Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Sunday, May 15, 2022

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2644 - Neal, George, Joe, and Me: Comic Book Sunday 2205.15



A Sense of Doubt blog post #2644  - Neal, George, Joe, and Me: Comic Book Sunday 2205.15

I am riffing on the King Crimson song "Neal and Jack and Me."

In preparing to post about Neal Adams some more, George Pérez died.

Then I also spotted an older post about Joe Kubert.

Thus, the confluence of different memorials gives birth to this trifecta of memorials.

Great artists will be greatly missed.

Thanks for tuning in.

Blog Vacation Two 2022 - Vacation II Post #80
I took a "Blog Vacation" in 2021 from August 31st to October 14th. I did not stop posting daily; I just put the blog in a low power rotation and mostly kept it off social media. Like that vacation, for this second blog vacation now in 2022, I am alternating between reprints, shares with little to no commentary, and THAT ONE THING, which is an image from the folder with a few thoughts scribbled along with it. I am alternating these three modes as long as the vacation lasts (not sure how long), pre-publishing the posts, and not always pushing them to social media.

Here's the collected Blog Vacation I from 2021:

Saturday, October 16, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/arts/neal-adams-dead.html







https://www.comicsbeat.com/neal-adams-a-remembrance/

Neal Adams was born in New York City in 1941 and wanted to make comics from a young age, though as he said in numerous interviews, when he started looking for work, the comics industry was in decline. He spent years writing and drawing stories trying to break into one outlet after another, including a parody “Bent Casey” that he drew as a sample for Mad Magazine. As he would tell me years later, Joe Simon said that he didn’t want Adams to ruin his life doing comics.

“There was nobody either five years my junior or five years my senior in the industry,” Adams said in an interview I did with him in 2016. “There are people my age who got into it later, like Jim Steranko and Dennis O’Neil – but people my age were not in comics. I came into this business that older guys who were sad and depressed and assumed that the industry was going to be out of business in a year.”




He made short comics for Archie Comics and Boys Life Magazine, he did advertising work, and for three and half years he drew the Ben Casey comic strip, based on the hit television show, which debuted in 1962. “And while I was doing that, I did advertising work because that strip didn’t pay all that well,” Adams said. “I worked seven days a week, 15 hours a day, and I loved it. I just loved it.”

In other words, by the time comic book readers saw Adams’ work in the late sixties, he was already a seasoned professional. More than simply being a good artist and a good storyteller, Adams understood comics and design, he had a sense of color and printing. And although he did work as a ghost for various artists in the sixties – for Stan Drake (The Heart of Juliet Jones), Lou Fine (Peter Scratch), John Prentice (Rip Kirby) and Al Williamson (Secret Agent X-9) – he was working at DC, Marvel and Warren Comics under his own name at a time when it was rare for to be working for companies simultaneously.

At Warren he contributed to CreepyEerie, and Vampirella. At Marvel he drew X-Men and The Avengers, including part of the Kree-Skrull War story. But his biggest legacy is his work at DC Comics. He drew The Adventures of Jerry Lewis and The Adventures of Bob HopeOur Army at War and The Spectre. Adams wrote and drew Deadman. And beginning in 1970, he worked on Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow, primarily with writer Denny O’Neil.




Those stories introduced us to Ra’s al Ghul, Talia al Ghul, and Man-Bat, and for the impact and the influence that those issues had, it’s notable just how few stories Adams drew. He was a prolific cover artist, but he only drew a handful of Batman stories. But in those stories, mostly written by O’Neil, the style and the tone was so sure-footed. It was more than simply a shift from the campy tone of the Adam West TV show, it was a reinvention and a way forward for the character. And a reinvention of the Joker and other villains that affected the tone.

Adams continued to make comics and draw covers throughout the 1970’s, but he ended the decade with his biggest project, co-writing and penciling Superman vs. Muhammed Ali. Today that seems like an unusual – even bizarre – idea for a comic book, but in the 1970s it was even more shocking. “Remember, America didn’t love Ali,” Adams said in 2016. “Half of America hated Ali, but he was a hero to the world.”



Adams and O’Neil teamed up the folk hero Ali with a different kind of folk hero, a costumed superhero created by two young men, the children of Jewish immigrants. And in 1978, Superman and Muhammed Ali could represent not just the United States, but the world in a way that even today stands out. The book was funny and philosophical, featuring iconic images of Superman in space, of Ali as a fighter and a wordsmith. It was a book that had at its spine, a simple but not simplistic set of values. It was about fair play. Which is so simple, and yet, it remains out of reach.

