Vaporators?
Chapter 137: We're Selling Spawn Comics Like It Was Our Job!
End of the Year Going… Fine?
I Wonder How Many People Call It “Comic-Chub?”
Other People’s Comics!
I Answer Your Questions, Rudely!
My New Favorite Music Video!
Hello.
Happy Hump Day! Here I am back again with another installment of My Usual Bullshit™. I wanted to get this out earlier, but I was up writing until 6AM, so we’re a little behind schedule. Hope it hasn’t totally ruined your day.
As we head into the end of the year my urge to just watch all the best movies of the year, read all the best books of the year, and listen to all the best music of the year has been going… poorly. For example, I watched 4 movies this week for my best of 2023 list. 2 of them actually came out in 2022. A simple mistake, but still a mistake. One of them came out in 1998. That one is fully on me. But sometimes you just want to rewatch ROUNDERS. Anyway, for my 2023 December movie watch this week I am happy to report that BOTTOMS was really fun and you should watch it.
My Best of 2023 book reading is going equally well as I just finished a BATMAN comic from 2008. It’s possible I am bad at this.
After posting about putting up a bunch of signed books and records in our webstore, a ton of you ordered stuff. Thank you. As I crunched the numbers some interesting things presented themselves. We have regularly had a lot of requests for the SPAWN cover for WTFPFH? so Tyler and I signed a bunch and put them up in the webstore. Almost nobody bought them. Conversely almost no one has ever asked me for the elegantly named STAR WARS: JEDI: FALLEN ORDER: DARK TEMPLE trade, but I had some copies so I threw them up there anyway. And they almost completely sold out. I think I have 2 left. Weird. I wonder if the latter has anything to do with the books price point on Amazon-
All this is to say, thank you for the support. It means a lot. But I had a few people ask me about comic shops, which I’d always prefer you shop at. So I will answer en masse here. First, ComicShopLocator is your friend. Use it to find shops near you and go buy things. But, I know some people don’t have shops, or shops they like, near them. And for those people there are always online shops. There are too many to name here, but a simple google search will bring up a bunch. But I did want to highlight one great service that also happens to include a lot of great shops.
ComicHub is both a point of sale system and a website management company. What does any of that mean for you? Nothing at all. But what it does mean is that they make it easy to find good comic shops from all over the world, browse their inventory, and order things for mailorder or in store pickup. Not only can you find stores close to you, and browse their selection, but you can also look for specific titles across all their networked stores to see if anyone has what you’re looking for. For example 8 different shops have copies of my Star Was book and all of them have it for over $90 cheaper than Amazon. Support small businesses and cool comic shops and again, please don’t pay $100 for my Star Wars video game tie in. I can just tell you how it ends if you need to know.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that they have a neat little “Featured Creator” section on their home page with a little tab for yours truly. Very flattered.
As always, go buy some comics.
What a flawless segue. It’s Wednesday. New Comic Day. Let’s talk about some cool books that are out today that I didn’t make.
MASTERPIECE #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. Two masters remind us how it’s done in this amazingly fun heist story about family, legacy, and discovering the world. I’d read Brian’s brilliant dialogue over Alex’s gorgeous art every day for the rest of my life and be happy, but this book exceeds even my admittedly very high expectations. An amazing start.
ARCADE KINGS by Dylan Burnett. Dylan is one of those artists that every writer I know wants to work with. His work is kinetic, vibrant, unique, and just fun to read. Turns out he writes a pretty fun book too, the jerk. Arcade Kings is a love letter to arcade culture and tournament fighting. A really fun ride and a must read for fans of video games and fighting people for honor.
WHERE THE BODY WAS by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. I guess it’s the week that the teams behind the best crime comics ever made release books. If you aren’t familiar with the Brubaker/Phillips ouvre you haven’t been reading some of the best comics ever made. You should probably go right now and buy CRIMINAL and RECKLESS instead of reading some dumb newsletter where a guy talks about chocolate milk all the time. Anyway, Where The Body Was is another masterwork from these gentlemen. A modern, suburban, drugged-out RASHOMON for the pulp crime set. It is, as always with them, as good as comics get.
UNDERHEIST #1 by David Lapham, Maria Lapham, & co. If we’re going to have my favorite creators of all time launch new crime comics this week, might as well go 3 for 3. David Lapham’s STRAY BULLETS is one of the most important comics ever made. I said it. It’s a brilliant and groundbreaking work, that never loses sight of the humanity of its characters, all done with some of the most beautifully crafted comic pages I’ve ever seen. So anytime David’s name is on a book, I buy it. This strategy has yet to fail me. But Underheist is something special even beyond that. It’s a smart, weird, fun return to everything that made me fall in love with his work in the first place. A heist story that’s just a little weirder and wilder, this is a must read.
THE SEASONS HAVE TEETH by Dan Watters, Sebastián Cabrol, & co. A surreal trip through a world of regret, loss, and beauty. The Seasons Have Teeth is the story of a photographer trying to get photos of the god-like creatures we call the Summer, Spring, Autumn, and Winter, and hoping they will restore his world to what it once was. Equal parts poetic and exciting, it’s a hard balance to pull off but the team does it effortlessly. A really beautiful book.
And that’s it for this week.
Time for another trip to the ol’ Mailbox to see what people have to say.
Dave T writes
“Any chance you have copies of the Furthest place from here cover with Spawn on it? I’ve been looking for it and nobody has copies. Only one I’m missing.”
Thanks for the question Dave. Yeah, we have them. But I don’t believe that you really want them. Prove me wrong.
If you’d like to be mildly taunted by me in this here newsletter shoot me an email or leave a comment below. If I’m in a bad enough mood I might just pick yours.
I’ve been listening to this ANXIOUS record a lot lately. I didn’t know they made a video for my favorite track, but just found it. I honestly can’t tell if this is the best video I’ve seen in years, or a REPLACEMENTS level “fuck you” video, or both. But I love it and it’s been stuck in me head, so now it can be stuck in yours.
That’s it for me.
Stay safe. Take care of each other. Remember- if you feature me prominently on your website, I’ll probably talk about you on here.
-Matthew Rosenberg
NYC 12/13/23
Yo, can we get Lapham on the podcast? I first became aware of him when he was drawing superhero stuff at Valiant. I was amazed and quite pleased when it turned out he is a Crime storytelling genius.
I suppose I could ask more about your Fallen Order tie-in. (I was fortunate to get it when it came out.) How did it come about and what was the process like writing the story? (With the game group?) Also, are you running out of C-3PO-related titles?