Tales of Syzpense #46

The Mega teaser, an X-Files celebration and a related groan-worthy con tale, a spinner rack of shadows, and more. Plus: release of The Cabinet #4 and A Haunted Girl TPB!

I’ve got some catching up to do so this week will be more of a rapid-fire run-through of miscellani.

First, Francis Coppola released the first official teaser trailer for Megalopolis just ahead of its festival premiere at Cannes this week.

MEGALOPOLIS teaser trailer 01

So of course the noise around the making of the movie became the story, but so it goes.

Francis Ford Coppola and the Megalopolis cast at this week’s Cannes Film Festival.

The reviews after its Cannes premiere were even more all over the place. Here’s a good one but it’s worth seeking out the various critics’ reactions since I’ve rarely seen such wildly diverse opinions about a movie. Somehow, just the idea of a movie that so polarizes audiences already makes me even happier that it exists. A movie that offers the uncompromising and unique vision of its filmmaker without concessions to outside forces or demands seems to me the definition of true art. What a thrill to be associated with something and someone so singular as FFC.

But even as the film heads toward nailing down its distribution plan and release, Jacob Phillips and I are continuing toward the conclusion of the graphic novel — I won’t call it an adaptation, since it’s not directly adapting the story you’ll see on-screen, but it’s definitely a kindred spirit to the film, something wholly unique and gorgeous on its own. I can’t wait to show more of the book — especially considering we’ve not shown anything at all yet. So here’s an early page, which also functions as a bit of a “Before” shot to the “After” image from the trailer above.

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The X is Out There

While Megalopolis has been in the works for over 30 years, The X-Files also turned 30 last year. An April, as part of a documentary release honoring the show, there was a celebration in New York that was attended by show creator Chris Carter, among others. One of those “others” was comic writer Joe Harris, who wrote The X-Files comic I oversaw in my past life. Joe posted a pic of he and Chris C. together at the New York event, which made me recall that day in 2013 when Joe and I first met with Carter to discuss how the X-Files: Season 10 comic series might work. Here are both pics.

Chrises Carter and Ryall and Joe Harris in 2013, and CC and JH together again in 2024

I had a good time working on that comic with both guys, and some of the other cast members and show writers, too.

And thinking about all of that led me naturally to reminiscing about the one time I met Gillian Anderson. The time she called me an asshole on a Comic-Con panel in Hall H.

We did a panel to talk about the show, our new comic series, and all things X-Files. This was Gillian’s first Comic-Con and the crowds were certainly an adjustment for her, so we mostly navigated the convention center’s tunnels to keep her off the floor until she was ready.

As we walked to the panel, I had some advance copies of the next issue of our X-Files comic in my bag. We’d released two issues so far, and they’d gone over well.

Now, in 2013, there had been a steady stream of people online demanding a third X-Files movie. Gillian and David Duchovny were on record as having said they’d be open to it, but nothing had been announced.

But it sure seemed to me that the massive crowd in Hall H deserved some kind of exclusive bit of news. So during the panel, I told the crowd something along the lines of, “this hasn’t been announced anywhere, but I am so happy to be able to announce to all of you that finally, there will indeed be an X-Files 3.

The room erupted in applause.

Gillian looked at me, shocked — like, how was the comic guy possibly in the know about such a thing if she knew nothing about it.

I let it sit for another beat or two, and then I said, really, here’s proof. And I reached into my bag…

…and pulled out the advance copies of The X-Files #3 comic.

“Issue 3 goes on sale in two weeks,” I told the audience.

I’ve never heard a group of two thousand people groan in unison before and it was pretty deafening, and yet nowhere near as resonant in my head as Gillian’s voice, when she leaned in toward her mic, looked at me, and whispered (so the entire audience could hear) “you’re an asshole.”

But she flashed a little smile as she said it.

And I earned that, but even knowing the joke might earn the wrath of both cast and audience, the timing of those advance copies being for issue 3 made it too perfect a gag to skip, come whatever may. It was a fun experience all around. So happy 30th to one of my all-time favorite shows (and a damned good comic, too).

