Dead, Dead, Dark, Deviant, Drew, and…SPIDERS
It feels super cliché to start the first newsletter after a long hiatus—the first newsletter of 2024—with a spiel about how I let my posting regularity get away from me…so I won’t. The Foxe Gospel isn’t a paid gig, so when the deadlines stack up, it’s the first to get the chop. But now that I’ve finally said my firm goodbye to Twitter/X (and am in the process of doing the same with Instagram) I suppose some link to the outside world is wise as someone whose livelihood depends on selling comics. Plus I’ve actually accumulated enough subscribers that I exceeded the free plan, so I’m actually paying for this gig now. Woo.
In reverse order for the newsletter headline, I ended 2023 and kicked off the new year with a rush of Spider-related news. Spider-Ham: A Pig in Time is finally out now, concluding the three-book run I got to do with one of my favorite collaborators ever, Shadia Amin. It’s been such an honor and delight to tell these Peter Porker stories, and while I shouldn’t pick favorites, these books are kind of my favorite. Keep an eye peeled in this one for a cameo Shadia included that meant a lot to me.
It’s also been announced that I’m one of the contributors to Spider-Man: Stories from the Spider-Verse, out next summer from Disney Books. This is a prose anthology featuring a diverse array of Spider-heroes, and I was over the moon when I was asked to contribute a brand-new Web-Weaver story, continuing the impact of the character I was lucky enough to help co-create last year. Stories from the Spider-Verse is aimed at younger readers but is suitable for Spider-fans of all ages. In addition to my Web-Weaver story, which vastly expands Cooper Coen’s world and introduces a new Earth-71490 version of a major Spider-foe, the book contains stories from nine other spectacular writers, including my buddy Alex Segura, whose Miguel O’Hara story threads through the whole anthology to link our heroes across the Web. Preorders are everything in publishing, so if you have a Christmas gift card burning a hole in your pocket, place your reservation now!
Also announced in the Spider-world was Web of Spider-Man #1, out this March featuring a truly amazing (wink) roster of friends, peers, and legends, including a cover by Greg Capullo (!) and two stories written by yours truly and brought to vivid, creepy life by the incomparable art team of Greg Land, Jay Leisten, and Frank D’Armata. Our twin tales spotlight troubled Spider-clones Ben Reilly, now known as Chasm, and Kaine, reluctantly saddled with the Scarlet Spider moniker. Who knows what 2024 has in store for them beyond Web…
Finally, in the last of my breaking Spider-news, November saw the launch of Spider-Woman, my very first ongoing Marvel series. My big goal for 2023 was to write a solo series, and I’m still pretty shocked it happened with Jessica Drew, one of my favorite Marvel heroines. As I’ve said in interviews, I was the right age to appreciate her Bendis-ushered Renaissance, and it’s wildly intimidating to follow a string of fan-favorite runs from folks like Dennis Hopeless, not to mention her regular appearances in books like Captain Marvel. Jess may have partially originated as a way to expand the Spider-Man copyright, but she’s such a vibrant, unique heroine in her own right, and it’s a major responsibility to help bring her back to shelves.
I’m joined on Spider-Woman by artist Carola Borelli, colorist Arif Prianto, letterer Joe Sabino, and editors extraordinaire Ellie Pyle and MR Daniel, not to mention powerhouse cover artist Leinil Francis Yu, which still blows my mind. Carola has been a DREAM collaborator, embracing all the aspects of Jess we hope to highlight on this run, from her super-spy background to her street-level detective stint to her high-flying (or gliding) superhero antics.
(Special shoutout, too, to Eric Koda, Wade von Grawbadger, Lee Duhig, and Joe Caramagna, the creative team on our prelude short that ran in Amazing Spider-Man #31 a few months ago! You don’t have to read it before Spider-Woman #1…but you should!)
Spider-Woman #1 spins out of GANG WAR, the big new storyline in Amazing Spider-Man, as overseen by the zealously collaborative Zeb Wells. While we embrace the crossover and move some key pieces across the board, it’s also very much a Jess-focused story, setting up plot points that will play out after our initial arc. I’m enormously grateful for the opportunity to shepherd Jess (and some fun guests!) for a bit and I hope readers will check out what we’ve been cooking.
If you want to hear me talk a bit more about Jess, check out the interview I did with the always lovely AIPT.
And before we totally crawl away from spiders…the trade paperback of All Eight Eyes, my very first creator-owned mini-series, came out just after Thanksgiving! I won’t talk as much about this at the moment, as I tend to run long, but I absolutely loved doing this creature feature alongside Piotr Kowalski, Brad Simpson, and Hass Otsmane-Elhaou with Daniel Chabon and Dark Horse. In fact, maybe we should get the gang back together soon… I have high hopes for All Eight Eyes enjoying a nice second life as a collected edition, reaching horror readers who might not necessarily read floppies with any regularity.
And hey, I’ve got an interview for this one, too! Via Gay League this time.
SPEED ROUND:
November and December were pretty in Foxe-town, with the release of Dark X-Men #4 and #5, our final issues. I’ll have to devote a newsletter to talking about this one in more length once I have a little more distance from it. Doing Grand Guignol X-Men with Jonas and Frank has been an absolute career highlight, and #4 kicks off with a moment of unexpected sweetness (just for everyone who angrily assumed I’d be breaking up Gambit and Rogue) before rocketing us toward our bloody conclusion in #5, while also finding time to touch on the Limbo Embassy’s most notable prisoner, Benjamin Reilly, who also…
…features in my Deadpool: Seven Slaughters story! I was tremendously tickled when my Spider-Woman editors Ellie and MR invited me to join this oversized issue’s ridiculous roster (which includes my good buddy and collaborator Phillip Sevy absolutely killing it on a story with Cullen Bunn!). I got a tiny taste of Wade in X-Men ’92: House of XCII and I’ve been itching to do more ever since. He’s kind of like an 18+ Spider-Ham in a lot of ways, so it’s a fun wavelength to tap into. This short also allowed me to reimagine a Dark X-Men Annual idea I had pitched to Jordan White in the off case the Fall of X minis got extended. And what a treat to work the Gerardo Sandoval on this story—he’s got ample experience with Wade already, but seeing his Maddie was a bop and a half.
