I Woke Up In A Meeting With A Bunch Of Random Dudes
I'M BACK
Hi. I’m Danny. I write comic books and am reviving my dormant newsletter!
Sip Another Beer In The Shower
Spent the last few months obsessed with these chaotic bisexual Canadians. “Blame Brett” seems like it’s the big single, but the whole record is great front-to-back. Not even sure how I discovered them — if it wasn’t a random Pitchfork email, it was coming across the record on Spotify and deciding the album cover suggested a band I might dig.
I really like this one too:
Another Just Another Swamp Song
After about a year of dragging my feet for no particular reason, I launched a crowdfunding campaign for Just Another Swamp Song once again. This time, we’re back to Kickstarter because all the alternatives just seem to be for creators with bigger, dedicated fanbases that will follow them to whatever vaguely named website said creator decides to set up shop on. For the rest of us, using shit like Zoop or Wup or whatever just means that normal people are like “What is Zoop?” And, honestly, they’re not wrong to ask.
Just Another Swamp Song follows Laurel, an edgy teenaged outcast who’s SO CLOSE to graduating and getting the fuck out of Florida. There’s just one problem: her secret childhood friend, a swamp monster named Bog, just killed a bunch of people. It all comes to a head at the weirdest prom ever.
A project that’s been in the works for an embarrassingly long time, Just Another Swamp Song is best described as “Swamp Thing meets Jennifer’s Body,” and boasts amazing art by CJ Camba. I can’t wait for people to finally be able to read it.
As of writing this, the campaign is about 75% funded with a few weeks to go, which is certainly encouraging. Trying to promote anything these days sucks more than ever before — we’re all buried under the algorithm, comics websites ain’t what they used to be, and I’m just not charismatic enough for TikTok — but I’m glad people are seeing it and appear to be interested.
Next campaign will probably be Survivant #2.
Other Comic Shit
Speaking of which, I’m currently writing the final issue of Survivant. It’s been fun to get around to ideas and moments I’ve been thinking about for years. I can’t realistically say when anyone will get to see it — I mean, I haven’t been able to finish #2 yet — but having all the scripts done is going to feel GREAT.
Other than that, I’ve been putting together some new concepts. Nothing to brag about yet, but SOON ENOUGH.
It’s Happening Again
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? For a good long while, I didn’t have a lot to write about when it came to comic stuff, so the newsletter didn’t seem like it needed to come out.
Circumstances™ resulted in me getting a new day job in the fall of last year. It seems Professional to keep the details vague, but basically, it’s work I used to do pre-Pandemic. I was bummed out about the sense of retrograde, but you can’t argue against a paycheck. Turns out you need money for things?
May also marked my final month with Valnet/The Sportster after four years and thousands (?) of articles, but I didn’t have the time or energy to devote to it anymore. It was a really fun, rewarding gig writing about stuff I love — not just pro wrestling, but also sometimes its intersection with another thing I love, comic books. Plus, at one point my wrestling writing was cited in an actual book. A good one, too!
Rewatching X-Men
In anticipation of X-Men ‘97, I went back and watched the original X-Men cartoon from the beginning, which I don’t think I’d ever done since they originally came out. That show was a big one for me, as it was for many kids in the ‘90s. I feel like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got me into comic books, but X-Men kept me there. I had that fucking Jim Lee comic like everyone else. Shit’s iconic.
Decades later, the cartoon is still compelling and shockingly sophisticated, which is what was so cool about it back then — it felt like watching something for adults. Never forget that Fox occasionally aired it during PRIME TIME. Unthinkable today.
The strongest season is easily the first one, which has a nice arc that plays across every episode. From there, it can be hit-or-miss, especially when there’s a long string of one-offs before a big multi-part saga that finally capitalizes off of something from months prior. Surely the result of higher episode orders and other production stuff. Also, as much as ‘90s kids love Gambit, it’s obvious that the writers had no fucking clue what to do with him most of the time, so he disappears for huge chunks of episodes at a time.
As for the revival series, it’s HOT FIRE. I wasn’t entirely stoked for yet another nostalgic revival project — even after the trailer — but it transcends nostalgia. Sure, it hits all those buttons for people who remember shit like the old video games, but it also totally nails what worked about the original show. Being a satisfying revival that stands on its own while not drowning in nostalgia is a tough needle to thread, and X-Men ‘97 does it beautifully. The incredible animation doesn’t hurt, either.
Without giving anything away, That One Episode left me in such a state of wordless shock that I accidentally made Elizabeth think Something Serious happened in real life. Whoops!
Feel The Byrne
Shoutout to the San Diego Public Library for having random Marvel omnibusseseses in their collection. Reading a whole slew of comics in order is a special joy, and the latest one I did was Volume 2 of the John Byrne Fantastic Four run.
First thing I’ll say about these comics is that Byrne’s art totally slaps. He’s no Miller/Chaykin/Simonson, for sure, but dude was unstoppable in the ‘80s. There’s an issue in this omnibus with a whole first-person POV sequence of Paste Pot Pete breaking into the Baxter Building, and it’s cool as shit. Even if you don’t know the character, understand that his name is PASTE. POT. PETE.
I always point to the Jim Lee/Scott Williams partnership when it comes to the importance of inkers — when somebody else inks Jim Lee, it doesn’t look right — but Byrne’s FF stuff here is another great example. He doesn’t always ink himself in this volume, and it really makes a difference. His art looks best and most Byrne-y in these pages when he inks himself, so when, for example, ‘60s Marvel inker Joe Sinott takes over the inking duties, the final product loses a bit of the Byrne-ness. At some point, Jerry Ordway inks Byrne and it’s REALLY good, but it also takes on Jerry Ordway qualities (himself a great artist with his own identifiable style).
The stories themselves? Fun stuff, if a bit sexist (after all, it’s John Byrne). You’d be shocked how many times She-Hulk identifies herself as a “lady lawyer.” The scripting here is of particular note, at least for me. In the past, I’ve complained about people — mainly comics writers purporting to have an authority on the craft of scripting — shitting on Byrne’s X-Men collaborator Chris Claremont for his excessive “purple prose,” and I really think all of those people should try to read some of the shit that John Byrne writes himself. A perfunctory scene with Mr. Fantastic communicating with the White House has Byrne narrating that the President holds the loneliest office in the land. It’s a notion that isn’t uncommon, but it’s also totally overwrought for a scene where the (unidentified) President is just getting Reed Richards on the phone to ask what’s up with the disturbance du jour.
I Feel Like I Should Talk About Something That Isn’t Capeshit
Finally got around to reading Sara by Garth Ennis and Steve Epting from TKO and, expectedly, it goes hard. I feel like everyone except for Tucker Stone tunes out when Ennis does WWII stuff, but I’d recommend people check this one out.
It’s about a band of young female snipers blowing Ratzi brains out in the name of Mother Russia, and it’s as cold as it sounds — and not just because of the snow-blanketed setting. Go read it.
Someone remind me to write about Battle Chasers next month.
Look At Me
To promote Just Another Swamp Song, I hopped on Zoom to talk with Thomas from World At War Comics about the project and some other stuff: