Because you won’t get it!
Chapter 123: Stolen Cars and CBR...
Don’t be alarmed!
Those damn Kia boys will pay for what they done!
CBR has nice stuff to say about us!
Mixtape- Sharks and Sailors is a fun thing to yell!
Hi. Me again.
So it has been brought to my attention by a few folks that yesterday’s email was a bit alarming. This time it was the title “Begging for help!” which seems to have made some people believe that I was, in fact, begging for help. It seems that my very particular but dumb system of titling my emails has once again confused some of you. So I thought I’d lay down a couple ground rules that I should have done a long time ago.
RULE #1. The title of the email will almost certainly never have anything to do with what’s in the email. Is that confusing? Sure is. Am I going to change that? Sure not.
RULE #2. I am not going to ever beg you for help. Sometimes I’ll say stuff like “it would be cool if you did this thing” about preordering books or whatever, and in my head that is sort of “soft groveling,” but I don’t think I will outright beg. Mostly I’m just happy you let me send you these emails.
So, with that in mind, next time you see an email from me and get all scared, just remember- it’s probably a podcast or me begging reminding you that you can preorder WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? vol. 2 now.
In not so fun news, my partner in comic-booking, Mr. Tyler Boss, has his car stolen this week. It seems that America’s teens have found out from tiktok that it is very easy to steal a Kia. And if we know anything about American teens it’s that they like easy things. Having your car stolen sucks. Having your car stolen by teenagers who are just bored really sucks. But want to know what sucks the worst? Tyler had tons of pages of his original art in the trunk of his car. He was coming from a speaking engagement where he discussed his work, so a ton of valuable art was still in the car when the Kia Boys struck.
Dealing with insurance companies, police reports, and having to ride Buffalo public transit are not things I’d wish on my worst enemy. And Tyler isn’t even in my top 3 worst enemies. But add to that losing hundreds of hours of works and thousands of dollars worth of original art made us both really despondent. Actually, it seemed to make me much more depressed than it made him. He is even-tempered in a way some have described as “alarming” or “Hannibal Lecter-esque.” But under all the quiet, terrifying calmness, I sense a sadness in him that I have only ever seen in him when the Bills lose in the playoffs.
I wasn’t there when Tyler talked to the police but there is no doubt in my mind it was exactly this-
I don’t think there is anything we, as readers and writers of this newsletter respectively, can do to get Tyler his car and art back. Unless one you wants to go all Taken on the Kia Boys. We’d be totally into that. But short of that, maybe you can help Tyler out by buying some original art that wasn’t stolen by the cast of The Fast & The Furious: Buffalo Drift.
You can buy pages from DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, RAZORBLADES, ARCHIE covers, a few remaining 4 KIDS WALK INTO A BANK pages, and a whole lot of WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? art. And now it seems like there may be a whole lot less Furthest Place art in the world once the Kia Boys finish driving his car into Lake Erie, so those pages may be a good investment.
So get yourself some cool stuff for your wall AND help Tyler buy a new, unstealable car. I’m not begging you to do it… But it’s close.
Speaking of WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE?, the fine folks at Comic Book Resources have just published their mid-year list of “THE BEST INDIE COMICS CURRENTLY IN PRINT” and our weird little book was on the list. I was going to make a list of jokey reasons why our book is better than all the books in front of us on the list, but I actually like all those books a lot and thought that making the list would come off as obnoxious and entitled…
Let’s begin!
10. SAVAGE DRAGON. Okay, so our book isn’t technically better than SAVAGE DRAGON, but we only have #13 issues out and S.D. has literally hundreds. Think of how much money you save reading our less-good book? That’s economics.
9. I HATE FAIRYLAND. Who would want to read a comic about a foulmouthed kid doing crazy stuff in fantasy story? Our book is about foulmouthed KIDS (plural) doing crazy stuff in a fantasy story. Contradicting my previous point, but more is better.
8. SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN. James Tynion? Really? C’mon. Let someone else get a win. Just greedy.
7. NOCTERRA. Is this book beautiful and wild and exciting? Sure. But it is by Scott Snyder and Tony Daniel! Those guys are so cool, and good at everything, and powerful, and successful. They are basically real life Batmans. Me and Tyler? We’re the scrappy underdogs with weird fixations and acute agoraphobia. We’re basically The Mad Hatter. And when you read a comic who do you root for? Batman. No! You root for The Mad Hatter!
6. ALL AGAINST ALL. So British. Alex Paknadel once told me to include the sentence “Chance’d be a fine thing” in a comic script. 4th of July is coming up. I’ll leave it at that. Great book though.
5. BRZRKR. I was going to make a joke here but I actually love to see a new writer in comics have some success. It fills me with joy. Good for you, Keanu Reeves. I hope you get to write a D-Man mini-series or something next.
4. THE BONE ORCHARD MYTHOS. Is this series, made by one of my favorite creative teams in comics, better than ours? Yup. But when you say your favorite book series has “Mythos” in the title you sound really pretentious. Whereas when you say “What’s The Furthest Place From Here?” instead of “What’s The Farthest Place From Here?” you also sound pretentious, but maybe a little less pretentious. Jury is out on this one honestly.
3. SAGA. Come on. Saga has been the best comic on shelves every month since before I was a professional comic writer. Saying Saga is the best comic is like saying milkshakes are the best drink or puppies are the best animals. Fucking of course they are! That’s not interesting. Everyone knows it. If Brian and Fiona wanted to do something interesting they’d make a bad comic every once in a while. That would shake things up.
2. JUPITER’S LEGACY: REQUIEM. It’s not enough that Mark Millar gets to work with all the best artists in the world? Or that he gets tv shows and movies made of all his stuff? Or that he redefined both the superhero comic and the superhero movie for the modern age? Now we’re putting his books at the top of lists? Why? Just because they’re really good? I don’t even understand the criteria anymore.
1. CROSSOVER. I don’t know what this is. Looks cool.
Anyway, go read all the comics on the CBR list, even the ones we’re better than.
I revisit this band every June because that is the power of putting a month in your band name I guess.
Either way, “I'm a buoy in a city of sharks and sailors” is a great opening line
A very good jam.
A late breaking news item came in after I wrote this newsletter but before I sent it and I’m too lazy to delete what I wrote. The Buffalo PD, most famously known for pushing an elderly man to the ground and breaking his head open for no reason, have found the Kia! And it is… Fucked! Neither the art nor the car may be salvageable. Truly some real shitty news. I will update you if I remember to, but in the meantime Tyler still probably has to buy a new car so my previous points remain. Buy some WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? pages so the dude can drive around at night and hunt the Kia Boys for sport.
That’s it for me.
Stay safe. Take care of each other.
-Matthew Rosenberg
NYC 6/20/23
Wait, have people not realized you are slowly going through all the lines from Star Wars?
Oh shit! That’s awful!!
I’m not sure how much help I can be- but I’ll def make sure the feelers are out at the local shops/antique stores. If by some chance the pages end up seeing the light of day, at least the stores will know they’re stolen and may be able to recover some/all of them.
It really annoys me to hear this stuff... but especially in Buffalo where we like to pretend this shot doesn’t happen.