The Foxe Gospel 8/10/22: Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Yelps & Barks
I planned to take another day or two with this installment of the newsletter, but saw enough speculation circulating that I realized I needed to rush it out:
Today’s issue of Archer & Armstrong Forever will be the final issue for the foreseeable future.
Obviously, this was not the original plan—the print issue, at least, still ends with the cover for #5, and we were originally solicited through #6, too. The whole creative team was comfortably ahead of schedule, but plans changed late into the game and we’ll now be stopping at #4. While I am of course disappointed that readers won’t get to see the rest of our original plans any time soon, I am extremely grateful for the four issues we got out there, and for the entire experience. To say that I learned and grew from the process is a massive understatement. And as much as it stings to end early, #4 is the best possible place to stop for now. It ends with a major new status quo for the boys, and I look forward to either exploring it myself or seeing how others tackle it in the future. If you picked up #1 through #3 and are now on the fence about #4, I’d urge you to still nab it—it’s a sort of A New Hope-style ending, not a brutal cliffhanger. And if you were waiting to check out the series in trade, it should still provide a satisfying complete story, albeit with threads left to pursue one day.
I will reflect on the series in more detail when I’m not dealing with Covid (more on that below), but I want to take the opportunity to sing the praises of all of my awesome collaborators.
Archer & Armstrong Forever #4 Variant Cover by Erica Henderson
Most obviously, I have to thank Marcio Fiorito, who did career-best work on our opening arc and was well into kicking butt on #7 and #8 when we got the pencils-down notice. Marcio’s ability to marry clean-lined action with just the right amount of humor and heart made the book, and it brought me so much joy to see reviews praising his hard work. I am confident he’ll be very busy in the months and years ahead, and I’m so grateful we got paired together on A&AF at a time when we both had a lot to prove. We really pushed each other and it was a gratifying feeling to be cutting our teeth on the same grindstone.
I was not super familiar with Alex Guimarães’ work before he came onto the project as colorist, but now I’m shocked I hadn’t noticed his rising profile sooner. It’s no mistake that his name is popping up EVERYWHERE, and I’m sure that trend is going to continue. He has a very clever eye for color and he and Marcio made a perfect team for the book. Alex is the sort of collaborator you work with once and then request every chance you get.
Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, on the other hand, is someone I already knew quite well—I begged Rob to put him on the book, in fact (not that he had to be persuaded). Hass is one of my best friends in this business, and it’s always a joy to cut him loose on a project that can get experimental and bold. For my money, he’s one of the two best letterers working today (the other being Aditya Bidikar), and I cling to Hass for dear life every chance I get. He got hog-wild across these four issues, and his letters were the perfect final touch of comedy for the series. Hass often came up with his own gags, too—some of my favorite bits in A&AF were all him.
We had an absolute murderer’s row of cover artists across the run, from Bernard Chang’s pitch-perfect main covers (a double honor, considering Bernard contributed a good deal to the original Valiant line in the ‘90s) to Ro Stein & Ted Brandt’s knee-slapping subscriber variants. Along the way, we were also graced by Dan Hipp (#1), David Talaski (#1), a laser-cut wooden cover by Marcio (#1), Chris Wildgoose (#2), Nick Robles (#3), Erica Henderson (#4), and, though they won’t be seeing print, David Romero (#5, as well as the design for the demon you can still see teased at the end of #4), Marguerite Sauvage (#6), Joe Quinones (#7), and someone awesome for #8, though I didn’t see that one and don’t want to falsely attribute anything in case that didn’t end up getting drawn.
We also had a largely invisible side of our team that contributed enormously, as first Phil Hester and then Andy Kuhn provided layouts for later issues in the run. Their sequential skills were a joy to behold (as were the comical notes Phil often left at the bottom of pages). Joe Prado, Marcio’s agent, is a master artist in his own right, and also served as a major cheerleader. Second Rocket Comics designed our logo, which is a special honor when working with existing properties—the run may have ended early, but I have enamel pins of a logo designed just for our take! Pablo Collar was revealed as our guest artist for #5 and #6, and did simply phenomenal work with the horror-influenced #5 before the pencils-down. I’m sad folks won’t get to see his take on the crew, but I was thrilled to find out he’s drawing an upcoming comic called Trance that’s about drag queens and go-go boys of all things. Sign me UP.
