With art by Tim Hamilton
With art by Sonny LiewThe emperor Julius Caesar has reached out from beyond the grave to resume his campaign against the Egyptian people, and only the young Doctor Fate can protect his ancestral homeland from the ghost of its former conqueror.
If you came to love DC comics first in some faraway place, say a thankful farewell to Phyllis Hume today. Phyllis had one of those jobs invisible to the general public, unacknowledged on any masthead, but vital to changing the world’s comics culture. She began her involvement with DC as a paralegal in the corporate trademark department, but really made her impact in long decades managing DC’s international rights. She travelled relentlessly for decades, building partnerships and true friendships across the globe, and working to get comics published by people who loved comics.
A tough little woman from Brooklyn Heights, Phyllis helped make possible some of the first truly beautiful editions of American comics, long before DC (or any American comics publisher) was ready to produce oversize hardcovers, or art book-quality volumes. Titles from WATCHMEN to ancient classics like CAPTAIN MARVEL AND THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL happened on her watch, and with her support.
Sadly, she had a rough parting from DC when the international markets changed and she and her then-supervisor saw different paths ahead for the company. One of my regrets as an executive was the occasions like this when I couldn’t bridge gaps between good people and manage to keep both on the team. But those circumstances didn’t detract from my great respect for Phyllis, or appreciation for the work she’d done.
The world of comics is better for the efforts of many largely anonymous people behind the scenes, connecting the creative talents with their audience. We’ve been lucky to have folks doing this who don’t treat it as a job, but as a responsibility to both the talent and the audience. Phyllis Hume was one who made the world of comics larger by making distances, cultures and languages smaller gaps, and for that I’m grateful.
Fun this weekend chatting with Sonny Liew at MoCCA and Midtown Comics for our signing. Email’s a wonderful tool, but nothing really replaces conversation for getting to know each other. The panel celebrating Sonny drew a full house, and we want through a slid show of his career (so far), while chatting about details that included some I didn’t know (like Shelly Bond giving him a shot at inking his own pencils on MY FAITH IN FRANKIE, then pulling in Marc Hempel when she saw Sonny wasn’t quite ready), and some Sonny didn’t (the challenges the Minx line faced when chain bookstores gave up on it completely after just a couple of volumes, just as he was doing THE REGIFTERS).
His THE ART OF CHARLIE CHAN HOCK CHYE is getting wonderful reviews, and that was probably a major reason for the enthusiastic audience. We talked about the fact that it may be a unique approach to a graphic novel, mixing history with a completely fictional ‘spine,’ and his process, including a year of research before the year and a half of drawing. He composed it in thumbnail drawings, rather than a formal script.
We also talked about our process on DOCTOR FATE, where we work from a full script that I provide, but often revise bits to take advantage of Sonny’s perspective. We discussed a couple of examples, most notably how his reaction to the character Akila as originally proposed led her to be depicted as much more traditional Egyptian young woman than originally planned.
And a special nod of the head to David Mazzuchelli, who was Sonny’s teacher at RISD, for joining us in the front row…but even more for his efforts encouraging Sonny and connecting him to the American comics world.
Since my executive days ended I’ve been spending about half my time teaching: classes in writing, publishing, transmedia, and the graphic novel, all areas where my practical experience weighs heavily enough to balance for my lack of traditional academic credentials. I had the pleasure of learning from many wonderful teachers, both in classroom settings and in professional ones, and it was always on my bucket list to see if I would enjoy the experience. I do–because (as Karen Berger commented on hearing I was going to teach) “(I) enjoy the sound of my own voice,” but also because the energy of the students can be infectious, and I find myself learning about my subjects as I teach.
Some of the learning is from the preparation for the classes. I just finished “AN EMPIRE OF THEIR OWN,” a great examination of the Jewish entrepreneurs who built Hollywood, which seemed a logical book to read before tightening my syllabus for this fall’s “Comics, Graphic Novels and the Jews” course at Princeton. I was broadly familiar with the history, and had heard a couple of Jack Warner stories from one of the execs at Warner Bros. who had worked with him and was still around when I began showing up there, but there was so much more information and texture in the volume.
Maybe more valuable to me is the learning from codifying theories in order to teach what I’ve done by instinct. Simple lines like character is is revealed by choices, especially by choices with costs, seem to help convey fundamentals of writing. And once codified, serve to remind me of important goals to strive of in my own work.
