The Foxe Gospel 9/20/2022: Merry Christma-Halloween
Yelps & Barks
The beginning of this week’s newsletter is going to sound like #SponCon, but I swear it’s not. This edition is one of the first things I'm typing on my new Freewrite Traveler, a device Instagram dangled in front of my eyes. I've been lucky to have an extremely busy 2022, but I really despise that one of my best motivators for focusing on work is a deadline hanging over my head. Like, uhh...every other writer on the planet not named Thomas Pynchon, I struggle with far too many digital distractions (and I wouldn't put it past him to be secretly running a few dozen BTS stan accounts or something).
Earlier this year, faced with several book-length projects and the terror of the blinking Microsoft Word cursor, I took to writing first drafts by hand in an old notebook, which freed me up to flow faster, scratch things out, draw arrows, etc.—just be sloppy and follow my gut more than I might on Word, where I have a tendency to self-edit too much as I go, slowing down the whole process. The drawback, of course, is that my handwriting has, since childhood, looked like absolute dog crap, which means transcription becomes its own unique hurdle.
(My mom always said I should have been a doctor with handwriting like this, which is rich considering just calling a doctor gives me pangs of body horror.)
The sales pitch of Freewrite and devices like it (which, again, are not sponsoring me, but absolutely could, and I'd talk about them even more) is that they are just digital typewriters. They have no apps, no tempting distractions one click away, but also don't require scanning or transcription. Write, finish, connect to WiFi, and send to the full-function device of your choice. They also make editing intentionally a little clunky, which I’m still getting used to. To navigate to prior words, you have to use a two-button combination, which is designed to help guide you to just writing ahead and fixing it in post.
(The added joke is that I am and have always been a two-finger typist, and years on flat Mac keyboards have left me ill-prepared for the more analogue Freewrite keyboard. There is a lot of fixing in post.)
Oh, and it’s got an e-ink display. There's really no way around staring at screens in this profession, unless you're wealthy enough to use an antique typewriter and pay someone else to scan and upload your work, so I was very enchanted by the idea of NOT looking at backlighting as frequently.
Anyway, as I said, not #SponCon, but the device wasn't cheap, so I'd be happy to say exclusively positive things about them in every newsletter moving ahead if anyone from the company reads this and wants to help spread the word among a modest but supportive circle of comic nerds.
Oh hey, I wrote an X-Men Annual.
There’s really no calm or coherent way to talk about this. I might not even be a writer today if not for VHS copies of Marvel Animated Series, racks full of Toy Biz action figures, and easily accessible X-Men comics during my childhood. The mutants really started it all, including Firestar, who debuted in Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, one of the previously mentioned cartoons I owned and treasured on VHS.
Out in December, X-Men Annual #1 stars the entire new squad of Krakoan heroes, but spotlights Firestar as we examine her unique role among mutant culture. Here’s what I told ComicBook.com in their announcement:
"Oftentimes, the 'new member out of their depth' on an X-Men squad is a former villain or a teenage trainee who has graduated to the big leagues. Firestar introduces such a unique dynamic to the team since she's neither. She's a proven hero several times over...in the Avengers, New Warriors, and Young Allies. I'm sure this explains both why she won the fan vote and why a lot of readers had, err...heated opinions about her victory. I'm enormously grateful to Jordan, Lauren, Gerry, and the rest of the X-Office for letting Andrea and me put Angelica through the wringer to explore her complicated, conflicted path toward representing the best Krakoa has to offer (while having a lot of bonkers fun with the rest of the squad, too!)."
Andrea Di Vito is on interior art, and I can tell you already that people are going to FLIP. The story is full of big action moments, and Andrea is just murdering it. He’s been working nonstop at Marvel for a while, most recently on the very fun Patch mini with the legendary Larry Hama, and I think Andrea’s work here is going to earn him a lot of new X-fans. The stellar Stefano Caselli, currently knocking it out of the solar system on X-Men Red, provided our cover. Because I have rocks for brains, I did not even clock it was an homage until someone pointed it out. Angelica is sporting her new design by Pepe Larraz, and Cyclops’ inclusion is very much intentional. He’s one of my very favorite characters (I have a tattoo of him as a cat!) and he gets a lot of attention in these pages. I also got to use a Marvel mutant who has almost never appeared in an X-Men context. Out right before Christmas, so make sure you ask your shop to preorder you a copy!
And finally, two fun award announcements:
Rainbow Bridge, the AfterShock kids OGN I co-wrote with Steve Orlando, with stunning art by Valentina Brancati, colors by Manual Puppo, and lettering by my pal Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, is up for Best Kids Comic or Graphic Novel in the 2022 Ringo Awards! This is a huge honor, especially following the book's Eisner nomination. Comic pros can vote here, and be sure to vote for Hass in the Best Letterer category, too.
And Adventure Kingdom, the kids series I write for the Epic! app with pitch-perfect art from Pedro Rodriguez and Sonia Moruno, is a Favorite Book Cover finalist in the 2022 Kids’ Book Choice Awards through the Children's Book Council's Every Child a Reader program! You can vote here, although it is meant to be for kids only.
OUT THIS WEEK(ish) [9/20/22]:
X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #51-53
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
#51: The Secret X-Men try to save Gorgon before it's too late! Will Hydra party crashers derail this year's Hellfire Gala?
#52: Siryn and Micromax are the first to notice that Gorgon's "stone gaze" powers are surging out of his control!
#53: Avalanche is the next one to lose control after he and Monet St. Croix shake up their investigation on the Hydra party crashers!
Three installments of my X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comics serial with Alan Robinson, Carlos Lopez, and Joe Sabino have gone live since my last newsletter, and they make sense to bunch together, as each follows a smaller subset of our cast during simultaneous events.
