Tales of Syzpense #29
Unlocking The Cabinet, a tribute to the most iconic movie poster ever, and a Spinner Rack Chain of Command
A Haunted Release
Before talking about a new Syzygy title coming your way soon, I wanted to mention again that issue 2 of our acclaimed current series, A Haunted Girl, is now on sale, and is available with these three covers.
The first issue launched well and was solidly received by comic fans and by readers who saw something special in the story that Naomi Sacks and Ethan Sacks developed, the way they worked in very real themes of depression and anxiety amidst the more creepy and fantastic elements.
Because we’re in an increasingly strange time for comics, especially new series, issue 2’s numbers took a pretty precipitous drop from issue 1. There are the usual reasons why we see dips from a first issue on any series — the first-issue speculation market, the fact that retailers who often have to order product on a non-returnable basis also have to order a second issue before knowing how issue 1 sells to their customers, and so on — but the fact is, it’s always a challenge for new series to find and keep a proper foothold.
All of which is to say, if you checked out issue 1 and liked what you read, here’s hoping you stick with the series. It’s four issues in all, and the story being told by Naomi, Ethan, artist Marco Lorenzana, and the rest of the team is something special.
And as with any Syzygy title, if you can’t find a copy or a specific cover, drop me a line and I can help you out directly, too. Feel free to send any other feedback to that same e-mail as well; I’m always happy to hear from you.
Opening The Cabinet
Just announced this morning is our latest title, coming in February from Image/Syzygy: The Cabinet.
The series is something we’ve been planning for a while, and something I’ve wanted to find a good home for even longer. By way of initial introduction, here’s the catalog ad for the series — Image’s “Launch of the Month” for February 2024:
And the press release with additional details about the series:
TELEPORTING FANTASY ADVENTURE BEGINS IN THE CABINET COMIC BOOK MINISERIES LAUNCHING IN FEBRUARY 2024
A five-issue quest to summon arcane power makes this the perfect debut for fans of Paper Girls, Lumberjanes, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Eisner- and Harvey-Award-nominated writer Jordan Hart (Ripple Effects) and co-writer David Ebeltoft team up with up-and-coming artist Chiara Raimondi for the vibrant and magical five-issue miniseries, The Cabinet. This technicolor-drenched, tongue-in-cheek adventure begins in February 2024 from Image Comics’s Syzygy line.
Each vibrant issue will also feature an interconnected variant cover by Eisner-, Shuster-, Manning-, and GLADD-award-nominated artist Marguerite Sauvage (Faith, Bombshells).The Cabinet follows an Indian-American teen, Avani, and midwestern jock, Trent, on a teleporting mission across a post-Cold War landscape to collect bizarre relics. Why? Well, because they need to summon the arcane powers of a resplendent 17th-century cabinet to fix a teeny-tiny mistake the last time Avani used it… a gaffe that inadvertently unleashed an ancient evil from its prison and killed her parents.
About the series, co-writer Hart said, “Equally beautiful and creepy, medieval Display Cabinets (Kabinettschranks) inspired David and I after seeing one in person at a local museum. We immediately knew we wanted to build a story around a baroque version with arcane power – but sidestepped a dark, gothic horror tale in favor of a vibrant supernatural adventure set in the early ‘90s. The result is a world that combines Constantine with Clarissa Explains It All through a Lisa Frank-esque lens that only Chiara could deliver.”
“Jordan and I, while cooking up The Cabinet, had an underlying rule for our occult and character-driven adventure — always have fun,” said co-writer Ebeltoft. “And that’s what we did. Even when Avani, our heroine, comes face to face with uber-dark moments and calamitous escapades, our emotional meter never dips into depressing. It swings dramatic for sure, but that just makes the levity before and after those tense moments more rewarding… for us at least… hopefully for y’all too.”
“Drawing The Cabinet truly took my art to another level,” said artist Raimondi. “I've never had the chance of drawing such fun, unhinged and vivid pages as the ones written by Jordan and David before. I really felt I could create without limits, and I wanted my colors to fully reflect the fun I had in putting this project together! You'll never know what crazy and hilarious challenge Avani and Trent have to face next, so put on your best ‘90s outfit and get ready to be hooked!”
The Cabinet #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, February 14.
Jordan Hart is a creator I’ve known for years (and the inspiration behind many of the themes in the regular Spinner Rack feature here), and I’ve wanted to work with him for a while now — never moreso than when I read his great Eisner- and Harvey-nom’d graphic novel, Ripple Effects (released by Fanbase Press in 2022). And when he first laid out the world he and David Elbetoft were developing in The Cabinet, helped even more by the gorgeous visuals of their artistic discovery, Chiara Raimondi, I knew it was something that felt right for Syzygy.
