He really is in first-class condition!

Chapter 176: Not my most fun newsletter (but not my least)...

• A Bad Month!

• Tired of Social Media!

• A Special Look at Vampire Goodness!

• New Books You Should Read This Week!

• The Mixtape!

Hey again.

Time for another one of these, I guess. After a long break I like to come back with a real bummer of a newsletter. Let’s go!

So I’d fallen a bit behind on writing these and May was my month to catch up. And then May was the shittiest month in a long time with non-stop work crises, injuries, people I care about in the hospital, and the death of a family member. So we sorta skipped May.

Looking back, I realize that even without all that personal stuff that sucked, May brought the deaths of four people who were true icons to me. As an artist, a musician, a writer, and a director, their work was incredibly important to me. I don’t know how many hours I spent losing myself in Moon Knight pages likeI thought they were keeping secrets from me, or losing my mind watching a worn out VHS copy of Gas-s-s-s again and again, or getting lost in the beautiful language that made up City of Glass, or getting literally lost as I wandered the city late at night listening to Big Black as loud as my headphones would go. These men shaped my view of what art could be from a very young age and continue to shape it now. But more than just the work, it was the passion for craft, the need to make things bigger, weirder, louder, cheaper, more intimate, more uncomfortable, that is what will stay with me. The two things I am slowly learning as I get older are that eventually you will watch every one of your heroes die, and that you will never get used to that. So I will just say it here because I never got to say it to them. Thank you Don Perlin. Thank you Steve Albini. Thank you Paul Auster. Thank you Roger Corman.

And fuck you, May.

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I mentioned in the podcast post on Monday that we’ve had a big influx of new subscribers. Maybe Substack’s system is working overtime suggesting me to unsuspecting Robert Reich and Andy Borowitz fans. Or maybe I just became wildly more charming this past week and the world took notice. But my suspicion is that a bunch of you signed up because I went on a Mini-Rant™ about new social media platforms on the old social media platforms, and that got passed around a bit. Whether or not that’s the case, I just want to talk about it a bit more here.

If you don’t know, it seems Instagram is up to some dumb shit and a lot of people are jumping ship. I was told last year by a paid instagram influencer that my account will never be popular because these days Instagram’s algorithm buries you unless you post some variation of these 3 things- selfies, food pics, and photos of pretty places. I don’t take selfies, everything I eat looks gross, and I don’t leave my house. These apps no longer work the way I need them to. I know there is a new site that artists are flocking to, but honestly? I’m too tired.

I will admit I have made many close friends on social media. It helped my career many times. It has given me hours of amusement. But like all things that take a big investment to make, eventually someone wants their money back. And in the case of social media, that means twisting and breaking what brought us there in the first place in order to squeeze out every nickel and dime off our presence. If you have to use them for your business, you have done enough social media platforms by now to know the lifecycle is "help you build an audience / begin to cut you off from that audience / charge you to get your audience back." If you ever watched the movie New Jack City you are aware of these principals of running a business. And when you work in a field that requires you to communicate with you audience, beginning to lose that ability feels like watching years of your work slip away to help pad someone else’s bottom line.

That’s why it's so crucial to support artists on platforms where they have a direct line to you, like this one. There is no algorithm being used here to build an audience and then co-opt it away from me. Obviously getting newsletters like this doesn’t have the potential for the same endorphin release of liking a photo, sharing a tweet, or being able to have a genuine back and forth with the people who make the things you like. And it’s impossible to go viral and reach a larger audience like this. But when the audience signs up for a newsletter or patreon, it’s their decision if they want to see the posts. Not Musk's. Not Zuckerberg's. And having a reliable way to communicate is going to become more and more essential for survival in the arts in the coming years.

So my heartfelt thanks to all of you who subscribed here. It makes me believe there is a future in what I do. I also have a lot of recommendations for the newsletters of other comic creators I love right here. But, don’t just follow my suggestions. Seek out the substacks, patreons, mailchimps, ghosts, and buttondowns of the artists whose work you care about. It really matters.

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I’m done complaining for a while. Promise.

In actual comics news, the wonderful people of DC Comics have set a release date for the next series of DC VS. VAMPIRES. Otto Schmidt and I are returning to the world we helped destroy with DC VS. VAMPIRES: WORLD WAR V and issue #1 will hit stores August 14th. We’re all pretty excited about it.

The book is part of the newly relaunching ELSEWORLDS line of titles that all, frankly, look awesome. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s a neato trailer for all the books.

You know the deal. Call your local shop. Tell them you need ‘em.

I’m trying to get back to making semi-regular comic recommendations on here. We’ll see how it goes. But for now, here are some new comics that came out this week that I think are worth your time.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ALPHA #1 by Jason Aaron, Chris Burnham, & co. Jason Aaron writing TMNT is not something I ever realized I needed until he told me he was doing it. And now I need it. One of the most badass writers in all of comics takes 4 of the most moist boys in comics to places they’ve never been. This is going to be so much fun.

FALLING IN LOVE ON THE PATH TO HELL #1 by Gerry Duggan, Garry Brown, & co. I love this book. It’s a western. It’s a samurai story. It’s creepy and surreal and you have no idea where it’s going. One of the most fun comics of the year.

PRECIOUS METAL #1 by Darcy Van Poelgeest & Ian Bertam. The team that made the brilliant and beautiful LITTLE BIRD returns with their new series. Beautiful, poetic, haunting, hard sci-fi that doesn’t look like anything else out there. This book is a joy.

SCARLETT #1 by Kelly Thompson, Marco Ferrari, & co. I make no secret of my lifelong love for G.I. Joe. Am I jealous that my friend Kelly got to write a book for one of the coolest Joes? No. I am overjoyed because she made it a smart, action-packed espionage story that made me flashback to my childhood reading the old Marvel Joe series while also taking me someplace completely new and different. I loved every page.

Also, I am a little jealous.

PETROL HEAD vol. 1 by Rob Williams, Pye Parr, & co. Brits just do sci-fi better than us these days. I don’t know why. But this post-apocalyptic, cannonball run just feels so wild and different from what you expect at every turn. It’s a blast.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN by NICK SPENCER vol. 2. So I just found out this was coming out today as I put this email together. I wrote 5 issues in this book. Nobody told me. Or put my name on the cover. >shrug emoji<

Anyway, Nick and Pat and Mark and Marcelo and Federico and Ed and co. made a really fun Spider-Man run. If you missed it, grab one of these. And next time I’m at a con you can bring me your copy and I’ll sign the cover where I think my name should have gone.

THE NEW YORK CITY OUTLAWS by Bob Huszar and Ken Landgraf. 1980’s indie comics are a wonderland of violence, sex, and maladjusted weirdos. This collection of the shortlived series THE NEW YORK CITY OUTLAWS is a lovely time capsule to time when comics were much less innocent. If you have a soft spot for stuff like early TMNT, BIKER MICE FROM MARS, REID FLEMING, DEN, or FLAMING CARROT, you should definitely grab this book.

Been writing weird stuff to this album this week. It’s a classic for a reason.

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That’s it for me.

Stay safe. Take care of each other. June better be on its best behavior.

-Matthew Rosenberg

NYC 6/6/24