SPECTATORS - Part 43
Plus, your favorite films of the 2020s (so far)!
Oof, did you also happen to catch an absolutely terrible movie this weekend?
Brian here, and I’m too cowardly to reveal which cinematic catastrophe I saw on the big screen yesterday, but at least it was nice to be back in a movie theater again (though after a couple months of reckless abandon, about 75% of us were once again masking up between fistfuls of popcorn).
Hey, remember when Val’s story opened in an Omicron-era cineplex earlier this year? Feels like an eternity ago, huh? Let’s see what she and her new pal Sam are getting into a few centuries in our future, as brought to life in this week’s vignette of Spectators by artist/co-creator Niko Henrichon and letterer/logo designer Fonografiks.
A heads-up: next week will feature our final Exploding Giraffe missives of 2022, as the crew and I take our first vacation of the year from Substack/your inboxes, before we return “live” on Monday, January 9.
Val and Sam’s story will continue in a big way in 2023, and we look forward to telling you soon how Exploding Giraffe will also be evolving in our upcoming second year, especially for you generous paid subscribers who help make all this possible.
Speaking of you kind souls in The Tower, I hope you dug my rambling interview with Robert Kirkman from last Friday. I was impressed and empathetic when Robert admitted how much he still has to push past his own self-doubt while writing. A great dude, incredibly fun to talk shop with.
Our next guest for “Mature Readers” already reached out to ask why the hell I hadn’t invited them to be on yet, so stay tuned for their hopefully revealing episode in the new year.
For now, I promised this Kirkman-signed copy of Walking Dead: The Alien to one of you monthly/annual/Founding subscribers, and our intern Genesis the Exploded Giraffe has randomly selected… Tamara L.!
Congrats, Tamara, and thanks to all of you who signed up just to listen. I hope you stick around for a while.
This is bittersweet, but the whole team behind Paper Girls and I are extremely grateful to The Los Angeles Times for placing our humble adaptation on their list of best TV shows of the year.
What an honor to have been a small part of this one-season wonder. I can’t wait to see what everybody who helped bring it to life does next…
In somewhat related news, my friends are so goddamn talented:
I just got this extraordinary gift from one-person-creative-team Cliff Chiang, and you should be able to pick up your own copy of his Gotham masterpiece next week.
Plus, my longtime Ex Machina collaborator Tony Harris successfully crowd-funded a special edition hardcover of his fan-favorite book The Whistling Skull (with B. Clay Moore, Dave McCaig and Wes Abbot), and you can purchase your own copy—along with sweet add-ons like an original head sketch from Tony—over here at Zoop.
And last but certainly not least, if you’re one of those folks who can’t stand reading comics digitally (why are you here??), the second physical collection from Image Comics of the hit Panel Syndicate series Friday by my dear pals Marcos Martín, Ed Brubaker and Muntsa Vicente will be at your local comic shop this week (and still available online for any price you think is fair at Panel Syndicate, in case you want to sample it there first).
Shit, I forgot to plug that Saga unexpectedly advanced to the final round of the annual Goodreads poll, where our tenth volume ultimately managed to secure a runner-up spot amidst (beneath) some intimidating young upstarts:
Apologies to Fiona Staples, Fonografiks and our partners at Image Comics that I was bafflingly the sole creator credited for our collaboration in that poll, but we old-timers appreciate still being in the mix with these incredible books/creators, the future of comics.
Finally, over the past few weeks, you relentless spectators have discussed your favorite films of the 70s through the 2010s, so it’s finally time to close out our epic conversation with: What’s your favorite movie of the 2020s (so far)?
Options are obviously somewhat limited by the pandemic, but there have nevertheless been some real gems these past few years, so I look forward to discovering your faves in the chat.
Think I’ll copy my wife’s answer of Miranda July’s Kajillionaire,
BKV
An early and commanding lead for Everything, Everywhere!
It's got to be Everything Everywhere All at Once, though if I knew what it was about I probably wouldn't have watched it when i did. Sobbed through the entire third act.