Tales of Syzpense #11
Down Under cons and Spinner Rack Photos
Supa Freak
My schedule here is going to be a bit interrupted for the next couple weeks, as this will land in everyone’s inboxes right around the time I’m embarking on the long flight to Sydney, Australia. I’m a guest at the Supanova conventions in Sydney the weekend of June 10-11 and then in Perth on June 17-18, so will largely be away from the computer as much as I can be, anyway. I’m sure I’ll at the least post some pics from the shows. And if you happen to be reading this from either city or surrounding area, I sure hope you’ll come by and say hey.
We — Syzygy partner Ashley Wood and I — will have some exclusives at the show, including the limited-edition hardcover of our newly minted Eisner Award-nominee, Joe Hill’s Rain, as well as limited-edition hardcovers of our own Zombies vs Robots Classic. And we’ll be debuting a con-exclusive of our new comic (and this newsletter’s namesake), Tales of Syzpense #1.
Tales of Syzpense #1 does its debut in comic shops the following week, on June 21, with the below cover options, but we’ll have the special edition version available at the shows a few days prior to its full release. And with all of these, if there are any particular covers you want and can’t find, drop me a line and I can get you set up.
I’ll also bring copies of other Syzygy releases, and probably some older books as well (ROM, Weekly World News, Comic Books 101, KISS, you name it and I’ll bring it), as well as some things that may not be as readily available in Australia, like some of Skelton Crew’s amazing Locke & Key replica keys.
It should be a fun time. I made this same Supanova Sydney and Perth run back in 2014 and loved it. I promise that our exclusive comic this time around will be less disturbing than our last one, which featured, um, me, along with former IDW publisher Ted Adams.
And while this Mars Attacks cover might’ve been ridiculous at the time, it does serve as a nice lead-in to this week’s Spinner Rack Theme, as you’ll see below.
The Eisner Award
But first — since there aren’t other new Syzygy releases to talk up this week, these looming conventions happening in mid-June have me thinking about times past. Namely, my first start at IDW in the middle of June in 2004 (!!), and my first official San Diego Comic-Con as the company’s editor-in-chief only a few weeks later. I’d been on con panels prior to any start at IDW but this one felt different not only because of my new role and the fact that I’d be co-moderating this one, but mostly because one of the panel attendees was none other than Will Eisner.
Will was on the panel to talk up a new collection of his old John Law strip, accompanied by a new comic series being put together by Aussie creator Gary Chaloner. The other panelists were impressive on their own — writer Matt Fraction and Easy Way author Christopher E. Long, 30 Days of Night co-creator/Wormwood creator Ben Templesmith, and IDW’s then-editor-in-chief, Jeff Mariotte — but it was the presence of true comic legend Eisner that gave the panel a lot of added weight and pressure. But it also felt like some kind of anointment, to share panel space with Eisner at the convention that also featured the prestigious awards show named after him as my official entry into the world of comic publishing.
That was a long time ago. And so much has changed. But the positive memories from that time and that panel remain. Especially since e lost Will Eisner about six months later, so I’m especially glad I had that experience. Conventions in general really are one of the best parts of this business: the chance to meet fans, to meet fellow creators, and to talk to and learn from the masters who paved the way for the rest of us. In the lead-up to July’s San Diego Comic-Con, I’ll share some other pictures from past shows in this newsletter, too, in part because it’s just fun for me to look back at them even as I’m grateful I still get to do shows like that and Supanova.
Spinner Rack Photo Backs
I’ve always loved seeing comic art against photo backgrounds: I loved it when Jack Kirby would occasionally drop the Fantastic Four team over some wild photo collage that he put together:
And I love it on covers, too. It makes for a pretty fun spinner-rack theme (and it’s an approach we’re taking on a unique Syzygy comic series I’ll be talking about soon enough).
Theme-wise, I tend to separate the full-photo covers from the art-on-top-of-photos — the blend of photo and art is always my preference. But there are four fun full-photo exceptions I included below, too.
As always, if there are any I missed, please let me know.
I did purpose skip the couple Jimmy Olsen covers featuring photo insets of Don Rickles because they’re just a bit too ridiculous compared to these others (although I do own one of ‘em and rotate it into this thee now and again). You can see those jack Kirby-drawn covers here and get the story behind them if you so choose. The ones I rotate in most often are these:
But there are many others. Like these:
Nowadays, photo variants are prevalent to the point of overuse — actor press photos (I used those regularly on comics like Angel and 24), cosplay pics, even photos of toys. Which is an approach I used in 2017 on this Rom variant cover.
Today, you can find photo covers pretty regularly, if they’re your thing. It’s another reason I tend to limit these themes to Bronze Age titles and back, because so much of everything has been done and done and done again by now, losing a bit of what made these oddities special back in the day. In the 1980s, photo covers were pretty rare, and notable when they happened, if not always so perfectly reproduced for print. Of the four examples below, the most technically impressive is the Spider-Woman 50 cover for the degree of difficulty of the shot, as well as for the sheer amount of costumed characters they included. But it remains hard to beat the Amazing Spider-Man cover because, well, those jeans.
That’s it for now, but I thought I’d head out with this parting thought for the week courtesy of Raymond Chandler. Apropos of no current events, I’m sure…
A couple Syzygy limited editions are available through Ko-Fi, with more to come!
Love the Ko-fi idea and that Spider Woman cover. Most of those villains went on the form Marvel's Night Shift.
An exclusive con cover and limited editions for Supanova! See you in Perth, going to be a good weekend.