild card on the team, and over in **New Mutants**, Claremont starts to follow some narrative trails that he planted early in that title’s run. There’s a strong feeling in these issues that something is coming. The strong presence of Rachel Summers in these issues, reintroducing her in the current timeline from the “Days of Future Past” storyline suggests that the future isn’t quite as written in stone as we thought and that anything could happen.
from **Uncanny X-Men #209**, art by John Romita Jr. and P. Craig Russell
The daughter of Scott Summers and Jean Grey from an alternate future timeline, Rachel’s story is a reminder of the fate that “Days of Future Past” showed us— mutants dead or collected into concentration camps, constantly guarded by Sentinels— while her appearance in the X-Men’s present is already a change to that established timeline. Future X-Men writers would use the idea of a dystopian future to tell all kinds of far-out and disconnected stories but Claremont uses Rachel as an agent of disruption. She’s a woman out of time, from a time that probably doesn’t exist anymore. Her mother is dead before she ever gave birth; her father is married to another woman who’s pregnant with Cyclop’s son. Rachel shouldn’t exist. She’s the impossible girl living an impossible life.
With this disruption, Claremont uses this time to mess around a bit with what and who we think the X-Men are. As if one troubled telepath/telekinetic running around wasn’t enough, Charles Xavier finds out that he has a son with reality-altering powers and multiple personalities. David Haller’s story (**NM #26-28**) plays out in the pages of the junior team, having the New Mutants confront facts about their mentor that the X-Men haven’t had to. In **Uncanny X-Men**, Xavier is the wise mentor and teacher. But over time, the X-Men became more his equals than his students. Storm and Wolverine have learned all that they can from him but for the New Mutants, they’re still the students but they get to witness Xavier’s failings in ways that the X-Men never did.
**Uncanny X-Men #200**, art by John Romita Jr. and Dan Green
Xavier is on interesting ground in this period, dealing with rebellious teenage students while also having to adjust to the fact his older compatriots don’t need him in that way anymore. He and Storm butt heads over who should lead the team after he regains the use of his legs. He wants to be out in the field but doesn’t have the experience that the X-Men have. He’s trying to protect these teenagers, to teach them, but more often than not, he falls short. This is probably the most human time we see for Xavier; he isn’t the holier-than-thou leader of the X-Men. He’s a man who is forced to recognize that’s all he is; he’s no saint. And then when it comes to the point where he has to leave this world in **Uncanny X-Men #200**, he appoints the X-Men’s deadliest enemy Magneto to take his position and run the school.
The other longtime X-Man that Claremont removes from his story at this point is Cyclops. Since the death of Jean Grey, Cyclops has left the team multiple times but somehow or another, he’s always pulled back in. So Storm has had to deal with two men who are used to leading the X-Men, Scott Summers and Charles Xavier. Xavier gets critically wounded and can only find the necessary healing in space with his beloved Lilandra. For Storm, that’s one down. But with Scott, Claremont had spent a couple of years showing him and Storm getting in each other’s and the X-Men’s way when it came down to who was leading this team. Cyclops just assumed that he was Xavier’s anointed one because he always was but over time, Claremont wrote Storm and showed that she had earned the right to lead this team. Cyclops was given the team but Storm made it her team.
These are two characters that Claremont had struggled with throughout the first 10 years of his run because they tied the X-Men to their past, to the Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Roy Thomas days of the team. This is something that Marvel obviously wanted at this point, having turned The Defenders into some kind of X-Men West team with Angel, Beast, and Iceman over there leading that team. Bringing Rachel into the X-Men, having her take her mother’s place as Phoenix feels like a way forward but only works as long as Jean Grey remains dead, which only lasted so long and led to the launch of X-Factor, the original X-Men posing as mutant bounty hunters. But that feels like a story for another day.
**Uncanny X-Men Annual #9**, art by Art Adams
Interestingly at this time, Claremont writes *The Asgardian War*epic. Over four issues (**X-Men/Alpha Flight**, **New Mutants Special #1,** and **Uncanny X-Men Annual #9,**) Claremont spins this story about all of the mutants fighting for survival on Asgard, Thor’s mythical home. The story pits the X-Men and New Mutants against Loki, who offers everything to the mutants at the cost of their own freedom. The story is probably most memorable for Art Adam’s artwork in the final two chapters but in the midst of all of these tight and personal stories that Claremont is working on, really putting his characters through the emotional ringers, he shows he can still do the big and epic stories. A few years later and this would probably have been a huge crossover event, with most Marvel comics tying into it one way or another, but before he disrupts everything in **Uncanny X-Men #200**, where Xavier leaves for (almost) good, Claremont gets to write a story showing that his characters can stand up to gods.
By **Uncanny X-Men #209**, Claremont has what’s his team- Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat, & Colossus. Even Magneto is a member by this point as Claremont has reformed the villain into a dubious replacement for Xavier. This introduces some good character conflict in **Uncanny X-Men** and **New Mutants** as this is a role that Magneto was never built for. It puts Magneto in a different situation, having to be a protector of more than just his narrow vision of what the world should be. Since at least **UXM #150**, Claremont had been pushing the character to be more than just a mustache-twirling villain but not every character is built to be a pure hero.
These issues around **UXM #200**, mark a bridge for the title and Claremont’s run of the book. These are some of the last issues for some time to feature such staples as Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the SR-71, or even the more cosmic aspects that have been part of the book up to this point. Claremont dismantles these ties to the past to push into the future. And he’s been on the book for 10 years at this point so it makes sense that he would have to do something to keep himself engaged and going on to redefine the status quo would be the best way to do it.
### The Seductive Dive into the Underbelly of Desire and Escapism in Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Night Fever
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/night-fever-ed-brubaker-sean-phillips-review/
Last updated: 2023-06-28T22:00:00.000Z
It seems easy– sneak into an underground party using someone else’s name off of the guest list. It’s a quick and hopefully, pain-free escape from your own life, as boring but solid as it may be. Two kids, a wife, and a house in the suburbs– that’s the American dream but is it enough? If you read enough Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ comics (*Criminal, Reckless, The Fade Out…*) it’s easy to understand the desire to be an outlaw– it isn’t about breaking the law as much as it is living outside of the confines of the law. It’s this nagging fear that the American dream is being a cog in a machine, not really living until you’ve broken someone’s nose with your fist or gotten away with the heist of a lifetime. Brubaker and Phillips’ comics aren’t cautionary tales as much as they are stories that show us the cruelty of life outside of norms and laws as if that’s just what life is. That’s the normal state of existence and anything else is an abnormality to that status quo.
In their newest book **Night Fever**, Jonathan Webb is at that point of his midlife crisis where instead of going out to buy a Corvette, he wanders into a French underground party and enters into a whole new world. It’s not the type of party that Jonathan Webb could ever get into but someone named Griffin walks through this world effortlessly. To Webb, “Griffin” is just a name on a guestlist, an easy lie for Webb to say that he’s Griffin to get in the front door. It’s just another mask, like the one he’s given for the party to circulate among the beautiful people and their sex, their drugs, their lawlessness. For the night, Webb is Griffin and he’s one of them. And then he meets Rainer, who shows him more of this hidden world, and takes him deeper and deeper into it until Webb can barely remember the wife and kids that are waiting for him at home, almost starting to believe that he could be this Griffin.
The things that keep a man away at night (art by Sean Phillips & Jacob Phillips)
This feels like a different kind of story for Brubaker and Phillips; certainly different in tone and scope than the *Reckless* series that they’ve spent the last couple of years working on. There are the standard hallmarks of their stories- the view of life from an outside perspective– but this book, with Jacob Phillips’s seductive colors, is less concerned about the plot and how it moves from point A to point B before finally reaching point C as it is fascinated with creating a tone and a mood for these characters to inhabit and navigate. Webb is a man who’s chasing a feeling; he’s not some career criminal who’s out just for himself. He’s hit a point in his 45-year-old life where there’s this nagging thought in the back of his mind that there’s got to be something more. And he finds it at a party beneath the streets of Paris, but he’s still a 45-year-old man, wearing his glasses over his mask as he’s not able to completely shed who he is. He thinks he blends in perfectly, with no one realizing that he’s an impostor. But the glasses keep him from ever fully becoming the Griffin that he imagines himself to be.
The pair of Sean and Jacob Phillips create a dream-like atmosphere for this story. Through the hazy lavender tones of these French nights, we walk into a different world; it’s the difference between the waking world and the sleeping world. This is a book that has the main character trying to find himself in the quiet moments. It’s easy for Webb to get lost in the big, violent, and visceral times but in between those, Phillips draws these scenes often with just Webb and one other person where Webb is trying to figure out if he’s Webb or Griffin. You can flip to most pages and it’s just Webb/Griffin navigating the nights between these loud, bombastic events, talking to Rainer or someone else. Phillips finds as much, if not more, drama in these more contemplative pages as Webb tries to figure out just how lost he wants to get in this dream world.
art by Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips
Brubaker’s writing wrestles with age, picking up threads from his and Phillips’ 2020 *Pulp* ([reviewed over at Panel Patter](http://www.panelpatter.com/2020/08/Ed-BrubakerSean-Phillips-Pulp.html?m=1&ref=fromcovertocover.com).) But where the older story was exploring age from the end of a life, this one is looking at it from the middle, when there’s still some chance of change, a chance of something new to happen. Jonathan Webb has one foot in this world and one foot outside of it. He’s unquestioningly open to the seduction that the night and Rainer offer to him. A coworker flat-out tells him that he has the life that most of them want. “You’re livin’ the dream… House in the suburbs… Picket fence, family… the whole deal… You **made it**, Jon,” she says as he brushes off his accomplishments. He’s got the life and that’s not enough for him.
Using that malaise, Brubaker enters some real Hitchcockian territory (maybe blended with a bit of Scorcese’s *After Hours*,) exploring an ordinary man entering into extraordinary circumstances. But for Brubaker, the extraordinary is either some kind of seduction or addiction here. Maybe it’s both. Webb gets a hit of another life and suddenly it’s all he wants. He is looking both forward and backward in his life and trying to figure out which one he wants more. He knows which one is more exciting and gives him a thrill and he risks everything to stay in that world a little bit longer. Even as the experiences lead to him starting to lose touch with reality (drugs will do that to you!), the life that Rainer shows to him has a pull on him. “And I’m not even going to pretend that I didn’t want it to go on forever… With the chosen ones… Where I clearly belonged.”
This being a Brubaker/Phillips joint, nothing is ever that simple. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips take us on this journey into the darkness and challenge us to find our own way out of it. The mirror that **Night Fever** holds up to the reader is a reminder that our lives should be re-examined; it just shows us how badly that kind of re-examination could go.
### Poison Ivy: The Virtuous Cycle - A Dark and Complex Journey of Revenge and Redemption
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/poison-ivy-the-virtuous-cycle-g-willow-wilson-marcio-takara/
Last updated: 2023-06-14T15:16:59.000Z
Up front, let’s establish a bit of honesty— Pamela Isley, more commonly known as the Batman rogue Poison Ivy, is a monster. Not in the literal sense that she turns into some monstrous creature but in that she’s a monstrous person in G. Willow Wilson and Marcio Takara’s **Poison Ivy: The Virtuous Cycle**. This book, the first in a new series, actually reads more like it’s the beginning of the last season of a prestige television show, where we’re spent years watching a deeply flawed anti-hero try to hold everything together to reach their goals even as the world and the law close in around them. Their days are numbered; it’s not a question of how it will end but how *badly* will it end. It’s Walter White thinking that he’s conquered the world even as more dangerous and more evil forces than he toy with him as if he’s their plaything. That’s the opening of this book as it builds off of some Batman event or DC crossover but Wilson and Takara deftly slide by all of that, using it as the setup to give us some clues to Ivy’s headspace without requiring us to get into the details of stuff that we probably don’t want to know.
Having been mostly depowered in whatever happened in the past, Isley begins a road trip out to the west coast to try to find the one person who can help her regain her lost glory. But Wilson and Takara quickly establish that this trip is more than just a journey to reconnect with someone from Isley’s past, trying to recreate some magic that’s been lost— this is a revenge story where Isley plans to scorch the earth behind her, killing the humanity that’s ravaged the nature that she’s been so intimately tied to in the past. Wilson writes Ivy as a pure anti-hero; she may be our protagonist and written from a sympathetic point of view but from nearly any other perspective, she’s the rough beast slowly slouching towards the west coast with a righteous anger pushing her forward.
This book feels deeply rooted (pun fully intended) in Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, and Tatjana Wood’s 1980’s *Swamp Thing* run. Marcio Takara and Arif Prianto’s art and colors (joined for part of the book by Brian Level on art) capture the beauty of nature and the horror of flora unleashed. Takara’s storytelling shows us everything we need to know about Isley; her power, her rage, her control, and her love. Similar to how Bissette and Totleben were able to draw a horror story about nature, Takara’s depiction of that nature weaponized against humanity turns Isley from the victim of some other story into a woman taking control of her life in the most brutal ways possible. It’s about finding the horror in the natural. Takara shows us all of these different sides of Isley, drawing us into her strength and her insecurities, as she navigates her ability to wreak terror in the name of justice.
Wilson gives us a view into Isley’s emotional state through first-person narration in the form of a letter written to her love Harley Quinn. As Isley defiantly road trips across America, her letters to Harley show a woman defined equally by her anger and her love. Wilson’s Isley is more than the supervillain that she’s often depicted as in Batman comics and separating her from Harley puts her on unsteady ground. Usually, she’s either the one in control or the stabilizing influence in an otherwise unsteady relationship. But here, Wilson writes her as a woman trying to fulfill a purpose while trying to fill a void in her soul. She’s lost something and this trip is her attempt to regain it. It’s more than just her powers that are lost; it’s her direction.
With that letter, Isley is writing to us; we’re the recipient of Isley’s internal dialogue. During the chilling climax, she writes to Harley, “I’m telling you this because I know you won’t judge me for it. Well, maybe you will but you won’t hate me for it. And that’s the important thing.” It’s what one lover writes to another, looking to hold onto that connection even as Isley thinks that she’s doing everything she can to break it. And yet it’s also Wilson, through Isley, writing to us hoping that we see Isley for who she is; she may be a monster because of her murderous actions but she’s more than that. Can we read about this troubled woman and not hate her? Isley is asking us for an absolution that an absent lover is not able to provide in the moment.
**Poison Ivy: The Virtuous Cycle** shows us a woman that’s trying to find herself while she’s also acting on her anger and her sense of justice. Wilson and Takara are showing us that it’s possible to empathize with someone who is multifaceted in contradictory ways; you can view Isley as a villain but still understand where she’s coming from and maybe even sympathize with her motivations. That’s what it is to be human- never just being one thing. This is a comic about a villain doing villainous things but Isley is the hero of her own story and that’s the strong draw into this story. But it’s also a fascinating question that this story leaves hanging— can you be a hero even if your actions are anything but heroic?
### Noah Van Sciver Explores Childhood Turmoil and the Power of a Good Comic in Maple Terrace #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/noah-van-sciver-maple-terrace-1/
Last updated: 2023-05-31T13:30:18.000Z
For Noah Van Sciver, **Maple Terrace #1** returns to the familiar territory of exploring his childhood, a story that he started in *One DirtyTree*. In an introductory paragraph titled “Hey! What is This?” he apologizes to his family. “Whenever I draw stories based on my childhood it fills my family with dread… I’m sorry to cause friction with any of them but I can’t leave it alone. I am an artist and I just explore these aspects of my life and tell my stories.” He calls it an “overwhelming compulsion” to create a narrative self-portrait of his life.
And apparently, 1992’s *Spawn #5* is a big part of that self-portrait.
Childhood for young Noah, the youngest of at least 5 kids, is the childhood of being an outcast. He sleeps on the floor of the room that he shares with two brothers, where a cockroach crawls over him in the middle of the night because he’s not allowed in one of the two beds in the room. A friend tells him that he’s no longer allowed to hang out with Noah because his mother suspects that Noah is stealing all of their graham crackers. Other kids don’t allow him to tag along when they want to light off some firecrackers after one of them regales the gang with tales of *Spawn #5* and how badass the villain Billy Kincaid is. “I thought I smelled a Van Sciver,” the kid says as if he didn’t even notice that Noah was there with them. And when Noah sneaks into his older brother’s attic room to try and read their *Spawn #5*, he may be taking his life into his hands if his brothers ever find out.
Words of Truth from Noah's Dad(about BWS, not Noah being a little maggot.)
Even if there were no words, Van Sciver’s art builds up the emotional climate of this issue. Looking at the images, there’s this feeling of uncertainty throughout every page that’s like a force acting upon the reader. This transference of oppressive emotions from the artist to the reader creates this growing sense of dread with every page turn and every new person that enters Noah’s life. Maybe it’s the terrorized look in Noah’s simple eyes, cartoony black dots within white circles, that’s all that Van Sciver needs to get to the emotional core of the story but every panel transmits the dread that Noah lives with every day.
It’s this atmosphere of fear that Noah grows up in. It’s rarely a nurturing home or neighborhood as Noah is almost an afterthought to everyone, including cruelly his parents. This isn’t an older and wiser Van Sciver looking back at his childhood with nostalgic-tinted memories. Except for one small act of grace by an older brother at the end of the issue, Van Sciver shows how he grew up under a strict rule of fear and terror, forced on him by nearly everyone in his life. At best for most of this issue, it seems like the moments where everyone around him is indifferent to him are what constitutes peace and belonging for Noah. Van Sciver reflects on his childhood with a memory that’s maybe (hopefully) too focused on the fear he experienced rather than the few moments where someone is honestly kind to him.
### Rick Veitch's The One: A Cold War Comic Reflecting Today's Superhero Culture and Humanity's Struggle for Unity
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-one-rick-veitch/
Last updated: 2024-03-28T01:06:31.000Z
“**Nothing** ever ends, Adrian. Nothing **ever** ends,” the being once known as Jon Osterman says before disappearing into a three-dimensional model of a solar system. A portion of New York has just been obliviated by a man once worshipped as the hero Ozymandias and the being who had the most power to do something about it just fades away.
Kicking a Kryptonite-infected Superman in the face with a spiked boot, Bruce Wayne growls, “I want you… to remember, Clark… in all the years to come… in your most private moments… I want you to remember… my hand… at your throat… I want… you to remember… the one man who beat you…” right before Wayne’s heart gives out and flatlines.
In some kind of heaven, the naked, cherubic, enlightened survivors of a corrupted world are serenaded by four lads from Liverpool singing “We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.” And thus ends Rick Veitch’s **The One**.
The One and Larry meet Charles
These are the 1980s texts that ushered in the age of superhero revisionism in American (read: DC & Marvel) comics: *Watchmen*, *The Dark Knight Returns*, and **The One**. Two of them are still considered classics today but the third is the type of comic that you almost had to be there for. Or at least, you have to know what Moore, Gibbons, and Miller we’re doing to see how Rick Veitch is having a discussion with them in **The One**. In the 1980s, we were just far enough from the 1960s to still have some of that idealism infecting us even while we were cynical enough (or maybe realistic enough) to believe that at any moment we were doing to die in nuclear annihilation. For those of us who were teenagers at the time, it was comics like those by Miller, Moore, Gibbons, and Veitch which expanded our worldview with their pessimistic take on our superheroes and our gods which guided us through school, puberty, teenage rebellion, indoctrinating us into a mistrust of the powers which ruled our world.
Looking back now, you can see these comics as trying to radicalize their audience into identifying the failures of their and past generations who mistakenly thought they fought the war to end all wars. They were identifying their own generation’s mistakes in viewing Superman or Batman as great Americans which we should all try to be like. These false idols were the stories of our youth, the golden gods until these creators tried to take them down a notch or two.
And at the time we thought these new texts and their worldviews were just cool comics.
Rick Veitch’s **The One** is a Cold War comic, pitting the godly Americans against the godless Soviets with superheroes as those governments’ weapons of mass destruction. The superman is more powerful and deadly than the atomic bomb in Veitch’s estimation and maybe it is because we were stupid enough to believe that we could control that much power. We’re Americans; we have might on our side thanks to our righteousness and our goodness. That’s what it came down to during the Cold War, wasn’t it? And that’s what a lot of us still want to believe our country is. The greatest country on Earth. Yeah, right.
The One/Larry encounters The Other
Veitch replaces the bomb with superheroes– the Americans have the brother/sister duo of Charles and Amelia, good kids given powers beyond imagining– Superman and Supergirl if Supergirl were supposedly his sister instead of cousin. The Soviets have their Bog, a superpowered god for a supposedly godless people. These patriotic “heroes” supposedly represent the best of what these different ideologies offer but they’re just that– mouthpieces and fists for powerful men who have different thoughts about how the world should run. There are many ways to read what Veitch is doing with these characters, from the clearly political (US vs. USSR) to the meta (a bit of Marvel vs DC, anyone?). Like Miller and Moore, Veitch is fascinated by the overindulgence of superheroes, telling this tale back when Rolling Stone magazine declared that comics weren’t just for kids anymore. This is superhero comics for people who want to have nightmares about superheroes.
You can draw a straight line from Veitch’s **The One** in the 1980s to Mark Millar’s work, specifically *The Ultimates*, with its contempt of the nationalized superhero. But Veitch offers a fascinating counterpoint to Charles, Amelia, and Bog with The One and The Other, two opposing forces that work on a more human level than politics. The titular The One is a black bodysuited with a series of concentric circles on his face and chest. If there’s a hero in this book, it’s The One and his message of unity and togetherness. The best of humanity brings all of us together as The One. The flip side of that is The Other, a mass of human bodies, each person trying to claw their way to the top in their selfish needs to be to have and be everything. The One is humanity’s connections while The Other is mankind’s cruelty and corrupted individualism.
The so-called superheroes operate on The Other’s level in their Cold War battles, seeking power and pleasure over all else. To bring **The One**’s story to life, Veitch focuses on a small group of people, a mother and her son, and their interracial couple, one of who just happens to be an honest-to-goodness 1960s hippie. The son, Larry, is the innocent child in this story; he hears and instinctually understands The One’s message. His mother Egypt is ultimately the conflicted character in this book, caught between The One and The Other (get it?), trying to find some kind of equilibrium between looking out for humanity or her own selfish pleasure.
Abandoning this world like Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen?
**The One** is Egypt’s story; everything else is set up to illustrate or reinforce the struggle that Egypt experiences. The battle of the superheroes is what the world of The Other looks like- fighting essentially for the sake of fighting. That’s a world of might makes right. It’s every Mark Millar book ever. Every. Single. One. Larry becomes the host of The One, bringing his unconditional love to the world. That’s the dream of the superhero. It’s Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s **All-Star Superman**, decades before that book came out. Veitch combines these differing viewpoints of superheroes to try to show us a view of what superheroes are and what they can be. They’re the decadence of the 1980s writ large but they can also be the hope for the future. The potential for both is in the idea of the superhero back then.
Here it is almost 40 years later and we’re circling back around these ideas as thanks to pop culture, the idea of superheroes is more popular than ever. Superheroes have dominated pop culture for the past 15 years the way that they dominated comic culture back in the 1980s. It’s the same cultural thirst for these ideas just with an insanely larger audience. Everything old is new again.
The 1989 King Hell black-and-white version of this story depicts a world that’s at the end of its life, corrupted by greed at nearly every level. It takes a character like Larry to remind us that there is some innocence in this world. Veitch’s drawings are dark, inky, over the top, and repulsive on a narrative level. His depiction of these physical and spiritual battles is designed to be another reflection of the failures of this world and our dreams. In his view, there is no difference here between the hero and the villain– it’s all about the powerful and the powerless and that’s how his art depicts everything. Well before Christopher Nolan’s Batman, this story is showing how you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. And nearly everyone here is a villain.
**The One** turns out to be as relevant if not more than it was originally in the 1980s. Superheroes are everywhere; we’re pretty much at war with Russia, and there’s a distinct lack of empathy in the world as it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. We’re living in the 21st century and it’s still a battle between The One or The Other. Now if anything, Veitch’s ultimate answer to everything seems a bit simple and naive. In the end, there’s still The One and The Other, with The One’s enlightened people giving up on the Earth to go and live in some heavenly realm while the Other’s mass of humanity still just slouches around the Earth. That’s how we supposedly win in **The One**, but there’s no angelic superhero coming to rescue us and take us off to a better place.
The 1989 King Hell collection
### The Gull Yettin is a Minimalist Masterpiece
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-gull-yettin-joe-kessler/
Last updated: 2023-05-22T13:00:15.000Z
Fair warning: This review is going to be effusive, to say the least.
Almost invariably, when I read a wordless graphic novel, I tend to blow through it fairly quickly. The narrative is usually sparse enough that my main endeavor is taking in the art on its own terms. I would contend that for most wordless graphic novels, the narrative is secondary to the art. But Kessler’s work is far different. I’ve never read anything like this before, wordless yet somehow absolutely complete in terms of its narrative ambitions.
I found myself examining every page, looking for even the most minute detail, both to take in the mesmerizing free-form beauty of every panel while also working to graph each position of the incredibly precise, fully formed story Kessler executes. It is not hyperbole for me to say that, in **The Gull Yettin**, Kessler does more without words than I could have possibly imagined. Most wordless graphic novels require much more work on the reader’s part to assemble the structure of the story, and it’s frankly astonishing how well laid out **The Gull Yettin** is. Kessler’s coup is his ability to impart significant emotion and narrative substance merely through body language and positioning. That he achieves so much with a fundamentally minimalist, fairly abstract style is mind-boggling. However, Kessler’s expressionism channels through his command of form, not the dissolution of it.
**The Gull Yettin** is a modern fairy tale of sorts set in a non-specific part of the late 20th century, possibly in the bleed between modern and postmodern. It feels funny to consider the temporal distance from this timeframe, one where screens exist, but are rare and hardly dominant. This is possibly a time I’ve lived through, or perhaps the remnants thereof. At the very least, there is both a charm to the familiarity and panic at realizing how much things have accelerated since. That thirty or so years ago could evoke such nostalgic comfort in a way decidedly more ancient fairy and folktales do is a staggering feeling.
Our story starts with a pair of brothers at afternoon football (soccer) practice. From the first few pages, you get the sense that Kessler is damn serious about what he is putting on the page. I was mesmerized by the flow of the football as it careens towards the goal, the angle of the children’s limbs as they run the pitch - this is serious work not belied in the slightest by its minimalism. Kessler expertly conjures the frenetic feeling of football practice. It feels almost divorced from everything else going on around it as if it’s the only thing that exists in the world, and that is the exact feeling we’d all get when we’re engaged in sport. These boys seem to be of a specific precious age. They seem old enough to have some degree of independence, but are very much still little kids, perhaps somewhere around seven or eight.
Following practice, one of the two boys notices a bird perched on a ledge as they walk home. He flicks a button to the bird as a little token of friendship and proceeds on his merry way. Unbeknownst to him, another anthropomorphic bird creature (perhaps the same bird transformed, perhaps some ethereal being) takes interest and follows him home. Later that evening, our protagonist’s house catches on fire. It’s a deadly, overwhelming blaze, and our boy appears orphaned and injured.
As tragic as an event this is, it is some of the most beautiful art in the book. It had some degree of familiarity, possibly recalling the kinds of sketches children make on lined loose-leaf paper, chaotic marker lines strewn across it. And it is, to some degree, just that, but it is so much more refined in ways I’m going to have difficulty explaining. But I’ll do my darndest.
When I was in college, I had a philosophy professor who told me that the deconstructionists were the most formalist of all. When everything is broken down, there is nothing left but form. I never entirely bought into that contention, and I’m positive Derrida would not have agreed either, but I realized Father Thayer (that’s right, this man was a Catholic priest who specialized in contemporary philosophy, was fairly radical in his outlook, and who smoked Marlboro Reds before class) might have been on to something as I was reading **The Gull Yettin**.
The form is at the heart of Kessler’s art. As free-flowing, and perhaps occasionally haphazard as it might seem on first blush, it is ultimately an exercise in precision. It isn’t as intentionally abstract as it might appear, though it certainly calls upon a certain technique of abstract expressionism. But what differentiates it from purely abstract art is that there isn’t an inherent puzzle at play. It isn’t reduced shapes or intentionally raw - no, there seems to be refinement at the core of it. At first glance, indeed, one could quite easily read into the experimental chaos of certain pages. The reader might observe the high contrast of thick, primary colors and rightfully assume intent behind the lines. But really, Kessler’s work is more minimalist than it is abstract. Yes, there are certain nods to abstract expressionism, and there are times when the form descends enough that the page seems more abstract than minimalist, but fundamentally, Kessler is focused on reducing the page down to the line, a meditation on the most rudimentary component of the form. To that degree, I could stare at these pages for hours. I don’t necessarily need a narrative: the flow of the lines is enough of a story for me. The fact that Kessler holds an exceptionally tight narrative on equal, if not elevated standing, with his artistic experimentation is why I find this book so mesmerizing. But it’s almost certainly wrong for me to break apart these two components. I do so only to point out the structures at play.
The way my mind works is very categorical. I often attempt to find antecedents, if not direct influences, for music, comics, prose, and the such. My brain simply tracks chronologically, so, despite any best efforts, and frankly without even noticing it, I tend to sequence things. It must be how my brain makes sense of things - this movement preceded this style, and so on. At first blush, I could see how one might pull a DeForge vibe from Kessler’s pages, but I think such a comparison is only fitting in a few instances. There is a definite connection of genre - or perhaps sub-genre. Each cartoonist is approaching something similar, though from different angles (and, to be fair, I would say that only certain components of DeForge would enter such a comparison with equally specific components of Kessler). To use a punk rock analogy, DeForge is the band that didn’t know how to play when they first picked up instruments but who end up creating their own beautiful music. Kessler is the band of trained musicians who deliberately play only a few chords. He is the power trio that creates far more sound than seems would be possible. So, despite my efforts, and despite the way my brain works, it’s rather difficult to discern Kessler’s genealogy. There are elements of graffiti, and you can see the Keith Haring influence at play. Some of Kessler’s coloring - specifically the beautiful and jarring house fire scene and the watercolor rowboat interlude - reminds me *just* enough of Tillie Walden. But fundamentally, this book is its own. I make whatever comparisons I do only to distinguish it. It’s important to realize the precision of this work, and the clear thought behind each line. As chaotic as some of these pages might appear, Kessler isn’t slapdash. It’s not lines thrown on paper as an experiment, or to channel emotion. Not this is as precise an exercise as one might find, but it could be easy to miss at first glance because that precision often arrives as thick felt tip marker figures and blocky primary color background. And I can’t help but think of Sylvia Nickerson’s Creation when I consider Kessler’s outline figures. While Nickerson’s purposeful reduction gives us artfully rendered and precise thumbnail sketches, Kessler’s figures explode from the page in some 3D sleight of hand. To go back to the music analogy, Kessler is few chords but many pedals. There is a saying about shoegaze - chords as lyrics. In **the Gull Yettin**, lines are dialogue. This is the type of art an idiot thinks he could reproduce, but that a renowned artist would stare at for hours.
And, at the risk of repeating myself, what makes **The Gull Yettin** remarkable is that all of this experimentation and reduction of form and chaotic energy exist for the sole purpose to drive the narrative of the book, to emote through those lines a sense of trauma and jealousy that deftly balances guilt and catharsis. It’s difficult to achieve such a feeling even when using words to add weight to visible events. But, perhaps that’s the real genius behind **The Gull Yettin**. Perhaps words get in the way. Yes, that’s precisely it. Just as Kessler eschews the conventions of form, he entirely excises the existence of prose, whittling **The Gull Yettin** down to its purest form, an unabashed **graphic** novel.
### My Claremont Year- March/April 2023
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-march-2023/
Last updated: 2023-05-04T13:15:37.000Z
Around the end of 2022 a thought struck me; have I ever read all of Chris Claremont’s X-Men? I think I’ve collected it all in one form or another (or even multiple forms) but there’s a point in the mid-1980s where a lot of it becomes fuzzy in my memory. I probably read it when it was coming out but more out of the inertia of collecting than any love of it. So armed with several omnibuses, Marvel Unlimited, and whatever back issue diving I need to do, I’ve set the goal to read his 16-year run on X-Men, New Mutants, and other related books, probably also eventually including some Louise Simonson New Mutants and X-Factor here as well since the series are so tied together.
As much as this is to check out these stories again, I want to see if there’s a completeness to the story that Claremont was telling, starting with his first issue, **X-Men #94* (1975), and extending all the way through **X-Men #3* (1991). Maybe by the end of 2023, I’ll have some kind of grand unified theory of Chris Claremont’s time on the book or maybe I’ll just have read a lot of comics that range from “not bad” to “what were they thinking?”.
This month, we're covering 1983 to 1984, the heyday of Claremont's run on ****Uncanny X-Men.**
- Uncanny X-Men #167- 188
- New Mutants #1- 21
- New Mutants: Renewal Graphic Novel
- X-Men: God Loves/Man Kills GN
- Uncanny X-Men Annual #6 & 7
- New Mutants Annual #1
- Special Edition X-Men #1
- Marvel Team-Up Annual 6
- Wolverine #1-4
- Magik #1-4
- X-Men and The Micronauts #1-4
So this is where things really start to get interesting.
So this is where things get interesting as Marvel clearly realizes the hit they have with Chris Claremont’s X-Men. While **Uncanny X-Men** had been allowed to just exist really by itself from 1975 through to 1981, 1982 is when things start expanding just a bit, first with two graphic novels (one of which introduces a whole new team of mutants,) and the first Wolverine miniseries, with art by Marvel superstar Frank Miller. And then with the launch of the ongoing **New Mutants** series, the X-Men became a franchise. And perhaps with the popularity of the book he was writing came an amount of freedom for Claremont to turn the X-Men into outlaws even as they fought for the good of mutantkind and mankind.
Going back to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the idea that the X-Men were feared and hated for being mutants is central to the myth of the X-Men. It’s the “we fear what we don’t understand” mentality that’s defined who the X-Men are. Spider-Man is just hated because he’s Spider-Man but no one thinks about his origins as the source of his powers; the origin isn’t the cause of Spider-Man’s lack of respect. But as soon as someone in the Marvel Universe is labeled “mutant,” that’s it; that’s enough to hate them. Maybe it’s the thought that characters like Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four are still essentially “human” while mutants are something else. To go back to the idea of mutants being stand-ins for various persecuted and discriminated-against people, there has always been an othering of mutants. They’re not us and that’s enough of a reason to hate them.
From **X-Men: God Lives, Man Kills** (art by Brent Anderson)
Around “Days of Future Past,” Claremont started to explore that more, suggesting that we would have concentration camps for mutants in the not-too-distant future. For some reason, back in 1980, that seemed very pessimistic but as we look at the past 100 years of history, particularly of the United States, it honestly doesn’t seem that unrealistic to imagine, especially if mutants would ever have been viewed as threats to “the American dream.” So by 1982, with the “*God Loves/Man Kills*” graphic novel, Claremont goes all the way and has the X-Men as the target of religious extremists, proposing the annihilation of mutants as a race all in the name of genetic purity. It’s still quite shocking how the Brent Anderson-drawn graphic novel draws lines from mutants to Jews and Black people and the inhuman persecutions that comprise the histories of those two peoples.
Claremont went there. In that graphic novel, Claremont draws straight lines from Jews and Black people to the mutants, The young ingenue Kitty Pride was depicted as Jewish right from the beginning and the book opens with her wearing her Star of David necklace as she pummels some prejudiced little Westchester, NY punk. And in her anger, she asks her Black dance instructor “Supposed he’d called me a N——- -lover, Stevie?!” Only Claremont used the word and Marvel printed it. But right there within Kitty’s anger is the convergence of all of this hatred and bigoted persecution. Claremont and Anderson’s work on this story signifies a shift in Claremont’s writing from being a superhero soap opera to being a series where Claremont can start exploring what it means to be “feared and hated.”
From **Wolverine #4** (art by Frank Miller and Joe Rubenstein) and **Uncanny X-Men #173** (art by Paul Smith and Bob Wiacek)
This period around 1982/1983 also represents a shift in the characters themselves as Claremont begins to see them as more than novice superheroes as so much of his previous writing has. The miniseries **Wolverine** introduces the iconic line “I’m the best there is at what I do, but what I do best isn’t very nice,” in the first issue. It almost perfectly defines Wolverine so much that it’s become a joke how often that line has been repeated over the years. Claremont had always hinted at this side of Wolverine but never really showed it in the team environment, except for Wolverine’s attack on the Hellfire Club during “*The Dark Phoenix Saga.”* In the miniseries, Claremont finds the opportunity to dig into Wolverine and bring out all of these traits and skills that he had only been able to previously hint at.
The miniseries doesn’t so much redefine Wolverine as it does build on everything that had been done with the character before and it’s interesting to watch Claremont revisit Wolverine and other characters like Rogue, Illyana Rasputin, and Storm (more on Storm next month) throughout these couple of years. A villain, a child, and a goddess get the same treatment during these years as the brawler. With the two main **Uncanny X-Men** artists during this time, Paul Smith and John Romita Jr., Claremont has two character-driven artists that harken back to the work of John Byrne. Romita Jr., very much his father’s son, is a strong paring to work with the Claremont soap opera, really able to build character even as punches are being thrown. He can do both the loud and the quiet moments of these stories.
from **Uncanny X-Men #180** (art by John Romita Jr, Dan Green, and Bob Wiacek)
And then there’s the introduction of The New Mutants, returning to the idea of the X-Men as students learning to use their power. Claremont, Bob McLeod, and Sal Buscema establish this new group, often playing their youth and inexperience against the more mature and experienced X-Men. It’s like Claremont loves the idea of Xavier’s as a school and realized that the X-Men have grown beyond that but still wanted to play in that world. This cast fills in that role but Claremont struggles a bit with landing on what this team is– are they a new team or just X-Men wannabes? And what kind of adventures should they have? He shuffles characters in and out, quickly dropping Xian McCoy, a character he created even before **The New Mutants** only to introduce Roman-by-way-of-Brazil Magma in an overly long story that sends this young team to the Amazon.
McLeod and Buscema are solid artists in the modern Marvel way so it’s quite a shock when Bill Sienkiewicz takes over in **The New Mutants #18**. He had done a few issues of **Uncanny X-Men** before this, where more of his Neal Adam’s influence showed through. But with **“** *The Demon Bear Saga*” (everything’s a saga here,) the title turns into a dark horror, where the threat is far more psychological than physical, even as one of the team lies nearly dead after a horrific attack by the spirit bear. Claremont and Sienkiewicz hit on something as the series finds an identity of its own, visually. With John Romita Jr. on one book and Bill Sienkiewicz on the other, Claremont finds this period where he has two books that are connected but have distinct flavors thanks to the artists.
From **The New Mutants #20** (art by Bill Sienkiewicz)
So this period is marked by expansion as it starts piling up miniseries and spin-off titles but also as Claremont begins to let the characters push the boundaries of what their role in these teams is. And he must have been onto something because you can see a lot of what he’s doing with Wolverine and Storm and Kitty be what defines them for decades afterward. There are ways that these characters are trapped in the amber of this period. The settings and conflicts may change but the characters today are still largely the characters as Claremont wrote and defined them. In these issues, we see him not comfortable with maintaining a status quo but yet so many writers and artists after him have returned to these issues to build on the character (see Storm’s recent image change in *X-Men Red* that’s meant to recall the punk stage of the character.)
The earlier work of Dave Cockrum and John Byrne built so much of the foundation that Claremont built his vision for these characters on but it’s with Paul Smith, John Romita Jr., Bob McCleod, Bill Sienkiewicz, Frank Miller, and others that Claremont tests the footing of that foundation, seeing how far he can push these characters while remaining true to their inner struggles and emotions.
### Leslie Stein's "Brooklyn's Last Secret": A Road Story about the Band You Wish You Knew
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/brooklyns-last-secret-by-leslie-stein/
Last updated: 2023-04-27T13:00:14.000Z
Major Threat is one of the best bands around that you have never heard about and they’re hopefully coming to a bar, a venue, or a festival near you soon. In her new book **Brooklyn’s Last Secret**, Leslie Stein chronicles a month of the band on the road, in a van traveling across the country from gig to gig. Lilith (guitars,) Ed (drums,) Marco (lead vocals), and the ever-mysterious Paul (bass) make up Stein’s fictional (possibly with a few semi-autobiographical elements thrown in) rock band, a group that has fans everywhere but still sleeps on friends and relatives couches whenever they can. It’s a road story about the sites, sounds, and people you meet along the way and even about how you can be another version of yourself when traveling. Stein shows us who these four people are while on the road and how that either conflicts a bit with or totally confirms who they actually are when they’re home and just being themselves.
This band is a fun group of people to just hang with. The way that Stein captures the individuality of each of them goes a long way toward keeping you in the book simply because you enjoy the time with them. This was a tour that I hoped would never end. Each person has their idiosyncrasies to explore within these pages but Stein has so many interesting ways to signal that we’re only seeing a snapshot of these people, from the ways that she doesn’t draw lines to define and close off anyone’s face to the way that each image is an open, round drawing, highlighted by her watercolors, but only a fragment of a larger image or world. In showing these lives to us, Stein hints at so much while leaving large swatches of her images open to allow us to fill in the details as we imagine them to be.
Her artwork is so simple and expressive, making it easy to get lost in this nomadic month with Major Threat. The way that she doesn’t close the lines in people’s faces gives her so much room to plumb the depths of these characters. For each one, there’s so much more to them than just their roles in the band, whether it’s personal or professional depths that Stein finds ways to fit into the story without them becoming the strong, defining moments of these stories. Those open faces give us the room to “read” and interpret their faces as much as we do their words.
Rather than closing off her drawings, completing the image, and limiting our ability to fill in the images of what these characters look like, her approach to her figures nudges us not to box in these band members, defining them by looks or stereotypes. It’s a way to suggest that we are only seeing a portion of these characters, meeting them where they are now without getting a complete character portrait. Lilith is maybe the closest we have to a point-of-view character but how much do we get to know about her or her world? The other three, while having their own mysteries, seem much more complete because we see them a bit through Lilith’s discovery of them, of who they are and what’s important to them.
Even Dani, their manager, is a full and complicated character who we only see in small doses in this book. But for Stein, all such moments are opportunities to have the characters drive them and reveal something about themselves in them. Dani starts off sending the band on their way, checking in with them at some of the gigs but with each appearance, we learn something new about her through her actions and her relationship with the band. Stein does this with family, rivals, ex-band members, and fans. There’s always something to learn about these characters from and through the simple ways that they relate to each other. No one feels thrown in to fill space or just to provide a necessary bit of dialogue; everyone in this book has an important role to play whether they’re the focus of the book or show up for just one page and are never seen again.
While **Brooklyn’s Last Secret** may be built around rock and roll, it’s not a book about music. We rarely ever actually see them playing music as Stein uses the concept of the band to be able to show what life in a band is like. This is a road story, looking at who we are and what we do when we’re allowed to step outside of our everyday life for a little bit. Stein uses that to allow the circumstances to reveal the characters. She doesn’t tell us who these people are but lets us discover them. Marco is the newest member of the band; this is his first tour with them so we get to discover him as much as Lilith does and he’s such a fascinating, fun, and damaged man, but in the ways that we’re all damaged. Stein doesn’t just come out and lay all of this on us but peels back who he is in the small moments that we get to just hang with him the way that the band hangs together. It’s almost like we’re the fifth member of the band, the one that no one knows who just gets to hang around the back of the stage, observing everything. Maybe a roadie or something fun like that if only Major Threat was big enough to have a roadie.
If you’re going on a vacation this summer, this is the kind of book to throw into your bag and pick up when you have just a few minutes as Stein builds her story through vignettes and focuses on moments that you can only have when you’re not at home. **Brooklyn’s Last Secret** is a great summer book as it reminds you to step outside of your life now and again and to just take in the world around you. For Stein’s characters, this journey is built around all of their gigs but it’s more about the time that these characters get to spend with one another and everyone else on the road that they meet along the way.
### Getting the same tax breaks as the heterosexuals- a look at Rob Kirby's Marry Me a Little
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/marry-me-a-little-rob-kirby-review/
Last updated: 2023-04-13T18:59:50.000Z
Rob Kirby’s new book is a quiet little affair chronicling his 2013 marriage to his longtime boyfriend John. **Marry Me A Little** fights the temptation to make this a “gay marriage” story and instead tells about the marriage of two gay men (subtle difference but hang with me a bit here) and what they had to go through to say “I do.” Taking a matter-of-fact approach to his storytelling, Kirby’s storytelling is more fascinated by the meaning of their marriage than the romance and fireworks of it. Don’t mistake this for some great love story; while the two are obviously in love with each other, this isn’t a boy-meets-boy story. By the time the book begins, the two have already been together for 10 years and are essentially all but married. But before the state of Minnesota legalized same-sex marriage in 2013, it was just something that they could only think about in the abstract “maybe one day…” kind of way.
With that historic 2013 vote, it went from a “maybe one day” to “maybe we should do this now” and so they did. Early in the book, Kirby talks about how “unromantic” he can often be accused of being, arguing that it’s more that he doesn’t like cheap sentiment such as you can see all over social media- the showiness of it all. He owns up to not even remembering if one of them proposed to the other. It’s almost like one day they just decided that they were going to get married and that was enough for both of them. Likewise, the book avoids sentimentality and instead focuses on the practical steps two men have to go through to get and even just be married.
Maybe there’s a little passive/aggressive shade being thrown here as well. These are two people in a loving and committed relationship, doing what millions of people do every day. With that, large parts of this book are just looking at the mechanics of getting married, the steps that Rob and John have to take that are the steps that any couple needs to follow to be legally married. Minnesota was incorporated in 1858 and presumably, people have been getting married since then, if not even before then. Yet it wasn’t until 2013 that Rob and John were able to get married. Who do you invite? What do you call your new spouse? Where do you go afterward? What will the clerk say when two men apply to get married?
The book opens with Kirby at a store in December 2013, buying dog food, and having to have the cashier look up his rewards account. A simple enough activity, no? When he asks the cashier to look it up under his husband’s name there’s something in that moment. His husband. Not his wife, a heteronormative expectation. Not even a more general “spouse” or “partner.” “*It might be under my* ***husband’s*** *name…*”. And even though it’s a couple of months after his marriage, Rob is still dazed thinking about it. And what will the cashier think? It’s not normal, whatever “normal” may be.
There’s something of that encounter that reverberates through the rest of the book. When Kirby gives an overview of the struggle to legalize same-sex marriage, he recalls Kris Perry from the HBO documentary *The Case Against 8*. Perry was one of four people who challenged a 2008 ban on same-sex marriage in California. At one point in the documentary, she talks about the ways that gay people have to desensitize themselves to get through life. From there, Kirby writes, “You have to come out every single day, everywhere you go and good luck with that because that’s never fun…”
If there’s a core concept to Kirby’s work here, that may be it. That may be what he wants you to take away from **Marry Me a Little**. Thinking about queer comics, two of the big ones are [Alison Bechdel’s *Fun Home*](http://www.panelpatter.com/2015/09/banned-book-week-fun-home-by-alison.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)and Maia Kobabe’s *Gender Queer*. Those are big, almost loud books because they’re about discovery, revelation, and even self-realization. They’re empowering stories because we see in them the journeys of the cartoonist into their identities. Kirby’s work belongs right there with Bechdel and Kobabe but it’s so different because right from the start, Kirby knows who he is. There’s no journey here of self-realization, just a journey of getting what other people already have with no problems.
On the first read, there was a bit of a letdown getting to the end of the book and not having that climatic moment of the cartoonist having a profound moment. Personally, I was waiting for it and never got it Rob and John’s story is a good story, it’s an important story, and it’s a different kind of gay story. It’s not exploring their coming out or any big emotional thing like that. At least not until you think about the line about having to come out “every single day.” Rob calling John “his husband” the first, the fiftieth, or even the thousandth time must have been huge. It’s such a loaded word coming from a man. But it’s only that because we’ve made it so big in Rob and John’s context. My wife calling me her husband means nothing in the grand scheme of things. But one man calling another man “my husband?” Well, it doesn’t need to mean anything more or less and yet it can mean so much more.
Just think about that for a moment. Rob opening himself up by calling John his husband means so much. One man getting married to another man means so much. All of these little things that so many of us take for granted are things that these two men (and so many other men and women) need to think about every day or else get desensitized to the idea of ever being able to enjoy the privileges that so many of us just assume are normal.
Flipping through the book, Kirby tells it mostly through black-and-white drawings but there are these bursts of colors in almost every panel. Mostly red and blue (with an occasional yellow thrown in for additional flavor,) these colors feel very charged. Think about where you see red and blue being used right now– to identify Republicans and Democrats and their respective ideologies. As Kirby approaches his thoughts of marriage, he’s usually coming at it from a more political perspective, exploring what same-sex marriage means when it’s a government that has to license it. There are the more religious and conservative underpinnings to it but Kirby is exploring the civil side of marriage. His colors are deliberate but rarely are they political.
He’s almost reclaiming the colors, reestablishing an equilibrium between them. Red and blue don’t need to mean conservative and liberal, especially in a gay story. It’s lovely to see how Kirby puts in these splashes of color to show emotion, punctuate a moment, or to even create depth in his art. The colors become an element of the storytelling, charged with meaning but used counterintuitively to any preconceived meaning.
Even with all of that said, there are distinct political overtones to this story, particularly the end of the book last it looks forward to an uncertain future as the Republican party looks to strip away rights from people. Returning to the idea of having to come out every day, there’s also the worrying every day about always having to fight for the rights that other people have. Rob, John, and so many other people have to think about what the power of the Republicans will and won’t do for them. Even after the 2013 ruling in Minnesota that allowed for same-sex marriage in the state, it’s hard not to recognize the attacks our Democracy has endured since at least 2016 and still struggles with today.
Kirby lets us into this glimpse of his and John’s life. It’s so obvious from Kirby’s cartooning just how settled into life these two are, how committed they are to one another whether or not they had a piece of paper saying that they were married. But Kirby also uses this book to write about the uncertainty of same-sex marriage, of what it means to be in one, and of what a loving couple has to deal with daily that so many others don’t need to worry about at all. **Marry Me A Little** is an important book, helping to show that all aspects of marriage aren’t set in stone and the same for everyone. On top of the same-sex nature of Rob and John’s marriage, Kirby shares his experiences in a universal way, putting all of us in his shoes, knowing just how in love he is but wondering just what marriage even means today.
### Good and Bad Days in Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Look Back
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/look-back-by-tatsuki-fujimoto/
Last updated: 2026-07-30T00:31:31.000Z
**Note: This piece contains spoilers about Tatsuki Fujimoto’s LOOK BACK.**
**Look Back** somehow manages to be one of the saddest yet most joyful books in recent memory, celebrating a friendship that was cut much too short by both selfishness and unspeakable violence. Tatsuki Fujimoto (*Chainsaw Man*, *Fire Punch*) follows the relationship of two young women, Fujino and Kyomoto, from their first encounter in the pages of the 4th-grade school newspaper through to their university years. Bonded through a love of manga and the need to draw their own stories, these two develop connections that are deeper than just friendship as they spend days and years together, in their solidarity time haunches over drawing boards working on short stories like “Metal Parade,” “The Sea Cities,” “The Cicada Humans,” and “Bagworm.” In these two, Fujimoto explores the compulsion to be an artist and to tell stories. For Fujino and Kyomoto, this is more than an occupation, something they do as a profession. It’s life and meaning; it’s not what they do but it’s who they are.
The two started as rivals back when they were just schoolgirls in 4th grade. Fujino was the star cartoonist in the school newspaper, drawing fun, rough cartoons to delight her schoolmates but she had a drive to be the best at it. So when she saw Kyomoto’s strips next to hers, the work of a reclusive shut-in student, whose drawings are leaps and bounds more advanced, Fujino dives deeper into her cartooning, spending all of her time drawing and trying to get better. Or at least, trying to get better than her school-newspaper rival Kyomoto. But even that gets too much and eventually Fujino just gives up and decides to hang out with her friends and family instead of spending all of her time drawing. That is until she actually has to meet Kyomoto which rekindles a passion in her as the two girls bond over their shared love of drawing.
So much of this book is just images of one or both of the girls drawing at their boards, usually in Fujino’s room. Fujino sits at her desk while Kyomoto usually sits on the floor, at a low table drawing the backgrounds of their stories. When the manga podcast Mangasplaining looked at this book back in 2021, [their show notes](https://www.mangasplaining.com/blog/ep-39-look-back-by-tatsuki-fujimoto/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) cover two different interpretations of how to read the images of the two drawing their comics.
> This segment where David (Brothers) talks about how all of the scenes of drawing manga are silent, in this book, is true. He describes it as sacred, but it always looked a little lonely from the outside. I’ve (Chris Butcher) been this person though, dedicated to their work in this way, and it wasn’t lonely exactly?’
There are many truths to both readings of these moments. As the two girls create their manga together, Fujimoto shows it as this solemn experience. It’s quiet; it’s austere. But it’s also life; it’s existence for the two young girls. The repetition of the images creates this almost monastic space for the two, isolated and disciplined. That’s how Butcher and Brothers have two different readings of Fujimoto’s work because both meanings are there. Fujimoto comes back to the image of the girls working on their manga many times and it has a ring of truth to it like he’s speaking from his own experience, bordering somewhere along the sacred and the mundane.
## This tension between dualities can be seen in practically every aspect of this story, including in the fates of these characters.
The idea of duality resonates throughout the book, from the duality of the two girls to the spiritual duality of the act of creation, and through to a duality of fates. There are two sides to everything, mostly reflected in Fujino and Kyomoto. For their published work, they use the pen name Kyo Fujino, a merging of their two names, signifying how the two kind of complete one another in their work but also in their relationship. So much of this book is built on this yin/yang type of give and take, seeing these different aspects from two different perspectives, starting just with Fujino and Kyomoto and how different they are when they first meet face to face.
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Introvert or extrovert. Sacred or mundane. Even foreground and background artist, the roles that the two fall into in their work. This tension between dualities can be seen in practically every aspect of this story, including in the fates of these characters. While a work of fiction, Fujimoto’s story reflects many aspects of real events, including the [2019 arson attack on the Japanese animation studio, Kyoto Animation, which killed 36 people and injured another 34 people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto%5FAnimation%5Farson%5Fattack?ref=fromcovertocover.com). The arsonist attacked the studio because he believed that the studio has been plagiarizing his work. (For some background, also check out the recent news from [Japan Times](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/01/19/national/kyoto-animation-arson-trial/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) about recent developments in the case against the arsonist.)
After Kyomoto leaves the partnership these two have developed to attend university to become a better artist, she’s killed in a similar event at her school, when a man enters the art school, ranting “They (the school and students) stole art that I put up online.” When Kyomoto left for school, Fujino lashed out at her. “… there’s no way you can handle college life on your own,” she told Kyomoto, trying to convince or goad her into staying. So Kyomoto went to school while Fujino worked on a manga series, *Shark Kick*, getting up to 11 volumes before the awful day when the news of an ax-wielding man attacked an art school was announced on the television.
## …this what-if partnership is drawn with an energy and a liveliness that both girls probably wanted but just weren’t ready for.
At the memorial for Kyomoto, a magical moment happens when Fujino is suddenly back to being a 6th grader, about to meet Fujino for the first time but something stops both girls from opening just one door, with them going their separate ways and never meeting until years later on the day of the ax attack, where just as the man is about to swing his ax down on Kyomoto, Fujino suddenly flies in with a karate kick to the man’s back, saving Kyomoto and disabling the man.
The days that could have been...
In the face of real-life tragedy, Fujimoto shows Fujino doing what we all do when faced with circumstances like this and trying to imagine “what if?” What if I could have been there? What if I could have saved my friend? What if everything was different? And in this moment of pondering what if, Fujino and Kyomoto still bond over the manga they want to create but Fujino imagines their collaboration as something different. Instead of the austere images of the two working at the same desk and table day after day, with a repetition that speaks both to the loneliness and reverence of the act, this what-if partnership is drawn with an energy and a liveliness that both girls probably wanted but just weren’t ready for. Fujimoto’s drawings of this dream collaboration show two young women enjoying the work, enjoying each other, and sharing an energy and an excitement that was probably there in real life but just wasn’t able to be expressed.
The duality between what was and what could have been.
Fujimoto’s storytelling is just so perfect. Every image contains the whole story. He tells it through the ways that he stages Fujino and Kyomoto in the panels, capturing their personalities and their emotions. Their relationship is told through their proximity to each other and the way that they go from rivals to friends to partners. Whenever one of them isn’t in the panel, there’s a huge absence, building up to the horrible attack. These two belong together so when they’re not, Fujimoto recognizes and conveys a longing within the characters and the story.
**Look Back** exists in this quiet and reflective narrative space, celebrative and mournful as Fujimoto explores the messier parts of friendships. Fujino and Kyomoto’s relationship is both turbulent and deep, reflecting the rivalry and love that exists between the two. The ending is even Fujino trying to shape her story like she would shape a manga, trying to write a happy ending for her and Kyomoto, trying to take away something from the tragedy and rediscovering the very thing that they bonded over— their art.
### My Claremont Year- February 2023
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-february-2023/
Last updated: 2023-03-08T13:15:44.000Z
Around the end of 2022 a thought struck me; have I ever read all of Chris Claremont’s X-Men? I think I’ve collected it all in one form or another (or even multiple forms) but there’s a point in the mid-1980s where a lot of it becomes fuzzy in my memory. I probably read it when it was coming out but more out of the inertia of collecting than any love of it. So armed with several omnibuses, Marvel Unlimited, and whatever back issue diving I need to do, I’ve set the goal to read his 16-year run on X-Men, New Mutants, and other related books, probably also eventually including some Louise Simonson New Mutants and X-Factor here as well since the series are so tied together.
As much as this is to check out these stories again, I want to see if there’s a completeness to the story that Claremont was telling, starting with his first issue, **X-Men #94* (1975), and extending all the way through **X-Men #3* (1991). Maybe by the end of 2023, I’ll have some kind of grand unified theory of Chris Claremont’s time on the book or maybe I’ll just have read a lot of comics that range from “not bad” to “what were they thinking?”.
This month, we're covering 1980 to 1982, which is the heyday of Claremont's run on **Uncanny X-Men.**
- Uncanny X-Men #132- 166
- Uncanny X-Men Annual #4 & 5
- Spider-Woman #37 & 38
- Avengers Annual #10
- Marvel Team-Up #100
- Marvel Fanfare #1-4
- X-Men/The New Teen Titans
**Uncanny X-Men #137** by Claremont, Byrne, and Austin
February started with the classic *The Dark Phoenix Saga* but on this rereading of these stories, it’s **Uncanny X-Men #141 and 142**, *Days of Future Past*, that stuck out to me. With just one fun Kitty Pryde issue left in #143, the two *Days of Future Past* issues are John Byrne and Terry Austin’s goodbye to the series that made them comic superstars but it’s also where Chris Claremont finally seems to figure out what his story of the X-Men actually is. His X-Men tale is a fight for the future. In those issues, a Kate Pryde from a dystopian future where mutants have either been killed or herded into mutant concentration camps sends her mind back to the present-day Kitty to help prevent events that are key to ensuring that her awful future will come to pass.
While he’s dropped hints at the possibility before this, these issues are really where Claremont develops the idea of the X-Men as persecuted outlaws. *The Dark Phoenix Saga* is the showier, louder version of this, with the X-Men attacking the Hellfire Club in their swanky party, which was attended by anyone who was anyone at the time. It was a public outing of the dangers of mutants for the whole world to see. But before he follows up on the image hit that the X-Men take, Claremont has to conclude the story of Jean Grey, the Phoenix. The closing of Jean’s story is a closing on the innocence and childhood of this team. Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, and Professor Xavier have to fight for the life of a teammate and a loved one when it’s questionable whether Phoenix deserves that kind of loyalty.
**Uncanny X-Men #142** by Claremont, Byrne, and Austin
Sure, X-Men have died before, most recently John Proudstar, Thunderbird, in Claremont’s second issue but that was due to the creative limits of Claremont at that time, unable to see why a team needed both Thunderbird and Wolverine, so one of them had to go. But in those few issues that Thunderbird appeared in, there was no time to get to know him, to grow attached to him, or to mourn him when he was killed. He died for his team. That death was probably the biggest character moment for him.
But Jean was different; she was a founding X-Men. Claremont, Cockrum, and Byrne obviously loved her; in the original version of *The Dark Phoenix Saga*, Jean lived after the Phoenix power was exorcized from her. And then Jim “every issue is someone’s first issue” Shooter stepped in and set down his Editor-In-Chief edict that Jean Grey needed to die for her actions as Phoenix. *The Dark Phoenix Saga* is a big, epic story, the longest that Claremont had written up to that point. In a lot of ways, it’s everything that an X-Men book should be; it’s a classic that still holds up today if you can find your way through all of the words that Claremont puts on every page. It’s worth the read.
So *Days of Future Past* is almost a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it story with only two issues but it lays down the foundation for almost every X-Men story that follows it. It firmly establishes the “hated and feared” portion of the X-Men myths while emphasizing the two choices for mutants— the X-Men path of working towards a peaceful future or the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants’ path of ensuring a future for the mutants alone. Every instance of a law being passed against mutants or every possible future suggested after this can all be traced back to the events of this two-part story.
**Uncanny X-Men #158** by Claremont, Cockrum, and Wiacek
And that goes through the present day. Jonathan Hickman’s *House of X/Powers of X* era of stories is another one of those possible future stories; it’s just that we’ve caught up with that future. Imagine if the Kate Pryde of the Krakoa era psychically jumped back into her 13-year-old body and told or warned the X-Men what they would become and do. What would Claremont’s X-Men think of Hickman’s X-Men?
So after the powerful one-two punch of *The Dark Phoenix Saga* and *Days of Future Past*, it’s weird how **Uncanny X-Men** settles into a fairly safe status for a few years. When Byrne leaves, Dave Cockrum returns. The X-Men fight Doctor Doom and Arcade. Claremont starts setting up a space opera with the return of the Starjammers but after the tumultuous time of the end of the Byrne era, the Cockrum stuff feels kind of tame following it up. Now Cockrum was a great artist and it showed how much he loved these characters and Claremont’s stories but between Byrne and Paul Smith (and all of the artists that followed Smith,) Cockrum’s second run on **Uncanny X-Men** doesn’t have the ferocity that his first run did. Maybe it’s the inkers but Cockrum’s art in the first run feels raw, creative, and unrestrained. When he returns, he’s coming back to a top-selling comic and his artwork feels like it’s trying to maintain something instead of pushing what he’s capable of.
He’s not helped much by Claremont’s writing either. If *Days of Future Past* unlocked something in him, Claremont appears hesitant to follow it up immediately. He’s still early in his run and wrapped up a big story with Jean Grey’s death but has so much more ahead of him. This period of **Uncanny X-Men** pulls back on Claremont trying to tell grand stories and instead sees him trying to tell X-Men stories. He’s established what those stories are and now he has to live up to the expectations he’s set for what an issue of X-Men should be.
**Uncanny X-Men #166** by Claremont, Smith, and Wiacek
But we get to see some experimentation poking through here, whether it’s the four issues of **Marvel Fanfare**, drawn by Michael Golden, Dave Cockrum, and Paul Smith, where Claremont gets to return to the Savage Land, a setting he always seems to enjoy, or artistic fill-ins by Brent Anderson and Bill Sienkiewicz, two artists who are from a completely different mold than Cockrum. With these artists, Claremont realizes that X-Men stories can be so much more than just what they’ve been. Look at Brent Anderson’s issue, an exploration of the mysterious island that the X-Men briefly called home and setting up Illyana Rasputin’s story. Like *Days of Future Past*, this issue sets up another possible future for the X-Men, completely different from that dystopia but no less threatening. The future threat facing the X-Men after this issue isn’t political but mystical. It shows the richness of the stories that Claremont is building. This issue shows that the X-Men aren’t just stuck fighting other mutants or being hated and feared.
This second month of rereading Claremont’s X-Men stories starts with such promise with both *The Dark Phoenix Saga* and *Days of Future Past* but after Byrne leaves, Claremont spends a few years churning out good but ultimately unremarkable stories. This is the safe period of his run; the team is established so let’s tell stories about The X-Men. Nothing wrong with that. But then the last two issues introduce Paul Smith as the new regular artist on the series, taking over from Cockrum before the ending of a big space epic. Smith introduces a lithe line to the series, a thin, purposeful one that was able to show who these characters were better than Cockrum’s rather blunt lines. There’s a depth of personality behind Smith’s figures that make this space ending, where the X-Men are quite literally fighting for their souls epic and personal at the same time. It’s a jolt that this series needed.
Next month: *God Loves, Man Kills* and *The New Mutants*
### The Dead and the Dying in The Human Target #12
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/human-target-12-by-tom-king-and-greg-smallwood/
Last updated: 2023-07-17T21:41:38.000Z
Note: There are some spoilers here for **The Human Target #12**. Proceed at your own risk.
Saying goodbye is not the same as letting go. By the end of the eleventh issue of **The Human Target**, Tom King and Greg Smallwood wrapped up most of the mystery. The series started with Christopher Chance finding out he had been poisoned while standing in for Lex Luthor. And that’s what Chase was hired for; to be the proverbial human target for whoever may want to kill Luthor. But he was expecting something more straightforward, not being killed by sharing a drink with Luthor after he thought the job had been wrapped up. He had 12 days until the poison would kill him.
In those 12 days, he investigated the mystery of his own imminent death and he fell in love with Ice, a member of Justice League International. All signs pointed to her as being the one who tried to kill Luthor but Chance couldn’t help it. The heart wants what the heart wants. And by the eleventh issue, Chance learned that all of his suspicions were true; Ice tried to murder Lex Luthor for revenge for killing her years ago. Remember, this is still a comic book and bargains in comic book tropes.
**The Human Target #12** is about saying goodbye without letting go. This issue shows both Christopher Chance and Ice holding onto the past even as life goes on. This issue is neither an epilogue nor a coda even if it feels like the mystery was wrapped up in the last issue. It’s not about loose ends but It is about what happens after the story ends and life goes on even after you think you’ve lost everything. King delivers one of his most heartfelt stories here, about two people who meet, fall in love, and then that love ends.
In the end, Chance solved the mystery of who killed him. King and Smallwood’s story hasn’t been about justice or revenge even if it maybe turns a bit into the latter in the end. This issue feels like it should be zigging and zagging everywhere. Chance’s whole thing is about escaping death. It almost feels like there are a couple of moments where a character should rip off a mask Mission Impossible-style, revealing Chance smiling at his love and saying “You didn’t think I’d really die on you?” but this isn’t that story. King isn’t the type of writer to take the easy way out. But if you stuck with the series over its 12-issue run, you probably kind of hoped he was.
But that would be too easy.
King and Smallwood’s ending doesn’t pull any last-minute miracles or use any superhero comic book logic to cheat the ending this series has been marching toward since the beginning. Christopher Chance, the Human Target, did what he was hired to do; to protect his employer and, if necessary, to take the bullet for them. That cost him his life even as he found love in his last days. And Ice is the one who has to live with everything that they’ve both done.
This series told the tale of a man paid to put himself in the path of danger but who doesn’t want to die. This final issue makes that clear but that’s what the whole series has been about; the mystery and the thrill of love have overshadowed that fear. Smallwood’s creamy artwork has had a tinge of melancholy to it, his lines and colors being far more optimistic than the story he’s telling. This is a story told through the ways that characters look at each other, whether it’s Chance and Ice, Ice and the Martian Manhunter, or even Lex Luthor and Ice. You read these characters by the ways that they look at or avoid the eyes of others. With that, it’s only fitting that Chance and Ice share just a couple of panels together where we see both of their eyes, facing the other and facing the end of this story.
In many ways, this issue caps off what has been an 11-issue wake with a one-issue funeral, a last moment to say goodbye to these characters by King and Smallwood. You know that someday, Christopher Chance will be back cheating death and Ice will be back to being the innocent sweet one. But whoever those characters will be, they won’t be the Chance or Ice whose story King and Smallwood told. So this issue is the funeral, their and our time of mourning. It’s sad but King and Smallwood also end it with just enough of a wink and a nod to let us know that life and the story will go on.
### Explore the Mystery of Time in Richard McGuire's Here (1989)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/here-1989-richard-mcguire/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T02:07:31.000Z
Tucked in the pages of 1989’s **Raw Volume 2, No 1** sits Richard McGuire’s original take on *Here*, a short story that a couple of decades later he’s expand into a much larger work. In six pages in **Raw**, McGuire challenges the way that we look at time, both in our everyday normal world and also in the way that time works within the visual plane. Each panel captures a moment of time from one specific location. In 1902, a house was built and McGuire plants us concretely in the living room, watching time move forward and backward from this one spot. The first panel in the comic establishes the corner of the house and the second panel shows 1957, a woman tells her husband that it’s time for their baby to be born. In the next panel also set in 1957, the father talks on the phone, telling someone that the baby’s name is William, 10lbs 6oz. One more 1957 panel shows the mother, cradling her son as she sits on the sofa, the father from off the panel asking if he can get her anything. These three panels are the only ones that are told in a normal flow of time and progression, with one panel leading to the next. They establish our point in space and the idea of a family that is central to almost everything that comes after this. Yet, from here McGuire weaves through time, flowing forward and backward to tell the story not only of these people but of this location, taking what looks to be a normal mid-century suburban living room and turning it into something reverential and constant even as life changes all around it.
It’s a fairly innocent opening, those first four panels establishing the basics of storytelling; a setting, a time, a group of characters, and an event in their life. So far, so good. But what’s going on in those last two pages, where McGuire starts manipulating time? He eases us into the fluidity of time with the inset panels of 1957\. We’re still part of 1957 but it’s shrinking, losing its importance as we see the room 35 years earlier and then 11 years in the future (dig that great shag carpet and note the round ceramic cigarette tray that was a fixture of seemingly every house at the time.). 1957 and William’s birth recede into the background, both the past and the future of this story.
The second page is even more chaotic at first glance, offering us glimpses of 18 other moments spanning from 1860 to 2000\. It all feels random, haphazard even, as McGuire shows a New Year’s party in 1940 and then William’s birthday party in 1975\. But even those aren’t just simple jumps in time as he inserts other time jumps into the main panels. But he does something brilliant starting in the last panel of the previous page where a cat in 1999 shows up and then almost imperceptibly walks across the room in the first 3 panels of the second page. It’s a wonderful way that he anchors us in space and time without making it too simple and obvious. With that anchor, we can see that even as we’ve moved through time, we’re still in the same room, looking at the same corner, witnessing the lives that are being lived in this room.
But wait? What about that last panel and the animals in 1860? Could a cow be in the room?
On the third page, McGuire continues to push what he can do in his story. In the first two pages, he establishes the rules of this little world that he’s created and on the third page, it’s time to see how far he can start pushing those rules, going to a time before the house was even there and providing a glimpse of a fateful future in 2029\. In the progress of the panels, whether time is moving forward or faster, we can start putting William’s story together but also the story of this room. And McGuire is also having a great time, making some fascinating connections between the years, such as in the last main panel, with a man in 1955 asking “who’s a chicken?” even as he cuts to 1870 in an inset panel, showing the chickens who once called that piece of land their home. Probably not the kind of chickens that the man was talking about but McGuire uses these moments to start bringing time together, condensing it just as he’s condensed space in his comic.
By the fourth page, we know what we’re in. We know the shape of the story as McGuire has provided the guidelines through his storytelling. So what better way to upset our expectations than show a wrecking ball demolishing the wall that we’ve come to know through the years? But we follow the story of this house, piecing the years together to see everything the events that McGuire has pulled together. This isn’t the complete story but it doesn’t have to be because McGuire shows us the life that this place in space nurtured.
Reading *Here* is like watching an old filmstrip in school (and that may be a too-out-of-date reference today.) You see one image at a time as your brain tries to process it, to connect it to the other images from the strip in its jumpy style. It wasn’t a smooth process or high fidelity but it had this way of imprinting itself on our minds almost through the repetition of the flickering light.
McGuire’s 6-panel foundation on each page replicates that repetition, image after image after image, burning itself onto our retinas before jumping to the next panel and the next year. McGuire uses the space that he has to distill a portion of this story down to one meaningful image but then he still finds ways to surprise us with all of the inset panels, playing on these moments that comment and contrast eachother. Through the repetition and the way that he manipulates that, he keeps his story lively and fluid.
*Here* is a story that makes you take a step back out of your own life, to take the time to look around you and take in your environment. It’s constantly in transition; it’s temporary and won’t be the same tomorrow, next year, or 10 years ago. Richard McGuire takes a grand concept like time and personalizes it; he contracts time to where all of these events are happening in quick succession in the present, in the past, and in the future. It’s almost even deconstructing the through of time and how it flows in a comic to make it something that can be completely experienced in just six pages. Time is condensed into a single point in space, something that should be relatable for anyone right now. Just take a look around you and imagine everything that has happened and will happen where you are.
A fixed focal point would usually make for a boring and tired comic but McGuire keeps *Here* dynamic through the panel transitions. Once you glom on to what he’s doing, it’s exciting to see what’s next, figure out where it relates to in the story of this spot, and mentally try to asemble the continuity of McGuire’s story. It’s a snappy six pages that brings all of this into a nice and tight package. McGuire brings time together, condensing it into this thing that we can experience. Time is a grand concept that seems to far beyond us in certain scales that McGuire peels back the grandness of it to expose a simpler experience of it.
### 23 Reads for 2023
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/23-reads-for-2023/
Last updated: 2023-02-22T13:39:57.000Z
Assembled below are 23 comics that should be on your radar for 2023\. To be perfectly honest, I started this post in December with the hopes that I would publish it in mid-January at the latest. But alas.
**Action Philosophers**
**Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunleavy**
**Rocketship Entertainment**
**April 26**
> *Laugh, learn, laugh some more, and ponder the messages of history's great thinkers as Van Lente and Dunlavey deliver this comprehensive cartoon history from the pre-Socratics to Jacques Derrida!*
I don’t know if this material has ever been collected in one volume before, but I’m definitely going to pick up this new edition. Using modern characterization to put a humorous spin on great philosophers of the Western tradition, Van Lente and Dunleavy created the best sequel to *Histeria* one could hope for.
**Alison**
**Lizzy Stewart**
**Fantagraphics**
**July 18**
> Combining immaculate prose and stunning artwork, Alison is a complex love and coming-of-age story, as well as a meditation on female friendship and empowerment, class and patriarchy, the creative process and the thorny world of fine art.
Lizzy Stewart had a remarkable year in 2021, releasing her poignant and insightful graphic novel about drifting friendships, *It's Not What I Thought It Would Be* and the excellent collaboration with Molly Naylor, *Lights, Planets People*. Stewart's ability to tell illustrated stories seems rather effortless. She understands something about the human condition, and, more particularly, the way we communicate with one another that she is able to grasp the essentials of interaction and channel those subtleties into her drawings to the point that the little in-betweens.
**Big Ugly**
**Ellice Weave**
**Avery Hill**
**Release Date Not Confirmed (Kickstarter Successful!)**
> It turns out that even as adults, living with your sibling brings back the dynamics of tween rivalries. As Mel tries to rebalance things with her brother, she navigates how to offer help to someone who doesn’t want to need it
I find Ellice Weaver's artwork to be utterly sublime. She has cut her teeth the past few years providing delectable illustrations to articles in various glossies and newspapers, the content of which usually fails to match the images Weaver provides. Her post-impressionist surrealist funk-pop art is full of nuance punctuated by exaggeration. For what is literally a *big* story, it's the perfect combination. Early previews through Avery Hill's Kickstarter also indicate that her color palette will be earthy and contrasting, a choice I think highlights the flowing liveliness of her exaggerated forms.
**Blood of the Virgin**
**Sammy Harkham**
**Pantheon Books**
**May 3**
> Like a kaleidoscope, Blood of the Virgin shifts and evolves with each frame, allowing the reader to zoom out and see that at its core, this book is about the making of a man.
I can't put it much better than that myself. Serialized in Harkham's excellent *Crickets,* **Blood of the Virgin** is a spiraling tragedy that captures the tradeoff between creation and happiness. Harkham perfectly captures the aura of the early 70s, and chips away at the concept of the American Dream at a time when that notion seemed far more concrete. This is cartooning at its finest.
**Box of Light Volume 2**
**Seiko Erisawa**
**Seven Seas Press**
**March 28**
I can't wait for the return of Darkness Cat, and for volume two of **Box of Light** as a whole. I just finished the first volume this weekend, reading it in two sittings. The first thing I did was google the arrival of the second part. Erisawa has a breezy storytelling approach that works perfectly for this surreal, often intentionally confusing story. The worst part about worldbuilding is the stories that focus entirely on exposition, driving the point home while ignoring any sense of development. I feel like Erisawa eschewed much of the exposition in favor of driving the plot forward, dusting portions of the story with little specks of the backstory here and there. A volume in and we've just begun to dig into these characters and their place in a convenience store at the crossroads of life and death.
**The Cloven Book Two**
**Garth Stein and Matthew Southworth**
**Fantagraphics**
**August 8**
> Moody and mysterious and atmospheric as a fever dream, The Cloven is a raucous, funny, and dynamic sci-fi graphic novel series about James "Tuck" Tucker, a genetically modified human organism known as a Cloven.
The first volume of this series caught me by surprise. I'm not sure at what point I realized it was *[Racing in the Rain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FArt%5Fof%5FRacing%5Fin%5Fthe%5FRain?ref=fromcovertocover.com)* dude's first graphic novel, but I was far enough into it that I couldn't reckon with it. *The Cloven* is the type of book that I would give to a mainstream comics fan who is eager to learn what else is out there. Southworth's artwork is dark and deliberately imperfect, with thick ink lines that look like they were made with Sharpie marker. There is a raw contrast to the overall - I wouldn't say "polish" as much as "experience" - Stein as a writer brings to the text.
**Disney Villains: Scar**
**Chuck Brown and Trevor Fraley**
**Dynamite**
**April 5**
> A plan is starting to formulate within Scar's corrupt mind, which will bring him face-to-face with the mysterious shaman, Rafiki.
Overall, I'm excited that Disney comics are back on the shelves. While I'm not as invested in *The Lion King* as I am with *Darkwing Duck* or *Uncle Scrooge* (come on, Dynamite, make it happen), I am 100% invested in Chuck Brown, whose work alongside David Walker and Sanford Green on *Bitter Root* produced an absolutely exceptional series. While I don't think we're going to get, say, Mark Russell *Flinstones* level experimentation and satire- I just don't think Disney would allow that for such a valuable property - I know that Brown is still going to layer the commentary in this book and explore the depths of Scar as a character.
**Goes Like This**
**Jordan Crane**
**Fantagraphics**
**June 20**
> Featuring over a dozen short stories (spanning multiple genres) published over the past 25 years, *Goes Like This* is a gorgeously packaged anthology (including varying paper stocks and rounded corners) from master cartoonist Jordan Crane.
*Keeping Two* was one of my favorite reads of 2022, so a Jordan Crane anthology is a no-brainer for most anticipated books this year. I'll be honest and say that prior to reading *Keeping Two*, I had very little background on Crane. Thus, **Goes Like This** is going to be a good primer for me, or anyone like me, who enjoyed his storytelling and is eager to see more of his portfolio.
**The He-Man Effect: How American Toymakers Sold You Your Childhood**
**Brian "Box" Brown**
**First Second**
**July 11**
> Brian “Box” Brown’s The He-Man Effect shows how corporate manipulation brought muscular, accessory-stuffed action figures to dizzying heights in the 1980s and beyond.
Wait a second - my 1980s childhood was commodified? By whom? By whom, I ask? Seriously, though, do you remember when you first realized all of the shows you loved as a kid were actually advertisements to buy toys? Alas, our idyllic youths of creating our own basement battle scenes that pitted Dr. Doom against Admiral Ackbar for control of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sewer dojo spawned from the seed of marketing. Box Brown is uniquely adept at telling these stories. Explanatory without being condescending, he's able to expose the perpetrators without necessarily blaming the perpetrated-upon. This might be a tough read for me and my late Gen-X, elder millennial crowd, but most likely a necessary one.
**In Limbo**
**Deb JJ Lee**
**First Second**
**March 7**
> This stunning debut graphic memoir features page after page of gorgeous, evocative art, perfect for Tillie Walden fans. It's a cross section of the Korean-American diaspora and mental health, a moving and powerful read in the vein of *Hey, Kiddo* and *The Best We Could Do*.
