The Foxe Gospel 9/1/2022: Marvelous!
Yelps & Barks
Oh man, it feels like it’s been forever since I wrote a newsletter. It’s been…two weeks, so I guess that’s the length of time at which my brain resets, like how dogs can’t tell how long we’ve been gone after 15 minutes alone, a “fact” I am not going to double-check before disseminating.
ANYWAY.
Happy September, folks. I don’t care how cliché it is, but the onset of Halloween merchandise that arrives to signal the end of summer is one of my biggest annual joys. This will also be the first year where my partner and I get to decorate a place together from scratch, as he previously moved into an apartment I was already renting and was stuck with the Halloween decorations I had stockpiled.
Before we move on to some very exciting recent releases and reveals, AIPT swung in just in the nick of time with our biggest peek yet at Web-Weaver, the brand-new spider-hero I got to co-create with unmatched character designer Kris Anka. The preview also reveals our interior creative team. Kei Zama murdered these pages—their sense of style and action struck the absolute best possible balance for Web-Weaver. I was over the moon the moment they started sending in designs. And joining Kei is colorist Brian Reber, who’s doing phenomenal work across the Edge of Spider-Verse series. I love when anthologies have a few consistent contributors, and we get to see them flex entirely different muscles in different stories. Massive thanks to editors Kaeden McGahey, Lindsey Cohick, and Nick Lowe for assembling the team and for giving us this opportunity!
Like I tweeted, Web-Weaver is not Peter Parker—he's a brand-new hero in the classic Spider-hero archetype. And I promise you don't need a degree in fashion to follow his exploits. His job at Van Dyne is akin to Pete's at the Bugle. This is very much an action story (with some flirting), which is really my favorite kind! Final order cutoff for Edge of Spider-Verse #5 is September 15th, which means that’s the last day to ask your retailer to preorder your copy. Preorders are everything in comics, especially when launching a new character. How this issue sells will help determine if we get to tell more Web-Weaver stories in the future, and trust us—we have plenty to tell!
AND LOOK AT KRIS’S VARIANT COVER ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEEE
One other bit of housekeeping: Rainbow Bridge, the all-ages graphic novel I co-wrote with Steve Orlando, has been nominated for the Best Kids Comic or Graphic Novel category in the Ringo Awards! Valentina Brancati, Manuel Puppo, and Hass Otsmane-Elhaou did such amazing work bringing this heartstring-tugging story to life, so it’s been really gratifying to see our team’s efforts recognized, first by the Eisners and now by the Ringos. If you’re a comic pro, please consider voting for us!
[And big shout-out to my Razorblades: The Horror Magazine co-creator and good pal, James Tynion IV, for his Best Writer nom, as well as special favorite eternal collaborator Hass Otsmane-Elhaou for his richly deserved Best Letterer nom!]
OUT THIS WEEK(ISH) [9/1/22]:
Spider-Man Magazine #413 & #414
Art by Claudio Sciarrone
Colors by Valentina Taddeo
Letters by Arancia Studio
Edited by Guido Frazzini, Caitlin O’Connell & Lauren Bisom
Published by Panini in conjunction with Marvel Comics & Disney
#413: What started as a nice day on the beach for Peter Parker turns into an all-out battle against not one, but two foes! Sandman and Hydro-Man are ready to fight anyone, including each other! Can Spidey turn the tide, or will it end with him all washed up?
PLUS: There’s a tidal wave of amazing arachnid activities to wade through!
#414: It’s a team-up special! Peter Parker is trapped in his worst nightmares and can’t find a way out! Can Doctor Strange help him overcome this dream world, or will his worst nightmares come true? Check out this issue to discover who’s behind this dastardly dream attack!
PLUS: There’s a whole multiverse of cool stuff to get stuck into including puzzles, fact files, posters and more!
Hey, surprise—I’ve been writing a bunch of all-ages Spider-Man stories, and they’re only available in Europe for now! Is that a bizarre sentence to type on multiple levels? You bet! This project started quite a while ago, thanks to both Lauren Bisom (who helps edit my Spider-Ham books) and Arancia Studios, who I’ve worked with on a few projects, including a sci-fi/horror series coming next year.
If you’re not aware, Disney has a robust publishing arm in Europe, especially with kids comics. While the editors and many of the artists are Italian, the shorts need to be in English for publication in other countries, too, thus hiring someone like me! I have had an unbelievable time getting to do these 10-page adventures featuring Peter Parker as a teenager in classic great power, great responsibility mode. And the ARTISTS. Good lord, the artists—these folks blend the absolute best of superhero action with an animated sensibility that blew me away the first time I saw it.
