The Foxe Gospel 12/20/2022: X-Citing!
Yelps & Barks
Happy holidays! Or near enough, anyway.
I’ve been radio silent for a bit, partly because I’ve had a ton of deadlines but no work on shelves, partly because of a few tweets from my friend and collaborator Aditya Bidikar, which I’m going to repost here in their entirety because who knows how long Twitter has left:
“Writers, instead of using newsletters like blogs, I recommend … a blog! You can post as much as you like and someone can subscribe to your feed or go to your site every few days and read the posts. And you can aggregate them in a newsletter every couple of weeks.
I’m posting this because it looks like newsletters are one of the platforms people escaping Twitter are heading to.
I feel blogs and newsletters work differently, and what many people actually want is a place they can be found at, not to be in people’s inboxes.”
And I think he’s dead-on here. The catch is that we’re all using newsletters like blogs because the blogging infrastructure of the internet bottomed out when social media took over the world, and the vast majority of internet users now only understand one-stop shopping. We’ve seen the negative effects of this everywhere, from plummeting website traffic to links shared without anyone actually bothering to read the articles they’re attached to. When I was an editor at Paste Magazine, I saw firsthand that internet virality had no effect on traffic. A tweet from the Paste account could get shared thousands of times and the click-through to the article (which actually generates ad revenue and allows the website to function) was abysmal. Little surprise, then, that the section I edited no longer exists!
Frankly, I think a lot of us are worried that no one will expend the effort to click on blog links or remember to visit our websites regularly, especially since most 2022 internet users are no longer familiar with subscribing to feeds. A newsletter is an opportunity to write a blog and force-feed it to people, up until the point subscribers feel overwhelmed or annoyed and unsubscribe.
When I launched the newsletter, I had three reasons for doing so:
--I had just undergone a pretty miserable month on Twitter thanks to the Web-Weaver news attracting a bunch of nasty homophobes, so I no longer wanted to be there.
--I had a good amount of working coming up that I needed to promote.
--I wanted an outlet for thoughts and reactions that wasn’t limited to 240 characters and couldn’t be easily shared of context.
My platform is still pretty modest, but I think I can accomplish all three of those by taking Aditya’s advice and transitioning to more of a blogging format on my website, SteveFoxe.com, reserving newsletters for…news. So after one more year-end round-up/look-ahead post after Christmas, I’m going to try to get back on the blogging horse for my own satisfaction, and keep The Foxe Gospel to more of a release/announcement blast. I’ll include links to any blog posts I want to share to a wider audience, but will otherwise treat the blogging aspect as more of a personal online journal.
With any luck, Twitter will collapse soon, and we’ll all have to become re-accustomed to a diverse, multi-stop internet again. I promise there used to be more than five websites, and some of them were even pretty fun and good.
OUT THIS WEEK(ISH)
X-Men Annual #1
Art by Andrea Di Vito
Colors by Sebastian Cheng
Letters by Clayton Cowles
Main cover by Stefano Caselli & Federico Blee
Variant Covers by Peach Momoko; Pablo Villalobos & Romulo Fajardo; and Stephanie Hans
Edited by Jordan White & Lauren Amaro
Published by Marvel Comics
THE NEWEST X-MAN BURNS UP THE SPOTLIGHT!
In a surprising turn of events, Firestar, who had not yet fully embraced Krakoa, was elected to the X-Men at the Hellfire Gala. Her history with her mutant nature is a tumultuous one for many reasons?but her record as a hero is exemplary. Can she wrestle with her past in time to rise to the occasion thrust upon her?
It’s truly unreal that an X-Men Annual is coming out this week with my name on the cover. The merry mutants were my first love in comics—practically in all of pop culture—and I’m immensely grateful to get to contribute to their long and storied legacy, especially alongside such a powerhouse artistic team. I think folks are going to flip for the work Andrea Di Vito did here, and I’m glad he’s busy in the months ahead with other fun projects.