I know very little about this book, but the cover alone is enough to tell me that this is a serious cartoonist who is bound to tell us a beautiful story. The brief previews I've seen display an interior that does indeed recall Tillie Walden, specifically her earlier work, while also featuring beautiful pencil shading. Lee attempts to address both the immigrant experience and late-adolescent mental health and I think they are going to end up with a book that is on a bunch of end-of-year lists.
**The Last Count of Monte Cristo-** **Azize Jama-Everett and Tristan Roach** **Abrams/Megascope****April 26**
> This speculative update pushes the narrative into a future hundreds of years after the polar ice caps have melted and submerged our planet into a new era of technology and culture.
I have a big place in my heart for the original *Count of Monte Cristo*, and I’m curious to see how it works as a commentary on climate change. Abrams’ Megascope Imprint has produced a nice catalog thus far, and I am additionally curious to see how the creative team retrieves some of the cultural legacy of Alexandre Dumas.
**Maple Terrace**
**Noah van Sciver**
**Uncivilized Books**
**April 5**
> From a multiple-award-winning cartoonist, Noah Van Sciver comes the brand new three-part autobiographical comic series, Maple Terrace. Hilarious and forlorn stories from the author's childhood, surrounded by 90s comics, cartoons, toys, deprivation, and painful nostalgia.
What kind of run is Noah Van Sciver on these days? It seems like he is churning out books at a breakneck pace, and there doesn't seem to be any sort of dilution that would lead to a decrease in quality thanks, I would assume, to the varied topics and lengths of works Van Sciver picks. *Joseph Smith and the Mormons* was very much an American epic in graphic novel form, and it expressed a new version of Noah Van Sciver's storytelling in an extended format. But at times, it felt more like a dutiful read than a pleasurable one. I'm happy to see Van Sciver return to autobiographical comics - *Please Don't Step on My Jnco Jeans* was fantastic - and in the periodical format.
**Memoirs of a Man in Pajamas**
**Paco Roca**
**Fantagraphics**
**August 29**
> In the vein of sitcoms like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Roca’s comic vignettes brilliantly satirize the pesky pitfalls of modern-day life.
Roca's *House* is one of my favorite graphic novels of the past few years, and it served as my introduction to his work. Since then, I've read what Fanta offers us via translation, and I've been more than impressed at Roca's ability to work in different genres and formats. Thus, to hear that this edition offers small, humorous vignettes, I'm intrigued. Roca has a sense for wry humor, not necessarily dark, but cockeyed enough. This should be excellent.
**The Mysteries**
**Bill Watterson and John Kascht**
**Simon and Schuster**
**October 10**
> In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.
A benefit of taking nearly three months to write a beginning-of-the-year preview post is that more recent announcements have been able to make it into the fray. I don't think I should have to explain this one. How can one not anticipate a book written by one of the most famous cartoonists of the 20th century, who created an iconic piece of cartooning that resonates well beyond the world of comics, and who has remained fairly silent for the nearly 30 years since the finale of his masterpiece? That this book seems oceans away from the tone, style, and substance of *Calvin and Hobbes* is that much more captivating. After 28 years, I can't help but wonder what Watterson has to say, why he chose this time to emerge, and how John Kascht will evoke the message through his startling art.
**Nejishiki**
**Yoshiharu Tsuge**
**Drawn and Quarterly**
**April 18**
> The emotionally and erotically charged imagery collected in this third volume remains as shocking and vivid today as it did upon its debut fifty years ago.
Well, ok then. But honestly, since Drawn and Quarterly started issuing these Tsuge collections courtesy of Ryan Holmberg's translation (and often, research), they've been must-reads. I know next to nothing about manga, and I assuredly know even less about alternative or underground manga, and that's part of the reason I find these books so enthralling. The way my mind works, I love to make connections. I love to look for books that inspire other books, or ideas that inspire other ideas. And even when I'm (almost always) not educated enough to grasp the antecedents of various styles or perspectives, I find some comfort in the notion that the counter-culture will always have an underlying component that defines it, regardless of era or location.
**Otto Binder's**
**The Unwanted**
**Otto Binder, Robert L. Reiner, Angelo Torres, and Stefan Koidl**
**Fantagraphics**
**February 14**
> Never before published and now unearthed, The Unwanted is Binder's response to the 1950s McCarthy era, couched in metaphorical science fiction terms.
A true time capsule, an early 50s version of underground literature, *The Unwanted* is one my most anticipated books of the year because I want to see exactly what we missed with this book that "languished, unread, in a yellowing file folder for decades," according to Fantagraphics. Binder is perhaps most famous for his work on Fawcett's *Captain Marvel* at the height of the character's popularity. His work following the Big Red Cheese never reached those same heights, but he certainly had a perspective that was informed by science fiction and thus in turn informed his own science fiction prose pursuits.
**Outpost Zero: The Complete Collection**
**Sean Kelly McKeever, Alexandre Tefekgi, Jean-Francois Beaulieu, and Ariana Maher**
**Image/Skybound**
**April 19**
> School, friends, the fights every Friday night-there's plenty to distract her, yet Alea's sure there's something else out there. And when tragedy strikes, Alea vows to uncover the truth...even if it upends her world forever.
I adored this series. It was my introduction to Alexandre Tefenkgi, and I found myself often staring at the beautiful landscapes and vistas that filled pages of the book and brought to life the world he and McKeever created. Scott and I talked before about artists who can capture the acting of their characters, and Tefenkgi certainly showed he could do that out of the gate. Sean Kelly McKeever is adept at these kinds of stories - he understands dialogue in a way that is both authentic and lean. He lets the story work for itself, rather than using the characters to explain everything going on around them.
I have to say I'm disappointed by two elements here: 1\. the 6X9 format - I get it; that's the size of manga and of many YA graphic novels. So, to the extent that this book gets a second life in our libraries and bookstores by finding an entirely new audience, cool, I'll live with that. But it also needs an oversize treatment. 2\. Jean-Francois Beaulieu's colors are the definition of crucial to the story, as is Arian Maher's lettering technique, and they both should be listed on the cover. Again, I get it; it's probably the ownership thing, but still.
**Palookaville 24**
**Seth**
**Drawn and Quarterly**
**May 30**
> A memoir ruminating on memory and place and the people who pass through his life, this chapter of Nothing Lasts closes with a seminal event in Seth’s young life.
I continue to stand in awe of *Clyde Fans* four years after reading it. One particularly enjoyable feeling of reading it is seeing the evolution in Seth's artistic style. His linework changes, both in shape and thickness. He changes perspectives and angles as the book evolves over the two decades he serialized it, ultimately settling into a more geometric feel that typifies his current mode of abstract formalism. I often try to think of Seth as a storyteller and not *specifically* a visual artist, because if I don't, I tend to find myself hypnotized by his little boxes, packed full of way more than we could ever hope to find on a splash page.
**Pandora Perfect**
**Roger Langridge and Brett Parson**
**Rebellion/2000AD**
**April 26**
> Not your regular babysitter! Pandora Perfect, the hilarious criminal mastermind, crash-lands into her very own collection!
Turning Mary Poppins on her head by casting Pandora as a cat burglar of the highest caliber, Roger Langridge and Brett Parson created delightful strips for the *2000 AD Regened* all-ages series. It was a beautiful series of strips - what else would one expect from Roger Langridge - and I'm excited to read it in collected format.
**Santos Sisters 4**
**Greg and Fake**
**Floating World Comics**
**June 14**
> The unceremonious return of Bridget Spinner and Fondu! Plus Ambar and Alana find out the difference between etymology and entomology in a story that will make your skin crawl. All this and more! Once again printed in full-color on your favorite decadent newsprint!
Admittedly, the original draft of this included **Santos Sisters 3,** which arrived on stands at the beginning of February. But it's been a busy beginning to 2023 for your 347th favorite comic critic, and I wasn't able to meet many a deadline. But redemption is here in the form of satiric nostalgia, courtesy of *another* quarterly **Santos Sisters** publication. The best parody, I have long contested, is rooted in some level of admiration. This is the coup for Greg and Fake.
**Steady Rollin'**
**Fred Noland**
**Birdcage Bottom Books**
**April 12**
> Starting as a hardscrabble misfit and minister's son in the Bible Belt, followed by a stint as a suburban So-Cal Black punk, and onward to bicycle-obsessed, graphic novelist and dad in Oakland, *Steady Rollin*' is a portrait of the author in time-lapse.
I have a particular fondness for graphic memoirs that do not translate to their prose cousins, for whatever reason. I think there is something about the graphic memoir that allows a better portrayal of events (duh, pictures) while also being far more compact. Much of Noland's work has been autobiographical in tone if not substance, but I'm curious to see how he puts it all together for a retrospective of his life. I've thoroughly enjoyed works like *Black Sheep* and his more recent short cartoons like *Taco Tuesday* because of the way he manages to combine foresight and hindsight, and I expect the same from **Steady Rollin**'.
**Tegan and Sara: Junior High**
**Tegan Quin, Sara Quin, and Tillie Walden**
**Farrar, Straus and Giroux**
**May 30**
> Before Tegan and Sara took the music world by storm, the Quins were just two identical twins trying to find their place in a new home and new school. From first crushes to the perils of puberty, surviving junior high is something the sisters plan to face side by side, just like they've always faced things.
Who doesn't love Tegan and Sara? Who doesn't love Tillie Walden? I feel like I don't need to explain much here. But, alas. I'm very hit or miss with YA lit in general, mostly because - when it's bad, or even just mediocre - it feels a little too calculated and entirely too haughty. But I don't know if Tegan, Sara, or Tillie are even capable of such things, because their art has always been sincere. I'm eager to read the twins' take on their days of early adolescence. And, let's be honest, Tillie Walden could illustrate the phonebook and I'd stare at it.
**The Vigil**
**Ram V, Lalit Kumar Sharma, Rain Beredo**
**DC Comics**
**May 16**
> With some hinting that they call themselves The Vigil. What were they after? Why did they intervene? Are there metas among us? Stay tuned for more/ /.../ /you are being watched./
Ok, a little bit of cheating here because my tardiness with producing this post allowed for this announcement to land before I completed my final draft. I'm farther away from superhero comics than I ever have been before - the only monthly I'm reading at this point is Ram V and Rafael Albuquerque's *Detective Comics* \- but I'm very excited about the potential for new characters to enter the DC Universe. I'm skeptical of any diversity initiative from a faceless corporation such as whatever amalgamation DC's Warner parents have become at this point in terms of it being a hollow marketing idea, but I'll always be more optimistic about the inclusion of diverse voices within comics, and boy does this *We Are Legends* have some great names attached to projects. To double down, my beloved DC Universe is in dire need of new blood, and that doesn't mean just the tired retread of retconning a character to change their identity. No, I love the idea of introducing *new* characters with their own identities that can shine and flourish via the pen and ink of writers and artists who created those characters and understand exactly what they should be about. Moreover, I feel at this point that Ram V has earned *must-buy* status. He is one of the most complete writers in the industry, and from the moment he was given a chance to create new visions at DC, he brought a new version of **Swamp Thing** that is the freshest take on the character in twenty-plus years, and that uses Ram's own Indian heritage in an integral way.
### Ok, so what'd I miss? Plenty, I'm sure.
**I Am The Law** by Michael Molcher is already on shelves and isn't technically a graphic novel, but it's certainly worth a read. **Where I'm Coming From** by Barbara Brandon-Croft is also already likely in your reading pile, but grab it if it isn't. **Kent State** isn't new, but Derf's masterpiece arrives in paperback and should be a must-buy if you haven't had the chance to read it or, like me, don't actually own it because the library is so great. Of course, you should read **Marry Me a Little** by the wonderful Rob Kirby. Ditto for **Roaming** by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. Both books entered my radar a little late in the game. I'm going to read **Crimson Quays**, but it didn't happen to crack the top 23\. Cest la vie. Superheroes have little appeal to me anymore as discussed above, but the kinds of series that do are **Silver Surfer: Ghost Light** and **I Am Iron Man**. Before you were spoiled by *The Wire*, I was spoiled by **Homicide: Life on the Streets**, so I'm definitely picking up that graphic novel adaptation.
Enjoy 2023, my friends. I hope the impending Spring brings a rebirth for you in all the ways you need.
### Playing By The Rules in Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi’s The Good Asian
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-good-asian-by-pornsak-pichetshote-and-alexandre-tefenkgi/
Last updated: 2023-02-07T12:30:19.000Z
Edison Hark is a man out of sync with the world around him. The young detective, born to Chinese parents but raised by a rich American family after his mother died, isn’t enough of any one thing to be accepted fully into any world. He’s not white so he doesn’t enjoy the privilege that the children he was raised with do. His Chinese heritage means that he’s just a cop working in San Francisco’s Chinatown beat but he’s not a real cop to the rest of the force. And being the “Chinese cop” in Chinatown means that he’s just another cop, a sellout trying to be whiter than he is. In 1936 San Francisco, he’s a man without connections, walking through many different worlds but not a part of any of them. But when a missing person case brings these different cultures together, they all look to Hark to solve the case. In **The Good Asian Volumes One and Two**, writer Pornsack Pichetshote and artist Alexandre Tefenkgi use this period and its anti-Chinese biases to examine the weighty subject of immigration that we still face today even as they weave together a tight page-turner of a mystery.
As if to signify just how out of place he is in nearly every situation, Tefenkgi draws Hark like he’s playing the role of a detective in a movie. Hark’s wardrobe looks to be borrowed from nearly any Humphrey Bogart film, taking Bogie’s overcoat and fedora to look like he’s a detective as if he’s playing the part in this story. There’s something almost childish in Hark’s appearance during much of these comics like he’s a kid who’s wishing that he was an adult in this world. Maybe it’s playing too much with my own biases but Tefenkgi is signaling something here through his art, whether he’s implying it or I’m just inferring it. Being a detective is a role that Hark plays, much like he’s played different roles throughout his life.
Living up to the role of detective. Interior art by Alexandre Tefenkgi and Lee Lourighdge
And if more emphasis was needed on the “detective costume” that Hark wears, Hark recruits Frankie, his best friend whose house Hark grew up in, to role play as a detective and get into places and get answers that Hark can’t. Frankie’s a gweilo, a white man, so he can move around San Francisco a bit easier than Hark can. The two men grew up together, they’re practically family. That’s why Frankie reached out to Hark to investigate a missing Chinese woman who means a lot to Frankie’s father. They should be family but there’s always something present in their relationship to remind Hark that he’s the poor Chinese boy that the rich Carroway family took into their home.
The story starts as a search for a missing girl in San Francisco, just another poor Chinese girl who’s disappeared but as Pichetshote and Tefenkgi delve deeper into this Chinatown, they explore the power structures in place and how everyone has their role in it. Hark may be the ultimate outsider but he’s also one of the only characters in this book who understands their place in this city; as he’s not a part of any particular clique here, he maybe has the clearest view of who’s who here. And even then, his vision is clouded by his own biases towards nearly everyone else. His history with the elder Carroway, Frankie, and Frankie’s sister Victoria turns out to be his blind spot, that thing he’s not able to see around. Even as he’s tried to put the past behind him, the powerful family that raised him are some of the people who are hiding the most from him.
The rules of the game. Interior art by Alexandre Tefenkgi and Lee Lourighdge
Set in 1936, there may be an inclination to write off aspects of this story as “well, that was then…,” particularly the times’ attitudes and legislation to “control” the Chinese population in America. But that’s the danger that this book acts as a warning against— taking people at a face value and devaluing them for that. Hark is the poster boy for this as everyone reads into him what they want to but he’s as guilty of it as well, largely blinding him as a detective for most of this book. It’s only when he can start seeing beyond his own thoughts and impressions that he’s able to begin seeing the workings of Chinatown and how his case ties into the larger machinations of this San Franciscan enclave.
There’s danger in seeing the world only on a surface level, acting only on skin tones and facial features that are all too easy to use to categorize people. It was true in 1936 and Pichetshote and Tefenkgi are reminding us through their story how true it is today. By being a man without a people to call his own, Hark shows us how easy it is to be both the victim and the guilty one here, getting lost in our ideas of who or what a person is without getting to know them. All great detectives have some flaw to overcome that blinds them to the truth; Hark’s is that he’s as blind to the world as the world is to him.
### My Claremont Year- January 2023
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/my-claremont-year-january/
Last updated: 2023-02-01T08:00:38.000Z
Around the end of 2022 a thought struck me; have I ever read all of Chris Claremont’s X-Men? I think I’ve collected it all in one form or another (or even multiple forms) but there’s a point in the mid-1980s where a lot of it becomes fuzzy in my memory. I’ve probably read it but more out of the inertia of collecting than any love of it. So armed with several omnibuses, Marvel Unlimited, and whatever back issue diving I need to do, I’ve set the goal to read his 16-year run on X-Men, New Mutants, and other related books, probably also eventually including some Louise Simonson New Mutants and X-Factor here as well since the series are so tied together.
As much as this is to check out these stories again, I want to see if there’s a completeness to the story that Claremont was telling, starting with his first issue, *X-Men #94* (1975), and extending all the way through *X-Men #3* (1991). Maybe by the end of the year, I’ll have some kind of grand unified theory of Chris Claremont’s time on the book or maybe I’ll just have read a lot of comics that range from “not bad” to “what were they thinking?”. But right now, we’re diving into the early days of 1975-1980 with some of Claremont’s earliest writing when it comes to Marvel’s mutants.
**January Reading List**
- Giant Size X-Men #1
- Uncanny X-Men #94-128
- Iron Fist #14
- Marvel Team-Up #65, 66, 69, & 70
- Ms. Marvel #16-18
- Power Man & Iron Fist #56 and 5
- Uncanny X-Men Annual #3
- Classic X-Men #1-34 (backups)
In the 48 years since *Giant Size X-Men #1* came out or even the 32 years since his swan song in *X-Men #3*, it’s almost difficult to think about a time when Chris Claremont’s name wasn’t synonymous with The X-Men. Over 16 years, Chris Claremont redefined the modern superhero, taking a previously canceled book and turning it into a publishing juggernaut during his time writing the mutant’s adventures. And he wasn’t even there for that giant-size debut of a new team; that was Len Wein who assembled Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler to be a new generation of heroes. It wouldn’t take long for Wein to step aside so that Claremont could join artist Dave Cockrum full-time on the book, getting to take an old concept (the X-Men originally debuted in 1963) and treating it like a near-blank slate to redefine the team and what a team book could be like.
And he redefined them by turning comics into a soap opera. Sure the Fantastic Four had their family drama and the Avengers had their ever-changing roster but Claremont uses his first 30 issues to develop his core characters’ relationships with one another. Whether its Storm and Colossus’s sibling-like care for one another, Wolverine’s rough and tumble friction mostly with Cyclops, or even Nightcrawler’s devil-may-care attitude that he uses to define himself, Claremont’s Number One priority in his writing is to have these characters bounce off one another and even for of the villains. He maneuvers them on every page in ways to reveal their character.
Writers after Claremont who took these characters on just assumed they were who they were. The mold was cast for them. Cyclops was Cyclops. Wolverine was Wolverine. Storm was Storm. For years, these characters have remained what they were; only the plots and conflicts change but the characters barely do. The illusion of change drives the X-Men much more today than actual change But so much of the characters were defined between **Uncanny X-Men #94-#128**, where Claremont had so much room for these characters to grow. Reading these issues again, it’s almost hard to recognize that Claremont is establishing so much of the characters and their stories as opposed to repeating them as we’ve grown accustomed to in more contemporary comics.
From **X-Men #100**. Just look at how intense everyone is. (Art by Dave Cockrum)
You can even see him doing it with established characters like Cyclops and Professor Xavier, characters that were 12 years old by the time he got his hands on them. By placing Cyclops as the veteran leader amid a team of rookies, Claremont challenges Cyclops to grow and become a real leader. These aren’t his childhood friends who had the same education as he did; Cyclops is not among his peers here. He’s leading individuals and has to make them a team. You can chart his growth here. Initially, he’s barking orders, telling everyone what to do but towards the end of this run, he’s taking a step back from that (as stated in Annual #3) and letting the team take a bit more of the lead, developing their teamwork as they’ve learned to work together. At first, everything Cyclops says and does rubs Wolverine the wrong way but by the end, as they develop more as a team, Claremont has the two of them working off of each other.
When John Byrne joins the book with *X-Men #108*, taking over art from series original artist Cockrum (don’t worry- he’ll be back eventually,) there’s a seismic shift in the way that the book works. The Cockrum issues are very dramatic; Cockrum believed in dynamic, sweeping facial and body expressions. Every panel is about to explode with energy, no matter what the scene is like. His artwork is very broad but, while great here, doesn’t have a lot of range in the acting. Byrne, who had worked with Claremont on *Iron Fist* and *Marvel Team-Up*, right from the start demonstrated the ability to pull a lot more visually out of each character. Cockrum was about the superhero action of everything; Byrne plays much more with trying to pull the emotions out of his characters and seemed to unlock something for Claremont.
More than Cockrum, Byrne plays to the soap opera aspects of Claremont’s writing, perhaps showing Claremont that those aspects can work in comics. It’s with Byrne taking on part of the plotting duties (credited starting at issue 113,) where Claremont starts to see what he can do with these characters, first splitting them apart into separate factions as Xavier and Jean Grey believe the rest were killed in a fight with Magneto when they really escaped to the Savage Land. Byrne and inker Terry Austin can tell so much of the story through body language, which gives Claremont more room to explore what all of these characters are going through but in more natural ways than he was able to with Cockrum.
Once Byrne is co-plotting, Claremont’s stories are driven by the characters instead of the other way. The initial issues of Claremont’s run with Cockrum show a writer who’s trying to push the idea of what a Marvel book could be but it’s still very plot heavy with a tinge of villain-of-the-month tendencies. That may be Cockrum more than Claremont but those first issues are rolling along with the planning of “and this happened which led to this which caused this.” Sentinels captured the X-Men, which led to Jean Grey becoming the Phoenix, which took them to space to fight the Legion of Super-Heroes the Shi’ar Imperial Guard. Claremont and Cockrum keep driving the momentum forward.
From **X-Men #122\.** Everyone seems more chill here, in an issue which is basically just a big hang. (Art by John Byrne and Terry Austin)
That forward drive continues with Byrne, through battling Magneto which leads the team to the Savage Land, where they eventually end up in Tokyo before crossing the ocean and taking on Alpha Flight. With Byrne though, there’s a stronger emphasis on the characters and what they’re going through in the moment. By the end of these first 30 issues, who these characters are is so clear that Claremont spends the next decade or so trying to see how much he can bend and twist them without ever losing sight of who they are.
When we talk about comics that have lived rent-free in the back of our minds most of our lives, these are it for me even if most of them I had to track down in back issue boxes and trade for with other friends (I once traded a reader’s copy of *The Incredible Hulk #181* for an equally well-read copy of *Giant Size X-Men #1)* but haven’t gone back and revisited them at any time this century. But doing it now, I see how these are “my” X-Men, what I picture when I think about the characters. I go back to this classic time, particularly the Claremont/Byrne era and now it just feels so pristine, so trapped in amber when you look at everything that’s been done to this franchise over the years.
**Next month**\- *The Dark Phoenix Saga through The Brood (with maybe the beginning of The New Mutants thrown in.)*
### The Empty Writing of Todd McFarlane
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/todd-mcfarlane-spawn-batman-spawn-unwanted-violence/
Last updated: 2023-01-23T22:06:36.000Z
I don’t believe that Todd McFarlane actually has anything to say.
That may not be a fair assessment of his writing capability based on only the two books written by him that I’ve read in I don’t know how long (my OG Spawn collection ends around the original McFarlane-drawn Spawn/Batman crossover and I don’t even know why it lasted that long.) But if there was going to be anytime to re-evaluate his writing, now seemed like a good time with the newest demanded-by-no-one **Batman/Spawn** crossover or the out-of-nowhere **Spawn: Unwanted Violence #1**. Greg Capullo (the crossover) and Mike Del Mundo (Unwanted Violence) are two artists that I like so I guess it made sense to pick up both issues to see their art. The only problem with that logic is that based on any monetary investment made by purchasing the books, I felt like I needed to read the dang things.
And ultimately, I feel like maybe I should just be happy looking at pretty pictures.
Let’s start with a kind of mind-blowing concept— there are over 31 years of Spawn comics and over 300 issues in that time. So if 1994’s *Spawn/Batman* was the last time I checked in on Spawn, that is a mere 29 years ago. You would think a lot would have happened to the character during that time but I’m not too sure if there’s any evidence of that. McFarlane’s plot for 2022’s **Batman/Spawn** is what… Batman and Spawn team up? I think it’s basically just that and that’s almost rehashing the whole of Frank Miller’s 1994 crossover script. They fight each other, realize the other is not the true villain, turn around to fight the actual villain of the piece and then go their own ways, grumbling about how the other’s methods of fighting crime are weak or ineffective. And for better or worse, that’s been the general template of these kinds of crossovers for a long time.
## "Spawn is just caught in the middle of this with no real role in this story but to annoy Batman."
Art by Greg Capullo, Todd McFarlane, and Dave McCaig
Working with Greg Capullo, McFarlane seems to be doing his best Scott Snyder imitation here, using Snyder’s Court of Owls and Talon as the big bads here. And in a nod to Frank Miller (the first of a couple in this book,) the pearl necklace that Martha Wayne wore the night she was killed is some kind of MacGuffin here, a prize sought by the Court of Owls for some significance or another. It’s nothing other than a motivational tool: the Court wants the pearl and Batman doesn’t want them to have it. Spawn is just caught in the middle of this with no real role in this story but to annoy Batman.
With no real depth or even character work, McFarlane’s script’s sole purpose is to give Greg Capullo allegedly cool stuff to draw. It hopes that you get so sucked up in Capullo’s work that you don’t notice just how thin everything else about this comic book is. There’s a sense of playing the hits on this one, as key characters show up in terms of fan service in this comic. A Joker here, a Clown there. McFarlane brings them in with no purpose and no real impact on the story. The audience is here for the hits and I guess McFarlane and Capullo deliver them.
But it’s a crossover, you say. All anyone wants from a crossover is just their favorites to show up and play with other characters that they wouldn’t normally get to. That’s all we want. Any kind of story or anything is just a bonus if it’s there.
O.k., if that’s what you want.
How about another recent McFarlane-penned comic, the first part of **Spawn: Unwanted Violence #1**, the first of a 2-part miniseries with art from Mike Del Mundo? Curiously here, McFarlane is credited with Script/Plot (in that order?), maybe suggesting that this was done “Marvel” style where McFarlane gives Del Mundo a general plot, Del Mundo goes off and paints it, and then McFarlane comes back and does the writing over the artwork. That was the way that Stan and Jack did it. Looks like the way that Todd and Mike are doing it as well.
## "If you squint just right, you maybe see some kind of anger toward injustices starting to peer through here"
Art by Mike Del Mundo & Marco D'Alfonso
Normally in an analysis piece like this, there's some kind of plot summary here, explaining what happened and maybe diving a bit into the motivations of the characters and what they’re fighting for. But no matter how many times I’ve read this comic, I can’t figure out what any of that is. There’s a sequence about Spawn dealing with a child abuser which somehow leads to a Black Lives Matter protest to something in a hospital, before ending with Spawn being surrounded by cops with their guns pointed at him. But how any of these events relate to the ones before or after them follows a logic that probably only exists in McFarlane’s mind because it doesn’t appear anywhere in these pages.
Much like the crossover, the art in **Unwanted Violence** is nice. Del Mundo steps into this world and gives it visual depth and is doing yeoman work on pulling a story together but he can’t make the connection between the varying sequences of this book. That should be McFarlane’s job here, establishing the connective tissue in the plot that gives the readers something to latch onto here. If you squint just right, you maybe see some kind of anger toward injustices starting to peer through here but Spawn is not a character here: he’s a delivery tool to move through the pages, for the reader to follow. Normally that would lead to a story but in McFarlane’s hands, it just leads to confusion and ambiguity.
So here are two examples of Todd McFarlane’s writing that should be a bit more high-profile than just another issue of Spawn, where anyone who’s still reading that maybe has an idea of who this character is and what drives him. But the big conceits of these issues are 1) he’s not Batman and 2) he’s angry. Shouldn’t there be more to a 30-year-old character than that?
At least the art is nice.
### From Cover to Cover's Favorite Comics of 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/comics-of-2022/
Last updated: 2023-01-02T15:00:46.000Z
Thank you for taking a few minutes to read what we thought were some exceptional offerings in the world of sequential art during 2022\. We'd be remiss if we didn't issue the standard boilerplate caveats that this list is by no means conclusive or comprehensive. We choose the term "favorite" for specific reasons as the books that comprise this list rank highest in our own personal regard based on what we've read this year. By no means have we read everything, and by no means do we mean to offer any commentary by means of exclusion.
**A.X.E. Judgement Day #6,** cover art by Mark Brooks
**A.X.E.: Judgement Day by Kieron Gillen, Valerio Schiti, Al Ewing, and others, published by Marvel Comics** ([review of the lead-in issues](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/reviews-x-men-hellfire-gala-immortal-x-men-4-a-x-e-eve-of-judgment/))
I don’t know if Gillen’s story feels like a big event, even though that’s precisely what it is. The main, six-issue series tried to have the beats and the grandiosity of a mega event. Using a Celestial judging humanity to balance out a story of the Eternals/mutants conflict, this event leaned heavily on its crossover issues (particularly *Immortal X-Men*, *X-Men Red*and a number of Gillen-penned Eternal or character-focused tie-ins) to keep the story focused on the personal meaning of this judgment. And it all hung together far better than these types of sweeping crossovers tend to. And there’s so much to dig into in this story, so many rich layers and characters to build something that feels grand and weighty. (sc)
**Cankor**, cover art by Matthew Allison
**Cankor by Matthew Allison, (self-published)**
Part autobio, part super-hero deconstruction, part takedown of the comics industry, Allison’s is a puzzle with no real clues about how it should fit together. And maybe the answer is just “Comics…” with a shoulder shrug. Allison riffs on the most cosmic and navel-gazing Marvel/DC comics while also trying to establish his indy credibility by citing Jim Woodring, Peter Bagge, and John Porcellino in this book that feels like it’s trying to exorcize many demons out of Allison’s brain. This is a book I can see returning to over and over again to try and pick out more of what Allison is trying to do here. (sc)
**Catwoman: Lonely City**, cover art by Cliff Chiang
**Catwoman: Lonely City by Cliff Chiang, published by DC Comics/Black Label**
You knew going into this that it would be a fantastic-looking book. Chiang’s story, a *Dark Knight Returns*for Selina Kyle, also delivers a great story about living in and with the past, including the damage that it ultimately does. Returning to Gotham City after a 10-year stint in prison, Kyle finds a city playing its usual games even if the players have shifted where they’re sitting around the board. This story could lose itself in the past, but Chiang always keeps his characters focused on creating a future for themselves and the city. (sc)
**The Joy of Quitting**, cover art by Keiler Roberts
**Creepy by Keiler Roberts and Lee Sensenbrenner, The Joy of Quitting by Keiler Roberts, both published by Drawn & Quarterly**
Ok, so it's cheating right off the bat, and I know that. It took me forever to get to read **The Joy of Quitting.** Earlier this year, I fell in love with *My Begging Chart*, and I spent the rest of the year in eager anticipation of both **The Joy of Quitting** and **Creepy**. The latter isn't *exactly* a graphic novel or comic. It's fundamentally a children's book, sure. But it's still Keiler Roberts, and it's still published by D&Q, so it's fair game for me. Co-authored with her brother, Len Sensenbrenner, **Creepy** is a 21st-century morality tale for a generation consumed by screens. (I hope you're reading the From Cover to Cover print version). It carries with it a sense of whimsical precociousness as siblings Lee and Keiler conjure the mischievous nature of youth. **The Joy of Quitting** is everything I wanted it to be, and it might rank as Roberts' magnum opus when all is said and done. It's more comprehensive than *My Begging Chart*, both in the content and the style of art. Roberts doesn't eschew her wild inclinations, but **The Joy of Quitting** feels more like a reflection, whereas *My Begging Chart* felt like a reaction to events as they happen. Roberts brings the same wry wit that allows her to subtly lampoon everyday events by undermining the kind of attention and importance we assign to the temporary incidents of daily life. (mmc)
**Detention #2**, cover art by Tim Hensley
**Detention #2 by Tim Hensley, published by Fantagraphics Books**
Honestly, I’m still trying to wrap my head around this one– an adaptation of Stephen Crane’s **Maggie: A Girl of the Streets** done in the style of an old Little Rascals comic. Hensley takes the language of street urchin comics and applies it to this classic story of a woman’s journey to be something more than just what her family is. Or what they think they should be. The characters often look like something out of an old E.C. Segar Popeye strip, which keeps the tone of this comic light even as Crane’s weighty story shows this breakdown of people in the late 19th/early 20th century.
**Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands**, cover art by Kate Beaton
**Ducks: Two Years In the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton, published by Drawn & Quarterly** (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/ducks-two-years-in-the-oil-sands-by-kate-beaton/))
Beaton puts herself out there in this book, examining two years of her life when she worked in the Canadian oil sands and experienced a life that was designed to tear people down instead of building them up. Maybe that’s why it’s taken her nearly 20 years to tell this story. Beaton is just very honest in this book, showing an ability to explore her personal past while presenting it in an open and universal way that allows the readers to see themselves in some aspect of her story. It’s very personal, examining her ordeals and traumas while revealing these breakdowns in the very systems that are supposed to be supporting her.
**Goiter #7,** cover art by Josh Pettinger
**Goiter 7, Power Wash by Josh Pettinger, self-published**
I don’t think there is a cartoonist who captures the modern condition any better than Josh Pettinger. He continually impresses with his ability to evoke a general sense of paranoia via stories that are just *that* side of the absurd. I’m not sure what makes **Power Wash** distinct from a normal issue of **Goiter**, as most of what occurs in **Power Wash** is introduced in the more recent issues of **Goiter**. Pettinger seems to have connected with the development of Tedward, a character who suffices to a definition of charmingly cringeworthy(?). These two issues also both feature installments of *Victory Squad*, a more direct, or perhaps broader satiric offering that peels layers of consumerism apart. Overall, Pettinger can’t help but evoke an “on-edge” feeling with his comics - each choice seems designed to poke the reader *just* off-center. The end result is a contemplative feeling, but one without any firm resolution. (mmc)
**The High Desert,** cover art by James Spooner
**High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere. by James Spooner, published by Harper Collins**
I likely will not be able to explain how I feel about this book in a way that will actually do it justice. **High Desert** is one of the most fully-formed books I read all year, and I was stunned to realize it is James Spooner’s official debut. Now, to be fair, Spooner has published some zines, and he’s also famous for the exceptional **Afro-Punk** documentary, so it’s not exactly like the dude came out of *nowhere*. But the fact that his storytelling prowess comes across with such thoughtfulness of the paneling and structure of each page, the idea that he has a command of facial gestures in such a way that they capture whole paragraphs of thought, and the way he is able to interweave personal reflection with an account of events without feeling over editorial or pedantic is downright stunning. **High Desert** is a book that functions on numerous levels. It’s a fantastic snapshot of the 90s punk and hardcore scene that causes me to reminisce almost every page. But triumphs as a beautifully personal account of growing up black in what is arguably the dominant white subculture - suburban punk rocker. Spooner’s genius is his ability to access all layers of his account. It’s a personal memoir, a beautiful individual story, while also being an account of the hypocrisy of the punk movement in the eyes and thoughts of a person of color. But ever for a basic white dude like me, it feels like a transcendent message about adolescence as a whole. Spooner captures the loneliness of the punks, goths, and hardcore kids in **High Desert -** the overwhelming feeling of being ostracized that caused so many of us to reach out to the world of punk rock in the first place. But the genius of Spooner’s account - and what I think hammers home its authenticity - is the way he is able to articulate the feeling when that safe haven still conjures those came feelings of othering. **High Desert** is a superb book and belongs on the shelf next to the likes of *Our Band Could Be Your Life, Get in the Van,* and *American Hardcore. (mmc)*
**How To Make A Monster**, cover art by Glenn Pearce
**How to Make a Monster by Casanova Frankenstein and Glenn Pearce, published by Fantagraphics Books** (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/how-to-make-a-monster-by-casanova-frankenstein-and-glenn-pearce-review/))
This was the last thing that I wrote about in 2022 and it won me over just by how close the childhood shown here was to my own. I was able to see things in Frankenstein’s story that quite literally spoke to me in terms of experience and feelings, which I loved. And I also appreciated the differences in our stories, where while I recognized the events, I didn’t live with the same fear that he did. To me, this was the experience of the contrasts in our lives, where things were the same and where they were different. And Pearce drew a wintry south-side Chicago that felt both alien and comfortably recognizable. It was weird how we captured that soul-numbing chill of those winter days.
**It's Lonely At The Centre of the Earth**, cover art by Zoe Thorogood
**It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood, published by Image Comics**
Holy moly. Zoe Thorogood’s six-month memoir heavily focuses on the pressure, anxiety, and emptiness following the publication and critical success of *[The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott](http://www.panelpatter.com/2020/09/The-impending-blindness-of-Billie-scott-Zoe-thorogood-review.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*. It was hard not to interpret *Impending Blindness* with some autobiographical notes, but in **Centre of the Earth**, Thorogood pulls back the curtain entirely and bares her soul, ostensibly to cover a six-month period of intense depression simultaneously fueled by and contributing to extreme self-doubt. The honesty is as brutal as it is touching and reassuring. Thorogood’s ability to be self-deprecating without entirely deflecting is an art in and of itself. For those of us who read *Impending Blindness* and found Zoe Thorogood to have arrived to us fully formed as a genius cartoonist have to admit we were a little wrong in that Zoe has so much more to offer than we first considered. Her cartooning takes a giant step forward. Her ability to experiment with the form serves to both drive the non-linear components of the narrative while also allowing her to explore different aspects of herself. There is almost a free-verse feel to the book which serves both the feeling of unencumbered, unedited honesty and the idea that this book is very much one of stanzas, of little moments and snippets that compile into a harrowing year. (mmc)
**Keeping Two,** cover art by Jordan Crane
**Keeping Two by Jordan Crane, published by Fantagraphics**
We’re borderline overrun by cringeworthy material bent on eliciting some sort of ironic detachment-laden humor, but **Keeping Two** is a book I felt in my gut as I read it for different notions of discomfort and embarrassment. Rather than the purely cringe, **Keeping Two** hits the reader with a terribly precise depiction of the mundane ugliness of life. **Keeping Two** chronicles a mere few hours in the life of a young couple trying to remember why they love each other amidst of a simple series of everyday obstacles. There is nothing here that is particularly tragic, and yet that makes the whole endeavor feel that much more tragic. **Keeping Two** is rut personified, with a level of honest precision that had me grimacing as I was reminded of my own inconsiderate pigheadedness. Woven together with a parallel story, a literal short story the couple is reading together, Crane interjects little winks at the surreal that serve to interrupt the timeline of the main narrative and provide both a metaphor and a commentary on the main story. It’s a tight story considering it takes hundreds of pages to investigate the fallout of a fight that lasts a few hours at most. (mmc)
**Our Colors**, cover art by Gengoroh Tagame
**Our Colors by Gengoroh Tagame, published by Pantheon Books** (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/our-colors-review-gengoroh-tagame/))
Kind of like Frankenstein and Pearce above, Tagame has a way of creating empathy in his audience, but not just for the main characters. In this tale, Sora is a young man struggling with his own queerness in a very conservative Japan, Tagame is probably bringing his own experience to the story. But as the audience, he also puts us in the position of the family, the friends, and the outsiders who are struggling to accept and understand Sora. He gives us this insight into a struggling young man’s emotions while also making us ask how would we respond to Sora.
**Phenomena**, cover art by André Lima Araújo
**Phenomena: The Golden City of Eyes by Brian Michael Bendis and André Lima Araújo, published by Abrams Comicarts**
**Phenomena** is hands down the best genre book I read all year. I was absolutely stunned by how tightly constructed and driven this book is. Bendis creates a fascinating world and he manages to take a step back and allow Lima Araújo’s artwork to function as the core component of the narrative structure while also leaving the reader with enough mystery about the world of the **Golden City**. For all his ability to mine characterization, Bendis always seems compelled to contextualize his plots, but here he seems to let the world exist. It’s cleaner, and it’s far more engaging as a result. And really, André Lima Araújo’s line work is an excellent complement. This year, Lima Araújo also produced *A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance* with Rick Remender. But his work on **Phenomena** feels clearer and softer, and it looks beautiful in black and white, a choice that both connotes the obvious Shonen manga as well as 80s indie comic influences. Lima Araújo conjures a sublime style, one that feels part Miyazaki, part Moebius. (mmc)
**Prime/Drome**, art by Jesse Lonergan
**Prime/Drome by Jesse Lonergan, self-published on Patreon, newsprint.**
Jesse Lonergan is my favorite science fiction storyteller working in comics today. He succeeds in capturing an aesthetic that hearkens back to both pulp magazine cover art and 70s underground comics. When I read a Jesse Lonergan story, there is a timelessness to it. I feel continually mesmerized by his layouts - the geometry of his pages alone is enough to induce a trance state. In an era in which science fiction comics are often overly glitzy, Lonergan’s raw feel is a welcomed change. Steeped in the traditions of science fantasy, **Prime/Drome**is an example of how to do long-form storytelling without relying on needless re-explanations of the exposition, an insistence upon setting up the background for every event, or the use of incessant dialogue to advance the plot and provide overloaded context. Lonergan has always known how to pull back and let the page speak for itself. His gridded process gives the levels of detail better than any wedged-in dialogue ever could. And Della is a badass, through and through. (mmc)
**Reckless: The Ghost in Your** and **Reckless: Follow Me Down**, cover art by Sean Phillips
**Reckless: The Ghost in You & Reckless: Follow Me Down by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, published by Image Comics.**
I’m not really that keen on the first three Reckless books. They were fine but lacked any real emotional gut punch that the best Brubaker/Phillips collaborations do. And to be fair, that statement applies to most of the non-*Criminal* books by the two as that work often feels more like exercises in storytelling than trying to convey something real or meaningful (except for *Pulp*, which remains excellent.) But these last two **Reckless** books, which go together as they cover the same time period from two different viewpoints, are simply fantastic. In the first book, putting the spotlight on Anna, Ethan’s girl Friday in this series, opens up the emotional space in the book. And while *Follow Me Down*is back to being focused on Ethan, it kind of helps knowing that he’s not the center of this world and there’s room for other, more developed characters to move and affect Ethan. Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips capture this California ennui in the characters, in the location, and in the lighting that defines the space that these characters exist in.
**Time Zone J**, cover art by Julie Doucet
**Time Zone J by Julie Doucet, published by Drawn & Quarterly** (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/time-zone-j-by-julie-doucet/))
The art from this book is what will haunt me for a long time, page after page of facesjust all intermingled on the page, creating this barrier for the cartoonist to hide in as she tells us about a failed romance from her youth. Each page is more of the same but so different than what came before it, creating this nearly endless scroll through Doucet’s memories. As I wrote in my review back in May, it’s like being at a party, tightly packed together in a room with a ton of people but focusing on only what one of them is saying as her words cut through all of the other clatter.
**Upside Dawn**, cover art by Jason
**Upside Dawn by Jason, published by Fantagraphics**It’s been a few years since Jason’s books have really made that much of an impact but **Upside Dawn** is one of the most inventive and fun books that he’s put out in a long time. A collection of short, absurd, and often funny stories, Jason is playful in these stories. His quirky storytelling set him apart years ago but in many ways in the past 10 or so years, it feels like it has become a brand to be managed instead of a direction to be explored. The stories in this book tap into that inquisitive nature again as we see the cartoonist really pushing the idea of what a story is and what needs to be there and what needs to be cut out as he really plays with structure in ways that few cartoonists do.
## Honorable Mentions:
There are plenty of other comics I enjoyed this year. **Metax** made me think more than any other book, and if I had the chance to re-read it and write about it, it likely would have ended up on this list as well. **M is for Monster** is also deserving of more consideration and is one of the better young-adult graphic novels I’ve read in recent times mostly because it allows itself to be its own book without twisting to fulfill every YA trope. **20th Century Men** has some of the biggest ideas of any mainstream book out there. It feels like a throwback to early 10s Image Comics, and it makes me yearn for more floppies that try to tackle big concepts. Alas, I’m three or four issues behind. Ram V is solid in everything he does, but he and Mike Perkins are other level with **The Swamp Thing**. The only downside is that the book needs another 30 issues to do it justice - talk about big ideas in a small package. I enjoyed **Birds of Maine**, but I struggled with the D&Q version. I understand the inclination to keep each entry the size of the original Instagram post, but I feel like the whole point of publishing a book would be to expand the size of the original cartoons. I guess it would have been a long book, but that’s not a problem, right? (mmc)
### From Cover to Cover's 2022 Favorite Archival Editions and Collections
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-2022-favorite-archival-editions-and-the-like/
Last updated: 2023-01-02T12:49:30.000Z
Thank you for taking a few minutes to read what we thought were some exceptional collections and archive editions from 2022\. We'd be remiss if we didn't issue the standard boilerplate caveats that this list is by no means conclusive or comprehensive. We choose the term "favorite" for specific reasons as the books that comprise this list rank highest in our own personal regard based on what we've read this year. By no means have we read everything, and by no means do we mean to offer any commentary by means of exclusion.
**All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson by Charles Johnson, published by New York Review Comics**
This is one of a few books I was able to read this year that I desperately wanted to write about but never was able to get exactly what I wanted to say onto paper. And there really is so much to say about this collection. You can't help but stand in awe of Charles Johnson, and if you aren't incredibly familiar with his cartooning (as I was not, myself), this collection will serve to offer another layer of the genius of a man who is an accomplished author and academic scholar. What impresses me most about Johnson's work compiled in this collection - mostly cartoons from prior to when he achieved literary fame - is the way he subverts the typical style of the single-panel political cartoon - think radical politics by way of a New Yorker cartoon. The juxtaposition of perspectives and the poignancy of Johnson's gags amount to a masterclass of political cartooning. Johnson's commentary is searing, and it's almost tempting to say he was ahead of his time with his philosophy. In reality, it's more of a reminder of how little progress we've made. (mmc)
**John Paul Leon’s The Winter Men Artist's Edition by John Paul Leon, published by Zoop**
Here’s hoping that this book, written by Brett Lewis, gets a nice, deluxe collection sometime because it’s a really great story. But this book is a labor of love by Scott Dunbier and Leon’s studiomates Tommy Lee Edward and Bernard Chang, scanning John Paul Leon’s great original artwork from this series. I’ve got a handful of the big Artist's Editions and even more of the Artisan’s Editions (hidden gems that reprint the hardcovers in a smaller, more affordable, paperback version) and the best ones are where you can see the work happening on the pages. In some of the editions, the artwork seems so perfect like all they are is just a black & white reprint of the comic. But in this Winter Men edition, you can still see Leon working through the storytelling and the drawing, where to fill in all of the details and where to pull back because the reader can fill in the blanks. It’s a great testament to Leon’s artwork and a reminder of just how fantastic he was. (sc)
**Elephant/The Projector by Martin Vaughn James, published by New York Review Comics**
I read this at a point I thought I could actually keep with a new job and a new website, and I'm hopelessly remiss that I never had the chance to truly get my thoughts about this compilation down on paper. Kudos to the **New York Review Comics** team, a publishing house that continually produces some of the finest-looking books, for putting out this collection in such a beautiful package. Seth's book design provides a modern context, if not elevation, coupled with Jeet Heer's analytical foreword. Both **Elephant** and **The Projector** are the types of comics that - barring a few dated elements of reference - feel like they could be made five weeks ago, let alone fifty years. Both eschew narrative in favor of form, **Elephant** more so, and each page is essentially an exercise in piecing it all together, both what is on the page and what is left off. Situationist and dadaist, this is the type of book that, being rediscovered, feels like a lost piece of a puzzle. Its history does not preclude its contemporary vitality. (mmc)
**Pulp Power: The Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Art of the Street & Smith Universe by Neil McGinness, published by Abrams**
Abrams has the best design of any publisher working in the world of comics today. And I know that pulp isn't exactly *comics* per se, but there is a clear trajectory from pulp art to golden and silver age superheroes. So, yes, this book is somewhat comic adjacent, as pulps tend to be to comics in general. It’s hard to say the spirit of pulps disappeared, inasmuch as their overall motifs and tropes seemed to find a better home in the comic world than in prose. What McGinnes is able to do in this stunning oversize edition is to trace the impact pulps had on pop culture and the next generation of creators who entered comics inspired by the stories as much as the covers and art pages of pulp magazines. This is the kind of book that is fun to have around not necessarily to read from cover to cover, but to leaf through every so often to experience little details. Books like this often get obsolesced by the internet, but there is something special about it being put together in one package, both as a reference and a symbol. (mmc)
**The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror - Ominous Omnibus Volume 1: Scary Tales and Sacrier Tentacles, published by Abrams Comicarts** (reviewed [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/simpsons-comics-return-with-treehouse-of-horror-ominous-omnibus-volume-1-scary-tales-and-scarier-tentacles/))
I wrote about this compendium when it first arrived on shelves, and I’m still in awe of it sitting next to my turntable (it doesn’t fit on any of my shelves. I need bigger shelves). Simpsons Comics captured a sweet spot of fandom, and the Treehouse of Horror collection is a love letter to the seemingly extinct series. What sets this apart from any regular collection is the beautiful production value of this tome. Treehouse of Horror arrives with a glow-in-the-dark cover featuring brand-new art, encased in a sturdy slipcase that connotes a special prominence for the series. The book is slightly oversize. And it’s heavy - weighty paper and a solid cover. It is an absolutely elegant edition of, yes, Simpsons Halloween comics. It’s perfect. (mmc)
**Love and Rockets: The First Fifty by Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, and Mario Hernandez** and **The Complete Eightball by Daniel Clowes, both published by Fantagraphics Books**
This isn’t the first time that Fantagraphics has done collections like this, and it’s not even the first time that they’ve published **The Complete Eightball** as this is a softcover collection of the work previously released in hardcover but I greatly enjoy these collections that present whole issues. Even though I really enjoy a lot of Clowes’ work, the early stuff in this collection is a huge blindspot to me. I’ve never read *Dan Pussey* and even though I own two copies of *Like A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron* (don’t ask,) it’s another book that I’ve just never found the time for.
And the act of reading these books is just do different from regular collections. I’ve got and read multiple versions of the early **L&R** stuff but the early stuff like Jaime’s *Mechanics* always felt like it was just that- early work– that you had to wade through to get to the good stuff. But reading **Love and Rockets #2**, Maggie’s story took on a new life. I was able to read it by itself, not just to get to more Maggie & Hopey stuff but as its own thing and it was fantastic. You almost forget just what the single issue experience is like so I’m grateful to Fantagraphics for putting out these great collections and reminding us just how fun it is. (sc)
**Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix by Brian Doherty, published by Abrams**
**American Comics: A History by Jeremy Dauber, published by W.W. Norton**
After I finished **Dirty Pictures**, I realized that anyone interested in the trajectory of American comics needs to read both **Dirty Pictures** and **American Comics** to get the full picture. The more I consider each book, the more I realize simultaneously how far comics and comix have come since their iteration (or even their proto-formats) while still being fundamentally connected to the same core concept that helped them emerge in the first place. It’s rare that we get this kind of analysis of comics, let alone twice in one year. (mmc)
**Uncle Scrooge: The Diamond Jubilee Collection by Carl Bark**
**Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck: Bear Mountain Tales by Carl Barks, Don Rosa, Daniel Branca, and Giorgio Cavazzano, both published by Fantagraphics**
It's the 75th anniversary of the [Adventure Capitalist](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/whatever-happened-to-the/), and Fantagraphics has provided us with two beautiful collected editions. If you've been following along with Fanta's Duck and Disney archival editions, it is no surprise that these books look and feel fantastic. The **Diamond Jubilee** collection, a treasure trove of Carl Barks classics, is a near-complete-omnibus of the best works of Scrooge's creator. Clocking in at over 300 pages, this is a gorgeous collection that lets the reader experience the sheer magnitude of Barks' creative output. Not to be outdone is the equally special collection of famous Bear Mountain tales. This collection marks the first time Fantagraphics has collected Duck comics under a general theme rather than a specific story or cartoonist. What I love about the **Bear Mountain** book is the ability to read through the legacy of Bark's creations passed down to Rosa, Branca, and Cavazzano. Both of these books are stellar editions to an already superb collection of Duck comics shepherded by Fantagraphics. (mmc)
### Can a kid just be a kid? Thoughts on Casanova Frankenstein and Glenn Pearce's How To Make A Monster
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/how-to-make-a-monster-by-casanova-frankenstein-and-glenn-pearce-review/
Last updated: 2022-12-22T12:00:25.000Z
The way Casanova Frankenstein tells us about what it was like to be an 8th grader in a south-side Chicago, religious school is almost instantly recognizable to me. I grew up about 15 miles away from where he did. I wasn’t yet in a private religious school (that would come about a year later for me, in high school) but his depiction of growing up middle class in the 1980s feels so familiar: I had so many of the same pop culture interests and experiences as he did. There’s this one portion of the book where he talks about waking up early in the morning, before anything good is on TV, and watching the farm report on a local TV station before the good stuff came on. “The farm report was still on. Maybe five minutes until the Ray Raynor show. I didn’t get the farm report. All that talk of ‘pork bellies’ going for so and so dollars. It was confusing. Surely there were no farms in Chicago,” was a strangely nostalgic thing to me, bringing back memories of those same mornings, watching those same farm reports, and trying to figure out where there was even a farm around us. I haven’t thought about those farm reports in years, probably decades. But suddenly I’m right back there, stuck with a limited amount of channels to watch on the TV before the ubiquity of cable TV, and just perplexed by this report that seemed so important to adults. **How To Make A Monster** was leading me to that moment and then BOOM! I was entirely in the book, identifying with Frankenstein and his childhood.
The memories of an 8th grader (art by Glenn Pearce)
The big difference is that he grew up on the mostly black south side of the city, but firmly in Chicago, while I was just a kid from the white suburbs– so close but worlds apart. Glenn Pearce’s drawings of Frankenstein’s memories turn this childhood connection between us into an absolute horror story, almost retroactively rewriting some of my own memories of childhood to frame them similarly to Casanova’s. Casanova Frankenstein and Glenn Pearce depict childhood as a series of emotional beatings that wear down on a thirteen-year-old, but ultimately in an oddly optimistic and mystifying way as it prepares that kid for what’s next in his life, the monster that’s waiting in all of us during high school and beyond.
## “…Casanova’s memories are those of an innocent young man living in a godless world.”
“The 1980/1981 school year started with a dismantling of childhood and got steadily worse,” an older Frankenstein tells us on the first page, leather clad and sitting at a bar, an ashtray full of cigarette butts next to him. A self-described loner up until 8th grade, he describes the previous years of his childhood as “fairly normal” until puberty, hormones, and all of that stuff hit everyone in his school and everything changed. This chronicle of eighth grade shows a kid who wanted to stay a kid even though the world around him was changing and becoming even more threatening. He had lived with a certain amount of fear up to that point; his cop father had instilled that in him but that fear had centered on his father, not on the rest of the world around him. Telling this story from the remembered perspective of childhood, the south side of Chicago becomes hell on earth. Maybe it is a holdover of concepts from his religious schooling but Casanova’s memories are those of an innocent young man living in a godless world. So if there’s no God, what else could there be to fill his soul?
Pearce’s artwork turns Chicago into an urban Hieronymus Bosch hellscape populated by school-age demons and torturous adults. Recreating Frankenstein’s childhood, Pearce concentrates on creating horrific images from a child’s point of view. It’s almost like he’s reshaping that happy-go-lucky movie [*A Christmas Story*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfjEZ88NHBw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)– you know the one with Ralphy and his father, Christmas, triple dog dares, the furnace, and its way of recreating memories with a tinge of rosiness– without the comfortable haze of nostalgia. Frankenstein and Pearce are practicing a similar kind of looking back at pivotal events from childhood as that Christmas movie did. Where that movie was wrapped in the warmth of the holidays and memories, this book remembers a similar age for the main character with terror and the dread of surviving the horrors that wait around the school hall corner.
Through his vivid depictions of events colored by the fear that Frankenstein remembers as much, if not more than the happening itself, Pearce’s pages are just one horrific moment after another, showing the hell of 8th grade, trapped between being a kid and a teenager. Whether it’s an encounter with a disapproving secretary in the principal’s office or navigating the way home to avoid Frankenstein’s teenage tormentors, Pearce makes it hard not to confront these horrors of childhood without feeling as if they are your own. He takes this incredibly personal story and makes it even more relatable to the reader, putting you in Frankenstein’s shoes and making you face his fears.
## “It’s off-putting to read this journey, to get to the moment of realization, and then a few minutes later, you hit the last page of the book and it’s done.”
##
All of this makes the book sound like it’s a horror book, which it is, but it’s something more than that. Frankenstein is doing more than just telling us about his crappy 8th grade in a religious school where God seemingly didn’t exist, or at least, where he didn’t care about this small, scared kid. And even when he plays hooky to escape his school, Frankenstein finds a largely uncaring, unforgiving, and unrelenting city that doesn’t let a little kid be a kid. Three-quarters of the book shows us this world that is actively telling Frankenstein that he doesn’t matter and, worse yet, it may be better if he wasn’t there (not in a suicidal way but in an existential one.) As he’s getting older, he’s witnessing what becoming a teenager supposedly means in his classmates (supposedly being an “adult” means bullying those you can) but he also sees his father reflected in nearly every adult, a cop with a short temper who parented through fear instead of love.
The fear of our fathers coming home.
All of this- the fear, the uncertainty, the desperation, and the need- lead up to the making of the monster and that moment when Frankenstein discovers his salvation. It’s a revelation for him, just as it should be for the reader so we’ll avoid spoilers here. It’s off-putting to read this journey, to get to the moment of realization, and then a few minutes later, you hit the last page of the book and it’s done. There’s so much build-up, and then a revelatory breakthrough that would normally lead to the climax and a resolution. But Frankenstein and Pearce get to the emotional breakthrough and it is clearly a life-changing event for Frankenstein. And then…
The monster is something personal. In ways, we’ve seen the monster throughout the book, some obvious in hindsight and others hidden. Accepting the idea of a transformation into a “monster,” The book makes us see how at some point in childhood we’ve got to accept that we’re part of the world and give into it, becoming one of the demon tormentors. Or we can choose to be a monster, an individual disconnected from the world, finding our own means of expression and existence. Most of us probably fall somewhere in between, sacrificing portions of ourselves to fit neatly into everything else. For Frankenstein, the monster is part of his identity (hence even his name); you can’t get to the monster without understanding the journey that came before it.
The memory of these events help define Casanova Frankenstein. Those events and torments primed him and made him ready for discover and for revelation. Frankenstein and Pearce guide us through this painful story, laying out Frankenstein’s emotional wounds from that time and giving us the opportunity to reflect on our own pains. It’s the opening of wounds for examination and reflection. And it hurts. Frankenstein’s memories in **How To Make A Monster** are his own but he and Pearce find ways to explore them that creates ties between the creators and their readers. And during those explorations, Frankenstein shows us how all those painful events are still part of who we were then and who we’ve become because of them.
### "Go home, traveler"- thoughts on Tradd Moore's Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise #1 (and maybe a few words on Ronin Book II #1)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/doctor-strange-fall-sunrise-1-by-tradd-moore-and-heather-moore/
Last updated: 2022-12-01T14:45:55.000Z
Forget continuity.
Forget that there are other *Doctor Strange* comics.
Forget that he’s supposedly dead in the comics (whatever “dead” means in terms of Marvel or DC these days;) At least, forget it as much as it’s a plot point that’s been happening over the last year or two and just accept this comic for what it is.
Past and Present merge for Stephen Strange
Tradd Moore and Heather Moore’s **Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise #1** lives and breaths outside of all that stuff. And hopefully, that’s where it stays for as long as this series runs. All you need to know s right there on the first few pages– Stephen Strange wakes up in a strange land (no pun intended) of fantastical landscapes, mystical creatures, and stunning magic. One of the dangerous spirits declares that he’s dead so that must mean that this is some afterlife. But even then, as Strange remembers who and what he is, he says triumphantly “I am Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts. I AM ALIVE!” So this isn’t a story about death but about life. Helping the spirit attacking him reconcile its love and loss, he heals a pained spirit and then sets out to walk this new land.
I don’t want to say that Moore’s writing gets in the way but it takes a secondary role to the storytelling that’s done through the art. Someday maybe there will be a wordless edition of this book that while a different experience, will have its own story. As it is, Moore is considered in his prose, using it to establish the pressure in this comic. There are panels and pages here where Moore just lets the image tell the story, allowing the comic to breathe. But when he starts layering in words over the art, it changes the pacing of how you’re reading this story, amping up the tension of Strange in this fantastical world. There are wordless (but never really silent) passages in this book where you’re taking in this environment right along with Strange, just living in the moment of the panel, but then when Moore’s writing comes in, he uses it to build your anticipation for what’s going to happen on the next page. There’s this building up of pressure through the words and then an exhilarating excitement of release when you get to that big next moment in the art.
Two pages showing the scale and detail of Moore's artwork
Moore’s artwork is strange and fantastic, inspired by pop art as much as it is by comics. He’s telling a story about magic and his art is imbued with a different kind of magic. There’s a lot in this comic where my eyes are telling me that the images shouldn’t work but by the time it gets to my heart, I’m sucked into the mysteries of Moore’s drawings. It’s already seductive with its melodic lines but Heather Moore’s colors pull your eyes further and further into the book, trying to lead you into something that’s just behind Moore’s linework. It keeps coming back to the idea of mystery in the storytelling; the writing, the art, and the colors all show us something, guiding us, but also obscuring something just outside our vision. It’s both playful and inviting, wanting us to have a more active role in peeling back the layers of this story.
It’s hard then not to compare **Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise #1** to another recent #1, **Ronin Book II #1** by Frank Miller, Phillip Tan, and Daniel Henriques. It feels like both comics have the same goal to be visual feasts but end up being completely different experiences. Working over Frank Miller layouts (which maybe should be a bit of a red flag to begin with,) Tan’s work is huge and dense, each page just bombarding you with images, layers, negative space, and textures to an almost painful degree. After a surface reading, Tan is creating some of the best images of his career, finding a rendering style that seems just as mysterious as Moore’s work, Where Moore is going to envelop you in the art, Moore and Tan are persuading you to ask for more even as they just hammer at you, beating you over the head with the self-importance of their work.
**Frank Miller's Ronin Book II #1** By Frank Miller, Phillip Tan, and Daniel Henriques
Almost more of Miller finally getting to do his version of *Lone Wolf and Cub*than a sequel to his *Ronin* (I guess *Ronin: Book 1* now?), **Ronin Book II #1** is a comic of smoke and mirrors, trying to distract you with Tan’s detailed art while there’s no real story here– at least, no significant plot or conflict is established in this issue. It’s all just anonymous ciphers leaping and dancing around for who-nows-how-many pages. For as kind of pretty as the book looks, it misses some intangible element that pulls you into the story like Tradd Moore and Heather Moore’s work do. Miller and Tan are doing a lot of work on the page, trying to show dazzle you with the dynamism of the image but that only gets them so far as you start to realize that there’s nothing to these images, no meaning or storytelling behind them other than the “kewlness” of the whole thing.
**Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise #1** may be the continuing adventures of Doctor Strange after he was killed (somehow, somewhen,) but Tradd Moore and Heather Moore manage to make it its own thing, pushing at the boundaries of what a *Doctor Strange* comic is supposed to be while being truer to the spirit of the character’s mystical and psychedelic roots than so many other of the character’s other comics even come close to. Moore’s draws this mystical, cool, and mystifying comic that’s a journey of discovery to find out what it is. The pure storytelling on display here transports you along with Stephen Strange to a new world that’s as exciting to behold as it is dangerous to journey through.
### Ducks: Two Years In the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/ducks-two-years-in-the-oil-sands-by-kate-beaton/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T02:11:35.000Z
There’s an active system in Kate Beaton’s **Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands** that’s designed to exploit its workers. There are many systems on display that look for ways to game both the work and the workers. These systems operate on a personal level, a gender level, a financial level, an ecological level, and even a socio-political level. In **Ducks**, Beaton revisits 2005, the time in her life just after she graduated from university and faced all of the student loans that she needed to get an art degree. That’s one system, an educational system that requires most people to leverage a large chunk of their future earnings to pay for it. And for North America, it’s a fairly common systematic exploitation; to get a job, you need a college degree- to get a college degree, you need a job to pay for it. And in many ways, it’s the most insidious system at play here as it is what makes Kate explore and have to engage in several other systems that have been corrupted over time to tear down people instead of building them up.
For Kate, all of these satellite systems orbit the system of work, or more specifically, of employment. To pay for that university education, Kate travels from the east coast of Canada to Alberta and its oil sands. There’s work to be found in Fort McMurray, one of the main settlements built up around the oil business. Many Canadians have found themselves in the same situation as Kate, needing to find ways to pay for an education and heading west for a couple of years to make some good money to get out of debt before beginning their true vocation, hopefully, debt free. So here’s a structured system that’s designed to attract young people to work on the sites, in the offices, and in support roles of big oil. And it’s a system that Kate enters into, seemingly understanding the mutual benefits to both parties- the employers and the employees.
In many ways, the work is just work- a contract entered into in which services are paid for with wages. But it almost feels cliche and condescending to say that these oil sands are no place for a young woman. And that’s less because of the work itself than it is about all of the other systems at their exploitative work. And that’s not to say that the oil sands are for young men; these systems have formed to eat at men and women, old and young. Beaton focuses on her experiences, what she did and what was done to her, but she develops other characters, mostly her close co-workers, so that we get glimpses into their experiences too, what brought them to Alberta and what has worn them down over time. Some are the same issues that Kate faces; some are different.
**Ducks** is primarily built around people talking and developing relationships, good and bad. Beaton tells it mostly through medium-focused images; there are not a lot of close-ups or far shots in her drawings. She uses some wide images to capture her settings but when she shows Kate at work, talking and helping out people, it’s in this fairly steady frame design to focus us on the characters’ interactions. It also acts to ground the reader in her story. For much of this book, Beaton frames us as quiet eavesdroppers into her life.
It’s like we’re largely in the corner of the room, just off-panel but still silently witnessing Kate’s life. It’s an uncomfortable position for us to be in; it’s hard to watch what happens around her and to her and not be able to act. There’s powerlessness reading this book (another system acting on us?) that probably mirrors a lot of what Kate was feeling at the time. We’re swept up in these events, carried along by the need to find out how it ends without ever being able to act or to help out in situations where we can recognize that Kate needs someone to be there for her.
Beaton confronts the events from her time in the oil sands.
Kate is put into all of these situations, from the uncomfortable to the personally destructive. The ways that Beaton frames each encounter puts it front and center where we can’t ignore it, from the basic inequality of the work to the sexism she encounters, to the abuse that’s done to her. It’s two years of her life where she experiences the worst that humanity has to offer and we’re experiencing it with her. Sure, we could put the book down and grab something more fun and light but as Beaton makes us confront these things from her life, she’s building our investment in Kate, in the strength and resilience that she develops. Beaton is giving us this insight into Kate’s story that she and the people in her life at the time don’t have. And the cruelty is that we’re even less capable of nurturing or protecting Kate than the people and systems that are part of her life.
It should all be better than this.
We should be better than this.
... it doesn't work like that.
We watch all of these powerful and abusive systems attack Kate physically and emotionally. It’s probably only a small portion of what she experienced but Beaton transfers her pain and frustrations with the system to us. It’s amazing how she makes us both a witness and also a recipient of what we’re reading. This autobiography is a painful page-turner, painful in an empathic way but also a page-turner as we see her persevere through all of this. But even the last pages show that those experiences are still there outside of Alberta’s oil sands. That may be part of the reason for this book, to try to work through the damage those systems did, or even just to offload a portion of it on the audience. Hopefully, we can take a portion of Benton’s pain from this time, giving her some relief by sharing the pain with her.
It’s easy for an autobiography to tell you the story of a life. It’s another thing for an autobiography to get you to live that life through its story. Beaton places us by her side during these two years of her life, witnessing and taking part in these systems that have been twisted over time to wear down our personhood and to make us just another cog of those systems. All these years later, **Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands** fights back at these systems, denying them the final say in who and what Beaton became after her time at work in an environment that cares little for the people working to maintain it.
### An Introduction To the World in Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham's Miracleman: The Silver Age #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/miracleman-the-silver-age-1-by-neil-gaiman-and-mark-buckingham/
Last updated: 2022-10-26T04:45:49.000Z
Decadence is at the heart of **Miracleman: The Silver Age #1**, Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham’s remastering of a thirty-year-old comic before they properly begin the end of their long, long, long delayed story. The world has been remade in the image of Miracleman, a 1950s forgotten superhero who destroyed London but saved the world back in 1984\. This story opens in 2003, or 19 E.M. as eras are measured in this brave new world. But it’s 19 years into the age of miracles, a period shaped by man-made superheroes, aliens, and the next steps in mankind’s evolution. Children wearing brightly colored costumes fight over and through an NYC skyline, using the debris to knock each other into buildings while they talk tough, grown up, and heroic. When a Galactus-like threat appears above their playground, the boy declares “If that thing’s going to be defeated, we have to join forces,” to which his rival answers “Okay. But we’ve still got a score to settle, and just don’t you forget it.” Sounds like the writing of Stan Lee or Roy Thomas.
But they’re interrupted by another child, slightly angelic, who has been sent to gather her friends from their playtime. This wasn’t some portentous battle for the fate of the world but children playing dress up, dressing up as superheroes the same ways that kids used to dress up as cops and robbers. Only the New York City and buildings that they destroyed in their playtime seem all too real. “Renovations later. Rematch tomorrow,” they decide as they race to witness the next step of history being taken– the resurrection of Young Miracleman.
The New Olympus
These opening pages set the stage for the rest of Gaiman and Buckingham’s story. Young Miracleman, or Dicky as his only friend Miracleman calls him, was killed back in 1963, the discarded experiment of his original makers. But in this age of miracles, he’s resurrected by an alien. But why? For what purpose other than to soothe an old man’s soul? For 19 years, Miracleman had been at the center of rebuilding the world around him, the center of his universe. So why resurrect a ghost of the 1950s into this new day and age?
“Because you deserved a second chance at life,” Miracleman tells the disoriented boy. “Because you were my friend. Because you were a part of the Miracleman family.” In his answer, Miracleman shifts the onus of Dicky’s resurrection onto him. It’s because of Dicky’s value as a human. But when Dicky asks about the democratic rule of this glorious future state, Miracleman answers “... There’s just me.” Gaiman and Buckingham pack so much into that line. It says so much more about the world than all the ways that Miracleman has tried to show the world to Dicky. “There’s just me,” is such a loaded statement about who Miracleman is in this world and where his head is at. Young Miracleman wasn’t resurrected because of who or what he was but because one old man with too much power felt alone and rudderless in the world that he has made.
The cold, hard facts of this new age.
The decadence of this issue is hidden beneath flashy costumes and all too familiar battles but it’s a decadence that comes out of power and privilege. It’s unrecognized by the people who are in the middle of it; it is just the way that the world is, kids flying about and destroying buildings that they can rebuild before bedtime just to destroy again tomorrow. They play with these things the same way that I played with Legos and Star Wars figures, controlling an imaginary world that bent to my whims. When I was a child, I played and spoke like a child. But of course, I didn’t have any real powers and eventually got bored of my Legos and action figures.
The Buckingham of 2022 is a great artist for this because he can capture the emotional center of Young Miracleman and Miracleman on an almost instinctual level. His Young Miracleman’s smile shows an outer optimism but the way that he follows the character’s eyes as he takes in this new world tells us his confusion but also his distaste for this future that he’s found himself in. It’s the same with Miracleman; Buckingham draws him as a character who’s trying to convince himself that he’s doing the right thing as opposed to just being selfish and wanting a friend who reminds him of the old days.
**Miracleman: The Silver Age #1** shows us a world that looks beautiful and perfect on the surface. The bad guys have been defeated and the good guys have claimed the world as their reward. For 19 years, they’ve been benevolent gods walking the Earth and giving all of us their gifts and love. And what do they demand? Just that the world is theirs. But is that enough? Gaiman and Buckingham are telling a story about a character (Miracleman) getting everything he wants and then still wanting more. And it’s horrible to think that the more that’s wanted (Young Miracleman) may not have any agency in his own life here and instead just be a wish rather than a real boy.
### From the Archive- Miracleman: The Golden Age
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archive-miracleman-the-golden-age/
Last updated: 2022-10-20T04:55:19.000Z
It's just weird to think that these stories are over 30 years old and now just finally getting finished. With Marvel finally releasing *Miracleman: The Silver Age #1,* it's a good time to revisit this piece on **Miracleman: The Golden Age**, originally written for Newsarama back in March 2016.
---
Superheroes have pretty much become a ubiquitous presence in our entertainment spheres that it’s hard to imagine a world without them on our movie and television screens. But think about it a different way-- imagine what it would be like if golden gods and vile fiends with the powers of life and death really walked among us. Think about how different everything would be if Superman or Iron Man really did fly through our skies. It would almost be an unrecognizable world. In the 1980s, Alan Moore wrote his *Miracleman* story that ended with the heroes building a new Olympus on the remains of bombed-out London. After that, Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham began the now-collected **Miracleman: The Golden Age**, telling the story of the ten years following the gods' ascension and humanity's conflict over accepting these new gods into their everyday lives.
After the condition that Alan Moore (a.k.a. “the original writer”) and John Totleben left London and the world after their run on *Miracleman*, Gaiman and Buckingham have the unenviable job of rebuilding that world on a much different foundation. The world they have left to build from has been emotionally and physically scarred by the revelation of god-like men and women with powers we have only ever been able to dream about in the past. Sure, Miracleman saved London (and by extension the world) from a murderously maniacal Kid Miracleman. And as these gods/heroes try to recreate the world in their own image, Gaiman and Buckingham have to ask just how do you try to pretend that the world is normal when you’ve seen that the supernatural exists.
Gaiman reveals this post-superhero world through the stories and lives of normal but unsettled men and women. **Miracleman: The Golden Age** isn’t the continuing adventures of Miracleman and Miraclewoman, even if their stories are small parts of this new world, but Gaiman shows us a man whose daughter is slowly dying, a spy in a world that doesn’t allow for spies anymore, a woman who is watching her family crumble before her eyes, an artist who doesn’t know what art is in a world where an alien can reanimate the dead, a man who falls in love with one of those gods and other people whose existences are turned upside down when the world is revealed to be something completely other than what they thought.
The ever-changing art by Mark Buckingham and colorist D’Israeli gives Gaiman’s story a wonderful and exciting canvas to be told on. Shifting between cartoony, abstract, childlike, shadowy, and jubilant styles, Buckingham doesn’t define this new world of gods as simply as good or bad. The shifts in art create a world of possibilities and shades. There’s no way to label the new world under Miracleman and Miraclewoman because each and every perception of it is different. Even if the basic fibers of an earthly existence seem disrupted by the revelation of these powers, Buckingham’s art provides wonderful context by helping to define these different lives as still unique and vibrant things in a new world of wonders and miracles.
Working with that visually diverse world, Gaiman’s writing recalls some of the best issues of *The Sandman* where Gaiman didn’t focus on the large, grand story but more on the impact of the powers that be on the lives of men and women who inhabit that world. It’s that fascinating way that Gaiman writes about myths but frames them in ways that are intimate and personal. Playing with genres like Buckingham plays with artistic styles, Gaiman’s short stories about a supposed golden age leave a lot of room open for interpretation about what it is that makes this age so “golden.” Seeing the aftermath of the revelation of superheroes, Gaiman’s characters still struggle with their own small lives as if they were untouched by the new world order they now live in.
It’s easy to think that the world would have changed after the revelation that gods and demons walked and fought amongst us but Gaiman and Buckingham show just how steady and constant humanity is as their stories focus on such human qualities as love, hate, fear, and uncertainty. The gods may try to give mankind a utopia but humanity's own restlessness in **Miracleman: The Golden Age** shows just how unwilling we are to understand or accept the gifts of gods. Gaiman and Buckingham show a world in turmoil, not over war but over mankind’s own place in a world where gods now walk.
### Welcome the Mighty Marvel Age of Miracleman
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/miracleman-0/
Last updated: 2022-10-11T11:00:36.000Z
*“This is an imaginary story… Aren’t they all?” Alan Moore, Superman #423 (1986)*
*“I could ask about why Marvel Comics are churning out or planning to bring out my ancient MARVELMAN stories, which are even older, if they had a viable idea of their own in the quarter-century since I wrote those works… Just simply get some of your top-flight talent to put out a book that the wider public outside of the comics field find as interesting or as appealing as the stuff that I wrote 25 years ago. It shouldn't be too big an ask, should it? I wouldn't have thought so.” Alan Moore (*[*Bleeding Cool interview*](https://bleedingcool.com/comics/recent-updates/alan-moore-speaks-watchmen-2-to-adi-tantimedh/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*, 2010)*
*“Go fuck yourself, Alan Moore.” Jason Aaron (*[*CBR*](https://www.cbr.com/240180-2/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*, 2011)*
*“A father always knows his children.” Jason Aaron, *Miracleman #0* (2022)*
In 2011, Jason Aaron claimed to stop giving a shit about Alan Moore in the above-linked CBR piece. It’s difficult to not remember that as Jason Aaron contributes a Miracleman story to this new issue, particularly a meta-story where a creator quite literally becomes his creation. Now Moore didn’t create Miracleman; that credit goes to Mick Anglo who told stories of a thinly disguised Captain Marvel ripoff (got to call it what it was.) But it was Moore and Garry Leach who brought the character out of obscurity in 1982\. And then eleven years ago, Jason Aaron wrote “Go fuck yourself, Alan Moore,” in response to Moore calling out a whole generation of writers as not living up to his standards as creative individuals. And now in 2022, Aaron is “celebrating 40 years of Miracleman’s modern age!”
Not 40 years of the character as if Anglo created him back in 1982\. Anglo’s Marvel Man (so named before Marvel through a legal fit in 1982) was first published in 1954 so maybe Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham’s long-awaited story will finally be completed in time for the character’s 70th anniversary. No, this comic celebrates 40 years of Moore and Leach bringing the character back in Warrior magazine, starting the trend of deconstructing old superheroes for a modern audience. So we have this #0 issue and in a few weeks, we get Gaiman and Buckingham’s *Miracleman: The Silver Age #1*, a comic that’s been 30 years in the making. And then, Miracleman enters the Marvel Universe, I guess. Or he’s already there as some Kang story alluded to the character being in the Marvel Universe. This month, he’s even appearing on all kinds of variant covers, teaming up with the likes of Obnoxio the Clown and The Forbush Man or other Marvel characters. Who really keeps track of these kinds of things?
**Miracleman #0** feels less like a celebration and more like a warning of what can happen to the character once Gaiman and Buckingham are finally done with him once and for all. Ryan Stegman opens the anthology with just an odd story, lifting names from Anglo and Moore’s work without offering any real explanation or exploration of them. “But what will they say when the 2000s came and Miracleman has ushered in a new century of peace?” Stegman ponders in his story. Which would have been all fine and good if that even reflected what was in the story at all.
Over at [The Beat](https://www.comicsbeat.com/the-marvel-rundown-miracleman-0-review/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Joe Gruenwald theorizes that Stegman is taking a shot at Todd McFarlane’s one-time effort to revitalize Miracleman as The Man of Miracles. “There’s something for longtime fans here, too, as it’s hard not to notice the resemblance Stegman’s leather jacket-clad Miracleman has to Todd McFarlane’s ‘Man of Miracles’ – a character originally intended to be Miracleman before legal disputes curtailed those plans – a resemblance driven home by Stegman’s apparent amping up of the McFarlane influence on his artwork.” Sure, let’s go with that. I don’t think Gruenwald is that far off but I’m still not too sure that the story succeeds on that level, coming off as more of a surface-level understanding of these characters and themes than anything more.
But it does work as this issue provides a glimpse of the possibilities of Miracleman, some welcomed and some to be glanced at side-eyed. Wrapped inside of a framing sequence by Gaiman and Buckingham that identifies these stories as apocryphal, Marvel’s first real stab at telling new Miracleman stories is a mixed bag. Following Stegman, Mike Carey and Paul Davidson tell the tale of a Warpsmith, one of Moore’s more obscure and fascinating co-creations. Carey and Davidson provide a sense of fun that’s largely missing from the rest of the book. Peach Momoko’s contribution feels like some kind of funhouse mirror of a story; what you get out of it is what you put into it. It’s a puzzling story that demonstrates a creator wrestling with some possibilities that come out of Moore and Gaiman’s writing in this world. Ty Templeton provides some whimsical comics that feel more like creative exercises than anything else.