“One may easily think that I did comics for a long time, but starting with, I guess, Elongated Man and ending with Superman vs Muhammad Ali, that was the beginning and end of my comic book career. From that point on I did advertising.”

In 1971, Adams and Dick Giordano founded Continuity Studios, originally Continuity Associates, which focused on not just comics, but storyboarding and advertising work, which continues to this day. “The thing about advertising is that you make more money,” Adams said. “You can put kids through college so they don’t come out with loans. My kids don’t and my grandkids don’t, and advertising paid for that. Comic books probably wouldn’t have. It was a good place to go. You may or may not think so – and I wouldn’t expect anybody to think so.”



Adams could be philosophical like that. “Look, lawyers suck and businessmen suck,” he told me. “I’m sorry. As much as I’m a businessman – and I have to be a businessman – there are moments when I suck. I will have a thought and go, ‘That really sucks. Neal, you’re an asshole, don’t think like that.’ But businessmen think that way. Nothing is gained by not being kind and courteous.”

Adams was a businessman because he had to be, but he was also unafraid of taking on comics companies. It’s easy to say that he had advertising work and other projects that he could fall back on to make a living, but he didn’t fight for himself. He fought for everyone.

Adams’ best known battle on behalf of comics was for Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster to receive credit and compensation for creating one of the biggest pop culture figures in the world. Along with Jerry Robinson and Ed Preiss, they fought for the two to receive credit and compensation as the creators of Superman.



“Finally, truth, justice, and the American Way win out,” Walter Cronkite said on the evening news that night when discussing the settlement.

Adams’ other big fight was over artwork. For years comics companies claimed that they had bought the rights to the art and proceeded to destroy it, give it away, horde it. In the 1970s, copyright laws in the United States changed, and Adams was one of the key people who helped to force companies to act differently. Although as he told the story to me, “it was never a battle. It was always pre-ordained that I would win.”

As he explained it, they didn’t understand copyright because there was a difference between buying a piece of art and buying the reproduction rights. And if they had been buying artwork for fifty years, they had not paid sales taxes on it. “Somebody, sooner or later, is going to go to Albany and visit these people – and when you press that button, it will never be unpressed. Tax people are not like that. They will hound you to your death. The next week, they started to return artwork. I did my homework, and they didn’t.”



I have spoken to many artists over the years who have talked about their contact with Adams when they were young. How people would bring their portfolios to Continuity and Adams would sit down and be merciless in his critique. Many people have talked about the sound effects that Adams would make flipping through pages in ways that they can still hear. But if he saw talent, Adams would pick up the phone and call editors – or in some cases, Jim Shooter, then the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel – to say that he was sending someone over who they needed to meet. That was how Frank MillerBill Sienkiewicz and many others got work. Or Adams would say that a person’s art wasn’t there yet, but they showed skill as a letterer and called to find them a gig.

Adams didn’t take a percentage or a fee, or ask for anything in return. How many people can speak of having a mentor like that? How many fields have someone where dozens of people can cite someone doing that?

This is why so many different artists have spoken about their deep debt to Adams as an artist and a mentor and an artistic father and surrogate father, even if it’s been years or decades since they last worked together or spoke. From Frank Miller to Denys Cowan to Bill Sienkiewicz to Larry Hama and so many others. And they were not artistic clones of Adams. All the people I mentioned have their own style and approach, but they all credit Adams with a lot.

Though his most prominent work was superheroes, Adams did a lot of work on behalf of other artists and suing comics and art for various educational projects. With the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Adams worked to get the government of Poland to return the original artwork of Dina BabbittRafael Medoff, the institute’s director worked with Adams to produce They Spoke Out: American Voices Against the Holocaust which focused on Fiorello La GuardiaVarian Fry, and others who opposed the Nazis and saved lives.



That’s not to say that Adams was always right or that everything he did succeeded. Continuity Comics, which published between 1984 and 1994, was a mixed bag creatively and otherwise. The highlight being Larry Hama and Michael Golden’s Bucky O’Hare, which launched an animated series and toy line. There was mixed response to the more recent comics that Adams wrote and drew like Batman: OdysseyDeadmanSuperman: The Coming of the Supermen, and Batman vs. Ra’s Al Ghul, and his collaborations like First X-Men and Fantastic Four: Antithesis.