I’ve done a couple interviews about the issue (here’s the X-Men Monday chat—always a pleasure), which mostly focuses on the team’s newest member, Firestar. She’s got a very unique position on the X-Men, and I wanted to help put that into perspective for readers who may not be super familiar with her journey. We found a lot of fun chaos to throw the rest of the team into, too—I wasn’t going to miss my chance to go big with the X-Men for 30 pages.
X-MEN ’92: HOUSE OF XCII TPB
Art by Salva Espin
Colors by Israel Silva
Letters by Joe Sabino
Design Pages by Jay Bowen
Main Cover by David Baldeón & Israel Silva
Edited by Lauren Amaro & Jordan White
Published by Marvel Comics
Everyone's favorite X-Men have returned - but everything is different! Mutants are taking a huge leap forward by founding their own nation on the island of Krakoa - guided by Professor X, Magneto and a mysterious, long-lived mutant who knows much more than she should. Mutantkind is ready to protect their new homeland from threats of all kinds - but if they knew the truth about the mutant whose secret power of resurrection was the key to it all, would they be so eager to sacrifice everything to defend their founders' dream? That's right, the '90s X-Men are tackling the Krakoan Age thirty years early - including Arakko, the gala and more - and it's not going to go the way that you expect! Collecting X-MEN '92: HOUSE OF XCII #1-5.
I missed the on-sale for this collection—my first from Marvel!—but it’s out there now, both in comic shops and book shops (I’m pretty sure). Every single aspect of doing House of XCII was a delight, and set a very high bar for the experience of working with superheroes. If you skipped the single issues (or want to double dip!) you can read the whole thing in one collection now. Also makes a perfect gift for the X-fan in your life.
ON THE HORIZON:
If you missed the first print of Creepshow #2, featuring one of my favorite stories ever with Erica Henderson and Pat Brosseau, the second printing comes out at the end of the month featuring this STUNNING new cover from Maria Wolf and Mike Spicer. I got my comps yesterday and it looks gorgeous in print.
After December, I think my release schedule looks pretty bare for a while, aside from the continuation of my Spider-Man stories oversees. I’ve had a very busy fall, though, so once the announcements start dropping, I’ll have a lot of exciting things to talk about for 2023. Maybe I’ll tease some of them in next week’s newsletter, even…
INPUT, OUTPUT:
See, this is what Aditya was talking about—reflecting on media we enjoyed is a blog thing, not a newsletter thing. Still, I’ll keep it up for the last few weeks of 2022.
My partner was away visiting family this weekend, which was my cue to watch older stuff he’s not as interested in. His Girl Friday is on Criterion right now and is just about as enjoyable as comedies get, even though some aspects haven’t aged that well—understandable for something released in 1940. The most impressive part is how fast it is. Any two-minute segment of this movie has more jokes than most studio comedies have in their entire runtimes now. It’s the same pace that makes The Golden Girls so enjoyable to rewatch. Comedy has shifted to such a focus on situational setups, prolonged awkwardness, and the terrible “So, that happened” approach that it feels like a revelation to watch something just packed to the gills with actual comedic writing. A joy.
On the far other end of the spectrum, I finally watched Cruising, a movie I probably should have seen years ago based on my personality and interests. It’s got some wonky bits, but god, did I love it. Pacino is great even though he’s about twice as old as he should have been for the role. The New York setting is unparalleled, and the way they do the killer, which I won’t spoil here, really sneaks up on you in a satisfying way. This is my Heartstopper.
I got a ton of books for Christmas, which I celebrated early with my parents already, and the first I dove into is Red X, a buzzy recent release that approaches the real-life killings in Toronto’s gay neighborhood, which the cops overlooked for years, with a supernatural and somewhat meta angle. I’m nearly done and enjoying it quite a bit—paired well with Cruising. Next up is probably going to be Sabrina, which I skipped when it made a big splash in comics but decided to circle back to on James Tynion’s recommendation. I’m sure it’ll make for cheery holiday reading.
And with that, I’m out for the week. See you once more in this format, and then in a truncated 2023 revamp.
Happy Holidaze,
Steve