Finally, the support within Valiant itself was enormous and very gratifying, starting with our editors Rob Levin and Audrey Meeker. Audrey is an artist herself, and her eye for composition and technical skills was invaluable throughout the run. Rob is the definition of a seasoned pro, and I learned as much from watching the two of them work as I have from any of my experiences in the industry. Everyone should be so lucky to work with editors as attentive and detail-oriented as these two, and I hope I’ll have the opportunity to do it again one day. And that Valiant love extends to folks like Gregg Katzman, Nic Osborn, Dani Ward, and others I’m surely forgetting, who helped us all feel like superstars during the production of the series.
There are no hard feelings between the creative team and Valiant, and I'd work with them again in a heartbeat. Part of the benefit of spending years bouncing around every aspect of the industry, from the book market to freelance editorial to running a comic site, is a significant sense of context. While comics are an art form, they’re also a business, and sometimes business decisions result in series ending sooner than expected. It’s not impossible that we’ll see the rest of our plans one day, but for now, I am grateful for the experience and the collaborative process, extremely gladdened by the nice response we saw from both Valiant diehards and newcomers alike, and choosing to feel good about contributing these four issues to the ongoing legacy of Obadiah Archer and Aram Anni-Padda. If you were one of our readers, thank you for coming along for the ride!
Please also consider preordering Bloodshot Unleashed and XO Manowar Unconquered, as what I’ve seen of both books has been amazing so far. And if you want to go the extra mile, make sure you check out other new work from those creators, like Liam Sharp’s StarHenge and the upcoming 20th Century Men, written by Deniz Camp!
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As mentioned above, to add illness to injury, my partner and I both tested positive for Covid last Tuesday and Wednesday, reverse-respectively. I suspect we got exposed at a screening of Thor: Love & Thunder, so can only personally blame Taika Waititi for our troubles.
This is the first confirmed time either of us have had it, though he spent half a week sick last year after spending time with his family, all of whom tested positive without experiencing symptoms. He tested twice that week and was negative both times, so who even knows. Meanwhile, there’s a non-zero chance I had it way back in December 2019, following a chain of exposure that led directly back to Europe. That week saw me getting about as sick as I ever have been in my life, but Covid wasn’t yet a major concern in America, so testing wasn’t even an option. We’ll never know now, but my experience was exactly the same last Tuesday. The first day was agony—I couldn’t find a way to sit or lie down that didn’t make me want to throw up, I had a ruthless migraine and fever, and sleep was a pipe dream. Thankfully, the migraine and fever broke within 24 hours, and I spent the rest of the week just exhausted and unable to eat anything but plain pasta.
My partner, luckily, didn’t get nearly as incapacitated. He had a worse cough than I did, but never the migraine or stomach sensitivity, and was able to pass the time with Genshin Impact. One of the worst parts of my Covid experience was that I couldn’t even be “fun sick”—I couldn’t concentrate to read comics or watch even short videos. From early Tuesday morning until Friday night, I achieved the bare minimum of existing. Blessedly, while watching Prey on Friday night, I started to feel more human. I’m still more tired than usual—I’ve had to take a nap every day—but I am getting back to a baseline productive existence. I don’t miss a single aspect of office life aside from Sick Days, which simply don’t exist for freelancers. When you get an illness that demands rest, it’s hard to fully achieve that Odinsleep knowing your deadlines are just hanging out in the shadows, biding their time.
But yeah, no subterfuge here—the only reason I didn’t have a better Archer & Armstrong Forever post prepared was that typing this much still makes me need to rest for a while. Fun on fun on fun!
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Edge of Spider-Verse #1 Art by Caio Majado & Brian Reber
One last fun tidbit for this section: while Web-Weaver won’t make his full debut until Edge of Spider-Verse #5 in September, he got a very fun shoutout in my pal Alex Segura and artist Caio Majado’s story in issue #1 as the in-universe designer of Araña’s fantastic new look! (In the real world, this was designed by the always amazing Humberto Ramos.) Very cool to see the character getting integrated even before he shows up on the page, and definitely hope to see more of Alex and Caio’s take on Araña, too!