As I mentioned above, I know that any time retailers need to figure out how to order a new series, and want to see those orders find their way into customers’ hands, it’s an immense help to them for us to spread the word in as many ways that help drive people to their stores as we can. To that end, we’ll be sending an 18” x 24” poster to all shops. Fortuitously, my poster comps landed on my porch about an hour before I sat down to put this newsletter together:
Also, the always amazing Marguerite Sauvage is doing variant covers for the entire series! Here’s a larger look at her first variant cover:
Even better, Margeruite’s five covers connect to comprise one large image. I’ll hold on sharing the full, color version of the combined image but here’s a peak at it:
The Lunar distribution catalog available at your local comic shop also includes a 3-page preview of issue 1. Which I’ll share here, too, to show off just how beautiful Chiara’s art and colors are on this series:
So that’s The Cabinet, a 5-part miniseries coming your way monthly beginning in February 2024. If this looks like something you want to explore further, let your local retailer know to order a copy for you.
In Memoriam
Poster artist Roger Kastel passed away at 91 this week. If you don’t recognize the name, you most certainly know his work. Among other pieces he produced throughout his career, he just might’ve created the greatest, most iconic and memorable movie poster of all time. Debatable, sure, but it’d certainly be my pick:
If you’re interested in more, here’s the full story behind Kastel's Jaws poster.
Beyond Jaws, well, Kastel is also responsible for another of my all-time favorites, too:
But really, the surest sign that his work has achieved immortality is the fact that it was once parodied on the cover of Mad Magazine. I showcased this image a few newsletters back, along with a number of other shark-focused comic covers and Jaws riffs, but it bears displaying again here. R.I.P., Roger.
Spinner Rack Chain of Command
Recently, my pal Scott Dunbier shared the below image on his social media, saying this:
Scored some more art yesterday for the Neal Adams DC Artist’s Edition, including this one being held by my wife Amanda
and shared this picture of Amanda holding the original art from one of my—hell, one of nearly everyone’s—favorite covers:
Which got me thinking about the many times Superman has been chained up, and how somehow those images of comic-book bondage often loom large for me. Another such Superman image by Neal Adams, the cover of Action Comics 485 (the second image directly below), never leaves my office spinner rack.
While Golden Age-era Wonder Woman comics often (so often!) showed WW tied up, it seems there’s been an undue amount of Superman-in-chains covers over the years. And other characters besides. So I thought I’d not only share a number of both, but also honorable mention has to go to ‘90s comic icon Spawn, who’s been around for well over 30 years and 300+ issues now, and you’d be hard-pressed to find one of those that doesn’t involve chains. So a handful of Spawn covers get their due here, too. But first up is the original super-character in chains, Superman, who was first dealing with chains on covers dating back to 1939. And, it seems, every decade since, too:
Of course, Superman isn’t the only character who appears chained up on covers. Many characters, from Wonder Woman to Luke Cage (a bit easy, since Cage’s own belt back in the 1970s was a thick chain) to Ghost Rider (excluded here because if I’m going to feature a character whose 1990s incarnation included plenty of chains, well, GR has to take a back seat to Spawn) to even Spider-Man and beyond:
Finally, well, the alpha and omega of chained characters is Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. And know that these nine don’t begin to scratch the surface of chain-heavy Spawn covers…
Lastly, as far as chain-breaking comic characters go, well, the last word belongs to cartoonist Kerry Callen for this great strip:
Miscellani
Just a few points of interest to end this week’s newsletter:
First, massive congratulations to Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird for the long-time-coming and even more well-deserved honor from their hometown of Dover, New Hampshire:
And I don’t often spotlight other comics I’m excited about because there are so many good comics out there and recommending them would fill every newsletter every week. But once in a while, there’s an announcement that gets me particularly excited. In this case, it’s the next pairing of the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow creators Tom King and Bilquis Evely on a series launching March ‘24 called Helen of Wyndhorn.
The work this team did on their Supergirl series was amazing and particularly gorgeous (and is the basis for the Supergirl film that James Gunn & co are developing now). So Tom and Bilquis pairing again on a series that King described as “Conan the Barbarian meets Withering Heights” seems like the perfect fit. This cover alone makes it irresistible to me.
And for a book without pictures, I usually balance a non-fiction audiobook and a novel, and am well into a couple particularly compelling reads at the moment: on the fiction front, Chuck Wendig’s Black River Orchard is a perfect book for a fall season that treads the line between Halloween and Thanksgiving. And it will make you both crave, and fear, a fresh apple.
And as much as I love the design of the hard copy, the audiobook about the story behind the making of the movie Airplane!, Surely You Can’t Be Serious, is a great listen with contributions from the filmmakers, the movie’s cast, and others, too.
At the same time, I’ve been digging into the MCU book, too, which is especially compelling to revisit the MCU’s beginnings as we enter this era of supposed comic-book movie malaise.
The book is a good reminder about how long the odds were for these films to ever get made, and get made well, in the first place. Which in turn is a nice reminder that we live in an era where we take for granted many of the comic-book TV series and films. It’s an era I never could’ve imagined as a kid, that we’d have endless comic-book stories on screen. You may not like this movie or that show — hopefully you’re at least reflective enough to realize that not everything made is made for you — but overall, we’ve got it pretty great.
Congratulations on the success! You deserve it.