Tales of Syzpense #65

Celebrate the holiday the season with this week's Dread the Halls, including a couple in-person launch events; and the first week of the holiday Spinner Rack

Everything gets compressed this time of year, doesn’t it? I felt like I just knocked out the last newsletter a week or two ago and yet I see it’s been a full month since my “post-election existential crisis ad dread” edition.

That hasn’t diminished by any means but I’ve been distracting myself with a challenging number of overlapping projects, and a good array of conversations about books on podcasts, interviews, and hanging out in person at conventions and other such places (the last of which is by far the most helpful. Getting offline and together with old friends and so many of the good people in this business is the best.

Among the various podcasts I’ve done of late, mostly discussing my two recent Marvel projects and this week’s holiday-horror comic, Dread the Halls, are:

• The Short Box podcast

• Nerdy Mewzings — the link takes you to the audio podcast or the video, if you want to sit in judgment over my alternate spinner-rack choices, is here:

And I had a great time talking to Fanbase Press’ Barba Dillon and her team, alongside my Dread the Halls partner Jordan Hart, on a recent Fanbase Weekly podcast, too:

I also talked about the Mighty Marvel Calendar Book on Jace Milam's LRM Online podcast

And then I hawked the books in person at the recent Scottsdale Comic Book Show. Had a blast at that one — it’s just a one-day affair so I drove out the day before and had dinner with fellow show guests Kevin Eastman and Jay Fotos, along with current Titans writer John Layman, and Mike Malve, former AZ-based comics retailer and one of the two owners of the Scottsdale show.

Here’s Jay and I set up and ready for action, even as Kevin Eastman was already well under way tending to his day-long line next to us:

I brought along a co-worker to help me showcase advance copies of my new Dread the Halls…

…only he didn’t prove to be much help since Brian Pulido adopted him soon after the doors opened:

And a few other pics from the show: I met artist Victor Irizarry, who did a retailer-exclusive cover for Dark Phoenix Comics for our Zombies vs Robots Classic #1 a couple years back; the impressive wheels that Arizona-based Champion Comics cruises around in, the even-more impressive set-up that Jay created at his studio, and the new (old) comics I traded for at the show, some of which will help flesh out future spinner-rack topics…

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Dread Tidings

This week, to help launch our Dread the Halls one-shot (available everywhere on Wednesday, December 4), Jordan and I will be signing copies at the great Golden Apple Comics in LA on Dec. 4 from 11-1. Golden Apple is celebrating 45 years of operation, which is amazing and wonderful, and I’m happy we can be there (alongside Barbarella writer Blake Northcott) this week. If you’re in the area, I’d love it if you came by. I’m planning to bring some of the Origins of Marvel Comics books and the Calendar Book as well, so you can knock out lots of holiday shopping at once.

Jordan and I will be doing the same at one of my favorite comic shops in Southern California, the great Knowhere Games & Comics in San Marcos, on Saturday, December 14.

Here’s a preview of the issue at Capes and Tights.

Hope you can come say hey in person and/or check out the comic. We’ve already talked about not only making this one an annual affair but also have a fun spin-off title planned for next summer, too.

In other new-release news, I’m told the latest issue of Weird Tales is arriving this week, too. I’ve not seen it in person yet but I’m still so happy and flattered to be in this mag alongside all the other great names you see listed on the cover.

I’m writing this on December 1, so the compressed holiday season is now officially in full swing. It’s hard not to feel tentative about where we’re headed next year, and the continuing talk of tariffs has all of us in comics and publishing worried about what this will mean for us, as well as for the broader world, too.

I happened upon this bit from the first issue of Bendis & Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man #1 from 2000, where they lifted this scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and dropped it into the comic. Which was amusing then, but not so much now. Now it’s yet another warning.

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‘Tis The Season of the Spinner Rack, Part 1

It’s always a calming thing for me to set up my spinner racks with holiday covers (and it felt good to be able to add our own covers from Dread the Halls to one of the racks, even though I tend to avoid adding new or my own covers to it). So here’re some of those in place, with more to come. Hope you all have a great holiday season. I greatly appreciate your patronage here and elsewhere, too.

Of the above covers, Nick Cardy’s Teen Titans cover is probably my favorite, although that Nick Fury #10 image by Frank Springer and John Romita is also pretty hard to beat. If you don’t mind the Hate Monger being the focus of your holiday-themed cover, that is.

I’m pretty partial to the Santa Claus Conquers the Martians cover, too, for its sheer ridiculousness. The cover is great; the interiors are… let’s say, on par with the movie itself.

Dave Stevens’ Elvira cover technically works for both a Halloween theme and Christmas, although of these four, I’m partial to Walt Kelly’s cover. Rom isn’t exactly Christmas-themed on the cover other than its snowy setting, but giant mechanical spiders always deserve their due. And the issue itself ends on a nice holiday note, too:

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Finally, to end on a less-festive note, here’s a little silent two-page comic from an old issue of Marvel’s Bizarre Adventures comic (issue #14) that keeps running through my mind lately. It seems sadly just as relevant now, if not moreso than the time in which writer/artist John Byrne created it.