Last year, I began work on a short comic that I’d had in my head for years. It was a comic about my grandfather and a phrase he used to say to me when I was younger. It ended up being finished this year and on my Patreon but I thought I’d share it here since things have been light on the website.
It was drawn by Secrets & Shadows/Mega Centurions artist Dexter Wee, lettered by Mega Centurions letterer Cristian Docolomansky, and edited by Steven Forbes (who’s edited almost all of my stuff).
[Originally from the February 22nd edition of my newsletter.]
Years ago, I stumbled across a comedian named Josh Johnson on YouTube. I had to go back and find the exact video and it turns out to be seven years old, Catfishing the KKK. Since then, he’s been slowly making a name for himself doing standup. Recently, he’s gotten decently big on YouTube for doing sets where he breaks down current events. They are usually anywhere from 20 minutes to a full hour of him explaining various happenings in the world. From Trump to the Drake/Kendrick Beef. It’s incredibly impressive the way he can create such informative and thoughtful sets while also having callbacks to bits earlier on. You can see how well he’s honed his skills between the first video and his more recent ones.
One of the most recent videos covered the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl Halftime show. If you hadn’t seen the halftime show, it was an entertaining one. Samuel L. Jackson appears as Uncle Sam and the halftime show basically weaves a story of Kendrick “playing the great American game”. And, as Kendrick is wont to do, there were also layers to the imagery and songs. Personally, I thought it was a testament to how thoughtful Kendrick is as an artist but it also served as the perfect culmination of his yearlong campaign to utterly destroy Drake. He simply set out to embarrass his long time rival only to win five Grammys and perform it at the Super Bowl. It just shows that sometimes, it’s better to be a hater.
The most diabolical smile in Super Bowl Halftime History.
Sorry, I got sidetracked.
In his video, Josh spends 50 minutes breaking down a lot of the imagery and parts of what it meant. While there was a whole section that he either skipped or it got cut from the video, he manages to explain what a lot of the imagery meant. As always, it is really thoughtful and incorporated a story from his own life as well as about the venue he was performing at that night. When I say thoughtful, I mean it in the truest sense that he clearly puts a lot of thought into the set and what he wants to talk about. And it always comes across as sincere which is not as abundant in current stand-up comedy spaces.
But if you can’t watch the entire 50 minutes, I think the part that resonated the most is in the final five minutes where he responds to criticism that Kendrick didn’t go hard enough with the incredible line: “Art can save your life but entertainment will never be your salvation”.
In America (and the west in general), people tend to lean on entertainment and escapism pretty heavily. And the harder times get, the harder they lean. It’s expected to entertain us, educate us, inspire us, edify us, absolve us, and ultimately save us. While it can do some of those things, entertainment (and entertainers) can only do so much.
Even now, you see people looking to fictional movies and characters for inspiration on how to handle real events that we’re living through. And I get it, that’s what you’ve leaned on but Star Wars or the MCU might not be the best place to look for a plan of action.
It’s getting to the point where it feels like entertainers and creators are held to a higher standard than our actual authority figures and expected to do things we don’t even ask of our representatives. That’s part of why creators and entertainers are burning out because they have to live up to standards that go beyond what they are making and collapsing under the pressure. Imagine making a comic, a game, or YouTube channel then having several people put you on a pedestal and tell you that your creation is the thing that keeps them going. No pressure, right?
Kendrick Lamar is a great entertainer, but he’s an entertainer. He literally has a song called Savior telling the people that he can’t be their savior. He can’t lead the revolution but he can probably make a dope song for us to march to. And the thing is that he shouldn’t have to be our savior. We have tons of history in book and video form that covers real people who lived through real events that should serve as inspiration. They might not have written an ill sixteen or did anything as exciting as an action film star, but they probably made huge impacts and saved lives in mundane, boring ways.
