True believers unite
Welcome to the Amazing Journey
Today is Wednesday, which from time immemorial until last year1 universally meant one thing: New Comic Book Day. Across this great nation, Wednesday Warriors will journey into their local comic book shops to pick up their pulls of the latest issues of their favorite ongoing series, new one-shots, line-wide events, and trade paperbacks. They peruse the shelves, chat with their LCS (local comic book shop) employees, pick up a title they hadn’t previously heard about, and then return home to read their haul of books.
Later in the week, they will scan the comic news sites and blogs for the latest info about new series, variant covers, second printings, and more, before trekking back to the shop the following Wednesday and repeating the process all over again.
As a relative newcomer to comics (stay tuned next week for my origin story), slowly learning the intricacies, history, and traditions of the Wednesday Warrior clan has been an enlightening experience.
And so, as I begin the next stage of that journey, setting off on the path toward publishing my first comic, I thought I would document the process and explore the realm of comic books in an all-new section of my newsletter entitled:
No, it’s not an homage to The Who’s track on the hit album Tommy, it’s a play on two Marvel anthology titles: Amazing Fantasy and Journey Into Mystery. Those of you who are up on your comic history likely already know this, but Amazing Fantasy #15 featured the first appearance of Spider-Man and Journey Into Mystery #83 featured the first appearance of Thor. As it happens, both of these issues came out 60 years ago next month.
Every Wednesday, I will touch on a comics-related topic, such as how I got into comics (coming next week), writing the first issue of a series, what it’s like to run a comic book store, working with artists, and how writing comics is different from writing prose.
I’ll also highlight the week’s new releases, indie comics, and backlist titles I’m reading.
For now, I’d love to hear what comic you’re currently reading (whether one out this week, 20 years ago, or somewhere in between), as well as what topics you’d like to see me cover in future installments!
What I’m reading
X-Men Red #4: Mutants are now on Mars! How they got there is a story for another day (or read last year’s Planet-Size X-Men), but all you need to know for today is Al Ewing is tearing up the Red Planet.
Monstress #41: Majorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s ground-breaking series wraps up its current arc and I can’t really say anything more than that. If you love fantasy stories set in a semi-industrial setting with sentient animals, crazy and sometimes grotesque magic, and gorgeous artwork, then go pick up volume 1 of Monstress at your LCS (or mine) or your local library and get caught up!
Eight Billion Genies #2: What if at exactly the same moment, everyone on earth gets a genie and one wish? Charles Soule and Ryan Browne’s new series will explore that crazy question over eight issues, with each issue taking us slightly into the future. The first issue took place eight seconds and eight minutes after the mass-genie event, and so issue 2 will take place eight days later.
Variants!
One thing that comics has that fiction doesn’t is variant covers galore! Here are three variants that I’ll be adding to my collection this week.
X-Men Red #4 Jen Bartel Hellfire Gala variant. Jen has her own Substack newsletter, which is a mix of her gorgeous artwork and commentary on current events and pop culture:
She-Hulk #4 Russell Dauterman Costume variant. Russell is the regular cover artist for X-Men Red but he has been killing it with these costume variants. Next up is the Invisible Woman on Fantastic Four #47!
The Variants #1 Ashley Witter variant. Jessica Jones stars in an all-new series where she meets variants of herself from across the Multiverse, so it seemed only fitting to include here! Be sure to check out Phil Noto’s gorgeous A cover as well!
Finally, one bit of housekeeping, if you visit the main page of ARC Worlds, you may seen the different sections at the top. Those sections aren’t just sections, however; they are actually separate sub-newsletters.
Which means, if you aren’t into comics, you can switch off future Amazing Journey emails and only get the NYC Questing Guild-related emails. I won’t be insulted.
To customize which sub-newsletters you receive, simply hit your profile picture at the top right corner of the page, hit Manage Subscriptions, and then scroll down to Notifications. Select or unselect which newsletters you want to receive and voila! You’re good to go.
Until next time, Guild members!
Last year, a certain unnamed comic publisher moved their weekly new issue release date to Tuesday, creating more work for comic book retailers and making the term “Wednesday Warrior” not that accurate.
Eight Billion Genies sounds interesting. Will have to hunt that down!