During the battle...
Chapter 7. I promise at least one typo in every newsletter or your money back!
Typos and Being Cool.
My cat!
Stuff I didn’t write! - Beyond The Breach.
Stuff worth watching- The Outside Story.
What Do You Want From Me?
Oops. I forgot when The Joker: Puzzlebox comes out.
Before we get into the business of my business, let’s talk about ourselves. I’ll go first and then if we have any time left over you can go.
I made a mistake recently and alerted my dear friend Kelly Thompson that our newsletters were, in fact, in a competition. She messaged me the single most cruel thing she could after I sent out my recent newsletter and I want the world to know the kind of monster I am up against. Here, unedited for your reading horror, is Kelly’s message to me-
Monster.
Also I told you all in this here newsletter to sign up for Kelly’s wonderful newsletter and she said a whole bunch of you did. That’s awesome. She also told all her readers to sign up for mine and like three people did. There are two possible takeaways from this. Either the readers of my newsletter are much cooler than the reader of hers, and are happy to support another great comic book writer. Or the readers of her newsletter are much cooler than the readers of mine and can’t be bothered to come slum it over here with us. I am sorry if I have made you all less cool by being here with me. But on the other hand if I have made you more cool, you’re welcome. Either way, this has been keeping me up for days.
In other news, it has come to my attention that some of my peers have taken to putting photos of their cats in their newsletters to try and bump up subscribers. If that’s the game, let’s play. Every week I will put a picture of my dear, sweet boy Shutterstock in this here thing.
Look at my sweet baby boy. Don’t you just love him? I like to pet his real fur and feed him real food that he eats. He is very much as cute as/cuter than the cats my peers are sharing. Because he is real.
Looks like we ran out of time to talk about what’s been going on with you. Sorry. Onto the next section!
Today is a big day for the friends of this here newsletter. It is F.O.C. for BEYOND THE BREACH #1 by Ed Brisson, Damian Couceiro, Patricio Delpech, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. I know that was a lot to unpack so I’ll take this slow.
What the hell is a foc?
Good question. F.O.C. is a very ‘inside baseball’ term no one who doesn’t make comics should know, but due to our weird system of making comics it is something we need to ask people to know anyway. F.O.C. is an acronym, like S.H.I.E.L.D. or B.A.T.M.A.N. and it stands for Final Order Cutoff. It is the last day your local comic shop can order a book and be guaranteed a copy. It’s usually about 3 weeks before the book comes out. It is not, as many people seem to think, the last day your shop can order a copy. They can do that whenever. But it’s the last day they will definitely get it.
Confusing? Sure is. But there is a very simple reason for all of this. Nobody wants to waste money. Comic publishers (and creators) don’t really want to be printing way too many copies of a comic that nobody ordered, because that costs money and eats into the profits. Comic shops don’t want to order a bunch of comics that they aren’t sure they can sell because they pay for everything in the shop so that eats into their profits. So a system was built where comic shops make a best guess as to what they need and publishers tend to print just over what was ordered. Comic shops place their F.O.C. order at the last possible minute before the book goes to print so they can gauge the level of excitement from their customers as close to the release date as possible. It’s not an exact science though since often times books really pick up steam a week or two out, or the early excitement is all the excitement the book will ever get. It’s a very difficult job for comic shops. Imagine having to guess what everyone you know was going to want for dinner in a month.
But that’s why you see comic creators beg and plead with people to order the book on F.O.C.. It tells shops “people are excited about this” which helps the shop decide how many to order. Since most people don’t request books in advance but just grab them off shelves, many shops use a single request for a book as a metric for what the overall excitement might be. One request for a book before F.O.C. might mean ordering an extra 3, 4, even 5 books on the shelf. So ordering your books doesn’t just help you guarantee you get the stuff you want, it helps guarantee that other readers will have a chance to read it, it helps shops, creators, and publishers guarantee they don’t miss out on sales to more casual readers. So it is really helpful to the whole ecosystem of comics.
Wow. Thank you. That was real boring. Can we move on to you explaining why you’re promoting a book by Ed Brisson? Don’t you guys hate each other?
I get asked this a lot. Almost every day. The honest answer is that that is just a fun bit we play online to amuse people. Ed is one of the first professional comic creators I ever met when I started out. He lettered my first comics work. I was a big supporter of his brilliant self-published series MURDER BOOK. We’ve gone on to share hotel rooms during conventions all over the world. We’ve done signing roadtrips together. We co-wrote UNCANNY X-MEN together for a bit. He’s crashed at my house multiple times. I’ve helped him decide what family pets to get. But more than all that we just generally tend to bounce ideas off each other about our work and our lives in general all the time. Besides being a good friend to me, Ed is easily one of my favorite writers in comics. He is versatile, fun, and approaches story from a different angle than I think most other writers. His books always feel different, but they always feel uniquely his. And that is a rare skill.
So no, I don’t hate Ed Brisson. That’s just a joke I play online. He definitely does fucking hate me though. That part is not a joke.
You mentioned a book a while ago…?
Yes. This one-
Here is how they describe Beyond The Breach- “Life sucks for Vanessa. Her mother just died and her boyfriend is cheating on her (with her own sister!). To clear her mind, Vanessa is taking the California road-trip that she's been dreaming about for years.
