Tales of Syzpense #41
Under-rated Talents, Ellison Wonderland, Friend or Fotos, and a Spinner Rack Face-Off
Under-rated Tito & Tarantula, Harlan, comic (JLGL?)
Earlier this month, the band Tito & Tarantula released a new song, “Sneer at the Drummer.” Which on the surface seems to have nothing to do with comic books, my usual focus here. But bear with me, it will.
Tito & Tarantula is band often described as “Chicano rock,” or “Latin alternative",” but essentially, they got their start in Los Angeles thanks to their creative head, Tito Larriva. Tito was in LA punk bands like The Plugz and then formed the less-punky, more blues-rockery band, The Cruzados. They got some attention (and if you recently tried to get rid of the bad taste left by the recent Road House remake by watching the original, you would’ve heard their tune “Don’t Throw Stones” in that flick).
Anyway, Tito disbanded the Cruzados in the early ‘90s and formed Tito & Tarantula. I got my introduction to their music in Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado. Tito had a cameo in the movie, too, and a bigger part in Rodriguez & Tarantino’s From Dusk til Dawn. They had some tunes on that soundtrack as well.
I dug ‘em from those first few songs in Desperado circa 1994, and have followed them since. The band has released a number of albums since then, but doesn’t often play live in America and doesn’t have much of an online presence, so they seem to fly under the radar. As long as they’ve been at it — since the early ‘80s or before — I’m always pleasantly surprised when they resurface.
The fact that they released a new song last week got me thinking about that, artists who’ve been around for a long time without ever seeming to really break big in the usual ways.
Which led me to wondering about comic creators who’ve done the same. Not necessarily which creators are deserving of wider recognition — I’d argue that all comic creators are deserving of wider recognition — but instead, the creators who’ve been able to have decades-long sustainable careers without ever having had what is perceived as a career-defining breakout title.
It’s a long list, I’m sure, and I also think the general criteria for defining what I mean likely needs more specificity, but ehhh, that just slows down the conversation, which is the part I want to get to. I mean, you could also argue that, technically, Tito & Tarantula, having had music in multiple fan-favorite genre movies, aren’t exactly under the radar. And yet I still think they are.
Thinking of comic creators, for example, longtime DC artist Jose-Luis Garcia Lopez celebrated a birthday in March, which led to plenty of people posting plenty of JLGL’s art, welcome reminders of how good he’s been for so long. And I think you could argue that he fits the definition I presented above, although anyone who’s been reading comics for any duration knows his work and, having seen it, respects how great he really is. He’s amazing, one of the best superhero artists to ever work in comics, I think. And outside of maybe the Hulk/Batman crossover from the 1980s, he’s maybe never had a massive crowd-pleasure of a book or a long, sustained run on a title in the way that many of the most acclaimed talents have had. He’s never been the focus of any online drama, he’s just quietly had an amazing career, albeit one that any of us who know his work would still love to see elevated even more. His talent deserves it.
Where all of this leads me is, who else has put together a decades-long career of comic-making but has flown pretty far under the radar for whatever reason?
To qualify it further, I think it’s widely agreed upon that Marie Severin wasn’t celebrated enough at the time she was producing great work for EC Comics and for Marvel, but since then, there’s been broad appreciation for her many contributions to comics. But she’s also probably still under-appreciated and under the radar to some degree, but she’s no longer a working (or living) creator. So I’m wondering who has been at it for a long time and is still working today, but is deserving of much more attention than they’re getting? I’d love to hear who you all think fits this description so we can celebrate them a bit more.
Ellison Wonderland
Speaking of talents who are less appreciated now than their body of work deserves, there are two new released from Harlan Ellison. Ellison, who passed a handful of years back and is still greatly missed by so many of us, tended to fly under the radar his entire life. Or at least, his work too often took a backseat to his personality and real-life goings-on. So it’s great to see that J. Michael Straczynski, who’s managing Ellison’s estate, has helped shine the spotlight on Ellison the writer once again.
Released this week were a mass-market Greatest Hits paperback as well as a new edition of Dangerous Visions, a ground-breaking and controversial anthology that basically kickstarted the New Wave of Science Fiction; the second volume, Again, Dangerous Visions, releases this summer, followed by the never-released third Dangerous Visions, finally making its way into the world later this year.
If you’ve never read Ellison, or if you have, these books are a perfect place to be reminded of his importance as a writer, and as an editor who pretty much dragged the entire science-fiction genre into a new era after it’d grown stuffy and safe by the mid-1960s.
His work has been too long out of the public’s eye in such a mass-release kind of way, so I’m really happy these books exist, along with the others to come.
Friend or Fotos
Locke & Key colorist (as well as colorist on Onyx, The Colonized, our upcoming Cottingley Faeries series, and innumerable other great comics) Jay Fotos has a new Kickstarter campaign under way, collecting all of the ‘68 comics he’s done over the years, into a fancy oversized Omnibus. Jay runs great campaigns, always delivers quality books on schedule, and this one looks to be especially cool and chock full’a good stuff. Check it out here.
Self Service
Bleeding Cool ran a recent piece about my upcoming Marvel Calendar book with Abrams ComicArts. The book was officially approved this week and will be in stores just ahead of Christmas, so if you want to get a jump on your holiday shopping, it should make a nice gift, although it’s too large and pointy to fit inside a normal stocking.
And as a cool little add-on, Abrams is also reissuing the 1975 calendar itself in the same format as the original — heavy yardstick paper and spiral binding — that’s also up for preorder now. This is one of 7 calendars included in our book, along with a full gallery of process art and other unique ads and original art pieces.
When it gets closer to release, I’ll share plans for some very limited signed editions of the book that will be accompanied by some truly one-of-a-kind extras, too.
A Tale of Tales
The first trade paperback of our Tales of Syzpense series was released this week, so it’s available at all the best retail outlets right now. Or signed editions are available directly from me, too.
Spinner Rack Face-Off
I’m wrapping up this newsletter just before heading out to WonderCon in Anaheim. I’m only there one day, and it looks to be a pretty packed day but I’ll still find time to scour the back-issue bins for additional comics that help fill in interesting spinner-rack themes.
For this week, I’ve been playing with a handful of covers where teams face off against one another. This is another cover theme with a storied history in comics, and something you still see at times today. It’s pretty impossible to resist — any time you see two opposing groups of characters, it promises some form of chaotic goodness. At least, that’s the lure these images always held for me:
Finally, these last two don’t fit (one of them literally) but they deserved notice, anyway. The DC Super-Villains cover is on an oversize Treasury Edition (and now I’m suddenly wondering if I could ever track down a spinner rack that would hold Treasury Editions…).
The other, a KISS cover by Nick Runge, is a comic I wrote (and that Jamal Igle beautifully illustrated). I originally intended to have Kiss facing off against some cosmic menace or other but then, Nick Runge’s original Kiss painting was so nice that I didn’t want to crowd the image so it’s basically a face-off cover gimmick in search of an actual face-off. On that one, I included a look at the original piece, too, since that gaudy background on the printed comic does nothing but detract from Nick’s work.
I’m guessing you weren’t trying to be comprehensive with the face-off covers but here are few more from DC that came to my mind
http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/main/features/comic.php?comicid=24449
http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/main/features/comic.php?comicid=17849
http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/main/features/comic.php?comicid=29111
The Banks family has pre-ordered multiple copies of the 2025 calendar to hang in various offices in Omaha and Lincoln Nebraska. Bravo Chris!