The issue concludes with Aaron and Leinil Francis Yu’s story of a fictional superman confronting his creator. This version of Miracleman, sharing a passing familiarity with our own but looking more like Bryan Hitch’s Apollo than Leach’s Miracleman, is trapped in his fictional existence, experiencing endless reimaginings and reboots. “You did this!” he rants at his creator. “You created this monster (Miracleman)! And remade him again and again as times changed and your precious sales declined! You devoted your life to your work and what did that get you?! Look at this wretched place! On some worlds, there are billion-dollar film franchises devoted to us!” That’s a surprising amount of self-reflection from a Marvel comic.
Is this still a fuck you to Alan Moore for all of the creators who have made a living ripping Moore off? (by Aaron and Yu)
So this Übermensch version of Miracleman kills both a Miracleman that we’re more familiar with, clad in the blues, reds, and yellows, but also kills the creator he’s confronting, accusing him of unleashing a meme of the Miracleman into the multiverse (yes, this is one of *those* stories.). That alone would say something about the state of the superhero narrative in 2022, how they use up and discard the people and the ideas originally behind them. Maybe this could be some kind of continuation of Aaron’s “fuck you” to Moore, killing a creator in this celebration of 40 years of the character’s modern age. It would already be an odd and puzzling story if it ended there.
Except it doesn’t end there. The original spirit of the character revives the creator’s body, pummeling the more modern version of it before flying off into the sky, wondering if he’s just a puppet on some even high creator stings but vowing to “write myself a better life.” This isn’t the Miracleman you know; this isn’t Alan Moore or Mick Anglo. The meta twist of a character killing and resurrecting his creator speaks to how these characters enter our collective consciousness at some point. It’s a fascinating critique of the work-for-hire environments that have created such memorable characters as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and Captain America. Those characters are so much more now than Siegel and Schuster, Kane and Finger, Lee and Kirby, or Simon and Kirby ever thought they could be. Or even so much more than some of them lived to see.
It’s been 30-some years since we got new Miracleman stories. Thecharacter and his creators have gone in and out of favor in comic fans' eyes (and even some creators- we see you Jason Aaron) at least a couple of times now. Even before Marvel acquired the rights all of those years ago, there have been endless hints, Easter eggs, threats, and promises of reviving the character. But Marvel’s efforts have been odd, from an inexplicable strategy of reprinting old comics to having to strip Alan Moore’s name from all credits and just refer to him as “The Original Writer,” itself some weird meta happening. And when we finally get new stories, it’s Stegman pondering what the 2000s will think of the character and Aaron having a fictional comic character kill his fictional comic creator.
Gaiman and Buckingham will be concluding a story cycle that began 40 years ago with Moore and Leach. Once their Silver Age story is done, then what next? Both Stegman and Aaron’s stories offer possibilities of what the character could look like in a modern writer’s hands. From the pastiche of what could have been to the wonders of what could be, Miracleman is a character who does provide Marvel with a lot of possibilities. Aaron’s story is self-contained but could be an intriguing launch point for the character’s Marvel future. Once he’s overcome the burden of his creation, what could it look like for a character to write himself a better life?
Or once we say "go fuck yourself, Alan Moore," are we able to just finally move beyond the long shadow of Moore?
Somehow I doubt it.
### Newburn Volume One by Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/newburn-volume-one-by-chip-zdarsky-and-jacob-phillips/
Last updated: 2022-09-23T04:45:07.000Z
There are the cops and there are the robbers. We’ve been conditioned to believe that’s all there is, the dichotomy of the good guys and the bad guys. It’s good versus evil, law versus chaos, or at the least, it’s right versus wrong. We’re taught that’s how the world works; you’re one or the other. We’re presented with this two-dimensional binary view of everything but we grow up to realize just isn’t the way that the world works. It’s never as easy as one or the other; it’s more of a spectrum where we just try to point towards one side of it more often than not and hope that those in authority are doing the same. And even then, the nightly news often course corrects our own beliefs of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.
Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips’ Easton Newburn is a man who has come to recognize and reconcile his inner demons and inner saints. He is both a cop and a criminal. Once a member of the police force, he learned one day that he could still do his job but get paid better by the criminals. He was still working on the side of order only he policed the criminals and mobsters to keep the peace between them. He still investigated crimes and murders, only this time to see justice maintained between the various criminal organizations instead of the law. In many ways, he was still a cop as both the “good guys” and the “bad guys” gave him room to operate, to help solve the crimes and see that justice was done. Maybe there’s some kind of moral compromise happening here but Newburn was able to hold onto the self-image of a man who kept the peace.
All you have to do is count on one side or the other not to turn on you and forget the special privilege you have because of the job that you do.
Zdarsky and Phillips quickly develop a comfortable pace for **Newburn Volume One**. The easy, high-level description of the book is that it’s a procedural like any number of *Law and Order* spinoffs. Or more likely, it’s the slightly darker side of the *Rockford Files* (if you’re old enough to remember that goldie oldie.). Basically, Jim Rockford (the great late James Garner) was a private detective, an all-around good guy who operated a bit outside of the law but never crossed the line of the law. Easton Newburn wants to believe that he’s that man as he tackles cases like murder investigations, burned down buildings, potential gang wars, and even going undercover in a prison to get to the truth. Each chapter functions as another episode in the ongoing adventures of Easton Newburn.
Newburn gets a case working.
But it’s not that simple; Newburn and his new assistant Emily skillfully navigate that line between cop and criminal, careful not to tilt too much one way or the other. Zdarsky writes the kind of nuanced hard-boiled dialogue you would expect from a modern procedural as Phillips stages the maneuvering of these characters in both light and shadow; Newburn and Emily are creatures of both the day and the night, having to know how to navigate in both worlds. Newburn is the old hand at this and Emily is the newbie, learning from Newburn but demonstrating her own unique already developed skills which are what caught Newburn’s eyes. In this life, she’s no more guilty or innocent than he is.
Emily functions as the fascinating wild card in all of this. At first, she seems like just a witness to another investigation but Newburn quickly realizes that she’s more than just an innocent bystander. Trusting his instincts even though he realizes he doesn’t know anything about Emily, he takes her on as a partner, teaching her, and developing her skills. Half the time in the book, she’s a background character, staying out of the spotlight as Newburn takes center stage. But you can tell that she’s always watching, always absorbing. Newburn may be the star of this book but Emily is the character that you really pay attention to what she’s doing and saying. Even while the last two chapters reveal more about events from her past, she remains the character with so much potential to surprise the audience and disrupt Newburn’s carefully constructed world.
Jacob Phillips' atmospheric artowrk
Between **Newburn** and *That Texas Blood*, Phillips gets to draw similarly dark stories in completely different settings— the concrete jungle of New York City and the dusty plains of Texas. He has simplified his line as his art has developed, focused on storytelling and the acting of his characters. For as dark as the stories get, his linework provides a slight breeziness to this work, an immediateness to Newburn’s actions.
Even his coloring settles in on capturing tone and emotion more than it does strict light or shadow. He layers in colors and tones to express the character of each scene. As Newburn and Emily move between these worlds, Phillips’ artwork ties those worlds together closer together than we may be comfortable with. As we’re conditioned to believe that good happens in the light and evil in the shadows, Newburn’s world doesn’t reflect what we may want it to. Phillips has a way of showing a world where the mythology of good guys and bad guys is constantly challenged.
Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips’ **Newburn Volume One** pulls at the private eye story, operating in the established noir rules but giving us a protagonist that may be an actual bad guy, someone we should be repelled by. Easton Newburn is a cop and a criminal, having merged his career with his needs and desires. Zdarsky’s rugged dialogue combined with Phillips’ atmospheric art sets us in a recognizable world even as Newburn and Emily’s unique standing in this world keeps you tensely turning each page, waiting for everything to explode.
### The Maximalist Storytelling in Alex Ross' Fantastic Four: Full Circle
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/fantastic-four-full-circle-alex-ross-review/
Last updated: 2022-11-18T01:27:27.000Z
**Fantastic Four: Full Circle** opens on a rainy night, focused on a monster or a man standing alone in the rain. Alex Ross’ story begins much like *Fantastic Four #51* where the Thing was mysteriously pulled toward a stranger’s residence. But this new story begins with a ragged figure standing outside of the classic Baxter Building, Ben Grimm and his family’s home. With that opening image, Ross shows us just what kind of story he is going to tell; a “classic” Fantastic Four story that builds on the work of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, equal parts homage and exploration of those early Marvel texts. Four intrepid adventurers facing the unknown together, a family forged through the mysteries of the world around them– that’s what we know of these characters. Ross uses that familiarity to throw us into his story. This is the story of the Fantastic Four and what happens on a dark and rainy night in the Baxter Building.
When that mysterious figure makes his way into the Baxter Building, interrupting one of Ben Grimm’s midnight Dagwood sandwiches, the Thing realizes that he knows this figure having encountered him in the aforementioned *Fantastic Four #51* when the figure attempted to take Ben Grimm’s powers and place in the team to get at Reed Richards. It’s still a mystery of who he is or where he came from but all indications point to his origin being the Negative Zone, an at times horrific anti-matter funhouse mirror of our universe (and another Lee/Kirby creation.) After fighting off a swarm of nasties that explode out of the stranger’s mouth in their home, the quartet does what they do best and plunge into the mystery of the Negative Zone, trying to Scooby Doo what they just experienced.
Chances are that you know who the Fantastic Four are if you’ve picked up this book. But if you’re here just for Alex Ross, he’s included one of his patented 2-page origin summaries for you as part of the book’s dust jacket. This origin recap is the only portion that’s fully painted as you would expect from Ross, a highlight reel of the first half of the first issue to feature these characters. At best, it’s a perfunctory inclusion of who and what these characters are without really telling you anything about who Reed Richards, Susan Richards, Johnny Storm, or Ben Grimm really are.
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**Fantastic Four: Full Circle** doesn’t look like an Alex Ross comic beyond that introductory recap. After that two-pager, he sets aside his usual paints and draws most of this book in ink and line (with an occasional Kirby collage flourish thrown in as well,) just like Kirby did. For an artist who made his career through the “realistic” paintings of *Marvels* and *Kingdom Come*, Ross shows he can work much more traditionally, following in the footsteps of Kirby like so many others before have. But for as much Kirby as there is in this book, you have to recognize the influences of other FF artists like Rich Buckler, John Buscema, and most importantly Joe Sinnott in Ross’ artwork. Ross’ art as well as his writing is firmly planted in the second hundred issues of Fantastic Four as much as it is in the first hundred issues. So much so that this book often feels like it could be an annual or a Giant-Sized issue from the 1970s more than it feels like a comic from 2022.
It’s hard imagining Ross as a maximalist but that’s what he’s doing here, filling every page with details and colors to keep your eye darting around the page. It’s a busy book as Ross overwhelms your senses with so much chicken scratching, without successfully creating any sense of depth to any of these images. His linework and his coloring flatten everything out until the picture plane becomes a mess of shapes and blobs that you need to work to decipher. In the Negative Zone, he colors this like a black light poster (even one of the characters comments on the weird hues in an old foes fortress) but all of his unique coloring, rendered in unwavering hues and concentrations, pulls the focus of the foreground and background of every image to one indistinguishable level, barely ever creating a place for you to focus just for a moment of rest while reading the book.
Weirdly, even though it’s harder to read, Ross’s artwork has barely ever felt this vibrant or alive. By forcing you to dig for the moment in each image, Ross keeps you actively involved in what’s happening as you try to peel back the layers of each image. It’s a weird frustration with this book, trying to visually read it when Ross, an artist who usually is very staid because of his clarity, works to throw so much at you that there’s nowhere to just stop and take in the image; you have to take in a whole page at a time, working to use figure out what Reed Richards is doing. The overwhelming visual presence of this story is what makes this something more than just another issue of The Fantastic Four.
Because, frankly, that’s what the story is— just another issue of *Fantastic Four*. Probably a good issue but still just an issue of it. There’s nothing new, unique, or particularly memorable about the way that Ross writes these characters. It’s the same way that Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman and so many others did, once again showing that Ross is a student of the first two decades of *Fantastic Four* comics. There are little nods to more recent continuity; a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it short of Valerie Richards, a possible reference to Jonathan Hickman’s recent-ish run (just to show that Ross is up on what the kids are doing nowadays?) but Ross isn’t saying anything with or about these characters that hundreds of issues haven’t already covered with them.
Ross takes a very down-to-basics approach with this story. His goal is to tell a Fantastic Four story and that’s what he does, with equal mixes of adventure, exploration, and family dynamics thrown into the mix. There’s an attempt for this to be an evergreen FF story, one largely free from the confines of any continuity (except for the already mentioned occasional nods) to get to the core of the characters and the story. In that way, he very much borrows from his *Astro City* collaborator Kurt Busiek in the approach of trying to be faithful to the core tenets of the kind of story that he’s trying to tell.
Those core tenets are the characters; this is largely a character piece that’s done its homework on the characters. Ross knows who they are because of all of the work of the writers and artists who have come before him. He obviously has had his ideas of what has worked and what hasn’t as he demonstrates on the pages that he’s done his homework of reading all of these FF stories to process them and spit something “original” out. This is like showing your work on a math test; Ross shows how he’s taken all of the input of past stories and almost backward engineered what a Fantastic Four story should be: pseudo-scientific family adventure.
If this was any other issue of *Fantastic Four* like an annual or an anniversary issue, it would be easy to overlook all of that and see this as a celebration of the foundational texts of the Marvel universe. And that’s what it still is, just wrapped up in the prestige of an elevated presentation; a graphic novel as the kids like to call it. Ross capably shows off his craftsmanship as an artist and as a writer here, delivering all of the expected beats of this kind of story. But it delivers just what you would expect out of it, nothing less and, more disappointingly, nothing more. This will be a book that in a few years you’ll pull off of your shelf and wonder why didn’t they ever go all the way and do an actual black light version of Alex Ross’s art.
### 5 Things To Read the Week- Aug 27th, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/5-things/
Last updated: 2022-08-28T01:00:15.000Z
It's late August, school's all over are starting up again, and the summer is almost over. It's event season as the Big 2 and there is a new issue of **Love and Rockets** that I still need to read. So let's get to these links of things that caught our eye this past week.
Honestly, I would have preferred them to use a cover from the actual comics.\`\`\`
At High-Low, Rob Clough went against his general policy of not reviewing Marvel Books to dive into this new collection from Abrams (one of our favorites around here,) **[Marvel Big Book of Fun and Games](http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2022/08/not-quite-comics-marvel-big-book-of-fun.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**. I'm old enough to remember when these comics were coming out and honestly never thought I'd ever see a collection of them. So in the last couple of years, we've had collections of the 1970s Marvel stickeers and these puzzles and games. What a time to be alive.
Rob writes about about this book takes him back in time.
> I bought my comics from a magical place called The Front Page, a small shop jammed to the gills with magazines, newspapers of all kinds, tobacco, and even the obscure Marvel magazines like *Marvel Preview* and *Epic Illustrated*. That place was heaven, the guys who ran it let me hang out as long as I wanted, and a trove of comics was available for just a few bucks.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong or creepy about Ant Man. Nothing to see here.
Now I'm hoping someday for a collection of **Pizzazz** or even **Blip**!
---
To quote Greg Burgas, "Literally everythign wrong with DC over the past 20 years summed up in six words!"
Writing at Atomic Junk Shop, [Greg Burgas has issues with how Tom King writes Batman](https://atomicjunkshop.com/what-is-it-about-batman-that-turns-tom-king-into-a-bad-writer/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). DC's latest attempt to create a new *Killing Joke* just reminds him of those issues. This Riddler one shot is on my reading pile somewhere because the comic shop had it up as their book of the week and I'm about 50/50 on what King I like and what King I just want to forget.
> The little things, though, is where the book really bothers me. It’s the question of who the character is, who he could be, and what you can do with him. I claim, above, that King ruined the character, something the clerk at my store scoffed at because he says this is not in continuity (which may or may not be true). Sure, this might not be “canon,” but King is in the same position, I would argue, of Miller and Moore in the mid-1980s – influential enough that even if DC ignores this rendition, other people will read this and decide to use King’s take on the character, and then we’d get more of this garbage. I mean, The Killing Joke wasn’t supposed to be in continuity, yet here we are. So, speaking of that, the Riddler was the mastermind behind the events of The Killing Joke? Here’s what he tells Gordon: “How’d the Joker know you’d be home with Babs that day? How’d he know where you live? How did he get past your security? We both know him. He’s a weird guy, complicated, but never much of a planner.” So not only does King not understand the Riddler, he doesn’t understand the Joker, either, which isn’t surprising, given that most writers since Frank Miller turned the Joker into a rampaging maniac have misunderstood him.
---
For Shelfdust, Masha Zhdanova looks at the first volume of Naoki Urasawa's **Master Keaton**, an early-ish Urasawa serial that ran from 1988 to 1994\. I've made it through a few of these volumes; the serialization nature of these books is different than that of *Monster*, *20th Century Boys*, or *Pluto* in that I never felt the need to dive immediately into the next volume. But Zhdanova found its serializtion to be a benefit and not a bug of the series.
> This manga is one that benefits greatly from chapter-by-chapter serialization, as each chapter is densely packed with events and information, often taking place in a completely different country from the chapter before it. Each mystery Keaton tackles takes no more than three chapters to solve, and no big overall story arc unfolds besides Keaton and his family members continuing to live their lives. It’s a comic that feels almost cinematic at times in its visual storytelling, with wordless sequences conveying significant parts of the narrative.
---
To celebrate 50 years of the strip, the character from Funky Winkerbean prepare for a 50th High School reunion.
The comic strip Funky Winkerbean is 50 years old? [Michael Cavna talks to the cartoonist Tom Batuik](https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/08/22/funky-winkerbean-tom-batiuk/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) about how the strip has changed over the past five decades.
> The reunion arc spotlights aging characters who have weathered so much in “Funky’s” half-century, from enduring love to profound loss — a golden milestone not often achieved by a single syndicated creator.And no modern mainstream comic strip this side of “Doonesbury” has so often dealt with the challenges of mental and physical health, and so sensitively handled the death of a beloved cast member.
---
At the Chicago Mag, [Kathleen Rooney talks to Chicago-based cartoonist Nick Drnaso about his new book **Acting Class**](https://www.chicagomag.com/arts-culture/chicagos-grid-helped-graphic-novelist-nick-drnaso-manage-perspective/)**.**
> I think this is maybe like a, not a midlife crisis kind of book, but I think there was a sense when I was younger that art and making art was all I needed and that was going to be the main purpose of getting up in the morning and not succumbing to depression or just to inaction. Now, it feels like that might be changing a little bit. My wife and I don’t have kids. I have a circle of friends, but there are vague themes of religion in the book or just finding your tribe. I think it’s a little weird not to have that, to just feel very disconnected from a community.
### A Politics of Dream - Thoughts on 20th Century Men by Deniz Camp, S. Morian, and Aditya Bidikar
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/a-politics-of-dream-thoughts-on-20th-century-men-by-deniz-camp-s-morian-and-hassan/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T02:06:53.000Z
I wanted to finish up this short piece last week, but the opening of school got in the way. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the first issue of **20th Century Men**, and I believe it’s the type of book worth exploring because of the ideas the creative team pushes through the narrative.
**20th Century Men** has the aesthetic feel of a different era of style of comic book. Twenty years ago, this book would feel perfectly at home at Vertigo. In visual style, it feels like it could have been a series of 2000 AD strips from the mid-90s. And despite being published by Image, **20th Century Men** recalls a quality that hearkens back to the heyday of Image’s early 10s campaign where it would have fit perfectly aside big-idea science fiction books like *East of West*, *Black Science*, or *Nowhere Men*. I make these comparisons because, like the aforementioned books, **20th Century Men** is the type of book that births big ideas through the science-fiction form. I would argue that these types of books – both graphic and prose – are the truest examples of science fiction as a diverse genre, while there are other perfectly fine stories out there labeled as science fiction and that succeed in telling a story with science fiction overlays. There is, I would contend, a fundamental difference between a story that uses science fiction elements as a unifying device and a book like **20th Century Men** that embraces the totality of the genre and elevates it’s tropes and forms to the extent that it can only truly be told using those very tenets.
The story begins in some version of Vietnam. **20th Century Men** inhabits a recognizable world, one with more overarching similarities than differences to our own. One of the things a reader will notice as they page through this issue is that Stipan Morian alters his artistic design for the different story lines and settings within the book. The opening feels painterly with a definite nod to impressionism. Morian will employ a type of painted realism for a good chunk of the book, but he will intersperse it with a distant kind of monochrome for the tragic early days of Platanov, our protagonist of sorts. Camp’s story jumps around to the highlights of the Cold War – from Vietnam we travel to 1948 Moscow before making our way to Kabul in 1987, Russia in 1968, and San Francisco in again 1987\. I appreciate how distinct the feel for each of these settings is thanks to Morian’s unique touches that change the tone of each mini-story.
Camp embraces tropes of the superhero genre to tell this story, namely that of the “super-soldier.” The early days of superhero books are of course rife with the patriotic appropriation – or perhaps more fittingly, conscription – of superheroes for a war effort. Throughout the silver and bronze ages, superheroes were often stand-ins for geopolitical commentary. Camp pulls at some of these strings, and one catches different glimpses of the motif. Camp’s Platanov recalls elements of the most famous super-soldier of them all, *Captain America*, but there are also hints of the way Moore played with the notion of superheroes as agents of the state in *Watchmen*, and further connections to the aforementioned conscription of superheroes in the pages of *All-Star Squadron* or *Invaders*. Camp isn’t necessarily creating a pastiche, but rather embracing various characteristics of the super-soldier concept to create commentary laced with some clear deconstruction. There are elements of both Platanov’s visual characterization – that of a genius donning a robotic suit of armor – that obviously nods at Tony Stark while also winking at characterizations of both Dr. Doom and Reed Richards. Predominantly, though, 20th Century Men seems most rooted in the realism of DC’s war comics – *Sgt. Rock*, *G.I. Combat*, and modern incarnations of *Unknown Soldier* (to which the series has already drawn some comparisons).
It is this component that gives Camp and Sorian’s story it’s grounding. Camp is trying to tell a fantastic story about the real world, deliberately blurring the line and creating an alternative history scenario that feels very familiar. The realist grounding of the settings allows Camp to muse on what might have been had neo-liberalism developed a super-soldier component. For comics fans, the premise of this story might feel like an answer to the open-ended, “what if Tony Stark had gone all in.” Bigger than that, though, it is fundamentally a story of combat and the chess game of hegemony that dominated Cold War politics. Camp’s skill here is that he is able to create this overarching narrative of geopolitics that is driven by the will of one particular man and his own interpersonal relationships. As such, **20th Century Men** is also a meditation on the great man of history theory.
**20th Century Men** doesn’t overtly bill itself as a superhero comic. And to be fair, it shouldn’t. It is a post-superhero superhero book. Camp’s premise very much rests on the idea that the reader is coming into the book with at least a basic understanding of superhero comics and a working knowledge of late 20th century diplomatic history. And if you can enter with those minimum prerequisites, you’re free to immerse yourself in the world where the worst impulses of neo-liberalism have commingled with a Marvel comic gone awry.
Twenty plus years removed from the turn of the century, it’s easy to forget about the kind of anxiety that permeated the late 80s before the fall of the Soviet Union. What seems like a foregone conclusion now was not in the vocabulary then. I was seven when the Berlin Wall fell, and even my immature mind understood the magnitude and, more importantly, the perceived impossibility of something like that happening only a year before. But the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union both fell apart three decades ago. The idea of the cold war, and the attached ephemera - the kind of fine-line diplomacy-espionage hybrid – seems to scratch at the back of Camp’s head. He also explores similar themes in his other current series, *Agent of W.O.R.L.D.E*, but it is **20th Century Men** that he chooses to mirror the real world with more deliberate precision. With only one issue in, it’s hard to speculate exactly what Camp and Morian are getting after. It is easy to think of this story as allegory, perhaps a cautionary tale, maybe even a deconstruction for it's own good. Regardless, I find something compelling about the reckoning Camp and Morian call down.
### #screenshot reviews- Dune Book 2 & Parker Girls #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/screenshotreviews-dune-v2/
Last updated: 2022-08-19T00:27:31.000Z
Over on the Twitter, we're posting reviews of new issues and books. The idea is that the review has to fit into one screenshot of our phones and that screenshot is the review that gets posted to social media. It's a fun way to approach single-issue reviews. You can follow us on Twitter ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) to see them when they're posted and we'll be posting them here as well!
Here's what we have this week:
- Dune: The Graphic Novel Book 2
- Parker Girls #1
Click on the header link of each review to see more preview art from the book.
---
**Frank Herbert's Dune: The Graphic Novel, Book Maud'Dib** by Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, Kevin Anderson, Raul Allen, and Patricia Martin, with cover by Bill Sienkiewicz (Abrams Comicarts)- *reviewed by Mike*
[**I feel like the stakes are higher for a comic adaptation of a genre book, especially a book as renowned as *Dune***. ](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1557535151667793920?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Fortunately, if you had the opportunity to read the first part of this adaptation, you know the quality of the publication both in its physical presentation of the classic and the faithfulness to the original story. It's impossible to bring everything into a comic adaptation, but Brian Herbert clearly knows the important notes, and he and Kevin Anderson achieve the appropriate balance.
What's most impressive is the amount of storytelling that is purely visual. That's something rather astounding for a sprawling novel. The source material rests firmly on big ideas, but Herbert and Anderson are content to allow Raul Allen and Patricia Martin to portray the landscape and lean into the world of Arrakis.
This type of storytelling leans into the concept of the setting being a character itself. I love when comics pick up this concept in general, and it's an essential component for any Dune adaptation. Not since Alexandre Tefenkgi's and Jean-Francois Beaulieu's work on *Outpost Zero* have I been this enamored with the way an adventure book handles its landscape.
---
**Parker Girls #1** by Terry Moore (Abstract Studios)- *reviewed by Scott*
#### **[I’ve seen enough movies to know that nothing good ever happens when a hapless man meets a beautiful woman on a beach. ](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1558969720191139841?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**
The plots of one con and one murder interweave but never crossover in Terry Moore’s **Parker Girls #1**. A man who stole ten million dollars and a dead woman’s body washing up on a beach set the conflicts in this issue; both involving Parker Girls (and they’ll tell you there’s no such group) trying to exert their command over the situation. I’ll admit that I haven’t read a lot of Moore over the ages, losing track of *SiP*somewhere around the hallways point but his work there was about two women (Francine and Katchoo) reacting to the world around them. Here, Moore is telling the story about women trying to control the world around them, setting the agenda, and being the strength that’s needed.
This issue shows a world where the thieves, the killers, and the cops may think they control what’s happening but it’s the operatives like Kelly or Cherry Hammer (a great name for a flanneled secret agent) who are really directing events. There’s a force present when they’re on the page, a guiding hand manipulating the actions where they want them to go. This issue skirts the borders of an underworld where the Parker Girls (remember, they don’t exist) are the law. Or at least, they’re some kind of retribution in this world that Moore established in *Strangers in Paradise.*
Moore draws that strength and toughness in his characters. Always in charge; always in control, Kelly particularly in this issue is directing the momentum of this story without ever appearing to work at it. Moore shows her just subtly manipulating events to her purposes. How that control comes into conflict with a murder remains to be seen.
### (More Than) 5 Things to Read this Week
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/5-things-to-read-this-week-8-13-22/
Last updated: 2022-08-13T16:00:43.000Z
[At The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-cute-and-horrifying-world-of-jim-woodring?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Sam Thielman profiles Jim Woodring ahead of next week's Fantagraphics release, *One Beautiful Spring Day*.
> Woodring seems to enjoy baiting the reader’s suspicion that he is compelled against his will to draw Frank, and this heightens the corresponding sense that the Unifactor somehow exists, whether or not it defies laws of physics and logic.
[The Harvey Award nominations arrived this week](https://www.comicsbeat.com/2022-harvey-award-nominations-announced/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (Comics Beat). At Panel Patter, [Rachel provides a quick review of the second volume of the of Cat + Gamer](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/08/blog-post.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) which earned a Harvey nod for best manga. Also at Panel Oatter not technically from this week, but about a book that arrived this week is [James Kaplan's review of Tom King and Elsa Charretier's Love Everlasting.](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/02/love-everlasting-1-by-tom-king-elsa.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Charretier has an incredibly appealing style that's exaggerated in a "cartoonish" way, but never for the purpose of mocking the characters or just to be funny. No, everything that Charretier does in regard to character design feels rooted in the needs of the story.
Andy Oliver reviews [Animal Stories for Broken Frontier](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/animal-stories-peter-maria-hoey-top-shelf/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> With a healthy helping of magic realism the half a dozen tales here subtly weave in and out of each other, sometimes obviously, sometimes tangentially, to justify the term graphic novel over the description comics anthology. Each is self-contained but in the context of the overarching whole build up into something far greater than the sum of its parts.
Manuel Gomez conducts a nice interview with Alanzo Sneak cartoonist, [Nate Garcia](https://nategarcia.bigcartel.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) at [Monkeys Fighting Robots.](https://monkeysfightingrobots.co/self-published-spotlight-nate-garcia/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> *I read [comics](https://monkeysfightingrobots.co/category/comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) in my school library. Stuff like the BONE collected paperbacks from Scholastic by Jeff Smith.*
Oh man does that Bone comment make me feel old . . .
I think I owned the 13th print at some point?
From the Paper of Record, [Richard Sandomir remembers Mad Magazine cartoonist and acclaimed animator, Phil Coker](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/arts/paul-coker-dead.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Actually from this past Saturday, but new to me is the [fitting remembrance of Sid Jacobson by George Gustines also from the New York Times.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/06/arts/sid-jacobson-dead.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
At Shelfdust, [Brandon Davis analyzes and contextualizes Christopher Priest's definitive run on Black Panther](https://shelfdust.com/2022/08/10/1998-in-black-comics-history-black-panther-1-by-priest/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) from the late 90s.
At Solrad, [Nicholas Burman reviews the highly anticipated new release from George Wylesol, 2120](https://solrad.co/unsettling-alluring-nicholas-burman-reviews-george-wylesols-2120?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> There’s one particular thread, the longest in the book, that reveals the nature of the life Wade is living, and results in a breaking-the-fourth-wall moment that acts as a playful reference to the reader, and finally lets you close the book. Scholars interested in the relationship between reader, text, agency, and interpretation will have a lot to pick apart here. Thankfully, Wylesol embeds these theoretically heavy moments with dark humor and visual playfulness.
## There Does Seem To Be A Fair Amount of Media News . . .
[IDW is bringing a bunch of Top Shelf Books and their latest Scott Snyder project to television](https://www.comicsbeat.com/idw-top-shelf-television-development-announcement/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). So, uh, how does that make you feel, Valiant? And is anyone else perplexed at the sheer volume of things Scott Snyder has published since he stepped back at DC? IDW seems to have perfected the old-fashioned Dark Horse model by balancing creator-owned properties with (a shrinking) line of licensed material. Kudos to IDW for shrugging off losing Marvel and Hasbro.
In other news, [Vault is doing Kickstarters now](https://aiptcomics.com/2022/08/09/kickstarter-vault-comics-jazzlyn-stone/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), so that's a thing. Meanwhile, the second round of White Noise all stalled mid-run. It's hard to figure out exactly what is going on with that company. I wouldn't say Vault is too big for Kickstarters, but who am I to say? Anyway, they've partnered with Jazzlyn Stone for marketing and promotion. [I don't know who that is, but she might have a blue tongue](https://www.instagram.com/jazzlynstone/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
Dating back to last week, there were a few stories I wanted to comment upon that involved some industry (or industry-adjacent) shakeups. [Heidi MacDonald](https://twitter.com/comixace?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [is the best at sorting out all the press releases and announcements to clarify what the tangible impacts are and how potential changes will affect the greater comic community](https://www.comicsbeat.com/the-dceu-is-fine-if-by-fine-you-mean-a-flaming-dumpster-fire-perched-on-the-edge-of-a-volcano-full-of-poison-sharks/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (Comics Beat). First up is whatever the hell is going on at [Discovery Warner Bros](https://www.msn.com/en-US/news/news/hbo-max-and-discovery-are-merging-here-s-when-why-and-what-s-changing/ar-AA10iZpN?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Beyond the fact that I can’t get over how someone could screw up running the second biggest media company on the planet, nor how said second biggest company needed rescuing from the far smaller Discovery, the company that seemed to be the employer for every other twenty-something I met who lived in Logan Circle in the mid-aughts, there seems to be a bevy of cost-cutting measures that have caused a nearly-completed $90 million movie to be shelled and have seemed to resuscitate the “DC will cease publishing periodicals” discourse.
While the Warner news is the bigger story for mass audiences, [Heidi broke the news this week that Valiant will drop to one book per month](https://www.comicsbeat.com/valiant-cuts-back-to-one-title-a-month/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Deniz Camp and Jon-Davis Hunt's brutal Bloodshot Unleashed. This news follows [the broader analysis of Valiant’s tenuous fate last week](https://www.comicsbeat.com/rumored-layoffs-and-downsizing-at-valiant-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (Comics Beat and Heidi again).
I hold a very soft spot in my heart for Valiant because the company provided my first real gateway into collecting comics in the idyllic summer of 1994 when I was but an innocent twelve-year-old. Something about the relative *newness* of Valiant’s universe - more sprawling than anything Image would cook up, but far more contained than anything in the Big 2 - catalyzed the latent completer gene inside me. This was a young enough world that if I didn't necessarily get in at the exact origin, I could easily build a path there. I hadn't started at the beginning, but I could easily get back there - and I did with a few particular books: Solar, Harbinger, and H.A.R.D. Corps, at least. Why that mattered to me as a 12 year old, I don't know. But it did. I managed to continue to read Valiant, perhaps even more so, after the doomed Acclaim purchase when their issues started to hit the bargain bin at the local baseball card store that made a half-hearted attempt to get into the comic game in the early 90s. I never really connected with Valiant again in the same way, but what I've read, I've enjoyed. It seems perplexing to me that the same thing can happen to the same company twice. But then again, there are five Spawn books right now, so learning from history isn't exactly what we do in this hobby.
Years ago, Valiant employed a murderer's row of talented veterans and rising stars alike, and they still seem to be able to attract top talent. Heidi points out that, while the latest Archer and Armstrong series was canceled, there are still big plans in the new year for Valiant.
> After this four issue series wraps up, BOOK OF SHADOWS returns in January, teaming up Shadowman, Eternal Warrior, Punk Mambo, Doctor Mirage and Persephone. It’s written by **Cullen Bunn** and with art by **Vicente Cifuentes**. *X-O Manowar Unconquered,* another mini from the A-list team of **Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad and Liam Sharp** follows that.
Cullen Bunn writes about 47 comics a month, and he has worked with Valiant in the past. The X-O team is an Eisner nomination waiting to happen. So, is the sky falling? I don't think Valiant has put out more than five tittles a month in years. Maybe they can operate bare bones? After 130 people (130 people work at Valiant?) lost their jobs, that's not comforting in the slightest.
But if this is a house of cards, what will the forecast for Valiant be? I doubt either of the Big 2 want anything to do with purchasing that IP, and I'm not particularly sure anyone smaller would have the finances to do it. I could see something like this being up Kirkman's alley. Licensed to BOOM!, Dynamite, or IDW? Would the Valiant characters be something that just wallows? As for me, I just wish I still had those Solar back issues.
> 12 Aug 2022 [pic.twitter.com/QymxUgfFUx](https://t.co/QymxUgfFUx?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — actual heathcliff comics (@RealHeathcliffs) [August 12, 2022](https://twitter.com/RealHeathcliffs/status/1558133330218225665?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Simpsons Comics Return with Treehouse of Horror Ominous Omnibus Volume 1 - Scary Tales and Scarier Tentacles
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/simpsons-comics-return-with-treehouse-of-horror-ominous-omnibus-volume-1-scary-tales-and-scarier-tentacles/
Last updated: 2025-02-01T20:58:56.000Z
The world of *Simpsons Comics* occupies a rather confounding space within Comicdom. *The Simpsons* are one of the world’s most recognizable media franchises, yet [Bongo Comics](http://bongocomics.com/blog?ref=fromcovertocover.com) was run as a tiny independent publisher whose website often didn’t work right. The individual comics were both far better than they had any right to be yet far less commercially successful than anyone would have suspected. Fantastic writers and artists have graced the pages of Simpsons Comics. Famously, Simpsons Comics gave Gail Simone her start. Sergio Aragones created strips for the series. Creators like Mike Allred, Jim Mahfood, Evan Dorkin, and Tom Peyer have all contributed to the annual **Treehouse of Horror** issue. For some reason, Chuck Dixon wrote an inordinate number of issues. The yearly Free Comics Book Day was almost always the best book available that day. Single issues of *Bart Simpson* would make year-end lists. The issues themselves, specifically the second hundred of *Simpsons Comics*, were printed on a beautiful heavy matte paper stock. Over the course of 25 years, the core series, *Simpsons Comics*, averaged just about 10 releases a year, a fairly impressive tally. Bongo additionally published long-running *Bart Simpson* and *Futurama* series, *One-Shot Wonders* featuring popular supporting characters, original series like *Roswell the Little Green Man*, a *Jimbo* series through sister company Zongo, and even a seven-issue [adaptation of a Coldplay album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mylo%5FXyloto%5F%28comics%29?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
And then, suddenly, it was gone.
Bongo ceased publishing new issues in 2018 without much explanation why. There was plenty of speculation. The single issues never sold particularly well despite a consistently strong secondary market. Disney’s acquisition of Fox seems to be a likely culprit, but the fact that the property hasn’t been effectively re-licensed since then leads to increased speculation that the publishing rights might be a little more firmly in the grasp of Matt Groening than other types of properties. Bongo continues to operate [Simpsons ](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simpsons-store/id537668106?ref=fromcovertocover.com)and [Futurama ](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/futuramaland/id1040208491?ref=fromcovertocover.com)apps, the exclusive digital homes for purchases of single issues from the respective properties. Bongo had been releasing back issues for app purchases in tandem every week, but the last release was close to a year ago (according [to the website](http://bongocomics.com/blog?ref=fromcovertocover.com)). Colossal Compendiums, *Simpson Comics* omnibi from issues 106-onward, might be out of print but still fairly well stocked. Nonetheless, there hasn’t been anything new from Bongo or Simpsons Comics in four years.
Cue [Abrams Comicarts](https://www.abramsbooks.com/imprints/abramscomicarts/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), [who this week publish what I can only hope will be the first of many archival quality Simpsons comics](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/simpsons-treehouse-of-horror-ominous-omnibus-vol-1-scary-tales-scarier-tentacles%5F9781419737121/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Specifically, Abrams brings us what is promised to be the first of three **Treehouse of Horror** collections in a high-quality, oversized hardback edition with a die-cut slipcase and spooky glow-in-the-dark cover that features new artwork for the edition. It’s a wonderful presentation suitable to both anchor the end of a bookshelf or display on its own. If I can be indulged for a moment, I need to point out the impressive quality of what Abrams has been producing. The design team at Abrams continues to outdo themselves. The paper stock is heavy and thick, and while it isn’t the trademark matte finish Simpsons comics had come to be known for, the glossy pages certainly make the art feel bright and vibrant.
Abrams seems to have been picking up their output, and I have to assume that their publication design plays a big part in it. Books like Noah Van Sciver's *[Joseph Smith and the Mormons](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/joseph-smith-and-the-mormons%5F9781419749650/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)* and *[Fantastic Four Panel by Panel](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/fantastic-four-no-1-panel-by-panel%5F9781419756153/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)* along with this **Treehouse of Horror** collection show the level of detail the Abrams team brings to their offerings. That level of detail is important for comics’ increasingly digital landscape. This is the type of book worth owning, worth showing off. There is no ability to replicate something like this digitally.
The collection features creators recognizable to a wide array of fans. Of course, Simpsons' mainstays Bill Morrison, Ian Boothby, and Nathan Kane all feature heavily in this collection. They are joined by some great talent from both the comics world - Evan Dorkin, Mike Allred, Sergio Aragones, Paul Dini, Geoff Darrow, Kelly Jones, and Gail Simone - and, in grand Simpsons tradition, a few celebrities - Mark Hamill, Alice Cooper, Patton Oswalt, and Lemmy Killmeister.
Somewhat disappointing is the inclusion of a Doug TenNapel story. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that however wonderful this collection is, it is still disconcerting to think that he could be receiving even a portion of what you'd pay for the book. TenNapel's story was part of the Eisner nominated *Treehouse* issue from 1999, but I paged past it and onto another story.
A beautiful two-page spread from Ian Boothby and Dan Brereton's Lord of the Rings parody. Copyright © 2022 Bongo Entertainment, Inc. The Simpsons TM, created by Matt Groening, is the copyrighted and trademarked property of 20th Television. All rights reserved.
The rest of the collection is filled with fantastic stories that vary from two-page gags to twenty-page main features. Evan Dorkin writes two stories, but it’s the full-length Professor Frink escapade he draws that is a true highlight. *Simpsons Comics* have always had a penchant for Silver Age homages and parodies, much like the Simpsons cartoon formally incorporated a wealth of sixties and seventies pop-culture humor and references. This **Treehouse**collection includes a number of those fun Silver-Age winks, from the pages of paper doll cutouts to mid-century-style advertisement parodies. Mark Hamill’s excellent story lampoons Silver-Age Bizarro stories, and there is a great series of stories that combine for a solid EC homage. The other notable, and indeed very engaging component of the **Treehouse** issues that sets these stories apart from the core series is that the **Treehouse** issues often featured art that differed from the proverbial Simpsons house style that mimics the look of the cartoon. Getting a Stan Sakai version of the Simpsons, or the exaggerated look of Tone Rodriguez's interpretation is a fun way to interact with incredibly familiar characters. If *Simpsons Comics* ever return with new stories, I would love for them to take a page out of both their own **Treehouse of Horror** issues and *DC's Hanna-Barbera* comics to use different character designs.
What I appreciate most is the weight - physical and metaphorical - of this book. As a long-time fan of both The Simpsons cartoon and comic iterations, I'm delighted to store this book on my shelf. I never felt like Simpsons comics received their due. To me, they were consistently well-produced adaptations that both held true to the tone and vision of the cartoon while also exploring some areas the cartoon couldn't. For years, *Simpsons Comics* functioned as the best arbiter of the zeitgeist within Comicdom. Creators like Bill Morrison were always able to lovingly lampoon the world of comics, both contemporary and classic. For over one hundred issues, *Simspons Comics* were also some of the nicest-produced floppies on the stands. The matte paper stock always gave me a nostalgic feeling, and I legitimately loved the smell of a new Simpsons floppy. Their covers were thick and durable to the point that Simpsons Comics often barely squeezed into thinner comic bags. So, to be able to hold this book and feel the heft of it sends a signal about what these books meant to fans for twenty-five years. Abrams has announced that they plan to publish two more editions that will complete the **Treehouse of Horror** collection, and I can only hope that these collections will be successful enough to spur on additional archival editions of other Simpsons material. The three **Treehouse**collections will combine to include every story from the annual special and other horror-themed one-shots Bongo released over the years.
It's wise for Abrams and Bongo to begin with **Treehouse**collections because of the wide array of household names that have graced those issues. **Treehouse** comics, like their cartoon inspirations, always pushed the bar for what *The Simpsons* could do. I would be ecstatic if Abrams continued to produce this type of book for the core *Simpsons* series, and I would truly go bananas for a similar *Radioactive Man* collection. I mentioned above that Abrams really seems to know what they're doing with design and publishing. They have a knack for putting together the type of material that lends itself to the paper analog experience. *Simpsons Comics* have never had more than a paperback collection, and it's fulfilling to see the comics celebrated in such a loving way.
### But wait, don't I need to perseverate on licensing deals?
If you’re paying attention, you might have noticed that Abrams seems to have licensed some material from Disney. *The Simpsons* are in kind of a nebulous position following the Fox purchase. And, for what it’s worth, there are no Disney markings in this book at all. The copyright page makes reference to both Bongo Comics and 20th Century Television. But, 20th is a Disney Television subsidiary.
Abrams has always had its hands in the art book game, and it’s not unique to see a third-party company publish an archival or artist edition - Dark Horse and IDW have both been famous for that. However, Abrams is not only reprinting art editions like [Fantastic Four 1: Panel by Panel](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/fantastic-four-no-1-panel-by-panel%5F9781419756153/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and collections of comics ephemera like Marvel-themed puzzle books or a celebratory accounting of [Uncanny X-Men trading cards](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/uncanny-x-men-trading-cards%5F9781419757242/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), but they are also set to publish [Alex Ross’ Fantastic Four original graphic novel](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/fantastic-four-full-circle%5F9781419761676/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) as well as a series of children’s books about popular Marvel characters that look to include or possible rework original art from equally popular creators.
One day, this will all make sense to me. Disney owns two legitimate publishing companies: Disney Publishing, itself a functional conglomerate perhaps best known for Hyperion Publishing, home of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and all related derivations, and Lucasfilm Books, the publishing house for Star Wars material directed at YA and younger; and of course, Marvel Comics. The number of different publishing houses that produce material for the **biggest media company on the planet** will never cease to amaze me. I understand there are layers of media. A television studio like Paramount might produce a show that could air on ABC, despite the company being connected to other Paramount Networks like CBS or Showtime and ABC being owned by Disney. I understand that. The current count of Disney-controlled material *comics licenses* stands at *five*: Marvel Comics, Fantagraphics, Dark Horse(forthcoming), Penguin, and Abrams.
OK. I'm done.
### "Assuming it's about a 'boy and girl.'"- thoughts on Gengoroh Tagame's Our Colors
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/our-colors-review-gengoroh-tagame/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T21:06:00.000Z
There’s nothing “normal” about **Our Colors**, Gengoroh Tagame’s coming-of-age story about Sora Itoda, a closeted gay Japanese teenager who struggles to reconcile who he is with who everyone else thinks he is. The kids at school and even his parents think his childhood friend Nao is his girlfriend; even she starts to wonder if there’s something between them that’s more than just a close friendship. His friends at school, including Sora’s crush Yoshioka, think he’s just another one of the guys, laughing that one of the other boy’s sisters has a collection of gay romance and erotic manga. “Homos” they laugh. “Disgusting.” “Sick,” they judge the idea of homosexuality as much as, if not more than, they do the girl’s collection. And they expect Sora to join them in their mocking of it. Even his parents expect him to be the good son who will meet a nice girl and give them grandchildren someday. Sora puts up masks when he needs to, to protect himself and his secret. He doesn’t play along to get along with anyone- he doesn’t laugh at the jokes or join in on the banter- but he can’t be honest with them about who he is. It’s a lot for a teenage boy to have to deal with when there’s no one to support him or help guide him. Everyone around Sora is heterosexual, assuming he has to be too.
He doesn’t do anything to make anyone think he’s anything other than their idea of normal. He doesn’t go along with his friends’ jokes or his parents' expectations but doesn’t share himself with them. He smiles and that’s all that they or anyone get of him. Tagame, himself a gay manga creator, approaches Sora with a protective touch, showing the young man at a crucial time in his life learning how to be comfortable in his skin or even just aware that he can be. The pressure of maintaining his secret weighs him down at the beginning of the book. Sora holds everyone at a distance, using that manufactured gulf as a buffer for his feelings. Even Nao, his closest friend growing up, sees the distance that has grown between them as Sora makes her call him the more formal “Itoda”. But Sora thinks he knows who he is and he’s scared of others finding out because he doesn’t know how people will react. Will they reject him? Or will their reaction be worse than that? Why should he let them in when all he expects is pain and rejection?
**Our Colors** is almost the inverse of Tagame’s earlier book [*My Brother’s Husband*](http://www.panelpatter.com/2017/05/finding-family-in-gengoroh-tagames-by.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com). In that book, a straight Japanese man has to figure out what it meant that his late brother was gay when that brother’s Canadian husband unexpectantly shows up in Japan, wanting to get to know his extended family. A large portion of the emotional weight was on the surviving brother attempting to understand who his brother was and who his brother-in-law is. In Tagame’s work (well, his non-[gay exotic work](https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/gengoroh-tagame?ref=fromcovertocover.com) at least,) he wrestles with all of these swirling emotions that we all experience in the face of the truth, making us confront these issues along with these characters. In *My Brother’s Husband* and **Our Colors**, Tagame shows us the pressure of the secrets and the truths. These books are shaped around empathy, something that is essential for Tagame and something that Sora doesn’t think he will find once people start finding out about him.
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Sora needs someone to be himself with, someone who will accept this young man as who he is. But in this repressed world, it’s a lot for a young man to come out as gay. His parents seem nothing other than loving and wanting the best for their son. Same with Nao and her friend but they also have no idea what’s going on with Sora. Throughout **Our Colors**, it’s not that the people around Sora are against the idea of him being gay; they just don’t know any better. Yes, there are the friends at school who laugh over gay manga, including Sora’s crush, but they don’t know what they’re doing to Sora because he hasn’t let them. That’s not to let them off for their hurtful language but it does illustrate Sora’s need to find a way to express his honest self.
Sora encounters empathy for the first time in a stranger, a man who appears out of nowhere during a particularly low point for Sora. The old man stands over Sora, confessing “I’ve always wanted to tell you that I love you,” before disappearing without a trace.” Convinced that it was just a dream, it was still the first time Sora heard a man say “I love you.” It’s a massive moment for Sora that completely disrupts his world, including the masks that he’s built around himself for protection. It’s almost even more confusing for Sora because he’s developed these different defensive postures to shield himself that those seemingly simple words completely shatter.
That man, My Amamiya, eventually crosses paths with Sora again after Sora spots him, following him to a small, hidden cafe that Amamiya owns. That cafe becomes a refuge for Sora where he views Amamiya as a role model. And when Nao learns and accepts Sora’s queerness, the cafe becomes where Sora can himself without his defensive masks. An older gay man, Amamiya seems to have it all figured out. Here is a gay man who’s not hiding who he is. At least that’s how it appears to a teenager who only sees today and can’t even imagine that Amamiya may have a past that’s more similar to Sora’s than Sora realizes. Tagame finds ways not to make anything easy for the characters as Nao learns about her friend’s sexual orientation or when Amamiya’s past catches up to him. For Sora, there are all of these external forces that push at him, forcing him to step outside of his comfort zone until he can be comfortable with who he is and start living his life in a healthy & honest way.
For all of the complex emotions and situations that Tagame explores, he expresses them through simple and expressive drawings. His pages are full of big, bold drawings of these people and their lives. The artwork opens up the story as the acting of these characters lets us into their hopes and fears. Tagame lays out the drama in the artwork on every page. The artwork expresses the need for and the results of empathy in Sora’s life. When we talk about the masks that Sora puts up to face his peers, Tagame steps outside of reality and draws Sora’s inner vision of himself, with an expressionless mask facing outward to his friends and family, not letting anything in but more importantly not revealing anything of Sora out to the world. And when he’s not in a defensive mode, his uncertainty and confusion are shown on his face. He may be hiding from the people around him but Tagame doesn’t let Sora hide from the reader.
An artist, Sora interprets his view of the world in terms of color. Sora’s observations of the colors around him express his connection to his own emotions. He may be repressed but he’s not blind to what he’s going through. Sora’s view of the world reveals his connection and perceptions of his environment that he’s not comfortable sharing with the people in his life. It’s part of his discomfort with who he is that Amamiya and Nao help him adjust to. He’s never ashamed of being gay; he doesn’t apologize for who he is. It’s just that he sees a normality around him that doesn’t reflect who he is.
Once Sora’s mask begins to fall away and the people in his life learn who he truly is, the boy begins to take the steps needed to accept himself and he finds acceptance from others. Mr. Amamyia and his story show Sora that it’s never easy to be a gay man, whether you’re a teenager or even older than that. While Mr. Amamiya seems to have it all figured out now (hint: even he doesn’t,) his past shows Sora the cost of holding back on telling anyone even longer than he already has. So Nao is the first and while it takes her a bit to adjust, her and Sora’s friendship grows even stronger. As his best friend accepts who he is, that gives him the strength to say “I’m gay” to even more people. He doesn’t get to be open with everyone; his secret crush remains secret even at the end, but by the end of the book, Tagame shows a young man who is ready to be honest with himself and with the world.
This brings us back to the idea of what is normal anyway. All Sora wants to ask the person he’s interested in out on a date or something. And it’s normal to be scared of that, to be scared of what the person might say or do. But when you say a boy wants to ask another boy out on a date, is that normal? Shouldn’t it be? In Sora and Mr. Amamiya, Tagame unveils how the pressure of not being what some would judge as “normal” weigh on these characters’ souls and how it beats at them. That pressure ends up being both external and internal as these men have been raised to think one way, the “normal” way, but discover that they’re something else, still normal but ultimately just different. That’s where Tagame is searching and finding his empathy as Sora and Amamiya learn that they are normal. It’s not them who have to adjust to the world; it’s the world that has to accept them just as it accepts everyone else.
### Overanalyzing the Overexamined Life - Pausing for Grant Snider's The Art of Living
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review_grant_snider_the_art_of_living/
Last updated: 2022-08-04T13:30:54.000Z
I’m not sure I’d be able to pinpoint exactly when I first came across [Grant Snider](https://www.grantsnider.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). I’m sure I read his stuff in an incidental ([no pun intended](http://www.incidentalcomics.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) manner for years before I ever really explored his work on large. However, I remember the exact feeling when I first read a Grant Snider collection, 2019’s fabulous [*I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf*](https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/i-will-judge-you-by-your-bookshelf%5F9781419737114/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). I read the entire collection in one night divided into two different sittings. I’m fairly certain I annoyed my wife by audibly giggling on almost every page and occasionally thrusting the book in her face to make her read a particularly funny strip. Snider’s latest, **The Art of Living,** has been sitting on an end table for a few months now, a casualty of a hyper-busy school year. It’s somewhat appropriate, though, that I’d be able to pick up a collection, one that is fundamentally a collection of mindfulness platitudes, as my summer begins. I was wholly predisposed to like *I will Judge You by Your Bookshelf*. It was rife with English major-friendly humor coupled with the appropriate amount of self-deprecation. Would **The Art of Living** resonate the same way for me? I am a very reflective person (maybe I’m just neurotic), but I’m certainly not predisposed to mindfulness, some end result of a blue-collar Irish Catholic guilt-ridden upbringing. The overarching theme of **The Art of Living** is to take a moment. I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to do that. Could I take a moment to enjoy this book? Isn’t that just taking a moment itself?
Before I get into the content of the collection, I think it’s important to assess what Snider does, and has been able to do as a cartoonist during his entire career. I’ve always been of the camp that is more impressed with a tight short story than a sprawling novel, and I feel that there is an appropriate application of a similar philosophy towards comic strips vs. their larger cousins. Perhaps this is predilection. Despite my writing style, I tend to always find things too long - novellas are the ideal form, movies can usually excise their second acts, [Minutemen ](https://open.spotify.com/artist/0z6zRFzl5njXWLVAisXQBz?ref=fromcovertocover.com)are the truest punk band - you get the idea. Thus, despite the fact that I’m currently reading all of the Palomar *[Love and Rockets](https://www.fantagraphics.com/pages/love-and-rockets?ref=fromcovertocover.com)* stories in succession, I’ve always been most impressed, and most at home with something like a single issue of [*Optic Nerve*](https://drawnandquarterly.com/press/depth-review-adrian-tomines-optic-nerve/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) or Tom Taylor and Otto Schmidt’s *Batman Annual # 3*.
I say all of this because what Snider does on a page, sometimes two, is distill certain truths about the way we live in a manner that is very poignant and precise. **The Art of Living** is very much a meditation on meditation, and it’s kind of stunning to imagine the level of self-editing or restraint that’s necessary to lay out this type of strip. Yes, this is a collection of strips, and it isn’t as if Snider were sitting at a drafting table attempting to create one singular work. These strips all had a single purpose in and of themselves, and many were published long prior to the collection. Nonetheless, the ability to confront these types of existential crises in this beautifully sparse, poetic style impresses.
Stylistically, Snider pushes himself in a few different directions than he pursued on *I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf*. His cartooning is still deliberately minimalistic, but he brings some new coloring approaches that add depth to his typically purposeful two-dimensional feel. Using watercolor techniques to enhance his natural images is a wonderful little touch that I might have missed if I weren’t reading an entire collection of these strips.
It’s hard not to see Snider in the vein of [Tom Gauld](https://twitter.com/tomgauld?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Both make a type of academic comic that winks at academia while incorporating an intentional style that allows the art to fade behind the ideas a little more than the average comic permits. I can’t help but wonder if Snider is conscious of this idea because **The Art of Living** tips the scale back a little more towards the art driving the ideas. Snider’s art picks up some abstract formalism traits, and parts of **The Art of Living** feel influenced by the later parts of [*Clyde Fans*](https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/clyde-fans/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) as he channels the style Seth employed as Simon Matchcard catalogs his mother’s items to meditate on the changing of the seasons.
But as beautiful as the art is, and as impressed as I am about the way Snider manages to refine certain elements of his cartooning while maintaining his core minimalism, it’s the philosophy at the center of the book that requires examination. And I’ll admit, I had a tough time with it upon the first read.
Admittedly, my love of *I Will Judge Your By Your Bookshelf* stems from the book’s content. Yes, the fact that I love wry self-deprecation about things I enjoy is a plus for sure, but the fact that the book is about something I enjoy on the face is more than enough of a vehicle in for me. And Snider certainly handled it well, creating a set of strips that both celebrate and boop the nose of a reading as a culture.
I was remarking to a friend that **The Art of Living** seemed well put together and that I appreciated what Snider was doing . . . but . . .
But, I kinda hate mindfulness.
So I thought about it - what makes mindfulness a turn off for me?
Initially, I chose to discard the most obvious premise, that it has been an en vogue phrase and, as such, overused and watered down for about a decade now. I chose to sidestep this premise because I think such an adverse reaction is a little passe and, really, too easy.
I narrowed it down to an overarching gripe, and to be fair, it is rather superficial and can’t exactly be applied with any degree of universality. First, mindfulness as it has been branded and marketed seems to me to reek of privilege. It appears to be the province of the rich. And, like most things birthed from social media, there is a level of artificiality and dishonesty that feels like hucksterism. There is certainly a disconnect between the influencers hawking a particular lifestyle and the type of people who think that said lifestyle is at all possible without a full-time job devoted to hawking the aforementioned lifestyle. [That mindfulness is an industry is rather self-contradictory](https://newrepublic.com/article/116618/technologys-mindfulness-racket?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
And, as a result, mindfulness seems not to jibe with my worldview. I had a blue-collar upbringing; work ethic was the primary source of pride. The notion of slowing down flies in the face of the nose-to-the-grindstone code I had instilled in me at a young age. There is no working-class connotation for mindfulness. Along with “self-care,” it seems to be a corporate buzzword reserved for managers and executives, not the callused hands of working people.
These complaints felt unfair or inaccurate when applied to Snider and **The Art of Living**. Yes, I think mindfulness reeks of privilege. I’m truly tired of hearing the term “self-care,” less because it seems contradictory and more because it feels both hollow and disingenuous. I don’t think there is anything about **The Art of Living** that feels disingenuous. And. honestly, I practice self-care all the time. Self-care for me is writing an essay like this or reading a book. And despite not being a very meditative person, I’m certainly contemplative. I studied English and Philosophy. Whatever work ethic was instilled in me did not cancel out my ability to pick the two most leisurely courses of study, obviously. Why would I be bitter towards a book telling people to slow down and think?
And then I happened to walk past **The Art of Living**, sitting slightly askew on the coffee table in our living room, and I noticed for the first time the full title of the book - **The Art of Living: Reflections on Mindfulness and the Overexamined Life**. I thought about that portion: the overexamined life. Of course, that made me consider the *partially examined life*, both the aphorism and the podcast. And so I paged through the book again and realized what I had missed the first few times I tried to read it.
***Reading*** it is precisely the mistake I was making.
Now, I don’t mean that we wouldn’t want to “read” this book, but I don’t think that Snider’s prerogative here is to have anyone sit down and read this book back to front. And despite the fact I did just that for *I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf*, I’m certain Snider did not have that goal in mind when he completed that collection either. Reading **The Art of Living** from back to front is probably exhausting for anyone, even someone without my bitter predispositions. Because it is a book of aphorisms, because it is precisely designed to cause the reader to break with the moment, the idea of reading it for the purpose of completing it contradicts the whole notion of the book. And while I’m of the opinion that once the words are on the paper, the author has very little agency over how one reads a book, I do think there is always something to be said for attempting to read a book on the author’s own terms. The meaning one may derive could differ based on what we bring to a book, but the process can align with authorial intent and still be personal to the reader.
Grant Snider’s comics appear on both his blog and in various periodicals. He is an incredibly talented producer of strips because he is able to distill complex concepts into a few panels with a poetic flair that naturally lands in the heart of the reader. Taken as a whole, **The Art of Living** was too much for me. But, as I realized I needed to stop over-examining things - I did tell you I studied English and philosophy, and overanalyzing is pretty much my primary skill set - I realized that I was missing the point of the collection as a whole. The simple fact that the book is a collection does not mean I need to read it all at once, digest it, and offer commentary. This is a book designed to be taken in doses. It is supposed to cause a shift in perspective, even for someone like me who has a hard time unplugging in that way.
### Where Are You, Demon? Detective Comics 1062
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review_detective_comics_1062_ram_v_rafael_albuquerque/
Last updated: 2022-08-01T13:00:37.000Z
One thing about the group of comics friends Scott and I share is that we are, as our friend [Rob](http://www.panelpatter.com/search/label/rbm?ref=fromcovertocover.com) likes to put it, comic omnivores. Lately, though, my diet has been more restrictive. Prior to picking up **Detective Comics #1062**, I hadn’t opened a superhero floppy in months. I had gone comics Keto or something. I was spending more time with OGNs and alt-comix, and I wasn’t exactly missing the Wednesday warrior books. To be honest, I never really caught on following the derailment of Tom King’s run. The endless cycle of breaking Batman down to build him back began to exhaust me. Crossovers and tie-ins seemed to be all-too-frequent, and the preponderance of Bat-books, be they Bat-Family/Bat-Adjacent or the slew of mini-series that dominate the shelves became, frankly, disenchanting. The idea of keeping up with single-issue Bat-books felt a little trite for my forty-year-old self.
But, if I’m being honest with you, my favorite way to read a comic is via the serialized single-issue format. I love that mode of storytelling, and when a creative team is clicking, there is no better treat for me to read these short, specific, pointed installments.
The announcement of the new creative team for **Detective Comics** was enough of a carrot to get me back into the fold. Compared to the core *Batman* book, **Detective Comics** always has the potential to be a different endeavor. I have been ardently following Ram’s writing since I was first introduced to him through *[These Savage Shores](http://www.panelpatter.com/2019/12/mikes-25-favorite-comics-of-2019.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*, and I’ve personally been itching to see him take on Batman. **Detective Comics** seems like the proper book for him because what Ram readers have come to expect, and what I would assume most of us want from him on a Bat-book, is an ambitious book that asks big questions about Batman and his mythos - i.e. the kind of book that could (mostly) exist without a ton of external pressure.
And that’s exactly what this first issue indicates will be the direction for this series. Rafael Albuquerque, Dave Stewart, and Ariana Maher join Ram as creative partners for the beginning of this run, and I’m impressed by the way the team coheres so well for the first issue. One of the traits that Ram shares with his White Noise counterparts (writers Dan Watters, Alex Paknadel, and Ryan O'Sullivan) that always sticks with me is the ability to utilize all components of collaboration to construct a comprehensive aesthetic for a book that serves to advance the plot and thematic concepts in a truly organic or even symbiotic way. Books like *Coffin Bound* and *Blue In Green* typify this concept. To see this same unity emerge in **Detective Comics #1062** makes me very excited to be reading this book from month to month.
I’ll warn you now that there will be spoilers below.
I’ve always been an admirer of Rafael Albuquerque’s art. For this issue of **Detective Comics**, he and colorist Dave Stewart bring just enough abstract messiness to the page that it helps to connote an underlying chaos that Ram harnesses to drive the idea home that something isn’t quite right with Bruce Wayne. It is a dark issue without being devoid of color, and that’s because of the specific work in the contrasts. Albuquerque and Stewart work in texture and shades, and you get the sense that Batman truly emerges from the shadows. Stewart helps to enhance Albuquerque’s natural noir feel by providing texture for the negative space Rafa employs. The end result is that Batman feels both like a creature of the night and separate from it. The contrasts are subtle and beautiful, providing a clear tone without either muddying the whole issue in an overly murky darkness nor establishing too steep a contrast that, for lack of a better term, makes the book look too “comic booky.”
The issue opens with Batman doing what he does best, [busting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcS7CP4Om0&ref=fromcovertocover.com) up some thugs. But his timing is off, and there is a new grotesque monster who has taken over the body of a mid-level mob boss, and oh yeah, Talia is back. What I appreciate about Ram’s approach to the opening of this series is that he puts Batman off-balance. He is still effective, but perhaps not to his standards. Dick Grayson chides his mentor, asking if he is merely getting old and slowing down. But Batman is all about preparation. The idea behind his training and his skillset is that, in contrast to his excessive wealth, he has earned his status as a superhero. It is his training that separates him from the rest of the pack. Batman is simply going to outwork everyone around him, and Ram seems to be exploring what happens when he can’t meet his own standards. Including Nightwing as a little whisper of mortality provides a wonderful contrast - Dick isn’t a slouch, but his cocky demeanor and natural gifts provide the other side of the coin for Bruce’s reserved nature and hyper-dedication. The existential crisis that drives Batman stems from a five-second decline. This is the kind of Batman we’re working with. We know this iteration of the character, and it’s ripe for a thorough exploration.
Ram gets Bruce’s inherent neuroses. In the seemingly endless cycle of breaking Batman down to build him back up, the breakdowns are often superficial - wealth, power, reputation, etc. Grant Morrison flirted with the psychological component, but it was one of the many tools they employed during their run. What Ram seems to be wrestling with here is far more existential. By the end of the issue, Bruce’s nightmarish visions conjure images of Barbatos, the demon of his own mythology. Perhaps Bruce needs not to worry about a nefarious plot but instead needs to confront himself, one way or another.
So, yes, I have high hopes for this run. Of course, I think it can be easy to publish a solid first issue. Setting up the premise of a run is nowhere as difficult as executing it. True, much of Ram’s most notable output came through limited series; there is no reason not to notice the seeds for a longer run in books like *These Savage Shores* or *Laila Starr*, but I think Ram’s track record of exploring the intricacies of a character over a longer run while embedding vital metaphysical questions was put on full display during *The Swamp Thing*. With that book, he proved he can use a character to explore big concepts while using those concepts to in turn drive the development of that character. I think we’re in store for something similar in **Detective Comics**, and what I wish more than anything else is that Ram and Albuquerque get that latitude to bring this story to life sans unnecessary universe-wide distractions.
If there is something I’d call for, it would be for Albuquerque to lean into the avant-garde. Together with Stewart, he can truly make the series memorable from a visual standpoint. The Talia reveal felt a little too reserved, a little too formal. Maybe it was the result of an editing edict, maybe Rafa felt it had to be clear and obvious. Make it nuts, I say. The chilling Barbatos scene is rife with the exaggerated body contortions Albuquerque is known for - I want that to be the overall feel of the book. What will hurt this book is if anyone plays it safe. Let it ride.
Following the lead story is a superb Jim Gordon second feature from Si Spurrier, Dani, Dave Stewart, and Steve Wands. I’ve been absolutely mesmerized by what Dani does since *Coffin Bound*. It’s funny; I call for Albuquerque to let loose, but I tacitly recognize that Dani does have to reign it in for a mainstream monthly title. Her images are fuller, and she and Stewart create striking depth. Most pages of the story utilize a nine-panel grid, interspersed with panels of plain text to carry Gordon’s narration forward. It’s fascinating to see Dani work in this model, and the result is art that is tighter, more detailed, and just a little lusher in its finish.
At this point, Gotham’s top cop is retired and drinking his nights away in a seedy bar. Spurrier’s dialogue coupled with how he structures Gordon’s narration sells the hard-boiled tone it needs, and I love how Steve Wands utilizes the various text modes. It really is every bit as good as the main story, and I’m equally intrigued to see where this one goes. It doesn’t have the sprawl that the main story has, but that’s a good thing. Together, these stories give two entirely different feels, and they both work well
### 5 Things To Read This Week
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/5-thing-you-should-read-this-week/
Last updated: 2022-07-31T16:27:03.000Z
Welcome to our somewhat re-branded link post highlighting five things we think should be on your radar from the week that was.
\*John Jennings' [Megascope](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/85039-john-jennings-talks-speculative-fiction-and-the-debut-of-megascope.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), an [Abrams Imprint](https://www.abramsbooks.com/megascope/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), is coming up on its two year anniversary. Focusing on speculative ficiton by and about people of color, the impint is home to one of my favorite sci-fic graphic novels of the past few years, Blackstar, as well as Hardears, that earned creator Matthew Clarke an Eisner nom. [Over at the Beat, Nancy Powell covers the Megascope panel at SDCC and previews what the next year will hold for Jennings and crew. ](https://www.comicsbeat.com/sdcc22-abrams-comicarts-megascope-imprint-panel/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> “Megascope as an imprint would look at the unseen world, uncharted territory, and focus on people of color and speculative technology, which includes horror." - John Jennings
The world of comics lost a giant on July 20 in the form of Alan Grant. The renowed writer was well known for his work with Judge Dredd and assorted Rebellion/2000 AD properties, and is best recognized on our side of the pond for his work on Batman and Lobo. At The Comics Journal, [Tom Shapira pens a thoughtful and elegiac refleciton on Grant's career](https://www.tcj.com/alan-grant-1949-2022/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
How should comics handle transgression? Comics have had a conneciton to the counter-culture almost since their inception, and the comix movement from which Art Spiegelman merged was never without contreversy. At Solrad, Publisher Alex Hoffman explores Maus in light of both the recent attempts to ban the classic and the infmaous Red Room cover in his essay, [Art Spiegelman’s MAUS: Canon, Appropriation, Transgressions, and the Red Roo](https://solrad.co/art-spiegelmans-maus-canon-appropriation-transgressions-and-the-red-room?ref=fromcovertocover.com)m
Scott and I, English majors both, joked that when Marvel first announced their Penguin Classic editions, they may have been directly targetting us. Now, the veritable Atlantic asks the question, [Have Comic Books Officially Entered the Canon?](https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/07/penguin-classics-marvel-collection-books/670965/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) As someone who read Persepolis almost 20 years ago for a class on the contemporary novel, I'd say they entered quite some time ago.
Ritesh Babu consistently composes such great analysis of Ram V comics that I sometimes stop what I've started to write as a result. [This week, he tackles the beautiful and haunting first issue of Aquaman: Andromeda.](https://shelfdust.com/2022/07/27/diving-into-the-depths-in-aquaman-andromeda-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And to close this week, even Sluggo is getting in on this multiverse game.
> Nancy by Olivia Jaimes for Sun, 31 Jul 2022 [https://t.co/NlSA91WHZA](https://t.co/NlSA91WHZA?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/FM7lK2QHEZ](https://t.co/FM7lK2QHEZ?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Nancy (@SluggoIsLit) [July 31, 2022](https://twitter.com/SluggoIsLit/status/1553629568216567808?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### #screenshot Reviews- X-Men: Hellfire Gala, Immortal X-Men #4, A.X.E.: Eve of Judgment
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/reviews-x-men-hellfire-gala-immortal-x-men-4-a-x-e-eve-of-judgment/
Last updated: 2022-07-19T10:00:25.000Z
This week, Kieron Gillen and Valerio Schiti's A.X.E. event begins, pitting the Avengers, the X-Men, and the Eternals against each other. "[The X-Men claim they're the planets' new gods. The Eternals know that position is already filled](https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/MAY220805?ref=fromcovertocover.com)," which sounds like a pretty good tagline for an event.
Honestly, I thought I'd get out of X-Men comics after Hickman left but Gillen has been doing some really intriguing work over in *Immortal X-Men* and Gerry Duggan's X-Men has been slow and steady but has really built up the mystery in the last couple of issues. I kind of want to quit the X-Men but Gillen and Duggan are making that difficult. (I'd also include Al Ewing's work on *X-Men: Red* as the third strong voice on the X books right now but he didn't have anything out last week.)
Last week, Marvel Comics released three comics leading up to this event, **X-Men: Hellfire Gala**, **Immortal X-Men #4**, and **A.X.E.: Eve of Judgment**. Let's take a quick look at these issues and catch up with the party and the afterparty.
**X-Men: Hellfire Gala** by Gerry Duggan, Kris Anka, Russel Dauterman, Matteo Lolli & CF Villa (Marvel Comics)
## Welcome to the Party (X-Men: Hellfire Gala)
During the recent era of Marvel’s mutant titles, the mutants have faced adversity from outside of Krakoa. However, they have largely still remained their own worst enemies during the Hickman-driven portion of X-Men stories. With **X-Men: Hellfire Gala**, Gerry Duggan resets that status quo to once again be the mutants versus the world. Emma Frost’s party to celebrate the medical “gifts” that the mutants have shared with allied countries becomes a defensive stand against the revelation of mutant resurrection as allies like The Avengers and the Fantastic Four view the X-Men once again as a possible threat while enemies like Orchis take it as proof towards what they’ve always believed.
Duggan and artists Kris Anka, Russell Dauterman, Matteo Lollie & CF Villa condense last year’s mini-event down to a workable issue, cutting out the fluff to show the Gala as the stage for the world to question the mutant’s motives. Emma Frost takes point in this defense of the mutant nation, with most of Krakoa’s “government” watching from the shadows. The White Queen becomes the face of the mutants as Duggan pulls together a number of threads that have run through X-books the past year, including events from his own *X-Men*title as well as Moira’s return in *The X Deaths of Wolverine*and even the manipulations happening in the background of *The Immortal X-Men*. Duggan sets the tone of the party and the artists provide the atmosphere for it, showing beautiful people being outwardly beautiful, trying their best to hide their own damaged selves from the rest of the world. Duggan has been portraying a heroic idealism in *X-Men* but here he begins to let show the cracks in that strong facade.
Remember Hickman’s first issue of *X-Men*, when he tried to sneak in hints that Scott and Jean had an open marriage with Wolverine and we all thought how scandalously great that was? This issue reminds us of the other threesome at play here; Cyclops, Jean, and Emma. These three have always had this fluid relationship going back to Grant Morrison but Duggan turns the love/rivalry of these X-Men into a fortified front, establishing them as the movers and shakers of Krakoa. There may be the Quiet Council at work in the background but it’s going to be these three who really get things done as this Gala is sure to give way to the next big challenge set to face the mutants.
**Immortal X-Men #4** by Kieron Gillen, Michele Bandini, and David Curiel (Marvel Comics)
## The Afterparty Kicks into Gear (Immortal X-Men #4)
Secrets shared in private at the Hellfire Gala need to be dealt with in the harsh light of the day. The last two issues of **Immortal X-Men** focus on the wildcards of the Quiet Council, Emma Frost and Destiny. Sure, the Quiet Council consists almost exclusively of wildcards but these two share a hope for a type of better tomorrow that may not quite align with other’s goals for the mutant nation. **Immortal X-Men #4**’s focus on Emma shows a woman who tries to project one image of herself while trying to hide her real self-image from the world, thinking it’s a sign of weakness when strength is needed.
As Kieron Gillen writes her, Emma is someone who needs to look like she’s always in control of the situation but the Hellfire Gala just showed how unwieldy all of the chaos surrounding Krakoa is. She needs others to believe that she has a handle on situations that are completely out of her powers of influence, such as the world’s knowledge of mutant resurrection. The last issue with Destiny and this issue with Emma are about two strong women who see the world for what it is while both have dreams about what they want it to be. That’s the difference from the Hope-driven second issue; Hope just doesn’t have the same perspective that Emma or Destiny possess.
It almost sounds like this whole issue could just be introspective navel-gazing but Gillen and artist Michele Bandini keep the action moving as the revelation of another Sinister in the world puts a target on the council’s Mr. Sinister that everyone wants to take a shot at. Between this title and Gerry Duggan’s *X-Men*, Sinister is being shown as more than just the dangerous court jester he’s largely been lately. There’s a mystery to his past, his present, and even his future that is the chaos engine driving these stories. What’s his true role in these comics? There’s a part of him that’s a clown but there’s also that part of him that lives up to his name “sinister” that’s easy to forget about. Gillen builds this issue around both Emma and Sinister, getting to show that all of these characters are more than just their roles on the Quiet Council. Gillen hints at the motivations driving these characters, giving glimpses of the forces that drive these characters forward. But as with any government, these motivations are often at a cross purpose, leading to the kind of conflict that we expect out of **Immortal X-Men**.
**A.X.E.: Eve fo Judgment** by Kieron Gillen, Pasqual Ferry, & Dean White (Marvel Comics)
## So what were the unpopular kids doing during the party? (A.X.E.: Eve of Judgment)
While the X-Men have been dealing with their drama in many X-titles, the Eternals have had their own issues to deal with, finding themselves in a spot where they question their own self-value. In case you need it before the next big Avengers/X-Men/Eternals event, **A.X.E.: Eve of Judgment** is a nice issue to catch up with the Eternals after their recent series. Kieron Gillen shows these god-like beings trying to figure out their relevance in this world of super-powered beings. They’re trying to figure out if they still even matter. So what better way to do that than going after the new gods of this world, the mutants.
This could easily be the next issue of Eternals as Gillen and Pasqual Ferry structure this as a “let’s see where everyone is” issue, establishing the current status quo of the Eternals, the two or three different factions of them that have developed, as well as ultimately the self-centered motivations that lead to the next genocidal event possibly facing the X-Men. For as long as the Eternals have been around, this issue shows them feeling like the forgotten kids of the world, having to do something splashy to get their elders’ attention again and prove that they’re still here and relevant. The mutants may feel like they’re the red-headed (pun intended) stepchildren of this world but the Eternals are right there, lacking the red hair but pretty much without any unique purpose for a race of super-powered beings.
Ferry and colorist Dean White capture the longing of these characters; longing for purpose, power, clarity, and direction. These characters feel like they’re in a transition stage of their long lives, trying to figure out what their next step is. Ferry and White provide an interesting bridge from Esad Ribic and Matt Wilson (artist and colorist on the previous series) into the *A.X.E.* event. Their artwork evokes Ribic and Wilson’s mythic art but feels more classically super-heroic, invoking Kirby (the Eternals’ creator) as much as they are Ribic.
**A.X.E.: Eve of Judgment** is probably a needed but enjoyable bridge issue to catch up non-Eternals readers (and really, you should check out the Gillen/Ribic/Wilson series) before the real start of the **A.X.E.** event this week.
### Surviving the Teenage Apocalypse in Tillie Walden's Clementine Book One
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/clementine-book-one-tillie-walden-review/
Last updated: 2022-07-12T11:00:38.000Z
In her comics, Tillie Walden has shown us the vulnerability but also the resilience of youth. Her drawings in her latest book **Clementine Book One** introduce us to a band of teenage characters fighting for their lives at the world’s end. “*Teenagers at the end of the world*” almost sounds like an exaggeration of the high school experience, where every day could feel like a life and death situation as they navigate hallways and classrooms. That feeling is what Walden taps into, removing the high school setting and placing it in Robert Kirkman’s *The Walking Dead* world. High school jocks and cliques are replaced by apocalyptic survivalists and zombies. Even with its zombies and fight-for-survival mentality, Walden still focuses on the experience of growing up in this time; it’s just that this time is the literal end of the world when society as we know it crumbled when the dead started walking the earth again. But while we may see the end of the world, **Clementine** actually looks forward with a bit of youthful optimism and asks “what’s next?”
Focusing on these characters, their experiences, and their developing dependencies on one another, Walden quietly introduces us to Clementine, a teenage girl who is missing a leg below one knee but can still fight walkers (the undead) using her crutches as weapons. In the first few pages, Walden shows us this character’s toughness but there’s also a vulnerability to her. More than just the obvious missing leg, she draws Clementine with a youthful defiance. Even with no one other than the walkers around, you see on Clementine’s face her me-versus-the-world attitude as she hacks at the walkers. But in the quiet moments, that facade falls away as she sleeps. The first handful of pages are setting up who the character is, or at least who she thinks she is before Walden begins chipping away at that self-created identity during the rest of the story.