Claudio Sciarrone and Valentina Taddeo are my collaborators on the two already out, featuring Sandman and Hydro-Man in a beachside brawl in the first, and then Doctor Strange and a whole host of nightmares in the second. Their work is next-level and, as I said, I’ve written…quite a few of these! So I’m excited to see them continue to roll out in the U.K.
For the moment, they’re not available stateside, but who knows what could change down the line. Thwip thwip, folks!
Strange Tales: She-Hulk Infinity Comic
Art by Ramon Bachs
Colors by Javier Tartaglia
Letters by Joe Sabino
Edited by Lauren Amaro & Jordan White
Published by Marvel Comics on the Marvel Unlimited App
She-Hulk gets drawn into a supernatural trial with eternal souls on the line!
Ahhhhhh I got a chance to write Jennifer Walters—and pit her against one of my all-time favorite Marvel villains in a demonic court of law! The Strange Tales Infinity Comics are super fun little chillers, narrated by Doctor Strange’s dead vampire brother. It’s totally a thing! They are collected individually on the Marvel Unlimited app, but I recommend seeking out the other three first, if only because my opening line doesn’t make as much sense without them.
Ramon Bachs and Javier Tartaglia perfectly captured the spooky-fun vibe, and I dug getting to pull inspiration from one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Can you guess which one? Vertical scroll comics are also a fun challenge to script, so be sure to check this out on the Marvel Unlimited app—especially if you, like I, are enjoying the new She-Hulk TV show, a sentence 10-year-old me would never have believed I’d be typing.
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #50
Art by Alan Robinson
Colors by Carlos Lopez
Letters by Joe Sabino
Edited by Lauren Amaro & Jordan White
Published by Marvel Comics on the Marvel Unlimited App
Uniting the "losers" of this year’s X-Men Election, this round of the Secret X-Men picks up only minutes after the election with the Hellfire Gala in full swing!
Speaking of Infinity Comics—I got to write a six-part X-Men Unlimited story, which debuted this past Monday! Brought to vertical-scrolling life by Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez, and Joe Sabino, my collaborators on the one-page Hellfire Gala Election Losers shorts that were released on Marvel’s social media accounts in July, our serial follows Monet, Siryn, Avalanche, Gorgon, Gentle, Surge, Bling!, Armor, and Micromax, the nine mutants who didn’t win the 2022 X-Men election. The whole thing actually takes place during the Hellfire Gala, building out of the story Gerry Duggan and co. told in the main book.
It was such a thrill and an honor for my first in-continuity Marvel work to be a 36-page X-Men story (I wrote this before She-Hulk), especially one with such an eclectic cast. Figuring out how to bring them together was exactly the kind of weird prompt that gets my brain-gears turning. Massive thanks to Jordan White and Lauren Amaro for the invite. Very excited for folks to see how we structured it as the next few chapters roll out on coming Mondays!
But most importantly: Monet!!!
I also believe I’ll have more fun news about this story and other X-related things to share before too long…
ON THE HORIZON:
We’re just two weeks out from X-Men ’92: House of XCII #5, which wraps up our spin on Krakoa occurring during the ‘90s in animated fashion. I can now also reveal what a trip it was to switch between the House of XCII Inner Circle Gala, designed to be an epic prom party, and the main-continuity Gala, which is a considerably classier affair! Excited to see my first monthly Marvel series conclude, and to run down lots of fun after-chatter.
Edge of Spider-Verse #5, as mentioned above, also has its FOC on the 15th, so be sure to get your orders in ahead of time! As further incentive, check out this awesome fan art my good pal Phil Sevy whipped up today! Phil's killing it over on Tini Howard's newsletter, The Scorpio Room, where they're serializing their original story Phenomenocity. I love it when my favorite people get together, and I love it even more when one of them draws Web-Weaver for fun!
Input, Output:
I’ve been in full-speed mode for a few deadlines, so haven’t taken in much lately, but have to shout out my buddy (and Razorblades contributor) Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives, the sequel to his smash-hit teen slasher novel. His publisher was kind enough to send me an early PDF, but I actually can't stand reading prose on an iPad and had actually already preordered a hardcover, anyhow. While technically YA, adult horror fans will go gaga for both of these, just like I have. And thankfully, Frendo Lives is more of a Friday the 13th Part IV or VI, or Nightmare on Elm Street 3, and not a Halloween 5 (a.k.a. it’s great and doesn’t suck). Buy it, read it, lend it, buy it again. Give it out for Halloween.
My partner and I also saw Bodies Bodies Bodies. I thought the trailer was insufferable and then loved every second of the movie. Avoid learning ANYTHING about it ahead of time and I bet you will too.
Thwip thwip,
Steve