Welcome

I live. The intro is often the last part I write whenever I draft up a new edition of the newsletter, and I’m fully out of steam this week so....yeah. Just read what’s below.

Rapper:Producer::Writer:Artist

For the past few months, I’ve had Savage Mode 2, an album by 21 Savage and Metro Boomin (and several others who you can find in the credits of the album), in frequent circulation. Every day or two, I’ll take some time out of my day to listen to the intro track, simply titled Intro, and take in the passionate sermon delivered by none other than Morgan Freeman himself. I don’t think Savage Mode 2 was the best album to have come out in 2020 by a longshot, but I also do think it’s the greatest album of all time.

But the real reason I bring Savage Mode 2 up today is not only because of the lyrical stylings of one Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, but also the producing prowess of one Leland Tyler Wayne, for you see, Savage Mode 2 isn’t a 21 Savage album; it’s a 21 Savage and Metro Boomin album. With Metro Boomin doing the production on every track on the album (with help from other producers on some tracks), he’s earned himself top billing on both the album’s credits, as well as its masterpiece of a cover:

A similar case can be found in last year’s Alfredo, a joint feature between The Alchemist (Al) and Freddie Gibbs (Fredo). The Alchemist produced every track on the album The dual billing isn’t a common occurrence in the music medium, let alone the rap genre, and it raises an interesting parallel in the comics medium as well.

As I look at the New X-Men omnibus on my shelf, I notice there’s only one name credited on the spine: Grant Morrison. But next to it, on the Runaways omnibus, two names are credited: Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. It makes sense, given the baker’s dozen of artists throughout the 44-issue-long tenure that Morrison had with New X-Men, while the initial run (no pun intended) of Runaways primarily stuck to Alphona as its main artist, with a few fill-ins from other artists, like Skottie Young and Mike Norton.

A similar case in the comicsphere could also be Immortal Hulk, a 50-issue-long run written by Al Ewing that (unfortunately, lest you google Bennett’s name) features Joe Bennett as its primary artist, with a few fill-ins from other artists. This is much more of an occurrence in indie comics, where runs are defined by the writer-artist pairings that created them (Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, etc.).

It’s funny to think about the parallels, given how often creations in both mediums are attributed to just one person. Scorpion by Drake, Daredevil by Chip Zdarsky, Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti, X-Men by Jonathan Hickman. What does this say about giving credit where its due in both mediums? I’m not sure, really. I mean, most, if not all Big 2 comics don’t even credit letterers on their covers in the year of our lord (Charli XCX) 2021, so we’re clearly a far way off from giving everyone their fair share. But what exactly does that look like? I don’t know. I didn’t think this far ahead when thinking about this topic, so I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself.

What I’ve been:

Working On

Remember that “Weird Fucking Period, Dude” from the last newsletter? Probably not, but anyway, it’s turned into a “Feeling Disillusioned by a Pseudo-Industry You Never Really Had Much Stake In, But Still Feel As Though It’s Negatively Affected Your Quality of Life?”. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but it’s hard not to feel incredibly disillusioned with the current state of comics criticism on the internet, and namely on Twitter.

A lot of the re-evaluation of what was work to me vs what wasn’t turned into a sort-of assessment of the state of the comics crit community. There’s Something Rotten in the State of Comics Crit, but I haven’t fully been able to parse out the root causes yet (though I imagine a lot of it comes back to there not being enough money flowing through the damn thing). I really hope this doesn’t sound ominous, but the long and short of it is that I’ve been burnt by a community that claims to care about hearing out the voices of marginalized folk (such as myself), while not doing much to support that clause. Morale is low!

But what does this mean for me and the “Working On/Putting Out” sections of the newsletter? Well, I’m definitely taking a break from comics crit after I finish this last obligation to ComicBookHerald (a quaint little piece about something that shouldn’t be surprising if you’ve been paying attention to any of the media I’ve been consuming lately), so things will be empty on the comics crit front for the foreseeable future.

However, that doesn’t mean there’ll be nothing that I’m working on. The work continues, and with all this newfound free time, I might pick up some projects that I’ve been keeping on the backburner for a while. Hell, maybe even get back to making YouTube videos? We’ll see. I’ll probably have more info on gestures at everything by the time the next newsletter drops.

Putting Out

Funny enough, I had a piece come the exact day after I released the last edition of the newsletter, so there’s that. Also, now that I’ve been bequeathed editorial purview over GateCrashers’ Fun Size Roundtable series, I’ll be working on that (primarily making headers and organizing the behind-the-scenes stuff) for the near future as my (hopefully) only comics crit-related work for the foreseeable future.

