Tales of Syzpense #56

SDCC memories... or not. Plus a spinner rack on the Half Shell, Syzygy's September and October releases, and more. More, I say!

SDCC Memories… or not

I had all these plans. I was going to offer a full recap of the seven panels I did at Comic-Con; my experiences as one of the judges for the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award and the rest of the Eisner Awards; and various other stories, pictures, and apocrypha that came out of what was a truly enjoyable, energizing, and optimistic Comic-Con.

And then I got covid and was laid up for a week.

At this point now, over a week since the convention ended, is there anything less interesting than a Comic-Con recap? Well, maybe a couple things: hearing more opinions about Robert Downey Jr’s return to the MCU as Doctor Doom, and hearing more about Colin Kapernick’s new company designed to democratize comic-creation by, uh, replacing comic creators.

Actually, while I have no opinion on the RDJ news — I prefer to, you know, see how the movie turns out before I opine on it — I do have opinions and concerns about CK’s new company. In fact, I voiced those opinion to Colin and his team over the course of a couple meetings earlier this summer. Yet another of the many “can I pick your brain about a business venture that’s raised a lot of money for us but we can’t afford to pay you for your acquired knowledge?” calls I’ve taken over the past few years. And like the other comic creators who were asked about the A.I.-powered venture, I cautioned against this approach for the genuine damage it could do to both actual freelance comic creators but also to Colin’s own reputation.

I long for the day when entities funding these kinds of ventures realize that it’s not the quickly produced end result that’s the best part of the process of creating comics. It’s the making of them alongside other talented collaborators.

Anyway, SDCC was a blast, Covid, less so. But now I’m up and around again, so it’s back to making comics with talented creators, and onto Dragon-Con in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend. Although maybe masking up at that one wouldn’t be the worst idea.

Two last bits on SDCC:

1. The only real news anyone needs coming out of SDCC is this:

2. Just ahead of the show, I recorded a segment with local station KPBS. The video segment on their site shows one of my oft-referenced spinner racks in all its glory:

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Morse Code

Comic creator (The Magic Pickle) and animator (plenty of Pixar films) Scott Morse put out a call ahead of SDCC for one-page stories for a book he’d be drawing before, at, and after the con, with both friends of his and also opening up space for new writers as well. The book is called This Ink Runs Cold.

I’ve known Scott for a long time, and Pixar’s unfortunate loss will again be comics’ gain, as he’s one of the most talented, inventive, and unique creators going. I’ve missed seeing his stuff in comics on a regular basis.

I wrote a story for Scott called The Silurian Hypothesis, something I’d been reading about recently. This hypothesis is defined as “a thought experiment which assesses modern science's ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilization.” So my story involves a far-future Earth being visited by an alien race… who may be able to detect evidence of a prior civilization, but will they understand what that evidence tells them…?

Anyway, Scott took my little paragraph story and made it better even while turning the entire thing around in only a few hours. The entire book will be filled with this kind of beautiful work.

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Syztember

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Syztober

Syzygy's four November releases

Also Coming in October

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Spinner Rack on the Half Shell

I normally shy away from modern covers since it’s too easy to find examples of any possible cover theme now. Artists are too self-aware, they’ve become big business as retailer exclusives, and generally, every month, there are a dozen homage covers that hearken back to some theme or other. I’m doing another one for a December release, in fact.

But, owing to the fact that it’s Comic-Con time, time is somewhat limited and, well, some weeks are better than others, let’s face it.

Still, this theme is also being done in celebration of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turning 40 this year!

But first: among the key inspirations for the series and its first cover before we get to the homage covers:

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SDCC Photo Dump

Okay, just a bit more from SDCC to end this one after all. First, here are the random and sundry comics I picked up at the show, most of which satisfy at least one spinner rack theme, or help suggest new ones:

SDCC pick-ups

And then some random pictures from panels (like when writer/editor Linda Sunshine was surprised with an Inkpot Award during her Spotlight panel), from the show floor, the final Eisner judging, a farewell party for Comic-Con Executive Director Fae Desmond, and other goings-on from throughout the “6-day weekend.”