When I was younger, I was a huge fan of Eminem. His music was almost cathartic for a kid who didn’t get to be angry or voice his displeasure with things. When things got bad in the house, I could pull out my Walkman and pop in The Eminem Show to flood out the yelling. But Eminem didn’t save me. Eminem didn’t stand up to my stepdad. I did that. The music helped me get to a place where I could do that but I had to take action myself.
Art can save your life but entertainment will never be your salvation. You can take inspiration from entertainment and maybe even be motivated by it, but you have to save yourself.
[Originally from the March 15th edition of my newsletter.]
I haven’t been talking a lot about comics recently. I hadn’t been reading much stuff due to my mind being elsewhere and focused on other things. However, I made a list at the beginning of the year of comics that I wanted to read and told myself that I would make an effort when things cleared up a bit.
After getting my taxes mostly in order and finding out I didn’t have a doctor’s appointment that I thought I did, I decided to take a bit of time to find some of those books. I opened a Bookshop.org account because I’ve been trying to move away from Amazon for book purchases and found a few of the books from my list. After picking a few that were available, I ordered them and excitedly waited for them to arrive. And they arrived a day early.
The first of which is Do a Powerbomb! by Daniel Warren Johnson, Mike Spicer and Rus Wooton.
I spoke about Daniel Warren Johnson before and referenced the book, but I hadn’t yet read it. I’d heard good things and wanted to but life got in the way. But I’m so glad that I finally got the chance to read it. It was a hell of a read and a hell of a ride.
When Yua Steelrose defends her Tokyo Grand World Title against her long-time rival Cobrasun, her daughter Lona is in the front row. But a single slip on the top rope turns what should be an amazing match into a tragedy. Years later, Lona is struggling to become a wrestler and follow in her late mother’s footsteps. Unfortunately, her father has made sure that no one will train her out of fear of her ending up like her mother. Things turn weird when she is grabbed by a strange man named Willard Necroton and transported to another world. Necroton wants her to fight in his tournament, the Deathlyfe Tage Team Tournament. After learning the winner will receive a chance to bring someone back from the dead, Lona is immediately on board. Frustratingly, it is a tag team tournament and no one will partner up with her.
No one except Cobrasun, the man who killed her mother. Together the two of them work together to reunite a family and find forgiveness while hitting dropkicks, Snap German Suplexes and gravity defying moonsaults.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much about the comic other than it revolved around wrestling so I went into it fairly blind which was great because this book is bonkers. The whole story is just a wild ride from start to finish and goes in so many wild directions that were great to see. But it also had its share of emotional gut punches as well. There were a couple moments that hit me harder than a Katsuyori Shibata corner dropkick. I think Johnson did a great job of grounding the characters even in the most ridiculous of moments. You really root for Lona and have a lot of sympathy for Cobrasun as you find out more about him. It’s just really well written and paced in a way that I didn’t want to put it down. It was just really good.
Do I even need to say that the art is great? Daniel Warren Johnson is an amazingly talented artist. He has a style that stands out and immediately makes you pay attentions. The thickness of the lines, the energy, ability to convey chaotic motion is just fantastic and so well suited for a wrestling comic. The way he draws the moves look brutal. Some of the recognizable finishers just look devastating. When he draws a character performing a dive, it legit felt like they were frozen in time because of how energetically the bouts the preceded it were. And Cobrasun’s design is sick as hell. I don’t have enough words for how good it is.
And Mike Spicer wasn’t slouching with the colors either. They fit so well and accentuate the art which shouldn’t be a shock as the two have worked together on multiple projects. Rus Wooton nails the lettering as well. The SFX have a real crunch to them and the logo is on point. It’s just a really well-crafted comic in every sense.
Reading this hit me in the same way I Kill Giants did the first time I read it. They aren’t similar in a way that I can articulate but the emotions it hit were the same. It’s the kind of book that I hope I can make someday. It’s very aspirational and just reaffirms my love of comics as a medium and again shows how comics can be dope as hell.
And also, a special shout out to Kota Ibushi and Tomohiro Ishii’s match in the 2018 G1 Climax. Not only did you have a banger match, you also apparently inspired a banger comic.
