Tales of Syzpense #59
The first of two Marvel archival book unboxing videos and a unique Calendar Book-related offering, plus the unfortunate losses of John Cassaday and Karl Moline, and Spinner Rack University
I was away for the better part of a week in a wifi-free setting, so it was a pleasant surprise to, first, get back online and see that my coming Mighty Marvel Calendar Book (October 15, Abrams ComicArts) was featured in iCV2’s recap of the best gift books coming this fall.
And along with that article, one other Calendar-related thing waiting for me upon my return was the book itself — four large boxes of comp copies.
Which excited me enough that I thought I’d attempt an unboxing video, which also explains a bit more about what the book is, and also shows off some additional book-related items I tracked down throughout the process of putting the book together and will be able to offer as part of a deluxe package for collectors of making-of artifacts:
And so: as mentioned in the video, I have all of the making-of bits and pieces of the 1979 and 1980 calendars: the hand-drawn cover and interior sketches, the hand-made calendar grids, the original typed scripts, some with Stan Lee’s editorial mark-ups, the memos, letters, and miscellani that went in to making these books in that distant pre-computer age.
I first found them thanks to comic historian Shaun Clauncy and calendar editor David Anthony Kraft’s widow, Jennifer. And then from art dealer Mike “RomitaMan” Burkey, who acquired all of the pieces in an auction and then loaned them to me to finish the book and is letting me serve as agent for the pieces as part of deluxe packages I thought i’d make available to collectors.
These packages wil consist of:
A signed (personalized, if you want it) copy of the book (limited to 20)
A boxed, unopened copy of the new replica 1975 spiral-bound calendar that Abrams released in July (its dates line up with 2025) (limited to 10)
One month of process art and related materials (limited to the below sets)
I’m going to offer these through eBay in early October but thought I’d extend any initial offer to anyone reading this who might want to then avoid dealing with an unpredictable auction.
As you can see, some of the months are slightly different in terms of the available material, but all are unique and cool.
So if anyone would like to know more and have the advance track to grabbing any specific one of the above sets, or want to see larger images of any one of these, please e-mail me at ryall.syz@gmail.com and I’ll happily help. I’ll likely only leave these available to Substack subscribers until October 1, at which point the remaining sets will be offered on eBay.
Likewise, if you’d just like a signed Calendar book, reach me at the same email address and I can help you there as well.
On top of all of that, it turns out that the Calendar Book wasn’t the only advance Marvel archival book I was involved with that arrived on my porch this week.
I also got comps of Origins of Marvel Comics: The Deluxe 50th Anniversary Edition, which is also coincidentally coming in October. This one is coming out first, in fact — specifically, October 1st, courtesy of Simon & Shuster’s Gallery Editions.
Being wary of this newsletter spiraling into 25,000-word territory, I’ll talk all about that one next time around. But if you want to be amused until then, the Origins reissue was featured in this news story, albeit not quite with the specific focus I would’ve liked. But it did amuse me.
Astonishing Talents
Being out town last week and off wifi and devices was nice in terms of them coming home to be surprised by those boxes of my Calendar Book comps.
But it was also a rough homecoming, when I caught up on industry news and saw that we lost two great comic-industry talents only a couple days apart: artist John Cassaday and artist Karl Moline, too.
There are some really good, touching eulogies from people who worked directly with Cassaday and Moline much more than I did. In fact, I never did work with Karl, and I was primarily just a massive fan of Cassday’s gorgeous work on series like Planetary, Astonishing X-Men, the post-9/11 Captain America relaunch, and Marvel’s 21st century relaunch of Star Wars with writer Jason Aaron, too. Among so many others.
I got to work with Cassaday exactly once, and it was early on in my time at IDW. In his Wildstorm days, outgoing IDW editor-in-chief Jeff Mariotte created, with Cassaday, a western comic series called Desperadoes. And Jeff was working on a new Desperadoes series when I signed on as the company’s second EIC. Cassaday, already a huge and in-demand talent at that time (2004), kindly agreed to do the cover for the new series’ first issue out of loyalty to Jeff and the series being such a good launching pad for his career.
And he delivered a suitably amazing color, brought to life even more vividly by the great Jose Villarubia. A really stunning piece, and a thrill for me, early on in my pro career, getting to work with two such established and talented artists.
As I say, I never did work with or meet Karl Moline but I certainly studied his work. When Brian Lynch and Franco Urru were working wonders on IDW’s Angel series, Moline was doing some really stellar work on Dark Horse’s various Buffy series. Here’s but one example of just how good he was.
This might sound odd but you notice, and remember, particular things about particular artists — and I really adored the way Moline drew noses. His work was great—he was doing actor likenesses but in an organic way that never felt swiped from photos. His version of these familiar TV characters were his own.
More importantly than their work is the fact that both artists left us in their early 50s. I don’t know the specific circumstances of either artist’s passing but the fact is, too many people in this business are forced to contend with lives without easy or affordable healthcare. (I know that’s not a problem only affecting comics creators, either.) We’re losing people far too young. I don’t know what the easy answer there is — there’s clearly no easy answer. And I can’t say with any certainty that either guy was in that situation, without easy access to proper care, but whatever the case and whatever the causes, it’s a shame to lose them. They’ll both be greatly missed.
Spinner Rack University
Somehow, I’m now the parent of a college student, since my only kid headed off to school a few weeks ago.
Since I’ve had college on my mind, I decided that a fitting spinner rack theme for the week should involve schools — primarily, covers featuring colleges and universities (mostly since I could fill a thousand thousand spinner racks with just Archie comics alone if I’d stuck to high school covers).
Unrest on college campuses was certainly prominent in the news and on comics covers from the late 1960s, but college was also used as a prominent way to just show a character’s aging: both Spider-Man and the Human Torch had a few prominent excursions to college.
But there have also been a number of titles with “Academy” in their titles, too, so they got included even if they weren’t all strictly colleges. And The Boys’ cover below deserved inclusion for its fun parody of the Animal House movie poster alone.
This was a great one. Love this calendar book! The extras are spectacular. As far as losing Cassaday and Moline... always hurts to know we have lost other creators in our creator family. At the same time... Bravo to them for all of their achievements while here! They deserve a standing O! The difficulties involved in remaining a creator in the industry for a long term is astoundingly difficult.
Bravo!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