Off to read Paul Buhle’s “JEWS AND AMERICAN COMICS” next…
With art by Sonny Liew
You thought global warming was bad? Anubis, the Egyptian Lord of Dead, is preparing the flood to wash the world away. Standing in his way? An overwhelmed Brooklyn med student who’s been handed the helmet of Fate, without an instruction manual.
This title collects the first seven issues of the acclaimed new series, plus the eight-page sneak peek story from CONVERGENCE: AQUAMAN #2!
When Dan and Jim said they were open to a pitch for a new series, I asked after the availability of Doctor Fate because of my fondness for the original character going back to the classic SHOWCASE issues by Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson (though I first read them before I was paying any attention to credits, much less meeting Gardner and becoming a friend of Murphy’s for decades). Relaunching to try to capture a more contemporary feel was a challenging goal, especially since a couple of the takes that had been done by old friends like Steve Gerber, Keith Giffen and Marc DeMatteis had explored different variations with at least creative success. But without a doubt, the smartest thought I had in that first meeting was suggesting Sonny Liew as the artist.
I had met Sonny when he was doing MY FAITH IN FRANKIE for Vertigo, and had enjoyed his expressive work. He was kind enough to occasionally send me his work from Singapore, and when I visited there for their comics & games show a couple of years ago we connected again. That had me on the lookout of his current work, and I had seen his quirky take on super heroes in THE SHADOW HERO in the months before that fateful meeting.
But I didn’t know that Sonny was an incredibly smart artist, and a courageous storyteller who enjoyed playing with the form. We do DOCTOR FATE from full scripts, but he’s comfortable making suggestions that restage scenes for better drama or more visual imagination, and his sense of characterization and acting has brought the cast to life. He’s also been comfortable challenging me about scenes or character depictions, which has usually led to a result that both of us felt was better. I also didn’t know that he’d just completed and was about publish a masterpiece: THE ART OF CHARLIE CHAN HOCK CHYE. Even better (from a selfish standpoint), Pantheon would be releasing that book in the U.S. almost simultaneously with our first DOCTOR FATE trade paperback. Pantheon has a great ability to get their titles reviewed in serious forums, and CHARLIE is such a worthy book that it’s already been acclaimed on NPR and in places like THE ECONOMIST. I’m not sure how much collateral effect that’ll have on DOCTOR FATE: THE BLOOD PRICE, but it has to help.
Proud as I am of THE BLOOD PRICE (I think it’s the best thing I’ve done since coming back to the keyboard in 2009), CHARLIE is by far the better book. If you only buy one of Sonny’s books, start there, please.
And if you want to meet him, we’re doing a joint signing at MIDTOWN COMICS Fulton Street store the evening of April 1, and I’m interviewing him at a panel at the MoCCA Fest on Saturday, April 2. It’s a rare U.S. trip for him, but he will also be making an appearance or two in other cities courtesy of Pantheon.
I hope to see some of you there, and if you haven’t read FATE, check out the trade. If the book does well enough, it might give the series a longer life. As a periodical, it’s not a commercial star even though it’s gotten good reviews, It’s almost 20 years since the first DC series to have continued as a periodical because the collected edition made the project profitable when the periodical couldn’t (TRANSMETROPOLITAN, for the history buffs), and I’d be thrilled if FATE could follow in its footsetps.
Jeff Vaughn at Gemstone just sent me a care package of some of their recent books, including THE OVERSTREET GUIDE TO COLLECTING COMICS. A slick 300+ pages, it was a long way from the half-dozen or so typed pages at the front of the first Overstreet Price Guide covering the same subject. It also reminded me of my first book contract, a deal Jenette Kahn had instigated with Warner Books in the mid-1970s. I was supposed to write a guide to comic collecting, back when there were still only a smattering of comic shops. As I recall, I had done a pretty thorough outline for the project, which doesn’t survive. It was officially a real project for about a year before I gave up, preferring to use the time my full-time staff job allowed me to write comics instead. Roads not taken…
With art by Tim Hamilton
With art by Sonny Liew
Doctor Fate travels to Egypt, where the young hero discovers that an ancient, malevolent superpower is making things unduly difficult for his ancestral homeland.
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