OUT THIS WEEK [8/10/22]:
Archer & Armstrong Forever #4
Art by Marcio Fiorito
Colors by Alex Guimarães’
Letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Main Cover by Bernard Chang
Variant Cover by Erica Henderson
Edited by Audrey Meeker & Rob Levin
Published by Valiant Entertainment
The Eccentric will stop at nothing to add Armstrong to his collection. Archer will stop at nothing to restore his best friend's lost immortality. And who the heck is going to stop The Maw when he catches up with A&A? Only one thing is certain: this issue will change Archer & Armstrong...FOREVER!
I think I covered this one pretty well above, but I’ll stress again—this is a pretty good spot to end things. I cite A New Hope a lot with endings, but it’s a north star for me. When George Lucas made the first Star Wars, there was no guarantee it would take off. While the ending to ANH is very open and doesn’t resolve the Empire/Rebel conflict, etc., it’s still a complete story in a way Empire Strikes Back wouldn’t have been without Return of the Jedi. Whenever I’m doing a story that may or may not get a sequel or a longer run, I try to do an ANH ending. No one wants to be caught with an accidental ESB ending, which would have been the case if we had stopped with #5 or #6.
ON THE HORIZON:
The fun flipside to unexpected printing and shipping delays is that X-Men ’92: House of XCII #4 is following hot on the tails of #3, releasing next Wednesday, 8/17/22. The goal for the series was already to do a fun, hyper-speed spin on the biggest hits of the 616 Krakoa era, so #4 dives right into the nineties version of the Gala, complete with era-appropriate fashions and cameos galore. Justice for the jacket-era Avengers!
Also out next week is the long-awaited Razorblades: The Horror Magazine deluxe hardcover, collecting the entire contents of Razorblades #1 through #5 in oversized glory. James Tynion IV and I started this as a wild pandemic project, but it’s easily one of my proudest achievements, and I hope anyone who likes horror will consider picking it up.
And speaking of James and horror, I’d keep an eye on his newsletter this Friday…
Input, Output:
As mentioned, the act of boiling water was an achievement for me for most of the last week. I did watch Prey, though, which my partner and I really enjoyed. (Our dog did not, as she freaks out at any dogs and horses on screen.) I’d consider it easily the best Predator movie aside from the original. Amber Midthunder and Dakota Beavers are great, the action is clear, and it’s just a nice, simple setup. I can forgive wonky animal CGI and a little Predator stupidity when everything else works so well, and you can tell the whole creative team had an authentic, invested approach to doing the film right. I’m bummed I didn’t get to see it on the big screen, but also glad I could watch it just as I came out of the worst of my sickness fugue.
We ended up watching a bunch of other movies over the weekend, as I couldn’t motivate myself to read or concentrate on much else. Of those, I have to say I was disappointed with the Evil Dead remake, which I had seen a lot of respected horror-heads champion. I liked the added addiction angle, but don’t feel it really went anywhere. Aside from some solid gore shots, this seemed about on par with any okay studio horror movie from the last decade; I have to assume it gets graded on a curve for not being nearly as terrible as you’d expect an Evil Dead remake to be?
I did, however, love Alligator, the sufficiently self-aware Jaws riff about a mutated sewer Alligator in one of the laziest on-screen attempts at portraying Chicago ever. I expected full shlock, but the effects are solid, the main characters all behave rationally, and there’s just enough humor to tip off that the production wasn’t taking itself too seriously. The titular alligator goes out of its way to trash the wedding thrown by the evil pharma CEO before bashing him to a pulp in his limo. This is what good trash is all about. I watched Alligator solo, but we took in Piranha together, which is a more slapdash affair with largely non-existent effects but is still a fun use of an hour and a half. You can see the wicked glint in Joe Dante’s eye that would go on to become Gremlins and his more fondly remembered movies.
In conclusion, my Covid tips are lots of rest, ample Tylenol, and several doses of self-aware throwback eco-horror.
And I didn’t read a thing this week—could barely concentrate long enough to send emails—but still wanted to shout out Behold, Behemoth, the new series announcement from my pals Nick Robles and Tate Brombal. Both are exemplary talents and seeing them collaborate on something new from the ground up is going to be a joy. For a taste of what it might be like, be sure to check out Christopher Chaos, which Tate writes from an idea by James Tynion IV, featuring awesome designs and covers by Nick and interior art by my comics husband Isaac Goodhart. Issue #2 just dropped last week (for free!) and I look forward to reading it when my brain fully regrows.
Until next time,
-Steve