He seemed philosophical about that, perhaps because he believed that they would find an audience. He labored over his art. He took great pleasure in it. And while he loved meeting fans, he didn’t draw for fans. He loved art that people hated and hated art that people loved and was unbothered by this.

This is a man who ended up drawing a holiday storyline for the webcomic PVP with Scott Kurtz years ago because his granddaughter. But he liked comics and comics energized him. “This is the greatest time in the history of art,” he said in 2016. “There’s never been a time like this. We can do anything. We can publish it, and a portion of the population will buy it. So we don’t have to satisfy everybody, we can satisfy a niche, and they will buy it and love it. It’s not like rock and roll – it’s better. This is only going to get bigger.”

At a time when some creators expressed a disdain towards cosplayers and many young fans and creators, Adams had a very different response. “Forget Halloween – cosplay,” he said. “I don’t even recognize half the characters anymore, and there’s nothing wrong with that. They love it. It’s a creative community, and it’s coming out of America and it’s going to China and Russia and South America and Australia and all of those cultures have something to contribute to it as well. It’s incredible. This is the greatest cultural explosion in the world.”

Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be given to Adams – and it has been said by those who loved him and hated him – is that comics would be a very different place without him. There are few figures in American comics of whom that can be said. Other than Jack Kirby it’s hard to think of an artist with as much influence. And in terms of his mentorship and stylistic influence, he has few equals. The comics industry and community today is very different from the one he started working in.

I spent half a day at Continuity Studies in 2016 and during one story Adams paused to say, ‘I’ll tell you this, but only if you don’t print it.’ What he told me wasn’t salacious gossip. He wanted to explain what happened, but he also didn’t want to embarrass a friend in print. Or maybe they weren’t friends at that point; I don’t actually know. But he respected the person and wanted me to know that I needed to be respectful. That even if people knew, Adams didn’t want it to be in print.

Of course that required him to trust and respect me, as well, which is not something I forgot. One remembers the people who were nice for no reason. And kinder than they needed to be. I’m also a white cis male and not naïve enough to think that treating me well is a sign that someone is a decent human being. But there is something to be said about someone who makes a point of being kind to others.

Adams was neither quiet nor humble. He knew his worth, or what he thought his work and time was worth, and he would not apologize or exhibit false modesty. Perhaps he got in his own way sometimes, when trying to launch a comics guild or in different negotiations. I don’t know. But he was who he was, and did not apologize.

In our lengthy conversation that day he kept returning to family, to stories of being a father. There was a way in which the studio was an extended family, overseen by his daughter, Kristine, including his other children who work as artists. He loved his work, but he believed that there was more to life than work. That has always stayed with me, and our thoughts are with his family in these days.

There was only one Neal Adams.

May his memory be a blessing.




https://www.comicsbeat.com/joe-kubert-an-unparalleled-life/

Joe Kubert: an unparalleled life




Although it really wasn’t logical to think that Joe Kubert would live forever, I think we can all be forgiven for thinking it might
just happen. So his death yesterday at age 85 comes as a real blow. With one of the longest, most productive careers in American comics, he was a pillar of such energy and strength that as dynamic as his art was, the man himself seemed to surpass it.

Kubert’s start in comics sounds like something out of the annals of the child welfare agency now: as a mere boy of 12 or so, he hung around the studios of the burgeoning comics industry of the late 30s—not exactly the most savory place for a kid, perhaps, but he loved to draw, and his family encouraged that interest. It was at MLJ Studios (the precursor to Archie) that Kubert recalled getting his his first job, helping ink a Bob Montana story while he was just a young teen. (The exact details of Kubert’s first comics job don’t seem to have ever been established, such being the drifting memories of a man with a long life behind him.) Although he did go to high school—the High School of Music and Art—by the time he graduated he was already working with several publishers, and coloring reprint of Eisner’s Spirit. Harvey, EC, Fiction House — Kubert worked for them all, creating the prehistoric warrior Tor, for St. Allen and becoming the seminal Hawkman artist for the Silver Age DC.



