All The News That's Fit To Print
So if you're getting this newsletter on a regular basis, I'm assuming you're mightily curious about new projects I happen to be working on, particularly projects involving big-name Marvel characters. So you're probably expecting me to mention something like that in this space, if it happens to be relevant.
And it's with great pleasure that I let you all know that I'm the newest writer on...
...SLYDE, the nimble non-stick nuisance who once slipped slickly through the webbed fingers of Spider-Man himself! And it's a true pleasure to take the frictionless felon to new and greater adventures in the twin realms of velocity and viscosity!
What, you wanted some different news? Tough tushy, pilgrim! You'll have to make do with baseless internet speculation until the originally appointed hour of revelation has arrived. We serve no wine before its time.
WHAT'S OUT THIS WEEK?
Venom #19, that's what!
This one was the victim of a little solicit mishap - the solicit text would have gone better with last issue. This issue is more of a breather than a tale of cosmic enlightenment, as we switch scenes to the ongoing struggles of Dylan Brock and the original Venom symbiote... as they run into none other than Norman Osborn, a.k.a the Gold Goblin. How is Dylan going to take a Sunday dinner with one of the worst people in the whole Marvel Universe, even if his sins have allegedly been eaten? And what dominoes will topple as a result? All will be revealed - with help from the stunning skills of Rogê Antônio on art and Frank D'Armata on colors! Also, Slyde's in it.
MARVEL COMICS, PANEL BY PANEL
Again, the sense that things are kicking into high gear - everything's bigger, louder, more. Horton's rail-thin, a slumped stick figure, his speech balloon unmoored and drifting away from him, commas separating his words as if he's struggling to get them out. Destroying him - "him", not the journalist's "it" - does not answer anything! Horton's the scientist here, needing answers to the conundrum of the Human Torch - it's not a matter of making him safe, it's a matter of understanding him. Green Jacket's having none of it - he writes the news, he creates the answers. He's looking more animated than we've seen him yet - which is saying something - and in comparison to Horton, his balloon is a scream, an all-caps threat. But the scene gives Horton the upper hand - the setting of the lab dominates, the equipment seeming to grow across the walls, over and around them both. A small argument in a vast cathedral of science. Pink Jacket is nowhere to be seen - he's been absorbed into the all-pervading pink of the room itself. Green Jacket is alone, and for all his bluster, he has no power in this moment - he's a portent of a danger to come, the "power of the press" as villainous force, unconcerned with providing facts, only with creating a reaction. There's a scare story to be mined in this pink room, a flaming satanic panic waiting to be stoked - and he's on the ground floor. The power of the press he craves isn't the power to shine a light of knowledge, it's the power to manipulate the darkness - the power to create more power. This man, wearing a new face, will come back to the Marvel Universe – and to our own.
AND THAT'S IT!
Well, we got through another week, so this is still the place to find me. Love and strength to all who need it - and sorry again for a lack of answers to the thundering questions on everyone's lips. PERHAPS THE POWER OF THE PRESS WILL HELP CHANGE MY MIND -- but for now, gentle reader, I ask for your patience.
Playing us out with Stevie Nicks and "I Can't Wait".