As she brings in other characters, we get to know them visually as much as we do through what they say and do. Whether it’s Amos, the young Amish boy, who looks at the world with wonder and curiosity more than horror, or Ricca, a girl who is just as tough but more open than Clementine, Walden gets her characters to act on the page, to emote and express themselves physically. She lets us know who these characters are and also who they want the world to think they are. She balances out the inner and outer essences of these kids, drawing out their personalities through a sideways glance or even the occasional enthusiastic charge into the unknown (mostly by Amos.)
There’s an early moment of horror for Amos that doesn’t involve any of the walkers. He and Clementine fought a lot of zombies on their way to Vermont where he hopes to get a job building homesteads on a mountain. “Sounds like a scam to me,” Clementine says already jaded from having seen the world. But when they arrive in Vermont and meet the two sisters who are building the homestead, one of the sisters does something seemingly out of the blue and completely unthinkable to Amos. And Walden draws him with the appropriate shock and terror. The one action and his reaction to it build on what we’ve already seen of this character but lays out his innocent (maybe naive) worldview which Walden expresses visually with the character.
This story needs a strong survivor at the center of it and Clementine fits that bill. As we see her in those first pages, Walden balances the character’s strengths and weariness and then continues to build up both of those aspects of her throughout the book. Meeting other young survivors, Clementine stands out as the rock of the story while she’s trying just to survive. There’s a roominess to this story and on its pages that lets us into these characters’ headspaces. The story builds on Clementine’s reactions to the moment and to the choices she has to make, whether it’s as commonplace as accepting new people into her life or as harrowing as how to escape a mass of walkers. Walden shows Clementine always in a defensive stance, backed by a defiance to letting the world into her heart.
Yet, there’s a different side to Clementine, one that recognizes the brokenness in this world even though it’s the only world that she’s known. Along with Amos, Ricci, and the sisters Olivia and Georgia, these kids have to band together to survive in the snowy mountains, finding an opportunity to build a community. Through that opportunity, Walden shows Clementine adapting, growing, and changing. Friendships develop, flirting happens, and rivalry for affections threatens everyone. The Clementine who faces all of that is different than the Clementine we saw at the beginning of the book. She is beginning to accept a friendship that she closed herself off to when she met Amos.
As she faces all of this, that toughness that we saw at the beginning of the book is still there. Facing the walkers and a betrayal by one of the others kids, Clementine shows that toughness is a part of who she is, the girl surviving on her own against the walkers can still take care of herself but now she also has other people that she needs care for. With that comes a tenderness to her that develops throughout the story. It’s a tenderness she needs as she makes a friend with Amos or semiseriously flirts with Ricci. At the beginning of the book, she thinks she’s alone and doesn’t need anyone but learns to value personal relationships as she lets her guard down around other people.
Through it all, there’s hope that develops during the book that things can be better which is reflected in those changes in Clementine. Maybe it’s Amos’s unfettered innocent optimism at seeing the world, even a world overran by the walking dead, and building something that infects Clementine and every other aspect of this story. It’s a youthful optimism that Walden fosters as the story develops. Sure, things look bleak and dismal but Clementine opens herself up to the possibility of change. That’s why she stays with Amos, to protect him from a world that he’s not prepared for but maybe also hoping that some of his optimistic worldview could rub off on her. She’s resistant to letting anything into her life but she also remains in control when she does open the door to those opportunities.
At the heart of it, these are still teenagers; this is a teenage young adult story. Walden’s story finds room for that in a zombie story. After one disheartening setback where Ricci and Clementine find themselves trapped in a deep crevice (and this is before it even turns into a worse situation,) Ricci asks “Who knew there would still be moody teenagers in the apocalypse?” Tillie Walden’s **Clementine Book One** takes two types of stories, moody teenagers growing up and dystopian stories, and merges them to explore what it’s like growing up in a time when most of us would be thinking that the world was ending.
### This Week in Comics Journalism- July 9, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-july-9-2022/
Last updated: 2022-07-09T17:00:13.000Z
Just as I was planning out this column, The Comics Journal tweeted that critic and cartoonist R.C. Harvey had passed away.
> Today we mourn the passing of one of our most prolific and beloved contributors, the artist, journalist and historian R.C. Harvey. More will come soon on the legacy of this splendid talent. [pic.twitter.com/1O5XDnWqmP](https://t.co/1O5XDnWqmP?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — THE COMICS JOURNAL (@ComicsJournal) [July 8, 2022](https://twitter.com/ComicsJournal/status/1545475377937661952?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Harvey's was probably one of the first names I really recognized in The Comics Journal behind Gary Groth's and Kim Thompson's. I'm sure that TCJ will have more on Harvey in the next week. [His bio page on the TCJ website](https://www.tcj.com/author/rc-harvey/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), written by him, is a great place to start diving into his work. And it also contains links to his writing for the site, going back to 2011\. Looking through his articles on the site (let alone everything in the actual pages of TCJ,) you can see his love of great cartooning.
I'm not too sure why but it tickles me that in his self-penned bio blurb, the last accomplishment he notes is a merit certificate that he got in high school.
> In addition to being the All-Navy Cartoonist in 1960, Harvey has been awarded the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists’ Ink Bottle Award "in recognition of dedicated service to the Association and distinguished efforts to promote the art of editorial cartooning," 2013; and the San Diego Comic-Con International Inkpot Award "for achievement in comic arts," 2018\. **And when he was a senior in high school, he won a Certificate of Merit for Achievement in Cartooning Art from Scholastic Magazines.**
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Judge Dredd by Steve Dillon
At The Guardian, David Barnett has a piece up looking at the artwork of Steve Dillon, related to an exhibit of his work that was running in his adopted home town of Luton.
> “Steve has a special place in this town,” says Samuel Javid, creative director at the Culture Trust Luton. “We have roads called Preacher Close and Cassidy Close, some of his ashes are buried here, and his local pub has a picture of him behind the bar, sticking his middle finger up … ”
Sounds like a bar I want to visit sometime.
> Although Dillon was at home with the exaggerated macho heroes beloved of the genre (his Judge Dredd and Punisher depictions bristle with guns and ultraviolence), he also brought a more grassroots, individual look to his characters; he was renowned for drawing the type of people you might see in the pub. \[Alan\] Moore once wrote that if you shaved the heads of every female Marvel character they would be almost identical. Dillon, however, put as much care into the expressions and looks of his characters as he did the dynamic, detailed panels of his narratives.
I honestly don't know if Ennis and Dillon's Preacher works at all without Dillon drawing it. Thinking back on it (I haven't read the whole thing in years,) there's a cynical toughness to it that works because Dillon brought the characters to life, showing that toughness but giving the characters a vulnerability as well. '
Preacher publicity artwork, by Steve Dillon
---
I've always heard that David Mandel (Veep, Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld) was a big original art collector but I guess I never realized just how big until this 100th episode of Bill Cox's [Comic Art Live](https://www.youtube.com/c/ComicArtLive?ref=fromcovertocover.com) show. There were pieces in here that I was just stunned to see and to realize were actually in one person's collection. And Mandel's a pretty good storyteller so this was a fun spin through what sounds like just a portion of his collection.
Original artwork collecting is a fascinating aspect of comics and I've just been diving into Cox's Youtube channel, which is a mix of commerce and just generally geeking out over the original artwork market. I've only ever dabbled in it but it seems like this whole other thing that's part of comics but also adjacent to them.
---
This final link may also be a bit more comic adjacent but Game Rant's Joshua Kristian McCoy has a [thoughtful piece that explores the problem of calling comic book characters "crazy."](https://gamerant.com/crazy-comic-book-characters-problematic/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) He explores more the use of those characters in TV and Film but their base characteristics are lifted from comics.
> How many supervillains on the comic book page or in their big-screen adaptations are motivated, explained, or empowered by "criminal insanity"? These characters, in one form or another, are a staple of comic books and the art they inspire, but almost every version of neurodivergence in the medium is full of holes.
And later in the piece:
> Neurodivergent people are assumed violent in a variety of situations, despite the scientific fact that they are far more likely to be the victim of violence than the perpetrator. There is a massive infrastructural problem surrounding the treatment of neurodivergent people and the overwhelming likelihood that they'll be jailed for their different abilities. Superhero media simultaneously reinforces and is reinforced by this problem. It's a vicious circle. People think neurodivergent people are violent because that's what they see in media, so it becomes an easy shorthand for villainy.
### #screenshot reviews- Batman #125 & Hellboy and the B.P.R.D: Old Man Whittier
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/review-batman-125-hellboy-old-man-whittier/
Last updated: 2022-07-08T04:30:22.000Z
Over on the Twitter, we're posting reviews of new issues. The idea is that the review has to fit into one screenshot of our phones and that screenshot is the review that gets posted. It's a fun way to approach single-issue reviews. You can follow us on Twitter ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) to see them when they're posted and we'll be posting them here as well!
Here's what we have this week:
- Batman #125
- Hellboy and the BPRD: Old Man Whittier
Click on the header link of each review to see more preview art from the book.
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**Batman #125** by Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jiminez, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles, Belén Ortega, & Luis Guerrero
## [Q: When is a Batman comic just another Batman comic?](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1544469424064696321?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
A: When the cover proclaims, ”A New Era Begins!”
**Batman #125** ends up feeling less like that promised new beginning and more like business as usual as Chip Zdarsky and Jorge Jimenez set up another puzzle box for Batman to solve. This time it’s his own innocence after a nurse walks into a hospital room to witness Batman allegedly killing the Penguin. It’s hard to even define what this “era” is in this new issue other than just another issue of a monthly Batman comic. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After 80+ years, you need those kinds of things but it would be nice if Zdarsky and Jimenez at least went through the motions of having something to say about Batman, Bruce Wayne, or even Gotham City other than Gotham will easily believe that their hero can resort to murder. It’s not that this issue is bad or anything; it’s just that it’s wholly generic and lacks any inventiveness in its goals or stakes.
There is one extremely clever moment in the book that does signify the potential for more to come in this run when Bruce Wayne has time only to take off his expensive suit jacket and don his mask and utility belt. It’s easy to imagine that the outfit that Batman is fighting the Penguin in is mostly Gucci. More of that, please.
The backup story, drawn by Belén Ortega, almost makes up for the main story’s dulled efforts. It follows up the main story’s “Batman Wanted for Murder” by questioning what happens to a super-criminals evil empire after they’re dead? And the answer is charmingly common in that it becomes part of that super-criminal’s estate. Maybe it’s the lessened pressure of the backup but Zdarsky feels more playful and loose here, actually wanting to explore a unique question within Batman comics. The cleverness of the backup story just puts a spotlight on the generic and rote aspects of the main story.
SC 7/5/2022
---
## [Hellboy and the Scary Old House In the Woods](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1544373039026110464?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
**Old Man Whittier** is the kind of Hellboy story that the late and great Richard Corben would have drawn. Mignola gave him stories that were attuned to Corben’s depictions of form and physicality. So for this story, set in an old farmhouse in Massachusetts, it’s easy to imagine a version of it drawn by Corben. Instead, we get Gabriel Hernández Walta stepping into the artistic role, working with colorist Dave Stewart, to tell a moody and atmospheric tale.
Walta’s artwork blends the physicality of Corben with the moodiness of Mignola in this short story. The story’s visual tone buzzes with an underlying dread as Hellboy accompanies a woman returning to the childhood home that she had been told burned down years ago. Walta and Stewart shade this story with an effective graininess and grit. It’s dusty, old, and musty. You can practically smell the old dampness in the walls of the old Whittier house. Walta and Stewart set the scene for Mignola’s story, putting us in that old house and wondering what its history really is.
Mignola is great at setting Hellboy in this kind of American horror folklore setting. The story of a house that burned down decades ago but still stands in its original spot today is the kind of urban folklore story that gets handed down from generation to generation, the kind of ghost story that’s both frightening and thrilling. You almost want to go out and see if you can find that house in the woods but Mignola shows that sometimes those kinds of stories have a danger behind them. By placing this in Hellboy’s world, Mignola sets this against a world where we know that stories are more than just tales that kids tell to scare other kids.
Mignola and Walta set up a mystery about the Whittier family. Questions are asked but not necessarily answered. But based on this issue, hopefully, this creative team will get together again to explore more of this family.
SC 7/4/2022
### This Week in Comics Journalism-- July 2nd, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-july-3rd-2022/
Last updated: 2022-07-02T20:40:30.000Z
I took a bit of an unplanned break last week so let's catch up on a few of the things that have caught my attention recently.
---
*Rolling Stone* has turned up their coverage of comics a bit lately. Last time we linked to an interview with Grant Morrison and this time, RS's [David Fear spotlights the new Marvel series of Penguin Classic books](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/marvel-comics-penguin-classics-spider-man-1367080/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> For others, it’s a validation that what was once considered disposable and a pulpy guilty pleasure at best — and the literary equivalent of junk food that caused juvenile delinquency at worst — can be taken a little more seriously and evaluated with a more appropriate amount of intellectual, sociopolitical heft. Not that comics fans needed validation (MCU movie culture *is* mainstream culture now) or that superheroes needed to be “rescued” from the dustbins of history. It’s more that these are the closest things we have to modern mythologies, and these tales of gods and monsters, heroes and villains aren’t just childish things to be put away after childhood’s end. They deserve to be discussed in the same breath as other classics of the literary form.
---
Doonesbury is one of those formative comics for me. I don't know where I fall along the spectrum of its characters (I'm not Zonker, but I hope I'm also not completely a Mike at this point in my life.). Still, I remember finding the strip during its second decade, somewhere during the 80s when Reaganonimics was running wild in the land and it helped teach me a bit to question everything.
Like an old friend, I've lost touch with it over the years although a couple of years ago, I spent some time with [Trudeau's collection that focused on Donald Trump](http://www.panelpatter.com/2016/07/americas-landlord-on-garry-trudeau-and.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com). And then in our Covid years, the series celebrated its 50th anniversary.[ Two years later for The Comics Journal, R.C. Harvey reflects on Garry Trudeau's work and what it has meant to a lot of us.](https://www.tcj.com/celebrating-a-half-century-of-doonesbury/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> The words and the pictures in **Doonesbury* do work together. One comments on the other - while each retains an independent (albeit sometimes absurd) sense of its own. With this deployment of the resources of the medium, Trudeau has taken the art of the comic strip a step further. He has made the very nature of the medium—the relationship of word and picture—the vehicle of his humor and his comment. In a much more specific sense than in other strips, in **Doonesbury* the medium is message.
I think I may need to dig out a few of those old collections and catch up with Mike, Zonker, and especially Raoul Duke.
---
For Book Riot, [Kelly Jensen covers the continued attacks on Maia Kobabe's ](https://bookriot.com/virginia-politicians-sue-oni-press-and-maia-kobabe-over-gender-queer/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**[Gender Queer](https://bookriot.com/virginia-politicians-sue-oni-press-and-maia-kobabe-over-gender-queer/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** in Virginia, which has now escalated into a politician suing Kobabe and Oni Press as "obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors..." and offers the following defense for the book:
> As indicated before, obscenity laws demand examining a work in relation to its whole. *Gender Queer* is a book published for adult audiences, and the small excerpts making the rounds on social media featuring sex are age-appropriate and not representative of the whole of the book.
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Polygon's [Zack Rabiroff takes a look at the new generation of queer legacy characters at DC](https://www.polygon.com/23186514/dc-comics-pride-gay-superman-queer-superheroes?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> Case in point, this year’s **DC Pride*special, the company’s second annual showcase of an increasingly sizable stable of LGBTQ characters. Of the 12 stories housed in this year’s installment, half centered on out-of-the-closet legacy iterations of established characters.
> And if there’s a running theme that winds through each of these stories, it’s about the weight of legacy and reputation on the ability of these newer heroes to embrace their own sexuality… and whether sexual identities and superhero identities can coexist in the public eye.
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For Solrad, [Alex Hoffman explores Art Spiegelman's **MAUS**, Ed Piskor's **Red Room**](https://solrad.co/art-spiegelmans-maus-canon-appropriation-transgressions-and-the-red-room?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (including Jim Rugg's MAUS-inspired unpublished variant), and how cartoonists have used Spiegelman's work to either dialogue with their own work or just sample it as a marketing tool. And he also examines how the audience's reaction to these works makes them complicit in what the books are or aren't saying.
> But if silence is damning for Piskor, for whom it implies greed and complicity, isn’t silence to Red Room and the Maus parody cover damning for readers as well? That silence speaks to the ways in which we as readers and as critics have desensitized ourselves to the trauma of others, no matter how boring or banal the source material. Perhaps it is the American culture of spectatorship which, as Sontag notes, has “neutralized the moral force of \[images\] of atrocities”(Sontag, 2004). The boredom I felt when reading Red Room: Trigger Warnings #1? Perhaps, as Wordsworth warned, sentimentality, indecency, and overstimulation have led me to a “savage torpor.” And perhaps, the prurient interest in Rugg and Piskor’s work is worth a second consideration; why are readers so greedy for the pornographic desire to see bodies in pain?
I'll admit that I've continued to get Red Room but haven't been able to read it at all since the controversy of the variant cover came to light. For a while before that, I was giving Piskor (and Rugg) some leeway to be building to something, to actually have something to say with this work. I give Piskor props for his skills a bit more than Alex does but I recognize an unexamined aspect in Piskor's work. There are questions that it poses that Piskor seems to have no interest in actually exploring. This may be the ultimate art-for-art's-sake book that's just ignorant about anything that it's actually doing.
---
And one more from Polygon this week, [a wonderful examination from Rosie Knight of Tillie Walden's **Clementine**](https://www.polygon.com/23177011/clementine-comic-book-walking-dead?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> That idea of a broken world that could become a better one is key to the appeal of zombie storytelling and dystopian fiction in general. “I think it’s a very weird fantasy to be like, *I am here at the end of the world and I get to remake the world in my own image now, I get to choose who I’m with*, which is really, really special,” Walden shared. It’s an idea that also resonates in terms of the unexpected accessibility of **The Walking Dead*. “There have been [some papers written](http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2017/04/physical-disability-on-walking-dead.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) about how the Walking Dead universe is actually a really interesting commentary on how the world could sort of remake itself to accommodate the sheer amount of disability that would show up because of the mechanics of how Walker bites work.” It’s a great point and an idea that Walden is keen to continue exploring in **Clementine: Book One* and beyond.
The piece includes an interview with Walden, where she talks about the current pressures put on queer comic creators:
> \[Walden\] continued, “I do think there’s still a pressure and a tendency for a lot of queer comics to focus on pain. Of course people will still want to write about their pain and they should, but I feel like I’m beginning to see a trend of people who are queer but go on an adventure unrelated to their queerness.” That leads into one of Walden’s biggest wishes for the industry as it moves forward. “I hope that publishers are starting to realize that they don’t have to hire a person of color or queer person to just tell a story about their marginalization. They should just hire them and let them do whatever fuckin’ story they want to.”
### "A Dream of Dying" in Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/weapon-x-by-barry-windsor-smith/
Last updated: 2022-06-30T15:00:14.000Z
Calling **Weapon X** a *Wolverine* story is a matter of marketing, something to draw the kiddies and the rubes into Barry Windsor-Smith’s 1991 monster story (but not[*Monsters*](https://www.gamesradar.com/monsters-review-barry-windsor-smith/?ref=fromcovertocover.com); that’s a different book.) This isn’t a story about mutants or superheroes, and it may not even be exploring good-versus-evil. Just forget all of that kind of stuff as you live in the space of Windsor-Smith’s masterful cartooning for the length of this story. Live within this experiment of turning a man— a troubled, drunk, and violent man— into a weapon by people who should know better. Because within these pages Windsor-Smith sneaks in a horror story about mankind’s hubris into what should have been a marketing exercise— the origin of Wolverine, see it here for the first time!!!! Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?
Windsor-Smith finds a unique angle to the story. In 1986’s *The Uncanny X-Men #205* (also included in the recent **Wolverine: Weapon X Gallery Edition**,) Windsor-Smith already told a classic Wolverine story, teaming with Chris Claremont to tell a defining story about the man, his struggles, and his sense of honor. As Windsor-Smith’s third X-Men issue in a couple of years (following the two LifeDeath issues that focused on Storm,) Windsor-Smith left an interesting mark on Wolverine as he and Claremont used this issue to define the character in ways that the character’s popularity watered down in other stories. *The Uncanny X-Men #205*feels like Claremont teaming up with another master artist (after Cockrum, Byrne, Smith, Miller, Romita Jr.) to refocus and recenter who this character was.
Five years later, Windsor-Smith takes a solo shot at the character with a story that promises to tell us how Logan got his adamantium-laced skeleton. But that plot summary is just a Trojan Horse; there’s nothing in this story to make you think that Windsor-Smith is at all interested in playing nice within continuity or even cared about some guy who wore a tan-and-black costume that had pointy things all over it. Logan (never “Wolverine” in the story itself, just “Logan”, "Mr. Logan”, “the patient,” and “Experiment X”) is just a weapon. In the hands of a shadowy organization, he’s a literal weapon for them to form and attempt to control. For Windsor-Smith, Logan is the cannonball ball tearing through nearly every page, aimed right at the heart of the reader.
The chaos of the story from the **Wolverine: Weapon X Gallery Edition**
While you’re so focused on Logan while reading this story, Windsor-Smith sneaks in a story about three people whose roles aren’t quite defined but who are instrumental in the momentum of the story; the Professor (and even though he’s bald, it’s not the Professor that’s usually associated with Logan,) Dr. Cornelius, the main architect of the process, and Hines, the girl Friday of this story who is part observer and part active force behind everything that happens. These three characters function as both protagonists and antagonists in this story. In the grand scheme of things, they’re villains, experimenting on an “innocent” man. It’s hard to see them as anything else as they work for this Weapon X project; they’re the faces of it to the reader. They work for the kind of shadowy organization that these stories teach us not to trust.
Watching the dynamic of these three as they poke, prod, and inject Logan ultimately reveals three people who think they’re in control of a situation without realizing just how over their heads they really are. They’re playing God. Particularly the Professor, the authoritarian (but occasionally desperate) leader of this program, projects his control in all situations. He barks orders and dominates Cornelius and Hines, acting as if everyone there is to serve him and his vision of what Logan can be. Windsor-Smith depicts the others as subserviently cowering to his orders, without ever challenging him. Until the situation turns out for the worst, Cornelius and Hines seem almost excited about this experiment, this mission to turn a man into a weapon. They’re certainly not innocent in this story; it’s just a question (and even then barely) of just how culpable they are for everything that happens to Logan and them in this story.
For all of their control over what’s happening, BWS builds in constant tension about when their weapon is going to wake up and turn on them. The Professor, Dr. Cornelius, and Hines are both the hunters and the hunted in this story. Windsor-Smith finds this great way to write about Logan without really writing Logan as anything other than a machine for most of this story. Logan exists as the subject of the comic but he’s barely shown as an actor in it. The three mad scientists end up being our point of view characters of them being trapped in a lab with a monster of their own making.
A wordless page from the **Wolverine: Weapon X Gallery Edition**
So when Logan breaks free of the control of these scientists, Logan becomes a killing creature, hunting down the people who have experimented on him. Windsor Smith balances the scientists’ procedural story (how do you build a better gun?) with these scenes of bloody chaos as Logan turns into a killer that’s all rage and unmerciful violence. Logan is the sleeping storm of this boo, the one that you know is inevitable but a that you’re unable to do anything about but wait for it hit.
Windsor-Smith tells the **Weapon X** story by building up an environment that is a reflection of Logan with all of the chaos, turmoil, and manipulation visually there on the page. Logan is quite literally stripped of any agency in this story, reduced to a naked wild man let loose against these scientists. In terms of what interests Windsor-Smith, he is taking away all of the super-hero trappings until he gets to the core of a man who has claws pop out of his hands. That’s the elevator pitch of this character that Claremont spent almost 20 dressing up as a hero. Windsor-Smith has no strong need to tread that ground. By stripping Logan down to his skin, Windsor-Smith finds ways to focus on what this man is going through.
From the **Wolverine: Weapon X Gallery Edition**
As the character is stripped bare, Windsor-Smith places him in pages that quickly transition from sensory overload to almost peaceful moments of zen meditation. His page constructions serve to illustrate Logan’s state of mind even as the character himself cannot express his thoughts. From the staccato dialogue, word balloons, and caption boxes that overwhelm the beginning of this story when we’re trying to get our bearings, to the few wordless sequences where Windsor-Smith slows down time to allow you to be in the moment, and through the final epilogue of the story where form and color become a meditative way out of the story, the cartoonist uses the pages and images to create a connection between the reader and the characters. The construction of the comic is purposeful and designed to bind the reader to Logan.
To tell this story, Barry Windsor-Smith builds it in visual layers, starting with the characters. Visually, Logan is at the center of the story, the naked and hair wild man that everything revolves around. Even as he’s sleepwalking through the story, Windsor-Smith creates an iconic version of the character with the wild hair and electronic boxes hanging off of his wait, wires everywhere. It’s become as recognizably Logan as any costume has. But unlike so many of those costumes that are just surface-level appearances, the **Weapon X** Logan tells the story itself of a man whose own humanity is taken from him as others try to transform him into a machine. Windsor-Smith’s version of the character shows this man, trapped between his own personhood and being nothing but a weapon to be shot wherever his “masters” aim him.
**Wolverine: Weapon X Gallery Edition** by Barry Windsor-Smith (Marvel Comics)
### This Week in Comics Journalism- June 19th, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-june-19th-2022/
Last updated: 2022-06-19T01:22:45.000Z
2022 sucks. First Neal Adams. Then George Perez. Now Tim Sale. It's incredible how all three of them have drawn stories that are very important to me. It's just hard to imagine that we won't have any more art from these three titans.
So on that happy thought, let's dive into some of the pieces of writing about comics that jumped out at us this past week.
---
Yes, it's still over 2 months until Banned Books Week but we should always be thinking about how there are people out there who are always trying to find the next book to ban in their libraries.
For Popverse, Tiffany Babb argues that[ banned books are the books we should be encouraging and allowing our children to read](https://www.thepopverse.com/why-banned-books-are-the-books-your-children-should-be-reading?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> ... I challenge you to spend a day listening to how students talk. And wonder if it's better for children to see how that language is harmful or if it's better for them to learn how to perpetuate it without considering their impact (because they will). If you think a young person speaking about their depression and dark thoughts is going to be too heavy for your child, I'd ask you to talk to a child who is going through that right now, because you probably have one in your life.
And that wasn't all of the discussion this past week. Heidi MacDonald [spotlighted the librarians that are caught on the front line in defending these books](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/89572-comics-librarians-are-up-for-the-fight.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for Publisher's Weekly.
> It’s a frightening and exhausting atmosphere for librarians across the country, says Matthew Noe, lead collection and knowledge management librarian of Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library, who is wrapping up his second term as president of the GNCRT. “A lot of this stuff is sheer intimidation, and it’s mind boggling,” he adds. Noe feels that while the challenges were mounting all through last year, the phenomenon didn’t strike a chord in the mainstream news until *Maus* was removed from a school curriculum in Tennessee. “That seemed to be a wake-up call for a lot of people.”
---
Saying "Grant Morrison channeled John Lennon feels like the most 1990s thing I could write but here in 2022, [Brian Hiatt interviews Morrison for Rolling Stone](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/grant-morrison-ezra-miller-john-lennon-superman-1367662/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) about their experience channeling Lennon as well as a whole lot more.
> Utopian images of a future are few and far between; we’ve talked ourselves into a world where there is no future. So I think people still are clinging on to that last rope — “who knows, maybe we’ll become superhuman, maybe we’ll get through this.” But the truth is, these images are very infantile, and the fear of the future is driving that return to the past. Everyone’s recycling stories and recycling characters that were at their best a long time ago. It’s emblematic of cultural stagnation. At the same time, I think it’s the last flicker of light in a lot of ways in mainstream popular culture, which is still trending towards the dark. But we need something new.
---
At Shelfdust, [Steve Morris writes about the Connor Hawke story ](https://shelfdust.com/2022/06/13/i-am-green-aro-steve-morris-on-dc-pride-2022/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)that appeared in DC's 2022 Pride special and found a thoughtful comic that addressed a character's asexuality.
> ... we get to read extracts from a letter he’s writing to his mother, explaining how he realised he was asexual. As I’ve experienced myself, he explains how the asexual spectrum basically feels like a blankness or absence; the idea that something *isn’t* there. As a result, it’s tricky to actually think “hey, I’m asexual” at all, because there’s. always that nagging idea that asexuality isn’t *actually a thing*. Here, that doubt is turned into self-confidence, as Connor’s inability to be part of the crowd is precisely what allows him to defeat Music Meister.
---
Augie De Blieck Jr. [uncovers a preview of a crossover that never happened](https://www.pipelinecomics.com/neal-adams-spawn-valeria-she-bat-knighthawk/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)– Todd McFarlane's Spawn and Neal Adams' Valeria the She Bat– and investigates how Neal Adams shifted plans when the crossover fell apart.
> You can see most of the design changes Adams did to Spawn to create Knighthawk in this first page. As a Hybrid type of character, he takes on the characteristics of a hawk. The cape becomes more wing-like, complete with something closer to the way the end of a wing has individual feathers that look almost like fingers. The mask doesn’t cover the mouth area and the pattern around the eyes turns into a hawk silhouette. There is also, of course, a hawk logo on his chest now. The chains are gone.
There's a lot going on his this story and I feel like only De Bliek Jr. would have gone as deep as he did but it's an entertaining look at the crossover that wasn't and how Adams tried to salvage some of it.
---
At The Comics Journal, [Bob Levin explores Gary Panter's recent book](https://www.tcj.com/this-thing-without-teeth/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) **Crash Pad**.
> Panter was now 70\. If he had acquired wisdom, it must have seemed time to share it. And the “cosmic order” he hoped to “pass on” seemed to coalesce around installing a sense of one-ness. Man-with-Man. Man-with-Earth. Man-with-Cosmos. It appeared that, given present circumstances, the purpose of the oneness was to keep man from destroying his planet. If you wanted to save the planet, creating a comic book might not have been the first thing to come to mind, but, Goshkin would concede, adding one grain of sand to the dam against rising oceans could not hurt. And from the days of flower-power, Panter had mapped three paths away from raging fires, poisoned waters and acid-dripping skies: Meditation; LSD; and alien intervention.
---
I just absolutely adore [Ryan C.'s opening for his look at Nate Garcia's **Gecko**](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2022/06/16/how-the-west-was-fun-nate-garcias-gecko/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) at Four Color Apocalypse.
> It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but the law of averages dictates that one of these days, Nate Garcia is just gonna take this whole thing too far. His comics about tennis-shoes-wearing cowboy Alanzo Sneak, his horse Sheena for whom he harbors an unhealthy longing and/or obsession, and their anthropomorphic dog pal Huff Deely have consistently straddled the fence between humorously cheesy and downright queasy (with generous side helpings of sleazy and uneasy for good measure), but he’s got this uncanny ability to take you right to the edge and then reel you — and his characters — back in.
---
For Women Write About Comics, [Masha Zhdanova interviews Alec Longstreth](https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2022/06/interview-alec-longstreth-on-isle-of-elsi/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) about this work, including his current webcomic [Isle of Elsi](https://www.isleofelsi.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> Sometimes writers talk about their “internal age.” I feel like I’m about nine, which is the age of the main character, Rex, so he’s sort of a stand-in for me. It’s just looking for any little part where I can make it more interesting. I have a scene where the adults are having a meeting and it’s like, well what if one character falls asleep and their snoring sound balloon gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then someone pokes him and wakes him up and he goes “HUH?” So it’s a running gag going in the background while normal comics stuff is going on on the surface level. I try for visual gags and verbal humor in every story no matter what else is going on
---
💡
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### From the Archives- Julio's Day (2013)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-julios-day/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T21:06:14.000Z
Gilbert Hernandez is one of my favorite cartoonists. He's practically fearless when it comes to storytelling. His *Palomar* stories are so rich, so surprising, and just so lovely.
**Julio's Day** shares a lot of the same DNA with the *Palomar* stories, being character-driven in very rural settings. His recent comics, which still striking, have gone in some wild directions.
This review is from 2013 and is presented as it was originally written with just some of the grammar cleaned up. But there is one part of this story that I feel like I need to revisit sometime soon and clarify my own thoughts on it because I really wonder what I was thinking back in 2013.
> Like so many things in **Julio's Day**, Hernandez isn't writing a story about the life of a gay man. This isn't a story about homosexuality but there are elements of Julio's life that Hernandez touches on that explore Julio's relationships with men and his relationship with society around him.
With a 2022 perspective, this reads to me like I was trying to say, "Julio wasn't gay even though he really was." What could I have meant here? That's the thing with looking back at reviews– sometimes you just can't tell what the perspective you were coming from was. Maybe sometime this summer I'll give **Julio's Day** another shot and see if I can better unpack, clarify, or even correct myself from 9 years ago.
---
A simple life doesn’t necessarily equal a life that is simple as Gilbert Hernandez reminds us in **Julio’s Day**, the story of a man’s 100-year life that spans the 20th century. Following the life of a man from birth to death, with a few detours to track the events of family members, Hernandez builds up these sketches of a life which we easily assemble into a biography of sorts. He hits these big beats in Julio’s life, simultaneously moving us through the story while catching us up on the many years that pass between the panels as these characters grow up, have kids, have grandkids, and eventually die. He does this with the specter of the 20th century in the backdrop as real-world events overshadow the daily life of a simple man.
Well, maybe Julio’s not so simple. Hernandez plays it coy with Julio, a man who lives in times that won’t accept the man he really is. From childhood when a slightly older friend declares "You're going to get us in trouble one day, Julio" to his days as an old man when he chastises his young, gay grand-nephew Julio Juan, "You better keep your talk of a good life to yourself," Julio hides that he shares more with his grand-nephew than just a name. Like so many things in **Julio's Day**, Hernandez isn't writing a story about the life of a gay man. This isn't a story about homosexuality but there are elements of Julio's life that Hernandez touches on that explore Julio's relationships with men and his relationship with society around him.
In 100 pages, Hernandez paints us a picture of a whole life but we're only visiting with Julio and his family at these separated moments in their lives. We don't stick around long enough with most of these events to see the characters reflect on them, adjust to them and change their lives around them. These moments of crisis that Hernandez invites us into are about the actions and decisions of a particularly charged time. Hernandez barely even gives us the time to reflect on these moments before we're thrusted years later into new focal moments in Julio's lifetime. We're not given much time to judge these characters but we are given moments to sympathize with them as few of the characters are in the lives that they want to be leading.
**Julio's Day** is everything that is lovely about Gilbert Hernandez's storytelling and art. From the rural and familial Palomar stories to his more recent experimental comic "movies," Hernandez has always hidden complicated themes and methods behind very simple-looking stories. **Julio's Day** brings all of that together, providing a primer for anyone wanting to see what they may be able to find in a Gilbert Hernandez comic. It looks like it would have been simple for Hernandez to expand any of these moments in time into a full story like "Heartbreak Soup" or "Chelo's Burden" but by keeping them these short and snappy stories, Hernandez shows us his interest in moving us through time. Giving us these moments, he lets us really form our own image of these characters without ever telling us who they are from his point of view. The cartoonist gives us these characters and lets us fill in their life stories as we fill in the moments between the panels on any page.
What we've come to expect from a Gilbert story is strong and arresting images and he gives us plenty of those here. The sheer forcefulness of his drawings smacks you with the power of life and of nature. In **Julio's Da**y, he shows us the state of these characters more in their physical representations than in what they do or say. The ways that he protects characters, ages them, beats them up, saves them, and lets them die demonstrates the confident grace of his pen. Every panel is a captured moment, more real and descriptive than any photograph could ever be. Even when he sketches natural events, presenting almost abstract images of clouds, rains and landslides, there's a majesty to the world around us that we hardly ever see presented.
So much of **Julio's Day** looks simple. From the clean black and white drawings (it would be a crime to ever colorize any of the Hernandez brothers' artwork) to Julio, a man who looks to be more of an extension of his family than a fully realized person, Gilbert lulls us into the story by making it as easy as possible to. But he doesn't stop there because the characters aren't simple. The drawing isn't simple. The 20th century wasn't that simple And no man, no matter how little we may actually know or see about him, is that simple Hernandez is like a comic-making magician, distracting us with something understandable and shiny in his left hand while his right hand is performing these incredible feats that we only understand later after we've had the time to think, to ponder and to appreciate the true magic that we never really saw.
### #screenshot reviews- Hellboy and the BPRD: Night of the Cyclops, That Texas Blood #14, & Aquaman: Andromeda #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/screenshot-reviews-hellboy-bprd-night-of-the-cyclops-that-texas-blood-14-aquaman-andromeda-1/
Last updated: 2022-06-15T11:30:22.000Z
Over on the Twitter, we're posting reviews of new issues. The idea is that the review has to fit into one screenshot of our phones and that screenshot is the review that gets posted. It's a fun way to approach single-issue reviews. You can follow us on Twitter ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) to see them when they're posted or every two weeks, we'll be collecting them and posting them here as well! But instead of doing the screenshot of from our phone, we're posting the original text here.
Here's what we have this week:
- Hellboy and the BPRD: Night of the Cyclops
- That Texas Blood #14
- Aquaman:Andromeda #1
Click on the header link of each review to see more preview art from the book.
**Hellboy & The B.P.R.D.: Night of the Cyclops** by Mike Mignola and Olivier Vatine (Dark Horse)
## [The Hellboy That I’ve Missed](https://twitter.com/fromcovtocov/status/1531636112220987393?s=21&t=y7Se1i3sF-l8rBwJtrJ3ag&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
In **Night of the Cyclops**, there’s a cockiness and a solidness in the character and in the storytelling that has been largely missing for a while now. Hellboy just sounds right in this tale as he takes on Greek myths. With these one-shot stories, Mignola and his co-creators use the opportunity to put his character into an unfamiliar situation. Hellboy usually deals with Northern European legends and myths so placing him in a Mediterranean milieu is unsteady ground for the character, giving Hellboy and us a new thing to explore.
Since *Hellboy in Hell* ended years ago now, the character and the title have felt a bit meandering as it seems like Mignola has kept the series going more out of obligation than any desire to tell more stories with the character. While there have been some good comics out of it, the assembly-line-like output in recent comics has missed the spirit and soul of Mignola. Joined in the writing and storytelling by Olivier Vatine, Mignola and Vatine capture the right voice for the character— that sardonic-in-the-face-of-danger cockiness that leads to high adventure.
But this isn’t a story that Mignola could have drawn. It requires a classical lyricism that his baroque designs and shadows wouldn’t have done justice to. Vatine’s clean curves create a dreamy atmosphere. WIth fauns and Greek goddesses, Vatine’s artwork signifies that this is something out of the norm for Hellboy. It’s not a world of shadows and dragons but about curves, forms, and goddesses. Vatine is a welcomed addition to the Hellboy creative team, bringing in a sense of expanse to this world that’s normally tight and constrained. With the team of Mignola and Vatine, **Night of the Cyclops** offers a return to the character we know while giving us a glimpse of the stories that can still possibly be told.
---
**That Texas Blood #14** by Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips (Image Comics)
**[The Tone is the Story](https://twitter.com/fromcovtocov/status/1536397737708507137?s=21&t=y7Se1i3sF-l8rBwJtrJ3ag&ref=fromcovertocover.com)**
Kicking off the second main arc of their series, Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips deliver an issue that’s all about the pacing of the story. If the first arc was described in terms of being Coen brothers-like, this issue opens with an homage/riff on horror movies, particularly slasher films. Patti Doyle, a recently returned daughter of this Texas town, sits in the cold dark, watching *SIlence of the Lambs*. And understandably, she’s a bit freaked out by Hannibal Lechter. Condon and Phillips are working completely in tone and pacing here, crafting a scene that perfectly sets up what’s going to happen. This is the setup of a slasher moment; you can practically feel what’s going to happen and are still not disappointed when it happens that way. The tone is the story in these opening pages.
But that extension of the tone continues through the story, as most of the issue picks up on the following day in this sleepy Texas town. Condon and Phillips find a pace that allows all of these characters to live in the moment. Patti that night was in that moment. And the next morning, Lu, Sheriff Joe Bob, and his deputy Willy have their moments as well, whether it’s dealing with an election or getting a phone call that none of them are prepared for. Condon and Phillips allow their characters to live in the moment, to be part of it but also wrestle with it. And by allowing the characters these reflective moments in the comic, they allow us, the readers, to have those moments as well. When a call comes into the sheriff’s office, we know what it is; we don’t need to be told what someone found. We get to be part of these characters’ stories and experiences.
**That Texas Blood #14** immediately pulls us into the horror and then makes us sit with it, trying to digest what is happening in this Texas town.
---
**Aquaman: Andromeda #1** by Ram V & Christian Ward (Black Label/DC Comics)
### **[Escaping the Pressure of the World](https://twitter.com/fromcovtocov/status/1536351180984463361?s=21&t=y7Se1i3sF-l8rBwJtrJ3ag&ref=fromcovertocover.com)**
Aquaman is barely in this issue and that’s probably a good thing. The most we see of him is in a small, coastal Russian fishing town for a handful of pages out of this whole issue. We’re told that over the years he’s shown up in this village to help work on the boats and the nets. He never goes out to sea with the fishermen but stays on the land, working with his hands to make and mend things, “knowing that it’ll break and weather and fall apart, and he’ll have to do it all over again.” We’re told that part of him yearns for this “weightlessness.” For an Aquaman comic, Ram V and Christian Ward do so little with the character but say so much about him. It’s a simple statement but defines the character so succinctly in ways that so many others have failed to.
Even as we see Aquaman in this peaceful moment, Ram V and Ward make us experience the weight and pressure that he’s seeking refuge from in the rest of the issue. Ward transports the reader to a different world where you can feel the pressure of the ocean and the world pushing down on you. As something from space crashes into the deepest ocean depths, Ward’s artwork puts us in a different mindset as the blue hue over most pages puts us at the bottom of the ocean, with all of that pressure focused on a small group of soldiers, scientists, and explorers who may be in a possible first-contact scenario. Ward draws and colors each page to focus us on how isolated these characters are. This is a very remote comic as Ram V’s writing seeks connections in the very things and situations that are isolating all of these people from each other and from the larger world around them.
### This Week in Comics' Journalism-- June 11th, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-june-11th-2022/
Last updated: 2022-06-11T19:59:11.000Z
Let's just dive into the writing about comics that really jumped out this week.
---
First off, congrats to the [11 O'Clock Comics](https://11oclockcomics.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) podcast crew Vince, David, and Jason, and their [800th episode](https://11oclockcomics.com/2022/06/09/11-oclock-comics-episode-800/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) this week! I really don't know how they've done it for as long as they have. Their first episode was published on [May 2, 2008](https://11oclockcomics.com/2008/05/02/11-oclock-comics-episode-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) so for over 14 years, they've been providing great discussion and commentary on comics and everything happening around them. And now the march to 1,000 episodes begins.
---
Maybe it's with a Netflix show starting soon but I just started rereading Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, and Mike Dringenberg's Sandman recently. I've actually tried a number of times to reread it over the past couple of years and never made it that far into the series but I seem to be getting through it this time.
So I was happy to see I wasn't the only one checking out the series. For Multiversity, [Kate Kosturski is taking a look at the series](http://www.multiversitycomics.com/reviews/the-sandman-1-3/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), 3 issues at a time.
> A story this grand deserves an artist just as grand (if not more). Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg certainly rise to this occasion, using Baroque and Byzantine artistic influence on each page. I’m often reminded of the paintings of El Greco and Caravaggio as I look at the use of shadow as a tool to for adding emphasis. This isn’t a world bathed in complete darkness; color balances well with the shadow to set scene and tone. In dream moments when light and color overtake the shadow, the artificial application of the color does set those moments apart as dreams – – or as is more apt for these characters, grotesque nightmares.
---
On her Substack, Molly Ostertag has a very touching comic called "[a comic for my friend, Abe](https://ostertag.substack.com/p/a-comic-for-my-friend-abe?s=r)."
---
Over at Polygon, Ana Diaz reports on [Eiichiro Oda, the creator of the long-running manga ](https://www.polygon.com/23158245/one-piece-manga-final-arc-wano-viz-eiichiro-oda?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**[One Piece](https://www.polygon.com/23158245/one-piece-manga-final-arc-wano-viz-eiichiro-oda?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**[, taking a month-long break](https://www.polygon.com/23158245/one-piece-manga-final-arc-wano-viz-eiichiro-oda?ref=fromcovertocover.com) as he prepares for the series' 25th anniversary and the series "final saga."
> [Fans are debating](https://mobile.twitter.com/RainSpectre/status/1534045177580765184?ref=fromcovertocover.com) whether the announcement means the story only has one arc left, or if it simply means the story will come to a conclusion soon. Regardless, we’ve known for a while that Luffy’s story was finally coming to an end; in 2020, Oda said **One Piece*would [end in five years](https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2020/08/27-1/eiichiro-oda-claims-there-is-4-to-5-years-left-of-the-one-piece-manga?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
---
I'm going to say that this cover makes this book look fun.
But at the Manga Critic, [Kate Dacey doesn't have the highest regard for the ](http://mangacritic.mangabookshelf.com/2022/06/07/crazy-food-truck-vol-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**[Crazy Food Truck Volume 1](http://mangacritic.mangabookshelf.com/2022/06/07/crazy-food-truck-vol-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**.
> Perhaps the most serious problem with **Crazy Food Truck* is Rokurou Ogaki’s lack of vision. A story this outlandish needs bold, individual artwork that matches the intensity and silliness of its central conceit, but Ogaki opts for a blandly synthetic approach that borrows liberally from better series. Each character seems to have been created by a different person: some are grotesquely cartoonish—the better to emphasize their villainy—while others look like they’ve escaped from **Food Wars* or **Golden Kamuy.*
Ouch. "Lack of vision" is never good. At one point, I had this book pre-ordered but I'm glad I backed out of it and waited to see some reviews for it. Luckily, I have plenty of other manga to catch up on.
---
Kelly Sue DeConnick caught us up with the turbulent happenings in her life in the most recent [Milkfed Dispatches](https://milkfeddispatches.substack.com/p/finding-my-sunshine?s=r). Having gone through similar family events in the past couple of years, I completely understand where she's coming from and wish the best to her and her family.
But after she caught us up, she then stumped for Clayton Cowles, one of her primary letterers, and his Eisner nomination for Best Letterer. The piece is half praises for Cowles and another half of praise for lettering in general.
> Skilled lettering not only doesn’t distract, a skilled letter quietly strengthens the storytelling. Balloon placement guides the eye art details you might otherwise miss, for example. Overlapping balloons and a very slight font size adjustment make one character talk over another. Or a little bit of extra tail between two balloons adds a beat to the rhythm and lands a joke.
---
Sean Kleefeld is a great comics historian. His Kleefeld on Comics blog often provides fantastic and highly informative views of the rich history of the comics industry.
This week, he turned his eye towards the late Mike Parobeck, interestingly enough a cartoonist that he wasn't too familiar with because Parobeck had a short career during a time when Kleefeld wasn't able to pay too much attention to comics. Thinking about how he missed Parobeck's career, Kleefeld muses a bit on what else he has missed from the same period.
> What strikes me, then, is what else I might've missed from that same period. I mean, I've known for decades that there was comics history worth exploring from before I was born and I've studied a fair amount of that. And most of the gaps in my knowledge are ones I do know about -- I'm woefully ignorant of the underground comix movement, for example. But this period in the early '90s where I was active in comics, but somehow disengaged from the industry as a whole, seems to be another hole that I didn't even realize was there.
Seriously, if you haven't checked out Parobeck's work on **Batman Adventures**, go and find a copy of those comics now.
---
I really wish Alec Berry wrote about comics more often so I'm always thrilled to see his alec reads comics blog get updated. [This week, he skeptically picked up the latest #1 for **The Amazing Spider-Man**](https://alecreadscomics.com/2022/06/08/the-amazing-spider-man-1-2022/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). He opens the piece with the line "Zeb Wells always seemed like a fill-in writer, to me," which doesn't seem like there's much room to explore but Alec explores what he means and how Wells and John Romita Jr.'s latest take on Spider-Man exceeded his expectations.
> They, in no way, talk down to their reader or try to sell them something other than what’s happening when they turn the page. They allow their audience to see the story that’s right in front of them. The story that’s usually buried beneath the latest plot twist or big event, the marketing idea that sells more books. [**The Amazing Spider-man* #1 (2022)](https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/95737/the%5Famazing%5Fspider-man%5F2022%5F1?ref=fromcovertocover.com) shows Peter Parker as someone who is tired, and as someone who has maybe gone too far. His family is through with his superhero life. Too much has been lost to them because of it. So, Peter Parker is at a crossroads. He’s down on himself. He’s a loser. Selfish, too. And now, without his family to back him up, out of the picture yet on the periphery, it seems he’s about to be neck-deep in his life as a costumed hero. He’s throwing all of who he is into the role, self-destructive in the classical sense. And as this happens, Aunt May, Mary Jane Watson, and even Johnny Storm have to watch him navigate the maze, while they live their lives, too.
O.k. You got me, Alec. I may need to give this issue (and maybe the series) another shot.
---
O.k. So it's maybe not journalism but our friends at Fieldmouse Press (the people behind the [Solrad](https://solrad.co/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) site) have launched a fundraiser for their Spring/Summer season of books. Alex Hoffman writes [about the books here and the platform, Crowdfundr](https://solrad.co/weve-launched-our-spring-summer-season-and-we-need-your-help?ref=fromcovertocover.com), that they've chosen to use for this campaign.
> We’re excited to be working with ****[Crowdfundr](https://crowdfundr.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**, a new platform for crowdfunding creative work, that has been built by the folks at ConnectionPoint. We decided to work with Crowdfundr for a variety of reasons; they’ve built a platform that is better for creators than Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, they are a small business that has a long track record in nonprofit crowdfunding, and ****they’ve repeatedly stated that they will not adopt or allow the use of Web3 technologies like cryptocurrency, tokens, DAOs, or NFTs on the platform**. They’ve been hard at work to help optimize the platform with our feedback over the last two months, and now it’s time to make the magic happen.
[You can find out more about the campaign and support it here](https://crowdfundr.com/fieldmousepress.spring22?ref=ab%5F66okR1N4a9766okR1N4a97).
### Love in the Age of Cartoons- a look at Alec Robbins' Mr. Boop
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/mr-boop-by-alec-robbins/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T02:07:11.000Z
Alec Robbins really loves Betty Boop. That’s probably the most straightforward fact about Robbin’s **Mr. Boop**. From there, Robbins and his book just get… weird.
Here’s the premise of this book: Betty Boop is the cartoon character and Alec is married to her. Alec thinking “My wife Betty Boop is really hot,” is the first thing we see in this comic, cartoon hearts floating all around his and Betty’s head. He’s infatuated with his wife and she’s completely in love with him but it’s a weird love happening here. Any other two people and we would be worried about this deep codependency that both of them exhibit toward the other. Alec’s so scared that he’ll do something crazy like divorce her that he gives his divorce lawyer a gun to use on him if he ever wants a divorce her. “… if I ever come in here and tell you I want a divorce from my wife Betty Boop I need you to shoot me clear through the skull with this pistol” he instructed his divorce lawyer. He’s not getting a divorce but he already knows what lawyer he would hire if he ever did? But these must be the type of things you think of when you’re married to Betty Boop.
The first strip
Well, that and how can you sexually satisfy a cartoon character who happens to be your wife?
And the answer to that sticky dilemma is “Threesome.” Want more details? “Threesome with Bugs Bunny.”
Occasionally I write things that I can’t believe are strings of words that I have to use a keyboard to put together. “Threesome with Bugs Bunny” is up there on the list of those things. But all of the preceding text should give you an idea of what the book is or at least the starting point of the book.
So what does it mean that Alec is married to Betty Boop and engages in threesomes with Bugs Bunny? It’s a strange sense of humor that Robbins displays; it’s touching and disturbing all at the same time. The way he draws Alec, Betty, Bugs, and a host of other cartoon characters is crude, both in the depth of the drawing and in the subject matter. The somewhat ironic leer of Alec and Betty, when they’re thinking about the sex that they’re going to have, flaunts children’s characters as sexual objects. It’s not sexy but it’s sexual if that makes sense. Robbins takes these children’s characters and reframes their existence around adult things. What’s more taboo for children than sex?
So on the surface, this is a cartoonist playing around with subverting our expectations of these characters. Peter Griffin from *The Family Guy*, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mickey Mouse, and a whole mess of other characters show up to join Alec and Betty in their sexapades and that’s Robbins pushing to see what he can do and what he can get away with in these characters that are all icons in their own, different ways. They’ve gone from our TV screens and game screens where they have relatively innocuous adventures into these outrageous and unimaginable (at least for the characters) situations. It’s edgy and dangerous. Ooh, what would Walt Disney think of Mickey being part of a threesome, his dick hanging out for all to see? And if the comics remained operating on that level, they would be some juvenile fun, something to nudge-nudge, wink-wink at, and then move on to the next book on your to-read pile.
But Robbins is smarter than that. Maybe it started as a juvenile joke of “I’m married to Betty Boop” but his stories become about more than just the sex that Alec and Betty have. A disclaimer at the front of the book reads, “*No Lawyers Beyond This Point!!!!!! Disclaimer: This comic is based entirely on true events. Any resemblance to fictional cartoon characters is a complete coincidence. I really am married to a woman named ‘Betty Boop.’ If, for whatever reason, you refuse to believe that, let’s just say that this is all a big parody or satire or something. Okay? Thank you.*” That’s almost the usual boiler-plate stuff that appears in any work of fiction with one change. Instead of citing a resemblance to “fictional cartoon characters,” the fine print usually reads “any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead…” because, unlike those actual persons, there’s this thing called trademark and the idea of ownership over those cartoon characters that supposedly protects the owners’ rights to these characters.
Warner Brothers owns Bugs Bunny. Disney owns Mickey Mouse. Fleischer Studios owns Betty Boop, or at least the name “Betty Boop.” More importantly, Alec Robbins doesn’t own any of these characters.
After we see all of the love and sex between Alec and Betty (he even returns from near-death to be with her,) the third part of this book see’s Betty’s father Mr. Boop (wait, wasn’t that Alec?) return to Betty’s life, serving Alec with a Cease + Desist order for “illegally marrying our intellectual property.” He forces Alec and Betty to divorce because Alec doesn’t own her and this is where things start to get interesting and more sticky.
From the first four-panel strip, Robbins walks a fine line of how far he can take his joke. For half of this book, it’s a fun and mostly funny romp through Alec and Betty’s married life. Sonic the Hedgehog shoots Alec because Sonic isn’t invited to a threesome when everyone else is. It’s that kind of humor that you either chuckle at or don’t. But even then, there’s something exploring possession and ownership upfront. “***My*** wife Betty Boop is really hot.” It’s nothing out of the ordinary to refer to a spouse as “***my*** wife” but “my” is possessive. The book opens with a word signifying possession. And we don’t necessarily think about it when it’s an actual person. “My wife is really hot” signifies that it’s my wife and not your wife I’m talking about here.
But “My wife, ***Betty Boop***…” is a bit more of a loaded statement. Alec is saying it so he’s implying his possession but it’s of a cartoon character and those are usually trademarked by large corporations. But with that implied possession of the character, Robbins (and we’re probably mixing the cartoonist’s rights to the character here with the character Alec’s marriage to Betty (it’s all kind of messy)) is assuming some kind of ownership over the character on multiple levels that’s kind of dizzying to think about. And as the other characters walk in and out of the story, there’s not that kind of ownership over the characters. Robbins gives them some slight agency outside of these twisted relations; Bugs Bunny, and Peter Griffin hold down jobs at a Subway while Sonic tends a bar— it’s not much agency but it counts.
So the second half then becomes more of a mediation on the ownership of Betty as her father Mr. Boop enters the picture and wants to assert his control over her to capitalize on her popularity, using the wealth and power of a big corporation behind him to push the little man (Alec) around and force a divorce. It’s a forced breakup, the story of a strong unapproving father but also the story of corporate power and greed. It’s the way that Disney “protects” their characters. So when Mickey ponders the forced breakup of Alec and Betty, he concludes “Walt Disney really hates it when I, Mickey Mouse, participate in orgies.” Not the kind of thing you would ever hear from Mickey on Disney Plus.
The final portion of the book shows Alec trying to manifest his new girlfriend into becoming Betty Boop in a way where you start to question Robbins’ own involvement in this story and how autobiographical it may be. And that’s part of the magic of this final part, where you almost start to question how much of this was performative art and how much of it was Robbins mining his own experiences for this story. A large chunk of the book, while claiming to be real and autobiographical, is performance, Robbins putting on a show to shock and entertain his audience and himself. And that stuff feels like it’s either something you’ll laugh at or you won’t. There doesn’t feel like much room for a middle ground here.
But the last quarter of the book becomes reflective and probing of Robbins’ fascination with Betty Boop, all of these other characters, and even his own interactions with entertainment as the ending of the book owes a lot to *Neon Genesis Evangelion*, which comes at us almost out of the blue. The climax of **Mr. Boop** is both Alec and Robbins searching for a kind of peace to come out of everything that has led up to the ending. It’s a cathartic ending for all involved, including the reader who gets to say “goodbye” to Robbins’ almost epic tale of love, possession, and cartoon threesomes.
I’ve come away from this book believing that Alec Robbins really loves Betty Boop, as well as Bugs Bunny, Peter Griffin, Sonic, and maybe even Mickey Mouse. He loves the characters enough that **Mr. Boop** is his attempt to rescue them from their corporate overlords and reclaim their stories as his own story. It’s a type of fannish desire to be involved in the fate of these characters, both as characters and as properties. He (and we) want to protect them so what better way than trying to marry them and make them family? It sounds like a nice wish for these fictions that we Robbins also takes it through to the almost inevitable end of that fanboyish desire threatening to overtake every aspect of our lives. **Mr. Boop** is both a love letter but also a warning– love what you love but maybe know when to let go as well.
### From the Archives- Paul Moves Out (2005)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-paul-moves-out-2006/
Last updated: 2022-06-09T13:30:54.000Z
**Paul Moves Out** may be the first Michel Rabagliati book I wrote about, although I had seen his books before that. Rabagliati's lightly-fictionalized autobio comics have been some of the most personal and touching stories that I think I've ever read. If you don't know his work, definitely go out and grab something.
This review ran for one of the first sites that I wrote for– Mediasharx. I think back in those days, I would spend all Friday night hammering out 3 or 4 reviews. I really don't know how I did it. And looking at this, I feel like the perspective is really someone who was writing only about superhero books at the time and was trying to stretch his legs a bit.
This piece has been lightly edited from how it first ran.
---
Rabagliati's semi-confessional story is a wonderful slice of life story that you just can't get in any other storytelling format.
**Paul Moves Out** (graphic novel)
Published By: Drawn and Quarterly
Written and Drawn by: Michel Rabagliati
*What you should know:*
Paul attends art school in Montreal where he meets Lucie, a girl who can reference Krazy Kat, Tin Tin, and Asterix as well as the best of them. Rabagliati's latest graphic novel follows Paul as he meets his new love and moves in with her.
*What happened:*
Rabagliati's semi-confessional story is a wonderful slice of life story that you just can't get in any other storytelling format. Rabagliati takes advantage of comic's ability to easily make the reader identify with the characters and pull them in for a most unremarkable story. By "unremarkable," I don't mean "boring" or "bad" but "normal" and "everyday."
Paul's story is very normal and well adjusted. Rabagliati's PAUL stories (*PAUL IN THE COUNTRY* and *PAUL HAS A SUMMER JOB* being the previous two volumes) have been called "semi-autobiographical." I don't know what parts of **PAUL MOVES OUT** are real and what parts are embellished but Rabagliati draws a number of incidents and events in Paul's life leading up to Paul and Lucie just sitting on a talk and not having a discussion about having kids. Sound boring? It's not. It's just life and Rabagliati explores events and feelings most of us have at one time or another. We don't all fight evil megalomaniacs every other day but we all eventually move out on our own and fall in love.
The book is divided into a couple of smaller episodes. The first half is Paul meeting Lucie, getting to know her, and falling in love with her. After a trying day in art school, Lucie first notices Paul and compares Paul to Krazy Kat getting beaned in the head with a brick. Finding a girl in his art school who's also a fan of old comics ends up being a dream come true for Paul. From there, Rabagliati shows us Paul and Lucie meeting each other's parents and a trip to New York with an art school teacher, helping show us how Paul and Lucie grow closer. The rest of the book is about the couple in their new apartment learning how to be a couple. From lousy landlords and repairmen to nice neighbors to their first experience babysitting Lucie's nieces, these day-in-the-life slices build life experiences for Paul.
Comics provide a low-key medium for autobiography. It's tough to see **PAUL MOVES OUT** being the next comic book on the big screen. Even in smaller, independent movies, there's still a dramatic plot and storyline that's necessary for most distributors to see potential profit in the film. This graphic novel doesn't have that type of over-the-top story elements. Instead, it has a nice, quiet, and normal life.
### This Week in Comics Journalism-- June 5th, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-june-5th-2022/
Last updated: 2022-06-05T17:16:04.000Z
The Toronto Comics and Art Festival (TCAF) is only a week or so away, but this was a rough lead-up week. As they were announcing their Featured Guests for this year's show, they announced Pink Cat (Saba Moell) as one of the many guests. And then the backlash started against this NFT-supporting artist which opened the floodgate to accusations of tracing as well as harassing, racist, and transphobic posts to social media.
As we waited for a response from TCAF, Brendan Montgomery for Sequential took a [look at Pink Cat and the artistic and economic/environmental problems issues with her work](https://sequentialpulp.ca/2022/05/30/tcaf-announces-nft-artist-as-featured-guest-to-creators-dismay/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and what it could possibly mean for TCAF.
> *To keep TCAF an artist focused, safe and positive space, NFT artists should not be included and certainly not featured. If TCAF organizers were as strong supporters of artists as they always have been, then how can they justify featuring a vocal NFT supporter while NFTs damage the planet and artists?*
On Tuesday, the show announced that they [had rescinded their invitation to Pink Cat](https://www.torontocomics.com/post/tcaf-statement-re-pink-cat?ref=fromcovertocover.com), citing issues with her behavior online as well as her artistic theft, but not the NFTs, which while the initial issue raised against her attendance was not the most egregious for a comics and art festival (but still bad.)
> TCAF initially extended a programming invitation to Moeel on the basis of their daily digital comics work on Instagram, and the personal importance that work had to one of our team members. At the time of this invitation, the organization was unaware of Moeel’s online conduct, plagiarism, or allegations of tracing. We apologize for programming and promoting this artist.
[Montgomery followed up with TCAF ](https://sequentialpulp.ca/2022/05/31/tcaf-rescinds-invitation-to-pink-cat/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)after their announcement, asking for clarification about their position on NFTs, receiving this reply from their board of directors:
> *TCAF’s response to this issue was slower than twitter would have liked in part because of the adoption of less hierarchical and more consensus based decision making, but also because NFTs were not part of any of our policy documents or discussions. While I would have hoped this technology would have died the death it seems to deserve before that became necessary, it looks like we will have to come up with a policy on these too. I am not about to hazard a timeline for that but I hope everyone is realistic enough to know it isn’t happening before this year’s festival.*
---
So how many comic-related events did you go to in 2020 and 2021? Do you have any plans for 2022? For Publisher's Weekly, [Heidi MacDonald takes a look at the current state of Comic Festivals](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/89474-the-return-of-some-comics-festivals.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) as well as a look at the market those kinds of smaller, more comic-focused shows support.
> Comic Arts Festivals are traditionally the place to launch new cartoonists and books, and publishers told *PW* this was the biggest loss of not having in-person shows. “Some great authors and great graphic novels didn't get the chance to get in front of readers the way they should have,” said Leigh Walton, marketing director at Top Shelf, an indie-style imprint of IDW Publishing. “But at the same time, pandemic book sales in general have really surged—if book launches have been more challenging, established names and the backlist seem to have benefited as people took the opportunity to dive into their ‘I've been meaning to get that’ lists.”
---
And in the final bit this week about comic festivals, Chicago's own CAKE in-person show [remains on hiatus this year](https://www.cakechicago.com/blog/cake2022postponed?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (hopefully next year!) but has kicked off their CAKEPOPS video series, featuring M.S. Harkness talking about comics and community.
---
Paul Gravett, comics' own man a the crossroads, takes a look at[ the comics, graphic novels, and manga coming out in August 2022](http://paulgravett.com/articles/article/top%5F22%5Fgraphic%5Fnovels%5Fcomics%5Fmanga21?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
August looks to be a great month, highlighted by:
- Adventuregame Comics by Jason Chiga
- Ducks by Kate Beaton
- Poe Clan Vol. 2 by Mato Hagio
- Ranx: The Complete Collection by Stefano Tamburini & Tanino Liberatore
And before we even get to August, Sean Cohea spotlights July as [Hayden Sherman month](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/06/this-looks-cool-hayden-sherman-is.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for Panel Patter, noting that the artist has 3 books coming out that month.
> It turns out that July is going to be quite the month for the Panel Patter favorite, and comics’ dearly beloved rising superstar, Hayden Sherman. Not only do they have an original series debuting in the month of July with one of the industry’s biggest names, but they also have two additional creator-owned series debuting with a couple other well-established indie writers.
---
Over at the French site (use your browser's built-in translator) Ligne Claire, they have two pieces about artist Christophe Chabouté.
First up, if you're traveling to Boulogne this summer, is[ a look at an exhibition of his work at the Galerie Glénat](https://www.ligneclaire.info/christophe-chaboute-glenat-262884.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com#lightbox-image-0/0/), running from June 2nd to August 27.
Accompanying that article is [a retrospective article about his work](https://www.ligneclaire.info/christophe-chaboute-2022-262910.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com):
> He has not talent but all the talents. Christophe Chabouté has a rare designer palette, an overflowing imagination, an imposing pencil stroke, shades of rare pictorial force. As a bonus, he has ideas, implements them and seduces, brings emotion to them. This is why, while he is exhibiting himself at Galerie Glénat in Boulogne in the summer of 2022, we went back, took out the archives, found Landru long before Moby Dick, or A few summer days before the impressive Yellow cab. From Chabouté in the text, those published in Midi Libre at the time.
(translation via Apple's Safari.)
Chabouté's work has been translated and published in English over the last couple of years and I would think a similar show here (yes, I can dream,) would be a popular show.
Or really, any kind of nice gallery show for a comic artist.
---
Following up on last week's news about Seven Seas employees attempting to unionize and that union not being voluntarily recognized by the company, Calvin Reid follows up on this piece with news that [Seven Seas is calling for a union election](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/89470-seven-seas-calls-for-union-election.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> In a statement emailed to *PW*, [Seven Seas Entertainment](https://sevenseasentertainment.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) said, “We have notified the NLRB that we are prepared to move forward with an election among an appropriate unit of employees, and we will, of course, abide by the outcome of the election.”
---
A sneak peek at the new Popeye artist Randy Milholland, via The Washington Post
There's a new artist drawing the Popeye comic strip.
Did you even know that there was a current Popeye comic strip?
For The Washington Post, Michael Cavna covers [the announcement that the weekly Sunday strip will be taken over by Randy Milholland](https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/06/03/popeye-strip-randy-milholland/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> The cartoonist is attracted to the fact that Popeye — despite the trusty “strong to the finich” strength he derives from eating spinach —is forever “punching up,” taking on large and menacing foes such as Bluto. Popeye is fallible but has long lived by his own moral code — a consistent trait that dates back to Segar’s creation.
---
And finally, Newsarama publishes an interesting piece by Jim McLauchlin about [how comic books have become more of a writer's medium](https://www.gamesradar.com/why-comic-books-became-a-more-of-a-writers-and-less-of-an-artists-medium/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and less of an artist's medium, exploring shifts in comic companies that go back decades to figure out how we've ended up where we currently are. He covers some well-worn ground in this piece but raises some fascinating possibilities that are hard to figure out if they're just a symptom or if they're a full diagnosis of this issue.
Here's a great quote from Howard Chaykin in McLauchlin's piece but the emphasis here is mine:
> "... since comics have evolved more into an ancillary product of IP, the powers that be—the management class, the movie-and-TV people—cannot identify what writing is in comics. They perceive the writer's job as writing, and the artist's job as illustrators. But comic book artists are—or at least should be—graphic designers in the service of narrative, pictures of narrative value, which means ‘story value.' **The way an artist sets up a picture is the writing of the book.** The writer provides a template. And certainly in this delusional Marvel-style thing where a writer says, ‘Give me a fight for five pages,' who's the writer on that? And since comic book fight scenes are external reflections of inner trauma, they are the equivalent of dance numbers or aria in ballet, opera, and musical theater, and choreography is storytelling. You see my point."
"The way an artist sets up a picture is the writing of the book." This reminds me of the [#artcred debate](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ArtCred?src=hashtag%5Fclick&ref=fromcovertocover.com) that Declan Shalvey tried to have on Twitter a couple of years ago. But this is a conversation that we need to continue to have in comic circles, to truly understand what comics are as a synthesis of different art forms.
### From The Archives- Jonah Hex #50 (December 2009)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-jonah-hex-50/
Last updated: 2022-06-02T13:30:42.000Z
The Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti Jonah Hex series remains one of the great series of the 21st century. They landed on a great format for the character, telling largely done-in-one stories that as a reader, you were able to get into and get a really meaty piece of storytelling. And they worked with some great artists on that series, from J.H. Williams III to Jordi Bernet. But for the handful of issues that the Gray/Palmiotti writing duo teamed up with the late Darwyn Cooke, that team produced some magic. Here's a look back at Jonah Hex #50, published by DC Comics at the end of 2009\.
Looking at the format of it, it was probably written for my old website, Wednesday's Haul, and has been lightly edited from how it first ran.
---
The last time Darwyn Cooke drew a Jonah Hex story, Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti wrote a story about fathers and sons and how one boy wished that Jonah Hex was his father. Set in the snowy woods of Canada, *Jonah Hex #33* told the story of how Hex filled a void in a boy's life after the boy's father had been killed. During the course of that story, Hex had a brief moment where he could have taken the boy in and raised him as his own son but, instead, he left the boy behind to fend for himself against an ugly and cruel world. There was never a moment of doubt or hesitation as Jonah Hex turned his back on the boy and walked out of his life. He didn't care about this boy who had quickly grown to idolize Hex and who wanted Hex to be his fatherly substitute. The boy's life held no value to Jonah Hex. In **Jonah Hex #50**, Hex has to face a similar situation again when another child is caught up in the chaos that is Jonah Hex.
**Jonah Hex #50** opens up very cinematically. You can hear the triumphant, rollicking music as Jonah Hex and Tallulah Black, Hex's occasional partner and lover, trap and gun down a criminal gang in a ravine. Gray, Palmiotti, and Cooke create a very classical scene to open the book. This is practically the end of another unseen story, as Hex and Black deliver the corpses to the local sheriff, collect their bounty and go off to celebrate their victory. You could fade to black here and have a nice little short story. But it's only the beginning for Gray and Palmiotti. That's where their story begins. Hex wakes up the next morning, alone and naked in a bar to be told that Tallulah rode off on her own in the middle of the night. He laughs it off even as he wanders out into the street to put his clothes on. She goes off to find a new life and he ends up hunting 50 criminals for the bounties on their heads. Hex's bounties crime? Killing the son of a very rich man.
During the course of this story, both Hex and Tallulah have to face the idea of who they are and who they want to be. The ugly truth is that neither of them is a particularly good person and maybe neither deserves to have anything resembling a good or normal life. For half of the issue, Tallulah abandons her traditional black clothes and tries to change herself by wearing a white dress. "I'm just running' till I can't see my past 'round every corner," she tells the local sheriff.
Hex never gets to be as poetic about his struggles as Tallulah does. More a man of action, Gray and Palmiotti let Cooke show Hex's struggle and sorrow. In this issue, Hex experiences everything from the joy of a successful bounty to the sorrow of losing Tallulah as a friend and as a lover. Her actions in this story put Hex in a position where he's never given a choice like he was in issue #33, a decision to be a father or to remain the cold bastard that he is. Hex remains a force of nature in this issue, moving through the west and leaving a body count behind him. Maybe Hex wants to change, maybe he doesn't. But he's never given the opportunity to choose who or what he wants to be. He's a killer, and as fate will have it, that's all he's going to remain.
During most of this issue, Hex is on the hunt for the killers of children; the killers of sons and daughters. It starts out as just business at first, as Hex almost seems to be playing with his prey. There's a great two-page montages where Cooke draws Hex dragging a priest out of his church, shooting his bounties inside a saloon, and even waiting outside of an outhouse for his bounty to finish up his own business. It's funny and it's easy for Hex. By the end of the issue, maybe when Hex understands a bit more about how these men killed someone's son, he's quick, merciless, and brutal. He doesn't hunt them one by one, playing cat and mouse with them. He sits with his gun, waiting to kill them all at once. He kills them with a pain that may be only a father could understand.
Jonah Hex #50
"The Great Silence"
Written by: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti
Drawn by: Darwyn Cooke
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Rob Leigh
### This Week in Comics Journalism- May 28th, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-may-28th-2022/
Last updated: 2022-05-30T19:13:20.000Z
It feels like another week, another shooting, and nothing is changing in the land. I don't know what it's like where you are but here in the greater Chicagoland area, we wake up each morning to news of a shooting somewhere in the city. And I know that clowns like the Texas governor like to use Chicago as an example of "gun control doesn't work" but [an estimated 60% of the guns confiscated in Chicago come from out of state, including from Texas](https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article261831775.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com). An interesting fact is that there are no gun shops in Chicago and we still have a problem. But largely, those guns are coming from neighboring states that have more lax laws.
We're still dealing with a health pandemic but for even longer than that, we've been dealing with a gun safety epidemic in this country that is widespread and has repeatedly attacked the most innocent.
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd%5FxlJTPar3/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Kieron Dwyer (@kierondwyer)](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd%5FxlJTPar3/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
Primary elections are happening right now, with national elections taking place in November. If the safety of our children is truly something that you care about, make sure that you know what the policies of your candidates are and vote accordingly. The only way we're going to get some true gun control in this country is if there are more of us than there are them.
As John Oliver would say, "and now this..."
---
Calvin Reid covers [the Seven Seas Staff's efforts to form a union](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/comics/article/89415-seven-seas-staff-launches-effort-to-form-union.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for Publishers' Weekly:
> The [UW7S released a 16 point list of goals](http://uw7s.squarespace.com/uw7s?ref=fromcovertocover.com#goals) to improve working conditions. Among their demands are healthcare, paid leave, and pension benefits, as well as paid time off and vacations (“employees are expected to be available in the virtual office at all times”), and reasonable workloads (“many employees are overloaded or burnt out due to high workloads”). The union is also seeking protections and benefits for freelancers (“across the board increases to pay, kill fees, and revision fees for freelancers”), and anti-harassment policies and grievance procedure (“staff should never be required to work on materials that make them uncomfortable.”)
> The UW7S statement concluded: “We're eager to produce the best products we can, and the best way to do that is with a living wage, proper hardware and software, and a well-organized digital office. As a union, we seek to negotiate better working conditions for both Seven Seas employees and the many freelancers who make what we do possible.”
Seven Seas started publishing manga in 2004 and [claims to be the #1 independent manga publisher in the English language marketplace](https://sevenseasentertainment.com/about/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). GoManga is the parent company of Seven Seas.In his [Comics FYI ](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/ComicsFYI/issues/our-flag-means-union-1188378?ref=fromcovertocover.com)newsletter, Graeme McMillan reached out to United Workers of Seven Seas to find more information about their efforts to unionize.
> Benefits have been “imminent” for more than three years now, with some new hires being told benefits are on the way and others told not to expect any sort of insurance or retirement coverage. By negotiating benefits through collective bargaining, United Workers of Seven Seas will be able to ensure they are implemented within a defined timeframe. Although United Workers of Seven Seas is a US-based union and there are legal obstacles to what we can achieve for our freelancers and our staff outside the United States, we will advocate as much as we can on their behalf as well.
On Thursday night, United Workers of Seven Seas posted on their [Twitter page](https://twitter.com/%5FUW7S?ref=fromcovertocover.com) that the company will not voluntarily recognize the union.
> Seven Seas Entertainment ([@gomanga](https://twitter.com/gomanga?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) has informed us that it will not voluntarily recognize United Workers of Seven Seas.
>
> — United Workers of Seven Seas (@\_UW7S) [May 26, 2022](https://twitter.com/%5FUW7S/status/1529963495009030144?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
---
Speaking of Graeme McMillan, I find this [Best DC Comic Stories of All Time](https://www.thepopverse.com/dc-comics-stories-best?ref=fromcovertocover.com) list he's done for Popverse interesting. As a regular listener of his Wait, What? podcast, this list feels very Graeme-ish because after his number 10 (Action Comics #1,) the rest of the stories feels very much like stories about other stories. I'm not arguing with any of the picks, mind you, but it's just I wonder how much this says about the writer as opposed to the comics themselves?
(O.k. I'd argue against The Return of Barry Allen and maybe slide in The Great Darkness Saga or the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter into that slot instead.)
---
Maybe it's still a bit old-fashioned but a new issue of [The Comics Journal](https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/new-this-month/products/the-comics-journal-308?ref=fromcovertocover.com) is out this week. Since its return a couple of years ago, I've really appreciated the approach to it, focusing on a topic and then really exploring it. I just got my copy so haven't had a chance to dig into it too much yet but I'm looking forward to checking out this new issue focused on community organizing and activism.
---
From the physical edition to the online edition, [The Comics Journal ran a great interview with Rachel Pollack](https://www.tcj.com/one-of-the-things-they-definitely-are-is-queer-an-interview-with-rachel-pollack/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), conducted by Alex Dueben. Looking back at her main time in comics, there was a lot of unfair disregard for her Doom Patrol run, which followed Grant Morrison's. But I see that all of the Vertigo Doom Patrol is up on DC Universe so I think I know what I'll be checking out this summer.
> ****I said before that your entire run was ahead of its time. Admittedly I’m not the only one who has said that.**
> I got that. As you know, I enjoyed doing it and I thought it was good stuff but then it was gone and I’ve moved on. And then I was invited to a transgender literary conference and to be a keynote speaker – which was great. When I got there, it turned out I was a hero. Because of **Doom Patrol*. There was a whole generation of young transgender and queer cartoonists who saw that storyline and Kate as this great inspiration. That was a wonderful experience discovering this. I’m sort of glad I didn’t know it was happening. I’m glad I was surprised by this. It was nice.
---
The [2022 Eisner nominations](https://www.comic-con.org/awards/eisner-awards-current-info?ref=fromcovertocover.com#2022%20NOMINEES%20WHOLE%20LIST) were announced a couple of weeks ago and Panel Patter palls [Rob McMonigal and James Kaplan took a look at some of the categories and nominees](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/05/panel-patter-roundtable-some-thoughts.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> ****Best Writer/Artist:** I'll make up for my Ito snub by saying that he is one of the greatest horror writer/artists of all time, possibly **the* best, and therefore deserves this award. But this is Barry Windsor-Smith's award to lose, let's be honest. And I'll just have to sit in the minority of people who just doesn't get the appeal of that creator. It's okay, I know I'm wrong, I just...nothing he's ever done has made me want to go back and linger over the art. It's a personal quirk thing and I own it.
Oh, Rob, you had me with the bit about 1984 and those kinds of literary adaptations but you lost me with BWS. But at least you know you're wrong. So, so wrong.
---
One thing of many that I've never figured out how to do was to write about anthologies so I'm going to be paying attention to[ a new series of reviews that Rob Clough is starting at Solrad looking at Fantagraphics NOW](https://solrad.co/the-vanguard-returns-rob-clough-on-now-1-from-fantagraphics-books?ref=fromcovertocover.com) series. He kicks off this weekly series with issue #1, a logical place to start.