BUT WAIT, THAT’S NOT ALL… We’re now two issues deep into The Deviant from James Tynion IV, Josh Hixson, Hass Otsmane-Elhaou, Tyler Boss, and yours truly picking up editorial duties. We’ve been hard at work on this one since last year, and it feels tremendously gratifying to have it out in the wild. James has cooked up an abundance of mind-melting ideas in his career, and I’ve been very lucky to edit several of them, but The Deviant might be one of his most somber and affecting. As he’s stated in interviews, there’s no supernatural twist coming, no high-concept swerve. This is a grounded, difficult, soul-searching take on horror, and each new script, each new page of Josh’s chillingly atmospheric art, each new finished page with Hass and Tyler’s touches in place, brightens my horror-loving heart. If you want to be frightened—if you want to be provoked and disturbed—don’t miss out on The Deviant.
(Or W0RLDTR33 for that matter, which is back for its second arc as of last week!)
Let’s see, that covers all the D-words in the headline except…oh yeah, Dead X-Men. This bad boy won’t debut until the end of the month, but I’m writing a four-issue mini-series spinning out of Kieron Gillen and RB Silva’s Rise of the Powers Of X, one of the epic bookends to the long-running Krakoan saga. The cast was briefly a bit of a secret, but a poorly kept one: Dazzler, Prodigy, Frenzy, Jubilee, and Cannonball, the newly elected X-Men who died at this summer’s Hellfire Gala, are back in a time-and-space-spanning adventure.
There’s very little I can reveal about this book just yet, but I take writing these five (along with our other two primary cast members, Rachel Summers and [redacted]) as a serious responsibility. Besides being some of my personal favorite mutants (DAZZLER), this is the team-that-almost-wasn’t. While the book was already planned and started before readers reacted to their shocking deaths, seeing the passion and interest X-fans had in seeing these five as X-Men lit a fire under all of us. I got a taste of writing them all alongside Steph Williams and Noemi Vittori in their X-Men Unlimited shorts, but the tone is vastly different—and the stakes much higher—in Dead X-Men. I’ve described the book as my chance to channel Claremont and Cockrum and I’m sticking to that vague-yet-accurate statement for now.
What I can say, though, is that the art team on the book is BONKERS. In addition to main covers and stunning new costumes designed by Lucas Werneck, we’ve got eight (!) artists contributing to our four issues. It’s an ambitious plan and I didn’t think our editor superstars Jordan White and Lauren Amaro would want to wrangle all of these moving pieces, but it’s worked out, knock on wood, exactly as I hoped.
My Dark X-Men collaborator Jonas Scharf kicks us off, with Jean Grey’s Bernard Chang appearing in every issue and Astonishing Iceman’s Vincenzo Carratù doing the bulk of #1. Fan-favorite Peter V. Nguyen (who contributed a Wolverine backup) and my X-Men Unlimited partner Guillermo Sanna join us for #2, before Lynne Yoshii (also X-Men Unlimited), Javier Pina (X-Men), and David Baldeon (X-Factor) loop in for #3. Bringing us home on #4 are David, Vincenzo, and Bernard. Frank Martin colors the whole thing, and it’s been a huge thrill seeing his unifying take on these very different artists. This was an extremely rad instance of everyone we asked and hoped for lining up, and it’s making for a really heartfelt tribute to the Krakoan era as a whole.
And speaking of Guillermo and Lynne, I should log off by directing folks to the Marvel Unlimited app, too, where Steve Orlando and I have staked out X-Men Unlimited for a few months now, first with Lynne Yoshii and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo to tell the saga of Sunfire searching for Redroot in Otherworld, and then alongside Guillermo Sanna and Java Tartaglia as we put Firestar through the ringer while she’s deep undercover with Orchis. Most recently, my buddy Phillip Sevy and colorist Ceci de la Cruz hopped on for three holiday-centric issues focused on Sunspot.
Steve O. and I are going to be sticking around for a bit, so I’ll go into more depth about the vertical scroll-a-palooza in a future, less crowded newsletter. The weird naming confluence of Sunfire to Firestar to Sunspot actually doesn’t end there, so start speculating about who we might take on next…
OH YEAH I ALMOST FORGOT…just before Christmas, it was revealed that I’m also writing a four-issue official prelude to X-Men ’97, reuniting with my X-Men ’92: House of XCII collaborator Salva Espin on art, with Matt Milla joining us for colors and Todd Nuack on covers! Massive thanks not only to my editors but also Beau DeMayo and the ‘97 crew, who were extremely generous in helping us carve out our story that would bridge the gap between series and help lead into the cartoon fans have been dying to watch. Storm! Jubilee! Beast! Cyclops! Jean! Bishop! Rogue! Gambit! Wolverine! And some ‘90s-tactic villains I can’t believe we got to use! Check it on in March before you tune into the new cartoon.
Over in the real world, my partner and I bought a house, which it turns out is an energy-intensive process even when things go smoothly, which, knock on wood, they have so far. I’m excited to get all the original art I’ve been hoarding up and framed in my new office…and to eventually find time to sleep for like, four weeks straight. A man can dream.