It was of course the war books, and Sgt. Rock that became his signature. Co-created with writer Robert Kanigher, these tough, direct tales were all about real-life bravery and heroism in the face of the brutality and senselessness of people killing other people—the standard stuff of war comics perhaps, but Kubert’s vitality and passion for the subject energized them. Kubert couldn’t help drawing iconic, heroic characters—see any drawing of Sgt. Rock glaring from his helmet—but his stories were gritty and humane.



As you can see from looking at any page of his art, Kubert excelled at the larger-than-life characters and fantastic action required by the pulp comics industry. And when I say excelled I mean he nailed it in every line and panel with a completely distinctive style that was sleek and rugged at the same time. He possessed an immense natural talent—one that developed quickly and surely, as shown by his early entry into professionalism. It’s all the more remarkable that he was able to pass on his knowledge. Many people with Kubert’s innate genius can no more talk about it than they can learn a new style. That was not the case with Kubert, and he was so committed to helping other learn the rules and guidelines of comics that he opened perhaps the most famous school for comics artists—and the only school devoted solely to cartooning, The Kubert School in Dover, NJ, which he opened in 1976 with his wife Muriel, and ran until his death. Its first graduating class including Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch and Tom Yeates, enough to cement its legacy right there, but the hits kept coming with such graduates as Amanda Conner, Tom Mandrake, Timothy Truman, Matt Hollingsworth, Tim Truman, Jan Duursema, Alex Mallev, Bart Sears, Kevin Colden, Eric Shanower and many more And of course his two youngest sons, Adam and Andy, have become indispensable parts of the comics world themselves.



Kubert’s golden age lasted for 50 years or so—his Tarzan was one of the most definitive; Enemy Ace, Ragman…the list goes on and on. In the last two decades of his life, Kubert turned to more personal subjects from real life; Fax from Sarajevo, based on letters from his friend, art agent, Ervin Rustemagić, sent during the siege of Sarajevo. Perhaps Kubert’s most personal work was Yossel: April 19, 1943which told the story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from the viewpoint of a young artist named Yossel. Kubert’s real family escaped from Poland in 1926, when Kubert was only two months old, and the winds of disaster were just beginning to blow. Yossel was Kubert’s version of “what might have been” had they not been able to escape. Yossel, and the rest of Kubert’s later works were brought out last year as part of the Joe Kubert Library at DC.

Other books in his more realistic vein include Dong Xoai, Vietnam 1965 and, probably the least successful, Jew Gangster. None of these books are masterpieces of subtlety, but the passion and humanity of their author is visible on every page.

Looking over examples of Kubert’s art, it’s hard not to be amazed at the sheer excellence of it all—emphasis on the ALL. Thousands of pages, all of them inventive, bold and, most importantly, clear. There is no question about what’s going on in a Kubert page. Like the two other Ks— Jack Kirby and Gil Kane—Kubert showed just how great you could be within the framework of an industry that, in its heyday, called for artists to turn out dozens of pages of work a month. There are shortcuts and recurring images, sure, but no matter how many times Kubert drew the same kinds of stories, it seems like the first time for him. From the beginning to the end, every panel is engaged and engaging.



It’s this very clear vitality for life which made Kubert, the man, the living legend, and the universally beloved, respected figure he was. At an age when most people were long retired, Kubert was still going strong—a new collection from DC was announced for this fall—and thrilling people at conventions just by being the kind of approachable, friendly legend that the comics industry, thankfully, has in abundance. Let’s face it, you don’t get to just go up and gab with Scorsese or Stephen King. but you could usually find Joe Kubert, get an autograph or just tell him how much you admired him. That is one of the very best things about the comics industry and something we should be incredibly grateful for.

Only a year ago, I was putting on a panel on history and comics for New York Comic-Con, and wrote a letter to the Kubert School information email address, timidly asking if Mr Kubert might possibly be interested in being on the panel. (You gotta start at the top, is one of my mottos.) To my shock, Joe himself wrote back, and yes he would do the panel…if he was at the show that day. Sadly he wasn’t, and I missed out on an event that I would have remembered the rest of my life.

One thing I will always remember about Kubert is from the first Pro/CON back in 92 or so. This was a professionals only gathering that presented panels and talks on various industry subjects. Which most of the first day was taken up with saving comics (breaking away from the 32 page pamphlet being the most popular suggestion) Kubert presented a talk on storytelling—he put up a few blow-ups of his thumbnails on an easel and just started talking about them. I remember the whole room sitting up straight and hanging on his every word. The thumbnails were so perfect—each a tiny lesson in values and motion and layout. “The eye goes to the area of the greatest contrast,” he said, one little soundbite that has stayed with me to this day. I’m sure the talk was only a sampling of the kind of thing he told students, but it was right on the money.