> In many respects, the first forty pages of the anthology seem to have been sequenced by Reynolds in a deliberate manner. They are a sort of celebration and investigation of movement and gesture: the foundations of cartooning. Sara Corbett’s full-color, densely-hatched one-pager about an old woman following her cat into a park is titled “Constitutional.” It’s a pleasant, restorative walk, shaking off the rust, just as this story is for both this issue and the anthology in general. Experimental cartoonist Tobias Schalken (of **Eiland* anthology fame) follows with “21 Positions,” featuring a formally-dressed couple engaging and intertwined in complex dance moves, some of which double as sex positions. Schalken followed that with “The Final Frontier,” which inverts the first strip by having a couple engage in explicitly sexual acts–only they are doing them in parallel without actually touching. It highlights the objective hilarity of making out while completely honoring the ardor and affection of the couple. It’s fitting that the strip after this is Davis’ “Hurt or Fuck?”, which also addresses issues related to intimacy.
### Welcome to the Party in Julie Doucet's Time Zone J
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/time-zone-j-by-julie-doucet/
Last updated: 2022-05-26T13:00:05.000Z
There’s a version of Julie Doucet’s **Time Zone J** that I hope we see one day. That version is freed from the book format and just a scrolling visual narrative with almost none of the traditional languages or structures of what we think comics should be. Clocking in at 144 pages (according to the D&Q website,) this book is one long image, each page an almost arbitrary unit of narrative where each image and mark on the page bleeds into the next page and its images. There are no panels, no borders, and no gutters to give the reader a feeling of involvement or control of the story. There are just Doucet’s images, mostly her face over and over again, and other faces looking out towards the reader; a sea of faces as Doucet tells us a story about a brief but impactful relationship that happened over 30 years ago.
The “story,” as much as there is one, is about a relationship that Doucet was involved in back in 1989, corresponding to a French fan of hers and her comic *Dirty Plotte*. Eventually, they met in Paris and had a relationship for the brief time that she was there. She tells the reader about the fear, the excitement, the uncertainty, and even the need for that relationship. Strangely for a comic, it’s a story that we experience only through words and no images relative to that story. We just see Doucet telling us the story. She opens the book noting that she had promised herself that she would never draw herself again. Right there on the first page, she states her hesitation about beginning the act of creating this book.
The book begins with being more about the act of creation and the nervousness of opening herself up to an audience again as she used to do in her old comics. Doucet’s entrance into this comic feels almost reckless, starting the story with doubt about what she’s doing. But even before that, the book opens with a strange set of directions: “*This book was drawn from bottom to top. Please read accordingly*.” So as a reader, you already enter Doucet’s space on a different ground than you normally do with comics. “Top to bottom,” what does that even mean? Flip the page and you’re greeted by a collage of faces, all of them Doucet’s, fretting and procrastinating to avoid making any kind of true progress.
If Doucet is uncertain about drawing a comic again, her composition makes us uncertain about reading her comic, not because it is poorly told but because it is constructed to throw us off balance. Her time away from comics has given her the freedom to just jump back into their creation, rewriting the rules about how she’s going to tell her story. Each page is a sea of faces, Doucet’s and others, that exist outside of the story she’s relating to her audience. Doucet is telling us a story about an old and brief relationship but the other images of this book are a sea of humanity whose only connection to the story is their connection to the space that they are drawn in.
It almost seems like the art and the words are at odds with each other. We’re used to comics where the two work hand in hand, supporting each other and occasionally going to the extreme point that it produces redundant storytelling. You know the type, where the caption or the dialogue just describes what’s happening in the panel. It’s like the artist and the writer don’t trust the other or the reader enough to follow what’s happening.
On the surface of it, Doucet’s words and images have no relationship with each other, existing both in their own narrative spaces and never mixing. And then throw in the fact that you have to read from the bottom of the page to the top and the book is practically daring you to just give up. The humanity of **Time Zone J** is displayed on every page; you just need to not look past it. The faces in Doucet’s pages are both a background for the story of this love affair while also the story itself. In the images and pages, Doucet shows all of these faces and impressions that cover a wide breadth of humanity, showing how her story is just one small story in the whole world; all of these other faces and people have their own stories that we can only imagine what they are. Her’s is only one of the many stories that could be told in this comic.
Imagine that you’re at a crowded party, stuffed shoulder to shoulder and face to face in a room with all of these different people. Each fascinating face is a possible connection waiting to be made and you’re in that mental space where you’re looking for an opportunity to meet a new and exciting person but you just don’t know where to start. You’re searching for a focal point among all of the sights and sounds that you maybe miss some small details– what’s with all of these birds that just randomly pop up and what’s up with the dolphin that just pops up out of nowhere and then quickly disappears back into the crowd?
But there’s that one voice that you hear over the others and that face that you just can’t escape. Maybe she’s talking to you or maybe she’s talking to someone else at the party and you can’t help but eavesdrop on the private conversation as she tells of youthful indiscretions and choices that she wishes she would have made differently. There are all of these colorful, vibrant, and different people around you but this one woman’s voice and story silence everyone else.
That’s what’s reading Julie Doucet’s **Time Zone J** is like and it is such a different experience from almost every other comic. Doucet pulls you into this story through the intimacy of the space she creates. Everywhere you turn in this book, Doucet is quite literally there to tell you her story. She traps you in her story and that turns out to be exactly where you want to be, around this captivating person as you try to figure out why she’s so fascinating to you.
### This Week in Comics Journalism- May 21st, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-may-21st-2022/
Last updated: 2022-05-21T13:00:12.000Z
It's been a while since we've done one of these. We'll try to do better in the future, we promise. But instead of wallowing in the general time suck that is life, let's just jump into a few of the things that have caught our eyes this week, including more attempted book banning, revisiting some old comics, the launch of a new pop culture site that may actually understand comic books, and some really good reviews from the last week.
---
Art by Maia Kobabe
Maia Kobabe's 2019 book **Gender Queer** was a very revealing book for me. Through Kobabe's cartooning, I was able to experience eir journey in identifying emselves as non-binary. It was one of my favorite books of the year but since then, it's been [among one of the topped banned books in school libraries](http://cbldf.org/2022/04/gender-queer-tops-most-challenged-book-list-of-2021/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
It's stunning that now that on top of banning it from school libraries, Virginia State Delegate and lawyer Tim Anderson is now pursuing a restraining order against Barnes & Noble to prevent them from selling the book to minors and against Virginia Beach schools to prevent them from loaning the book out. He's filing for this restraining order on behalf of Tommy Altman, a candidate for a US Senate seat in Virgina.
At Book Riot, [Kelly Jensen covers this story and writes](https://bookriot.com/barnes-noble-being-sued-in-virginia-beach-over-gender-queer-court-of-mist-and-fury/?ref=fromcovertocover.com):
> Virginia has been a hotbed of book challenges in the last year, thanks in part to the [rhetoric and campaigning against books](https://bookriot.com/the-new-satanic-panic/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and “critical race theory” by governor Glenn Youngkin. The governor, as well as Altman, are Trump supporters, and Anderson’s announcement is more than tacit approval of Altman’s run for Congress. Anderson has made books a big part of his [social media strategy](https://twitter.com/AssocAnderson/status/1526635803832623105/photo/1?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and has riled up his base through it.
> Though this lawsuit includes only two books, Manning, same school board member who triggered the removal of *Gender Queer,* has her sights on [*Saga* by Brian Vaughan](https://s2982.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/va-beach.jpg.webp?ref=fromcovertocover.com) next. She has been at the forefront of book challenges in Virginia Beach since the school year began, challenging *The Bluest Eye* [for being “too racy,”](https://www.thedailybeast.com/virginia-school-board-wokeness-checker-wants-toni-morrison-banned-for-porn?ref=fromcovertocover.com)despite never reading the book.
And just in case you haven't read it yet, [you can still go to BarnesandNoble.com and pick up a copy of Maia Kobabe's **Gender Queer**.](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gender-queer-maia-kobabe/1129752894?ean=9781549304002&ref=fromcovertocover.com) Get it while you still can.
---
Art by Sean Phillips and Jacob Phillips
This is from a few weeks back but [Jim Ruland](https://twitter.com/JimVermin?ref=fromcovertocover.com) checks into the LA Times with[ an excellent profile on Ed Brubaker and his and Sean Phillips’ Reckless series](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-05-12/how-the-pandemic-pushed-a-comics-legend-to-reinvent-pulp-fiction-and-1980s-l-a?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> The *Reckless* books are the kind of contemporary take on genre storytelling that only Brubaker, an influential comics creator with a deep grounding in pulp, could dream up. “Reckless is a successor to paperback heroes that gives me a chance to mine all my forgotten ’80s L.A. memories,” he said. Writing it allowed Brubaker to “escape to the past when Reagan was president and we thought the world was ending — as opposed to now when it actually feels like it might.”
[I’ve had mixed feelings about the Reckless series](https://www.gamesradar.com/reckless-review-ed-brubaker-sean-phillips/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), but I may compare everything this duo does to Criminal or even back to Sleeper and I just don’t know if anything can measure up to those two series. But the last book **The Ghost In You** was excellent and was just a great story. It has me wanting to go back and reevaluate the whole thing now.
---
Art by Tony Harris and Gregory Wright
Over at [Atomic Junk Shop](https://atomicjunkshop.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Greg Burgas (one of the great chroniclers of comics) has reprinted two pieces that he wrote a few years ago for CBG’s Comics Should Be Good blog, looking at James Robinson, Tony Harris, and a slew of other great artists’ **Starman**, one of the best mainstream superhero series of the 1990s.is
First up is his 2015 argument that [Starman is a comic you should own](https://atomicjunkshop.com/comics-you-should-own-starman/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), a statement that I wholeheartedly endorse.
> In *Starman*, Robinson synthesized a coherent and unified history out of many discrete comics, all of which were united – before Robinson – solely by the name of the character. He managed to do this and present a superb story of the latest Starman – Jack Knight – as he grew into a hero. Starman is not only about a historical legacy, it’s about fathers and sons, and these two themes are dominant over the course of the series, even when the “son” is a daughter, as is the case with the Mist. In this way, it’s almost a perfect “DC” comic, especially from the 1990s. Marvel, with its continual “present,” couldn’t have published a series like this, and its more recent attempts to do this kind of historical storytelling always feel a bit off. But *Starman* fits perfectly into the DC Universe, and Robinson’s skill made it work even better in this rich historical milieu.
And then to accompany this piece, [he also republishes a timeline of all of the events in Robinson’s stories](https://atomicjunkshop.com/your-starman-timeline/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). For someone who’s been a huge fan of it since **Starman #0**, this was a great reminder of the series and a kick in the butt to dig it out and read it again sometime this summer.
---
[Chris Arrant welcomes you to the **Popverse**](https://www.thepopverse.com/popverse-welcome-launch?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Reedpop's rebranded pop-culture site. Leveraging their dominance right now of the comic convention space, Reedpop has tagged Chris and a who's who of comic/pop culture journalism to really dive into this stuff from a fan's perspective.
> Enjoy unrivaled comics and pop culture coverage with Popverse, a modern entertainment brand from ReedPop – the people behind vibrant live events such as [New York Comic Con](https://www.newyorkcomiccon.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), [Star Wars Celebration](https://www.starwarscelebration.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), [C2E2](https://www.c2e2.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), and [PAX](https://www.paxsite.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Popverse focuses on the delectable media franchises people come to conventions for, with breaking news, expert commentary, and engrossing conversations with the people behind the things we all love.
> Popverse is your tour guide through the wilderness of pop culture, uncovering new details about your favorite creator or franchise, and introducing you to your next favorite creator or franchise.
For some reason, I'm not too sure about how I feel about their membership options even though there are plenty of smaller sites that I'm more than happy to support though a membership but looking at what they have up in just the first week, there's a lot about this new site to really like.
Tiffany Bab has not [one](https://www.thepopverse.com/lucy-knisley-apple-crush-interview?ref=fromcovertocover.com) but [two](https://www.thepopverse.com/lucy-knisley-comic-books-graphic-novels?ref=fromcovertocover.com) pieces this week up about Lucy Knisely. That alone is enough to seriously consider plunking down some money and those two pieces are FREE!!!!!
---
Not too long ago, I was sitting around and thinking to myself how I miss the old Jeffrey Brown comics. His current stuff is great but I miss the old alt biography stuff he used to do. Well, over at Comic Bookcase [Zack Quaintance has an interview up with Brown](https://www.comicsbookcase.com/updates/jeffrey-brown-loved-and-lost?ref=fromcovertocover.com) to help promote his upcoming **Loved and Lost**, a new collection of his that includes **Clumsy**, **Unlikely**, and **An Easy Intimacy**.
> **Brown**: *It is such a different world. The very very first version of* ****Clumsy** *was just Xeroxed. I just sold it at a few shops around Chicago, and the feedback was someone finding the book at the store Quimby’s and getting my information from Quimby’s to get in touch. Now, everything is so instantaneous and it’s so easy to connect with people through email or social media. There’s a difference of just how the work entered the world and the accessibility to it. It used to be all the really weird, obscure things were truly you would just find them hiding in the back corner of some strange comic book shop. Now, it’s much more accessible. Doing such deeply personal work, it’s hard for me to say how I would have approached that if it was entering the world the way webcomics enter the world now, posted regularly with feedback that’s instantaneous.*
---
And finally, here are some great reviews for you to check out:
Leonard Pierce digs into Noah Van Sciver's **[The Complete Works of Fante Bukowski](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/the-complete-works-of-fante-bukowski/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** at TCJ**: "**Fante Bukowski isn’t worth following through all his encounters with friends and rivals, family and foes, fleeting success and constant failure, because he’s unique; it’s just the opposite. He’s **omnipresent*."
Also at TCJ, Rob Kirby covers Jessica Campbell's **[Rave](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/rave/?utm%5Fsource=feedly&utm%5Fmedium=rss&utm%5Fcampaign=rave)**: "Campbell’s deadpan observations of teenage shenanigans strengthen the narrative throughout, and she accurately captures the random banalities and cruelties of high school life."
Rob Clough also offers some perspective on Campbell's **[Rave](http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2022/05/cool-jesus-jessica-campbells-rave.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** at High-Low: "Campbell's attention to detail with regard to the church in this story is almost painful to read; it's the sort of thing that only an insider could have explained."
At Shelfdust, Matthew Cowans takes a personal look at Jeph Loeb and Tim Sales' **[Superman: For All Season's #3](https://shelfdust.com/2022/05/16/when-steel-fails-superman-for-all-seasons-3/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**, a bit of an underappreciated series from almost 24 years ago: "The second lesson I took from this issue is that homesickness and the yearning for something familiar are both normal parts of life."
Edward Haynes covers a book that I've been patiently waiting for, Dave Chisholm's **[Enter the Blue](https://solrad.co/get-in-the-zone-ed-haynes-reviews-enter-the-blue-by-dave-chisholm?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** for Solrad: "Chisholm creates a strong rhythm within his pages and an effective melody with some interesting moments, though a little stayed and lacking in anything particularly innovative."
### I Don’t Think I Can Ever Eat A Pierogi Again- thoughts on Nate Garcia’s Muscle Horse
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/muscle-horse-by-nate-garcia/
Last updated: 2022-05-03T14:59:59.000Z
I can already feel you asking, “What is ‘**Muscle Horse**’?” and the honest answer is “I don’t know.” Nate Garcia’s cowboy comic features the return of Alanzo Sneak and his horse Sheena. Last we saw Alanzo and Sheena in the self-titled *Alanzo Sneak* (June 2021,) they had just narrowly escaped some meat hunters who were trying to turn Sheena into burgers. With Alanzo down for the count due to being bitten by a venomous snake, Sheena reacted just the opposite to a similar venomous bite, swelling up with muscles and biting the face off of one of the meat hunters. Picking up from there, **Muscle Horse** follows up on the duo’s adventures as an old friend Huff Deely catches up with them at Big Mama’s saloon. And Sheena has gone through a few upgrades to protect herself in the future even though she’s the one who saved the day in their previous appearance.
In this new comic, Sheena has a gun installed in her throat that comes out through her mouth when needed and that feels like one of the more reasonable plot points in this whole thing. There’s a child-like spirit present on every page, a playfulness with the genre and the plot of this comic. Alanzo Sneak looks like a not-too-distant cousin of Woody from the *Toy Story* films, minus the vest, the sheriff’s badge, and the pull spring that activates his voice box. And Woody would not be prepared for anything that happens to Alanzo, particularly a strange encounter with a guy who has a unique relationship with pierogies. But more on that later.
Garcia’s drawings of Sneak, Sheena, Huff, and all of the other characters in this comic feel like he is taking old wooden stop-motion puppets and drawing their adventures. There’s a chiseled quality to the characters, from Alanzo’s pointy nose that defines the rest of his face to Huff’s dog-like features. His floppy ears look like they should be made of the fake leather that old toys used to use to mimic furry features. Garcia’s artwork implies a physicality to these figures, but an exaggerated presence that is much more toy-like than realistic. It’s that connection to Woody and *Toy Story*, to the nature of fun and play, that makes **Muscle Horse** feel a bit like a honey trap of a story,
The artistic sheen of **Muscle Horse** lulls you in just so that Garcia can upend your expectations and make you squirm. The comic opens with a nice trip to the zoo, Sneak visiting a big cat exhibit just as things go wrong. Standing next to a sign that says “Do Not Feed The Animals,” Sneak flashes a devious grin toward the reader before pulling out a box of Muscle Horse treats from his sneakers. A totally ripped horse flexes on the front of the box, “Yum” he says, and “Only For Horses” the box warns in the corner but Sneak is more wrapped up in giving the tiger a treat than in reading any warnings on the box or any posted signs. Let’s just say that things don’t go good for Sneak from there and the only way to get out of the situation is to pull the treat out of the tiger, and he doesn’t go through the mouth to get it.
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The first couple of pages of this introduction are drawn innocently and cartoonishly, with a devilish yet innocent wink and a nod. Sneak’s actions are the stuff of cartoon shorts, misadventures of the *Looney Tunes* kind. Sneak is mischievous but he’s not dangerous. The tiger, after taking the treat, becomes this large, caricaturish beast chasing Sneak. A ZooKeeper gazes on unapprovingly; “Bitch shoulda read the sign.” her only words as the situation unfolds in front of her. Language aside, this starts as innocuous as a cartoon short from the 1950s does. And then you get to the third page and its twelve panels, Sneak on the back of the beast, grabbing its tail, and then plunging his hand into the cat’s butthole, fishing for the magical horse treat.
Yes, you read that right.
For Garcia, that’s just the first three pages of this comic, setting the tone and humor early so you can tell if this is a comic for you or not. If you stick with it, Garcia charts a story of building absurdities for Sneak and Sheena to overcome. Part of the fun of this comic is the feeling that Garcia is going to do something completely messed up on the next page. And then again on the next page, and the page after that, and the page after that. **Muscle Horse** is a visual gag comic where Garcia’s imagination runs wild in this old western tale. Each panel is a world of possibilities for Sneak and all of the oddball characters that he encounters, from Huff’s disgust at a boiled pierogi (an “abortion” he calls it) to another character's deeply personal and intimate relationship with another one of those boiled pierogies. And then there’s the Alanzo’s sister Monty and her partner Sazel, the duo who installed Sheena’s enhancements.
Garcia treats storytelling as constant forward motion. It’s always building to a “what’s next” moment. That’s what this Alanzo Sneak’s story is about, the what’s next of the situation he’s in. For the reader, there’s a thrill in waiting for that next moment, the quickness of getting to it, and the infinite possibilities that exist in the white space between the panels. And that can be said of all comics but Garcia plays with the expectation of that next moment. From the moment on the third page where Sneak has to fish the Muscle Horse treat out of the butt of the tiger, there’s the excitement tinged with a bit of fear about what sick or amusing or amusingly sick thing Garcia is going to come up with next. As Garcia builds his story, there’s a version of it that’s a standard Western. But luckily we get Garcia’s neo-absurd Western take on Sneak that does everything it can to take the air out of the self-importance of these kinds of narratives.
That drive for “what’s next” front-loads this conic with enough outrageous moments that by the time you get to the last quarter of the comic, it’s easy to feel a bit desensitized to everything. Oh, look, that guy with the pierogi on his cock is now facing down Sneak. Yes, we already got past the shock of what the guy with the pierogi was doing so maybe we’re past the moment of any more possible shock. Facing down the man who has had an intimate relationship with a boiled pierogi, Garcia’s storytelling doesn’t feel like it is as much building up to a climax as it is building toward what’s the next crazy thing that could happen, coming back around to another rescue from Sheena (see the last *Alanzo Sneak* comic,) this time hopped up on Muscle Horse treats like the tiger in the first few pages. It’s a showdown between a steroidal and a skeleton spirit like it’s high noon at the O.K. Corral.
So let’s come back to the question of what **Muscle Horse** is. Maybe it’s a how-to in horse protection. Maybe it’s a cowboy story about encounters at a western saloon. Maybe it’s Pierogi porn. Most likely, it’s probably all of those and so much more. Ultimately in it, Nate Garcia is exploring the possibility of the next panel, the quickness of getting to it, and the infinite possibilities that exist in the white space between the panels. **Muscle Horse** tells the story of a man and his horse but this is one of those comics where you have to pay as much attention to what’s happening between the panels as you do with what’s happening in the panels.
### This Week in Comics Journalism- April 17th, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-4/
Last updated: 2022-04-17T13:00:06.000Z
Perhaps not this week, but I read it this week via Alex Segura's contribution to the Sunday Longform email, Kelly Kanayama writes a beautiful exploration of Grant Morrison's **Multiversity,** [specificallyGrant'scollaboration with Frank Quitely on the Pax Americana issue](https://neotextreview.com/culture/peace-and-relativity-pax-americana-as-a-9-11-response-to-the-cold-war-eras-watchmen?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
For The Comics Journal, [Sean McTiernan profiles the recent Squeak the Mouse collection via an articulated conversation about the role of transgression in the arts](https://www.tcj.com/transgression-squeak-the-mouse/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Bonus point: McTiernan is the clear favorite for the lauded "Comics Criticism Line of the Year" with, "Thankfully, **Squeak the Mouse* does not just staple its scrotum at you over and over."
Another Neotext piece likely older than this week, but new to me is [Paco Taylor's](https://pacotaylor.contently.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) thorough [breakdown of Jean-Michel Basquiat' superhero influences and inspirations.](https://neotextcorp.com/culture/jean-michel-basquiats-superhero-influences/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I enjoy heady explorations of mainstream comics, and the past few years of X-Men discourse has explored the thematic implications of the Hixmen movement while also nerding out over X-Men continuity. [Chris Eddleman and Ron Secundus return to give the new X-Men '92 series that same treatment.](https://www.comicsxf.com/2022/04/15/hox-pox-toxcii-annotating-x-men-92-house-of-xcii-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Hey, more Grant Morrison news. They're writing a novel. What the hell will that be like? I don't know, but I recommend reading plenty of Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, and Claire North to prepare. Cheryl Eddy at [io9 has the scoop and an inrerview with Morrison to boot](https://gizmodo.com/grant-morrison-comics-legend-first-novel-exclusive-reve-1848790497?utm%5Fsource=twitter&utm%5Fmedium=SocialMarketing&utm%5Fcampaign=dlvrit&utm%5Fcontent=io9).
There comes a time when mom makes you put your toys away, and they eventuslly stay put away for good (except for My Little Pony -damn, this metaphor is apt). After some speculation about what IDW would do after losing both Transformers and G.I. Joe licenses, the decision is in: pivot towards creator-owned. Will this signal a shift in direction for IDW as a whole, or will it lead to a balanced portfolio of sorts, a la BOOM!? (God, that's some punctuation there). [Heidi MacDonald has the scoop for the Beat.](https://www.comicsbeat.com/idw-originals-launches-nine-new-series-from-snyder-ridley-wilson-more?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[At Broken Frontier, Andy Oliver profiles ***Ghosts in Things*** by father-daughter duo, Gareth and Martha Hopkins](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/ghosts-in-things-gareth-a-hopkins-martha-bill/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). I need to find a way to get this abstract minimalist minicomic on this side of the pond.
I cant say enough about Graeme McMillan's newsletter, Comics FYI. This week, [Graeme digs into the aforemtmiomed IDW news as well as Image's 30th Anniversary](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/ComicsFYI/issues/all-new-all-original-1133438?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
Ok, this series of threads predates this seek, but I've already proven time is relative. I love Comrade Bullski's threads, and I get lost in them for hours at a time.
> Every thread in my series on the history of the Archie/MLJ superheroes in order.
>
> The golden age:[https://t.co/zjMcqU4joh](https://t.co/zjMcqU4joh?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Comrade\_Bullski (@Comrade\_Bullski) [April 11, 2022](https://twitter.com/Comrade%5FBullski/status/1513508612005679121?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Finallt, are you a librarian or educator? Do you revile censorship. The American Library Association is looking for your help. [Click here](https://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2022/04/gncrt-seeks-information-about-censorship-comics-schools-and-libraries?ref=fromcovertocover.com) to learn about their new roundtable coalition.
### Catching Up With the Devil in Grendel Devil’s Odyssey by Matt Wagner
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/grendel-devils-odyssey-matt-wagner/
Last updated: 2022-04-14T15:45:41.000Z
Matt Wagner’s earliest Grendel stories were about singular characters like the debonair high society author Hunter Rose or Christine Spar, Rose’s biographer and the second Grendel. These stories revolved around distinct characters who wore the Grendel identity as a thing thrust upon them and their souls. Wagner showed Grendel as some malevolent force that could influence or even inhabit these characters: the spirits of Rose and Spar shaped the manifestation of their Grendel as much as Grendel changed them. Even the paranoia of Brian Li Sung or the madness of Eppy Thatcher created a starting point for Wagner to ground his characters in and build the idea of Grendel around. These characters gave the creator and the reader something to latch onto as Wagner showed the Grendel spirit/persona/virus as something that wore away at the characters, that used them and spit them out before moving on to its next host.
But those characters were a long time ago; they’re part of a history of comics and storytelling that is rooted in the times that they were created (which is the early 80s to the mid 90s.) Each new Grendel built on the Grendel that came before them but also fed on the humanity that was left in these characters. So maybe it makes sense that eventually Wagner would create Grendel Prime, a cybernetic warrior that had almost no humanity to begin with. He had no past, no story of who he was, no motivations or agency beyond what he was created to be both within the confines of the story but also as a character created by a comic book cartoonist. Wagner landed on this Terminator-like version of his Grendel thirty years ago. Now in 2022, Grendel Prime doesn’t feel like a character but more like a tool, directed and ordered by superiors, not making decisions or pursuing any agenda of his own but focused on the mission, whatever that may be.
And even that’s probably simplifying a lot of what Wagner has done with Grendel Prime over the years but when you look at the charisma of Hunter Rose in those early stories and the general detachment of Grendel Prime in nearly every story of his, there is this disconnect in the legacy of the character that showcases Grendel Prime more as a force than as a character. So as the earth is dying and humanity is on the verge of war and extinction, the Grendel-Khan of this dying planet sends Grendel Prime on a mission into space, with orders to find a planet that could sustain the remnants of mankind and give them a future that they no longer have on Earth.
The mission.
**Grendel; Devil’s Odyssey** is the story of Grendel Prime on this huge quest with the weight of mankind’s survival on his broad shoulders. It's also the story of Grendel Prime rediscovering his humanity in the far depths of space, away from the mankind he was created to protect and the weak humanity that needs him to do the work that it can’t do itself, away from the weak Khans who give him orders and point him at targets. Returning to the Grendel Prime character, Wagner returns to an adventure-driven story where motivations and actions are clear and understandable; find a suitable planet for the next iteration of humanity to survive and thrive on. Here Grendel Prime is actually a fairly easy character to get your head around. He’s a man with no past and no future— just existing in an unending now. At least 100 years, if not far more than that, have passed in the story since Wagner first introduced Grendel Prime in *Grendel: War Child* but the character remains unchanged; he just is. If the character was a little bit introspective, he would see his responsibilities as a trap, as a dead end. He’s lived a long time, served many masters, killed a lot of men and women, and followed every order. This is what his life was, is, and will be.
So Grendel Prime is given a directive- find a planet suitable for mankind. But there’s an interesting twist to it. The Grendel Khan (just think the king who orders his honorable knight on a quest,) has a simple requirement for this new Earth. “You must find a planet that will sustain our potential pilgrims,” the Grendel Khan commands Prime. “But not via violent incursion. If there is intelligent life… it must be a species with which humanity can coexist. Not one they would eventually conquer. Resort to combat only in defense of your mission.” We talk about Grendel Prime being a warrior but it’s interesting how Wagner shows him being used. When he was first introduced in *Grendel War Child*, it was also there as a protector of a child, the rightful Grendel Khan of that day. Prime was to hide him and protect him until the day that the boy could take the throne himself. And here again, he is taking on the role of protector.
Accompanying Grendel Prime on this mission is a drone, Sigma Seven, or “Siggy” as she prefers to be named and identified as. Right from the first page, we see the difference between these two characters, the stoic and determined Prime and the personable and very human Siggy. It’s a bit of an odd couple situation that Wagner establishes with these two, practically equals on this mission even as their roles in it are so different. Siggy is Prime’s Jiminy Cricket, that voice that grounds this Grendel in his quest. And the Pinocchio links go deeper than that, as Grendel has to wrestle with his own, long forgotten humanity. As Wagner writes this story of Grendel encountering these worlds and civilizations to determine if they fall in the parameters of his mission, there’s an unspoken question of his own place in this future that he’s trying to ensure. Is he a real boy? Does he have a place in this next stage of humanity that he’s trying to find?
Wagner’s artwork doesn’t give a lot of room for that kind of doubt to creep into the story. It’s fascinating to use all of his artwork in the Grendel mythology to chart the evolution of an artist, from a budding neophyte who’s learning on the job, to wunderkind genius doing things that we haven’t seen before, to old school, solid, dependable, and professional in every way. He’s not the flashy artist or storyteller that he once was. Just that a look at one of the earliest Hunter Rose stories *Devil By The Deed* for an artist who was flexing every possible muscle. The Wagner who draws **Grendel: Devil’s Odyssey** focuses on the panel-to-panel beats of the storytelling, occasionally having a WOW!!!! image but more concerned with clearly communicating the story to his readers.
But Grendel Prime wears a full face helmet that is unmovable and unchanging. Think for a moment how expressive Spider-Man is because of how artists use his mask and particularly the eyes in the mask to show emotions. The Grendel mask is very similar with its design but Wagner uses it and its variations to show the differences in the Grendels, not the differences in their reactions to things. That’s why the Grendel Prime is a difficult character to read. His face carries no emotions, which helps convey the immutability of the character and his mission. His helmet is a true mask, hiding any reactions or emotions.
So Siggy acts as that offloaded conscience for Grendel, guiding and advising Grendel Prime on this mission that’s basically looking for the next colony of humanity. It’s fascinating to watch Wagner wrestle with his own viewpoints of mankind and our desires to take over everything. Wagner wants to be hopeful, wants to believe in the potential of the good we can do but is a bit cynical and pessimistic about what we’re truly capable of. His work in the *Mage* series offers a far more optimistic and personal view of this but Grendel allows him to take a step back and be a bit more realistic in his views. If nothing else, Grendel allows him to give into his darker thoughts. *Mage* always feels more personal because it is semi-autobiographical, Wagner getting to wander through his own life. It’s easy to view Grendel as something else, something different.
As Grendel Prime encounters different worlds and civilizations (6 different ones in **Grendel: Devil’s Odyssey’s** 8 chapters,) Wagner places trust in his character to find the right world for humanity to make its new home. Grendel encounters various civilizations and worlds that just don’t quite fit the parameters of his mission. But on the penultimate world, he takes on a fascinating role of justice and liberator for an oppressed people. It not an unfamiliar role for the character; it’s one he’s worn when ordered to do so. But here he is on another mission and he’s diverted from it, wandering this world almost like a man with no name, bringing his own sense of justice to it. It almost feels like growth for a character who is practically impervious to it.
And in the final chapter, Grendel, Siggy, and mankind are judged. It’s the moment of truth as Grendel and Siggy find themselves in the presence of a more advanced society of beings. This is a point where this Grendel has to face questions about his own purpose in ways that no Grendel has done before. Wagner finds this truly unique challenge for the character, putting him in the position of possible failure which is something that Grendel Prime has barely faced before. It’s a challenge for the character that helps him become something more than the Terminatoresque force that he’s been before.
**Grendel; Devil’s Odyssey** opens the door to the next cycle of Grendel stories and it will find the character at an interesting point in his existence, which feels like new and intriguing ground for Grendel Prime. The book returns us to this work where a spirit or a force (call it what you will) permeates every corner of the earth. So what will that spirit find on other worlds? In Grendel, Wagner has this freedom to change the scope and the stakes of the story, going back and forth between a macro and micro view of what Grendel is. This book is a grand, expansive story that completely broadens the idea of this world and concept. But the story also reframes Grendel Prime, giving him a quest but also delving into this fascinating character in ways that Wagner hasn’t been able to do before.
### Some Nice Design in Jim Rugg's Hulk Grand Design Monster
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/hulk-grand-design-monster-by-jim-rugg/
Last updated: 2022-04-04T14:00:01.000Z
By now, we should know what to expect from these *Grand Design* projects– indie cartoonists (Pittsburgh-based no less,) faux aged-yellow pages, hundreds of old issues and their plots condensed down into relatively easily-digested chunks. The first two *Grand Design* series focused on X-Men comics (primarily Claremont-era) and [Lee/Kirby’s Fantastic Four](http://www.panelpatter.com/2020/03/this-comic-this-legend-look-at-tom.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), taking comics that were created on a month-in/month-out basis, attempting to reshape them into expansive and consistent narratives. Ed Piskor and Tom Scioli took these comics that had an overall but unplanned structure to them and essentially remixed them to tell the same stories as if the original creators had the vision to be able to create narratives with a beginning, middle, and end. Piskor’s *X-Men: Grand Design* reforms all of Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, and (mostly) Chris Claremont’s stories around the tale of Jean Grey and the Phoenix while Scioli’s take on the Fantastic Four took the first 100 issues of that series and gave them a satisfying conclusion that Lee and Kirby never got to do.
Rounding out the [Cartoonist Kayfabe](https://www.youtube.com/c/CartoonistKayfabe/videos?ref=fromcovertocover.com) school of creators, Jim Rugg is the latest cartoonist to step up to the *Grand Design* challenge, turning his pen towards another Kirby/Lee creation; the Hulk. One of the foundational characters of the Marvel Universe, the 1962 story of the Hulk is Jekyll and Hyde filtered through a superhero lens. The Hulk probably owes far more to the monster comics that preceded Marvel’s super-hero age (something that would be interesting to explore sometime) but it placed the monster within the superhero context, making him a founding member of the Avengers and often duking it out against the Fantastic Four. Bruce Banner was a mild-mannered scientist caught in the blast of a nuclear bomb. Instead of killing him, Banner finds that when triggered he turns into a rampaging, green monster, hunted by the army while all he wants to do is find peace for himself. There are so many tales that have been built around that concept as the Hulk is a great character to explore feelings of loneliness, disconnection, fear, and anger around.
In the first of two issues, Rugg’s **Hulk Grand Design: Monster** focuses on the time between the introduction of The Hulk in *Hulk #1* and runs through *Hulk #300* when the character is banished into another reality. It covers comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Harlan Ellison, Herb Trimpe, Bill Mantlo, Sal Buscema and so many other legendary creators. Unlike the first two *Grand Design* projects which were largely re-interpreting the works of a small group of creators (Claremont and Kirby & Lee,) Rugg’s source material doesn’t have that strong of a singular artistic viewpoint to work with as Piskor and Scioli had. The second issue due out in about a month should cover Peter David’s long run on *The Incredible Hulk* and will probably give Rugg a bit more of a focus. But this first issue covers the work of so many writers and artists that Rugg has to summarize and emulate while trying to establish his own consistent artistic voice over all of this work.
While he’s working under the same *Grand Design* guiding principles established by Piskor’s X-Men series, Rugg’s approach and goals feel different. These are largely fan comics, created by and for fans. You can read so many modern comics out today that are just riffing on the stories that the creators read when they were kids. Even the recent strong *Immortal Hulk* series by Al Ewing is built largely on the work of Peter David. The new book probably doesn’t exist without the work done in the older comics. And when it’s done right, a writer like Al Ewing uses the earlier work as a foundation and starting point but finds his own story to tell. But these *Grand Design* books are a different beast– they use the earlier work as the blueprint for their stories, basically just remixing the past work through Piskor, Scioli, or Rugg’s point of view.
But Piskor and Scioli were at least trying to tell stories in their projects, showing how with a bit of narrative tinkering these long, rambling comic series could be turned into true stories with a beginning, middle, and end. They were attempting to shoehorn modern comic storytelling structures on comics that were created in another and different time. Rugg’s endeavor feels far more like a walk down memory lane, an attempt to cover some of the greatest hits. It suffers from its constant “and then…” approach to these stories. There’s no sense of Bruce Banner or the Hulk’s events being a progression or a story. There’s no development happening to the characters that build off of what came on the pages before.
Rugg’s approach puts less emphasis on there being a “Hulk” story. He’s not applying any kind of narrative logic to these three hundred issues or even trying to demonstrate some truly grand design to this story, and thereby may be invalidating the name a bit. He’s picking out moments and story beats from these older stories and applying an “isn’t this cool” filter to them, stringing along events from within the comics and the larger pop culture world without really wanting to do anything with them. There’s no design evident here, no commentary or exploration of the character or events. There are just these clips and memories of old comics. This is not a Hulk comic but a comic about Hulk comics, a snake eating its tail.
Filtered through Jim Rugg’s brain, the story of the Hulk becomes this story of the comics themselves. It’s a celebration of all the moments that were created by these writers and artists, starting with Lee & Kirby and carried through to Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema. Rugg recreates this history through small vignettes, sometimes just a panel long and other times a whole page, that are emblematic of these comics. There’s a fun rush that comes from seeing these comics recreated but it’s also the same rush that comes from finding Waldo in a “Where’s Waldo” book; it’s all recognition of a character without wanting or needing to know anything about the character. **Hulk Grand Design: Monster** is a greatest hits version of these comics. More accurately, it is cover versions of those greatest hits. It’s curated and recreated which is kind of the directive of these *Grand Design* books without even trying to add anything to these stories.
The way that Rugg does this is by basically creating a scrapbook of the “life story” of the Hulk, from pictures of his birth through the troubled childhood of the green behemoth. More traditional comic pages are interspersed with recreated comic covers, drawings of old stickers, and even some of the old Marvel stamps that they used to print long ago in the Bullpen Bulletin pages. There’s even a fun little [Fabulous Freak Brothers](https://thefreakbrothers.com/pages/the-show?ref=fromcovertocover.com) callout when “Hulk joins a hippie commune but finds no peace.” Rugg’s *Grand Design* feels like it’s having far more fun playing around with Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema’s artwork than it is with exploring Roy Thomas or Bill Mantlo’s stories. You’re not going to learn anything new about the character here but getting to see Rugg recreate the cover to *The Incredible Hulk #181* on lined notebook paper with colored ballpoint ink pens already makes this one of the most fun artbooks of 2022\.
Now let’s just take a moment to admit that, unlike the source material that previous *Grand Design* projects have had to work with, there are not a lot of classic Hulk stories to begin with; some but not a lot. The strength of the character is more in the kind of stories that you can tell with him rather than the specific stories that have been told. (And that’s just a generalization as there have been some really good Hulk stories.) And maybe Rugg recognized that at the start of the project and decided to have more fun by taking a look at how the stories were told more than with the stories that were told. That’s why the emphasis of this book seems to be built more on the work of the artists Jack Kirby, Herb Trimpe, and Sal Buscema than the writers like Stan Lee and Bill Mantlo. As that kind of walk down memory lane, **Hulk Grand Design: Monster** is a fun nostalgic look at the first 20 years of Hulk comics.
### "Bet On Your Blind Obedience!!"-- quick thoughts on Ghost Cage #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/ghost-cage-1-dragotta-goellner/
Last updated: 2022-03-24T13:30:01.000Z
Flip through Nick Dragotta (artist/co-writer) and Caleb Goellner’s (co-writer) **Ghost Cage #1** and it’s incredibly easy to get swept up in it. Dragotta’s black and white artwork creates this world of wonder, monsters, and mysteries. The art itself sells the book. Dragotta’s *East of West* (written by Jonathan Hickman in his pre-Krakoan days) showed a lot of the same influences and style but he cranks up the visual excitement in this new first issue.
Dragotta's scale in action
Channeling his inner Katsuhiro Otomo, Dragotta’s drawings capture the raw energy that Otomo had in *Akira* and *Domu*, where every image and panel just hummed with potential energy until Otomo just poured everything into a page to blow our minds. Dragotta is doing the same thing here, building up excitement in every consecutive panel until these moments where he releases it all, drawing pages that are pure adrenaline rushes. Without any color to distract from Dragotta’s linework, he draws images that crackle with life. From fear to awe to anger and exasperation, his images express the energy of these emotions and feelings. Like the best and most fun manga that Dragotta draws his inspiration from, the highly emphatic art sweeps you into this story.
The story in that artwork is basically a giant fight comic, where a mega-corp power plant is under attack so that “the super-scientist who revolutionized and controls all energy on Earth sends his ultimate creation (and an adequate employee) in to destroy his monstrous secrets.” At least, that’s what’s supposed to be happening here [according to the solicitation blurb](https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/ghost-cage-1-of-3?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for this issue. And sure, that’s all there in the story but the story feels like it’s secondary to the artwork; it’s there in service of the artwork instead of the other way around. There’s some kind of critique about big business and the powerful and cult-like personalities behind them but it’s weird that the design of this industrial Svengali looks a lot like a character that was in *East of West*. Both manipulative and scheming characters share the same Colonel Sanders but more dangerous vibe, including white goatees and mustaches that cross weird wires and feel like weird choices. Where every other character in this story has a unique design that reflects their roles in the story, this design just distracts from it.
"An adequate employee..."
The artwork and all of its verve almost disguise the feeling that the story is a bit ab undercooked homage to all of the manga, anime, and comics that Dragotta and Goellner are influenced by. There are those *Akira* vibes from the artwork, a bit of a *Neon Genesis Evangelion* feel, and let’s just throw in a helping of Frank Miller’s *Ronin* into this stew while we're at it. This is a monster story that tries to have some social commentary about big business and its lack of concern over its workers. Remember that “adequate employee” from the solicitation text? That’s Doyle, the tech support who’s tasked to help out the “ultimate creation.” As a true-blue believer in the company he works for, Doyle jumps at the opportunity to prove himself to his corporate leader even as the rest of his fellow employees are running away for their lives. “You want that promotion? You want to climb the ladder?” the super-scientist barks at Doyle as motivation even as he calls Doyle “Boil” or “Oil” or “Toil” or anything that just rhymes with his actual name.
**Ghost Cage #1** is about as socially deep as you would expect an Image Comic to be. Meaning it’s all flash and bang sleight of hand. It’s satire without much bite yet but that may just be first issue blues as Gragotta and Goellner appear to have loftier goals for this series. And in a lot of ways, it doesn’t matter as the artwork is worth the price of admission here ($5.99 US but it is an extra-sized issue.) Dragotta’s art sweeps you up into it, pulling you into this comic of heroes and monsters and maybe even monstrous heroes fighting. If for nothing else, check out this comic just to see how Dragotta tells a story through scale here, creating so much tension simply through the way he composes his drawings to make you feel small as you encounter these creatures.
### The Week In Comics Journalism— March 19, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-week-in-comics-journalism-march-19-2022/
Last updated: 2022-03-19T13:59:59.000Z
Another week is done and we're almost ready to officially begin spring. Here's just a few of the things that caught our attention this week.
---
- We should probably start with the week around here. First up, Mike took a look at [Keiler Robert's **My Begging Chart**](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/finding-the-sublime-in-the-mundane-one-panel-of-my-begging-chart-and-the-brilliance-of-keiler-roberts/), writing "****My Begging Chart** is far more wry, almost devious in its construction. Roberts hones in on simplicity precisely to expose the complexity of life."
- And in a bit of nice autobio synchronicity, Scott followed up the week looking at [John Porcellino's ***King-Cat Comix & Stories #81***](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/john-porcellinos-king-cat-comix-stories-81/). "This is how Porcellino relates his life to us– through visual poems, remembrances of his teenage years, and snapshots of last year’s little moments."
---
In another bit of timing, The Comic Journal published a piece by [Lane Yates also looking at King-Cat Comix & Stories #81](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/king-cat-comix-stories-81/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), relating how the experience of reading King-Cat the past couple of years has provided some bit of calm in these otherwise turbulent times.
> Time alters and communicates with every aspect of **King-Cat*. It is the meticulous organization of time that gives every figure its ground. There’s no need to narrate the context of the engagement. It merely was, and, with a measure of time and labor by the cartoonist, it now is.
---
[Brandon Schreur at CBR reports on an assault on comics writer David Gallaher](https://www.cbr.com/green-lantern-writer-defend-girl-assaulted-nyc-david-gallaher/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> The two teenagers stepped away from Gallaher for a moment, at which point Gallaher again took out his phone -- an act that angered one of them so much that he punched Gallaher in the face. A garbage can and paving stone was also thrown at Gallaher in the following moments. "It's weird to me — that was just for calling 911," Gallaher said. "Imagine had it been like me punching somebody, or imagine it being an actual fight. I got assaulted just for trying to help somebody in a very non-aggressive way."
Gallaher is a great writer who's works inlcude *High Moon* (a fantastic early foray from DC into digital comics.) *Box 13, The Only Living Boy,* as well as other work for Marvel and DC.
To help cover his medical expenses related to this assault, [Gallaher has set up a GoFundMe](https://www.gofundme.com/f/medical-bills-following-brooklyn-assault?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
---
At the Beat, Taimur Dar reports on a [new project from Daniel Warren Johnson and Image Comics. **Do A Powerbomb**](https://www.comicsbeat.com/do-a-powerbomb-daniel-warren-johnson-image-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) is a new wrestling comic from Johnson as well as his usual partners in crime Mike Spicer and Rus Wooten.
I generally like Johnson's stuff but a couple of years ago at a C2E2 convention, I bought a minicomic from Johnson that he did about a Japanese wrestler and it was a great book, full of energy and excitement. And I'm not even that much of a wrestling fan but this sounds like a project right up Johnson's alley.
In a related piece at SKTCHD, [David Harper asks are we having fun yet](https://sktchd.com/column/are-we-having-fun-yet/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (note: the full article is behind a paywall)? He frames the article around a number of Johnson's recent work, including a dinosaur version of the Justice League called The Jurassic League.
> It can be easy to dismiss fun comics. I see that regularly. To be honest, it’s mostly by readers, who often dictate which comics we do or don’t see more of through their choices. Sales are the number one driver for what we see more (or less) of in comics, and there’s a reciprocal relationship between what is considered important and what is released. And I get the central premise of this idea. The connectivity of superhero comics is an essential ingredient to its recipe.
---
At ActualBD (use Google Translate or some other service in your browser,) [Frédéric Hojlo reports from France on Julie Doucet's winning the Grand Prix d'Angoulême](https://www.actuabd.com/Julie-Doucet-Grand-Prix-d-Angouleme-2022-une-recompense-pas-si-paradoxale?ref=fromcovertocover.com) this past week.
Doucet is a fascinating choice because as she's done some work recently, most of her career-defining work in Dirty Plotte and other comics was done during the 1990s.
> Julie Doucet has not "officially" made comics for about twenty years. Worn out by commissioned work, to the point of suffering a *burnout*, and tired of fighting and struggling in an environment so masculine that it is oppressive, the cartoonist puts down the pencils in 1999 and decides to devote herself to other artistic forms: wood engraving, linocut, collage, writing. It was finally the shock of the attack on Charlie Hebdo's editorial staff on January 7, 2015, that pushed her to draw again. Deeply offended and in total empathy with the massacred journalists and cartoonists, she immediately returns to it, first for herself, then for her self-publishing house, [Le Pantalitaire](https://lepantalitaire.bigcartel.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Nothing narrative at first, but a pleasure quickly found. Pages of notebooks are blackened, portraits follow one another. And, in the spring of 2022, a fully drawn book is ready to be published by Drawn & Quarterly. It will be *[Time Zone J](https://drawnandquarterly.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/9781770464988.pdf?ref=fromcovertocover.com)... (translated from original French text)*
The article also points out how Doucet is only the fourth female cartoonist to win the award after Clair Bretécher (1983,) Florence Cestac (2000,) and Rumiko Takahashi (2019.) This year, all three finalists were women.
> In an institution that has long been very masculine, to the point of bordering on ridicule and provoking anger, it is not anecdotal. Chosen by her peers, Julie Doucet by her mere presence in this place shows that the profession of comic book author has become highly feminized since the years 1990-2000 and that feminist struggles, both in and outside the publishing world, are bearing fruit. *(translated from original French text)*
Also from Angoulême and ActualBD (yes, more work for the translator of your choice,) [Marlene Agius looks at the exhibition of last year's Grand Prix winner Chris Ware](https://www.actuabd.com/Chris-Ware-la-bande-dessinee-c-est-l-architecture-de-l-esprit?ref=fromcovertocover.com), including some quotes from Ware about cartooning.
> Large plates illustrating Chicago architectures, exhibition architectural as a plate. For Chris Ware, if architecture is a key theme of his books, it is because it reflects the very space of the mind. "*One of the things that appealed to me the most as a child was seeing everything at a glance on the same board. I think comics are the architecture of the mind. In the same way that we see a burst of memories appear before our eyes.* »
---
I just recently picked up the new Milestone Compendium from DC, collecting a bunch of comics from the 1990s by black creators and featuring black superheroes like Icon and Hardware. I've actually never read much of this stuff before so while there are a lot of familiar creators involved with those books, there are some that I haven't heard of before.
Shelfdust has had a great series running called **Black Comics History**. In the latest installment of it, [Kenneth Laster l at Static #1 and it's writer Robert Washington](https://shelfdust.com/2022/03/16/1993-in-black-comics-history-static-1-by-robert-l-washington-iii-and-dwayne-mcduffie/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), and the hardships that Washington faced after co-creating a character that has become so important to DC Comics.
> It’s absolutely damning for the co-creator of a character that has been so incredibly influential beyond comics, animation, and soon to be live action, to have experienced homelessness multiple times before his early passing. It’s easy to go into the what if’s – what if Washington got scripts seen and published, would he have had a more comfortable final years, regarded as a respected elder in comics by his passing? As great as the Milestone revival has been, the tragedy of Robert L Washington’s passing needs to stay in the consciousness of those at Warner Brothers: DC’s formative creators are not expendable and Washington’s situation should have been avoidable.
### Letters from Beloit, Wi.- catching up with John Porcellino’s King-Cat Comix & Stories #81
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/john-porcellinos-king-cat-comix-stories-81/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T17:30:45.000Z
There’s something I feel when I read a new issue of John Porcellino’s **King-Cat Comix & Stories** that I don’t experience with most other comics. I feel calm; I feel at peace even while the world around me is completely falling apart. Porcellino has just sent his newest comic, **King-Cat #81**, out to his subscribers and the peace that comes with the book couldn’t be better timed.
For over 30 years now, Porcellino has been telling his life story through his comics. And it’s not so much that he’s telling a story but he’s sharing his life with us, the good and the bad. In the last issue from about one year ago, he wrote a text piece about the death of Gibby, one of his dogs and then he lets us be part of his wife and him adopting a new dog even while they were still grieving over Gibby. He let us in on the process of his grief. As Porcellino has shared countless stories about his dog and cats before, we’ve gotten to know the varmints as he calls them. More than the people in his life, we get to know the animals that surround him, that live in his home as well as the wildlife that lives in his area of Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin. Each issue includes a count of the groundhogs he’s seen in a year– an impressive 478 in 2021 as accounted for in this newest issue. I live about 70 miles southeast of him and I can’t even be sure that I’ve seen one groundhog in the 21st century.
But with every new issue of **King-Cat Comix**, I feel like I’m being gently nudged and reminded to just look for the groundhogs.
And the goldfinches.
And the squirrels.
And the chipmunks.
This is how Porcellino relates his life to us– through visual poems, remembrances of his teenage years, and snapshots of last year’s little moments. One story is him reflecting back on what Saturdays throughout his life have been, from being able to lounge about all afternoon watching monster movies on TV, to hitting Moondog Comics to pick up a new issue of Neil the Horse and then to Saturday’s having to work a retail store. But all comes almost full circle to now where he can spend his weekend afternoons just playing guitar. It’s a cycle of growing up and having responsibilities that most of us can relate to but Porcellino packs so much into seven pages that just feel like this breezy story. There are the Saturday afternoons and all of the activities done on them but there is also what Saturday afternoon is and means at these different stages of our lives.
Maybe we should count our own Saturday afternoons the ways that Porcellino counts the groundhogs.
But with stories like that, there are also just simple, single-page visual poems where the cartoonist is asking us to just live in the moment with him. Standing in some hyssop, enjoying the dew on the powerlines, or walking the dog down a street on a summer night during 2020 where most stores and businesses have been closed since March are these things that really only Porcellino would or could share with us. His artwork is so simple, so nondescript that it’s like he’s taking any artistic ego out of it. He’s wanting to deliver a pure experience of the moment to his readers and his uncluttered, direct linework just so perfectly reflects the emotional weight of the scene he’s illustrating.
But that makes Porcellino sound like some kind of Zen cartoonist, sitting on a mountaintop (or maybe just a very tall hill in Illinois,) dispensing his wisdom to all of us who have come to learn from him. Sure there are elements of that but Porcellino has a very interesting way of breaking out of the Zen-ness of his cartoons in his hand-lettered prose.
His opening letter to his readers feels anything but Zen or peaceful. He reflects on his own personal “golden age,” thinking about a Henry Rollins spoken-word show that he once saw. He remembers his early days as a cartoonist, young and free from responsibility (a theme later mirrored in his tale about Saturday afternoons) but then takes a bit of a darker turn. “Sometimes, nowadays, I feel like the only thing I have to look forward to in life is seeing my friends and loved ones grow old, get sick, and die.” He writes. The uncertainty and bit of fear he expresses here, written just over a year into our Covid lockdowns, counterweights the peacefulness and reflections of his comics. Even the forms of both offer this fascinating contrast. His comics have so much space and airiness to them that let you just take them in with no pressure or rush to them. But his prose, these letters that he’s writing to us, are personal, immediate, and intimate. Porcellino can be both this Zen philosopher and a modern man pressed down by the weight of the world. And there’s room in his comic where he can show these different expressions of himself.
**King-Cat Comix & Stories #81** is that letter from a long-distance pen-pal, catching up with them after not hearing from them since last year. He even includes fan letters he receives, which just enforce the feeling of a regular correspondence between the cartoonist and his audience (“I have a groundhog sighting for you…”, “It’s snowing here today in Paris, which is not that common…”) It’s been a year since we last heard from Porcellino in KC#80 and while we see the John we know and love (at least through his comics) in **KC #81**, there’s a way to read his comics as Porcellino offering us these regular reminders of how to pay attention to the world around us and how to appreciate the things that are here. He doesn’t just block out the bad things; he even acknowledges them) but that’s not what he wants to focus on or what he wants us to get trapped in. His comic to us is his regular reminder to just look at the world around us and to find pleasure in these observations.
### Finding the Sublime in the Mundane - One Panel of My Begging Chart and the Brilliance of Keiler Roberts
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/finding-the-sublime-in-the-mundane-one-panel-of-my-begging-chart-and-the-brilliance-of-keiler-roberts/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T17:30:48.000Z
I finished reading **My Begging Chart** a month and a half ago if my Twitter is to be trusted, and I’ve been thinking about it most days since.
I have a special fondness for Keiler Roberts' brand of wry self-deprecation. It’s been my functional modus operandi since at least high school. I also deeply appreciate honesty in a memoir - and I mean the type of honesty that you can feel, that is almost palpable, that stretches far beyond the mere factual. At first blush, such a statement might seem a little glib. No one likes dishonest memoirs, right? But I’m talking about the type of honesty that resonates with you in a kind of way that settles into a special place in your soul.
**My Begging Char**t is precisely that type of honest memoir, but it is also so much more than just a typical memoir. God, I’m already tired of typing memoir. It has some indebtedness to the current flock of mental health comics, sure, but it also functions very much like a slice of life comic. There are pages - not just panels - where nothing really happens beyond the passing of time. You know, just like life. A scene in a kitchen of little consequence, motionless Barbies, trying on clothes, or sitting on the couch.
And it’s precisely the combination of these elements - the honest self-assessment coupled with a fundamental understanding that whatever she puts on the page is going to be relevant and meaningful to the work (even when it seems most like it is not) - that makes this book the thorough examination of life that it is.
The genius in the assembly of **My Begging Chart** is that it connotes slice of life more than a memoir. It feels like a series of slice of life comics linked together to create one coherent narrative. And I mean that in a good way - it works well. The book, when examined from a wide angle, has a clear and distinct narrative, but the narrative is just meandering enough to give the feel that this is real life, the way it cascades for all of us, sometimes with prime importance, days we’d never forget, and other days where nothing seems to happen, forgettable but still integral in their own ways in that the each day by design has to lead to the next one. I think this kind of storytelling is absolutely brilliant. And it is also rather courageous. I can’t imagine the pressure to pack a book with content, to not allow it to segue into the mundane - but the fact that even the most intense parts of life eventually coalesce into the forgettable is the very point of **My Begging Chart**. It’s that honesty - and I think **My Begging Char**t is as honest as any other autobiographical book I’ve read - that sells this book so well for me as a reader.
A while back, I was reading through [Ryan Carey’s blog](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). It might have been around the end of the year, and Ryan was writing about how subtlety in graphic storytelling is deceiving, how it’s over-mined and overdone to the point that it often masks an otherwise boring narrative. That resonated with me, because while I appreciate the books that can pull back enough to let the reader make some inferences, I had also been noticing a similar pattern in my reading. But I can’t help but feel that Roberts is more than just the exception that proves this this, she is also the antidote to it. And perhaps subtlety is the wrong word to describe everything Roberts does with **My Begging Chart**. Maybe it’s really nuance.
Yes, it's the nuance. And in returning again and again to the book to find my angle to write about it, I continued to meditate on this panel.
It's page 97 of the book, roughly 2/3 of the way through. And you're probably saying to yourself, "cool, so what were they talking about on page 96?" But that's the point. This page comes entirely out of nowhere. Page 98 doesn't continue the conversation. We are left with this scene to contemplate two thirds of the way through our journey alongside Keiler. At this point, we had a grasp on her sardonic outlook, but we've also seen the honest moments. We have no idea the antecedent that leads to "anyway," and we're entirely uncertain whether she's being sincere with her self-assessment.
I could have picked any number of panels or pages from **My Begging Chart**, and perhaps there are ones better express the overall work. But for me, this page exemplifies Roberts' wit while also exhibiting the general narrative framework that sometimes this book is directly linear and sometimes it's not. Roberts' work is often described as "diary comics," and who hasn't tried to keep a diary in which there are pages of narrative flow that intricately chronicle days in succession followed up with a random thought jotted down two weeks later?
So, after two reads and a fair amount of contemplation, I'm still in awe of **My Begging Chart.** The book is downright unassuming, subtle, but not in a boring, reductive, “isn’t everything just quaint and awful?” kind of way. No, **My Begging Chart** is far more wry, almost devious in its construction. Roberts hones in on simplicity precisely to expose the complexity of life. It is through the day to day mundanities that Roberts develops her vitality of voice - sardonic, shifty, squinting an an imaginary object out of focus. And, frankly, I could spend another hour typing on and on about how much I enjoyed reading **My Begging Chart**. I could drone endlessly about the precision of Roberts craft, and the tight execution of each panel.
There is a certain element of realism inherent to the style. Life keeps trudging along; there aren’t massive plot points or emerging conflicts to create a functional plot. Rather, like Roberts' thin and quick sketch style of cartooning, the plot is just the wispy ins and outs of everyday life - no definitive moral, no grand narrative. Ideas and concepts occasionally return, and there are certainly thematic elements - coping with mental health, coping with developing MS, the anxieties of motherhood - that permeate the book. But it is almost the inconsistencies that shine the most, the way Roberts can capture the fact that even though they are stacked upon one another, moments need not necessarily feel chronological. She essentially embraces the entropy of the mundane. **My Begging Chart** is billed as a memoir, and it is. But it’s more of a self satire, a cathartic slice of life assault on the author’s world. It is a brutal book without ever seeming so. This is it. This is the confrontation with the world around us.
### This Week in Comics Journalism
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-3/
Last updated: 2022-03-12T19:12:59.000Z
Happy Saturday. If you're one of the many people stuck inside with this bizarre late winter storm, please enjoy these links. If you're not, well, why are you staring at a screen?
- Our friends at [Panel Patter](http://www.panelpatter.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) have been putting out fun reads with their new regular feature, [This Looks Cool](http://www.panelpatter.com/search/label/this%20looks%20cool?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Check out what Sean says about [Alice Ever Afte](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/03/this-looks-cool-alice-ever-after-debuts.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)r and what Rob says about [The British Paranormal Society](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/03/this-looks-cool-mignola-robertson-mutti.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
- [Tom Shapira](http://www.twitter.com/tomshaps?ref=fromcovertocover.com) composes a loving and thorough retrospective on the [brilliance of Larry Hama](https://www.tcj.com/do-not-fade-away/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and his tenure as write of *G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero* for The Comics Journal.
- At [Neotext Review](http://www.neotextreview.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), [Chloe Maveal](https://twitter.com/PunkRokMomJeans?ref=fromcovertocover.com) provides a similar retrospective on the talents of a [particular favorite of Scott and me, Shaky Kane](https://neotextreview.com/culture/bulletproof-coffins-and-cowboy-insects-the-wild-and-weird-work-of-shaky-kane/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
- The busier I get, the more judicious I have to be about what I read and what I start to follow. [Graeme McMillan's Newsletetter](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/ComicsFYI/issues/known-unknowns-and-a-little-nostalgia-too-1077614?ref=fromcovertocover.com) is something that has wedged itself into my reading habits, and it's a treat every time. This week, he tackles changes at Comixology and why DC continues to mine Watchmen.
- Speaking of Comixology, even prior to the Amazon nonsense, I've long lamented the set-up and user interface. I often have a hard time finding what I'm looking for, and I generally tend to know what I'm looking for. I could never imagine a newly curious comic reader stumbling into the app trying to find a particular story or starting point. (Such a conundrum is both the result of an continually compounded by renumbering, but alas). I'm forutnate to patronize an absolutely gigantic comic shop that still finds a way to put the customer experience front and center and, as a result, remains incredibly friendly to new readers. Nonetheless, I know many shops aren't as inclined, and I always thought Comixology was good for those people - new or casual fans who didn't want the stigma of entering a comic shop (some people don't want to look like dorks, and no one wants to feel unwelcomed).
And then Amazon messed Comixology up even more. [Anna Peppard](https://twitter.com/peppard%5Fanna?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [breaks it all down way better than I can for ComicsXF.](https://www.comicsxf.com/2022/03/06/it-shouldnt-be-this-difficult-comixology-and-accessibility/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- [T. Trewhella](https://twitter.com/Silent%5FT%5FT?ref=fromcovertocover.com) explores the implications of nostalgia [via an examination of Top 10 #8](https://shelfdust.com/2022/03/09/the-infinite-and-finite-in-top-10-8/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) at Shelfdust.
Photo by [Mika Baumeister](https://unsplash.com/@mbaumi?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit) / [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm%5Fsource=ghost&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcampaign=api-credit)
- Finally, [2021 was a record year for comics retail](https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/50651/2021-comics-a-record-year-retail?ref=fromcovertocover.com) as explained by Jim McLaughlin from ICV2\. Amidst the handwringing abut whether or not Diamond was a monopoly with a stranglehold on the industry or whether it was a necessary element to streamline the process for small businesses, sales in a world of multiple distirbutors are increasing exponentially. Of course, correlation doesn't equal causation. What is interesting is the shakedown of [Diamond's top-ten books](https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2022/2022-01.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (Comichron), that includes the entirety of the Spawn line published in the month and only one Marvel book (She-Hulk). Why shops showed a proclivity towards purchasing She-Hulk from Diamond over other Marvel books is a mystery. The other intriguing aspect is the difference in what qualifies as a top 10 comic without Marvel or DC dominating the top of the charts. **Stray Dogs** has been an indie hit and sold 100,000+ copies in December, and one could bet the far on similarly strong sales numbers for the **Saga** revival. That the Spawn team book outsold both of them is indicative both of the vitality of that line and the speculation surrounding a new #1\. If numbers are consistent with December, the Spawn books would ship between 40 and 50 thousand copies - solid for that particular line, but not necessarily top ten material pre-distributor decentralization.
> Nancy By Ernie Bushmiller 1941 [pic.twitter.com/AUD1GjvWIJ](https://t.co/AUD1GjvWIJ?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Nancy Comics by Ernie Bushmiller (@JohnnyCallicutt) [March 12, 2022](https://twitter.com/JohnnyCallicutt/status/1502632326400036865?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### #screenshotreviews- What's the Furthest Place From Here #4 and The Nice House On The Lake #7
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/screenshotreviews-the-nice-house-on-the-lake-7/
Last updated: 2022-03-10T14:59:59.000Z
It's a week for books with a lot of words in their titles.
In case you're just joining us, the idea is that these reviews have to fit into one screenshot of our phones and that screenshot is the review that gets posted. It's a fun way to approach single-issue reviews. You can follow us on Twitter ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) to see them when they're posted or we'll be collecting them and posting them here as well!
This week, we have #screenshotreviews of the following comics:
- **What's the Furthest Place From Here #4**
- **The Nice House On The Lake #7**
Click on the title link to see more preview art from the book.
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[**What's The Furthest Place From Here #4** ](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1485630721104384009?ref=fromcovertocover.com)by Matthew Rosenberg, Tyler Boss, and HassanOstmane-Elhaou, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
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---
**The Nice House On The Lake #7** by James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez Bueno, and Jordie Bellaire, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
### Whatever Happened to the Adventure Capitalist?
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/whatever-happened-to-the/
Last updated: 2024-03-28T01:07:44.000Z
*Look, I'm not exactly sure what happened here. I started pining about wanting to see new *Uncle Scrooge* issues on the stands after a long absence and then I blacked out. Everything below is entirely unconscious.*
Two weeks ago, I started thinking about the lack of new **Uncle Scrooge** comics on the stands. I couldn't pinpoint the exact date of the disappearance, but I knew I hadn't read one in quite some time. Scrooge is the only **Disney** comic I read with regularity, but of course, this gap on the stands exists for all new Disney Comics. There have been no new issues of **Mickey Mouse** nor **Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories**. The **Ducktales** television series revival ended approximately a year ago, but it has certainly been more than a year since I remember seeing **Ducktales** tie-in books on the shelves. After doing a few cursory searches on the ol' Googlebox, I realized it's been roughly two years since we last saw Uncle Scrooge on the stands and closer to five years since we've seen his fellow Disney compatriots. And shame on me for hardly noticing the latter.
Fortunately, we are still flush with **Fantagraphics**' excellent reprints of classic Disney strips. Their superb curation has expanded from the works of Barks and Rosa into a treasury of classic comics, and the production of those books is nothing short of stellar.
Still, I found myself pining for an Uncle Scrooge floppy. Or, at the very least, pining to know that they still exist. Beyond their absence on stands, Disney comics appear rather barren on the digital platforms. Before the Comixology debacle when searching for a book was fairly easy, I checked to see the status of the Duck and Mouse books.
And, nothing. Well, next to nothing. It seems that purchased copies will still show up for the user, but there is no option to buy any of the recent **IDW** books via Comixology. Disney is still offering the IDW-published miniseries, *Uncle Scrooge: My First Millions*, but it's one a scant amount of books listed under a **Disney Comics** moniker. (More of this later, but Disney Comics hasn't existed a specific publishing platform for close to thirty years, though there have been attempts to put all of the various licenses under this branded umbrella regardless of individual publisher).
(By the way, one of the tragedies of the new desktop Comixology format is the inability to quickly access book information. The previous iteration was a godsend for figuring out when a book was released. Not so much anymore).
Uncle Scrooge, both as a series and a character, is the likely best-known example of Disney's comics. Scrooge McDuck is clearly nowhere near as recognizable as his nephew Donald or company mascot Mickey Mouse. But, in the world of comics, Scrooge often has top billing, owing most of his fame to critically acclaimed cartoonists like **Carl Barks**, **Don Rosa**, and **Romano Scarpa**. Scrooge and his famous grand-nephews were birthed in comics. They existed on newsprint long before they made the transition to animation, and I'd contend that status is what continues to endear them to comics fans. Their eventual rise to equal-billing alongside many Walt Disney creations almost defies probability.
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Disney’s handle on comic licensing and publishing is enough for a decent-sized book. But even for our purposes, there are a few important things to understand about Disney and comic books.
First, Disney’s presence in comics’ Golden and Silver Ages would absolutely baffle fans today. Disney stories published via **Dell Comics** and **Gold Key Comics** were immensely popular. Around mid-century, they were arguably as popular as any comic, perhaps even more so given to Disney's lucrative subscription service rife with bonuses, extras, and collector's items not available to kids who would only purchase their books at the drug store spinner rack.
Any accounting of the history of American comics built on legacy titles like **Action Comics** and **The Amazing Spider-Man** would be remiss if it didn’t include **Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories** and perhaps **Uncle Scrooge**. Despite some significant gaps between publishers, the former title tallied approximately 750 issues depending on certain counts, and the latter hit almost 450 issues before its most recent cancellation (500 if you merge the *Uncle Scrooge Adventures* title in).
Second, Disney comics, particularly **Uncle Scrooge**, have remained incredibly popular worldwide even as readership has waned stateside. Scrooge and Mickey never went out of style, and Disney's hallmark Italian publications like **Topolino** and **Uack!** are as popular as any Marvel or DC book.
Third, and perhaps most relevant to our endeavor here, Disney’s licensing and publishing history is absolutely bonkers.
This will be a quick history. As I mentioned above, this story could take up the better part of a long book. Most of this is available via various Wikipedia and Disney fansites, but I'll try to put it together here in a way that makes sense.
And that will be hard. Because it often doesn't.
Disney began licensing its characters to **Western Publishing** who in turn licensed them to **Dell Comics** in 1940\. Yes. This was a tertiary license. By the early 60s, Western had gotten smart and started their own comics company, **Gold Key Comics**. Disney books, along with licenses from other cartoon studios like **Warner Brothers** and **Hanna-Barbera** made up a sizable chunk of Gold Key’s comic lineup through the 1970s. That decade, however, proved to be the ultimate decline for Gold Key and Disney comics in general. Most stories were reprints by the mid-point of the decade, and Gold Key struggled to compete against Marvel and DC. Years later, **Mattel** bought Western Publishing and made the regrettable decision to cease newsstand distribution in favor of three-packs of comics sold at toy stores and department stores under the **Whitman Comics** banner. Eventually, their books would make it to the emerging direct market comic stores, but Disney comics would never capture the same status they had in the Golden and early Silver Ages.
Whitman ceased publishing in 1984\. After a two-year hiatus, Uncle Scrooge would return to comics in 1986 with his fellow Disney compatriots via **Gladstone Publishing**, a company dedicated primarily to publishing Disney comics and birthed out of an original company founded to produce Carl Barks reprints. Gladstone is of course named after Gladstone Gander.
While Gladstone sales weren’t what they were at mid-century, there was certainly a creative renaissance. Gladstone’s primary contribution to Disney and the Ducks comes via the emergence of Don Rosa as the premier Disney Duck cartoonist. Rosa is usually thought of as the heir-apparent to Carl Barks, rounding out the trinity with Romano Scarpa. Gladstone would of course also offer reprints of stories by Barks, Gottfredson, and the aforementioned Scarpa.
But wait? It’s almost 50 years since the first Disney comic appeared on stands. If you're doing the math, it’s the early 90s, Michael Eisner is at the helm, and Disney is experiencing both a feature film and television animation renaissance. Why doesn’t Disney produce its own comics, you might ask?
And Disney asked themselves the same question.
Disney ended the Gladstone licenses in 1990 and thus **Disney Comics** was born.
It would be shuttered three years later.
Disney Comics was indeed ambitious, but most titles barely lasted a year. Legacy titles like **Uncle Scrooge** and **Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories** continued alongside a few random miniseries that tied into television or movie properties. By 1993, the licenses were all back at Gladstone. Disney would continue to publish some new and reprint comics in **Disney Adventures** until that publication ceased in 2007\. Disney also split the license in the mid-90s, leaving the legacy characters to Gladstone and licensing the Disney afternoon lineup and new animated movie adaptations to **Marvel Comics**. Disney's Marvel Comics included adaptations of **Gargoyles**, **Aladdin**, and **Beauty and the Beast**, but they were more or less finished by 1996\. Gladstone held its license until 1998, during which time it published Rosa’s magnum opus, ***The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck***.
All good things must come to an end. There would be another implosion, and though **Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories** and **Uncle Scrooge** would both survive an initial culling, Gladstone would cease publishing in 1998\. I can’t imagine Disney books fared particularly well during the speculator boom or the extreme 90s.
Five years would pass without Scrooge on comics shelves. But who would come to the rescue?
Wait, Steve Geppi?
Goddammit.
Geppi’s newly minted **Gemstone Publishing** picked up the Disney licenses. All of the legacy books converted to a prestige format. Geppi was likely aiming for the collector market. Gemstone books mostly featured stories new to the United States. Sales were decent enough; **Scrooge** seemed to average around 4500 issues shipped monthly, with **Comics and Stories** coming in a few hundred behind. Those aren’t terrible numbers on the face, and the dollar number is definitely bolstered by the $7.99 price tag, but who knows what the expectations are for a licensed Disney book. Gemstone struggled to stay afloat, and by the end of 2008, it had lost the licenses.
Shortly before **Gemstone** lost its Disney Connection, the ever-popular **Gargoyles** re-emerged at **Slave Labor Graphics** of all places. SLG also published some of their own material through **Disney Adventures**, a relationship that seems to have been more successful than their adaptations of Disney material. I'm not positive any of the series were formally concluded, outside of **Gargoyles** that finished in trade.
Cue **BOOM! Studios**, who acquired the license at the beginning of 2009 and revitalized the entire line to critical, if not commercial acclaim. Beginning with a few **Pixar** and **Muppet** tie-ins, **BOOM!** eventually acquired the entire license. They continued to publish the legacy titles using mostly European reprints, notably bringing the *Wizards of Mickey* storyline to American shores. The publisherdoubled down on Geppi’s collector-oriented prestige format books by leaning into multiple covers per issue along with increasing retailer variants. BOOM's books were priced competitively, though, compared with the $7.99 tag on **Gladstone** and **Gemstone** books.
The **BOOM!** years took a grander worldview than either **Gladstone** or **Gemstone**. Picking up to some degree where **Disney Comics** had left off, **BOOM!** expanded from the traditional legacy titles to include afternoon classics like **Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers** and my personal favorite, **Darkwing Duck**. **BOOM!** seemed to be successful with the entire line, from their early excellent **Muppets** comics by Roger Langridge and successful adaptations of **The Incredibles,** to the legacy titles like **Mickey Mouse** and **Uncle Scrooge**, to the inclusion of Disney Afternoon books that always seemed like they should have been more successful than they turned out to be. It marks the last time I can remember all major Disney licenses being under one roof. Eventually, BOOM! would even experiment with the early stages of a shared universe of sorts, linking Darkwing Duck via the Ducktales continuity.
And if you’re adding years up to determine the timeline, you’re beginning to realize something.
Disney's comic properties moved to **BOOM!** in 2009\. What else happened that year? Oh yeah, Disney dropped $4.2 billion to purchase **Marvel.**
To even begin discussing the ramifications of that purchase in this essay would be to undersell the entire venture, but it would certainly change the fate of Disney Comics.
By 2011, BOOM! Studios was out. After all, Disney now owned the largest and most successful publisher of comics in the world; why would they need **BOOM! Studios**? (Man, that's a lot of punctuation).
Here is where some of the sources diverge. Many have long indicated that Disney pulled the licenses from **BOOM! Studios**, leading to **BOOM!’s** embarrassing [retaliation in Ducktales #3](https://www.cartoonbrew.com/comics/is-this-the-worst-disney-comic-of-all-time-47209.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com). However, others are quick to point out that Disney bought Marvel in 2009, only shortly before **BOOM!** acquired the licenses, and that it was **BOOM!’s** shoddy handling of things - i.e. Ducktales #3 - that hastened the change. I’ve tended to lean more towards the former; if you want to keep a license, you don’t produce one of the worst comics ever printed. You do that if you want to be a jerk.
Here is where things start to get rather interesting, and by interesting, I mean convoluted and weird. The **Marvel** purchase would serve to only complicate Disney properties. Compounding this, Disney would buy **Star Wars** in 2012 (pulling the comic line from longstanding publisher Dark Horse, which in turn "retaliated" in a much more reasonable manner by launching a fire sale of all physical and digital Star Wars books). The purchase of **Lucasfilm** seemed to galvanize interest in the House of Mouse utilizing its dominant comics publishing arm, and Marvel relaunched Star Wars to incredible (and continued) success. Disney also utilized Marvel to print two John Carter series tied to their ill-fated movie (even weirder considering that Dynamite continued to publish their John Carter line). Two years later, Marvel would publish a few random miniseries about Disney World attractions, most notably **Jim Zub’s** charming *Figment*. **CrossGen** comics would also make its brief return from Disney's vaults. Marvel would even publish a few reprints of BOOM! era Muppets books.
But everything else was kind of . . . scattered. If there is something to be said about Disney licenses post-acquisition of Marvel, it’s that they are confusing.
In 2011, Disney tapped **Fantagraphics** to begin reproducing classic Disney comics, covering a segment of the market **Gladstone** served well in the mid-90s. Fanta started with the Ducks via Barks and Rosa libraries before launching a similar collection for **Floyd Gottfredson** and eventually expanding into a **Disney Masters** series. **BOOM!** had been printing some archive editions of Disney works, but nothing of the quality near what **Fantagraphics** would produce. Fanta would create beautiful library editions of these stories, touching up pages and recoloring without losing the original feel.
But, Fanta would serve exclusively as the archivist. Disney tapped a relatively unknown company with connections back to BOOM! named [**Joe Books**](https://joebooks.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) to publish a *Darkwing Duck* omnibus and eventually a new series. **Joe Books** would also publish a **Disney Princess** comic, a **Frozen** comic, a bunch of cinestories (comics made from animation stills) and prose adaptations of other animated properties. And then it gradually faded back into obscurity around 2017\. Its website is *kind of* functional?
Shortly thereafter, **Dark Horse** would find itself back in Disney’s good graces. **Frozen**, **Toy Story**, and **the Incredibles** found their way to **Dark Horse**. It seems that, outside of **Frozen**, **Dark Horse’s** license might extend only to **Pixar** books, but who knows?
In the interim, Disney left the legacy books to sit dormant from the end of the BOOM! license until 2015 when **IDW** picked up the series using a dual-numbering approach and leaning even heavier into the variant cover game. **IDW** would later pick up two **Disney** all-ages licenses - *Star Wars Adventures* and *Marvel Action*. IDW’s Disney-proper experiment wouldn’t be very successful, though. **Mickey Mouse**, **Walt Disney's Comics and Stories**, and **Donald Duck** were all canceled by 2017\. The **Ducktales** tie-in didn’t last as long as its animated counterpart, which itself has since sunsetted. Notable during this time was the publication of the popular Italian story, *Duck Avenger*. (**Fantagraphics** would also publish a *Duck Avenger* collection in 2019). **IDW** also printed a few archive-type collections, seemingly blurring the lines between their license and Fantagraphics'. IDW also launched a floppy reprint anthology, *Disney’s Afternoon Giant*, that featured a good chunk of the BOOM! material reprinted for the first time. The *Uncle Scrooge* title, though, managed to outlast all of those books, and even spawned a companion miniseries, the excellent *My First Millions*.
At some point, it becomes necessary to take stock of exactly how many different comic companies published **Disney**\-owned material within a few years of one another. Since its purchase of **Marvel**, **Disney** has published **John Carter**, **Crosgen**, **Star Wars** and theme park material through **Marvel**; **Star Wars**, legacy **Disney**, and **Marvel** material through **IDW**; a mix of modern and classic animation material through **Joe Books**; modern animation and Pixar material through **Dark Horse**; and legacy material through **Fantagraphics**. Yes, it’s confusing. And it only seems to be getting more so. Disney announced it would be moving the Star Wars all ages license to **Dark Horse**, the company that produced Star Wars books for over two decades. Moreover, following its acquisition of **20th Century Fox**, Disney owns a minority stake in **BOOM! Studios**, meaning it somehow owns two comic companies. Who does Disney think it is, Rob Liefeld?
