Tales of Syzpense #13
Tales from Down Under, 5 Years without Harlan, and a visual tribute to John Romita
When I was pulling into LAX on June 13, I saw alerts about John Romita’s passing. In the hour lead-up to the long flights to Sydney, Australia, I was able to at least enjoy all of the visual tributes and posts to “Jazzy” Jonny, as he was often referred to in the credits of the many comics he illustrated, since I couldn’t really offer up anything at length myself.
Much has been written about Romita’s legacy — this is a particularly nice piece — so I thought rather than re-state any of the words about Romita, I’d instead share some of his work that has always loomed large for me.
I’ve stealthily been working on a couple Marvel-related projects that will serve to spotlight Romita, among others, but until I can say more about either of those, here are some Romita covers and other pieces that I’ve always loved.
Hmm. It’s pretty impossible to encapsulate his career in 9 images (or 18, or 100…) so how about 9 more to at least dig a tad deeper:
I never had a chance to work directly with John. I was happy when we could publish some of his work in the form of the Amazing Spider-Man Artist’s Editions and the Spider-Man newspaper strip books — finally presented in the format I’d always wanted to see, rather than the reformatted paperbacks I had as a kid — but I’d always wanted to help bring some new work from John into the world, too.
That chance came thanks to Dynamite’s Nick Barrucci, who hired John to create a couple Dynamic Forces variant covers for the Angel and Spike comics I was overseeing:
Speaking of the passing of legends, June 28 was already the five-year anniversary of the passing of the great Harlan Ellison. It remains a supreme thrill that I somehow got to be close with Harlan over the final 10+ years of his life, and I miss him now and always.
When Harlan turned 80 in 2014, I wanted to do something special for him, so I commissioned a few artists who’d worked with Harlan over the years to create a jam poster for him. I don’t know that we’ve ever shown this before since it was just a gift for HE but the art is great, the overall approach was inspired by one of John Romita’s covers I posted above, and it brings back nice memories of the man so here it is.
What you have here is a Seven Against Chaos image by Harlan’s co-creator on that book, Paul Chadwick; “Zorro Jiminy Cricket,” who are the two characters Harlan always claimed summed up his personality, by John K Snyder III; the lead character from the graphic novel adaptation of Harlan’s Phoenix Without Ashes by that book’s artist, Alan Robinson; Harlan himself as he appeared in the Harlan Ellison’s Dream Corridor graphic novels by Eric Shanower; and finally a pensive Harlan at his ever-present typewriter by Harlan’s Star Trek: The City on the Edge of Forever graphic-novel collaborator, JK Woodward.
The last two weeks spent down under at Australia’s Supanova conventions in Sydney and Perth were a blast. I spent ample time touring around both cities with Kevin Eastman, Ashley Wood, Freddie Williams II, Jon Sommariva, and many other great folk. The Sydney con was where we debuted our exclusive Tales of Syzpense #1 wraparound cover by Ash. I appreciate the nice responses on the comic so far. I appreciate the review that said that the comic “in many ways is an artistic masterclass in its attempted oddity.” This is a nice write-up about the first issue, too, but, you know, I hope you check out the actual comic instead of just reading reviews of it.
I returned from Australia with a small number of copies of the exclusive cover — we printed 200 total and most are now gone, which is a nice thing — and some are signed by Ashley and I, so please drop a line if you’d like to pick up a copy. Or else check your local shop for the regular edition as well.
Ash was kind enough to hand me the original art for the cover, along with a copy of The Studio, a long-out-of-print book I’d never seen in person before but always wanted; and thanks to a friendly exchange rate right now, I managed to score some nice old books while at the shows, too.
Because all of these images have made this one run a bit long, I’ll cut it off here with apologies that there’s no Spinner Rack focus this week — but I can say that many of the above pick-ups go toward some themes I’ve been building so I’ll get back to that next week, featuring covers that all use my favorite background color — the lighting is blown out in this pic but there are a couple giveaways as to what color that is.
One final note: when you spend upwards of 30 hours on airplanes over two weeks, you have plenty of time for reading, watching, and listening. I especially enjoyed the new season of Black Mirror thanks to writer Charlie Brooker expanding beyond his initial premise for the show (“Joan is Awful” was the funniest of the five but I liked them all), and loved the surreality and reality of Boots Riley’s I’m a Virgo. I won’t mention the streaming services that offer those shows but both of them provide still more evidence of the importance of writers. I hope amidst the WGA strike, reason will still prevail and see the writers properly taken care of.
Also: S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed is a great read, and the last 2-3 weeks of new music releases has offered an over-abundance of great listens, too. Helping me survive the general tedium and hassle of air travel were: Salim Nourallah, Nat Myers, Noah Kahan, Bettye LaVette, Gov’t Mule, Son Volt, Jenny Lewis, Queens of the Stone Age, Jason Isbell, Ben Harper, The Royston Club, Rival Sons, Noel Gallagher, Janelle Monae, the Foo Fighters, Ben Folds… I tell you, June has been one of the best months for new music releases in my world in a long time.
Very cool read!