Memorials and tributes for Kubert are pouring in by the minute. You would be hard pressed to name another person in comics so universally admired and liked. Kubert’s life was a comic book life, through and through, but unlike so many of the sad stories that I and others write about as cautionary tales, Kubert seems to have found a happy medium, and lived a long, productive life of doing what he loved…and sharing that love with the people around him. There’s nothing not to admire there. I’m just sad we couldn’t have shared it with him for even longer.

Kubert is survives by his five children, sons David, Danny, Adam and Andy; his daughter Lisa, and many grandchildren, including Katie Kubert, currently an assistant editor at DC. My condolences to them all.



*****


Neal Adams, Moebius, and Joe Kubert in New York, 1972
Via




https://www.comicsbeat.com/silber-linings-jla-avengers-george-perez-goat/

SILBER LININGS: JLA/AVENGERS is Exhibit A for why George Pérez is the GOAT

In honor of George Pérez, Greg rereads the final Marvel/DC crossover and discovers a joyful romp.




The Beat’s Gregory Paul Silber has been accused of having a bit of an… obsessive personality. Each week in Silber Linings, he takes a humorous look at the weirdest, funniest, and most obscure bits of comics and pop culture that he can’t get out of his head.

Like many folks who read as many comics as I do, I make a habit of giving them away en masse to make more space in my little Brooklyn apartment. It makes me happy to know they’re going to a good home, whether I’m giving them to my younger comic-book-curious cousins, or donating them to places like hospitals, my mother’s students, or incarcerated people via NYC Books Through Bars. But there are exactly two comics which I deeply regret giving away.



The first is the DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore anthology, lost in a breakup. I’m not talking about the newer edition which includes Alan Moore‘s contributions to the Wildstorm universe, which has since been retroactively folded into the broader DCU. I’m talking about the out-of-print version which features Moore’s Superman stories, as well as Batman: The Killing Joke, as DC now redistributed them into two separate, smaller collections for Moore’s Batman and Superman stories. “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” and “For the Man Who Has Everything” are the Superman stories that made me a Superman fan, and while The Killing Joke hasn’t aged well, I vastly prefer the original, psychedelic colors to Brian Bolland‘s slick recoloring in the newer printings. And overall, I miss having all these stories in one book alongside Moore’s lesser-known DC gems like “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize.” So if anyone wants to get me a belated Chanukah gift, or maybe an early birthday present…

My second great regret when it comes to comic books I let go of is JLA/Avengers, by writer Kurt Busiek, artist George Pérez, colorist Tom Smith, and letterer Richard Starkings. Before giving it to my mom to give to her middle school students, I bought it in college at my then-local comic book store, literally called The Comic Book Store, from the same shelf for used, half-priced books where I bought several comics that would soon become favorites: Grant Morrison and Howard Porter‘s first volume of JLABatman: The Long HalloweenCaptain America: Man Out of TimeThe Punisher: Welcome Back Frank, Morrison and Chas Truog‘s Animal Man (have I mentioned before that I’m a huge Morrison fan?), and even that same Alan Moore DC collection I was just talking about… among many others.



I’ve written before about how this was an exciting time for me, as I was reading comics regularly for the first time in my life, visiting The Comic Book Store owner Alex at his shop every Wednesday. I suspect that may have been why JLA/Avengers didn’t work for me the first time I read it, to the point that I don’t think I ever even finished it. As excited as I was to read a comic in which DC superheroes like Wonder Woman and The Flash would have the novel opportunity to share pages with Marvel heroes like Hawkeye and Iron Man, I remember feeling like it was written for people with far more knowledge about both universes than I had yet acquired.

What I also didn’t know was that this trade paperback I bought on a whim for just $10 was actually quite rare. A decade later, with both Marvel and DC becoming increasingly more corporatized than they already were in my late teens and early ’20s, the chances of either publisher (or, perhaps more importantly, parent company) playing nice enough to reprint JLA/Avengers are basically nil. There had been a handful of Marvel and DC crossovers since 1976’s Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man, but short of a truly earth-shattering change in corporate structure, 2004’s JLA/Avengers will probably forever be the last official DC/Marvel crossover in comics or otherwise.

