Do Not Siege Walled Cities - 302
Substack Swimsuit Special ft Pale Doughy Men
GREETINGS FROM COSTA RICA
I’m at a resort. I’ve seen capybaras, sloths, and a toucan.
Since I last newslettered, I’ve been some places. Some nice, some not quite as. It’s all where they drop you, isn’t it? I walked the wrong direction in Bogota and saw one thing, my bandmates walked another direction and saw another thing. My impression of Guadalajara was informed by missing persons posters covering every wall and cops patrolling in ski masks with assault rifles. My bandmates didn’t see that on their walk. Perspective is limited for everyone, but feels complete in everyone’s mind.
Special thanks to people who bring me regional comic books to read. Comic fans are proud of the work that comes from their countries, and I’m happy to check it all out (with the Google Translate scan feature).
WEEKLY REMINDER GREAT THINGS INCOMING
Call your local comic book store and ask for GEHENNA: NAKED AGGRESSION issues one AND two! Both are up for order NOW NOW NOW.
TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN OR ARE ALREADY HAVE BEEN I GUESS ALWAYS WERE THE SAME REALLY
Marvel is doing a SWIMSUIT SPECIAL. First in a long time. A quick scroll of Youtube recommends tells me that accounts with fewer than 100 followers see this as a major victory. The idea being that ‘woke Marvel’ is over and that’s cause for celebration.
Let’s presuppose that shift would be a good thing. What, exactly, about a swimsuit issue makes you believe that shift has occurred?
Every month, both Marvel and DC publish ‘gooner variants.’ If you can’t guess, that’s their female characters drawn to be sexy, typically without story context. When they’re feeling ambitious, they’ll get talented names to do them. Other times it’s artists you’ve never heard of, and never will, because they refuse to draw interior pages. This is not new. And I’m not judging it. GEHENNA: NAKED AGGRESSION has some straight-up scandalous covers. It can be fun. The only difference is, I’m not ashamed.
Big Two editorial compartmentalizes this aspect of the market. While the stories may have a child’s idea of progressive politics in them, the covers signal something else. Nobody can assert it’s ‘reclaiming’ some variation on feminine sexuality, because this is not women artists doing the covers and this is not women doing cosplay on the covers. This is pure T&A for the boys. And editorial doesn’t love the feeling of being pornography half-steppers.
So does a collection of pinups from the usual tracing suspects really signify a vibe shift? Only if you’re not paying attention.
Publishers want their cake. They will tell you capitalism-is-bad stories while selling you a luxury good. They’ll desexualize their characters in stories by editorial fiat while selling you gooner pinup covers. There is no moral center to a corporation, as the purpose of a corporation is to diffuse accountability.
On this tour, I’ve stopped into a number of comic book stores. Had a great conversation with an owner about culture and politics in South America. He surprised me when he said his politics lean right-wing. In the US, that’s not something comic book store owners offer up. On the shelf behind me was a graphic novel version of the Communist Manifesto. I jokingly pointed to it. His reply: “my right-wing friends say, ‘why do you sell this?’ and I say, ‘because communists buy it.’”
That’s the spirit of a market, for good or bad. And comic books are a market. Yeah, institutional capture is possible. Having spoken to former Big Two editors, it’s confirmed that there’s a pervasive ideological vibe in these offices. But, ultimately, the market dictates and employees can only bloviate. Is it possible that someone high-level at Marvel Comics got the memo that the Marvel Rivals video game is popular in no small part because the characters are overtly sexualized? Yeah, very likely, honestly. The name of this special is MARVEL SWIMSUIT SPECIAL: FRIENDS, FOES, AND RIVALS. That’s the market at work, folks.
There is a vibe shift, certainly. However, it’s not evidenced by a book of terribly-conceived pinups.
ROB SAYS GO AWAY
Rob Liefeld has issued a clear missive. The X-office needs to be gutted. Yesterday.
I respect Liefeld for his contribution to the medium. And I’m glad he’s still in comic books, offering opinion from a unique perspective.
But I don’t typically agree with him. We have different sensibilities and there’s a lotta daylight between our ideas of good comics.
That said, I’m feeling him today. I can’t pretend to care about the X-books, but I am really stuck on the notion of efficiency. I’ve been on flights every morning for two weeks. And I am tired of things that don’t work.
Oversized luggage? Expect a 30min process, during which staff will look at a computer monitor as if for the first time. Checking into a hotel? While it would be reasonable to expect that booking in advance means they’ll be ready for you, instead anticipate another case of staff staring at a monitor as if trying to read blurred Cantonese.
People need jobs. But they don’t need THIS job. They don’t need any specific job. And they really, truly don’t need any job they are bad at.
This applies to me. I was let go from a gig last year. Rightfully. I did ‘fine,’ but I wasn’t justifying my salary with exceptional output. So, no hard feelings. My contract wasn’t reupped and that’s just the way it goes when you’re doing the job but not CRUSHING the job.
Now apply it everywhere. Apply it to comic books. Do you feel the X-books are exceptional? Does anyone? Liefeld can sometimes look like a kid salty that someone else is playing with his toys, but he’s not wrong here. Can bad books do sales? Sure. Can any book sell well short-term if everything around it is manipulated for that purpose? Definitely. Many such cases. But is anyone doing the job you’d want them to if you were paying their salaries?
The sickness in direct market comic books is that readers don’t care what Liefeld says. What any creator says. It’s corporate brand logo above all. And nothing is getting better until that changes.
MEDIA CONSUMPTION LOG
Making my way through the Frank Miller DAREDEVIL material. I was surprised there’s a chunk I hadn’t read. This one written by McKenzie.
I know this is basic sounding stuff, but writers are, at best, 49% of things. Frank Miller’s art couldn’t save an objectively terrible script. But it could elevate a C script to a B+ book. 2025 publishers pairing rising writers with C- artists are killing books. Somebody has got to be the load-bearing creator.
Tried reading SCARLETT by Joyner, Wilson, and Fern. Stopped after issue 3. The dialog is too arch for the tone and the art is too inconsistent to ever feel rooted in the world.
In reading it, I tripped over this in-house bit.
I winced a little and got sad. If you’re not familiar, the name on the top right, Gerard Jones, has some misery attached to it. He was convicted of possession and distribution of child pornography. I don’t know Gerard Jones and can’t even claim to be a fan of his writing. My sadness here isn’t necessarily for him. It never occurred to me he had a family. I am now thinking about the son announced in the editorial bit above. Does he use his patronymic name, or did he drop it? Has he had any contact with his father since Jone’s release from prison in 2022? What is his view of his mother? What’s her view of herself? It’s all so sad to think about.
Moving on, Phantasm III was fun. Actual, literal, nonsense. But fun.
Felt like I was watching a script being written in real time.
DESIGN FOLDER
Every time this one is up for auction, I’m rapidly priced out. Someday. It’s perfect. We really need to use streetlights as spotlights in more media. Some comics people will tell you not to give the reader your hero’s back. But they are often wrong.
The other poster for Ms.45 is fun, but less striking and doesn’t have the swag.
Read what is a classic, to some.
It was better written than I expected from a late-90s cheesecake book. It wasn’t exactly my thing, but as a guy doing girl-with-gun adventure stories in 2025, I feel I gotta put some respect on the DANGER GIRL name.
TIRELESS BUT A LITTLE TUCKERED OUT AT THE MOMENT
Thank you to everyone who has said they’ve ordered GEHENNA. I trust we’ll win your support for all four issues. It’s a ride.
And thank you to everyone who has been welcoming at these shows in places I don’t speak the language.
Hope everyone has a productive and fulfilling week. Do for self.