I’m not gonna keep linking the past two weeks’ roundtables here like I did in previous editions, simply for the sake of keeping this section fresh (before it goes kaput), and because I trust you to go read everything GateCrashers puts out anyways. :) Anyway, here’s what I put out over the past two weeks:

• Hellblazer: Rise and Fall Review: My ComicBookHerald debut was ironically a review of a book that underwhelmed me (even if that is unsurprising for Tom Taylor at this point), but if you want to read me waxing on a bit about what specifically about Taylor’s writing doesn’t sit well with me, here it is.

Reading

• Golden Kamuy Vol. 1 (Noda): I bought the first 5 volumes off a whim on Kijiji (with proper social distancing, don’t worry), at the recommendation of my peer good friend Guilherme, who I jokingly threatened with decapitation should I find the series unsatisfactory. Lucky for him, he gets to keep his head, because I was thoroughly intrigued and entertained by Golden Kamuy‘s first volume. I think the historical setting sets it apart from most everything else I’ve been reading over the past couple of weeks, and the first volume left off on a note that left me wanting to blast through the rest of the series.
• Megaman NT Warrior (Takamisaki): I originally borrowed the entire run of this decade-old Megaman manga for a prior commitment that fell through, so now I’m kinda just reading through it all before I have to eventually return them next week. I mean really, am I just gonna waste the effort it took to get these books to my house during a goddamn pandemic? Of course not! Anyways, the book. Still a really fun read a decade later, with expressive and pop-y art. My ties with this book runs deep, and part of my enjoyment of it might just be laced with nostalgia.

Watching

• Kamen Rider Fourze: For a season of Kamen Rider that’s built around being a shonen school series, it manages to do a great job of balancing the humorous moments with the serious and heartfelt moments. While not my favourite season, I still liked it quite a lot. I just wish I hadn’t googled where the cast was at nowadays, mainly for the sake of Yuki Jojima’s actress. :/
• Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight: So I mainly watched this as homework for the piece I’m writing that I mentioned above. It’s the second attempt at an American adaptation of the Kamen Rider franchise, so I figured it would be good to bring it up to better discuss and analyze the current Tokusatsu trend in comics. Honestly though, after ten episodes? Not bad at all! I’d probably give it a solid 6-7 out of 10. The acting’s a bit stiff, and the reuse of the Japanese footage is kinda rough in the first couple of episodes, but once it found its stride, I found the show itself to be quite interesting. I still think it’s really weird that they say “Kamen Rider” when transforming instead of any variation of “transform/henshin”, though.
• Midnight Diner: Netflix recommended this to me, most likely because the algorithm saw that I’d watched Ugly Delicious and the Way of the Househusband anime last month, and decided that “food drama” was what I wanted to see. The show revolves around the eponymous Midnight Diner, a diner in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward that opens up from midnight (duh) to 7 in the morning, and its colourful array of customers. The show’s narrator, the owner of the diner who simply goes by “Master”, guides us into the lives of his customers. While the content matter and the tone of the episodes do vary, the emotional beats hit incredibly hard. There’s been quite a few tearjerkers so far. It’s a show that’s definitely not made for binging, and I’ve been watching it one episode per day, right before I go to bed.
• The Bad Batch: They brought back Freddie Prinze Jr. for episode one, so they had my attention from the get-go. I’ve only watched the first two episodes so far, but I like it so far, though the show isn’t doing anything that makes me want to get up early on Fridays to watch the series as of yet. Crosshair’s a bitch for real though.

Listening to

• Snitches and Rats (feat. Young Nudy) - 21 Savage and Metro Boomin
• Marinate - Zack Fox
• IZANAGI - Sakuramen and Hideya Tawada
• Becky - Aminé

Question Corner!

Yeah, we got questions, baby! Thanks to you, my wonderful readers, I can open up this new segment. Without further ado, let’s open it up with our first question, from Anonymous Reader #4:

Q: Biggest cop in comics crit?

A: ....Well. It looks like this comics crit hiatus is gonna go much longer than I expected.

Afterword

If you’ve got any other questions (it doesn’t have to be about comics crit, for legal reasons), or you’ve got topic suggestions for future newsletters, you can ask them here. Next time, I’ll be talking about something Americans hate, staying out of Middle Eastern/South American Countries trains. But until then, have yourselves a great weekend.