Right now, you might be reading this and thinking, “who cares?” Sure, the overall market just might not be there for these stories, and the niche market that supports these types of books is likely comprised of people who are more inclined towards (and arguably better served by) the Fantagraphics line.
Is the sky falling? We’ve gone five years between **Uncle Scrooge** books before, and now we’re barely two years removed from the last Scrooge book, and that isn’t *that* long in the grand scheme. Nonetheless, despite the frequent shift in publishers following the demise of **Gold Key**, Disney’s core books were never *canceled* until IDW shut some of them down in 2017\. **Walt Disney’s Comics** **and Stories**, **Uncle Scrooge**, **Donald Duck**, and **Mickey Mouse** all pushed on, regardless of sales numbers. The company might fold or the license might shift, but the legacy books only had to endure a limbo period, not a flat-out cancelation. So, no, the sky isn’t falling. But it doesn’t look particularly sunny either.
Are there solutions?
There are really only two options - Disney either gives up on books like Uncle Scrooge, or it starts at it again.
(Duh, Mike. Something will either happen or it won't. That's some glistening analysis).
Disney scraps floppies and “new” stories. After all, anything that is *new* to us has been circulating Europe for years. Even Rosa-produced stories often found themselves translated into Italian or Finnish before they’d make their way back stateside. Uncle Scrooge, the strongest performer of the bunch, seems hard-pressed to even hit 5000 books a month. While 5k would be a nice number for an upstart indie, it probably isn’t enough to be profitable for a licensed product, especially when there isn’t much in the way of other media or products to tie it back to. I’ve heard the assertion before that the publishing wings of Marvel and DC are both loss leaders for their respective corporate overlords, that the media conglomerates keep publishing floppies for the sake of in-house content factories and research laboratories. I’ve never really bought into that mindset, but I would be stunned if Disney were willing to lose significant money on Scrooge and Donald. On the face, it might make sense, but in the grand scheme, not so much. They already have a vault of content IP, and they’re not exactly utilizing it now. Unless something unprecedented happened, Disney wouldn’t be generating any new stories. So why bother with individual comic books? Why not lean into **Fantagraphics** for the archival publications?
Or, Disney picks a new licensee and starts fresh. For whatever reason, Disney has soured on **IDW**. In addition to the disappearance of the legacy Disney books, **IDW** has lost the all-ages Star Wars license to **Dark Horse** and has canceled the **Marvel Action** line (in addition to losing the **Transformers** and **G.I. Joe** franchises as well). Despite no formal announcement, we likely won’t see any Disney books with an **IDW** banner any time soon. So who gets the books, and how do they look? Is it worth it to lean into the prestige format that Gemstone utilized? Do they go for a traditional paper stock and formatting, but lean towards a 64 page or 100-page model? Are there other tricks? Here are three ideas:
1. Disney decides to publish through **Marvel**. Maybe the books bear a company logo, maybe it’s a Disney imprint. That much doesn’t really matter. At one point during the debacle of multiple publishers towards the end of the ‘10s, Disney got into the habit of branding books as **Disney Comics** regardless of the publisher. Has Disney been angling in this direction all along? Does it matter? Not really. What matters is that **Disney**, via **Marvel**, would be directly publishing its own books for the first time in thirty years.
What would make this model interesting, particularly if it were **Marvel**, is that it would offer the opportunity to infuse the book with some Marvel talent. A Chip Zdarsky run on Uncle Scrooge? Peach Momoko Minnie Mouse variants? Donald Duck: Grand Design?
Initially, I thought the risk/reward gap is obviously the highest for the Marvel move, but it really might be all reward. Yes, there is definitely going to be danger in alienating fans. However, I’d say most of that danger comes from a visual expectation of how Disney books should look. As long as these books keep true to the adventure model, and as long as they look close enough to how Carl Barks drew the characters, they should be fine. It’s not like the traditional model was dragging more than 3000 people in the story anyway, so how many people are going to find themselves on the outside looking in. What DC was able to do with their Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera books could serve as inspiration. I can't see Disney letting Uncle Scrooge dip into a Mark Russell capitalist satire, but man, wouldn't that be fun.
2. Disney gives the entirety of the license over to **Fantagraphics**. In addition to publishing the archival editions, Fanta brings floppies back to the stands. Not a whole lot changes from what we’ve seen in the past, per se, but Fanta is uniquely equipped to lean into the publication value. Many Italian editions are already closer to magazine size; perhaps Fanta would eschew the traditional floppy for a quarterly treasury edition. I’d buy either, to be honest.
3. Disney returns the license to **BOOM!** Think this is weird? I don’t. Disney had no problem pulling the license from Gladstone in favor of their own publishing house only to run back when it flopped. **BOOM!** gives Disney some control. No offense to **BOOM!**, but this is probably the most boring choice as it yields a likely return to the status quo of European imprints in monthly floppies sans much fanfare. The same is likely true if **Disney** decides to go with **Dark Horse**. Again, maybe the move to **BOOM!** revitalizes the **Disney Comics** moniker. But, outside of that, nothing to get particularly excited about there.
Whatever way **Disney** goes, it's assuredly an uphill battle. What are the expectations for a licensed book? Using the last month of truly reliable data from **Diamond** (October 2021), the top twenty licensed books (including **IDW** Star Wars but not **Marvel**) fared as follows:
Masters of the Universe Revelation: 26,148
Star Wars High Republic Adventures: 23,667
Red Sonja: 21,995
Amry of Darkness 1979: 19,657
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 17,436
Star Wars High Republic Adventures Monster Peak: 16,021
Mighty Morphin - 14,772
Power Rangers: 14,772
Cimmerian Beyond the Black River: 13,901
Magic the Gathering: 13,371
Star Wars Adventures Vader’s Castle: 13,308
Firefly: 12,603
Star Wars Adventures: 12,460
Dune: House Altreides: 11,631
Star Trek Mirror War: 11,297
Sonic The Hedgehog: 11,013
Stranger Things Tomb of Ybwen: 10,662
Barbarella: 10,640
Transformers King Grimlock: 10,105
My Little Pony Generations: 10,094
(All of the above information comes from the stellar work of John Jackson Miller and [Comichron](https://www.comichron.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)).
Frankly, I was a little stunned by this group. Of this twenty, only two books - *Cimmerian: Beyond the Black River* and *Barbarella* \- were true number 1s. 18 of these books make it into the top one hundred books shipped by Diamond, with *Transformers: King Grimlok* and *My Little Pony: Generations* still hitting the 10k mark despite clocking in after the top 100\. The other piece of relevant data is the group of books these twenty beat. This set of licensed books topped some fairly high profile and/or critically acclaimed comics, including *Shang Chi, Killadelphia, Savage Avengers, Captain Marvel,* and *That Texas Blood*.
To sell even 5000 copies a month, **Uncle Scrooge** would need to do as well as *Warhammer 40K: Sisters Battle*, with a third issue that hit 5047 copies shipped. The lowest selling licensed comic that doesn’t appear to be simply a differently coded variant cover is *Willy’s Wonderland Prequel* #1, from **American Mythology**. It shipped about 1000 copies and is apparently a tie-in to some weird Nic Cage B-movie that I now really want to see.
But we're far removed from the days when *Uncle Scrooge* could move 5000 books. In October of 2019, the 43rd issue of the IDW series shipped 3339 issues, Fantagraphics' first volume of *The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck* shipped 960 copies, and IDW's *Uncle Scrooge: Treasure in the Clouds* collected edition shipped 362 copies to stores. That totals 4661 *Uncle Scrooge* items shipped in a month. Interestingly enough, the Scrooge floppy sold about just as well as the 5th issue of *Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt,* and better that *Steven Universe.* The numbers for *The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck* feel somewhat low, but that number of course won't count direct orders from Fanta's website, which I can only assume accounts for a decent portion of all Fanta sales, nor does it account for bookstores. (Though I've never personally noticed any of the Fantagraphics Disney books in a book store, but that doesn't mean much). Still, *The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck* didn't even crack the top 1000 graphic novels for 2019.
So, unless Disney feels like re-licensing the franchises yet again to a company like **Dark Horse** or **BOOM!** because: nostalgia, the best bet for any potential creative renaissance via a regular, non-archival periodical publication lies with the **Marvel** option I outlined above. Essentially, the **Marvel** option builds from what **Archie Comics** attempted with their 2015 reboot. But while that initiative - with names including Waid, Staples, Hughes, Krause, and Zdarsky - shot out of the gates, the series has been mostly absent from shelves since 2020 outside of a few one-shot specials. I would expect the novelty and nostalgia of some big names doing their take on the ducks would have a similar shelf life.
The saving grace for the entire situation is **Fantagraphics**. And maybe that's all we need. Perhaps it's time for **Disney** to entirely eschew the periodical on American shores in favor of Fanta's archival editions. At the very least, **Disney** can be assured a good custodian.
Still, I'd love for them to try something different, as unlikely as that might be.
### What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and George Perez’s JLA/Avengers?
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/jla-avengers-by-kurt-busiek-and-george-perez/
Last updated: 2026-08-07T23:47:03.000Z
George Pérez, like Jack Kirby before him, refined the language of superhero comics. In the 1970s, Pérez was a blue-collar artist, working on a variety of comics and titles, from *Justice League of America* to Sons of the Dragon in Marvel’s *Deadly Hands of Kung Fu* magazine. The 1980s cemented his place in comics, first with a stellar character-driven run on *The New Teen Titans*. In that series, he reworked the concept of a team of teenage sidekicks and turned it into a story of growing up and out of the shadows of the previous generation. And then he turned in the universe-altering *Crisis on Infinite Earths*, creating the template for these kinds of massive crossovers events that have become all-too-common today. With both of those created along with writer Marv Wolfman, Pérez is often considered for the spectacle of his work rather than the strong storytelling of it. He’s the guy who puts every detail into every panel and fills his covers with hundreds of characters.
During the 1990s, Pérez seemed more like a journeyman rather than the superstar artist he actually was. He’d turn up for small events like *Hulk: The Future Imperfect*, would ink over Dan Jurgens on a Teen Titans revival, and do covers here or there but he never seemed to find anything series that he could devote himself to until Marvel teamed him up with Kurt Busiek to revive *The Avengers* in 1998\. Together with Busiek, inker Al Vey, and colorist Tom McGraw, Pérez spent the next 3 years telling Avengers stories that stood up to the classic Stan Lee and Roy Thomas-penned comics of the 1960s. Busiek’s writing blends old school and modern sensibilities that were a great fit for *The Avengers* after many years that Marvel spent trying to make their books read and look like Image Comics. With Busiek, Pérez brought a sense of history to the run (some of his earliest work was in Avengers comics circa the mid-1970s) while his style had continued to develop into the sharp, detailed superhero mold. He took the works of Kirby, Adams, and Buscema as his foundational texts and continued to build on them to develop his distinct look.
Pérez left Marvel at the end of 2000 to go over and work exclusively at a new fledgling publisher Crossgen. Crossgen was looking to recreate the Bullpen work aspect that used to exist in comics, having all of their creators move to Florida (Pérez was already there) and work in a bullpen environment. But Pérez had one white whale project written into his contract to supersede his exclusivity with Crossgen. You see, back around 1983, Pérez started working on a Marvel/DC crossover, *JLA & The Avengers*. Back in those days, the two companies had worked on a handful of crossovers, Superman and Spider-Man, Batman and the Hulk, X-Men and the New Teen Titans. Pérez had started drawing this crossover (he was 21 pages into it) when both publishers killed the project. The whys and wherefores about the cancellation of the project are classic he said-she said back and forth between both companies.
"Nothin' but a bunch of Squadron Supreme wanna-bes!"
Speculation and rumors followed the project’s demise for years. The rumors and hope were enough so that when George Pérez signed an exclusive contract with a non-Marvel/DC company, he had a clause written in that IF a JLA/Avengers comic were ever created, his exclusivity would be suspended so that he could work on that project. So in 2003, after some regime changes created a temporary detente between both publishers, Pérez got to use that clause in his Crossgen contract when Marvel and DC re-greenlit the **JLA/Avengers** crossover.
The four issues that came out in late 2003 and early 2004 are a loving homage to Pérez’s history with both teams, including the abandoned 1983 crossover whose plot gets referenced at one point. Reuniting with his *Avengers* partner Kurt Busiek, Perez’s artwork ends up being relentless in its drive to use every square centimeter of the page, using every detail to show the conflict between the classic heroism of the DC universe and the world-outside-your-window type of struggles of the Marvel characters. Like every good crossover, it starts with a misunderstanding between the two teams that set them against each other.
Busiek’s story is a solid compare-and-contrast narrative of these two teams and really between Marvel and DC. Unlife earlier Marvel/DC crossovers that just glossed of the mingling of these two universes (Spider-Man who had teamed up with every Marvel hero just somehow had never made his way to Metropolis before) Busiek and Pérez used that narrative rift between the two publishers as the driving force behind this stories plot. It’s not just Marvel and DC, it’s Marvel *VS* DC, exploring the differences between the worlds of the JLA and the Avengers, while also trying to offer up fanboyish dream matchups like Captain America vs. Batman and Thor vs. Superman.
Reading **JLA/Avengers** is exhausting, not because it’s bad but because there’s so much crammed into it. At one point or another, nearly every member of both teams show up. There’s a core version of both teams but even that shifts a bit as the story plays with reality during the conflicts. And some characters show up for the briefest of cameos, hidden in a corner of a panel. Part of the fun is digging through this and trying to find D-Man or Big Sir. They are in there; you just need to look. The final issue is a big brouhaha of heroes and villains where Pérez is at his best in drawing all the details so that you can easily identify every character. There are no shortcuts to any of his drawings. The detail of all of these characters is repeated throughout the comics with artifacts and settings from the history of these two teams. If this came out today, there would be countless YouTube channels posting “Top 100 Things You Missed in JLA/Avengers” videos.
So much storytelling today is built on Easter Eggs, those obscure details that only fans would know that make shows like Hawkeye or Peacemaker an even geekier thing for those in the know. JLA/Avengers may be one of the earliest stories built on Easter Eggs like that. Through all of the TV shows and movies, we’ve grown used to stories being built on these old details and nostalgia. There’s nothing new under the sun so all of our modern, pop culture has to be built on old foundations and details (see *Spider-Man: No Way Home* if you doubt that at all.) It gets tiring because entertainment feels like homework where you need to pour over every detail of previous Spider-Man movies and stories to understand the latest one.
Just one of the fanboy moments that are about the characters.
But before this Easter Egg storytelling became the language of pop culture, Pérez and Busiek used it to celebrate these two teams and their histories. All of these costumes and these different references are part of the story, feeding into the disorientation that these characters are feeding and becoming part of the narrative. Any other artist would struggle with the depth of detail this story plums but Pérez is also enough of a geek that he gets what these Easter Eggs need to be and how they need to support the story. And he is a great storyteller because these details never overshadow the characters.
Which gets us to the thing that fandom wanted to see since 1983– the JLA meeting the Avengers. For all of the history of this project, all of the minute details and density of the art, Pérez works with Busiek’s story to make sure that we understand that the characters are at the center of this comic. Busiek’s story revolves around the idea of these two universes being forced to merge in a cosmic crisis (again, another nod to Pérez’s history.) As Busiek’s writing finds its drama in the clash of these characters, Pérez’s art supports that but also finds the commonality in their identities as heroes. It’s amazing how natural Pérez makes Captain America leading the JLA into action look. Even if the characters don’t know each other, their roles within the teams create some interesting visuals, like how the Avengers all attack Superman after he beats Thor in a fight or where we see versions of both teams from the 1980s hanging out on the Justice League’s satellite headquarters. Pérez has this way of treating both teams that grounds them and their very human stories.
There’s one sequence from the third issue where two classic lineups of these teams have to face things that they’ve done and become in time. Busiek and Pérez show heroes facing their failings like Yellowjacket’s physical abuse of Wasp or Hal Jordan’s heel turn after the destruction of his hometown. It’s this moment of the characters confronting the reality behind their myths and yet being able to put those aside to be the heroes who will save the day. These few pages are full of all of those Easter Eggs from older comics but Pérez can show the weight of the moment on these characters. It’s a revelation for the characters and a reminder for the readers of both the highlights and low points of these histories that Pérez can express as disappointment, reluctance but also motivation and obstacles to overcome. Pérez and Busiek give these characters a chance to realize that all of these actions and moments are part of them but also moments that they can rise above. It’s a character moment that acknowledges what has happened and then gets back to the business of saving the day.
It’s things like that which make **JLA/Avengers** a highlight of both teams. Pérez and Busiek’s tandem efforts to tell both a JLA and an Avengers story require them to give a ton of characters space in this story to make this an important story for both teams and not just a throwaway, gimmicky comic. Pérez could have drawn the hell out of a 180+ page battle between each team, providing answers to questions like is Captain America or Batman a better fighter or can Superman lift Thor’s hammer. And they do work those fanboyish questions into the story but they also tell the story of both teams fighting together to save not just one universe but both universes. They lean into everything that their audience wanted to see and give more than just those fights; they give a story about these characters overcoming their own doubts and prejudices to band together and overcome immense obstacles.
Thank you, George, for having the foresight to make sure that if this project was ever going to happen, you were going to be the one who drew it.
Thank you for reading ****From Cover to Cover**.
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The new Hero Initiative Limited Printing of JLA/Avengers
### Getting Caught Up In the Hands of Lale Westvind's GRIP
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/grips-by-lale-westvind/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T17:30:56.000Z
## A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lale Westvind’s **Grip** is a journey that starts in the most innocuous way with a woman walking down a sidewalk. Nothing special, no grand destiny waiting to be met or any sense of destiny in that walk. Just a woman, our hero figure in this story, stumbling a break in the wall that she’s compelled/pushed to look into. Some internal or external force causes her a moment’s curiosity that changes her, turning her hands into whirling, tornado-like forces of nature. Westvind draws this moment, and many more in this comic like it, as chaotic storms to be tamed and controlled. They’re not destructive but vocational and creative; they just need to be controlled and learned about. And so begins this woman’s path to learn about her abilities to create and craft as a woman from other women who have already learned these things about themselves.
Largely wordless with a few sound effects and printed materials like posters or books in the background, Westvind has created one of the loudest comics. Her colors practically fight each other on the page. The vivid pinks set against yellow backgrounds set the volume of this comic, pushing the visual decibels to their max. It verges on being difficult to look at but Westvind never turns the knobs to 11, instead finding just the right balance of these colors that make these images so intriguing and captivating. Her bright, warm colors, occasionally toned down with cooling purples and greens, welcome and guide us into this woman’s new experiences. For everything else that visually happens in this book, these unique colors provide an anchor for the reader throughout the book. It’s not a base that we’re used to but we can quickly grow accustomed to it, swept along in their warmth.
These colors establish a unified base for Westvind’s drawings, which are some of the most rapturously energized art as she shows the process of learning how to work with your hands. She turns this learning into an experiential act that’s frenzied, that’s haphazard, that’s frustrating for the woman. Whatever she has to learn about the powers and skills that she’s gained, it’s not easy or clear. Westvind takes what the character is experiencing, which most cartoonists would use dialogue and narration to get to, and turns it into a much more visceral experience for the character and, more importantly, for the reader. If the woman is learning what she can do, we have to learn to read Westvind’s drawings as tone and energy as much as, if not more than, we do as narrative and plot.
## “Expansive and Enveloping..."
And those drawings. How do you even begin to describe the ways that Westvind plays with time, with movement, and with space in this comic? She molds form and space around this woman in exaggerated ways that signal this journey’s spiritual elements as much as it does its physical one. And maybe it’s even more about the spiritual journey than any physical trip that this woman is taking to learn. Starting as just a traveler on the sidewalk, the woman’s world opens up to so much more than just that sidewalk. Whatever she encounters that changes her also changes the scope of her world, creating opportunities that she didn’t have before and shifting her worldview to be much broader than it originally was.
Westvind draws a spiritual journey to discover this character’s place in the world. She begins small and unassuming, experiences something that she thinks is unique but discovers that there are other women like her. Whatever she’s going through, she’s not alone in it; Westvind opens these experiences up to be communal and shared. It’s a truly lovely image that she builds of support, exploration, and community that this woman now finds herself part of. The cartoonist gets caught up in this story, pulled into the wake of its forward force. Each page and each image is something to get lost in as it swirls up around you but it’s also something to let carry you into the exploration of its themes. The printed page is relatively small and self-contained but the spirit of the artwork is expansive and enveloping.
For as “loud” as the comic is, it’s also tremendously physical. With all of the quick hand movements, it should seem off-putting, possibly even confrontational. But Westvind finds honor in the work of these hands; she finds dignity in them. They are a part of this woman that she’s growing into in this comic. They take her on this magical trip of discovery but they’re also shaping the world. One of the main takeaways in this book is just how active the woman is. She’s in constant motion in a way that is carrying her through the world, into each new encounter and opportunity. Everything she does and everyone she meets helps lead her to the next thing. The next thing is almost always an opportunity to learn new ways to mold the story around her and to mold her own story in them. Each page is empowering her more and more, expounding on the agency that she already has but giving her more knowledge to back up that agency. She’s a worker and a crafter, learning constantly by actually doing.
**Grip** is constantly moving forward and never looks back. It’s a journey that starts with a walk down a sidewalk and leads this woman into a quest of discovery. Lale Westvind’s pages are brimming full of this woman’s constant activity. The physical page almost isn’t big enough to contain everything that’s happening in Westvind’s drawings and that’s part of the magic of this book. It’s a story that’s bigger than just what can be shown on a page. And words aren’t sufficient enough for this story so Westvind relies solely on her images to convey the magic and dignity of this journey. And the images never fail to capture the power of Westvind’s story.
### The Week In Comics Journalism- February 5, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-week-in-comics-journalism/
Last updated: 2022-02-05T19:26:52.000Z
Something about this week. It felt like by Tuesday, we already had a week's worth of news and articles to post back to. Maybe it's the carry-over from the MAUS banning last week but here we are.
If you like any of the pieces here, we strongly recommend following the writes on Twitter, Instagram, RSS feeds and any otherway you can.
- Nate Powell recounts when **March** had trouble getting into libraries and the challenges faced by artists when it comes to making sure their books get to the audiences that need them. You can also read the comic at one of our favorite places for journalistic comics, [The Nib](https://thenib.com/shelf-it/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/CZb%5FFAVraKe/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Nate Powell (@seemybrotherdance)](https://www.instagram.com/p/CZb%5FFAVraKe/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
- This comic by [Andy Marlette](https://twitter.com/AndyMarlette?ref=fromcovertocover.com) was originally going to be the feature image above until I found that great quote from Powell. So here it is, a picture that says a thousand words.
- In litigious news of the week, Corrado Rizzi reports for Classaction.org on a [lawsuit against the publisher Action Lab](https://www.classaction.org/blog/comic-creators-file-lawsuit-saying-action-lab-entertainment-contracts-should-be-null-and-void?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> The case claims Action Lab’s apparent failure to follow through on its contractual promises started long before the pandemic. Per the lawsuit, the defendant’s contracts with creators represented that the company would put the individuals’ work into print, as opposed to releasing it digitally. Moreover, the handbooks provided to each creator promised Action Lab would not only release their works in print but promote and market the properties, report sales and income figures, drum up retailer support and stay in communication throughout the publishing and sales process, according to the case.
Action Lab was founded in 2010 and has had a somewhat turbulent history but it used to sound like it was mostly due to just being a young publisher but over the last couple of years, more and more disgruntled creators have been vocal about their feelings for the publisher.
Right now, there's almost nothing on [Action Lab's website](https://actionlabcomics.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), just promising something new. But based on Rizza's article, I wonder how long it will be before we see something from therm.
- A writer called [Stitch at Teen Vogue revisits a 2014](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/lie-of-let-people-like-things-stitch-fan-service?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (although the Facebook post is dated 2016) [comic by Adam Ellis](https://www.facebook.com/booksofadam/photos/a.160195804031634/1107530019298203/?type=3&theater) that became a whole anti-criticism thing.
Remember this one?
Stitch writes that fandom has a problem with criticism.
> To be clear: “Let People Like Things” culture is bad for the internet, cultural criticism, media, and fandom as a whole *because* of how this approach to popular culture turns all criticism into a conflict or an attack. It’s a form of anti-intellectualism to frame all criticism as “bad faith” b\*tching from the haters, even when it comes to issues of [racism](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/what-falcon-and-the-winter-soldier-teaches-us-about-fandom-misogynoir?ref=fromcovertocover.com) or [other forms of bigotry](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/harry-potter-jk-rowling-transmisogyny-what-we-owe-each-other?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
- Can I just say, I love Roger Langridge?
> [ View this post on Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/p/CZQznFCodqp/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
>
> [A post shared by Roger Langridge (@hotelfred)](https://www.instagram.com/p/CZQznFCodqp/?utm%5Fsource=ig%5Fembed&utm%5Fcampaign=loading)
- Warwick Johnson is a fantastic artist. If you haven't seen him yet check out **[Falconspeare](https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/3008-116/Falconspeare-HC?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**, recently out from Dark Horse. There have been two good interviews with him lately. First [Wendy Browne at Women Write About Comics](https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2022/01/interview-warwick-johnson-cadwell-returns-to-vampire-hunting-and-mystery-with-falconspeare/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and just this week [Joe Decie at The Comics Journal](https://www.tcj.com/i-much-prefer-the-drawing-of-a-thing-more-than-the-finishing-of-it-an-interview-with-warwick-johnson-cadwell/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) where he talked about collaborating with Mike Mignola.
> I love collaborations. Making my own stories I could, if I chose, avoid all the things I might not want to draw, making it easier for myself to do. Working with a writer takes off those stabilizers but collaborating is so much more. Working with others means you end up with something you wouldn’t have made by yourself, something properly new. I find the process of drawing very enjoyable, \[and\] also engaging and instructive, I learn a lot from it. Having another creator involved expands that experience. Working from Mike’s script with **Mr. Higgins* was amazing, exciting and daunting, and that was an original work. Working on **Tank Girl* and **Samurai Jack*brought another big element to the process in terms of audience expectation, and that opened up a whole other pile of issues. It also depends how you collaborate too.
- Sean Knickerbocker's **Rust Belt Review** has been on my list of books I need to check out and [Panel Patter-pal Rob McMonigal's review of it makes me even more interested](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/01/reviewing-rust-belt-review.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> The next story is "Best of Three" by Knickerbocker and it's the longest story in the anthology. The art style is a familiar one to me, sharing some qualities with Ben Towle, Kevin Huizenga, Charles Forsman, and others who I've read a lot of stories from over the years. The characters are ordinary people who might not be the nicest people in the world...
### Teenage Boredom in R. Kikou Johnson's Night Fisher
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/night-fisher-by-r-kikou-johnson/
Last updated: 2022-01-31T15:30:00.000Z
To most of us, the thought of living in Maui is like living in paradise; the sun, the beaches, the warmth, and the whole atmosphere of aloha that must be everywhere there. If we think about it, we’d probably conclude that this is a case of “the grass is always greener…” but it’s still nice to imagine that it’s the greenest paradise that we could think of. But for someone who lives there, who grew up there and has had to deal with it being the only place they know, they probably have to imagine that the grass is greener somewhere else, just like the rest of us. And then there are people like Loren in R. Kikuo Johnson’s **Night Fisher**, an outsider who moved with his father to Maui from Boston. In his last year at a fancy prep school, Loren is not a native of Hawaii but he’s not a tourist. He’s not an adult but he’s not a child. He lives in this perpetual transitory state where he feels like he’s always playing catch up with the other kids around him, especially his childhood best friend Shane.
To say that Loren is lost implies that he has somewhere he should be. There are the high school kids who know what they want and then the kids who know what they should want, the college and education that they’re told are what should come next in their lives. Loren seems caught somewhere in between, wanting to escape a life he feels ignored by but with no real desire or ambition to sweep him to that next step. It doesn’t help that Shane has always been ahead of Loren that way, taking those steps and teenage rebellions well ahead of Loren. For Loren, it’s like he’s watching and having to learn second-hand what he should be doing with his life.
Johnson’s story of Loren’s “lost” senior year, marked by drug use and criminality, shows a kid who isn’t bad but just looking for something to fill a void. With no personally-held goals, the influence of Shane and other people (who are far more criminally-leaning) gives Loren something to do other than school and yard work. As shown here, Loren doesn’t take control of his life at any point, he just goes along with the flow and hopes that the flow works out for him. And eventually, that flow has him standing lookout at a construction site as his new drug buddies search for generators to steal so that they can sell them to buy more drugs. It’s a cycle that he falls into for no particular reason other than his momentum (or lack of it) just pulls him in that direction.
An ennui permeates nearly every page of **Night Fisher**. Johnson’s stark black-and-white artwork acts almost as a binary representation of Loren’s emotional state. It’s either on or off, black or white. There’s almost no middle ground to Loren or any of Johnson’s other characters. There’s just this state of being that comes down to just existing daily. School is a bit of a joke, Loren is a foreigner even though he’s gone to school with these kids for years. There’s got to be something more to each day, some reason to get out of bed that’s more than it’s just what you do. And that’s a key to a lot of teenage rebellion; it’s just a question of how that rebellion expresses itself.
It’s fascinating how Johnson builds a backstory for Loren without giving him much of one other than his father and he moved to Maui from Boston several years ago. His father’s a dentist who has trouble keeping the front yard vegetation under control but that’s almost all we know about Loren’s background. Mother or any other family? Why move to Hawaii? For a kid who can’t picture what his future could be, Loren doesn’t give us much of any insight into his past, beyond his time in prep school. He barely even recognizes this blindspot in his life, even when he finds his father depressingly sitting at the kitchen table, with a piece of paper in his hand. Loren brushes it off, eager to get out of the house and meet up with his accomplices. “Fishing” he answers when his dad asks if he’s going anywhere. He can’t get out of the house soon enough even though it’s obvious that his father just wants to talk. Left alone, his father continues to look at a home loan statement. Johnson’s artwork is just clear enough that we know what it is that it’s concerning for his father but not enough to know why.
Loren’s oblivious disregard for his father or his past demonstrates the aimlessness that Loren is going through. He’s so wrapped up in his own high-school drama and selfishness that everything else becomes just noise in his life. Johnson gives us an insider view of Hawaii and it turns out it’s just largely another suburban environment, full of bored suburban kids. There are moments where Johnson shows us the wonders of Hawaii and the magic of youth, a strange unwanted innocence that wants to grow up too quickly, and the friendship and peace of fishing at night. These moments and more are special, even if Loren doesn’t recognize the magic of the moments.
**Night Fisher** expresses a longing that we can all probably sympathize with, a longing to be somewhere else, to be someone else. Johnson taps into the listlessness that Loren is experiencing as only a seventeen-year-old can. It’s an uncertainty of life or whether there’s a future that seems tolerable. And if there’s no desirable future, why not give in to just following a seemingly meaningless path of the present. If there’s no future, what do our actions in the present even mean? That’s a bit of a childish way of looking at the world and our place in it. But let’s be honest, Loren is still a child no matter how much he wants to be something else.
### This Week in Comics Journalism - January 29, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-2/
Last updated: 2022-01-29T16:00:00.000Z
we're back with some links for you to check out and of course, we have to start with one of the biggest pieces of news this week...
- Comics made their way into broad societal discourse once again with a Tennessee school district's headlining grabbing choice to [remove Maus from classrooms for a bevy of dubious reasons.](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/us/maus-banned-holocaust-tennessee.html??ref=fromcovertocover.com)
At play here are two important lines of discourse, both equally frustrating to most thinking persons. First is the absolutely fallacious rationale for removing *any* work about the Holocaust for its use of swear words or graphic imagery. But, that's to be expected from an ilk equally opposed to any real discussion of slavery or segregation in history curricula because, I don't know, it might make white children sad or something? Second is the underlying attack on graphic literature or sequential art as a form. Graphic novels written for children and young adults are easily the most progressive form of literature going these days, and Maus, a forerunner to the use of graphic literature in academia, likely did more to legitimize the form in the eyes of skeptics than any other comic prior, and perhaps since. *The Diary of Anne Frank*, *Night*, and *Maus* \- these books are canon for young people to learn about the Holocaust, and any assault on one is exactly as disgusting and indefensible as it appears. There's not subtletly here, no nuance, despite what any ban proponents would have you believe.
Fortunately, there are numerous bookstores, comic shops, organizations, and individuals providing copies or courses.
[Nirvana Comics in Knoxville offers free copies of Maus](https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/knoxville-comic-book-store-giving-away-free-copies-of-maus-after-it-was-banned-in-mcminn-county-schools/51-0f68161a-fca5-4daa-afeb-f957b33a6cc1?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Bay Area Comic Shop Sends Free Copies of Maus to Students in TN](https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/bay-area-comic-shop-donates-banned-maus-books-16813987.php?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Ryan Higgins of Comicscon Store Donating 100 Copies of Maus to Families in McMinn, TN](https://twitter.com/RyanHigginsRyan/status/1486484761648328704?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Scott Denham Offers a Free Online Course for Students Affected by the Ban](https://www.mauscourse.scottdenham.net/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- In good news, [The Small Press Expo announced it will return for an in-person convention this fall.](https://graphicpolicy.com/2022/01/24/small-press-expo-announces-its-in-person-return-in-september/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) Despite living in Maryland, I haven't been to SPX in years, and I'm incredibly excited for the chance to go this year.
- I've never read *The Nao of Brown*, but I have read [Chloe Maveal's piece about it and now I've added something new to my reading list.](https://neotextreview.com/culture/ten-out-of-ten-a-personal-reflection-on-glyn-dillons-the-nao-of-brown/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- At *The Nation*, [J. Hoberman writes a fascinating review of the new book, Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperalism,](https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/pulp-empire-comic-books/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) "an engaging account of the ways in which comics variously served or confounded official interests."
- Chris Schilling of The Alliance Review writes about why [Lichtenstein's 'borrowing' still a source of discomfor](https://www.the-review.com/story/opinion/2022/01/29/chris-schillig-lichtensteins-borrowing-still-source-discomfort/9253297002/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)t."
- [From Comicbook.com, TKO announces a distribution deal with Simon and Schuster.](https://comicbook.com/comics/news/tko-studios-simon-schuster-reach-distribution-agreement/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) TKO has put out nothing but quality products since its inception, but I guess there is a ceiling on how much you can disrupt the machine. The publisher seems to have moved away from their original model and has coalesced into mostly offering OGNs (though I'm seeing the box sets still available on their website. TKO still distributes directly to comic shops outside of Diamond or Lunar's auspices, but their books have long been available on Comixology and the requisted Amazon/Barnes and Noble/Bookshop.org. It will be interesting to assess if the move to a distributor is a precursor to an increase in other media adaptations, something thas has always seemed to be the underlying ambition of TKO. Well, that, and disruption, but it seems like the machine has gradually chipped away at that ambition.
- Speaking of disruption, [the Bad Idea guys are still at it for some reason, doing . . . stuff. Via Bleeding Cool.](https://bleedingcool.com/comics/cgc-asks-bad-idea-to-stop-selling-the-slabbed-invisible-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- From CBR - [Why the Pushing Daisies Comic Series Was Canceled.](https://www.cbr.com/pushing-daisies-comic-book-sequel/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) I didn't know one had been ordered. But now I'm perturbed.
- Also from CBR, [DC delays the Milestone Black History Month](https://www.gamesradar.com/dc-milestones-in-history-black-history-month/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) celebration until June. Perhaps they are hoping to salvage some connection via Juneteenth, but the entire idea of missing a Black History Month special in . . . (checks notes) . . . Black History Month is entirely disconcerting. Unfortunately, this is another stumble for the Milestone reboot that just hasn't seemed to catch on the way most of us wanted it to.
- Ian Thomas has a [great interview with Sean Phillips at The Comics Journal.](https://www.tcj.com/we-get-to-do-whatever-we-want-an-interview-with-sean-phillips/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- [The second installment of Nicholas Breutzman's Pill Hill arrived this week on Solrad](https://solrad.co/solrad-presents-pill-hill-2?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
## Some good reviews:
- Ryan Carey reviews [Bryan McCray's Krania from Strangers Fanzine Press.](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2022/01/26/swords-sandals-and-subversion-brian-mccrays-krania/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- [The Portland Mercury praises *Made in Korea*.](https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2022/01/28/38117883/comics-review-made-in-korea-is-the-best-comic-book-weve-read-in-the-last-decade?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- [Nicholas Burman reviews *Night Bus* for TCJ.com](https://www.tcj.com/reviews/night-bus/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Nancy by Olivia Jaimes for Fri, 28 Jan 2022 [https://t.co/NlSA91WHZA](https://t.co/NlSA91WHZA?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/U6dosdOLqF](https://t.co/U6dosdOLqF?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Nancy (@SluggoIsLit) [January 28, 2022](https://twitter.com/SluggoIsLit/status/1487040980972937219?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### #Screenshot Reviews- What's The Furthest Place From Here #3 and Usagi Yojimbo #25
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/screenshot-reviews-whats-the-furthest-place-from-here-3-and-usagi-yojimbo-25/
Last updated: 2022-01-27T15:00:06.000Z
One interesting challenge with these #screenshotreviews that I'm wanting to set up for myself in 2022 is using them to look at each issue of a couple of comic series. So far that's what I've been able to do with Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss's **What's The Furthest Place From Here,** [covering all three issues now in these short reviews](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/tag/tyler-boss/). I'm hoping to find a few other series to do this with. We'll see how that experiment goes.
In case you're just joining us, the idea is that the review has to fit into one screenshot of our phones and that screenshot is the review that gets posted. It's a fun way to approach single-issue reviews. You can follow us on Twitter ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) to see them when they're posted or we'll be collecting them and posting them here as well!
This week, we have #screenshotreviews of the following comics:
- What's the Furthest Place From Here #3
- Usagi Yojimbo #25
Click on the title link to see more preview art from the book.
---
**[What's The Furthest Place From Here #3 ](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1485630721104384009?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**by Matthew Rosenberg, Tyler Boss, and HassanOstmane-Elhaou, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
---
**[Usagi Yojimbo #25](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1485995373772505088?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** by Stan Sakai and Hi-Fi Design, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
### This Week in Comics Journalism - January 22, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-january-22-2022/
Last updated: 2022-01-22T18:14:25.000Z
Welcome to this week's post of a few of the articles, think pieces, and profiles that we've been reading this week. Yes, the first piece is more than just comics but I think it speaks to what's happening at a site that just a few years ago was one of the best mainstream sites covering comics.
- Not really comics but one of the big things this week was the news that 7 Chicago-based editors of the AV Club have essentially been forced out of their jobs by parent company G/O Media.
> UPDATE: The seven A.V. Club workers in Chicago have decided to take their union-contract-protected severances rather than move to L.A. without a cost-of-living adjustment. A statement from the union (1/X): [pic.twitter.com/IOUwuR0TWn](https://t.co/IOUwuR0TWn?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Onion Inc Union (@OnionIncUnion) [January 18, 2022](https://twitter.com/OnionIncUnion/status/1483504541266063360?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Back in 2017, the AV Club won the Eisner for best comic journalism so it is tangentially comics-related as one of their chief comic critics, Oliver Sava, is also Chicago based. It should be noted that Sava's recent writing seems to be more spread out to other sites now as the [AV Club's coverage of comics](https://www.avclub.com/aux/comics?ref=fromcovertocover.com) seems fairly anemic the last couple of years.
Robert Channick [covers these exits in the Chicago Tribune](https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-av-club-la-move-chicago-staff-leaving-20220120-dmy64npd5ng63irdzdliifzqha-story.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com):
> In addition to \[Managing Editor Erik\] Adams, the Chicago staffers leaving the A.V. Club include Film Editor A.A. Dowd; TV Editor Danette Chavez; and Associate Editor Laura Adamczyk. Four of the employees including Adams have agreed to stay on until May 1, while three will stay through March 1 as the editorial locus shifts westward, Neschis said.
At Gawker, [Tarpley Hitt wrote about the embarrassing ways](https://www.gawker.com/media/av-club-staffers-turn-down-invitation-to-move-to-la?ref=fromcovertocover.com) that G/O Media handled setting up these positions to transition from Chicago to L.A.
> In their statement on Tuesday, the Onion Union — representing “The Onion, The A.V. Club, The Takeout, Deadspin, Onion Labs, and Onion Inc.’s art, video, and marketing departments” — claimed that G/O Media had declined to negotiate on any of the terms of the relocation or severance. The company had, however, allowed “departing employees to purchase their company laptops at a depreciated value.” Had the staffers agreed to relocate, they would have held their current positions and salaries, but would not have received a cost-of-living increase, though Los Angeles is more expensive than Chicago.
And then at Pajiba, [Kayleigh Donaldson picks up the story](https://www.pajiba.com/miscellaneous/the-gutting-of-the-av-club-is-an-embarrassment-to-the-industry-and-a-horrible-sign-of-its-future.php?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and writes about how this is a repeating cycle in entertainment journalism.
> Whether you’re in this industry or just a fan of its work, it’s become increasingly crushing to see the same cycle of patterns play out. A site with a unique identity and loyal readership is bought out by some Silicon Valley conglomerate that starts raving in buzz-speak about how they love the ‘content.’ They don’t want to change anything, no siree, they’re fans too, and they just want the site to be its best self, Oprah-style. Then writers start leaving. The distinct atmosphere of the site changes. A lot more generic listicle posts and clickbaity headlines appear. There are rumblings about management ignoring union organizers or outright targeting them. Job postings go viral, revealing the staggering workloads expected of an employee for well below the minimum wage. Soon, that site you loved just looks and feels like a dozen other sites, covering the exact same headlines, reviewing less niche works, making the same lists of painfully familiar things You Won’t Believe. And you know it’s not the writers’ faults, but something just isn’t the same anymore. Then the site is gone, shuttered or sold off to the next SEO goon.
We've seen the same thing in comics, on a much smaller scale as independent comics sites have grown over time, start covering more than just comics, catch the eyes of venture capitalists, content farms, and companies that see a reach into new and exciting advertising channels buy and shape the content of those sites to reach a fairly large but homogenous audience.
We hope that the former A.V. Club editors and staff quickly find new opportunities that give them the ability to live where and how they want.
---
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---
art by Trevor Von Eeden
- For NeoText Review, [Chloe Maveal spotlights one of the greatest artists of the 1980s who just never really had a book that clicked with a wide audience as she profiles the work of Trevor von Eeden](https://neotextreview.com/culture/lightning-in-a-bottle-the-art-and-legacy-of-trevor-von-eeden/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> Taking inspiration from creators like [**Alex Toth**](https://neotextreview.com/culture/alex-toth-cartoons-comics-and-cheesecake/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Jim Steranko, [**Joe Kubert**](https://neotextreview.com/culture/make-war-no-more-marking-75-years-post-wwii-with-joe-kuberts-war-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), and even Frank Miller, **Thriller* is von Eeden in full swing, putting out artwork that’s at once bold and graphic and scratchy and intimate, with every line an expression of where he was at personally at the time. In [**a 2019 interview**](https://www.tcj.com/josh-bayer-trevor-von-eeden/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), he memorably referred to the run as containing “some of the very BEST, and the very WORST work of my career,” adding that it was “indeed a complete expression of myself… it’s just that the ‘self’ that I was back then wasn’t exactly a HAPPY one.” Such unhappiness for the artist wasn’t necessarily visible to the reader, though; instead, they were more likely to be blown away by some of the boldest, more powerful artwork published by DC [**since Kirby’s New Gods***](https://neotextreview.com/culture/behold-the-universe-a-celebration-of-jack-kirbys-the-eternals/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) was in full flower.
- Back to comics... [James Kaplan gets an advance look at Dave Chisholm's new book **Enter The Blue**](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/01/advance-review-enter-blue-by-dave.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), writing:
> Throughout the book, Chisholm does a great job showing us Jessie's emotional journey as she makes her way into and through the Blue. There are a lot of famous faces waiting for her which is a lot of fun to see. But Chisholm also shows the seductive power and allure of the Blue. It's a moment of raw honesty, but it's also a rush for the musicians, a high.
- Also at Panel Patter, [Rachel Lapidow covers Guillaume Long's ](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/01/blog-post.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**[To Drink and To Eat: Treats & Tribulations from a French Kitchen](http://www.panelpatter.com/2022/01/blog-post.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).**
> I knew that I was in good hands when on an introductory page that explains various icons, author Guillaume Long adds one called "Mr. Publisher" that as he explains represents "Spontaneous interjections from Oni-Lion Forge executives to improves this book's readability, meaning its sales." The book is a mix of recipes, travel logs, discourses on food, interesting facts about vegetables and fruits, a guide to spices, and some other miscellaneous entries, like a dream the author had about dining with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
> this week in building out the site, i have created a landing page for senior staff writer [@93418](https://twitter.com/93418?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)'s classic comic of the week...they're all on there, all the way back to when we started the feature during the early pandemic shipping freeze[https://t.co/ZCCxxKr6tx](https://t.co/ZCCxxKr6tx?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/ZwluupnUv4](https://t.co/ZwluupnUv4?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Comics Bookcase (@ComicsBookcase) [January 21, 2022](https://twitter.com/ComicsBookcase/status/1484656036602601474?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- One of the things that I really enjoy over at [Comic Bookcase is d. emerson eddy's Classic Comic of the Week](https://www.comicsbookcase.com/classic-comic-of-the-week?ref=fromcovertocover.com) series and they've now made a landing page for it. It's fascinating to see the comics that emerson has been chronicling during the last couple of years.
From Nod Away V2, written and drawn by Joshua Cotter
- I really wish last year I had the headspace to really explore Josh Cotter's **Nod Away Volume 2** so I was glad this week to see [Edward Howard dive into it over at Solrad](https://solrad.co/privileging-emotion-over-technology-ed-howard-reviews-nod-away-vol-1-2-by-joshua-w-cotter?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> This kind of unexpected connection highlights the series’ gradually increasing focus on ways of thinking about and visualizing the world. The second volume includes a lot more of this interstitial drawing. In some places, the lines weave between panels, their shapes filling in the gutters and drawing literal connections between the curve of a cloud in one panel and the spindly autumn branches of a tree on the facing page. Indeed, the second volume opens with a single dot expanding to a line, then a dense tangle that gradually coheres into an aerial view of an airport’s layout, leading into the opening image.
And some quick hits:
- [IDW loses Transformers and GI Joe licenses, announces 2021 results](https://www.comicsbeat.com/idw-loses-transformers-and-gi-joe-licenses-announces-2021-results/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (Heidi Macdonald @ The Beat)
- [Author Ron Goulart Dies at 89](https://www.tcj.com/author-ron-goulart-dies-at-89/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (Michael Dean @ The Comics Journal)
- [Saga - Experts and insiders look at its importance ahead of its return](https://www.gamesradar.com/saga-experts-and-insiders-look-at-its-importance-as-we-all-wait-for-its-return/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (Chris Arrant @ Newsarama)
- [Angoulême 2022: the 8 finalists for the Audience Award ](http://www.bodoi.info/angouleme-2022-les-8-finalistes-du-prix-du-public/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)(Benjamin Roure @ Bodoi (in French))
### From The Archives- Hellboy: The Midnight Circus by Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-hellboy-the-midnight-circus-by-mike-mignola-and-duncan-fegredo/
Last updated: 2022-01-20T15:00:02.000Z
It's been a quiet week around here, one of those weeks where writing gets in the way of reviewing things so it's a good time to dig into the archives with a look back at Mike Mignola and Duncan Fegredo's [**Hellboy: The Midnight Circus**](https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/20-175/Hellboy-The-Midnight-Circus-HC?ref=fromcovertocover.com), a stand-alone graphic novel that came out sometime during *Hellboy in Hell* (I think) and called back to to the adventures of Hellboy when he was... well, a boy.
This book originally came out in 2013 and this piece was written for Newsarama.
---
There are many ways that Mike Mignola's young Hellboy is just a normal kid in **Hellboy: The Midnight Circus**. Set in 1948, when Hellboy hears someone warning the closest thing he has to a father that the boy is dangerous and should be dealt with, he does what any kid would do: he runs away to join the circus. This being a Hellboy story, it’s no normal circus as a Pied-Piper-like clown and his dog lead Hellboy down the road to the circus which runs “from the clock strikes midnight… to the fearful crack of dawn.” The clown recites incantations to summon the rest of the circus folk into a magical center ring and of course even back in 1948, Hellboy is the inquisitive sort and can’t look away from the wonders in front of him. If Mike Mignola’s shadowy art hides the world around Hellboy in most stories, Fegredo and Stewart’s shadows part ways to reveal more and more mysteries to Hellboy in this circus.
When Hellboy leaves the normal world and steps into the big top tent of the midnight circus, Fegredo and Stewart open up their bag of tricks, welcoming us and young Hellboy into a brand new world of muted and graduated watercolors that make the darkness in **Hellboy: The Midnight Circus** more mysterious than we’ve seen before. For portions of the story, he colors the book more softer and deeper than he usually does, creating a veil over the world of the midnight circus. Returning artist Duncan Fegredo and Dave Stewart follows the standard look and feel of a Hellboy story that Mignola and Stewart defined 20 years ago and have followed faithfully since but when the world that Hellboy steps into becomes more unreal, the art and coloring transform into a world where the shadows reveal only what they want. Fegredo and Stewart make the world beyond those shadows more familiar as a fog hangs over the circus, allowing the artists to barely suggest what we can’t see through the night’s mist.
As Professor Bruttenholm searches among empty fields and old train wrecks, Hellboy is led through this midnight world by the Ringmaster and his sultry red-skinned niece Gamori. The Ringmaster’s motives are never really clear but what he shows Hellboy is dangerous. An old and wasting away Bruttenholm trapped in the belly of a whale; a hall of mirrors reflection of Hellboy as the conquering demon; a burning and destroyed world. “You can light a fire with a word,” he whispers into the young boy's ear. The Ringmaster and Gamori offer him temptations and when he flees them, she has the animals and the spirits of the circus try to kill him. Invoking the story of Pinocchio, **Hellboy: The Midnight Circus** is about Hellboy just wanting to be a real boy but the world around him has other plans for him. And really, hasn’t the whole Hellboy series been about that?
**Hellboy: The Midnight Circus** feels like a proper Halloween story, one told late at night around a blazing campfire. Mignola, Fegredo, and Stewart keep building up the mystery of the circus as well as the creepiness of it. Like some of the best Hellboy stories, Mignola explores myths while tying them into Hellboy’s story and even here you can see him adding elements that could play into future stories now that the character is dead and in Hell. The Ringmaster and his niece are more than just simple throwaway characters as the hints are there that they’re related somehow to Hellboy. As circuses are full of things that shouldn’t exist in the natural world, Mignola, Fegredo, and Stewart show us just how Hellboy’s life is a struggle between the world that we can see and the world which we can’t.
### This Week in Comics Journalism - January 15, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-january-15-2022/
Last updated: 2022-01-15T22:55:28.000Z
So this is a bit later than we would usually want but I have a semi-good excuse. I had errands to run this morning and then was going to head home just after lunch to post this when out of nowhere, an old friend texted me and asked if I wanted to meet up at the comic shop. He didn’t say it but he could have added "...just like we used to when we were kids." It took me a while to get down there so we didnt hang out at the comic shop long (he had already dug through the back issues and I had just been there last Wednesday) but comics are an old connection we have, reading them, collecting them, trading the, and eventually shopping for them together at comic shops. We hadn't talked really in years and connected back together just before the pandemic hit. But after all this time and all the years, it was nice to bond together at the comic shop.
Just like we used to when we were kids.
- Have you met Graeme McMillan? If you haven't read his byline anywhere before, then you're missing out? He's one of the best journalists covering comics today. He's been a staple at [The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/author/graeme-mcmillan/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for a while now but even better yet, he's started a newsletter- [**Comics FYI**](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/ComicsFYI?ref=fromcovertocover.com). He's only a few issues into it so far but it's definitely worth checking out.
- [The Judges for this year's Eisner Awards](https://www.comicsbeat.com/2022-eisner-award-judges-announced/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) have been announced. So now officially begins our season of handicapping the awards, starting with the nominations. Even money that Ed Brubaker ends up in the nominees somewhere.
Image via The Chicago Reader
- Own an original Dan Clowes comic. No, not one that he created but one that he collected. Chicago Comics has purchased his collection and the [Chicago Reader has the lowdown on it](https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/from-the-dan-clowes-collection/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> Before he became a cartooning titan, [Clowes](https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/daniel-clowes-under-glass/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) was just a kid blowing all his cash on weekly comics releases. Now, a couple thousand of those issues are in the basement of Chicago Comics. “These are mostly things I bought out of rote obligation/OCD during a period in my teen years when I bought basically every comic coming out,” Clowes says via e-mail. “My best friend worked at a newsstand on Lake Park and was able to get everything at a discount.”
In related news, I really need to get into the city and hit Chicago Comics soon. I want one of these like Gollum wants a ring.
Is that the face of a man who just signed an exclusive contract?
- It's a week late but I really just wanted to post the above caption. [Jeff Lemire signs an exclusive deal with Image Comics](https://imagecomics.com/press-releases/jeff-lemire-inks-exclusive-deal-with-image-comics-for-upcoming-projects?ref=fromcovertocover.com) to publish his new forthcoming books through them. His Substack and Dark Horse projects are safe where they are for now, he says.
- Chloe Maveal writes about one of our favorite comics of all time, the original Justice League International, [over at Neotext Review](https://neotextreview.com/culture/sanctioned-buffoonery-why-justice-league-international-is-still-the-comic-we-need/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Guy Gardner is definitely not the hero we need, but he's probably the one we deserve.
- What the heck was Eternals about? [Keith R.A. DeCandido (that's a great name) writes about it for Tor.com](https://www.tor.com/2022/01/12/i-dont-wear-a-cape-eternals/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Warning: there be spoilers.
- Ryan Carey writes about [The Unbearable Lightness Of Being : Karen Shangguan’s “Quiet Thoughts”](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2022/01/12/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-karen-shangguans-quiet-thoughts/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for his blog, Four Color Apocalypse. I have the review copy of this 2021 Avery Hill release sitting in my queue, and this has reminded me I need to open it up.
- For Solrad, Carrie McClain writes about *the gods lie* and [the burden of growing up too soon](https://solrad.co/the-burden-of-growing-up-too-soon-carrie-mcclain-reviews-kaori-ozakis-the-gods-lie?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
> 👊lines [pic.twitter.com/gAeuqaTO6X](https://t.co/gAeuqaTO6X?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — 𝔚𝔞𝔯 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔓𝔢𝔞𝔰 (@warandpeass) [January 9, 2022](https://twitter.com/warandpeass/status/1480245271527366658?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Simon Hanselmann Hopes You're OK and So Do We
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/crisis-zone-simon-hanselmann/
Last updated: 2022-01-13T12:00:04.000Z
2020 is the year that will exist in all of our memories as our lost year. The world shut down in that March and even now, almost two years later, it still hasn’t returned to normal. And it’s looking more and more like it never will. In that lost year, we hunkered down, cleaned everything, dusted off our Netflix accounts to watch Tiger King, and thought that we were on a short break from the world. Maybe it’s now the benefit of hindsight but we deluded ourselves into thinking we were on a short break and everything would be back to normal in a couple of weeks. More than that, we suffered, we lost, and we mourned. One way or another in 2020, we all saw some real shit and are living in the wake of it. And now here we are in 2022\. Just like that it’s two years later and what’s really changed?
For the past two years, we’ve seen our art and entertainment trying to adapt and react to our times but no one has done it quite like Simon Hanselmann. Taking to Instagram, he started creating webcomics that followed the lives of Owl, Meg, Moog, Werewolf Jones, and the whole menagerie as they went through what we did basically in real-time. Starting with Covid-19, moving into the summer of protests and social unrest, and even into our collective fear that the year was never going to end, Hanselmann chronicled the disease-ridden treadmill that was 2020 that we were never going to get off of.
Be honest, you've had this conversation with yourself sometime in the last two years, right?
As they were stuck in lockdown like we were, a lot of cartoonists were doing their pandemic comics, the true-life autobiographies where we saw that our own attempts at breadmaking or trying to find toilet paper weren’t unique as they showed their own attempts at these too. At least most of theirs were well-drawn. But Hanselmann was doing something different with his comics. They weren’t autobiographical (and thank God for that;) they were still fictional with the cast of characters that he’s built up over the past 10 years.
On the surface of it, there’s almost no one working in modern comics that can turn vulgarity and depravity into the soul-wrenching poetry that Hanselmann can. In more ways than one, **Crisis Zone** is not for the faint of heart. Werewolf Jones seemingly has no moral barometer but that probably relies more on how you define “morality” than on Jones’ own particular life choices. As the world enters lockdown, Werewolf Jones and his kids Jaxon and Diesel invade the quiet home that Owl, Meg, and Moog hare, turning their mostly-stoned TV watching pandemic life upside down. And they’re not the only ones as Mike, his mother Mrs. Mike, and Booger all descend on the same living room where Meg just wants to get high and watch some TV. That living room provides a foundation for these stories; it’s a certain thing in an ever increasingly uncertain world.
Let’s just say that Werewolf Jones moves the production of his Youtube channel where he will stick anything up his but into that living room and just leave it at that. And that’s just where all of the pandemic shenanigans begin.
Werewolf Jones is simply reprehensible and he brings everyone down with him. From his (non-existent) parenting skulls to his (let’s say niche) YouTube channel and through to his inability to even take partial responsibility for anything that happens around him, he’s the agent of chaos among this group who seems resigned to letting him be the storm that tears down everything around him. But that chaos also means that he’s the agent of change for all of these characters. When his YouTube channel turns out to be the most profitable thing around, even spinning off into its own Netflix reality show that morphs into the comic that we’re reading, he becomes the financial support for this group. The Netflix show Anus King just continues to highlight the directionless nature of these characters but it also gets them to realize just how lost they are in the midst of everything happening to them and the world.
From the Anus King show to Diesel’s journey to being a trans girl (no one is sure if it’s real or just an attention-grabbing stunt but eventually they all settle into Desi’s identity) Jones is just the absolute worst. And the weird thing is that he’s completely oblivious to the damage and hurt he’s causing. To him, he’s just trying to make lemonade when life is giving him lemons. In almost every instance, he’s just trying to make the best out of a bad situation. His moral compass just isn’t calibrated the same as yours and mine. We laugh or cringe (or both) at his actions but he owns them as best as he can even if he can’t own the effects those actions have. Whether they’re for his pleasure or his preservation, his choices end up being selfish and hurtful. There’s this giant blindspot for Jones where he just can’t see how his decisions affect his children, his friends, or anyone around him.
Having a character like Jones at the center of this cast during a pandemic has him taking it over by sheer force of will. Once The Anus King takes off on Netflix and Jones and everyone else become reality TV stars, Jones is the one supporting everyone. Owl may be the responsible one but Werewolf Jones defines the momentum of the group during the pandemic. And if there’s anyone who should not be making decisions for other people, it’s Werewolf Jones.
Hanselmann paints his stories with vulgarities and perversities. These comics are not for everyone as the crossing of the lines of civil discussion gives way to a realness of these characters, a relatability of what they were going through because it’s what all of us were dealing with during 2020\. To borrow a tagline from an old-school reality show, **Crisis Zone** shows “what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” In his book, Hanselmann has his characters dealing with trauma, discovering themselves, accepting others as they go through changes, going through breakups, and trying to figure out what life means in this world that we find ourselves in today.
Amen, Jennifer. Amen.
It’s easy to get turned off by the crassness of Hanselmann’s storytelling but that ends up missing the soul of this comic. It’s got to be said that Hanselmann is wickedly funny. The degree that these are just awful people creates these uncomfortable but humorous situations. From Owl’s over-the-top feeling of responsibility to simply the awful parenting of Werewolf Jones, there’s a release in seeing these people who are just worst than us. It’s fun but it’s also a bit reassuring that maybe we’re not all that bad. At least, we don’t have the ghost of David Choe (who I’m fairly certain isn’t really dead) telling us that the best way out of all of this is just to poison everyone, including ourselves.
These despicable actions pile up page after page, a catalog of just how damaging we can be to our own humanity. But the thing is that there’s a self-awareness to most of the characters and even eventually to Werewolf Jones that kind of promises a better tomorrow like such a thing is possible. Even as we find ourselves living in a Groundhog Day’s world, living the same day over and over, **Crisis Zone** affirms that we’re not alone in this feeling. Hanselmann shows real growth and development for almost all of the characters. It may be major (Mike becoming Jennifer) or more incremental (Megg coming to realize that she has to take a bit better care of herself to be better) but by the end of the book, there’s a bit of healing happening that Hanselmann wants us all to accept as a possibility.
Created in almost real-time on Instagram, **Crisis Zone** is a painful but promising artifact of now. It’s from 2020 but we’re about to enter the third year of this pandemic. We’re beyond the terrible twos and heading into another year of masks, of social distancing, of trying just to figure out how to deal with people, friends, and acquaintances who we may not see eye-to-eye with. We should be beyond this stuff and be back to normal and yet the world still sucks, we’re all sick one way or another, and we’re losing touch. But through these comic characters, Hanselmann shows us that there are ways to move forward and to maybe even be a bit better tomorrow than we are today. It’s hard and it takes work but it is possible.
### This Week in Comics Journalism - January 8, 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism/
Last updated: 2022-01-08T14:00:00.000Z
It hasn't been the biggest week for writing about comics, but we're always about quality vs. quantity anyway.
- [At ComicsXF](https://www.comicsxf.com/2022/01/04/juni-bas-monkey-meat-is-the-first-great-new-comic-of-2022/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Armaan Babu and Ritesh Babu capture their conversation about Juni Ba's **Monkey Meat #1.**
- In awesome news for an industry with a terrible history of exploiting labor, [the employees of Image Comics voted to certify their union - Via io9.](https://gizmodo.com/image-comics-workers-have-officially-certified-their-gr-1848317203?utm%5Fsource=twitter&utm%5Fmedium=SocialMarketing&utm%5Fcampaign=dlvrit&utm%5Fcontent=io9)
But in some more distressing news, it sounds like Image co-founder Jim Valentino has removed the names of unionizing members of the staff from the office credits of a recent comic from his Shadowline imprint.
> apparently Jim Valentino specifically removed the unionizing members of the Image Comics staff from the Shadowline book [#HELLCOP](https://twitter.com/hashtag/HELLCOP?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) office credits. It may fully be his right, but I still think it's cruel, and perhaps reveals a little bit of something about old boy culture in comics.
>
> — Sasha E Head (@sievish) [January 5, 2022](https://twitter.com/sievish/status/1478776007607918593?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- [Arizona O'Neill interviews Joe Ollman in comic form for the Montreal Review of Books about his Drawn and Quarterly graphic novel, **Fictional Father**. ](https://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/joe-ollmann-fictional-father-arizona-oneill/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
- Via Publisher's Weekly, [Jim Milliot details the growth in print publishing in 2021.](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/88225-print-book-sales-rose-8-9-in-2021.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) Even better, graphic novels grew 103% for **adult** audiences.
- Congrats to Brigid Alverson on the new title she has at ICV2.
> Starting the new year with a new job title:[https://t.co/bJF52kd60t](https://t.co/bJF52kd60t?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/dm5e1SzZni](https://t.co/dm5e1SzZni?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Brigid Alverson (@BrigidAlverson) [January 5, 2022](https://twitter.com/BrigidAlverson/status/1478878776511631363?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Brigid has been a favorite of mine for a long time. If she likes something, I feel the need to check it out.
And I don't want to be the guy who says "great, but take a look at her husband's accomplishments" but take a look at her husband's accomplishments:
> She recently retired from a job in municipal government and lives north of Boston with her husband, a physicist who was **part of the team that found the Higgs Boson.**
A lot of prestige in that household there!
- Naoki Urasawa's work is now available digitally... in Japan. Deb Aoki uncovered this right after Christmas.
> whut! long-time "my manga shall not be digitally distributed" holdout Naoki Urasawa now has several of his titles available on the Japanese [@BOOK\_WALKER](https://twitter.com/BOOK%5FWALKER?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) site now? [https://t.co/Co0gU2tnxM](https://t.co/Co0gU2tnxM?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (h/t [@hermanos](https://twitter.com/hermanos?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)) [pic.twitter.com/bDBovenvUZ](https://t.co/bDBovenvUZ?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Deb Aoki (@debaoki) [December 30, 2021](https://twitter.com/debaoki/status/1476386531904417793?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
I wonder how long it will be before Viz or Kodansha (remember Billy Bat?) gets to release his work digitally in English. Urasawa has always been anti-digital releases, preferring to be a book and magazine artist up until now.
If you check out [the follow-ups to Deb's post](https://twitter.com/debaoki/status/1476388142076731392?ref=fromcovertocover.com), she links to a YouTube video that Urasawa released (don't worry, it's subtitled) to talk about the whys and hows of this change to his publishing strategy.
- Shelfdust head bunny, Steve Morris, [dives into The Unwritten #1](https://shelfdust.com/2022/01/05/only-thing-worth-dying-for-the-unwritten-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
- Not necessarily news or journalism, but there is an [Ed Brubaker Humble Bundle available now](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/ed-brubaker-image-comics-books?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Also, issue 3 of **What's the Furthest Place from Here** is due out next month, but you can hear the Restorations cover "Radio Free Europe" from the 7 inch deluxe version at [Stereogum](https://www.stereogum.com/2172124/restorations-radio-free-europe-r-e-m-cover/music/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Finally, Strangers Fanzine and Publishing now has a new web address [www.strangerspublishing.com](https://strangerspublishing.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and it looks state of the freaking art.
- To close, here's a great Nancy strip for anyone who got snow this week and had to deal with school closures.
> Nancy by Olivia Jaimes for Tue, 04 Jan 2022 [https://t.co/NlSA91WHZA](https://t.co/NlSA91WHZA?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [pic.twitter.com/gJfNiXG23d](https://t.co/gJfNiXG23d?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — Nancy (@SluggoIsLit) [January 4, 2022](https://twitter.com/SluggoIsLit/status/1478358669586845696?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Cease the Means of Production - The First Issue of Juni Ba's Monkey Meat
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/cease-the-means-of-production-the-first-issue-of-juni-bas-monkey-meat/
Last updated: 2022-01-07T21:00:01.000Z
I'm going to level with you. I was highly anticipating this comic. Between following Juni Ba on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/juni%5Fba?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and reading his 2021 West African fantasy graphic novel, *Djeliya*, I have been sufficiently hyped for the young cartoonist's next project. That anticipation culminates this week with the publication of **Monkey Meat**, Ba's anthology mini-series for Image Comics that is a delightfully bonkers, gonzo satire. In a mere few months from the release of *Djeliya*, Ba shows growth as both a visual and narrative storyteller with **Monkey Meat**. He feels more pointed, more realized as an auteur. This first issue indicates that Ba is aiming for a mode of satire that will feel like a higher-octane version of Mark Russell.
Initially, I think it's important to recognize how cool it is that we get a series like this from a mainstream publisher. There is definitely a different feel to a serialized comic, and it's clear that **Monkey Meat** benefits from a type of episodic pacing. Seeing a creator handle the entirety of a publication for a company like Image is fulfilling in and of itself. The process of something like **Monkey Meat** is usually reserved for original graphic novel territory, smaller presses, or a novelty line. Not that there would be anything wrong with this being a small press or self-published book, but something is refreshing about it being in the Wednesday Warrior realm. Moreover, it's additionally refreshing to see someone like Ba, whose style is anything but conventional, publishing through Image. It's a feeling akin to reading early Lemire when a reader can tell a cartoonist is just as comfortable on the fringes as they are with the Big 2\.
Not only is this opening splash page a great example of Ba's satiric edge - the utter absurdity of a consumer base obsessed with something as morally and physically repugnant as canned ape meat - it's also indicative of his visual style and influences.
So, what about his style? Believe me, I'll get into what Ba has to say in this issue, because, for me, it is what makes this book land so well. But what makes this book take off is Ba's art. His pages are bombastic mosaics of pulpish pop art. He works in caricature - people and things resemble what they really are, but nothing is ever entirely precise. Of course, this lends itself to the fantasy and science fiction that guide his storyline, but it also lends the book - one that is particularly scathing when all is said and done - a sense of whimsy. His line structure can be both angular and flowy, two ends of geometry somehow working in concert. You can sense the thickness on each page - thick lines (particularly outlines) and thick colors. His color work is what captivated me most of *Djeliya*, and it's on display in **Monkey Meat** as well. Ba uses a specific set of earth tones for most of his coloring. Most of the time, the shades are one or two degrees off from what might occur naturally. Again, the color has the effect of both heightening the fantastic while providing a dose of whimsy. Altogether, this evokes a certain style. I see influences in place - some Darwyn Cooke and Kyle Baker, but even more so a 90s cartoon-inspired aesthetic of Genndy Tartakovsky, Bruce Timm, and the entire Nicktoons lineup. However, these antecedents seem to inform more than define, and Ba's style is an aesthetic to itself. Again, it makes me happy to read something like this in a Wednesday floppy.
Honestly, I think anyone could simply stare at Ba's pages and get their money's worth. I think I might have allowed myself to get distracted often while I read *Djeliya,* often needing to flip back to figure out what plot point I missed. To be fair, I also would contend that Ba's storytelling has also improved, and that's important because he's making a strong statement with **Monkey Meat**.
The focus of the book is the eponymous Monkey Meat Multinational, an equal parts nebulous and nefarious organization that is a stand-in for, oh, so many things - multinational companies, governments, the broad-sweeping colonizing apparatus, West African chattel slave-trade, displacement of indigenous populations, modern capitalism, late capitalism, capitalism as a whole, shoot, speciesism, maybe even feudalism. *Djeliya* wasn't without its socio-political commentary, but **Monkey Meat** puts it at the forefront. Even the name of Monkey Meat Multinational taps into the way companies shape our linguistic worldview. It is subtle, but Ba notes early on (pictured above), that the canned meat is 99% real ape meat. Accurate nomenclature is irrelevant - Monkey Meat is clearly a better name, what with its alliterative appeal, than the alternative.
> "To preserve their privacy, the owner of the Monkey meat company copyrighted and forbade the use of their own name. Because they can."
The issue opens with a commercial advertising a contest for the chance to win a tour of the Monkey Meat factory. The advert proclaims, rhetorically, "But how would you like to visit the place where the sausage is made?" It's with that line that I realized how serious of a satirist Ba was going to be in this series. He personifies the exact way gigantic, bloated corporations openly flaunt their faults, thumbing their collective noses at any attempt at regulation or basic human decency. I mean, they're selling canned ape meat. Scruples don't exist in this world. It's a step away from cannibalism, but, hey, what are you gonna do?
Remember that line from Usual Suspects, "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"? What Ba taps into is the way corporations don't even consider such a notion anymore. There is no need to hide, no need to convince the general public of some altruistic underbelly. We've fully given into the Dead Kennedy's proclamation, "Give me convenience or give me death." It's a both/and situation here - Ba questions both how much we are being manipulated, but also how willing we are to allow ourselves to be manipulated. This worldview is what makes his satire that biting. It's easy to go after the elites. It's almost, to some degree, inconsequential in the big picture. But it is far more difficult to point the mirror of satire back at the reader. We might not be the "big bad," but we're not without blame either. Good satire like this should make the reader a little uneasy; it needs to provoke some sort of reflection or re-evaluation. Otherwise, it would just be another screed against corporatism. And while that's always good fodder, it only tells half the story. What I find impressive about **Monkey Meat**is precisely that scope.
As I mentioned above, regardless of the content, **Monkey Meat** is a visual treat. But the content, specifically the narrative structure and Ba's specific phrasing, is what drives the book and - most importantly - gives us a feel for the type of creator Ba is going to be. He frames the narrative in two ways, using both a faux commercial propaganda message to set the exposition for the story, and later transitioning to the Monkey Meat mythos. He taps into the mode of fantasy legend storytelling that defined *Djeliya,* executing a succinct setup for the story that paints the evil backstory for the company while also providing us a dubious protagonist of sorts in the personage of Thaddeus Lug, a sellout turned apostate revolutionary, a wonderful stand-in for every one of us who complains about the exploitation of the developing world and their mineral-rich natural resource deposits while typing our screeds on our iPhones.
It is with the choice of language that I think Ba shows his growth as a storyteller. The man knows how to craft a page, and his work as crafting the narrative through the use of panels is increasingly tighter. But satire like this needs a deft use of language, and Ba finds a sharp voice in **Monkey Meat**. Word choice is incredibly important - for the jokes to land, for the targets to be hit, the words need to be precise. That is what allows Mark Russell to be continually successful with his satire, and it is exactly what is on show in this debut issue.
Ba drills to the heart of the chasm between the haves and have nots, brilliantly channeling the sociopathic mindset of the corporatists. It is over the top enough to be farcical without entirely self-indulgent. There is a balancing act here, and a dip in either direction either leans too absurd or too soft. It is also important, if one wants to mock the type of language used by elites, to be consistent in that use of language. Ba exemplifies the "party line" style of the elite, casting the native population as freeloaders who had been living on the island "rent-free." He consistently repeats this phrasing, driving the idea home that, for the plutocrat class, everything is a commodity. Ba writes of Monkey Meat Multinational's initial land grab, "the only issue was how to dispose of the raggedy lot who previously occupied the space with no claim." He can thus easily create the allegory for slavery, colonialism, indentured servitude, company towns, and neo-feudalism that feels both informed by history and incredibly relevant to current events.
By the end of the issue, we've experienced a brief history of Monkey Meat Multinational and its first experience with a rebellion. As **Monkey Meat** is an anthology series, I'm curious to see what threads Ba continues to pull following the set-up of this debut issue. He repeats a metaphor about a game of cat and mouse, explaining that eventually, the cat needs to understand that, for the mouse, it has never been a game. Is Monkey Meat Multinational too big to fail? Perhaps there is "no need to worry about a hapless revolutionary.
### #screenshotreviews- What's The Furthest Place From Here #2, Rorschach, and Asadora V4
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/screenshotreviews-whats-the-furthest-place-from-here-2-rorschach-and-asadora-v4/
Last updated: 2022-01-05T16:00:02.000Z
> Tom King’s Rorschach > Tom King’s Strange Adventures.
>
> That’s the kind of quality comic criticism that you come around here for.
>
> — Scott Cederlund (@ScottCederlund) [December 26, 2021](https://twitter.com/ScottCederlund/status/1475226360440406020?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
With the holiday's over, it's time to get back to doing the serious business of talking about serious comics. While Mike and Scott are hard at work to get you the hard-hitting criticism that you've come to enjoy from them, feel free to check out some of the [#screenshotreviews](https://twitter.com/hashtag/screenshotreview?src=hashtag%5Fclick&ref=fromcovertocover.com) (and one Twitter thread) that we've tweeted out recently.
This week, we return to the second issue of a new Image series, the latest Naoki Urasawa jam, and a DC cashgrab comic that's actually a pretty decent and harrowing read.
- What's The Furthest Place From Here #2 (Image Comics)
- Asadora! Volume 4 (Viz)
- Rorschach (DC Comics/Black Label)
---
[**What's the Furthest Place From Here #2**](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1470212159032467456?ref=fromcovertocover.com) by Tyler Boss, Matthew Rosenberg and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
---
[**Asadora! Volume 4**](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1478571413896413187?ref=fromcovertocover.com) by Naoki Urasawa, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
---
[**Rorschach**](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1472711287960449024?ref=fromcovertocover.com) by Tom King, Jorge Fornés, and Dave Steward, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
\*click on the link to read the full thread.
> Scott here. I read [@TomKingTK](https://twitter.com/TomKingTK?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [@jfornes74](https://twitter.com/jfornes74?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)'s Rorschach over the weekend. It's a really interesting read, about how "relative" truths can become absolute truths in our minds. 1/10 [pic.twitter.com/ulUPByZiZ1](https://t.co/ulUPByZiZ1?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — From Cover To Cover (@FromCovToCov) [December 19, 2021](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1472711287960449024?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> There's no justice in this book but there is a definite malevolent spirit hoving over everything, corrupting the world through concepts and ideas. Rorschach is a frighteningly prescient book as we go into 2022\. 10/10
>
> — From Cover To Cover (@FromCovToCov) [December 19, 2021](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1472711300140699649?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Who We Support- January 2022
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/who-we-support-2/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T20:54:07.000Z
One of the main things that Mike and I talked about when we were first hatching FC2C was our intentionality in supporting comic creators, comic journalists, and comic critics. There are many ways that we're looking to do that, from trying to support them through the writing of this site to calling out great work through our social media. And that also includes our monetary support through various crowdfunding campaigns. As part of this goal, we do maintain a page on the site, , but we also plan on quarterly sharing this information as a post on the site.
There's a certain amount of doing this to help promote these great crowdfunding opportunities but also to be transparent in the artists, writers, and sites we help support.
MB= Mike is supporting the campaign.
SC= Scott is supporting the campaign.
## Comics
### Kickstarter
In the past, Kickstarter has been a wonderful way for creators to be able to connect and sell directly to their audience. But with the recent news of [Kickstarter looking to rework their back end to base it on blockchain and cryptocurrency](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/18/web3-kickstarter-and-discord-face-backlash-over-moves-into-crypto.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), we will need to re-evaluate the viability of using that service to be able to support projects that we find appealing.
### Patreon
[John Allison](https://www.patreon.com/scarygoround?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Katrion Chapman](https://www.patreon.com/user?u=840956&ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Joshua/False Knees](https://www.patreon.com/falseknees?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Jesse Lonegran](https://www.patreon.com/jesselonergan?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Melissa Mendes](https://www.patreon.com/melissamendes/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
[B. Mure](https://www.patreon.com/bmure?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
### Comic Subscriptions
[The Nib](https://thenib.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
## Comics Journalism
### Patreon
[Broken Frontier](https://www.patreon.com/brokenfrontier?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
[Rob Clough](https://www.patreon.com/highlowcomics/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
[Fieldmouse Press (Solrad)](https://www.patreon.com/solrad/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
[Strip Panel Naked](https://www.patreon.com/strippanelnaked/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
### Subscription
[Sktchd](https://sktchd.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
[Panel x Panel](https://panelxpanel.gumroad.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
## Film Journalism
### Patreon
[Filmspotting](https://www.patreon.com/filmspotting/posts?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (sc)
### Substack Newsletter
[The Reveal](https://thereveal.substack.com/) (sc)
## Podcast
[A History of Italy](https://www.patreon.com/ahistoryofitaly?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (mb)
### This Year in Comics Journalism
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-year-in-comics-journalism/
Last updated: 2021-12-31T23:55:45.000Z
One of the concepts Scott and I tossed around as we came up with the rough draft for **From Cover to Cover** is the idea of supporting the comic journalism and critic community. The easiest way to do that, of course, is to spotlight the writing about comics that sticks out at us. Here are ten or so picks from this past year.
[PanelxPanel #53](https://panelxpanel.gumroad.com/l/PXPNO53?ref=fromcovertocover.com) ($) - I'm always mesmerized that we get this publication for a mere $4 an issue, $3 if you subscribe. We could easily recommend any issue of this series over the course of the year, but this one that features a cover story on Sas Milledge's incredible Mamo is especially strong. We picked Milledge's minicomic, Barn Owl, as one of our favorites from 2021, and Mamo is equally strong. This issue also features a great strip from Deniz Camp and Sinnerman and a recollection on *Athena*, among other treats.
