A Slow-Searing Ride On Satan's Carousel
Howdy, gang! It’s been a very eventful week in comics, as the usually behind-closed-doors ComicsPRO Conference found itself without doors to hide behind, and turned its usual buzz into a louder cacophony of big events. There’s a lot to talk about, and to keep track of it all, I had to call on some extra help. Luckily, a certain someone was at the event to announce that they’re turning their long-running creator-owned book into its own creator-owned universe, teaming up with an all-star lineup of creators on four new titles massively expanding the scope of their main series. And guess what? They graciously accepted to give me their take on the mood inside the meetings. Without further ado, it’s my great pleasure to give you TODD MCFARLANE’S COMICSPRO NEWS ROUNDUP.
DC Comics Teases 11 New Books For 2021, Reaffirm Their Commitment To Periodical Comics
Have you ever seen yourself act out of fear, and immediately regretted it? You know the right decision, but something overtakes you and you dive in head first into trouble? I’m Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn. We all get afraid sometimes. But when Al Simmons made his deal with Malebolgia, he didn’t realize that the demons can come up with things far scarier than death, and he might just have doomed all mankind. One little moment of fear, and an eternity of regret. And now, Spawn.
Diamond Comics Distributors Closes New Memphis Warehouse
Do you believe in human nature? That everything we do, we do for a reason, and that we can’t help but be who we are? Right now, Al is trying to figure out the answer for himself. Was he always gonna be a pawn in Malebolgia’s schemes? Or does he have the power to change it? The only person capable of answering these questions is himself. And me. I’m Todd McFarlane, and I created Spawn. The decisions in our lives are just that, decisions. What’s the difference between the right thing for yourself and the right thing for the world? Would you know? Turn down the lights where applicable.
BOOM Studios Announce 22% Increase In Sales To Comic Book Shops
When this is all over, do you know what you want? What’s your reward for a life well lived? Can we ever be worthy of it? I like to think so. I’m Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn. Al Simmons could have had it all. But then he chose to make a deal with the wrong devil, and now he can’t even realize what he lost. He played the game right. He led a good life. And yet here he is. Was this always where he was heading? Like I always say, “be careful what you wish for”. Tonight’s Spawn is presented in 3D, so put your special glasses on when the 3D logo is on screen.
Todd McFarlane Announces “Year Of Spawn” With The Launch Of “Spawn Universe”
Have you ever seen a big spider? Not just a spider that’s big when compared to other spiders, I mean a really really big spider. In this one Spawn fights a giant spider demon from hell. I’m Todd McFarlane and I created both Spawn AND the giant spider demon. Sometimes life is simple. There’s a giant spider demon, and you have to kill it with your infernal chains. There isn’t really a metaphor, it’s just about how cool it would be if Spawn fought a giant spider demon.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: HELL IS OTHER CRITICS’ TAKES
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that DC Comics has been through a lot in 2020. Their plans got derailed by the COVID epidemic, and then AT&T fired the people in charge of putting these plans together, as the plans were being enacted. Shockingly, this is not a good process for making comics, and, in many ways, Generations: Forged feels like a comic made by accident. It looks right, it reads as good as any other “superheroes stranded across time” romp, and yet it also feels completely incoherent.
Nominally, it was about solving the puzzle that was new unified timeline of the DC universe post-Metal. It doesn’t do that. Instead, it’s about teaching a guy that he can’t manipulate the timelines to live inside of a perfect moment forever, but then, its answer to the DC timeline is that everything can live forever as it has been, because something something the linearverse? And that’s just the big way in which this comic is at odds with itself. It asks you to care for events that moments later it will sweep under the rug of “the timeline is restoring itself”.
It is big, loud, and expensive, and yet it’s deathly afraid of featuring anything of any consequence. It feels like a comic made for no one, and for no other reason than having to close the door once and for all on the Dan Didio era of DC Comics. And I’d be all for that! DC has thrived on those metafictional arguments turned into cosmic punch-em-ups! This one is just nothing. And apparently it might not even be about Earth-0 continuity? I give up.
Anyway, before we bring this rodeo to a close, I think a couple of things should be said.
It’s not exactly the final week of Future State (Superman vs. Imperious Lex #3 made sure of that), but it is the last week before Infinite Frontier. And as such, for the first time this year, it is time to retire Conan, and it is time for us to say farewell to the Future State Highlights, no matter what the haters and the polar vortex have to say about it. Let’s do this.
I had my reservations about the main story in Superman: Worlds of War, only some of them having to do with a caricatural vision of ongoing human rights disasters in the Middle East. Some of those got alleviated with Superman: House of El, despite the fact that it has almost nothing to do with the previous two issues of Worlds of War.
Some of this has to do with the fact that Phillip Kennedy Johnson is playing in a more familiar territory. Sure, it’s space in the distant future, but the tone and flavor is a lot closer to the fantasy settings of The Last God than they are to a traditional superhero comic. You have your action setpiece in the form of the prolonged siege of a citadel on the Moon, but it is surrounded by the large ensemble cast and family drama made ever so popular by the likes of A Song Of Fire And Ice, and it is all told with the lyrical gusto of an epic.
And at the end of it all, when the hordes of doomsdays and parademons are dealt with, the secret legacies revealed and the long-lost champions returned to the realm, it finds a way to resolve in as Superman a fashion as there can be. It’s a fun mix of flavors, one that surprised and delighted me, and if you don’t read comics to get surprised and delighted, what do you read them for?
While you ponder that, let us make due diligence, and consider for one last moment Suicide Squad. Not the main story, an appropriately stylish and lethal affair giving us a preview of the multiverse-spanning coming attractions, but the Black Adam backups, just so you can tell me you told me so. It’s not a clear-cut resolution that unequivocally restores hope at the end of the universe, it’s mostly just a big status quo shift and a tease for what Black Adam’s deal is going to be going forward. But also, it’s dope as hell.
Still operating in their old-school maximalist mode of storytelling, Jeremy Adams and Fernando Pasarin bring the house down with enjoyable aplomb. There’s tremendous amounts of love and care put in every panel, especially when Pasarin has to deal with monumental locations and entities, but the big ideas and the big feelings are still the main event. Gold Beetle, the character find of 2021 so far, brings a welcome screwball goofiness to the whole proceedings, keeping the whole from getting too plodding, since, yeah, there’s still a giant mythological entity consuming everyone and everything. It ends with a tidy little time loop, and, gives us a bad future to prevent in the pages of Infinite Frontier. It’s as big as big time comics get, it’s fun, I loved it.
And now, rather than an indulgent rendition of Free Bird, let’s go for the usual pleasantries! Thanks for reading this strange newsletter in stranger times! Marvel have still not done anything about Joe Bennett! Meanwhile, please, do like, comment, and subscribe! Hold on! If love is the answer you’re home! If not, HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!