Tales of Syzpense #72
Finding Moonshine Bigfoot, the launch of Dark Honor, 1976 revisited, the release of Dreamweaver Giant-Syze, and a spinner rack full of Friendly Fire
In Stores Tomorrow!
Dreamweaver: Giant-Syze Special — 64 pages on beautiful, pleasant-smelling newsprint paper for $6, is in stores today, courtesy of Nelson Dániel and me. Or you can get a signed edition directly from me.
Dark-ness Falls
The latest round of Image solicitations, for titles releasing in May, went live last week, including a couple Syzygy series, one of which is all-new.
That one is Dark Honor, which came to me through A Haunted Girl co-writer Ethan Sacks. I think Ethan is a great writer and an equally good human and so I’m happy to work with him on pretty much anything he’s involved with.
Dark Honor is something Ethan and I have been working on for some time, alongside the book’s creators, K.S. Bruce and screenwriter Brian DeCubillis, and artist Fico Ossio, who’s currently lighting up DC Comics with his work on Black Lightning, too.
Here’s the announcement about the series and also a bit more from co-writer Brian DeCubellis.
The Foot Clan
The first issue of the impossibly fun, ridiculously gorgeous Moonshine Bigfoot was sent to press this week, and issue 2 is up for pre-orders now, sporting this cover. The cover, by the MB team of Steve Ellis, Zach Howard, and Nelson Dániel, is an homage to the legendary, recently departed Greg Hildebrandt, whose work you’ve definitely seen even if you might not know the name. See below for the source, and also find a few pages from issue two, too.
And the full Image solicitations for May are here.
There was a recent Self Help review at Publishers Weekly that sums up the newly available book very well:
And while you’re checking out Publishers Weekly, here’s their recent piece on my coming Daredevil: Born Again, which I detailed in a recent Substack. About my book and the other titles in Bloomsbury’s Marvel Age of Comics launch slate, the Comics Beat had a good interview with Bloomsbury’s Director of Publishing, Haaris Navqi.
And finally, following up on my 2024 Abrams ComicArts release, The Mighty Marvel Calendar Book: A Visual History, Abrams is putting out their second consecutive replica calendar this year, too. This one is the Mighty Marvel 2026 Calendar - A Reissue of the 1976 Classic. That original calendar celebrated America’s bicentennial, and I covered that one (and all the others) at length in the book, but the calendar itself required some light rejiggering to make it work in 2026 due to an intervening Leap Year. But graphic artist David Banks, who did such nice restoration on all the calendars in the book, revised it so well, I wonder if anyone will even be able to spot the difference.
In non-me news, my pal Joe Hill has a monster of a new book coming this fall. And whether you grab the domestic edition or the UK edition from Headline (or this signed edition available at Waterstones), you can’t go wrong. I was fortunate enough to read an early draft of the book and am currently digging into the (relatively, at 896 pages) shorter version headed your way. It’s a scorching tail, er, tale, that only grows in scope, scale, and stakes as it rolls along.
Comics By and For Dummies
I also got sent a copy of my Bloomsbury label-mate Stuart Moore’s new Captain America for Dummies book and it’s just what you’d want in a Dummies book. It’s massively comprehensive will still being a succinct and visually interesting read.
It’s funny — in 2007, Scott Tipton and I originally sold a Comic Books for Dummies book proposal that, after some editorial changeover at Wylie, ended up becoming an IMPACT Books release called Comic Books 101. Which I think worked better because ours wasn’t a how-to in the first place, like most of the Dummies books back then. It’s nice to see more and more informational types of books coming from them now, like Stuart’s well-done Cap book and an Avengers for Dummies book, too.
Spinner Rack of Friendly Fire
There’s really no way to even scratch the surface of the endless array of comic covers featuring characters who should be friends fighting with each other because of some misunderstanding or other, but this time-honored trope deserves at least some attention here, even if I can’t show anywhere near all of ‘em. This is one that will need revisiting at some other date but for now, here’s a Marvel-only edition, with others to come down the line. (Thanks to Dara Naraghi for this one!)
I appreciate the kind words for the new book, your fealty to King Sorrow has been noted by the great iguana himself. You will not be spared, of course, but the dragon appreciates the gesture.
Thanks for the shout out, Chris. The Mike Zeck cover for Cap Annual is so iconic and one of my faves ever, but I also have a soft spot for that Marvel Two-In-One cover featuring Power Man and Iron Fist. The concept is great, though maybe not well-executed with those weird color holds on the main characters, but that's what makes it appealing in a nostalgic sort of way.