For [Solrad](https://solrad.co/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Hagai Palevsky writes about and exceptional collectionthat would have undoubtedly made it into my favorites list if I read it earlier than last week - **[A Liminal World: Zuo Ma’s NIGHT BUS, Emotional Realities, and the Finished Unfinished](https://solrad.co/a-liminal-world-zuo-mas-night-bus-emotional-realities-and-the-finished-unfinished?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**
At Panel Patter, James Kaplan reviews [Lunatic: A Wordless Story by Dan Mazur](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/01/lunatic-wordless-story-by-dan-mazur.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Rachel Lapidow gives a personal analysis of book that has been showing up on a bunch of year end lists with [Gaining On the Job Experience with Guy Delisle's Factory Summers](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/06/gaining-on-job-experience-with-guy.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Kelli explores [The Fever Dream of Taiyo Matsumoto’s No.5](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/07/the-fever-dream-of-taiyo-matsumotos-no5.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com), and Sean Cohea and Rob McMonigal both analyze other year end favorites with [Will McPhail Makes Us All Look Inward With IN](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/06/will-mcphail-makes-us-all-look-inward.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [Halloween Horror: Dai Dark is Gloriously Drawn, Over-the-Top Murderfest](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/10/halloween-horror-dai-dark-is-gloriously.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
Here's a trio of pieces from Ritesh Babu, two about one of our favorite writers, Ram V. For his newsletter, Letters from Limbo, he writes *the* piece about Laila Starr that I was dying to read given my ultra-limited background in Indian mythology and religion with [The Avatars of Life and Death](https://buttondown.email/riteshwriter/archive/2-the-avatars-of-life-and-death/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). He explores *These Savage Shores* and its themes of colonialism and racism in [Civilized Monsters: These Savage Shores and the Colonialist Cage](https://neotextreview.com/culture/civilized-monsters-these-savage-shores-and-the-colonialist-cage/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) for [Neotext](https://neotextreview.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). And, finally, at [Comics Bookcase](http://www.comicsbookcase.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), he writes a beautiful appreciation for my absolute favorite letter, Aditya Bidikar - [Love of Letters Presents: Comics Anatomy - The Letters of Absurd Realities](https://www.comicsbookcase.com/updates/letters-of-absurd-realities-jhgs2?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Sloane Leong has been more active with her blog as of recent, and I've enjoyed her dives into story construction - [What Makes a Good Story? – trust not the eye; make of your meat an imaging device](https://sloaneleong.com/2021/12/19/what-makes-a-good-story/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
I never tended to write about Big 2 books even though they litter my bookshelves and shortboxes, and now I'm reading fewer and fewer superhero books, but anything that contains the Coffin Bound team of Watters/Dani/Bidikar is going to get my attention. [David Brooke from AIPT proclaims ‘Arkham City: The Order of the World’ #1 could be the start to a masterpiece](https://aiptcomics.com/2021/10/05/arkham-city-the-order-of-the-world-1-review/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
As we put together our year-end favorites list, Scott told me that Crisis Zone might be his favorite book of 2021 (and 2020). [Rebecca Kaplan moderated and compiled a discussion for Comics Bookcase](https://www.comicsbookcase.com/updates/crisis-zone-comic?ref=fromcovertocover.com) featuring Sophia Glock, Zack Quaintance, and Avery Kaplan that revels in the glory of the Hanselmann insta-classic.
For WWAC, [Kate Kosturski](https://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/author/kate-kosturski/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) summarizes the Comic-Con at Home panel about representation in Comics Journalism, featuring Heidi MacDonald, Tiffany Babb, and Wendy Browne.
[Mark Newgarden](https://www.tcj.com/author/mark-newgarden/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) interviews [Glenn Head about his memoir, Chartwell Manor](https://www.tcj.com/inside-chartwell-manor-a-chat-with-glenn-head/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), at [TCJ.com](http://www.tcj.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Also, Alex Dueben interviewed Matt Lubchansky on the eve of the publication of the Antifa Super-Solider Cookbook ([that Scott also wrote about here](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/07/cooking-laughs-in-matt-lubchanskys.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
At Neotext, Sergio Lopez writes an incredibly thoughtful examination of [How Pastiche Comic Books Help Us Rewrite Our Own History](https://neotextreview.com/culture/how-pastiche-comic-books-help-us-rewrite-our-own-history/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
I truly enjoyed [ComisXF's](http://www.comicsxf.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) [Laila Starr coverage from Andres Aryes and Armaan Babu.](https://www.comicsxf.com/category/articles/issue-overviews/boom/the-many-deaths-of-laila-starr/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
It's hard to pick out one thing from [The Daily Cartoonist](http://www.dailycartoonist.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), so, just have some fun poking around there. And, apologies for when you look down at your watch and find out it's two hours later.
I usually read Ryan C's Four Color Apocalypse to find things I'll never come across otherwise, but this three-part series - [Of Comic Books, Capitalism, And Culture War Crackpots, Or : What A Bisexual Superman Means — And What It Doesn’t](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2021/10/13/of-comic-books-capitalism-and-culture-war-crackpots-or-what-a-bisexual-superman-means-and-what-it-doesnt-part-one-of-three/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) \- sums up the state of affairs quite well.
Finally, my own favorite writing this year was a Panel Patter essay I wrote, [The Apotheosis of a Punk in Gary Panter's Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise from NYRC](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/04/the-apotheosis-of-punk-in-gary-panters.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
### This Week in Comics Journalism - Saying Goodbye to a Great Artist and The Year in Review
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-week-in-comics-journalism-the-year-in-review/
Last updated: 2021-12-31T14:00:01.000Z
I'm not entirely sure what to say about the passing of Ryan Bodenheim. In the world of comics, he was a dynamic artist who an aesthetic depth to some of my favorite science fiction comics. I was reminiscing about first picking up Halycon, my introduction to his work, and it breaks me up to realize the man is gone. Not the artist, but the father, the husband, the son, the friend. If you want to read a beautiful account of everything that is right about fandom, take a moment to read [James Kaplan's appreciation before meeting Bodenheim at Heroes Con.](http://www.panelpatter.com/2018/06/heroescon-highlight-ryan-bodenheim-and.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Longtime and frequent collaborator Jonathan Hickman [devoted a newsletter post to Bode.](https://3w3m.substack.com/p/bode)
From Mardou at The Comics Journal - [Islands in the Stream: 20 Years with Michael Rabagliati's Paul](https://www.tcj.com/islands-in-the-stream-20-years-with-michel-rabagliatis-paul/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
The Beat has the scoop on the [2021 PRISM Award Winners](https://www.comicsbeat.com/2021-prism-award-winners-announced/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
And there is a [wonderful new issue of PanelxPanel, with a cover story about the wonderful Catwoman: Lonely City series by Cliff Chiang.](https://panelxpanel.gumroad.com/l/PXPNO54?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
---
One of my favorite things about the end of the year is the opportunity to read through other people's best of lists, thereby creating my own **to read** list to start the new year. Here is a sampling.
### Broken Frontier
[Introducing the Broken Frontier Awards 2021 – Celebrating Twelve Months of Inspiring Comics Practice in a Year of Adversity](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/broken-frontier-awards-2021/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Celebrating 2021 – Ten UK Small Press Comics You Need to Own!](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/celebrating-2021-ten-uk-small-press-comics-you-need-to-own/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Gate Crashers
[Best Comics for New Readers 2021](https://gatecrashers.fan/2021/12/28/best-comics-for-new-readers-in-2021/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### James Kaplan
[2021 Favorites: Part 1 (Non-Fiction, Crime, Action, Drama)](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/12/james-2021-favorites-part-1-non-fiction.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[2021 Favorites: Part 2 (Superheroes, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction)](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/12/james-2021-favorites-part-2-superheroes.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[2021 Favorites: Part 3 (Favorite Series That Only Released One Or Two Issues This Year](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/12/james-2021-favorites-part-3-favorite.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Rachel Lapidow
[2021 Favorites: Part 1 (Serialized Comics and Manga)](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/12/rachels-2021-favorites-part-1.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[2021 Favorites: Part 2 (Graphic Novels and One-Offs)](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/12/rachels-2021-favorites-part-2-graphic.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Sean Cohea
[2021 Favorites: the Long Box & Short Box](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/12/seans-2021-favorites-long-box-short-box.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Rob McMonigal
[2021 Favorites Part 1: The Short List of 25 Awesome Books](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/12/robs-2021-favorites-part-1-short-list.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Ryan Carey
[Four Color Apocalypse 2021 Year in Review: Top Ten Single-Issue Comics](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2021/12/21/four-color-apocalypse-2021-year-in-review-top-ten-single-issue-comics/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Four Color Apocalypse 2021 Year In Review: Top Ten Comics Series](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2021/12/21/four-color-apocalypse-2021-year-in-review-top-ten-comics-series/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Four Color Apocalypse 2021 Year In Review: Top Ten Special Mentions](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2021/12/22/four-color-apocalypse-2021-year-in-review-top-ten-special-mentions/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Four Color Apocalypse 2021 Year In Review: Top Ten Vintage Collections](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2021/12/26/four-color-apocalypse-2021-year-in-review-top-ten-vintage-collections/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Four Color Apocalypse 2021 Year In Review: Top Ten Contemporary Collections](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2021/12/28/four-color-apocalypse-2021-year-in-review-top-ten-contemporary-collections/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Four Color Apocalypse 2021 Year In Review: Top Ten Original Graphic Novels](https://fourcolorapocalypse.wordpress.com/2021/12/29/four-color-apocalypse-year-in-review-top-ten-original-graphic-novels-2/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Strangers Fanzine
[Favorite Comics of 2021](https://www.instagram.com/p/CYAWFz2slvW/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### AIPT
[Part 1](https://aiptcomics.com/2021/12/21/best-comics-2021-part-1/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Part 2](https://aiptcomics.com/2021/12/23/aipts-best-comics-of-2021-part-2/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Comics Beat
[The Beat’s 24 Best Comics of 2021](https://www.comicsbeat.com/best-comics-of-2021-list/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Michael Cavna and David Betancourt
[Best Graphic Novels of 2021](https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/11/18/best-graphic-novels/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Nerdist
[The Very Best Comics of 2021](https://nerdist.com/article/best-comics-of-2021-nubia-static-night-bus-dc-marvel/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Newsarama
[The Best Comics of 2021](https://www.gamesradar.com/best-comic-comics-2021-books-graphic-novels/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Polygon
[10 best comics of 2021: Marvel, DC, manga, and more - Polygon](https://www.polygon.com/22821264/best-comics-2021-marvel-dc-manga?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### Non-comics Press
[New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/books/best-graphic-novels-2021.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/05/the-best-graphic-novels-of-2021?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robsalkowitz/2021/12/17/the-best-graphic-novels-of-2021/?sh=11d0ef6b4614&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[Variety](https://variety.com/shop/the-best-comics-of-2021-1235127525/?ref=fromcovertocover.com#!)
### From The Archives-- The Strange Life and Death of Adam Warlock
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-jim-starlins-adam-warlock/
Last updated: 2021-12-30T14:00:00.000Z
Most of the time, I kind of get sad about how many sites from the past have been wiped out by the passage of time and all of the writing about it has gotten lost to time. But here's a piece from a site that I wish would disappear basically because how the people who bought the site neglected it and turned it into something unrecognizable from what it was. Essentially, a fun pop-culture site was turned into a clickbait site that I hope the owners are making some money off. Best of luck to them and all of that. Normally, I'd link these From The Archive reviews to the original site if it's still up but I'm not doing that here. Sue me.
And now to the fun stuff...
I first read Adam Warlock in the 80s reprints and my mind was blown by it! These are comics that I continually read, buy, and go back to over and over again. And with a new [Marvel Gallery edition](https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/JUN210768?ref=fromcovertocover.com) of it coming out, I'll be doing all of that again.
This piece was originally publish in late 2013.
---
**Strange Tales #178-181, Warlock #9-11, Avengers Annual #7 and Marvel Two-In-One Annual #2**
Writer: Jim Starlin
Penciller: Jim Starlin
Finishers/Inkers: Steve Leialoha, Joseph Rubenstein, Jim Starlin, Alan Weiss and Al Milgrom
Colorists: Jim Starlin, Glynis Oliver Wein and Petra Goldberg
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Even before Jim Starlin had gotten his creative hands on Adam Warlock back in 1975, the character had already been a god as the messiah of Marvel's Counter Earth. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and used by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane as a Christ allegory (crucified, dead and resurrected to rid a world of evil,) Warlock already carried a lot of baggage with him. In his first issue, *Strange Tales #178*, Starlin rapidly recaps Warlock's history before entangling the character in a tale of fate, destiny, death and religion. A Vietnam veteran, Starlin was obviously working out a lot of issues about culture and religion through Adam Warlock while he began his ultimately too short run on the character.
If Lee/Kirby and Thomas/Kane were telling tales about an innocent childhood of the character, Starlin was dealing with the moody teenage version of Warlock. The core of Starlin’s Warlock run is Warlock’s struggle with the Universal Church of Truth and its god, the Magus. Preaching a universal message of love and peace, the Universal Church of Truth actually only means love and peace for people that look like they do. In other words, humanoids. Starlin reveals this to us when Warlock is captured by one of the Church’s death ships, full of all kinds of odd looking humans. The church is basically running a universal inquisition against anyone who doesn’t share some kind of physical characteristics with its god.
The story of the death ships are just a brief sidetrack on Warlock’s way to the church’s Homeworld, where Starlin is at his satirical and cynical best. The church’s Magus isn’t just another power hungry demigod that Warlock has to topple; the Magus is actually a future incarnation of Adam Warlock, corrupted by power and manipulating Warlock to ensure that he eventually travels back in time to turn into the Magus. It’s this fantastic power trip of a reluctant messiah to become an even worse god that enslaves and massacres whole civilizations. It’s the classic case of a teenager who has been told that he’s going to be an engineer and wants to be a philosopher instead; Warlock rebels against the future that’s been set for him and is determined to follow his own free will.
The idea that Adam Warlock becomes the very villain he’s fighting produces all kinds of dilemmas for the hero but the ultimate strategy to prevent the evil of the Magus may be to kill himself. This sets Warlock down an ultimately nihilistic path where he’s actually forced to team up with Starlin’s now well known creation Thanos. A worshipper of Death, Starlin originally introduced Thanos in an issue of *Iron Man* and really developed him in the pages of *Captain Marvel* where Thanos became godlike after channeling the power of the Cosmic Cube. A hero on the path to suicide and a being who is trying to win Death’s love-- yeah, that’s going to end well.
Starlin’s art is firmly rooted in that 1970’s Marvel aesthetic but it moves in ways that combine the best of Jack Kirby, John Buscema and Steve Ditko. Warlock jumps around, fighting and kicking that has the power of Kirby, the physical grace of Buscema and the other worldliness of Ditko. Warlock is a character who is more at home in the shadows (both physically and psychologically) even if he looks like a golden god. Starlin’s playfulness with character design (and costume as he quickly modifies Warlocks by his third issue) creates this otherworldly battlefield that elevates Warlock’s struggles because nothing if familiar or comfortable. His Magus, which ultimately is a purple version of Warlock (including the most awesome silvery afro in comics) highlights just how little difference there can be in a hero and a villain.
So you have a hero who doesn’t want to be a god, a villain who wants all life to bow down before him, and a monster who wants to kill everything as a tribute to his love Death. Even as Warlock is fighting against the very moments that will lead him on the path to becoming the Magus, Starlin shakes up everything you thought you knew about this battle as he reveals that the Magus’s true cosmic purpose is to be the life opposition to Thanos’s nihilistic plans. The Magus is a cosmically destined figure who should be the ultimate champion of life. In Starlin’s story, evil and corruption have a purpose in this world. It’s a yin and yang struggle that’s at the heart of Starlin’s narrative concerns.
**Warlock #11** (February, 1976) and **The Avengers Annual #7** (July, 1977) both illustrate the same pivotal moment in Warlock’s life. In a story called “The Strange Death of Adam Warlock” in **Warlock #11**, Warlock travels to “somewhere… a year-- maybe two years-- in the future!” to find his future self, trapped beneath rubble after a battle and dying. Using the vampiric soul gem that he possesses (today it’s called an Infinity Gem,) Warlock blasts his future self, killing himself the the future universe where he would become the Magus, thereby recreating existence without the Magus and his church. Warlock wins but Thanos is still out there without the counterbalance of the Magus to defeat him.
The strange death is repeated over a year later in the Avengers annual but Warlock’s story concludes **Marvel Two-In-One Annual #2** where the Avengers, Spider-Man and the Thing battle Thanos who plans to use the power of six soul gems (one of them being Warlock’s soul gem) to extinguish the sun. With no Magus, there is no opposing force for Thanos. The Marvel cosmic forces of Master Order and Lord Chaos manipulate events so that Warlock is resurrected for one final battle with Thanos. Finally and quite literally a fiery, golden god, Warlock fulfills his destiny even if he ultimately followed his own path to get there.
Starlin’s original Warlock stories are best if they’re first encountered as a teenager. That teenage rebellion against fate, destiny and having your future laid out for you is what the twenty-something Starlin was telling stories about. He was barely beyond that rebellious stage himself and chafing against some of Marvel’s editorial control, he was using Warlock to fight the powers of authority. When he would return to the character in the 1990s with *Infinity Gauntle*t, Warlock would become a more philosophical warrior and be mellowed with age. Between 1975 and 1977 though, Adam Warlock and Jim Starlin were Marvel’s l’enfant terribles, kicking and screaming against the powers and fates that tried to define them and maintaining what little sanity they had through their rebellion.
### From Cover to Cover's Favorite Comics of 2021
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-cover-to-covers-year-in-review-2021/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T20:54:22.000Z
We may still be in our infancy as a site, but that doesn't mean we've just started reading. Here are our favorites from 2021, a year that saw a lot of great books.Please know this post serves to celebrate our favorites, and while we read a bunch, we certainly don't read *everything.* Really, there's just too much out there. Looking at a bunch of other Best of 2021 lists on other sites, we see books that we just didn't have the time to read, books that we didn't know existed, and good books that just didn't make our list.
The great thing about comics is that there's just so many of them that there's always something new to read.
There is no order to this list besides the alphabetical.
**Barn Owl by Sas Milledge. Shortbox Comic Fair**
It’s usually easy to complain that comics are too long, that they stretch out the unnecessary at the expense of the things that actually matter. Barn Owl is probably perfect at its length, but it’s hard to believe Milledge was able to fit this entire story into essentially a single issue-length book. Milledge's style embraces shades with exceptional results, but it is her story-telling that makes Barn Owl one of this year’s best. (MB)
**The City of Belgium by Brecht Evens. Drawn & Quarterly.**
Evens’ book tells the story of three individuals during one night in Belgium whose paths cross in a colorful and exciting nightclub. One is spending his last night in Belgium, leaving for Germany and his wife in the morning. Another is a conflicted man, trying to find a connection to someone or something in this crazy town. The last is a woman, protected by her sister and friends, but wanting to escape that protection. Evens tells these three distinct stories that barely interact with each other but find the three people at similar intersections of their lives, trying to figure out who they want to be after this night out.
Each page of The City of Belgium is a work of art, filled with shapes and colors that capture the cacophony of this night. The art is exciting, it’s dangerous, it’s seductive, and it’s terrifying. You experience the transformations that these people experience in themselves and their settings like you’re part of it, sitting at the table next to these people and experiencing the same sights, sounds, smells, and tastes as they are. (SC)
**Crisis Zone by Simon Hanselmann. Fantagraphics**
In 2020, I had to read a bunch of Covid-19 comics for various reasons. So many comics about self-isolation, Tiger King, protests, and just general boredom with being stuck at home that I had to cut most of these kinds of comics out of my regular reading diet in 2021\. And then for some reason at the beginning of December, I got a copy of Simon Hanselmann’s Crisis Zone and suddenly all of those other Covid comics became obsolete because Hanselmann said everything about 2020 that needed to be set in such vulgar, obscene, and humane ways. I finished this one just before Christmas and am still processing so much of it. I’ve never been able to get into Hanselmann before but Crisis Zone just so effortlessly captures a zeitgeist that we’re still trapped in even as we prepare for 2022\. So much of this book is so specific to 2020 but it’s also a rich and disgusting dive into our collective headspace that we’re still dealing with. (SC)
**Eternals #1-8 by Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribic. Marvel**
I don’t know if I’ve ever found the Eternals interesting, maybe other than Sersi’s time as an Avenger. Coming late in Jack Kirby’s career, this always seemed like another tossed-off idea of his, exploring themes of godhood that he had many times before. Gillen and Ribic’s take on this cast, trying to explore the ramifications of their eternal lives, gives Icarus, Sersi, Sprite, and Thena a narrative purpose, they have something to fight for and to atone for. That need for atonement is at the heart of Eternals, including the couple of one-shot specials that expand the scope of the story.
Gillen has played with similar themes before, exploring these characters who place themselves above us and he continues to show his natural skepticism of them. It’s not that he doesn’t like (or even love) these characters but he’s suspicious of their lofty sense of self, where they think themselves gods and goddesses. Ribic’s artwork is all about the characters’ godhood but he also has this way of bringing these characters down to earth, showing them completely not understanding the secrets that they’re learning about their past. (SC)
Scott wrote about *Eternals* [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/eternals-going-to-eternal-in-kieron-gillen-and-esad-ribics/).
**Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell. DC Comics**
**Far Sector** didn't *need* to be a *Green Lantern* book. Jemisin and Campbell create a worthy space opera detective story that clearly stands on its own, but connecting it to the DC Universe gives it a certain sense of permanence. Campbell's art is beautiful and lush, but it is the way he finds subtlety via characterization despite his bright cinematic style that makes his art land so well. Part of the fun of this book is watching the established novelist Jemisin progress as a comic writer. By the end, twelve issues aren't nearly enough. (MB)
Mike and Scott wrote about *Far Sector* [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/far-sector-jemisin-campbell/).
**Jinz Freeze by Hurk. Avery Hill**
Hurk’s graphic novel is a distillation of all things surreal, a pop art combination of Dali, vintage Mad magazine, and Gary Panter all filtered through a psychotic version of the classic Saturday morning cartoon. (MB)
**A Journal of my Father by Jiro Taniguchi. Ponent Mon**
Jiro Taniguchi’s tale of mourning and reconciliation showed how different life in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s is to our own today but also just how similar it is. This story about a son reflecting on his father’s life and death exposes us to a different culture and traditions even while Taniguchi concentrates on the emotions and turmoil that Yoichi feels over the unresolved relationship with his father. The settings of this story may feel outside of us but the heart and soul of this book are truly universal, giving us the opportunity to grieve alongside these characters and this creator in this loosely autobiographical story. (SC)
Scott wrote about [*A Journal of My Father* for Panel Patter](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/03/review-jiro-taniguchis-journal-of-my-father.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
**Monsters by Barry Windsor-Smith. Fantagraphics.**
**Monsters** represents something familiar and also something entirely avant-garde. Few creators have made the pilgrimage from mainstream comics to the kind of gritty world Windsor-Smith creates for **Monsters**. This book is brutal, you've surely read. It's challenging in both its narrative structure and its visual detail. But that is the heart of it all. At its heart, **Monsters** is about the systematic destruction of a man, and the fallout of that resonates long after the cover is closed. (MB)
Scott wrote about [*Monsters* for Newsarama](https://www.gamesradar.com/monsters-review-barry-windsor-smith/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
**The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Ram V, Filipe Andrade, and Andworld. BOOM! Studios**
Ram V is writing the best mainstream comics right now, and we easily could have included *The Swamp Thing*, *Catwoman*, or *Justice League Dark* here. But it is **Laila Starr** that best speaks to his depth as a writer. Possibly a philosophical sequel to *Grafity’s Wall*, it is an intricate meditation on both the value of life and the role of guilt in daily lives. Filipe Andrade’s art is atmospheric, beautifully subtle - just wavy enough, just edged enough. (MB)
**Montana Diary by Whit Taylor. Silver Sprocket**
Whit Taylor’s mini comic about a trip to Montana gives us her unique view of where we are at this moment in time. She presents her reminiscences of traveling with her white husband and still having to deal with the history of the places that she’s visiting as well as the current attitudes and racism that she has to deal with. Taylor has this fantastic way of taking her specific experience and turning it into something that we all get to be part of through her work. She takes the specific and turns it into something universal. Or, if not universal, at least something that we can be a part of as we see it through her eyes.
Taylor’s voice in her comics shows a cartoonist who is trying to process what’s happening around her while, at the same time, trying to show us what her life is like. It’s a short comic but Montana Diary is the story of a black woman in a mixed marriage traveling parts of the country who maybe aren’t quite too sure what to do with that. There’s a passive-aggressive (to say the least) racism and sexism that she explores in this comic that she has a unique view of which she needs to show to us. (SC)
Scott wrote about [*Montana Diary* for Panel Patter](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/06/whit-taylor-montana-diary-review.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
**This is How I Disappear by Mirion Malle; translated by Aleshia Jensen & Bronwyn Haslam. Drawn and Quarterly**
Both comforting and unnerving in its ability to capture broken humanity, **Mirion Malle's** graphic novel of trauma and depression captures the knowing despair of retreat. Malle's exceptional approach cuts no corners. She even seems to eschew rulers. It is deliberately raw, replete with roughly drawn iPhone screens and dialogue that expertly captures awkward speech, all capped off with a denouement so graceful it will make you blush. (MB)
Scott wrote about *This Is How I Disappear* [here](https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-is-how-i-disappear-mirion-malle/).
**Young Shadow by Ben Spears. Fantagraphics**
Arguably the best Batman book of the year, Sears has a knack for creating an engaging world and fully formed characters without slogging through endless exposition. Shadow is appropriately self-righteous in a charming way. Everything about this book feels natural; nothing feels contrived, no part of the narrative or the characterization feels strained. (MB)
### Peter Bagge's Warning in 2010's OTHER LIVES Still Has Meaning Today
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/other-lives-by-peter-bagge/
Last updated: 2021-12-23T14:00:04.000Z
Peter Bagge probably hates the idea of [Meta](https://about.facebook.com/meta?ref=fromcovertocover.com), Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future of online life. By now you’ve had to have seen the videos of it where Zuckerberg was touting an almost completely digital life, all powered by his companies' oh-so beneficial technology. You will be able to live a virtual life, dress in virtual clothes, go to virtual concerts and do everything you do in real life but in a virtual (i.e. “better” by the Zuck’s estimation) way. And Facebook or Meta or whatever they want to call themselves by then will be the center of this virtual life. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
But did you know that [Second Life](https://secondlife.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) is still a thing? I certainly didn’t. “With thousands of virtual experiences and communities, you'll never run out of places to explore and people to meet. Music clubs, roleplaying communities, virtual cinemas, are and more,” the website promises. Around since 2003, Second Life is the original Meta, a virtual experience offering a promising substitute to the real world. But going back to the earliest days of the World Wide Web, online communities have offered that substitute for the real world, where people could craft a different identity than their IRL ones. Behind our screens, we could be someone on message boards and AOL groups that we only wished we were when dealing with people outside of the Matrix.
Peter Bagge’s 2010 comic **Other Lives** (recently republished by Fantagraphics) explores our desires to be someone other than who we are, both in a virtual setting but he recognized back then that desire is something that exists beyond the keyboard and computer screen. Vader Ryderbeck anchors this story and he’s the least online character out of everything even as he centers this story about constructed identities and the self-delusion that comes with them. A journalist who makes everyone call him “Vader” even though his name really is Vlad, Vader has built a life that’s a reaction to everything his late father tried to either teach him or force on him. In trying to renounce his own upbringing, he shapes and molds what his girlfriend and his friends see him as.
Going back to *Hate* and *Neat Stuff*, Bagge has always had a knack for tapping into the culture and showing how it brings out the worst in us. It’s not that he hates pop culture but that he hates what it does to us and what we do to continue to feed it. **Other Lives** explores the pop culture and cyberculture that makes us question ourselves, think we’re not good enough or who we want to be while giving us the opportunity to recraft our identity. Only it’s not complete; Bagge shows how we still are who we are and that our projected selves are at best masks that we wear to disguise who we are to the world at large and to ourselves.
Bagge’s inimitable artwork focuses on the flaws of these people but shows how those flaws help define who they are. From Vader’s haughty attitude to his friend Woodrow’s trying-too-hard mustache, Bagge’s rubbery-limbed people wear their hearts on their sleeve. There’s very little subtext in his drawings as his cartooning tells us so much of the story and the character work. All of that work is the text of Bagge’s artwork. A student of the old underground cartoonists, particularly Robert Crumb, Bagge understands the impact his drawings have in telling his story. For instance, his artwork becomes surprisingly stilted when it enters the online world and tries to show the characters’ virtual selves; Vader’s girlfriend Ivy has actual joints and pointy elbows. There’s a certain coldness to it that reflects Bagge’s own view of the value of these online encounters. It’s fun just to stare at Bagge’s artwork to see how the characters emote and act and tell you so much about themselves.
We find the opportunity to build this second life (wording intentional) where we can be a secret spy, a fairly, or even a conqueror. **Other Lives** presents this group of friends and acquaintances either trying to find themselves through online experiences or trying to self-actualize what they want their image of themselves to be. Vader builds this identity of himself that’s such an argument against his father; it’s a complete reaction against his upbringing and his heritage so much so that he loses sight of what that heritage could mean for him.
It’s weird that as Vader creates this projection of self unconscious of the act, his girlfriend and friends very deliberately enter the virtual world and build this second identity there. Ivy finds a release there, a chance to rebel as well but using it more as a release than a denial of who she is. Becoming a fairy in the virtual world, she has a virtual affair with one of Vader’s friends and then goes on a virtual destructive spree. And in many ways, it doesn’t mean anything to her because she views it as a game, something separate from who she is while Woodrow, the friend, sees the virtual fling as something more real and tries to pursue it outside of the virtual world.
This is a 2010 book that still offers a real warning to us as we look into the future. Mark Zuckerberg wants us to believe in the future of these virtual worlds and selves that we can construct. Look at the [Occulus commercial](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfTC-dPwdLM&ref=fromcovertocover.com) where two men are best buds in their online games but don’t realize that the lousy neighbor they’re yelling at is the other one. It’s supposed to be a joke, a fun little jab at how “real” the game world is and how it fosters relationships. But as the two men yell at each other through their apartment walls, you have to recognize some kind of loss in these interactions. They are online friends but are they really friends?
Bagge longs for real connections, for a personal touch in all of the relationships in his book. His idiosyncratic style and approach to the story could demonstrate some kind of hatred for the world but he’s always looking for ways to connect to his characters and his readers. Vader, Ivy, and the rest of the cast of **Other Lives** are not good people but they’re trying and that’s something that you always see in Bagge’s stories; this desire to be better. It’s a subtle difference from a desire to be someone else like the characters in this book are; their desire to re-establish identities is a byproduct of their desire to be better. And sometimes desire isn’t enough but a search for a true identity is the beginning of maybe being better. It’s tricky as Bagge avoids having a tidy ending to **Other Lives** and leaves it a bit messy, a lot like life generally is.
### From the Archives- Fear Agent Omnibus Volume 1 by Rick Remender, Tony Moore, and Jerome Opeña
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-fear-agent/
Last updated: 2021-12-16T14:00:12.000Z
For some reason, the December archives seem to be stuck in 2013\. This time around, it's a December 2013 look at the big Fear Agent Volume 1, a book that desperately wanted to be Wally Wood but ends up being Rick Remender, for better or for worse. I've got Volume 2 of these omniboo but I've actually never read it. It may be a long winter so maybe I'll finally pull that one off the shelf and see if Remender can be as EC Comics as he wanted to be.
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Rick Remender’s **Fear Agent Volume 1** (first published in 2005) actually mirrors the structure of his recently concluded run on *Uncanny X-Force* quite a bit. Starting off as a hard edged action/adventure story featuring all kinds of cool explosions and killings, Remender slowly peels back the action to reveal a softer and wounded core to the story and his characters. In *Uncanny X-Force*, he was exploring the morality of Wolverine’s actions and how it led a number of mutants astray but in **Fear Agent**, the story of the space exterminator gives way to a story about a self-exiled man who will do anything he can to reverse the actions of his past and try to find the life he lost long ago.
**Fear Agent Volume 1**, an omnibus book collecting the first 15 issues of the series, introduces us to Heath Houston, a space exterminator of lower level life forms. You have an infestation of the outer space equivalent of mice or rats, you call Houston. That seems to be about all he is good for. Remender along with artists Tony Moore and Jerome Opeña show Houston as a tough man-about-space; he only takes the jobs so he can get more booze and he only drinks so that he can forget about Earth and the life he lost.
All we know at first is that Earth has been attacked by aliens and during the invasion, Houston lost his son and his wife. Through an accidental time travel situation, he finds himself propelled back to the past on the planet of Earth’s invaders. It only seems logical that there he would do everything to change the course of history. But he finds little changes no matter what he does. In the end, he is still alone, having committed atrocities that drive the people he loves and cares for away from him. He still loses no matter how he tries to “correct” history.
**Fear Agent** starts out of an old Wally Wood-inspired science fiction story but Remender, Moore and Opeña tell a story about the failures of one man. Space just happens to be the setting of it. Moore and Opeña have sprightly styles in this book. Their outer space art pops off of the page, recapturing Wood’s lovely detailed line that just sizzled with adventure. They take glee in depicting Houston’s trials. Opeña’s work is much less detailed than his more current Avengers work but fits in nicely with Moore’s as both artists lines seem more lively than depressed, more action oriented than internally troubled.
Unlike Wally Wood though, there’s no mystery in Moore or Opeña’s artwork. With his rich lines, Wood’s artwork just dripped moodiness, sexiness and the danger of the stories that he was telling. Moore just isn’t able to create that same sense of wonder. Maybe it’s that at this point in his early careers, Moore didn’t know what to put in and what to leave out of a panel. Both Moore and Opeña’s artwork moves the story along but there aren’t that many memorable images, those images that just make you stop and admire the way a certain line just flows on the page as you wonder about the life, the universe and everything as captured in that line. That’s what the best Wally Wood artwork draws out of you that just isn’t present in either Moore or Opeña’s work at this point in their careers.
Remender is writing about a man who just can’t win. This isn’t like losing at love or at work or at the lottery; Houston just flat out loses at life. From the beginning, he is a beaten man who clutches at any hope he has of changing his fortune. Through a flashback which is the final third of Remender’s story in this volume, he shows us everything that Houston once had and how it all slipped out of his life. This last third of the main part of this book loses a lot of the crazy momentum that Remender and his artists built up as they shift the location from outer space to earth and the story from being a mad science fiction adventure to brutal war story (still with aliens though!)
While having fun showing off their genre-bending storytelling chops, the backstory of Heath Houston feels out of place and drawn out. And the worst part is that it comes at the end of this volume so, disregarding the backups for now, the main story slows to a stop as it fills in details but doesn’t advance the fun story of fighting space aliens that Remender and Moore started with. It works better as a pound-the-ground alien invasion/war story but loses the charm and propulsion of Heath having to deal with his life since that first invasion. The backstory is necessary for the story but Remender has trouble blending in Heath's origin with the rest of his adventures.
It’s more of a problem of placement than anything else. The story of Houston’s past, “The Last Goodbye” is the all too necessary origin story that interrupts the story that’s pushing forward by forcing us into the past. The momentum just stops and when you get to the end of this volume, you’ve been stuck in the past for so long that the present story isn’t as fresh and clear as it should be. It’s as much the fault of the presentation of this book as anything else. It’s also that Remender doesn’t give the space much room to just be. Like Moore’s artwork that is mostly just surface level storytelling, Remender’s work on the story is at much of the same level. By giving Houston a backstory, they take the mystery and swagger away from the character. It’s a drunken swagger but there’s a charm to it.
There’s the slam-bang surface element to **Fear Agent** that makes it a lot of fun and then there’s the woe-is-me backstory of Houston that tries to spell out for you who this character is. By the end of the book, you’re supposed to feel sorry for the character because of the atrocities he’s committed and what he lost because of it. Remender, Moore and Opeña put together a fun story about a broken man that’s obviously trying to build up to be about something more.
### #Screenshot Reviews-- The Human Target #2 and Fire Power #18
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/human-target-1-and-fire-power-18/
Last updated: 2021-12-10T16:29:59.000Z
I've never been a huge fan of capsule or pellet reviews. At other sites, we would do them regularly, trying to review a book in about 300-500 words. Something about that format just never worked for me. Maybe it was the strict word count, limited to just a certain number of words. It just never worked.
And yet, I think these [#screenshotreviews](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23screenshotreview&ref=fromcovertocover.com) are the greatest thing. It's fun to limit myself to something that should fit on one screen of a phone, which ends up being just around 280 words. It's playing more with form than with some formalistic writing exercise, which is really all these reviews are.
You can follow us on Twitter ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) to see these as they come out. We usually try to post one or two of these a week there and will continue to collect them here every couple of weeks.
This week, we have two "Dad" comics for your perusal. Click on the title link to see the original tweet and more preview art from the books.
- The Human Target #23 (DC Comics)
- Fire Power #18 (Image Comics)
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**[The Human Target #1](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1467520639053434880?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** by Tom King & Greg Smallwood, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
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**[Fire Power #18](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1467590851614461954?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** by Robert Kirkman & Chris Samnee, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
### From The Archives- Harvey Kurtzman's Corpse On The Imjin
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-harvey-kurtzman/
Last updated: 2021-12-09T14:00:03.000Z
One of greatest archiving projects of the past 10 years or so has been Fantagraphics black and white EC archives, with each edition focusing on a different artist. The Harvey Kurtzman volume just blew my mind, looking at the way Kurtzman drew these war horror stories. I was so used to him as a comedic cartoonist that seeing the same skills that he applied to MAD Magazine telling these hard war tales was shocking and just stunning.
This piece was published on Wednesday's Haul around March, 2013.
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*“I think what Kurtzman did ranks as some of the finest comics ever done. And I think, unfortunately, just because of the directions comics have gone in, it’s tending to be overlooked now. I hope it never will be forgotten.”*
*Archie Goodwin in an interview from BLAZING COMBAT*
In many ways, I’m almost glad that I never had an appreciation for Harvey Kurtzman’s artwork before because I didn’t know what I was missing.
Since getting Fantagraphics’ CORPSE ON THE IMJIN AND OTHER STORIES BY HARVEY KURTZMAN, I’ve been obsessing about the man’s artwork. Mostly chalked up to a sad lack of access to the work, Kurtzman has been a name that I’ve known and could identify images that he’s drawn but I never took the time to really look at the way he told a story, particularly his war stories.
The thing that immediately jumps out at you is the man’s love of ink. While Fantagraphics’ new line of EC comics have occasionally been panned for the lack of color, Kurtzman is an artist who didn’t need his comics colored. With no disrespect to Marie Severin or any other colorist who may have been working on his comics, Kurtzman’s strong, bold, expressive and daring line tells you everything you need to know about his images. The way the bottom tier of panels in the above example (actually the middle tier on the actual page) gets blacker and thicker as the struggle becomes a killing shows just how dark this story and the character’s soul are becoming. It’s not that it’s getting dark because Kurtzman is tightening his shot on shadows but it becomes the soul of the story “Corpse on the Imjin” (from **Two-Fisted Tales #25**) because Kurtzman is drawing his own heart of this story here.
This panel sequence is one of many signature pages for Kurtzman’s war stories because of the horror that he’s getting at with as little detail as possible. The final two panels are practically abstract on their own. Kurtzman draws his own version of a journey into the heart of darkness in this tale of soldiers who have to resort to hand to hand combat just to survive. Kurtzman’s stories don’t have a “and you were there” feeling to them. Instead, he’s writing about war from a realistic point of view, he explores the idea of what war must be like on the human psyche. In “Corpse on the Imjin,” Kurtzman reduces that psyche to a growing blackness that devours the whole panel.
You could boil this whole sequence down into three panels but Kurtzman showed it in seven panels. Today we would call this decompressed storytelling but for Kurtzman, it was how he told stories. We can see this throughout the examples in **CORPSE ON THE IMJIN**, where Kurtzman would draw out time in these stories, making the reader really concentrate on the action being taken. He did it in stories he drew and in those that he just wrote and did the layouts for. The John Severin drawn “Marines Retreat” or Alex Toth’s “Dying City” both show Kurtzman’s structure beneath the images of those great artists. Even the Toth drawn “Thunder Jet,” this practically abstract aerial ballet shows sequences where Toth must have been clearly been following Kurtzman’s instructions.
The way that Kurtzman stretched out these scenes wouldn’t have worked in his humorous work in MAD or HUMBUG, where the joke is in the moment and then you move on to the next joke. But in these war stories, where Kurtzman is trying to depict the actions and consequences of battle, he prolongs these moments. In “Corpse on the Imjin,” the makes us witness one man kill another man. He could tell it in three panels (see above) but then it’s something that just happens. Prolonging it into seven panels, Kurtzman pulls us into something that we want to end, we want it to be over but the artist doesn’t want to let us off the hook that easily. He makes us witness the events, unable to help out either soldier.
In other EC books, while I can marvel at the artwork, I’m always slightly turned off by how mechanical they can feel. From the steely precision of Wally Wood or the glamour of Al Williamson, the lettering always feels like something I learned to do in my mechanical drafting classes back in high school and it just makes the comics feel colder than they should. In Kurtzman’s stories, the hand lettering is unique and alive. It feels like someone did it rather than using some guide to lay down the words.
That traditional EC lettering just wouldn’t have worked in Kurtzman’s stories. Kurtzman doesn’t have the classic lines of a Wood or a Williamson. He’s got a quick, dashed off, in-the moment mark making style that looks improvised and immediate. Kurtzman’s artwork exists in the now and is moving as opposed to a Wood who is trying to capture a scene or an environment. Kurtzman is capturing the soul of those moments with his line. His gestural drawings hint at the details that we fill in. Look at the way he draws the sleeves and clothes of the soldiers. You’ll never seen anything like that in reality but Kurtzman makes you believe every line because he believed in every line. He would simplify his drawing his drawing over time, making his humorous cartooning more wispy and whimsical but he could make you believe that his images we as solid and concrete as the items or events that he was recreating.
Kurtzman put down ink lines in ways that shouldn’t work. The image of a tank from **Two-Fisted Tales #24** shouldn’t look like a machine of war but Kurtzman sells it. There’s no details to the drawing except for what we fill in. That’s how a lot of his war stories worked. A great artist, he still lets us do a lot of the heavy lifting when we look at his comics, from his war stuff to his humor. Kurtzman invited his readers into his stories by allowing them to participate in the story and not just merely reading what was presented to them.
### Mirion Malle Shows Us Just How Strong We Are in This Is How I Disappear
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/this-is-how-i-disappear-mirion-malle/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T20:57:16.000Z
**This Is How I Disappear** is a comic about strength and our inability to recognize it in ourselves. It’s about depression that tells us that we’re not strong enough or good enough or brave enough to deal with that depression. As Mirion Malle shows it, depression is this self-feeding cycle of one step forward, two steps back as Clara slowly discovers an inner strength in her only to be consistently set back by self-doubt and fear. Reading Malle’s book, you’ll probably recognize yourself somewhere in it, whether it’s in Clara and her fight against depression or one of her friends who aren’t sure of how to best help Clara. Malle creates a story about empathy that helps provide a guide for how to deal with depression.
From the outside, Clara appears to be a successful, young, professional woman working in publishing and writing a semi-autobiographical book that mixes prose and poetry. But from the opening pages, we know something different about Clara. Her first words are, “The first time I felt like I wanted to die, I was probably, like, twelve?” That’s a way to set the tone right from the start but even that isn’t quite the whole story here. Shortly after Clara makes that confession to her therapist, she’s at a get-together with her friends and tries to help out a young woman she just met that’s obviously going through her own panic attack. Calm and collected, Clara helps her through the attack, turning her own experience into the strength that she needs to help Amélie. Clara experiences a strength and sturdiness helping Amelie that she can’t find to apply to her own life.
As Malle shows it, that’s part of the insidiousness of depression; it isolates Clara from her friends and from herself. Malle shows Clara surrounded by friends who love her and want to be there for her but something convinces Clara that she’s not good enough for them, not strong enough for them. But it also convinces her that she’s not enough. Reading the book, it’s staggering to realize the truth behind Malle’s depiction of the loneliness that Clara feels even though coworkers and friends are constantly reaching out to her. Malle’s storytelling focuses on how lonely Clara feels; she thinks she’s alone. And it’s her depression that’s telling her that; that she’s alone and no one loves her because one person didn’t love her. One bad relationship may not be the cause of Clara’s illness but it’s certainly the trigger for it that even a few years later has just worn Clara down.
For such a heavy subject, Malle’s line dances gracefully across each page. In many pages, it’s hard to tell where the lines begin and where they end, creating a contour line that speaks to the expanse of Clara’s world that she’s blind to. Her need for isolation closes her off to the world that Malle shapes around her that’s full of life. But even with that, Malle’s lines feel honest for all of the characters. She captures an urban experience that is both lively and lonely. Her line is open enough to depict Clara’s own highs and lows.
And it’s such a friendly, non-confrontational line. When you start talking about depression, it’s easy to try to assign blame somewhere. This person isn’t taking care of themselves; that person just can’t understand what depression does to someone. That kind of thinking really doesn’t help anyone. It deflects from the needed discussion and required help rather than supporting them. Part of the beauty of this book is how Malle’s art is just so welcoming to the reader, bringing them into Clara’s life in a way where you feel the pain and the weariness of the characters. Clara isn’t a victim and she’s not weak but she’s hurting and Malle’s artwork gets you to feel the rawness of this women’s emotions. There’s a charge to her work that gives Malle’s art a reflection of her character’s emotional state. It’s strong but vulnerable and that tells you a lot about Clara and the state she’s in at this point in her life.
So instead of dealing with blame or the idea that something is wrong with Clara or any of the characters, this book encourages us to exhibit and practice empathy. It encourages us to spend some time not just in Clara’s head but in the heads of her friends who are trying to understand and help her. It’s important that as we understand the catalyst for Clara’s health issues (as well as Amélie’s,) Malle is trying to move her characters beyond that. Even as Clara focuses on her past relationships and the damage they’ve done to her, Malle doesn’t seem interested in the cause as much as she wants to focus on the healing that’s needed.
Malle doesn’t judge her characters and asks us to also not to judge them. The book is seeking understanding, empathy, and the ability to allow ourselves to realize we don’t know everything that’s going on in our own or others’ lives. As you read the book, you can understand the origins of Clara’s depression, the causes of it. But it’s not a book about those causes. It’s good to understand them but we shouldn’t be judging Clara’s mental and emotional state based on the causes. We shouldn’t be judging them at all and instead understand that regardless of the cause, the effect of anyone’s depression is very real and very serious.
Clara is an incredibly strong character even if her depression convinces her otherwise. At that early party, when we see her trying to help Amélie, we see a young woman who has gone through her own troubles and survived them and who can share her strength and knowledge with someone going through what she has before. So when just pages later we see her struggling, it’s a bit shocking as we try to match together these two images of Clara, the strong image and the struggling image. That’s part of the insidiousness of Clara’s emotional state as it tries to convince us that is her. Malle makes sure that we’re able to see who Clara really is and the strength that she possesses as she rediscovers it herself in this great book.
### From The Archives- Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn (1990)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-kyle-bakers-why-i-hate-saturn/
Last updated: 2021-12-02T14:00:03.000Z
This is a book that I feel like stared at me from comic store shelves for a long time and I don't remember why it took me forever to pick it up. And by forever, I probably mean 3-4 years. I'm pretty sure I picked this up at [JC's Comics](https://www.jcscomicsnmore.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) in Toledo, Ohio in the couple of years that I was there after getting married. I can even see the shelving rack that it was sitting on, probably toward the bottom. My copy is a bit messed up but it's all from love.
This comic established a long love of Kyle Baker and his urbane wit. This piece was published on my now defunct Wednesday's Haul sometime in mid 2012.
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"Tarantino before Tarantino"
"Thelma and Louise as written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Woody Allen."
Those are the kind of descriptive yet meaningless quotes a jaded New York intellectual like Anne, the main character in **Why I Hate Saturn**, would despise. They show off a pseudo-intellect with an easy shorthand that falls well below writers of her own obvious stature and greatness. Yeah, Anne is one of those kind of writers, a columnist for a high-minded magazine. She's also a New Yorker, with the arrogance and the low self-esteem that goes along with that. Her best friend Ricky is a great guy and you've got to wonder why they aren't sleeping together. She's got a great job, turning in one column a month for a posh magazine even through she detests everything about it. Basically, she's your typical self-destructive young urban professional who can't be happy no matter how good life is to her. And when it seems like it just can't get worse, her sister Laura, the self-described "Queen of the Leather Astro-Girls of Saturn" shows up, bleeding from a gun shot wound.
Yeah, **Why I Hate Saturn** is kind of all over the place but that's one of the fun things about the book.
Kyle Baker's 1990 graphic novel starts out as a slice-of-life story in the first half before it turns into something completely different in the second half. Once Laura shows up, Anne tries to change. Laura may be crazy (the whole "Queen of the Leather Astro-Girls" thing) but she's also more together and confident than Anne could ever hope to be. Before you know it, New Yorker Anne is off to sunny and wonderful California to find her sister before dangerous ex-lovers do.
Baker's book predates *Reservoir Dogs* by two years and *Pulp Fiction* by four years but it's curious to see how Baker is a bit ahead of Tarantino (or, at least, one the same track as the movie director.) While it doesn't have the language or violence that those other films had, it does have a similar pacing and snappy dialogue that Tarantino became famous for. It's quick, rhythmic and idiosyncratic to the story and setting. It's probably not how people talk but how we'd like them to talk. Anne and Ricky are quick witted, fun and always there with a smart-alecy comment or observation. They talk about everything without really meaning anything. Their dialogue portrays the person that they want to be but as the story moves along, we see how it's just a costume for the people they really are. Of course, Baker and Tarantino are also building on the work of a lot of people as well, from Woody Allen to David Mamet. Baker plays with the dialogue and narration, using them to create a beat and pulse to his story.
In many ways, what Baker does here reminds me of what Gilbert Hernandez does with his *Locas* stories, creating characters first that end up finding themselves in unbelievably fantastic and unreal situations. Anne could be the east coast equivalent of Maggie, with all the neuroticism and uptightness that comes from being in NYC. And like Maggie, Anne goes through many physical changes in this book, mostly cosmetic but the character does change her appearances often. **Why I Hate Saturn** doesn't have the breadth and depth of characters that can be found in Hernandez's comics but the characters have the same kind of life that are found in *Love and Rockets*. And like Hernandez, for Baker the characters come first and the plot comes second.
**Why I Hate Saturn** contains Baker's more enduring and memorable original characters (maybe tied with or just behind Cowboy Wally.) He would try to capture some of the energetic dialogue later in his pieces in *Instant Piano* but his later graphic novels would rely a bit more heavily on plot than **Why I Hate Saturn** does. From what I remember, *You Are Here* and *I Die At Midnight* are more structured stories, hinging on events and plot points where I Hate Saturn is more about the characters, how they relate and get along. The weirder plot points about Laura's ex and his compulsion to get her back are almost a background to Anne and her need to constantly complain and not be happy or Laura's weird belief that she's the Astro-Leather Queen of Saturn, a character flaw that's allowed to simply exist without ever really being explained.
**Why I Hate Saturn** may already be a lost classic or it may just be a really good book. I'm actually not too sure right now. It's not a book that's discussed and picked apart ad nauseum and that allows it to still retain its charm and hipness. Over the past twenty years, Baker's cartooning and storytelling would become more defined and crisper but **Why I Hate Saturn** shows a creator at the beginning of the graphic novel age leading the way and figuring out how to tell a 200 page story. Stories like this would become fairly common in the later 90s and into the 2000s but Baker was there when it all started.
### Ricky Miller Talks the Avery Hill Kickstarter
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/ricky-miller-talks-the-avery-hill-kickstarter/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T20:54:33.000Z
[**Avery Hill**](https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) has launched its first [Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/averyhillpublishing/avery-hill-publishing-spring-2022-line-0?ref=fromcovertocover.com), and publisher Ricky Miller and I had the chance to chat about what that means for the company, what the spring releases offer new readers, and the role of Avery Hill as a publisher.
At this point, there are nine days left and campaign needs another $6000 (I have no idea what that is in pounds). I'm pretty sure 9 days is the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Wait, that's not what a fortnight is, is it?
The opening of ****George Wylesol's 2020**
**Mike**: Hi Ricky, and thank you for agreeing to talk a little about the Avery Hill Spring 2022 release [Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/averyhillpublishing/avery-hill-publishing-spring-2022-line-0?ref=fromcovertocover.com). I think the best question to start off with is the most obvious one. This is Avery Hill’s first [Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/averyhillpublishing/avery-hill-publishing-spring-2022-line-0?ref=fromcovertocover.com). What prompted you to utilize a crowdfunding campaign?
**Ricky:** It had always been something in the back of our minds as a possibility. We saw other publishers using it to good effect and decided now might be the right time. When we announced it we listed the following 5 reasons:
1\. Find a new audience direct from Kickstarter.
2\. Get money for the creators quicker than the usual retail distribution model which takes months to come through.
3\. Financial (we used to pre-fund the print costs from personal funds and that's becoming more difficult).
4\. Shake things up.
5\. "It's worth a go."
**Mike:** Trying something new is always cause for some anxiety. Did you have any trepidations about pursuing a Kickstarter?
**Ricky:** Absolutely, still are having them! Mainly it’s that if you fail, then it’s very public and we didn’t want to do anything to upset the creators of the books. Hopefully we’ve done enough to mitigate that though.
A page from Taki Soma's ****Sleeping While Standing**
**Mike:** Where do you see [Avery Hill’s](https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) role in comics writ large? Compared to American publishers, Avery Hill seems to encapsulate the type of comics we’d see at **Fantagraphics**, **Drawn and Quarterly**, and **First Second**. Each seems to have their own niche, but Avery Hill seems like it casts a wider net. Is that a fair statement?
**Ricky:** What we are is very much been determined by the people who buy the books. We have broad tastes and so are open to anything really, plus the fact we’re operating in a smaller market with fewer publishers around than the US means we can spread ourselves out and not have to have a house style or type of book. We can do what we want without really treading on anyone’s toes.
Probably the only one of those 3 you mention where it’s an accidental crossover would be **First Second**, as that primarily comes from our relationship with [**Tillie Walden**](https://www.tilliewalden.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and we never really saw her as a YA creator in that way when we were publishing her.
**Mike:** I'd agree with that. I don't necessarily think of Tillie or other **First Second** creators like Box Brown or Gene Yang as primarily **YA** creators despite how **First Second** chooses to market them.
**Ricky:** We didn’t really think in those terms, to us she was just an indie oddball like all of the other stuff we liked! I’d say it was the way she was then marketed when she was published in the US more than anything else that gives people that perception of her now.
> ***"We’re creator driven, not house driven."***
**Mike:** Did the pandemic change any of the way you functioned? Did you have to consider pulling back at all? Did it expose areas or blindspots?
**Ricky:** For us, the pandemic didn’t present too much of a challenge in that we always had strong sales through our own online store and in those first few months our audience supported us very strongly. The downside was that the creators whose books we released during that time, although the sales were strong, missed out on big launches and showing off their books at shows and seeing them in stores. That was the sad aspect.
**Mike**: Where do you see the growth potential for Avery Hill? What are the goals for the publishing house?
**Ricky**: I’d say our major goal is to make more money for our creators. That’s the thing that drives what we do. To that end we need to get more mainstream press interest in the UK and expand what we do across the board in North America. We’re also starting to see our books being picked up and translated into other languages, so that’s a big priority too.
Opening page from Claire Scully's ****Outer Wilderness**
**Mike:** Two of the books in the Kickstarter are from American creators. Are you seeing pledges come in equally from both sides of the pond?
**Ricky:** I haven’t actually looked to see where they’re coming from yet, but I’d assume a lot are US based. Because of Taki’s friends and contacts, there are a lot of famous comics names that I could see when I scanned the list of people, so that’s always super exciting!
**Mike:** In terms of expanding more into North America, is there a particular angle you need or a niche you need to inhabit? Does it come down to exposure or distribution?
**Ricky:** Our strategy in North America is currently just in cultivating contacts, in the press and in comic stores, and getting enough personal buy in from those people that they want to push our books. It doesn’t need much extra in terms of sales to make a big difference to us and our creators so ground level growth feels right. That will only get us so far and then the next level would be harder and will probably require more advertising and going to more shows out there, but at the moment small gradual growth is enough.
**Mike:** For a backer of this project who is getting three different books from three different kind of creators, what do you want them to take away about Avery Hill?
**Ricky:** That we’re a home for all kinds of books, by all kinds of creators. We’re creator driven, not house driven.
**Mike:** I think that is a great way to look at it, and that works for me as a reader and fan. I trust that what I'm getting is going to be good, even if the similarities between [Kat Chapman](https://katrionachapman.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [Hurk](https://lordhurk.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) are fairly minuscule.
That makes me think of the way certain record labels work. There are ones that concentrate on a sound, and there are ones that are more eclectic. Do you think this philosophy - facilitating exposure for works rather than curating a particular style - gives Avery Hill any particular advantage in this market?
**Ricky:** Record labels were more of an influence on us than publishing houses when we started as we didn’t really know anything about publishing, but we were music geeks. So Factory Records has always been in the back of our minds. The eclecticism has probably historically made things harder as it’s not easy to explain what we do in a couple of sentences. We had to build an audience that would trust us enough to know that even if a particular book didn’t look like their type of thing, they could give it a go and hopefully find something in it that resonated in the way that other books of ours had.
**Mike:** That makes so much sense. **Avery Hill** as a publishing house reminds me of a statement Michael Azerad made about the glory days of **SST Records**. To paraphrase, he said that SST worked because it traded on its track record. Despite the musical disparity between Black Flag, Minutemen, Dinosaur Jr., and the Meat Puppets, fans knew that they could trust that what they were getting from SST was going to be quality. I feel similarly about **Avery Hill**. It doesn't really matter if it's Tillie Walden, Hurk, or Zoe Thorogood - I trust what I'm getting from **Avery Hill**.
> ***"Record labels were more of an influence on us than publishing houses when we started."***
Let’s talk about the books themselves. As someone who grew up in Philadelphia and who lives in Maryland, I’d love to start with [**George Wylesol**](https://wylesol.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)and **2120**. I loved *Internet Crusader*, and I just learned that **Wylesol** uses the trackpad of his laptop to do his digital drawings and I might have a migraine just thinking about that. But, nonetheless, for someone who hasn’t read his work before, what’s the draw to this book?
A page from ****2120** by ****George Wylesol**
**Ricky**: It’s a 500 page choose-your-own-adventure/first person simulator graphic novel, written and drawn by a graphic designer/illustrator who doesn’t think like other people...all of George’s books push the medium in some way and this is probably his most amazing book yet. Expect the unexpected!
**Mike:** I loved the preview of [Taki Soma’s](https://twitter.com/takisoma?ref=fromcovertocover.com) Sleeping While Standing. Outside of her color work, I’m not too familiar with her art, but it looks like she channels the surreal side of pop art a la Mike Allred or Gilbert Hernandez. I’m interested in the genesis of Sleeping While Standing. Was this something Soma had put together and was looking to publish, or was this a pitch?
**Ricky:** Taki had many of the strips already completed and pitched the idea to us to put them out as a book. Her partner, **Michael Avon Oeming**, knew of us from social media and I think he recommended us, which is super lovely as **Powers** was one of the major books that got me back into comics a decade or so ago. **Taki** has had a fascinating life, so she has tonnes of stories to tell, and I’m sure this is the first of many solo books by her.
**Mike**: It’s intriguing that she found you via social media when I know you're famous for having found Tillie Walden on social media. How much of your effort is spent on finding new talent? And, following from that, what is the role you take in the nurturing of that new talent?
**Ricky:** We also found [Zoe Thorogood](https://twitter.com/zoethorogood?ref=fromcovertocover.com) through Twitter in a similar way to Tillie and probably a few others. Then there are some creators we’ve found through the zine section of comic shops, like [B. Mure](https://www.patreon.com/bmure?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and also at comic shows, like [Lizzy Stewart](https://lizzystewart.bigcartel.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [Charlot Kristensen](https://charlotk.myportfolio.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Then there are great resources like [Broken Frontier](https://www.brokenfrontier.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) that spotlight new creators and we found [Edie OP](https://twitter.com/edieop?ref=fromcovertocover.com) and probably a couple of others through there. We’re constantly on the lookout for new people, but also now we have a roster of creators that we’re always happy to work with again whenever they want to do something. In 2021 we’ve published 6 books, and 3 of them were by debut creators and 2 were by creators whose debut work we had previously published.
**Mike:** I love that there is a balance between traditional word of mouth and social media. Back to the Kickstarter books, [Claire Scully](https://www.clairescully.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), I mean, those images are simply sublime. I noticed in the description on the Kickstarter that you mention textured pages. For a book like this, where the art is the entirety of the publication, how important is it to get the production right?
A page from ****Outer Wilderness**
**Ricky:** For Claire’s work, the focus for us is definitely on making it a beautiful object as possible. We’ve done two of these books with her in the past and so have nailed the paper stock and the printer we use is brilliant at helping us reproduce the artwork as well as possible. Her books always fly off the table when we have them at shows and things!
**Mike:** Tillie Walden has a forthcoming Walking Dead graphic novel, Lizzy Stewart has published books this year with both Fantagraphics and Avery Hill, and Zoe Thorogood has illustrated both covers and interiors for Image books.
Getting back to the idea above of finding new talent and providing them an outlet, how much does that play into the growth of Avery Hill?
**Ricky:** It’s been massive, I’m not sure we’d still be doing this if we hadn’t found Tillie when we did as it led to us getting UK and US distributors, better press coverage and also expanding into hardbacks and much bigger print runs. On A Sunbeam and Alone In Space will keep selling forever (I think/hope) and the money we get from those is consistent enough to fund a lot of our running costs. We’re always super happy when our creators work for bigger publishers as it’s a virtuous circle of them building their audience, getting more press and people then seeking out their other work. Likewise the fact that Lizzy Stewart has had massively successful children’s books, [Owen Pomery](https://owenpomery.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) is getting some big illustration gigs and Charlot Kristensen is a rising star, amongst many other success stories, all feeds into it.
**Mike:** Ok, so, can I pitch a graphic novel by Dan Watters and Zoe Thorogood about UK punk rock? They’re not aware they are doing it yet, but I think once it's announced, they’ll get on board.
**Ricky:** I’ve never met Dan, but Zoe knows we’d do anything she wants to do, so if she’s in then we’re in. I’ll get started on the press release.
You can pledge to support **Avery Hill's** [Kickstarter here](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/averyhillpublishing/avery-hill-publishing-spring-2022-line-0?ref=fromcovertocover.com). And if you're interested in the rest of their catalog, check out their [webstore](https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
Read some more on **Avery Hill** from Mike and Scott:
[Finding Our Home in Owen D. Pomery’s Victory Point](http://www.panelpatter.com/2020/09/Owen-D-Pomery-Victory-Point.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
[The Salvation of Art: The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott by Zoe Thorogood](http://www.panelpatter.com/2020/09/The-impending-blindness-of-Billie-scott-Zoe-thorogood-review.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
["Growing Up is Vicious" - The Emergence of Tillie Walden through "Alone in Space"](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/07/growing-up-is-vicious-emergence-of.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### From the Archives: The End of Summer (2016)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-the-end-of-summer-2016/
Last updated: 2021-11-26T14:00:01.000Z
I don't think I knew who Tillie Walden was before being offered a review copy of **The End of Summer** at Newsarama. It was actually the second printing of the book but there had been some buzz around it so I figured I'd check it out.
Who knew what Tillie Walden was going to be able to do.
It's still maybe my favorite of her works just because it is so liberated but she would continue to create great and personal comics, including Spinning just a few years later.
And next year she's going to do a Walking Dead comic. That's just wild.
The End of Summer was recently included in the collection [*Alone in Space*](https://averyhillpublishing.bigcartel.com/product/alone-in-space-a-collection-by-tillie-walden?ref=fromcovertocover.com), out now from Avery Hill Publishing.
This review was originally written and published in Oct, 2016.
---
**The End of Summer**
Written by Tillie Walden
Art by Tillie Walden
Published by Avery Hill Publishing
Review by Scott Cederlund
‘Rama Rating: 9 out of 10
In describing the process of creating **The End of Summer,** Tillie Walden writes in the afterword, “So I started with three things: Twins. Cats. Architecture. And with those three words, I built the story.” Her book tells the story of a sick boy, Lars, who lives in a really quite wonderful and mysterious house with his twin sister and their family. And to call their home a “house” is really underselling what it is. It’s more like a castle or even a mesmerizing fortress that protects the family from the three-year winter that is advancing on them. Walden’s story is a beautiful moment in time caught with pen and ink that takes us to a new world even as it breaks our hearts with the cruelty of family.
**The End of Summer** is part fantasy and part family drama. And both parts buttress each other as the fantasy that she creates develops the aristocracy of the family drama which gives the fantasy weight and meaning. Their home, a giant mansion with all of these wonderful little nooks and crannies, becomes another character in the book, another member of the family. The architecture is both a comforter and a threat to the Lars, his giant cat Nemo, and his twin sister Maja. It’s full of all of these wonders and things that would thrill any kid, almost like it’s a giant, indoor, Victorian amusement park. Lars rides around inside his home on Nemo. But the house is also a prison as his family prepares to spend three years in it, protected from the winter.
Within the many walls of this labyrinth-like house, Walden sets up these complex and damaging family relationships. The sickly Lars is essentially trapped in this house with his family as they all begin to fall into a bit of madness. They are all essentially looking at a three-year imprisonment from the winter. Maja rebels against her parents; their brother Percy starts to become overly possessive of little figurines; their parents begin to chafe at their roles and moral responsibilities. Winter may be coming in this book but the madness is already here. Walden carefully paces out the many sins of the family, leading up to the sad breakup of everything Lars’ family was trying to protect.
Visually, the family is quite literally fading from view throughout the book while the architecture gets more solid and permanent. Walden draws as much as she needs to in every panel and on each page to tell her story so sometimes her characters are well defined and sometimes they’re just a few marks, more than enough to suggest the mood or tone of the moment. As the book develops, she gets more confident in her drawing and storytelling, until her art is quite minimalistic towards the climax of the story. It’s as if the people are fading from this place and this time while the house, a monument to their existence, will long outlast them.
In **The End of Summer**, it’s as if the house both protects the family while it picks away at them. As a reader, it looks like this great and magical place that would just be a fantastic place to live in but you can quickly see how the madness sets in. Tillie Walden creates this space that should be safe but the pressures it and the coming winter press on Lars and his family forces this maddening change in the family. “Twins. Cats. Architecture.” Walden’s story takes this fragile, unhealthy family and places them in a fortress, protecting them from the winter but traps them with the rest of their family.
### #Screenshot Reviews-- Newburn #1, Primordial #2, What's The Furthest Place From Here #1, and The Thing #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/screenshot-reviews-11-19-21/
Last updated: 2021-11-19T14:59:59.000Z
Over on the Twitter, we're posting reviews of new issues. The idea is that the review has to fit into one screenshot of our phones and that screenshot is the review that gets posted. It's a fun way to approach single-issue reviews. You can follow us on Twitter ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)) to see them when they're posted or every two weeks, we'll be collecting them and posting them here as well!
- Newburn #1
- Primordial #2
- What's The Furthest Place From Here #1
- The Thing #1
Click on the title link to see more preview art from the book.
---
**[Newburn #1](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1457388981650395145?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** by Chip Zdarsky & Jacob Phillips, reviewed by Mike Baxter
---
**[Primordial #2](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1458093018268020739?ref=fromcovertocover.com)** by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, and Dave Stewart, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
---
**[What's The Furthest Place From Here #1](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1458438042637660169?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**, by Matthew Rosenberg, Tyler Boss, and HassanOstmane-Elhaou, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
---
[**The Thing #1**](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1460074506811285504?ref=fromcovertocover.com) by Walter Mosley, Tom Reilly, and Jordie Bellaire, reviewed by Scott Cederlund
### Just Another Awkward Holiday Break in Friday Book One: The First Day Of Christmas
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/friday-book-one-the-first-day-of-christmas-brubaker-martin/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T20:57:06.000Z
In another book, Friday Fitzhugh would have been a supporting character, the girl best friend of the boy-genius detective. In the books we all probably read or had read to us, we saw the small-town detectives and their trusty sidekicks who solved all of the mysteries in Smalltown, USA. And just think of how much crime there had to be in those towns for the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Encyclopedia Brown so that they were always busy solving crimes. IN THEIR HOME TOWN!!!!! And the cops just go to these kids for the mysteries that are too big and unsolvable for them. It’s kind of crazy but we were kids when we read those books. That was the life that we wanted.
So in those books, Friday would have been the sidekick. Every kid detective needed one. She was Lancelot’s conscience, his muscle, and his anchor to reality. She was the new kid in sixth grade, the outcast who didn’t grow up around here. That is until she stepped in and fended off some bullies picking on Lancelot, the smartest kid around but also one of the smallest in his class, a real target for the tough kids. On that first day that they met after she chased the bullies away, he offered her a job as his bodyguard. And as they say, the rest from there was history.
They met when she was in sixth grade and were a team until six years later when she left for college. He stayed home, continuing to solve mysteries with the local sheriff while she went off to school to study and to see the world outside of what she had known. But it wasn’t that simple. The summer before she left, she couldn’t tell if they were friends or something more. One thing led to another and by the time she left, she wasn’t even too sure if they were even friends anymore. When she comes back at Christmas time, she’s still not too sure what they are or what she wants them to be. So it’s a tad bit awkward when she steps off the train and he’s there to whisk her into the night to solve the latest smalltown crime as if nothing ever happened. He’s the detective; she’s the bodyguard. And maybe that’s what he wants to believe as well.
Ed Brubaker has read all the same books and comics that we have. And he’s tapped into them before. [*Criminal: Last of the Innocents*](http://flashmobfridays.blogspot.com/2011/12/criminal-last-of-innocent.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)came from the same childhood faves as **Friday Book One: The First Day of Christmas** does, trying to recreate the feeling of those great, old stories from our childhood but with a more cynical, older perspective. It’s like we love those old stories but we also have to recognize where they came from and who they were written and made for. So instead of this being the story about the boy genius detective, the hero of the town, Brubaker, Marcos Martin, and Munster Vicente pivot to explore the far more fascinating character, the trusty sidekick Friday.
Martin and Vicente paint a rich, visual text here. Martin’s linework, usually clean and classic, becomes more detailed and more expressive here, driving the personality of these characters. There’s a warmth to his work here that we haven’t seen often in his work. In his collaborations with Brian K. Vaughan, *Private Eye* and *Barrier*, Martin was working in familiar but emotionally distant settings. The high concept of those stories drove some distance between the page and the reader. Those stories were built on a much loftier high concept and Martin’s work brought a necessary austerity to those stories. But here, the story is a bit more down-to-earth as Martin’s approach to the art pairs up with the different perspectives and goals of this story. Friday and Lancelot are teenagers; they’re awkward and still a bit gangly. Martin captures them in this transitory point in their lives where they’re not children but not necessarily adults yet.
The town they live in, King Hill, feels like a real, small New England town. It’s like you should be able to Google it and recognize the streets and woods that Martin draws here. Martin and Vicente visually define the essence of this town so it feels like you should know it in real life. From those snowy woods to the fantastic tree fort headquarters of Jones and Fitzhugh Investigations, the artists create this landscape for Friday and Lancelot to run around in, to grow up in, and to discover themselves. The setting of King Hill helps to define who these people are and provides some great context for their relationship, how close they are, and for just the uncertainty of who they are outside of those contexts.
With this much storytelling and character-building happening visually, Brubaker has the expanse to flip the script a bit, taking that supporting character and making this her experiences and her story. And in typical Brubaker fashion, he finds the conflict in the characters. There’s a whole subplot in this book about the mystery that Lancelot pulls Friday into, with those grade school bullies still getting into trouble when they should have outgrown it. There are even possible supernatural elements that are part of this mystery but they could also just be some guy from down at the end of the street wearing a scary mask and cursing those meddling kids.
In many ways, the mystery doesn’t matter to this story. The mystery is a propellant for the story but it isn’t the story. The story is right there at the start of a book- a girl returning to her hometown having to confront the past and clean up a mess that she may have created just before she left. It’s from this seed that Brubaker and Martin pull in all of these plot details that expand on the story but the action and the external threats are all there to support Friday’s agency and her conflicts. Not all of us can relate to the idea of running around town solving crimes, no matter how many *Scooby-Doo* cartoons we’ve watched or *Encyclopedia Brown* books we’ve read but we all know those stories; the shape and the path of them. And to speak frankly, what Brubaker and Martin are doing here with the detective story is not particularly anything novel or refreshing.
But what is refreshing is how Brubaker and Martin are weaving these different aspects of Friday’s lives together, creating a more fascinating story about this young woman that has dimension to it. That’s something that Brubaker maybe doesn’t get enough credit for in his writing. It’s why most of his *Criminal* stories are so thrilling-- the crimes are a big part of the draw of those stories, so big that you almost miss the real conflicts that are happening on a more personal and intimate level. The story of the Lawless family in *Criminal* is built around these elaborate plots and heists but the real conflict of those stories really are these family dramas, father and son stories where the crimes are these personal conflicts manifested on a more visceral plane.
And that’s what Brubaker is doing here, taking this intimate story about two people who may or may not be in love and then finding this outward plot to provide the structure for the inner conflicts. There’s a lot of mystery and spooky elements in **Friday**; Brubaker and Martin could easily tell the story of what’s happening in the nights in this small, snowy town. It would probably be good, just seeing Lancelot and Friday as two young adults trying to show the world what they can do. But when you layer in the personalities of these two, the history that they share, and the questions that are unresolved between them, the story becomes so much larger and grander even as it’s probably one of the smaller, more constrained stories that either Brubaker or Martin has worked on before.
This combination of the story and the art is all mixing together to tell this compelling story of Friday Fitzhugh and the boy that she has so many unanswered questions about. It’s as heartbreaking as it is thrilling. But the real question of this book is are these two people the same people in December as they were in August and who even were they in August. Everything else is just flavoring to spice up that story. Ed Brubaker, Marcos Martin, and Munsta Vicente take all of those stories we saw and read as kids and ask that great, old question-- what next? What happens to these kids when they grow up as we did. How complicated did their lives become? It’s not that we grew older so these kids from our stories have to but it’s more that we grew older and want to see that reflected in the stories that we love.
### From the Archives- Matt Fraction and David Aja's HAWKGUY (2012-2015)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archive-matt-fraction-and-david-ajas-hawkeye/
Last updated: 2021-12-10T01:23:27.000Z
A couple of years ago, I was able to write a number of pieces for [Trouble With Comics](https://troublewithcomics.tumblr.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), an offshoot of Comic Book Galaxy. It was a fun site and I was able to cover a number of things that were just fun. One of the comics I got to write about what Matt Fraction and David Aja's (and a host of other creators) Hawkeye, one of the most interesting comics that Marvel has put out in the past 10 years. Fraction gave the series a lot of character while Aja's craft was a masterclass of storytelling. The book wasn't completely successful, probably just mostly, but it still stands out as a highlight of modern Marvel Comics for how innovative and counter-superheroic it was.
And in a couple of days, we'll get a Disney Plus show that looks to borrow a lot from this Hawkeye series. So let's take a look back at this 2015 piece about Hawkeye #1-22.
> Matt Fraction and David Aja and Annie Wu had 22 issues to tell a Hawkeye story, maybe even THE Hawkeye story. Fraction’s Clint Barton isn’t the super confident and cocky archer that has lead Avengers and Thunderbolt teams. This isn’t the hothead who’s chafed under the direction/tutelage of Captain America. This isn’t even the superhero security guard that we got the last time that anyone tried to show Hawkeye as just a working stiff. Heck, this isn’t even the Hawkeye who plays second fiddle to the rest of the superheroes in the movies. Fraction’s Hawkeye is a bit of a loser, a man who may know everything to do during the working hours but when he punches out for the day, he’s kind of lost and bumbling. But that doesn’t mean that he still can’t find trouble to get in when he’s just trying to hang around his apartment.
> Basically, this run of Hawkeye is about Clint Barton versus gentrification, a plot driver that is very similar to the recent Daredevil Netflix TV series once you stop to think about it. When Clint’s apartment building comes under threat of the Russian mafia who want the real estate but not the tenants or the lousy rent, Hawkeye basically squats in the building and gets everyone else to as well as they fight the Russians for their home. It’s weird that that’s what the basic plot of 22 issues is – Hawkeye fighting the Russians over his crappy apartment. And not in any cool and retro Cold War fighting the Russians way but in a kind of mundane, everyday struggles of working folk kind of way.
To read the whole piece, [head over to Trouble With Comics](https://troublewithcomics.tumblr.com/post/126506872986/scott-cederlund-reviews-fraction-and-ajas-hawkeye?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
### Art "is how we pray to one another."
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/art-is-how-we-pray-to/
Last updated: 2021-11-12T14:29:59.000Z
### Remembering Tom Spurgeon, December 16, 1968 - November 13th, 2019
Ten days before he died, Tom Spurgeon posted to his site Comics Reporter, [celebrating his 15th anniversary](https://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/index/missed%5Fit%5Fcr%5Fturned%5F15%5Flast%5Fmonth/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). He notes that the anniversary was sometime the previous October and that he had missed it. [Douglas Wolk in his excellent obituary of Tom](https://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/blog%5Fmonthly/2019/11?ref=fromcovertocover.com) put CR’s launch date as [October 11, 2004](https://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/blog%5Fmonthly/2004/10/?ref=fromcovertocover.com). Now Tom had survived serious [health issues in the last 10 years of his life](https://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/sickness%5Fessay/?ref=fromcovertocover.com) that he very publicly talked about and that shaped his work after 2011\. Just through his writing at The Comics Reporter, I’m not too sure if there is anyone who cared more about comics and the people who created them.
Especially the people who created them.
On November 3rd, Tom remembered and briefly celebrated the 15th anniversary of his site.
On November 13th, Tom passed away.
In that anniversary post which ended up being one of the last reflective things that he wrote at the site, Tom snuck in a small line toward the end of it that has stuck in my mind ever since I read it.
“I'm in awe of people who make art. It's how we pray to one another.”
Tom believed in comics. He believed in art. He believed in the artists.
Tom's 15th Anniversary post on November 3, 2019, featuring a Wildwood strip by him and cartoonist Dan Wright
By saying that art is “how we pray to one another,” Tom changed the way that I think about comics. Art is something that we all experience, either as a diversion, as a hobby, or as life itself. The possibilities are endless but Spurgeon, in that quick, almost off-handed remark, shows comics as a much bigger communal experience that we can understand. It’s more than the comic shops, the conventions, the websites, and the social media. Prayer typically is thought of as a communal experience to a larger power, a god or a spirit. It’s a calling to a power higher than us.
Two years ago, Tom saw art (and by extension, comics) as the way that we commune with each other. It allows us to praise, lament, grieve, rage, uplift, and even argue with each other. It’s an almost worshipful experience where we’re led by the likes of Steve Ditko (and I wonder what he’d think about that,) Lynda Barry, Charles Schulz, Chris Ware, and so many more. Art is communication but it’s so much more.
Tom had this way of thinking and writing about comics that brought out the best in all of us. This view of art as prayer puts his entire life in perspective. When you look at his body of work, from The Comics Journal to The Comics Reporter, through to the Cartoon Crossroad Columbus comic festival, you can see a life lived in prayer towards the art and the artists that he lived, breathed, and loved.
Tom’s statement has changed the way that I look at art but I’m still processing how. He had that effect on people or at least on me. In 2015, I got to see him at [CAKE](https://www.cakechicago.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), hosting a panel with Jaime Hernandez. Hernandez was drawing and his image was being projected on the wall behind him with an old-fashioned light & mirror projector. I don’t remember much of the specifics of the discussion but Hernandez and Spurgeon obviously had a great time just talking about the comics that Jaime and his brothers had loved as kids. I think I sat on a counter in the back of the room because I had decided late to actually go to that panel instead of just walking the floor. But listening to Tom, you could hear the awe and respect that he had not just for Jaime but for the act of creating his art.
Jaime Hernandez and Tom Spurgeon at CAKE, 2015
Art is how we pray to one another.
I still miss the daily check-ins on The Comics Reporter, whether it was to see whose birthday it was or just to see what comics Tom would have picked up on a Wednesday if he had hit a comic shop. It was always a thrill and an honor to have Tom link to something that I had written. But it was also huge to see and read other pieces that he linked to because if he did, you know that the piece had something to say. And there’s one piece of writing advice that Tom dropped-- I’m not too sure if it was on CR or on Twitter-- that still whispers regularly in the back of my mind. In essence, it was if you make a statement about a comic in the first paragraph of a piece, make sure that you support that statement in the rest of the piece. You can see a lot of writers about comics who don’t know how to say anything other than “here’s a plot summary and I liked the book.”
Mostly, I miss Tom just casually tossing off ideas like art is how we pray to one another, just putting the idea out there and almost waiting for others to pick it up. When he was on Twitter, that’s a lot of what his feed was, oneliners and tossed off notions like he was focus-group testing them to see what stuck. Two years later and art is how we pray to each other has stuck with me and it’s still something that I think about regularly and try to better understand.
Thanks a lot, Tom.
