Tales of Syzpense #34
The Rom Omnibus is here, some Syz arrivals and coming-soons, a tribute to Ramona Fradon's long career, and giving the Fingers to the Spinner Rack.
I was working on the introduction for the second volume in Marvel’s three-book series collecting the entirety of their Rom, Spaceknight run when I got a Ring alert that a package was just dropped on my porch.
Taking a quick break on revisiting particularly bleak period for the characters in Rom (the storyline that culminated in issue 50. Brrrr), I picked up the box and opened it to find a book that I’ve wanted since the mid-1980s (or whenever the act of collecting old comics into nice bookshelf editions really became viable): the first volume of Marvel’s Rom Omnibus.
Marvel was kind enough to send me an advance copy — it releases to stores across the land on January 24 — and it was a particular thrill not only to see the book but to see my name within its contents. As it turns out, I’ll be contributing introductions to all three volumes, so I finally had an official reason to revisit the series. Not that I ever needed one.
The series. which ended in 1984, has never before been collected, so the book existing at all is reason enough to celebrate. I felt like I should honor its existence by dressing like an adult and showcasing the book in a dignified manner. By which I mean this:
The book looks great — the paper has a bit of tooth to it, the colors are cleaned up but original, not recolored with modern touches that wouldn’t suit the art — and Marvel gave me six pages for my introduction to discuss the original toy, the comic itself, its creators Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema, and other bits of Rom trivia, too.
So if you want to see what I’ve been blathering on about for years now, check out this first volume and you’ll get to experience a full 29 issues in just this first edition alone.
The Week(s) in Syz
This is my first newsletter back since the holidays, so I missed directly mentioning the release of the fourth and final-for-now issue of this newsletter’s namesake comic, Tales of Syzpense. It came out the final week of 2023, and in the issue, I know I ended my story on a bit of a cliffhanger, which is never ideal for a final issue… however, Dreamweaver will be back, on the pages of his own comic.
And this week, another comic of mine was released: The Colonized, an aliens vs zombies vs isolationists (both left- and right-leaning) tale. We released the complete story in one bargain-priced (for today’s comics world, anyway) 100-page comic. The art is by Drew Moss (whose coming Thundercats comic just topped 100k preorders, which is huge), who, uh, drew the hell out of this comic. Colors are by Locke & Key colorist Jay Fotos, letters by Tom B. Long, and general design and production by Shawn Lee. And it’s all wrapped up inside this gorgeous cover by Francesco Francavilla.
About The Colonized, The Beat said:
This is an extra beefy one-shot with a just-perfect cover by Francesco Francavilla, which — as its title implies — features both zombies and aliens. But none of that is even what I liked best about it. This is lowkey an excellent story about a remote community trying to live autonomously in a way that has minimum negative impact on the environment. It’s very thoughtful under its fun pulp veneer, and a very satisfying read.
Finally, on February 14, Syzygy/Image will debut its latest series, The Cabinet, which comes to us courtesy of writers David Ebeltoft & Jordan Hart, and amazing technicolor art by Chiara Raimondi.
Final orders for issue one cut off on Monday, January 22, so if you’d like to make sure your local comic shop pulls a copy for you — it also makes for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift — let them know you want it by then. It makes their lives even easier if you give them the item code on the below ad, too:
And here’s a little animated trailer if you’d like to see a bit more of the first issue:
Flowers for Ramona
Speaking of beloved creators from the past (and in this case, still in the present, too), longtime comic-book artist Ramona Fradon recently announced that she was retiring from drawing comics and commissions — at age 97. Fradon is, among other things, the artist/co-creator of Metamorpho, the character who Anthony Carrigan will be playing in James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy movie.
There are far better tributes to the wonderful Fradon than this — there’s a good one at Boing-Boing and another at 13th Dimension, and Dynamite once put out a nice collection of Fradon’s work — but I thought I’d share a few images here as well in tribute to her long career.
Only three years ago, I commissioned Fradon to do a couple pieces for me. One was a gift for an esteemed comic artist who owns pages and covers from pretty much every Silver Age luminary who worked in comics in that era… except for Fradon, who was his answer to my question if there was any artist at all he never owned a piece from and wished he had. “Ramona Fradon’s Aquaman,” he said. Now, the original pages from her work on that series are both very pricey and hard to find, but I thought a personalized commission might be the next best thing.
So she was kind enough to do the Aquaman for him, and she did an image of my favorite character, Ben Grimm, the Thing, for me. (Incidentally, last time around, I ended the newsletter with a splash page from an issue of Fantastic Four with the team in Times Square on New Year’s Eve in the early ‘70s — an issue drawn by Ramona, the only time she ever drew an issue of that title.
But the piece I like the most from Fradon is this 2021 commission she did for me. At the time, me and a friend recently sold a TV show set in the comic-book world, and as I was immersing myself in some specific history while working on the pilot script, I had Jack Kirby on the brain (not a rare occurrence in any case).
So I asked Ramona if she’d be open to doing something a little different: rather than doing her usual commissions of drawing comic-book characters, I asked to see the Ramona Fradon version of Jack Kirby’s self-portrait, with Jack at the drawing table the way he usually drew himself (and the way he usually was). And as is her way, she delivered a completely charming and fun (and hand-colored) piece, with the added bonus of turning the angle a bit to give me one more image of Ben Grimm, too.
I had hoped to get Ramona to do a cover for Joe Hill’s Rain series but at the time, she was too booked up with commissions to take on deadline work. Still, I’m glad that she had time to do a few more DC covers before calling it a career, since her cover for Tom King’s Danger Street series as a fun one, and this one from last year’s Superman #4 was just great. Ramona was often asked to do “throwback” covers since her style was much more of her time drawing comics than today’s comics, so it was great to see her and DC both fully embrace the retro feel with the logo and trade dress on this one:
Enjoy your retirement, Ramona, and thank you again for all the wonderful work over the decades!
Gotta Hand It to the Spinner Rack
A recent fascination of mine has been covers with hands — usually giant — that have sentient fingers. I picked up a copy of this one at the LA Comic-Con this past fall and have been intrigued by the idea ever since.
Not just because it’s such an odd concept — are those the fingernails on that hand, manicured to look like weapons from the game Clue, or something far worse (in these comics, the answer is always, always the latter) — but because the idea of lethal, sentient fingers isn’t limited to just this cover. In fact, it’s a whole spinner-rack mini-theme unto itself! Who would’ve thought?
It could also be seen as part of a broader theme I also like (covers with giant hands), but I might do those for a piece at 13th Dimension since they challenged me to do so in a recent piece there. So, because there are enough of these covers, I kept the focus here on sentient hands and soon to add a follow-up piece at 13th D that collects the array of covers featuring giant hands.
While this isn’t really a theme you see on covers any more, the first volume of the recent Dark Horse series Black Hammer features a nice homage to these kinds of covers.
And with that, we’re back in the swing of things. Next time around, some words and pictures of two coming Ashley Wood comics, letters from Ray Bradbury, and more.
I have a Fradon Brenda Starr daily original i got from her at Comicon circa 2002. It's nice, but wish I had splurged a bit to get an Aquaman page... ah!
So Dreamweaver will be back...any idea when? Wouldn't want to miss it!