Her postcard-perfect drive through old growth forests quickly turns when THE BREACH hits. A bizarre anomaly in the sky plunges California into a nightmare-world populated with strange, extra-dimensional creatures. Now Vanessa, along with Dougie, an orphaned child, and Kai, a strange, fuzzball of a beast, must fight to survive if they ever hope to make it back home. If there's even a home to return to.
Written by Ed Brisson (Uncanny X-Men, Ghost Rider, Old Man Logan) and illustrated by Damian Couceiro (Old Man Logan, Iron Fist, X-Force), BEYOND THE BREACH is a fantastical sci-fi road trip adventure about perseverance and finding family in unexpected places.”
I read a bunch of it and feel like this doesn’t even do it justice. This book is remarkably fun and weird, and while it covers some territory you may think you’ve been before, I am sure it wasn’t like this. A likable protagonist, a great tone, lots of heart and humor, and just a cool setup all make this a book well worth your time and money. And look at this great art.
And that’s just the first page! You’ll have to pay money to find out why we’re mad at Tristan. So call, text, email, message, tweet, or stop in to your local comic shop today and tell them you need to know what Tristan did.
Don’t have a local comic shop? COMIC SHOP LOCATOR. Now you do.
I got a chance to watch THE OUTSIDE STORY last week. Written and directed by Casimir Nozkowski, the movie follows a man who gets locked out of his apartment for an afternoon. That’s it. That’s the plot. I fucking love that.
As you can see from the above trailer, THE OUTSIDE STORY stars Brian Tyree Henry, who may very well be the most charming and charismatic actor working today. The film is something of an ensemble piece but Henry really is the glue. His time spent locked out of his apartment forces him to get to know his neighbors, his community, and to go outside his comfort zone. But for the viewers it means we get to watch Henry interact with a wide cast of fun characters as his world expands around him against his will.
It’s a refreshingly small story that is smart to focus on basic human interactions and the things we take for granted in our lives. In focussing on those things it does a wonderful job of painting an intimate picture of a man finding himself. Following a year like we all just had, there is something especially cathartic about meeting your neighbors, trying new things, or even going out into the world around you. This movie is a celebration of those small moments of change that make up our better days. Check it out now On Demand.
Time to hit the old mailbag. Interesting fact- thanks to cutting edge technology, none of these letters come from inside a mailbag.
Matt, who isn’t me, has written in to say-
“Very generic question, but what are some of the best con interactions you've had?”
Hey Matt. Cool name. I’ve had a lot of con interactions I really cherish but mostly they all just blur together into hanging out, eating disgusting food, writing my name on a lot of comic books, and not recognizing like 80% of the cosplay that walks by. With that said, here are some of my top con moments-
It’s always a thrill when you see meet little kids who read your stuff. And while most of my stuff probably shouldn’t be read by little kids, I’m not their parents so I will let it go. But at one show a kid came up to me and told me my ROCKET RACCOON series was the first comics he ever read and now he reads a ton of comics. And then his father explained that he had trouble with reading and it the Rocket book made him want to keep at it. That was pretty great.
I met a couple who had recently gotten engaged and were each tattooing half the cover art of Duncan and Maddie from WE CAN NEVER GO HOME #1 on their forearms as part of their engagement. Amazing.
Seeing folks cosplay as your characters is a pretty weird and surreal feeling but I’ve seen a few folks dress up as The Last Phoenix from PHOENIX RESURRECTION, the Punisher War Machine armor from my PUNISHER run, a group of the Multiple Men from my MULTIPLE MAN, and a bunch of WE CAN NEVER GO HOME cosplay which is really just like jeans and t-shirts... But it’s still cool.
But honestly, I’m sort of shy and I don’t take compliments well. So I always really appreciate people reading my books, saying nice things, and wanting signatures, but it makes me feel a little strange and I worry that people think I wasn’t excited and flattered to meet them. I promise I was, I’m just weird. I don’t really see myself as a “comic book writer” as much as I see myself as a “guy who loves comics a lot and happened to blackmail his way into a career.” So for me, the high point of going to conventions is meeting my heroes and the creators whose work has inspired me. I’ve been lucky enough to meet so many people who made me want to make comics and they’ve all been beyond kind. Some of them I even now consider friends. I especially cherish memories of meeting Stan Lee, Sergio Aragones, Los Brothers Hernandez, Brian Michael Bendis, Greg Pak, Bernie Wrightson, Jim Lee, and Larry Hama.
Oh, and I met Donny Cates once. He was okay, I guess.
The question you should have asked was for weirdest con stories because… those are weird.
Remember last week when I told you to click the link so you could read THE JOKER PRESENTS: A PUZZLEBOX #2? Yeah… About that?
Turns out I lied because it’s out this week! Whoops. So for those of you who clicked the link and then angrily told me I’m a moron, thank you. And for those of you who didn’t, now is your chance to redeem yourself! If you read it on the DC UNIVERSE INFINITE App you get a bonus 6 page story that gives you even more clues. Or you can just read it on Comixology. Or wait for the print edition. It’s all cool with me.
It will be available tomorrow.
And another newsletter in the can. Was this our best one yet? Maybe! Probably not, but maybe. But the important thing is we did it together. See you next week. Or later this week.
Stay safe.
-Matthew Rosenberg
NYC 6/21/21
Dear Matt,
Thanks for answering my question
Regards, Matt.