Last year's Secret X-Men squad had a little more shared history than this year's batch, and my good friend Tini Howard, who wrote the Secret X-Men one-shot, came up with a very clever justification for why the team was assembled: they were the ones who WANTED it the most. I couldn't crib from Tini directly (especially since I'm already borrowing liberally from corporate bad-b*tch Monet à la Tini’s X-Corp run), so I decided to do more of a… accidental team-up. Chapters 2-4 of the serial spotlight different groups of mutants who get caught up in Typhon Group's attempt on Gorgon's life, with each chapter rewinding to show how they collide (literally) at the end. Issue #51 stars our Academy X-era kids, who hold a really near and dear place in my heart since I was roughly their age when they debuted. (I'd love to do more with some of these younger mutants one day, since they tend to get lost in the shuffle between the New Mutants and Generation X on one side and the newer classes of students on the other.) Issue #52 finds Siryn and Micromax trying to prevent an out-of-control Gorgon from creating a scene at the Gala, and #53 follows Monet and Avalanche as they take care of business…which I’m sure doesn’t go wrong in any way.
The last newsletter was prepared pretty hastily, so I forgot to mention this AMAZING trailer the Marvel Unlimited folks made to celebrate fifty issues of the X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comics and kick off the Hellfire Gala arc. It will never not be magic to me when stuff I wrote gets animated like this. Wild!
X-MEN ’92: HOUSE OF XCII #5
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
THE FINAL DESTINY OF XCII?
It all ends here — the epic journey through the Krakoan Age come too soon reaches its epic conclusion! Can mutantkind truly unite? Is the island-nation of Krakoa too good to be true? And is the woman behind it all — Jubilee — to be trusted? Find out within, X-Believers!
X-Men '92: House of XCII concluded last week, which was very meaningful to me as it was my first-ever monthly series. (That’s right—despite hundreds of pages and multiple OGNs published in between, it took from my first published comic in 2014 until 2022 for my first series!) Issue #5 takes some explosive turns, and maps onto its main-line predecessor, Inferno, the least of all of our issues. Jubilee's secrets spill, Trask's revenge boils over, and Dark Beast's machinations may cost the island everything.
For a spoiler-filled look behind the entire series, I did a major wrap-up interview with Chris Hassan over at AIPT for X-Men Monday, which you can read here. Thanks, Chris!
THE JUSTICE LEAGUE SAVES CHRISTMAS
Illustrations by Pernille Orum
Published by Random House Children’s Books
Counting down the days to holidays has never been so much fun . . . or so heroic as Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman and the rest of the Justice League help Santa deliver presents around the world in one night! Boys and girls 3-7 will love lifting one of the 24 sturdy advent calendar tabs each day to reveal a different surprise. But watch out—sometimes there might be a villain lurking under a tab, too! This interactive hardcover book that makes a great gift and stocking stuffer.
Whaaaaa, I wrote a Justice League story? About the greatest hero of them all, Santa Claus?! This is actually not news, but I'd forgive anyone for forgetting, as this picture book was originally slated to hit stores last September before COVID delays meant it would arrive too late to fall within crucial holiday windows. Pernille Orum’s art is totally worth the wait, though, and I am a huge sucker for holiday stories. I haven't written for DC Comics itself (yet?), but I'm very lucky to get to do kids books with their iconic characters once in a while.
(And if you think September is weirdly early for a Christmas book, most holiday books actually need to go on sale about two months before the holidays themselves. Christmas often has the longest prelude, which is why local CVSs are often putting up Christmas decorations before Halloween has even passed.)
ON THE HORIZON:
The first week of October is a major one-two punch of Spider-releases for me, with Spider-Ham: Hollywood May-Ham dropping October 4th, and then Edge of Spider-Verse #5, the debut of Web-Weaver, coming out the very next day. Which makes this tweet complaining (with good intentions) about not seeing a gay Spider-hero sooner even funnier:
Hey, I write that pig, too!
Spider-Ham is brought to life by one of my favorite collaborators in the world, Shadia Amin, who brings so much visual humor to the series. Be sure to check out her new Olive & Popeye comics, too!
Web-Weaver’s big debut comes courtesy of artist Kei Zama, colorist Brian Reber, and the editorial team of Kaeden McGahey, Lindsey Cohick, and Nick Lowe. And of course designer Kris Anka, whose look for Web-Weaver has earned the character a ton of attention and fans before his first story even hits shelves! If you want to see more of Web-Weaver and characters like him, make sure to pick up Edge of Spider-Verse #5 and make some noise. And as a treat, how cute are these doodles Kei posted on Twitter?? I want the lil' one as a toy NOW.
INPUT, OUTPUT:
My partner and I have a long overdue vacation coming up, so I’ve been burning the midnight oil to clear my to-do list before we depart. We did carve out time for Barbarian, though, which is the big surprise of 2022 in my book. The trailer looked like a middling studio horror picture, but the actual movie knocked out socks off. Absolutely make sure you learn nothing about the plot beforehand. There is no way you’ll guess what’s going to happen scene to scene. We really wanted to take in Pearl, too, but didn’t manage it before the vacay.
I also got my hands on my pal Jenna Cha’s Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder Sings ‘Come Out Come Out,’ a deliriously unsettling and perfectly crafted piece of work pictured here with my basil and jalapeño plants. It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Jenna’s work—she’s in Razorblades twice and provided one of my favorite Department of Truth variant covers—and I’m so thrilled she’s making screwed-up freak books like this. Nab it from her shop before it's gone.
Seeya in October, as Halloween really kicks off and my various Spider-stories all start thwipping into stores!
Steve