In The Year 2025, If Man Is Still Alive

New Year! New comics! But before that, let's take a moment to look back and take stock.

WHAT DID I GET UP TO?

I lost ten pounds. I developed a taste for a smoky Old Fashioned and learned how to put together a passable one. I started cooking with a steel pan. I did more DJing than I have in years and discovered a bunch of new music as a result. I made new friends. I committed to, and started serious work on, a creator-owned project that dwarfs the ambition of anything previously attempted.

In terms of launching new work into the world - well, ALL-NEW VENOM is a continuation, but it feels like a fresh start. More on that later. And the big launch of the year is, of course, METAMORPHO: THE ELEMENT MAN, which I'm gratified to see is hitting the mark with a lot of readers. It's been a joy to work with Steve and the rest of the team on this one - huge thanks to him and also to Jan, Carlos, Iban, Jahnoy and every other artist who has over the course of the year transformed my dry words into living, breathing work. No writer can do it without artists, colorists, letterers and the rest of the gang - though if you're part of a comic-creating team, it's always worth trying your hand at the skills you don't currently bring to the table. You improve yourself, and you get a better appreciation of the work that others are doing and how you can better align your own work with it to create a more harmonious whole.

On the negative side, 2024 was the year of burnout. I can resolve to do better in general in 2025, but that's going to mean taking a good look at myself, my working practices, my time management and maybe - whisper it - prioritizing my own happiness. Something I tried to do in 2023 and carried over to 2024 was build on previous successes, but now I'm wondering if that was a trap - if all the critical and commercial success I've had in my life just built a cage for my future self made of the expectations of readers and employers. What if I cared less about hitting previous highs again - or what others rate as the highs - and more about just being happy in myself and in my work? What would that look like? Well, it'd probably look like METAMORPHO, which is the breeziest book I've worked on in a while but hands down the project that made me the happiest this year. (If that sounds like I'm shilling for a book still on the stands - well, good! I'm proud of it and you should buy it, and then buy another copy to give to friends and loved ones. Issue #2 will be even better! Issue #3, better than that!)

And if METAMORPHO makes me happy, that ambitious thing I'm working on in my spare time - which is structured entirely around getting to do one of my favorite things to do in the medium of comics - will be a pure balm for the soul. Working on projects like these with like-minded artists is what life's all about. I can't wait for you to see it.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT WHAT'S TO COME... WHAT'S OUT THIS WEEK?

All-New Venom #2, that's what!

I mentioned this earlier - it's a continuation that's also a fresh start, and I'm taking the opportunity to have fun with a little mystery. We don't know who's in the Venom symbiote this time - Dylan Brock has four suspects, though, and one of them gets eliminated from consideration in these very pages. (People have short attention spans these days. We're knocking a suspect off the list every month.)

Also this issue - Venom takes on the Death Throws, NYC's oldest surviving theme-criminal collective... and a new anti-Symbiote task force, S.C.A.R.! Also in the world of acronyms, A.I.M. are on the hunt for Madame Masque, and so is Dylan Brock! Luke, Robbie and Rick have their own investigation going on! Paul is there! He made couscous! And it's all beautifully illustrated by Captivatin' Carlos Gomez! Miss it never, goo believers!

Also out today - Cruel Kingdom #1!

This was fun - EC Comics is back, and they reached out for me to do a story for them. I took the opportunity - ably assisted by Kano delivering some lovely fantasy art - to once again don my comics historian hat and embrace the EC "voice" as I remembered it from those classic suspenstories of old.

"Friendly Visitors" is a story that explores the nature of old-school sci-fi in an old-school fantasy universe - and I wasn't alone in that urge to mix the two. Greg Pak and Leomacs bring us a clever tale that investigates similar territory from another angle, and we're backed up by Chris Condon/Charlie Adlard and Ben H. Winters/Andrea Mutti - both teams twisting a story you think you know in a much darker direction. Four stories in one issue? Sounds like a bargain, fan-addicts!

AND THAT'S THAT!

Love and strength to all who need it, especially in these grim times. I'll play us out with what might be my best new song of 2024, or at least in the top three - I'll have to test it in a dancefloor environment to be sure - it's "We Make Hits" by Yard Act!