### From the Archives-- Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes (2011)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-donald-duck-lost-in-the-andes/
Last updated: 2021-11-12T13:38:58.000Z
Once upon a time, there was a dream. That dream was of a comic website where a number of critics would be given the same book to write about.
That dream was [Flashmob Fridays](http://flashmobfridays.blogspot.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
If I'm being honest, Flashmob Fridays was one of the more fun writing experiences that I've had. It was a short-lived site and I don't think we ever gained much traction. Getting critics to organize something like that was like herding cats but it was fun to be given an assignment, to have to write about it, and then to see what everyone else also wrote. The site was a spinoff of [Trouble With Comics](https://troublewithcomics.tumblr.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), itself a spinoff of Comic Book Galaxy (which sadly looks to have been wiped from the internet,) two sites that were also very important to me.
It gave me the opportunity to read and write about a few things that I had never experienced before. One of those things was Carl Barks. Sure, I knew about Barks but had never really read any of his seminal work before. And I had barely even read any Ducks comics before this.
Now, looking at the review, I think it speaks much more about me than it does about the stories in this great collection. This is one book that I may need to re-read sometime soon.
Let's see just how off-base I was on this one...
---
I think what I really miss is more of an appreciation for the Carl Barks art. He’s the most well-known classic Disney artist but when I look at the stories in Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, I see more of a generic house Disney style than anything else. I can’t pick out my Carl Barkses from my Don Rosas. It’s all Donald Duck and his nephews looking like I remember them from Disney’s old Sunday night movies. Somehow, Barks’s work in this book registers to me as stories but not necessarily as comics.
What I enjoy about Barks (and his spiritual descendant Don Rosa) is that he doesn’t tell stories about cartoonish ducks but he tells them about characters who happen to be cartoonish ducks. The stories themselves, from the adventurous and titular “Lost in the Andes” to the screwballish “Plenty of Pets” and even to the one-page gag strips, are built around characters. Donald Duck is the loyal but easily flustered hero. He seems to be all about himself and how everything affects him but he’s always doing things for his nephews or his uncle out of a strong love that exists among these characters. Even as characters lose their tempers and get mad at each other, there’s never a sense of spite or selfishness around these characters. Donald Duck is like Ralph Kramden in *The Honeymooners*. He’s quick to anger but there’s hardly a bigger heart around.
[Click here to read the full review at Flashmob Fridays](http://flashmobfridays.blogspot.com/2012/01/walt-disneys-donald-duck-lost-in-andes.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
### A Far Sector Discussion with Scott and Mike
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/far-sector-jemisin-campbell/
Last updated: 2024-12-31T02:06:40.000Z
*We're trying something different here. Scott and Mike had a discussion about* F**ar Sector** *following the release of the collected edition and tried to capture it for the site. This is going to read differently than the normal site content you'd see. This isn't an analysis, per se. It's more of an appreciation, but it's really more of an informal conversation between friends. There are going to be ideas that would appear in a formal essay that we'll miss in this conversation, but there are going to be little noticings that won't come up when we're, for lack of a better term, trying.*
**Mike**: Scott, we read **Far Sector** two different ways, right? I read it as it came out in single issues and you picked it up in trade. Obviously, we’ll have different perspectives as a result, but I wanted to start before either of us even turned to page one. It’s safe to say that, for a few different reasons, **Far Sector** is different from most of the GL work that preceded it. Lantern books hold a special place for me. The Ron Marz/Daryl Banks *Kyle Rayner* run is arguably the first time I truly followed and collected a series, and *Blackest Night 1* was the first single issue I bought when I got back into comics. Thus, I can’t help but look at it through that lens.
What’s your Lantern background? How do you step in?
**Scott:** One of the first comics I remember having is *Green Lantern #90* (thank you, DC Universe Infinite for reminding me that) from August 1976\. It’s some weird issue co-starring Green Arrow and looks to be the first issue of the series after a 4-year hiatus following the Dennis O’Neil/Neal Adams run.
Hal Jordan, for as white bread and boring as he is, is probably one of my favorite characters but I love all the Lanterns, from Alan Scott to Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz. The whole concept of the Green Lantern, the corps, the ring, all of the ring slingers, human and alien, are just really fascinating to me. I don't know if I could say why but I just think that Green Lanterns are cool, which probably says a lot more about me than I wish it did.
I actually missed most of the Marz/Banks run. As it is a favorite concept, I can’t say I’ve followed the book with any great consistency over the years. I pretty much dropped out after the end of the Englehart/Staton post-*Crisis* run and didn’t really pick it up with any regularity until the *Green Lantern: Rebirth* era began and read it until the actual *DC Rebirth* cycle began.
**Mike:** That’s the funny thing about Green Lantern books, and it’s especially acute when you consider the trajectory of the books since the mid-90s. We had the fall of Hal, the death of the Corps, and the establishment of Kyle Rayner as the torchbearer. All of that, more than a decade’s worth of a new GL status quo, is what provides the impetus for the entirety of Johns’ run, at least the early stories. It's all about rebuilding everything back up, and he takes almost ten years to do it himself.
And I’d agree - as far as boring white dudes go, Hal is the best boring white guy out there. After Johns left the title towards the beginning of the New 52, GL was in a weird place. It was as if Johns had almost broken the title after rebuilding it. Like, where do we go from here? And the Rebirth titles tried to address that, especially with *Green Lanterns*, leaned into a whole different type of Lantern personality that Johns kind of ignored, but that helped define the early Rayner stories I read - an idea of vulnerability. Johns never really grasped that about Hal. Tomasi and Gibbons managed to inject more of that into The Corps. So, the two series that emerged after the *Rebirth* era GL series both ended - *The Green Lantern* and **Far Sector** \- intrigued me because they seemed to be offering something different than any GL series I had ever read, but while maintaining this connection to the overall mythology.
What I love about the beginning of **Far Sector** is that it starts en media res. Here’s a brand new Lantern on a brand new planet. It’s fresh, but you have to bring a certain schema to it. You kind of need to bring certain things to it. What were your first impressions when you opened the trade?
**Scott:** I love the mystery of the first page, a bloodied hand lying on the ground in the rain. It’s such a classic opening for this kind of thrilling story. But then it’s the details that start to make the mystery even more compelling. The hand has seven fingers; there’s something else tattered and broken lying next to it. (You’ll come to realize what that is soon enough.)
Far Sector Issue 1, page 1
That’s just a captivating entry point into the story.
And then on the second page, we meet Sojourner Mullein, Jo for short, a Lantern officer dealing with the first murder on her new beat. It’s almost setting up a “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown” mentality to Jo’s story that N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell spend the rest of the book pushing back against.
And from there, Jo quickly became one of my favorite Lanterns, right up there with one Mr. Guy Gardner.
**Mike:** If there is any justice in this universe, we get the Jo Mullein/Guy Gardner buddy-cop Lantern book we deserve.
**Scott:** Do you want me to go into the attire similarities of Guy and Jo?
**Mike:** I literally want nothing else in the world.
**Scott:** One of the things I love about her is her uniform. It’s not the leotard that Hal and John wear. Her tunic is Guy’s tunic and that may just sway my feelings a bit. It certainly doesn’t hurt.
Now all she needs are the moon boots and the funky gloves.
Far Sector issue 1, page 2
**Mike:** How about the art in this one? Was this your first experience with Jamal Campbell illustrating interiors?
**Scott:** He did one of the Bendis DC books, didn’t he? (*Naomi* according to **Far Sector’**s back cover.) I think I checked out one or two issues of that book but it didn’t really connect with me. And I (unfortunately) couldn’t tell you anything about the art so for all intents and purposes, this is the first thing of his that I’ve read and for the most part, his storytelling wowed me.
Naomi Season 1, written by Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker, art by Jamal Campbell
**Mike:** Beyond his ability to work as a storyteller (or maybe in conjunction with it), I was also impressed by his worldbuilding. I picked up *Naomi* in trade, and it was my introduction to Campbell. I’d recommend going back to *Naomi* because I think it’s ultimately a very charming, tender story, but it’s also enlightening to see the difference in how Campbell constructs that world compared to that of **Far Sector**. Perhaps that is a bit unfair since Naomi’s world is primarily Earth, but it’s the bright and brilliant color that I think helps sell the entire setup of **Far Sector**. The City Enduring is exactly what it needs to be - a futuristic world, shimmering and bombastic. There are so many great elements of cyberpunk that are cleaned up for the hyper-technological nature of this society. I love the setting as a whole. It’s lush yet sharp. It feels like the futuristic world I want it to be.
**Scott:** I was pulled in quite a bit by Campbell’s character work. To a degree, I think a lot of that worldbuilding got a little distracting for me. It helped really establish Jo’s stranger-in-a-strange-world setting and does give The City Enduring its own vibe but it’s the way that Campbell and Jemisin present Jo, Marsh, @ICanHazEarthStuff101, and everyone else that really made this story more than just another Green Lantern story.
Campbell gave these characters that extra dimension beyond Jemisin’s writing that made me fall in love with these characters, get mad and disappointed at them, and recognize that most of these people are just as flawed and unsure of themselves as I am. It’s the acting that Campbell draws out of his women and men that really builds their relationship.
Like, I’m trying to imagine this if it was drawn by someone else. Jemisin has a really good script here and a lot of this work is in her writing but think what this would be like with someone like Ivan Reis or Ed Benes drawing it. Not to say anything about their artwork other than it’s different from Campbell’s but the end product would have been much different and more superheroey than what we got.
Campbell is the perfect artist for this book because he manages to get us to see this world through Jo’s eyes and her perceptions. He’s a much more emotionally evocative artist than a Reis but he’s also able to (mostly) pull off the action, to create energy and power in his artwork.
**Mike:** I’m so glad to see the way you’re analyzing Campbell because I was struggling to find the way to convey my thoughts other than “wow, dude creates some amazing pages.” For me, you’re hitting the nail on the head when you talk about the acting of the characters. Campbell gets gestures; he understands body language and facial expressions. It’s incredibly relevant and fluid. I think his entire style lends to the idea of movement. I felt in every issue like I was moving with the pages, different from simply an animated feel, cinematic in a manner distinct from widescreen action. The setting does a lot to help that feel, but it’s the characters that make it palpable. I think of the opening of issue six, where Campbell poses Jo and Marth in the style of a 70s romance melodrama (see image above.) Besides channeling [Ahura](https://www.google.com/search?q=star+trek+uhura&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwj5j9qai4%5F0AhUTRs0KHfgiDAYQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=star+trek+uhura&gs%5Flcp=CgNpbWcQAzIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQ6BwgjEO8DECc6BAgAEEM6CAgAEIAEELEDOgsIABCABBCxAxCDAToKCCMQ7wMQ6gIQJzoICAAQsQMQgwE6BggAEAoQGDoGCAAQBRAeUOcJWN5kYLtpaA5wAHgAgAFhiAGrEJIBAjI5mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWewAQrAAQE&sclient=img&ei=WmiMYfn6PJOMtQb4xbAw&bih=859&biw=1584&client=safari&ref=fromcovertocover.com) through Jo’s look in this scene, which is indicative of the homages throughout the story, it’s also emblematic of Campbell’s ability to sell Jemisin’s dialogue.
Artists adept at capturing acting. From left to right - Jamal Campbell (Far Sector), Sean Phillips (Criminal), and Cliff Chiang (Green Arrow and Black Canary)
I feel like the acting component is something I want to come back to again after you started me thinking about it. We can sit here and decry house style for ages, but even some of the best mainstream and superhero artists who eschew a particular house style don’t capture the component of character acting that Campbell brings to this title. I can’t help but think of artists like Cliff Chiang or Sean Phillips who, like Campbell, build as much of the characterization and plotting through gestures and facial expression as through the actual writing/story/narration.
And really, I think that’s the half of this partnership that makes this book what it is. I’m not sure if you’ve read any N.K. Jemisin, but in addition to being a fantastic story, *The Broken Earth* trilogy is long and comprehensive. If I had some trepidation going into this series, it was about how Jemisin would transition to this medium. Plenty of science fiction and fantasy authors have tried their hand at comics with varying degrees of success. I wasn’t necessarily nervous that she would over-write the series, but I was nervous that there would be a lot of telling as opposed to showing. And I’m so happy I was wrong. I certainly think her scripts got tighter as the series progressed, and I can tell she was feeling the flow at the end to the point that I was hoping the run would get extended, but it really speaks to her skill as a collaborator that she, as a multiple award-winning author, can take a step back. I always feel restraint is the hallmark of any good comic writer, and it’s a fine line to toe. But she and Campbell really get it.
**Scott:** Campbell provides an energy to this that makes it more than just another Green Lantern story. I know that Jo is popping up in the *Green Lantern* title right now but while she’s a great character, it’s going to still be a bit before I can buy someone other than N.K. Jemisin writing her or Campbell drawing her. To me, this was a near-perfect partnership of words and pictures as both creators were really driven by and for the characters. This is a great story whether or not it was a *Green Lantern* book.
What I find so intriguing about this book is Jo. On Earth, she was a soldier and a cop but was she a good one? Her “origin” is that when she was a cop, she froze as her partner brutally beat someone in front of her. Yes, she reported her partner and tried to do the right thing afterward but I’m not too sure if Jemisin ever tries to exonerate her or absolve her of any potential sins here. It’s something that happened to her and the events of then are part of why she is the person she is now. She’s on this world that’s lightyears from the center of the galaxy and she’s essentially the galactic sheriff of the area but she doesn’t let anyone just be a perp or a nameless victim like she once kind of did back on Earth.
Jemisin slips these details into the story and they’re hard to read after the spring and summer of 2020 when police brutality was so much on display and the impetus to try to drive social change. Jemisin and Campbell acknowledge that corrupted part of our law enforcement and as Jo deals with these alien cultures, you can see prejudice and even pre-judgment as part of this new environment for her.
**Mike:** So what you’re telling me is that we need a follow-up? *Sojourner Mullein: Year One*?
Along the lines of exploring the "police" aspect inherent to all Green Lanterns, I was waiting to bring this up because I already said a lot about the previous GL series that have led up to **Far Sector**, but since you’ve brought up the Earth cop/space cop dynamic, I can’t help but want to ask what you think of **Far Sector** in light of Morrison/Sharp’s *The Green Lantern* (or vice-versa)?
**Scott:** While I have all of Morrison/Sharp’s GL, it left me fairly cold and I lost interest in it. Sharp’s artwork is kind of pretty in a John Carter of Mars kind of approach to Hal Jordan but Morrison writing about a space cop just never sat right with me. It was just a weird combination of character and writer that never felt real, like Morrison said “sure, I’ll write a Hal Jordan comic” and then realized that they were never interested in Hal Jordan. You look at their Superman stories, Batman stories, and Wonder Woman stories and Morrison’s interest in the characters was the interest in their stories.
*[Read Scott's analysis of ](http://www.panelpatter.com/2019/07/it-was-self-defense-thoughts-on-grant.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*[The Green Lantern Volume 1](http://www.panelpatter.com/2019/07/it-was-self-defense-thoughts-on-grant.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)*[ here](http://www.panelpatter.com/2019/07/it-was-self-defense-thoughts-on-grant.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com) (note: this essay was published before Morrison began publicly using gender non-specific pronouns)*
Jemisin and Campbell tell a far richer Green Lantern story than Morrison could. Morrison’s Hal Jordan is a cop who lives to serve the badge. Jo was a cop who wants to serve the people, which is what we want from our police officers. That’s why Jo is so fascinating-- so many Green Lantern stories are about the ring and all of the great things it can do. In **Far Sector**, the ring is secondary to the story. It’s a weapon or a tool but it doesn’t define who Jo is.
**Mike:** What snagged for me as a reader is that I think we had Morrison trying to shoehorn themselves into a character as opposed to using the character to tell a story they wanted to tell. I feel that, for **Far Sector**, what we got instead was finding a way to use a Green Lantern to tell a story. And I think it works much better that way unless you have an encyclopedic knowledge of a character.
Going a step further, I think Jemisin actually does a much better job exploring the nature of being a space cop. There are reflections on being an Earth cop, and the implications run both ways. There's more of an implied dialogue between these two aspects of her life. We didn't get that with Morrison.
Shifting gears, what did you think about Jeminsin’s ability to channel internet culture into the world of the City Enduring?
**Scott:** It’s probably the least interesting part of the story to me. For as much work as Jemisin and Campbell did developing this world and these cultures, the @At felt the least developed to me. It’s an interesting concept, a race of living search engines, but I think they get lost a bit in the story and end up becoming just the villains of the piece. The Nah and Keh-Topili feel more substantial to me. Maybe it’s the nature of the @At but they just never feel like they have a presence in this story other than as the mustache twirlers.
It's not to say that they're bad or anything but I just had such a stronger feeling for everyone else. But Jo's assistant CanHaz before the climax of the book tries to explain the @At to Joe and how they've been repressed by the powerful of The Enduring City and that makes them far more understandable to me than their exact nature did.
Do you have a different reading of them or how the story comments on internet culture?
**Mike**: Not a different reading, per se, but I’m intrigued by the concept. It’s part of the questions I have about the generalized construction of the story. I am curious about how much Jemisin already had a concept that she overlayed a Green Lantern story onto. I wonder if it would have worked differently as a novel if the world really received the necessary amount of attention. I think the idea of forgoing emotions is far more intriguing. What is it called? The Emotional Exploit? The commentary from that alone is enough for me to write an essay about. Jemisin is asking the most modern of questions, namely, how does consumption negate emotion. Then there is all the characterization and the depth of Jo as a character. Essentially, I would have been down for a 50 issue series, I think that is what I'm trying to say.
**Scott:** I think you’re reading the current *Green Lantern* and Jo just showed up there. **Far Sector** and the themes it explores are so far removed from the standard Green Lantern mythos so how is it seeing her interacting with John Stewart, Kilowog, and Teen Lantern?
**Mike:** Warning: spoilers ahead.
Ok - it’s a whole thing because I’m not sure what I think about the current *Green Lantern* run because I'm so put off by the art. It is far more formulaic than anything we saw in **Far Sector**. It starts with another grave threat to the Guardians and Oa at large. Long story short, rings stop working, thousands of Lanterns die at random, and there are only two whose rings still work - those of Jo and Keli, the Teen Lantern (though her gauntlet was never tied to the battery anyhow).
Nonetheless, there are two stories running parallel. One is John’s. He led a mission into uncharted space when the lights went out, and he’s kind of going through an Odyssey to return home. Jo has assumed the role of de facto corps leader and is tasked with finding the stranded Lanterns. She hasn’t had much interaction with established Corps members outside of Simon Baz, who I never truly warmed up to because I always thought he was written as a jerk. Guy and Kyle are still MIA. Jessica Cruz is a Sinestro Corps member. Kilowog is just beginning to come back into the story. And Hal is on Earth. His ring still works, too, of course. We don't know why yet. Jo got to meet Sinestro, and that's something I'd like to see again.
But essentially, she hasn't had any major face time with any of the Lanterns you'd like. I’d love to see her interact more with the Corps writ large. But, I also think I'd rather just see another **Far Sector** story. That or the Guy Gardner team-up. Maybe both.
**Scott:** It’s a bit like you said-- **Far Sector’s** story almost works whether or not Jo is a Green Lantern. That’s what I really like about that book-- the power and the costume are secondary to the characters.
**Mike:** That's the danger, here. I think you’re on the money. The problem with Morrison’s *The Green Lantern* was that they seemed to be writing a story about Hal, not a Morrison story for Hal. Jemisin writes a Jo Mullein story (whoever Jo started as), and now Jo finds herself in the middle of a typical GL story as others have continued her story. I’d love to see how she fits, but I almost don’t want her to fit because I prefer her as her own thing, not just another GL. In recent years, the only GL that has stuck out from the pack is Jessica Cruz. I’m intrigued by where the current series is going because it’s tapping into some of the threads Jemisin placed, namely the different origin of Jo’s ring and the different nature of her mission, so I'll hang in there for a little while, but it isn't ideal.
**Scott:** When **Far Sector** is about her being a Green Lantern, it’s about her being something different and unknown by most of the Corps. Jo exists outside of continuity that way until she’s brought into it and just seemingly becomes just another Green Lantern.
**Mike:** And there is precedent for that within the mythology of the GLC. At a certain point in their run, that is what Tomasi and Gleason were exploring. There is a richness to these characters that has been eschewed for a while now. Most creators tend to focus on the idea *that* they are Green Lanterns, as opposed to the idea of *why* or *how* they are Green Lanterns.
**Scott:** I’m more interested in future stories about Jo being an officer assigned to a sector far removed from anything else than in her being another Green Lantern fighting Sinestro or Hector Hammond.
Jemisin and Campbell need to do a **Far Sector: Season 2** series.
**Mike:** I can live in a world where she shows up in team books, but I'd prefer to see her in more solo adventures. A *Season 2* would be fantastic. A new mission, some more information about the nature of her ring, and the Guardian who gave it to her - I'd love to keep going with her as a character. I wonder how much will carry over from the continuity-adjacent *Young Animal* curated line to the DC Universe proper.
**Scott**: Jo’s too good a character not to be seen again. I don’t know what Jemisin and Campbell’s plans are, whether or not they want to tell another story. But I hope whoever picks up on her, who really steps in next to advance her story, understands what kind of person Jo is. I guess she’s a Green Lantern but she’s also someone who has learned to care about the people she works with but more importantly the people she protects. It’s that empathy for people that really sets her apart and makes her the type of person I want to read more of. She’s not perfect; she’ll be the first to admit it. But she’s trying to be better.
Jemisin and Campbell have created a character who lives and breathes, who has feelings, and who makes mistakes. She feels so much more complete after just 12 issues than so many other characters feel after decades of stories trying to define them.
### Moving In with Rumiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku Volume 1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/moving-in-to-rumiko-takahashis-maison-ikkoku/
Last updated: 2024-03-09T21:07:24.000Z
Will they or won’t they? It’s a question as old as time.
Or at least as old as romantic sitcoms.
Rumiko Takahashi’s **Maison Ikkoku**, first published in Japan in 1980, shows us life in a Japanese boarding house where the people living in the house are all up in each other’s business. Godai is a student, half-heartedly studying for his exams. His neighbor Yotsuya (we’re never quite told what he does) uses a hole in the wall between his and Godai’s apartment to get into Godai’s apartment whenever he wants to use another, smaller hole in the opposite wall to spy on Akemi, the bar waitress who has the room on the other side of Godai. Kentaro and his mother also have a room in the house, he the schoolboy who’s a bit too young to understand the context of everything and her the mother-hen of the house who doesn’t do a lot of mothering to the other inhabitants, just more general scolding and judging. Godai plans on leaving the house; it’s a bad study environment for him and the cause of all of his problems. And then Kyoko, the new resident manager, moves in and Godai falls in love at first sight.
The start of **Maison Ikkoku** isn’t particularly deep or even meaningful. And to say that “Godai falls in love” is probably even exaggerating the point. He falls into lust, infatuated with this beautiful woman who steps into his life without knowing a thing about her or even making the slightest attempt to get to know her before letting his attraction to Kyoko take over his life. But it’s all played for comedy so it’s alright, isn’t it? Takahashi’s screwball antics set a lively and not-quite-so-serious tone for the book that it mostly follows. The residents of Ikkoku House are a typical dysfunctional family, one that occasionally lewdly spies on each other through holes in the wall. Even Kentaro’s mother, the responsible “adult” of this group, acts more like a petulant kid, fed up with and maybe even slightly jealous of the other’s youth. She almost lives vicariously through Godai, Akemi, and Yotsuya.
From the moment she walks in the door, Kyoko is something different and new for this group. By the time the story opens, the previous resident manager has already fled the scene, quitting because of easily understandable exhaustion. From the first few pages, it’s easy to see what could have driven him to that point as the residents of the house act far more childish and immature than you would think functioning adults would. They bicker, tease, and spy on each other, creating an environment that screams more frat house than boarding house. If the previous house manager thought he was just going to be a landlord or apartment manager, he found himself in the middle of a bunch of immature children playing at being adults. And then in walks Kyoko, the new house manager with her own secret past, looking for an opportunity to bury herself into being the responsible one. If only she knew what she was getting herself into.
Unlike the other inhabitants of the house, Kyoko has surprising depth to her. As the other characters are defined more clearly by their roles in this story, Kyoko remains a mystery to the boarders and the reader. She’s clearly the responsible one in the house but it’s a reluctant responsibility. Moving in with her dog Soichiro, Kyoko is the only one of these people who has a past. She’s the only one who has a life before the beginning of the book. It’s a simple thing but Takahashi has this woman who disrupts life in the house, especially for Godai, who is more than just an object of obsession, even if that’s how she is introduced.
Entering the manga as an object of desire, Takahashi slowly develops Kyoko, giving her a history and a family that no one else in the house has. Godai is a clown that you feel somewhat sorry for in his travails. You can feel sorry for him and at the same time definitely feel sympathy for Kyoko but everyone else in this book exists only to vex Godai and Kyoko. Godai is driven by a lust for Kyoko, one that’s barely interested in getting to know her. It’s sad to watch this man stumble over his own tongue as he’s driven by an unexamined attraction to her. She’s pretty so that’s why he wants her after he first sees her.
Kyoko and Godai are the two characters in this book shown with some depth, which makes sense because it’s their stories. Takahashi has all of the other characters around them to add color and a bit more personality to the story but they all exist to fill in a comedic role. As she draws them, they never waver in their purpose in the story. All of them are obstacles between Godai and Kyoko. They fill in the space so that Takahashi can concentrate on showing the frustration, the attraction, and the fumbling of the pair.
When another “suitor” enters the picture, a tennis instructor who displays a tad more true interest in Kyoko, it just fuels Godai’s competitive spirit. Coach Mitaka seems like a nice, decent guy in this story even if Takahashi gives him a few insecurities that the story has fun with. He’s not that much of a developed character but he shows a bit more depth than Godai does, enough depth that it’s hard to figure out why Kyoko continues to show any glimmer of interest in Godai.
But before Mitaka enters the picture, the first half of this book centers on Godai, his struggles with his school exams, and his desire for Kyoko. Takahashi plays this for fun comedy and largely delivers an enjoyable, if somewhat inexplicable, romcom. And that’s purely based on the charms of her story. Godai is a “lovable” loser. At least, that’s how the story tries to position him as his late-night, drunken pronouncements of his “love” and his rivalry with Mitaka positions Kyoko as a prize to be won. Takahashi gives Kyoko enough agency and purpose to be her character but at times it feels like she’s in a different comic than the rest of the cast of this comic.
Everyone but Kyoko piles on Godai. He is our “hero,” but just at the beginning of his heroes’ journey even if he doesn’t quite live up to the tasks before him. Too easily distracted by the world around him, Godai flutters from moment to moment following any shiny thing in front of him. In the second half of the book, Kyoko becomes more of the central character, given an explored life outside of the confines of the house she manages. As we get to learn more about her life, she becomes a tragic figure, a widow at a young age who is conflicted about how she should live after the death of her husband. She wants to withdraw to remain faithful to her dead husband but is that really what she should do? Is that the best thing for her?
Takahashi has a wonderful playfulness with her characters that animates them. Whether it’s the neighbor who sneaks into Godai’s room through a hole in the wall, the waitress neighbor who mercilessly taunts Godai, the older neighbor and her young son who just generally try to annoy Godai, Takahashi plays these characters off of one another, delivery a fun, slightly mean-spirited playfulness in this house. As they exist just to play a defined part in this story, they provide enough comic relief to distract you a bit from the drama of the story. Takahashi has a good time with her cast, finding laughs in the different ways that they torment Godai and Kyoko and their possibly burgeoning relationship.
With one of Rumiko Takahashi’s first comics, **Maison Ikkoku V1** establishes a fun rom-com dynamic where she lets the characters and personalities of her cast drive both the humor and the drama. Even if the supporting characters are a bit shallow, Takahashi’s Kyoko is a fascinating woman with a past who needs healing that this house that she’s managing may be incapable of providing. This book provides a lot of setup but also gets into Godai and Kyoko’s story, allowing both of them the opportunity to change a bit from the opening pages through to the end of this volume.
### We Tweet So You Don't Have To
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/twitter-reviews/
Last updated: 2021-11-05T19:00:00.000Z
As we were preparing to launch the site over the past few weeks, we took to the FC2C Twitter page ([@FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/fromcovtocov?ref=fromcovertocover.com)– follow n0w!) and have been doing some different types of reviews of books there. Scott played around with a format where a review had to fit into a single screenshot of his phone and Mike did a thread on a new manga that he enjoyed.
We hope to be doing this regularly on Twitter so if you didn't get the message earlier, follow us over there.
Catching up on our Twitter reviews here's the 4 books that we've been looking at over there:
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's **We Have Demons**
Brian Buccalleto and Hayden Sherman's **Chicken Devil**
Yourei Ono's **Hard-Boiled Stories from the Cat Bar**
Scott Snyder and Francis Manapul's **Clear**
> We’re a few weeks away from launching the site but that doesn’t mean that we’re not reading and thinking about comics. So [@scottcederlund](https://twitter.com/ScottCederlund?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) is going to do screenshot reviews, starting with the new Snyder/Capullo joint We Have Demons. [pic.twitter.com/MuLainFBAk](https://t.co/MuLainFBAk?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — From Cover To Cover (@FromCovToCov) [October 7, 2021](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1446175113846611972?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> In our latest Twitter review, [@scottcederlund](https://twitter.com/ScottCederlund?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) takes a brief dive into the "uneasy breeziness" of [@brianbooch](https://twitter.com/BrianBooch?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com), [@Cleanlined](https://twitter.com/Cleanlined?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [@HassanOE](https://twitter.com/HassanOE?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) fun first issue of Chicken Devil, now out from [@AfterShockComix](https://twitter.com/AfterShockComix?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com). [pic.twitter.com/WfiAEB6mk4](https://t.co/WfiAEB6mk4?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — From Cover To Cover (@FromCovToCov) [October 10, 2021](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1447336139044515840?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
> Almost two weeks to site launch, and [@mikemcbax](https://twitter.com/mikemcbax?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) is chomping at the bit.
>
> Hard-Boiled Stories from the Cat Bar, a thread 🧵 [@yenpress](https://twitter.com/yenpress?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> 1/ [pic.twitter.com/COobpfjTM2](https://t.co/COobpfjTM2?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — From Cover To Cover (@FromCovToCov) [October 16, 2021](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1449370266178625540?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Click on the Tweet to read the whole 10-part thread.
> We're back with another single screenshot review. [@ScottCederlund](https://twitter.com/ScottCederlund?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) takes a look at [@Ssnyder1835](https://twitter.com/Ssnyder1835?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com) and [@FrancisManapul](https://twitter.com/FrancisManapul?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)'s new Clear #1, now available on [@comixology](https://twitter.com/comiXology?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com). [pic.twitter.com/SeDgwrFtJE](https://t.co/SeDgwrFtJE?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — From Cover To Cover (@FromCovToCov) [October 17, 2021](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1449850204706934785?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
### The Poetry of Nate Powell's *Save It For Later*
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-poetry-of-nate-powells-save-it-for-later/
Last updated: 2021-11-12T13:26:23.000Z
Entry points into books, what hooks us as readers, are obviously varied. At some point, we all read to learn new things or to deepen our knowledge about a particular curiosity (especially when it comes to non-fiction). It can be hard, but many of us also read to challenge our beliefs, deliberately choosing a title that might not jive with our inclinations in order to either shore up our moral compass or at least give insight into another mode of thinking. All of these are noble reasons for cracking a book, but there is often another core reason that can be, at least on the face, a little more problematic. What is even more dangerous upon dissection is that this form of reading might be the most popular reading rationale in the age of the social media internet.
I write, of course, about reading for confirmation.
Confirmation as a modality provides a particular plague for modern journalism, one that affects both ends of the political spectrum, and one that leaders do a lot of lazy writing that rewards sensation over construction.
Thus, it makes me rightly nervous when I approach any work with a proclivity for at least initial appreciation based on a perceived message. This is different of course from choosing a book because the topic is particularly intriguing. To be fair, I think I get spooked much easier by short-form internet publishing that sits too well with my perceived notions, but when I come across a work that resonates with my ethics, I find a particular duty to engage in a more rigorous reading of it. In other words, I’m probably harder on these books.
I write this because, despite any of these rigors, Nate Powell's **Save It For Later** is easily one of the strongest offerings I've had the pleasure of reading in 2021, and it does its duty of cathartic purgation with such effective grace that I'll spend the next few hundred words stumbling over myself trying to capture exactly why this book resonates this well with a reader like me.
**Save it for Later** *indeed* holds up to my particular strict scrutiny. (I’m such a nerd, that I actually find it more fulfilling to put a book through the wringer and come out loving it like it proved something to me as if it actually had anything to prove). You can hopefully understand my trepidation. I already held Nate Powell in high esteem even prior to his superb work on the *March* trilogy. And I kind of had the feeling that **Save it For Later** would be a head-nodder for me, and I wanted to be sure I was considering more about the book than just what Powell had to say politically. My rigor as a reader was to move beyond his message if not his entire perspective.
Yes, I did this months ago, before I ever considered writing about it. This is what I consider reading for fun. This is why I'm so fun at parties.
But such an exercise was fairly easy because **Save it For Later**doesn’t necessarily produce any single distinct or linear message. Perhaps at the end, after he knows the reader has had the chance to absorb the entire book, Powell offers a unifying element in the closing chapter that helps to codify some intended takeaway. But, for the most part, I would argue that the brilliance of **Save it For Later** is that it is less a polemic and more of a real-time reaction to the Trump era of politics. Thus, for me, the book is less prescriptive than it is cathartic. There are certainly calls to action peppered throughout the book, and the idea of “urgency” in the book’s subtitle permeates thematically via Powell’s reckoning with the past five years.
Consequently, I’ve found myself looking more at the construction of the book than the message itself. I opened this book predisposed to Powell’s worldview, so I don’t have any particular inclination to analyze that component. What I hope the exercise does is reveal the salience of Powell’s message through an analysis of the methodology behind the book. **Save it for Later** isn’t necessarily unique in its politics, or perhaps more specifically, its worldview. It’s likely consistent with the feelings of anyone left of center who lived through the Trump years. What triumphs, though, are the layers deeper than the on-face worldview or political reactions, namely the personal catharsis Powell injects into this work. Perhaps, though, what I find most invigorating is the wholesale construction of it. Powell as a cartoonist transcends with this work. It is simultaneously more visceral and more ethereal. As someone who has enjoyed every one of Powell’s solo works, and as someone who believes the entire *March* trilogy should be in every classroom in the United States, I hope I say this without hyperbole - **Save it for Later** exists on a different level.
Most readers are familiar with Nate Powell from his work on the *March* trilogy, and that experience is enough of a primer into Powell’s style as a visual storyteller. **Save it For Later** will feel familiar at parts, but it is more inflected with color and contrast, a la Powell’s earlier work, *Come Again*. Powell has primarily worked in black and white, but it was with *Come Again* that he began accenting his dark shading with autumnal hues. He carries that aesthetic to this book, and I think it’s fair to say he has coalesced into a particular style, one that merges a type of semi-realistic cartooning with a dose of noir impressionism. Powell works mostly in personal stories, but I bet he’d draw the hell out of a crime book.
**Save It For Later** opens in 2016 just a few days after the Trump election. Powell accents this first entry with a faintly burnt orange hue, contrasted with the icy blue that punctuates the story months later as inauguration day approaches and resignation sets in. It’s hard not to read into that particular element of metaphor, and it is the cool blue that Powell will cling to most often through the rest of the book, harnessing it to inject a touch more emotion into his heavy black and white panels, especially the darkest pages, those the most bereft of hope, literally cloaked in metaphysical darkness. Perhaps the blue represents Powell’s depression, contrasting with the orange of the lead-up, the remnants of a red rage slowly burning out. I like to think of the blue representing the cold, conjuring images of winter with blue ice or frozen blue waterways, different from the dying orange of the fall. The steely, cool blue could be the steady return to normalcy, the comforting notion that the lake is only temporarily frozen, and that life will eventually return. One of the clear takeaways is the idea of resilience, the need to hold fast in the face of adversity. So, thus, Powell’s blue could also conjure that notion of dedication or faith.
Powell’s approach to panel and page construction is the hallmark of his creative approach to this book. Originally, I had convinced myself that Powell was doing something remarkably different with his panel construction itself. While it does tend a little more to the wild side at times, what I think truly sets this work apart isn't the image or panel placement as much as it is Powell’s lettering. I realized that it isn’t so much the way he constructs the lines on the page, but the way his lettering - and therefore the narrative - interact with his art. His placement of text on the page adds a unique dynamic to the book’s structure. The way he places text on his single panel/splash pages adds another layer of poetry to the work. It’s flowy, and there is a beauty in the way it descends on each page, connoting a far more personal feel like that of a journal of Powell’s real-time reactions to the world in the midst of Trump.
Coupled with the fact that the book is broken into sections compiled of shorter subsections that almost feel like vignettes, it really does start to feel like Powell is producing a diary or a letter constructed for the purpose to pass down to both his daughters and future generations. Powell seems conscious that he is creating an artifact, and it resonates as such. But he does so deftly. **Save It For Later** is a spotlight on history, and Powell doesn’t overextend by trying to universalize or reductively contextualize his message. In fact, I would contend he creates a far more universal message by focusing on his own personal reaction paired with his effortless way of documenting his own anguish. If you’re sympathetic to this worldview, it’s going to hit in a way I’ll never be able to capture. If you’re like Powell or me, raised on punk rock with your nihilism tempered only by your optimism, it’s hard to qualify the gut-wrenching realization that we’d regressed into neo-fascism.
In high school, I spent countless hours thinking about fascism. But it was always just beyond my imagination. I had anti-Nazi patches on my school bag and hoodies; I was convinced the only thing that stood between freedom and fascism was punk rock kids violently slamming into one another a VFW halls across Philadelphia and Southeastern Pennsylvania. As I got older, my values didn’t change, but I was definitely lulled into some false security that the looming Nazi punk was really just a boogeyman from a bygone era. And then . . .
I digress. Back to the construction of the book:
Parts of this book do indeed read like a structured comic narrative, and these segments are tight and well-executed. They provide not only narrative movement but also the appropriate context and occasional backstory that make Powell’s more poetic sojourns that much more poignant.
But the soul of the book is the splash pages, where Powell's words fall effortlessly down the page and the art mesmerizes the reader into contemplation. These more poetic portions don’t connote feelings of verse solely because of the way Powell writes, but also because of the way he organizes his pages. There is an organic conventionality to all of it, a thoughtfulness behind each page component, from shade to line to letter. These pages read differently - it feels more like the reader is watching a slide show and Powell is providing a voice-over. But it is distinct from narration; he isn’t ever necessarily describing a page. It’s more that he is articulating a feeling or emotion of the moment, and the art on the page should conjure a similar emotion. Both art and narration thus extend each other instead of progressing side-by-side. It’s a beautiful reading experience.
Throughout the book, this deliberate contrast of narratives drives the flow of the book. Powell’s words and images often work more symbiotically than deliberately. It isn’t that they are disparate, nor even disconnected, but they do seem to function each as their own component. Don’t get me wrong, Powell creates plenty of panels that are straightforward sequential scenes where his narration boxes and speech bubbles can only function within that panel. But, there are significant portions of the book where Powell’s words and art connote a feel that can best be described as free verse. I can only speculate about what came first, images or words. The structure itself feels different, more free-flowing, almost as is the images and words accompany one another rather than directly correlate. This design element makes me consider the role of the 24-hour news cycle and its hyper-relevance in the age of Trump, through the early days of the pandemic, the summer of Black Lives Matter, and the pendulum swing to the January 6th insurrection, all the way into the frustrating impasse that has personified 2021.
There are also some other meaningful choices Powell makes as a cartoonist. The most obvious is the decision to depict his two daughters as puppies, his older additionally adorned with a unicorn horn. Portraying his girls as puppies feels like a very specific choice to me. At first, I thought it might be a stand-in disguise, that Powell didn’t want to recreate his daughters’ images for the book. I would completely understand that prerogative, but a picture of Powell and his oldest daughter at a protest at the back of the book throws a monkey-wrench into that theory. It might not completely discount it, but it caused me to think differently. For me, the symbolism of innocence jumps out at me, but it also makes me consider the role that animals have in our society. If we are called to be caretakers of certain animals, it's also our responsibility to be caretakers for our future, for the future of children.
Earlier in this essay, I mentioned that this book could function as a letter to Powell’s children. At times, it feels like Powell *is* speaking directly to them, and in this way, he embodies both an idealism and patience. He simultaneously seems to know that nothing will change overnight and that the burden of protest rests in the diligence of the protesters. And that seems to be the core of what he wants to impart to both his daughters and his readers. It isn’t lost on Powell’s punk rock-rooted idealism that we can ever rest on our laurels. Powell’s idea seems to be an ongoing regeneration. He sees his Boomer parents who have good hearts and who served as inspiration for his own political awakening resign themselves to making certain excuses or concessions that, while not wholly apathetic, seem to take the wind out of the sails for change their generation could have provided. Powell deliberately wants to avoid this tragic turn, and it’s there that we see words from the book’s subtitle, “the urgency of protest,” become apparent.
Many of us spent recent years repeating maxims like "this is not normal" or phrases like "course correction." We often discussed the fragility of our democracy in the same sentence as we assured ourselves it would perpetually endure. The whole purpose behind **Save It For Later** is to jostle us back into action. While it certainly exists as a document of its time, what causes me to believe **Save It For Later** will endure is the timelessness of its message. Yes, it is an artifact, but it is also a reminder. With the *March* trilogy, Powell cemented himself as a giant in the world of comics, but this might very well be his magnum opus. Nothing I read during or about the Trump years is as emotionally honest without devolving into hyperbole. Message notwithstanding, what will forever stand out to me about**Save It For Later** is the storytelling model Powell employs. It is visual poetry, rife with lingering moments of contemplation. The best poets reach deeply into their souls in order to touch ours, and that is the catharsis at the heart of **Save It For Later**.
### From the Archives- Concrete: The Human Dilemma #1 (2004)
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives/
Last updated: 2021-11-08T14:24:39.000Z
This piece was originally published at Mediasharx, the first or second site that I ever wrote for. If I remember correctly, Mediasharx was a spinoff of Zentertainment, one of the first popular entertainment news websites. I think I may have started at the last month of Zentertainment before that site was shut down (the main guy left the internet to become a chef (?)) and when a lot of the staff started Mediasharx, I jumped over there.
It's so weird to be trying to remember what was happening on the internet via 2003/2004\. Trying to Google both Mediasharx and Zentertainment, both names are now being used for completely different things.
Paul Chadwick's Concrete has been a favorite of mine since discovering it back in the mid/late 1980s. The Human Dilemma #1 hit stands on December 29, 2004 and began the last cycle of Concrete stories to date. With the way that we worked at Mediasharx back then, this must have been published on New Years Eve that year.
---
*CONCRETE: THE HUMAN DILEMMA #1 is one of the smartest and most enjoyable issues of the year.*
**Concrete: The Human Dilemma #1**
Published By: Dark Horse Comics
Written and Drawn by: Paul Chadwick
Lettered by: Bill Spicer
**What you should know:**
As part of military testing, Ron Lithgow's brain was put into a gigantic, rock encrusted body. At least that's what they told the public about Lithgow, now called Concrete. They left out the parts about the aliens. Now Lithgow, a minor celebrity, spends his days collecting art and trying to figure out how best to use the alien body he's been given.
**What happened:**
After not being on the comic racks for a few years, most comic creators would probably throughout an introductory issue reminding you of the cast and characters in his books. Not Paul Chadwick. He just dives in, with the most brief "for the new readers" blurb, and picks up the story of Concrete, his assistant Larry and Maureen, the biologist who studies him. I hate to say that even though I've read CONCRETE for years, I'm still kind of lost on where these characters are at this point in their lives. The last couple of miniseries hasn't really stuck in my memory.
When you have comics filled with brightly costumed characters fighting other and even brighter costumed characters, CONCRETE has always been an interesting diversion from those books. Physically, it's almost impossible to find a character more fantastic and powerful than Concrete. With his alien body, he should be up there with The Hulk and The Thing in terms of adventures and excitement. Concrete should be out there every day fighting his own versions of The Leader and Doctor Doom. Instead, Chadwick grounds Concrete in a more real-world where he's spent years trying to figure out what to do. Instead of rushing out to have adventures (and he does have a few now and then,) Concrete spends most of his time contemplating the best way to have an impact on society. Whenever he actually gets around to doing something, he wants it to have meaning.
That's why when a corporate head comes to Concrete in HUMAN DILEMMA with a proposition for him, Concrete has to take the time to consider it. Concrete has always thought that in his body he should be able to be a spokesperson for an environmental cause. He's looked to the rain forests, green peace, even Mount Everest for a cause he could get behind and support. Now, Walter Sageman, CEO for Punchinello Pizza, calls him with an offer-- be a spokesman advocating limited population growth through sterilization. "I want childlessness to become acceptable, even chic," Sageman says. "The foundation will pay young couples to choose education, careers, and good works over childbearing." When was the last time you read something like that in a comic book? The incredible part is that Concrete seriously considers Sageman's offer.
While this is going on, we catch up a bit with Larry, Concrete's assistant. In a previous miniseries, Larry met Astra during an adventure of his own when he was kidnapped. Since then, they've fallen in love and we see Larry's attempts to propose to Astra. Larry has always been around to help ground Concrete. Larry is a regular guy and offers a mix of humor and stability to the book. Larry stands in for the readers in Concrete's world, invited in and learning to be part of the big rocky guy's life. But we've rarely seen Larry strike out on his own so it's good to see the character get a little life to him.
CONCRETE started out as short stories in DARK HORSE PRESENTS before graduating to its own series. Even in his regular series, each issue was fairly self-contained. Chadwick has always worked better when he's had the limits of 8 or 32 pages. His miniseries have never had the focus and strength that a majority of the short stories had. HUMAN DILEMMA finally seems to break through and deliver a strong issue that's part of a larger series. It's great to see an older character getting a new lease on life. CONCRETE: THE HUMAN DILEMMA is one of the smartest and most enjoyable issues of the year.
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Last updated: 2024-03-09T20:54:47.000Z
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### Eternals Gotta Eternal in Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic, and Matthew Wilson’s Eternals: Only Death Is Eternal
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/eternals-going-to-eternal-in-kieron-gillen-and-esad-ribics/
Last updated: 2021-12-10T01:23:04.000Z
*Let’*s talk about gods (small “g”) and Kieron Gillen’s fascination with them. His early Marvel work centered on Loki, taking Thor’s adopted brother and turning the trickster god into the trickster child, thus offering a view of the character that turned our perceptions of him upside down. It turned him into a hero from a certain point of view without throwing away everything we knew about the character or his past evil deeds. But it offered a new perspective on this all-too-familiar Asgardian that carries through to today, including the recent Loki television show. Then a few years later, he flipped the script with *The Wicked + The Divine*, turning pop stars and their fans into the newest 21st-century godly pantheon. Many of these gods were small and petty as they couldn’t escape their own innate humanity.
Gillen's gods offer a view of divinity through a very human lens, which in itself isn’t necessarily anything new, but Gillen throws such a modern spin into these gods that they become this reflection of ourselves and our times. And it even works with *Star Wars* and what Gillen did in *Darth Vader*. There’s a part of Gillen’s career built on taking swipes at these all-powerful gods and being, knocking them around and down a bit to make them something a bit more recognizable; to make them more human.
Jack Kirby was another comic creator fascinated by the gods. A child of the early 20th century, Kirby created our modern myths, legends, and gods. From the Asgardians to the New Gods through to The Eternals. There was an austerity to his gods that he always sought to preserve. Kirby defined the new gods of mythology. Kirby, along with Joe Simon and Stan Lee, gave us creation myths, morality talkies, showing us what a small and broken people could become. These gods weren’t us but they were either an aspiration (the New Gods) or a warning (Darkseid and his minions.) They could walk among us but they were rarely us which is quite the opposite of his take on very human gods in The Fantastic Four or the other Marvel silver age heroes. By the time he was working on his 1970’s comics, Kirby was looking to his characters as guides for humanity. They were protectors but also an evolutionary step. Jack Kirby dealt primarily with heroes and that is what his gods were.
That’s why people have often stumbled when they have tried to revitalize either The New Gods or The Eternals. No matter how much the creator may idolize Kirby (see John Byrne’s attempts at New Gods stories,) they are not Jack Kirby and don’t have his worldview or his imagination. The comics either feel like a rehashing of what Kirby already did (again, Byrne’s New Gods) or a-swing-and-a-miss efforts that don’t go anywhere (see the numerous attempts at Marvel to make The Eternals a thing, including Neil Gaiman’s.) Kirby has such a long shadow that comics, particularly Marvel comics, are still trapped under. Occasionally you’ll get a creator who finds new ways to approach Kirby on their terms and find new ways to use these characters to explore their concerns without stumbling over just trying to recreate the comics that they’ve read. See Walt Simonson’s *Orion* for a completely faithful interpretation of Kirby but also a very personal and creator-driven story from Simonson.
It’s obvious through their work in **Eternals Volume 1: Only Death Is Eternal** that Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic, and Matthew Wilson revere the work of Jack Kirby. This comic couldn’t exist without that respect for its origins. Gillen pulls a neat trick, opening the story with a resurrection: Ikaris reborn and the story begins. It simultaneously respects what has come before while it signals the beginning of something new. Ikaris is reborn and with him, the unknown sins of the Eternals are resurrected. He’s awake to a new life and the world begins falling apart. It’s a great opening that provides a solid foundation for this new story.
In Ribic and Wilson’s images, we find an uneasy tension between the world that we know and recognize and this alien culture that claims to protect us. These Eternals, these gods, live under a millennia-old mission: “Protect Celestials. Protect the Machine. Correct excessive deviation.” Protecting humankind falls somewhere in that, so when Ikaris has a vision of a tombstone for a boy he doesn’t know, he vows to protect that boy. His vision is a mission to him even if an also-newly resurrected Thanos is threatening the Eternals and the Machine. There’s a certain amount of ego in Ikaris’ assumption that the boy needs protecting. That Eternal ego is another driver in this story.
Ikaris has sworn to protect Toby Robson, the high school student whose grave he saw in a vision. Ribic shows Ikkaris appearing over Toby’s New York home, floating above it like a blond, perfect god. Ikkaris isn’t shown as a servant or as a protector but as a higher being. He eventually comes a bit down to Earth, pleasantly accepting a cup of coffee from Toby’s mother but he’s never a part of their world like he charges Sprite to be when he’s off battling Thanos. Sprite fits in a bit better as Toby’s bodyguard but even she’s something different from Toby, something from outside of his world.
It’s arrogance that Ribic shows whenever he draws Ikaris in the early pages of this comic. All of the Eternals exhibit some of the same arrogance but Gillen shows a bit of self-awareness in them that Ikaris is completely lacking. Even Sprite, the eternally youthful Eternal who tried to kill them in previous incarnations, appears more aware of who she is than Ikaris can ever be. Ikaris believes himself to be noble and righteous. If he is, he’s the only Eternal who may be those things. This lack of self-awareness though is something that’s at the core of the Eternals and it’s the biggest struggle they face in this story, even bigger than a homicidal, Death-worshiping Thanos. It’s both self-awareness and the lack of it that are the sits of these characters.
It’s almost funny how well the narrator of the book, The Machine, knows Ikarris even if he doesn’t completely know himself. The Machine that they’re supposed to protect is the Earth, which is self-aware in this book and is Gillen’s unreliable narrator. Even older than the Eternals, the Machine has watched over these men and women, knowing which one of them are arrows and which of them are snakes. They’re cogs in its existence and it knows how each of them fits together. But something is wrong; the Machine is broken. So even as The Eternals are battling among multiple fronts, the thing that they’re fighting for is falling apart around them.
As Gillen writes them, The Eternals fall somewhere between the worshipped and the worshippers. They’ve been abandoned by their gods who they vowed to protect; the Celestials recognize the rise of human superbeings as taking over the functions of the Eternals. Cast aside, they continue to perform their tasks even as others have risen to take them on. But Gillen frequently relates them to the gods of old, citing how they’ve often been mistaken by humanity as true deities and not just enhanced beings. The Eternals represent an old system, a dependable but outdated system. Sometimes those old systems can be updated and given a new life but sometimes, they just need to be thrown away and you need to get a whole new one.
Another Eternal Thena lives the same disconnected life as Ikkaris. The evolutionary flipside of the Eternals is the Deviants, a race of goblins and ghouls who are far more humanlike than the Eternals are. Thena takes on Deviant lovers, trying to understand them and how they have a life that the Eternals never could. While there are the external battles to protect the Machine, defeat Thanos, and even find a traitor in their midst, there’s a much deeper questioning of the nature of the Eternals. In an age of superheroes, why do the Eternals even exist? Beyond the story in front of us, what is their purpose? Why do the Eternals matter? Gillen, Ribic, and Wilson seem determined to tell us why?
And ultimately, it turns out that it’s the nature of the Eternals that may be their biggest battle. Gods or man? Worshipped or worshippers? Life or death? All of those dialectics strike at the biggest lie that the Eternals tell themselves. In many ways, The Eternals continues the questions that Gillen started in The Wicked + The Divine but the Eternals are not nearly as self-aware as any of those characters were. Lucifer, Persephone, Baal, and Cassandra were far more tuned into themselves, their narrative precedents, and even the world around them than Ikkaris, Thena, Sersi, or Sprite ever can be.
Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic, and Jack Kirby marvel (no pun intended) at the power of these gods (still a small “g”) but Gilland and Ribic aren’t quite the believers that Kirby was when he created these characters. While Ribic brings an air-brushed-fantasy-van grandiosity to this story, Gillen is far more subversive. On the surface, this is a story of heroes in the Mighty Marvel tradition but Gillen remembers that behind our heroic memories of that tradition is another thread of humanity inherent in the Marvel characters. The Marvel heroes are messy, imperfect, and often their own worst enemies. In that way, Gillen, Ribic, and Wilson are giving us a very traditional Marvel comic that Jack would have been proud of.
### The Inevitable Race in Chip Zdarsky and Elsa Charretier's We Run
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-inevitable-race-in-zdarsky-and-charretiers-we-run/
Last updated: 2021-12-10T01:22:52.000Z
In late June 2020, I sat in a hospital room with my mother as we waited for my father to die. He had spent the previous two months in and out (mostly in) of hospitals as the world fell apart around us. Just the day before, we had to make the decision to no longer fight against everything he was going through. Because this was still the early days of the Covid pandemic, we had not been able to spend a lot of those hospital stays with him. We would drop him off at emergency rooms and my mother would be able to go in with him to get him checked in while I waited in garages and parking lots. From there it would be mostly phone calls with him multiple times a day, trying to figure out what was happening long-distance. After a major procedure, he was home for a couple of days before complications forced him back into the hospital one more time.
I don’t even remember how long he had been in the hospital that last time. One week? Two weeks? April, May, and June of that year all blend together. But I remember the last day. Once he was moved out of intensive care and into more palliative care, the hospital allowed us to visit him for an hour or two that night. He was in and out of wakefulness (I don’t want to say consciousness because that sounds much direr than I want to remember) for the time we were there. But we had to go home and I don’t think either of us got much sleep as we anticipated the phone ringing to give us the news.
But there was no call that night and in the morning, they allowed us to visit again. This was during the first Covid spike when hospitals weren’t allowing visitors but the palliative care was removed enough from any Covid patients so they allowed us to stay with him. That day, he wasn’t awake at all, shallowly breathing and not responding to us. We sat and waited. The hospital chaplain came for a nice visit, offered last rights (my father wasn’t a particularly ceremonial man but I hope that he would have appreciated the gesture,) and then we waited some more. At times we talked like nothing was happening. At times we talked like it was the end of the world.
Sometime in the early afternoon, the nurse came in to check on him. His breathing had continued to slow down but he was still with us. She checked his catheter and then something happened; he shuddered. The nurse didn’t notice and walked out of the room but my mom and I recognized the moment for what it was. It’s a moment that I will always be grateful for but one that still is painful to think about.
I’ve always wondered what it was about that moment. What happened then? Why then? And what (if anything) did my dad experience.
Over the rest of that summer, it’s amazing how many books I read about life, death, and particularly the death of a father. From Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon’s *Daytrippers* to Paco Roco’s *The House*, I just seemed to be picking up comics about death. *Daytrippers* is this odd Carpe Diem story where the main character dies each issue only to have the next issue pick up at some point in his past or future as it moved toward another death. Roco’s *The House* meant more to me last summer, the story of the children of a man who died who have to clean up the house where he lived. For my mom and me, that ended up being a 10-month process I read that book towards the start of the process.
But none of the books I read approached the moment of death like Chip Zdarsky, Elsa Charretier, and Aditya Bidikar’s **We Run**, a minicomic that Charretier included in a Kickstarter campaign. Much like that June day for my father, this comic opens on an old woman in a Parisian hospital in the moments before her death. But unlike my father, there’s no one there to watch over her or to hold her hand except for a couple of nurses. There’s no spouse, no children, or no next of kin. The nurses walk out of the room to leave the woman alone.
Except for some part of her is still there. Her soul? Her self? A ghost-in-waiting? Some part of her is there waiting for Death. And when Death comes, complete in dark robes and a scythe, whatever it is of her that remains says “You’d think being alone would make it easier to go, but…” And thus begins her race with death. To death?
Throughout this race, this challenge, the woman remembers her life. It’s a cliche that our lives pass before our eyes in those final moments but that’s what Zdarsky is giving this woman, the chance to revisit her life and her loved ones. She’s not alone in this moment because she never had anyone; she’s alone because they’ve all gone on before her. “I’m mad at the ones who let their cholesterol go unchecked who drove recklessly who burned too brightly left too young while I held on, like a fool no matter how much it...hurt.”
I know that my mom is going through that anger at my dad right now, even 16 months later. She has me, my family, her family, her friends but she doesn’t have my father and she’s angry about that. I’m angry about that. Zdarksy writes this woman who is angry in these final seconds but Death gives her perspective. It gives her memories and that’s something that hopefully all of us have and will have. Zdarsky’s writing is surprisingly sentimental here; he’s usually more jokey and glib in his stories so it’s easy to not realize (at least for me) the range that he’s capable of.
Charretier is a master of suggestion. She provides enough details in her drawings to suggest to the reader what’s happening and how they should read the panel or the page. She only puts down on each page as many marks as she needs to, leaving shapes and panels open. It’s an invitation to the reader to participate in the story, not just to read it but to put some of themselves into it as they work to complete the details in their imagination. Bidikar wonderfully does the same thing with his word balloons and caption boxes, mimicking Charretier’s looseness but giving the images and the words the room to co-exist.
The woman races death to remember her life. Or is it that she’s being shown what she should remember. Death here is that hoary image of the grim reaper. It’s the menacing harvester that we all supposedly meet in the end. But Death gives this woman something. It allows a challenge to be declared, a race that she decides the route on. It’s a race that she has no chance of winning so why? What’s the point of this race if she’s just going to die at the end of it anyway?
You would think that a comic about death and dying would be an extremely heavy thing and there's plenty of text and subtext in this comic that supplies that heaviness. But there's also an airiness to it. Charretier bathes this comic in a single, orangish-yellow hue. Outside of the heavy blacks that accompany death, the comic, every page is colored in an almost pure sunlight. The black robes of death stand out against the bright lights of Paris and Paris never gives an inch to the darkness. The heady concepts of this story are counterweighted by the bright, warm colors that light the woman's path.
Death may look and sound menacing but that’s what we who have never gone through it think about it and it makes sense. It’s the end so it should be scary and menacing but Zdarsky and Charretier present it as something different. The woman isn’t afraid to die but she is afraid to let go of the anger and the memories behind that anger. Charretier shows us a woman who runs through Paris and her memories. This is no “rage, rage against the dying of the light” moment but it is more than just a race through the past. It’s this moment of being present but also of remembering.
It’s the moment when my dad shuddered. I don’t know if he experienced a race, bright light at the end of a tunnel or if there was nothing. My doubt and uncertainty of that event are something that I still wrestle with daily. But I like the image that Zdarksy and Charretier give us, the acceptance and peace that they probably hope are there right at the end. They are there on the last page of their comic and it’s something to hope for. There’s a part of me that thinks my dad had already slipped into a nothingness well before that nurse’s visit. But there’s also the part of me that hopes like her, he was surrounded and enveloped by everyone who had gone on before him, welcoming him and giving him some peace in his final breath.
**We Run** is available on Elsa Charretier's webstore, [bundled with her excellent 2nd sketchbook](https://www.bigheadlittlearms.com/product-page/artbook-vol-2-we-run?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
### The Rusted Staple Theorem of Comic Criticism
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/rusted-staple-theorem/
Last updated: 2021-11-05T00:24:56.000Z
### Or Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.
> Twitter, please show me content for two English majors who run a comic blog . . .
>
> 👀🤯🧐 [https://t.co/ILclU99t7o](https://t.co/ILclU99t7o?ref=fromcovertocover.com)
>
> — From Cover To Cover (@FromCovToCov) [October 17, 2021](https://twitter.com/FromCovToCov/status/1449773516346298379?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=fromcovertocover.com)
Hint: We're the two English majors.
Just what the internet needs-- another website about comics. We know, god, everyone has a website where all they do is talk about comics. Paul Schrader’s and Megan Thee Stallion’s comic blogs are all anyone is talking about right now. You may not know about them but trust me, in the hidden Twitter circles Mike haunts, they’re all people are talking about. Or so he tells me. He talked me into all of this promising fame and fortune. So why do you need two more palooka’s throwing in their own thoughts about comics?
Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should just shut this whole thing down right now.
But we already paid for a year of web hosting. It would just be wasteful not to use it, right?
RIGHT?
So where were we?
Hi there and welcome to From Cover to Cover, this new endeavor of mine and my partner Mike Baxter. (Say “Hi” to all the nice people, Mike.) I’m Scott and I’ve actually hung around the fringes of the comic blogosphere (remember that?), podcasting, and so-called serious comic writing for the past 18-ish years or so. And on the fringes is where I’ve wanted to be, it’s where I like to be because you can do almost anything there, like holding extremely one-sided conversations with an audience that you hope is there. (You’re real, right? I’m not just in a cave staring at shadows, am I?)
And nothing gets more on the fringes of pop culture than comics, even if they’re driving the pop culture right now.
So here we are, another comic website in a sea of comic websites that the world largely ignores. It’s not like superheroes and their mass-manufactured narratives aren’t the hottest thing on the face of the earth right now? But we’re not here to talk about tv shows or movies. We’re not here to tell you what to buy or to rate a comic on some made-up scale.
(But if we were rating comics, I’d rate them on a rusted staple scale. Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora’s **Once and Future** gets 8 rusted staples. Gabrielle Bell’s latest minicomic gets one rusted staple. Is one rusted staple better or worse than 8? 8 is more but it’s just really more rust. Is that something that deserves to be used as a pull quote on the back of some flimsy trade collection? Who knows? Who cares? Everything by Gillen, Mora, and Bell is great and you should be reading all of it)
Mike and I have been talking for a while about what we love about comics and what we love about criticism In a lot of ways, how we approach these loves is the same even as where we find that love overlaps but comes from different directions. And that’s one of the things we love about comics-- they’re so different. There are no defined statutes about what a comic needs to be. In a recent trip to the comic shop, I grabbed the latest issue of Jason Aaron’s **Avengers** and a recent edition of Dan Clowe’s **Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron**. The stack next to my desk (just one of many stacks in the house) has the aforementioned Gabrielle Bell and Kieron Gillen in it but it also has Rumiko Takahashi, Elsa Charrettier, John Porcellino, Grant Morrison, Joe Matt, and Lale Westvind in it. It’s not well balanced and will probably topple over at any moment but this is what we love about comics. It’s the voices, the creators, the stories, and the possibilities that start with a blank page.
And if you looked at a lot of comic websites, you would see only a portion of those comics and voices represented. I can’t say that Mike and I and whoever else we manage to coax into this thing are going to be all-encompassing because there’s just too much out there to be able to read everything. We’ve got our own blinders on as well and realize that there are cartoonists, writers, and artists out there that we don’t even know about. But we want to. We want to find voices and perspectives that will show us something new. And they can be the most established mainstream Marvel or DC creators but they could be doing something fascinating with decades-old characters or they could be some young person in a far corner of the world posting their first comic to Instagram.
We love comics. We love stories. We love art. We love when they’re done well and have something to say.
So that’s who we are. But before we get down to business (and we’ve got plenty of business planned,) I want to thank a couple of people.
First off, I want to thank Rob McMonigal and James Kaplan over at [Panel Patter](http://www.panelpatter.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com), as well as the rest of the gang there. Rob and I have probably known one another for going on 9 or 10 years now, ever since we were paired together at Newsarama (more on that in a moment.) For 7 of those years, he let me do almost anything I wanted to at Panel Patter, including messing around with the backend code of the site. Rob and James have been partners and friends all that time and we have supported each other through an awful lot. I hope those friendships and support continue as I value their friendship and their own love of comics.
And then I want to thank Ringo-winning comics writer [David Pepose](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiQlNa-wvXzAhWNGs0KHcfPAF4QFnoECAwQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.davidpepose.com%2F&usg=AOvVaw1CaohehVivcXPLpkrpgCFe). In his dark past, David recruited me (and Rob) to write reviews for Newsarama which was another great experience. I never thought I’d write for one of the “big” sites but David asked and I ended up accepting. My participation waxed and waned over the years but David was a fantastic editor and I still hear his voice in the back of my mind whenever I’m writing something. “Are you reviewing the book or something outside of the book?” “Where’s the discussion of the artist here?” And things like that. It’s been thrilling to watch David’s writing career take off in the last couple of years and I hope that it continues.
So that’s it. I’ve actually been on a writing break for a few months so I really need to get down to it and remember how to talk about comics. Which is what From Cover to Cover is all about.
### The Still-To-Be-Named Link Post- September 26th, 2021
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/the-reading-list-october-3rd-2021/
Last updated: 2021-11-02T03:07:03.000Z
While we're not officially launching the site for another month or so, I want to try to get into the habit of weekly link posts so here's the first one. Welcome to From Cover to Cover. Hope you survive the experience.
\*\* If you're new around here (and who isn't?,) there are a number of ways you cans start following us now.
1) Follow us at . It can be that easy but be sure to bookmark us so you can check us out whenever you want to.
2) In the lower right corner of your screen, you can see a SUBSCRIBE BUTTON but if not you can't find it, it should look like this:
You can click on the subscribe button, enter your email address, and then you'll get all of our posts sent to your inbox to never miss any of the fun. We promise not to bombard your email as we plan on only publishing 2-4 pieces a week. We're not going to be a site that's publishing the latest news as it happens or our Top 5 Reasons Why We're Digging The Latest Hot Comics to just drive traffic to the site. We'll have more in the future about what our plans are but we'll be going for quality, not quantity.
3) If you use an RSS reader (personally, I recommend [Feedly](https://feedly.com/?ref=fromcovertocover.com),) you can load us into there and follow us that way.
4) We're still putting together our social media plan (it sounds official, doesn't it,) but you can always follow us on Twitter. Our handle there is [FromCovToCov](https://twitter.com/fromcovtocov?ref=fromcovertocover.com).
So sit back and enjoy yourself. We may have a few things leading up to our official launch later on this fall but we'll be sure to let you know when we open the doors for business around here.
And until then, here are just a few things that caught our eyes this week:
---
\*\*[**Impossible Jones is Impossibly Fun: Catch It's for September 22nd 2021**](http://www.panelpatter.com/2021/09/impossible-jones-is-incredibly-fun.html?ref=fromcovertocover.com)– Our Panel Patter Pals have a bunch of great-sounding books to recommend this week. I totally agree with Rob's shoutout for *Scout's Honor* and I've heard Kelli talk about *Sweat and Soap* a bit and really want to check it out
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Yes, I know this isn't Bendis' Legion but it is MY Legion.
\*\* **"[The writer also said, as a *Legion* fan himself, he understands the stress over the book not being on the schedule, but that the series’ return will be worth the wait.](https://www.comicsbeat.com/bendis-legion-of-super-heroes-infinite-frontier/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)"** Joe Gruenwald over at the Beat had a big interview with Brian Michael Bendis about all things Bendis and Jinxworld related but he also snuck in some questions about The Legion of Super-Heroes, which have been missing from DC for most of the year. O.k., Bendis, you better be right and the return better be worth the wait.
---
\*\*"[**A legal dispute is heating up between Disney and the creators of Marvel characters Spider-Man, Thor, Black Widow, Iron Man, and more**](https://www.gamesradar.com/marvel-disney-copyright-ownership-legal-dispute/?utm%5Fcampaign=socialflow&utm%5Fcontent=newsarama&utm%5Fmedium=social&utm%5Fsource=twitter.com)" George Marsten at Newsarama reports on all of the legal shenanigans going on with Marvel and their attempts to prove that their creators were all created as work-for-hire as Steve Ditko's surviving family first filed to sue for copyright ownership of Spider-Man.
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\*\* I need to pay better attention to solicits but **[that's what the crew at Manga Bookshelf do so good](http://mangabookshelf.com/2021/09/23/manga-the-week-of-9-29-21/?ref=fromcovertocover.com)**, alerting me to new **Yotusba&**! this week!!!!
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### From the Archives: Daytripper #1
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-daytripper-1/
Last updated: 2021-09-27T00:30:36.000Z
Can we take a moment to talk about unfair expectations because I think I have them in regards to Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon's new Vertigo series **Daytripper**. I've been a fan of their work since 2006's *De: Tales*, Dark Horse's collection of short stories by the twin brothers. In *De: Tales*, the brothers created Brazil for me, or at least, they created a Brazil I'd like to discover one day. What they wrote and drew about in that book may not be real but I hope it is. There's a life and rhythm to their Brazil that comes through their stories. You can hear the sounds of the clubs of the faraway country.
It's not fair but I went into **Daytripper** looking for a return of the type of stories they told in *De: Tales*. **Daytripper #1** shares similar elements to De: Tales; the Brazilian setting and the emphasis more on the little moments that make our normal, everyday life special. But for all of its similarities, **Daytripper #1** lacks the excitement and joy of life found in Bá and Moon's short stories and ends up dragging through the first issue, which is more of a prologue or framing sequence to the larger story that the twins will be telling over the next nine issues.
The main character Brás' life is about other people. At work, he writes the obituaries for famous people; people who have had full and engaging lives that other people want to read about. At home, he stares at his old manual typewriter, a present from his father, searching for words and stories. At the newspaper, he examines other's lives, finding the moments and qualities that make them stand out; the awards, the families and the greatness of the men and women who have recently passed on. Life, death, family, these are the things of other people that are constantly on his mind even as he can't figure out what to do with his own.
**Daytripper #1** is a interesting, if somewhat muted, story on its own. I have the feeling that in this issue, we're getting the beginning, middle and end of the larger story that they plan to tell in this series. After this, the upcoming issues will fill in the space between the panels and expand on Brás' story but we've seen his story here. It's actually a strong way to produce a first issue and this issue is pretty confident in the ending. This is the story of Brás and, by the end of this issue, we've maybe already seen how his story ends. Hopefully the issues after this one will show us some of the magic and wonder in Brás past, even as he's kind of wallowing in his own mundanity in this one.
In the stories of *De: Tales* there's a liveliness and earnestness in Bá and Moon's stories that made you want to read them with the same intensity as the artists must have wanted to get them down on paper. They were rushing into life and storytelling and almost demanding that you, the reader, keep up with them. Of course, those were only short stories, 8-12 pages. With **Daytripper #1**, maybe the twins are having to pace themselves as they have to spread the energy out over 10 issues. Hopefully as they get into more of Brás' life, they'll remind us of the thrill of life that they've shown in the past.
**Daytripper #1**
"Chapter One: 32"
Written and Drawn by: Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá
Colored by: Dave Stewart
Lettered by: Sean Konot
### From The Archives- Rebecca Kraatz's House of Sugar
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archive-rebecca-kraatzs-house-of-sugar/
Last updated: 2021-11-05T00:25:07.000Z
Biography as fragments of a memory.
Rebecca Kraatz's *House of Sugar* is a melancholy look back at her childhood with the familial and social forces that shaped her through growing up. Told in short, four panel increments, Kraatz builds up the fragments and moments of her life, giving us insight into her personality.
Nothing much in Kraatz's life appears anything but perfectly normal. Growing up, she had an active imagination, typical crushes, friends, a few enemies and all the emotional growing pains that we all experience. On the outside, there's nothing in her life that makes her more worthy of an autobiography than you or me. And that's the charm in this book. Kraatz makes the normal and mundane into a fascinating and sometimes surreal experience, making growing up as strange and unreal now as it probably was back when we were all going through it.
The stream of conscience narrative flies fast and loose. Kraatz's mood and tone can change from page to page. On one page, she's describing a time when she missed an opportunity to be with a boy that she likes. On the next, she's relating personality types to famous actors from the 1940s. Then on the next, she's writing a letter to her late cousin, who died alone in Australia. The events and stories come with no real links or thoughts running through them other than Kraatz herself.
Memories don't happen in chronological order. You may start with one memory but then something will trigger another memory that happened eight years before. That memory could trigger something that happened six months after the first. They ebb and flow with no plan and no obvious meaning. That's what *House of Sugar* is, a memory-flow that's as much a puzzle as it is a story.
*House of Sugar*
Written and Drawn by: Rebecca Kraatz
### From The Archives: New York The Big City
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-new-york-the-big-city/
Last updated: 2021-11-02T03:07:40.000Z
While either sitting on the front stoop of an apartment building to riding the subway, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, to enjoying a summer day with an open fire hydrant to cool you off, Eisner catches the essence of life in the big city.
**New York, The Big City** (trade paperback)
Published By: DC Comics
Written and Drawn by: Will Eisner
There are millions of stories in New York City. Will Eisner gives us a brief glimpse into those that he knows and unveils the city in a way you may never have seen it before.
Originally published back in the early Eighties, Will Eisner's NEW YORK remains a vibrant and experimental book. In NEW YORK, Eisner tells the tale of a city. It's not about the people in the city, though they are there as well and contribute to the overall book. This is a love poem to the city where Eisner was born and lived.
For decades, Eisner had been one of the best cartoonists but, during the seventies, it seemed like he was often overlooked for other artists like Jack Kirby, John Romita or Neal Adams. Eisner wasn't necessarily as flashy as most of the super-hero artists of the sixties and seventies but he was just as skillful and often more subtle. Realizing that comics could be much more than colored costumed characters beating up on each other (not that there's anything wrong with that) Eisner began using comic books to explore his city and the people who he saw around himself every day. A CONTRACT WITH GOD, THE BUILDING and DROPSIE AVENUE all show the artist reflecting the world around him.
With NEW YORK, THE BIG CITY, Eisner isn't so much telling a story as he is showing his city to people who may never have been to NYC. I'm one of those people but, thanks to Eisner, I feel like I know the city in at least some small way. Eisner's New York is a timeless place, seeming like a cross between the NYC of his childhood combined with the NYC he lived in as he produced the pages to this book. While either sitting on the front stoop of an apartment building to riding the subway, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, to enjoying a summer day with an open fire hydrant to cool you off, Eisner catches the essence of life in the big city.
Instead of giving us one narrative to show us the whole story, Eisner breaks the book down into numerous two or three page vignettes, related only in an over arcing theme. He breaks the book down into nine main sections; "The Treasure of Avenue 'C'," "Subways," "Stoops," "Garbage," "Street Music," "Sentinels," "Walls" and "The Block." You can get an idea of what each section is from the name. I think I was wrong by saying before that this wasn't about the people in the city. It is about them and how they interact with their environment. They're as much a part of this story as is the locale. Setting and characters are almost blended together to the point that you can't tell where the people end and the city begins. Through the vignettes that define the city through the people that live in it, the city takes on a personality and life of its own.
With Eisner's graphic novels, you don't so much read them as experience them and almost become a part of it. In a medium right now that likes to try and show off the obviously extraordinary, Eisner captures the ordinary and explores it like few others before or since can. There are no heroes, no villains, no great people in this book. All the characters are normal people-- kids playing in the streets, street musicians, homeless people and men in suits-- who are just trying to make it through their lives. The people in NEW YORK are all relatable. Most likely, you've met these people in your own life.
While on the surface, there may not be much extraordinary in this book, Eisner makes the normal something more. Through his artwork and storytelling, the city becomes a magical place. Without any elements of fantasy here, the book is still a wonderful glimpse into the life of a city.
### From the Archives: Taiyo Matsumoto's Sunny V2
URL: https://www.fromcovertocover.com/from-the-archives-taiyo-matsumotos-sunny-v2/
Last updated: 2021-11-05T00:25:25.000Z
Taiyo Matsumoto has this shifting lens of reality. In this comics, he continually pushes the way we experience his drawings. *No. 5* was manga inspired by Moebius. *Tekkon Kinkreet* was a wild trip viewing the city through the exaggerated experiences of children and *GoGo Monster* turned an elementary school into an alien landscape with new horrors and monsters behind every classroom door. **Sunny Volume 2** is much less otherworldly than his other books but that makes it no less mesmerizing. Set in a home for unwanted children (not orphans exactly, more like kids whose parents for one reason or another are unable to care for them,) Matsumoto's **Sunny** focuses in on the isolation of childhood as these children struggle through the normal insecurities of growing up but without the normal securities of a mother and a father who are there for them.
**Sunny Volume 2** is built around short stories of these children. Each story focuses on a different one of the children in the Star Kids Home but each highlights just how alone the children really are but how much they really just want to be loved. The centerpiece of this book is a story about Parent's Day as the kids' school. Instead of their parents attending, staff members from the home go for the children. Mr. Adachi jumps from room to room to participate in each of the classes activities and to be there for the children. Most of the kids appreciate it except for Harou, a boy whose independent streak gets him in trouble more than it doesn't. "Why are you here, Adachi? Just go away," he says in the middle of one of his classes. It's something that a child would say to an adult without even thinking about it.
In the flipside to the story about Parent’s Day at the children’s school, Matsumoto ends the book with Harou getting to go on a trip to visit his mother. Sitting in a diner with this mother, Harou can’t understand why his mother says, “The home sounds like fun…” after he describes everyone to her. “I wanna get outta there! I wanna come home and live with **my mom**!” he yells at her in the middle of the restaurant. It’s painful to watch Harou come undone like that as you remember he’s just a kid who has been shunted aside by his mother. He’s the kid who tries to cover up his feelings by outwardly acting tough but throughout Matsumoto’s book, you can see the inevitable breakdown waiting to happen. It’s even more painful to watch her as she sits calmly behind her paper, unable to answer her son, to comfort him in any significant way. In some ways, Harou is less of a son and more of an obligation to her. She just moved into a new apartment the previous week so while Harou is not returning to his home, he envies the artifacts of his old life with his mother as they’ve been able to stay with her while he’s been at Star Kids Home.
Matsumoto’s story and artwork are so honest and brutal that it hurts. Through the story and art, Matsumoto heightens all of the insecurities of childhood so that these children’s pain becomes our own. The pain of being alone, of being abandoned by parents and of being surrounded by strangers is the focus of Matsumoto’s storytelling in this book. His thin, sharp detailed lines are captivating but they’re so realistic that they can’t hide the pain of these characters. Even as they’re laughing, the world he’ drawing is just sad and painful. The art doesn’t allow you to hide from the emotions and it doesn’t allow the characters to be anything other than 100% themselves, which are often damage children. Harou is the character who tries to hide the most who he is but the story about him and his mother is just pure heartbreak.
Matsumoto’s artwork doesn’t romanticize these children’s world but his drawings create a heightened world. The kids school, home and city are so crisp, defined and rich. He draws a vivid experience that allows you to experience things as if for the first time. This worked particularly well to his advantage in *GoGo Monster* where he recontextualized a normal school into some otherworldly place but in **Sunny Volume 2**, it works the same way on the real world, where things we recognize as everyday objects or settings become a unique encounter. By shifting the point of view a bit or giving a brief insight into the children’s perspective of reality, Matumoto puts us in these kids shoes and truly makes us see their world through their eyes.
The wonderful thing is that even as Matsumoto beats us down with the loneliness and hurt of these children, there’s hope at the end of these stories. Matsumoto’s kids bounce back in ways that we can’t understand as adults and that we couldn’t heal from if they happened today. For each of his stories, they end on a beat of hope that often comes from within the children themselves. Matsumoto doesn’t get completely weighed down in how the world is unjust but he doesn’t shy away from it either. For as bad as the world is to abandon these children like it does, the kids have a strength and kindness in them that offers hope in tomorrow.