Happy Monday?
Life is misery, but at least we’ve got some gorgeous new pages of our serialized graphic novel from co-creator Niko Henrichon and peerless letterer Fonografiks, so let’s get to it.
Spectators is (apparently?) the story of Val, a young woman who was one of the many Americans to die in one of 2022’s countless mass shootings.
Hundreds of years later, she endures as an etherial specter who continues to haunt her beloved New York City.
She is not alone.
I can’t wait for you to see next week’s double-page spread, best experienced on the largest screen you’ve got, please!
Hard to tell what’s more beautiful, Niko’s black and white artwork, or his colors…
If you’re not sick of my Cleveland twang after our most recent episode of Mature Readers, I also had a great time speaking with David Harper on his podcast Off Panel for 90 minutes of inside baseball about comics. Which I guess is just inside comics?
Anyway, give it a listen over here, or wherever you find your podcasts, thanks.
The responses to last week’s private chat with our members of The Tower about which era you would travel back in time to visit toggled between profound and profoundly dumb, and I loved every single post.
But only one commenter was randomly selected to receive all three of our deluxe hardcover editions of Paper Girls, and that lucky Tower member is… Kyle HD, who wrote:
As a Black guy, the time travel question always makes my window of travel feel pretty limited. For all the horrible in the world, being Black in America feels like it gets slightly better everyday. So I come with a boring answer, where I’d travel to the month prior (e.g., May 2022), assuming I’d have enough memory of most recent events to have some fun, make a bunch of money, save lives, and make my own a bit better.
Hard to argue with Kyle’s wise response, which was both humbling and hopeful, but certainly not boring.
I know we’re all struggling to endure the endless onslaught of content that is Peak Television, but Garth recently shamed me for not having watched this new one from David Simon, and I’m grateful to have finally inhaled over the weekend all of We Own This City, a six-episode series about systemic corruption within the Baltimore P.D.
Hard to say that I “enjoyed” this harrowing true story, but… no, you know what, I did fucking enjoy it. Reminded me a lot of the equally fantastic Generation Kill, another addictively watchable HBO drama from Simon about a painful subject I’d normally just want to look away from.
Universally excellent performances from a lot of actors you fans of The Wire will recognize, but I think this was the first time I’d ever seen Wunmi Mosaku, who steals the show as an increasingly horrified attorney at the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ. Very highly recommended.
And it reminded me to ask you: What’s the last art/entertainment you were surprised to find yourself bingeing?
We’ll leave the comments open to everyone this week, so I hope to see you in the chat after I kill a few more pages of this script that’s currently haunting me.
Still not sure if it’s “binging” or “bingeing,”
Brian
I don’t really binge shows any more. I like the weekly pacing of Disney+ and some Amazon Prime releases. I found that binging shows causes very little to stay with me. It’s like empty calories. That said the last thing I watched multiple episodes of at one go was probably Chernobyl. I was a late arrival to the show and the whole thing was out shortly before I started watching.
I spent the last two weeks bingeing The Crown, which surprised me. Don't get me wrong, I can fuck with British costume dramas, but I hate the royals so I was suspicious of The Crown. Turns out, The Crown hates the royals too.
I finished the show the other day and I have never hated Prince Charles more.