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Time Enough at Last

I recently helped out a bit on a self-published graphic novel written and drawn by a cartoonist named Sven Siekmann. The book is called Time Zones, and it’s a fictionalized account of the effects of an East German family’s attempt to escape from that country’s oppressive regime, and the consequences of doing so on both family and friends.

It’s a raw and interesting book, and while much of it is fictionalized, Sven himself was born in East Germany and his family did indeed attempt to escape from the country in 1977, and it didn’t go as planned. So the book is informed by and drawn from his experiences.

He’s self-publishing the book and it just went up for sale this week so if that kind of story told by someone who lived it sounds interesting, you can give it a longer look here.

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Lightning Round

It’s been over a week now but I hope everyone had a good time on Free Comic Book Day, which also happened to take place on Star Wars Day. I celebrated both at Nuclear Comics in San Diego’s North park area. The line was steady the entire time I was there, and it was fun to scribble on comics from my present as well as my past (like the Steve Niles-Rob-Zombie-Richard Corben Bigfoot comic I’m holding in this pic).

FCBD at Nuclear Comics. Photo by local comic-book gadfly Matt Dunford.

And speaking of Coppola, we spent a few days at his Inglenook Winery in Napa last weekend. I’d not been there before so it was a bit of a pleasant surprise to see that the tunnels under the winery are basically the Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse but with barrels of wine instead of purloined artifacts. In the event of some major catastrophe, never mind the survivalist-types’ bomb shelters, I’m making my back up there to live out the rest of my days like a subterranean Dionsysus.

Moon Knight artist/co-creator Don Perlin, also a longtime Marvel artist on titles like The Transformers and The Defenders, passed away this week at 94.

We reprinted a lot of Don’s Transformers comics but I only worked directly with him once. Back when the Transformers series, All Hail Megatron, was happening, I wanted to bring in longtime TF artists for variant covers whenever I could. Don agreed to do one, his first time drawing Optimus Prime in a number of years. He colored the cover himself, too:

And the 2024 Eisner Award nominations went live yesterday. Nice to see Hassan Osman-Elhaou get some attention for his wonderful lettering work — and that’s a nomination we share since among the list of works next to his name, All Against All is one of the “and others” titles not expressly listed for purposes of space but a part of the nomination all the same. Here’s a bit of his award-worthy work on that title:

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This Month in Syzygy

This week saw the release of the penultimate issue of The Cabinet, #4:

And next week, the trade paperback collection of A Haunted Girl is being released in a digest-sized edition. The TPB won’t be out in mass-market bookstores until June 4 but the book’s co-writers Ethan Sacks and Naomi Sacks managed to arrange a special signing at Barnes and Noble in NYC on May 22, the day of the book’s release to comic shops. There’s more information about that event here.

And available for pre-order at comic shops now in Lunar’s June catalog is the second issue of our big summer release, Self Help. You’ll be seeing much more of this soon, but if you want some specifics about the book—or about cats and baseball and music and other good things—give co-author Owen King’s Substack a follow.

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Throwing Shade at the Spinner Rack

The Marianna Ignazzi cover of Self Help #2 is a great image in its own right—helped even more by Ian Chalgren’s Robert Craise-inspired logo design—but it’s also a perfect lead-in to this week’s spinner rack theme.

Why? because it features one of those tried-and-true cover techniques that I always enjoy: the silhouetted mystery figure. Some of these covers are more obvious than others (John Romita’s Amazing Spider-Man cover not only didn’t leave much to chance on the shadowy figure itself but the cover copy went even further to make sure you know who was who on that one — and the Hulk cover wasn’t even trying to shadow the figure on that cover but it’s a good image so it earned a spot in the mix) but they’re always something I enjoyed seeing.

That’ll do for now. These comics aren’t gonna approve themselves to print, after all. And I’ve been working on a number of comic-related books, and a couple licensed comic scripts I’m eager to talk about in terms of both the character and the artists who’ll be drawing those stories, so as soon as I can say more about any and all of that, I certainly will…

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