Hey, the country’s on fire — let’s read some comics.

A couple of weeks ago (a week ago? Time is fluid, y’all.) my bestest bud gave me a book out of the blue. That book, How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page is amazing, especially if you’re a process nerd.

I am that nerd.

How Comics Were Made (I’m not typing that whole title out again) focuses primarily on newspaper comic strips, which you may remember I mentioned rediscovering in the last newsletter. And it covers everything, from the way an artist would work with printing in mind to the actual physical process for getting that work onto newsprint. Nothing is left out. Author Glenn Fleishman begins with woodcuts and Golden Age newspaper strips like The Yellow Kid and Little Nemo in Slumberland and goes all the way up to webcomics like the popular Lore Olympus (which my wife has been encouraging me to read). The book was published in 2024, and is pleasantly up—to-date.

With its blend of history, technical detail (kept mercifully brief and accessible), and luxurious use of illustration, it’s a great book to leaf through or to start from the beginning and plow through to get the whole picture.

Speaking of the whole picture, How Comics Were Made is designed by Mark Kaufman, the award-winning designer of The Nib, a well-regarded, much-lamented comics magazine. His work here does most of the heavy-lifting in making this book so readable, with a deliberate visual flow keeping a reader flipping from page to page with no blocks of gray to speed-bump the experience.

I don’t know where my friend picked this up, and I deliberately don’t know how much it costs, but it shouldn’t be hard to find and the effort would be worth it. I highly recommend it.

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I don’t plan to turn this into a Plastic Man newsletter, but here’s some Plastic Man news.

DC* has been putting out a new line of trades called DC Finest, and they’ve been doing it pretty quickly. So far there are at least 45 titles out, including the one I’ve been waiting for — Plastic Man: The Origin of Plastic Man.

(* As far as I can tell, DC Comics is publishing these trades, but their website is a friggin’ mess to navigate so I’m sending you to Penguin Random House instead.)

This trade collects exactly what the title says; Plastic Man’s early days in comics, including Police Comics #1-#36 and Plastic Man #1-#2. Did you know Plas was so popular when he premiered that he became the main feature of Police Comics within a few issues, AND spun-off into his own title, AND was able to sustain both for years? It’s true, and these early issues show why.

Plastic Man’s creator, writer and artist Jack Cole, was a genius of the form, and that becomes obvious as you read these stories. Golden Age Plastic Man (Police Comics #1 was published in 1941) is not easy to find, so this is a gold mine for anyone interested in this longstanding character.

Of course, I’d encourage you to try to find it at you local comic shop first, but as a person on a budget I also understand that 40 bucks for a collection of comics is pricey. So I’ll point out that InStock Trades is currently having a sale on all the DC Finest books for 47 percent off. As pal Shawn says, buy three and you get free shipping.

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So, I’m making a tentative return to podcasting, and you can listen to it today! I’m sure most people wouldn’t believe it, but in my mind I’ve never stopped podcasting (or wanting to podcast) and it’s always something on my mental list of things to do. Life being what it is makes that hard sometimes, but it’s something I think about a lot, to the point I keep coming up with ideas for new shows even as I neglect the ones I already have. I’m a bad pod-daddy. (I did not mean for that to sound so spicey.)

Anyway, the point is I’m part of a new podcast, but luckily more reliable people are running it. Over on the Fire and Water Podcast Network, Ryan Daley has kicked off Justice Society Presents: The Sandman Slept Here, co-hosted by myself and network all-star Paul Kien.

It’s a show that’s been in the works for a while, and I think our love for the Sandman Mystery Theatre run comes through. The first episode launched today (as I’m writing this), and we’ll be going through it in chunks of storyline so it’ll be a lean 18 episodes or so. Also, I was barely getting over a cold when we recorded, so you can hear what I sound like I’m dying. I tried to mask it as well as I could, so go check it out and tell me how I did.

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Until next time, be kind to yourself and others. We’re all in this together. Go read some comics.