Giving that away, for free? Not one of my better decisions!



Luckily, my illustrious editor Joe Grunenwald knew this was keeping me up at night, and, after stumbling upon a used copy of JLA/Avengers, was kind enough to ask if I wanted it. I Venmoed him the (once again, weirdly inexpensive) cost of the comic and shipping, and soon enough, JLA/Avengers was in my hands once again.

While I truly was happy enough just to own this historic and rare comic again, receiving George Pérez’s sad news this week encouraged me to finally reread it. If you haven’t heard, the beloved artist, writer, and co-creator of characters like Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven announced this week that he has Stage 3 Pancreatic Cancer, with an “estimated life expectancy between 6 months to a year.”


Even if you’re not familiar with Pérez you can understand how tragic this development is on a raw human level, but it’s hard to overstate how much of a heartbreaking blow it is to the comic book community. Between his extraordinary talent, and a reputation for being equally as kind, he’s one of the most universally beloved figures in comics. It’s hard to think of many others who even come close. But as of this writing, Pérez is still with us, so there’s no better time to appreciate his work than now.

So, how does JLA/Avengers hold up in a second reading? As it turns out, remarkably well.

For one thing, I had no trouble following it this time around. It’s not just that I’ve had a full decade to get a better handle on individual Marvel and DC characters and concepts. I have a better understanding of superhero fiction tropes, and more broadly, the language of comic books as a medium. JLA/Avengers is a comic for diehard fans of superhero comics, and that’s fine.



Much like Pérez’s penchant for his signature crowd scenes, Busiek – who’s written several other memorable comics for both DC and Marvel over his decades-spanning career, including an acclaimed early-’00s Avengers run with Pérez – appears eager to pack as much into JLA/Avengers as he possibly could. One gets the sense that he had a longer story in mind before being asked to compress his scripts into four oversized issues. It would have been nice to see Batman face off against The Punisher, for example, rather than for that fight to happen entirely off-panel. Busiek tends to fill his pages with a lot of words, but thanks largely to Richard Starkings’ lettering talents it rarely feels overwhelming.

For the most part, however, JLA/Avengers‘ density works in its favor. “Fan service” is sometimes seen as a dirty word, but Busiek, Perez, and company do an excellent job giving Marvel and DC fans what they want while simultaneously throwing in plenty of genuine surprises. The overall structure is familiar; universes clash thanks to multiversal mumbo jumbo, a misunderstanding causes the Justice League of America to fight the Avengers, and then they team up after realizing they have a common cause. But that’s just set dressing. The little moments in between are what make this story really special, like when a showdown between Batman and Captain America ends in a respectful draw after both combatants agree they’re equally matched.



Of course, my primary motivation for reading JLA/Avengers was George Pérez’s art, and he did not disappoint in the slightest. Tom Smith’s colors compliment Pérez’s style well, and Pérez’s absurdly thorough crowd scenes are as impressive as ever. I could have spent hours picking apart every detail. It’s hard to imagine a better artistic fit for a story like this, where readers want to see as many of their favorite Marvel and DC characters on the same page together as possible.

As an aside, it would be one thing if Pérez pulled out all the stops like this just because JLA/Avengers was a special prestige-format event, but he spent his entire career making maximalism his defining trait. I’ve always loved artists who appear to work harder than they could have gotten away with. Pérez is a bit like Jack Kirby in that way: he could have phoned it in every once in a while and still be hailed as a genius, but he gave it his all with each and every issue.



Which brings me to what I love most about JLA/Avengers: a palpable sense of joy. It’s made by creators at the top of their game who clearly could not be happier to be the ones privileged to bring two iconic universes together over the course of some 160 pages. For Pérez’s part, it’s consistent with what those who have interacted with the man in person have said about his gracious, joyful personality. In his announcement about his tragic diagnosis, Perez invoked Lou Gehrig by calling himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Reading JLA/Avengers, I could tell it’s drawn by someone overjoyed to be alive.

OTHER STUFF:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/jla-avengers-the-hero-initiative-limited-edition-tpb/



https://www.comicsbeat.com/dc-comics-george-perez-spread-june-titles/



By the great NEAL ADAMS:









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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2505.15 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2508 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.


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