Braving the gauntlet of tentpole events, off-the-radar releases, and a non-stop avalanche of movies, tv, comics, and other things that are bad for you is DoomRocket’s HOT PRESS. This week: saying goodbye to Ian McGinty, and other less important things.
by Jarrod Jones. I’d like to take a moment to talk about Ian McGinty, the comics artist of Adventure Time, Rocko’s Modern Life, and Welcome to Showside fame who passed away suddenly this week at the age of 38.
Ian was one of the first creators to come to DoomRocket when I was just beginning to write about comics more seriously. It was 2016 and Ian was promoting Welcome to Showside, a creator-owned series he was publishing through Z2 Comics that featured all the visual hallmarks I’d come to love from his work. “Monsters, horror, spooky skulls, kick-ass girls, demon kids, just things I’m interested in!” he told former DR contributor Stefania Rudd, in what was our first-ever interview with an actual comics creator. When it came to running a comics site I didn’t really know what I was doing back then — I still don’t — but Ian put his trust in us and I loved him for that.
This remains one of my favorite pieces of Ian’s:
It’s a wraparound cover for Dave Scheidt and Scoot McMahon’s Wrapped Up #2. I wrote more about it here. If you needed one example of how fun, funny, righteous, and energizing Ian could be in person, here’s a vivid blast of cartoon shorthand.
We didn’t keep in touch as much as I would have liked. We goofed around occasionally on social media, and I made sure to hit up his booth at whatever cons we both attended. The last time we spoke to each other was in 2020 — too long ago — as Ian was preparing a new semi-autobiographical graphic novel called Screamo with artist Chrissy Hoppes. I don’t think Screamo has yet seen the light of day, but I sure hope it does at some point; it’s a remembrance of that gnarly era in so many of our lives when the emo scene was fracturing into smaller, wilder subgenres, an era in which Ian spent a chunk of these formative years adrift. He talks about a few of his experiences in our last interview together, which you can read here. Here, Ian’s being Ian: frank, funny, sanguine about the work at hand, and enthusiastic about the work to come.
It occurs to me that I have an unpublished interview with Ian that we recorded at an Emerald City con years and years ago. I’ll have to see if I can find it. I don’t know why it never was transcribed and published; maybe I was unhappy with it, or maybe the audio wasn’t great for transcription. Or maybe, and this sucks, I thought I’d get another shot to talk to Ian someday.
Ian’s sudden death has inspired the comics industry to collectively air their grievances on Twitter via #ComicsBrokeMe, a trending avenue through which creators can share the people and practices of the business that have diminished their passion for the medium over the years. Ian’s last tweet, which he blasted on the app mere days before he left us, is a creatively energizing reminder that, among the comics industry’s many shortcomings, there are and have always been those in this business who want little more in life than to make cool stuff with good people. Go make something with someone you believe in; Ian would’ve. But take care of yourself as you do it.
My best to his family and friends.
In preparation for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, MJ and I have been making time for Dr. Jones and his various pre-Crystal Skull adventures. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, The Last Crusade, we’ve run the gamut and you can get more of my thoughts on those movies over on my Letterboxd account. We had the chance to see Raiders in a theater, which is the optimum way to watch such an inventive, untamed, earth-shifting work of filmmaking. A sweaty, grimy Harrison Ford pursuing perilous plunder set to John Williams — that’s cinema, baby.
We watched Doom at home, where we both shifted uncomfortably on our couch during that dinner sequence and that bug-fuck-nuts Bond-style opener. The darker stuff of Doom, like its infernal imagery, Jones’ descent into madness, and a brutal whipping sequence just before it, is still pretty cool, I’d say. Crusade, the squishiest of Jones movies (so far, anyway), we watched at home, too, because nobody was screening it in Chicago and I cannot tell you why. Are prints that hard to get? there’s a new Indy movie coming out, people! Anyway, we’ll be watching that fourth installment, too, sometime before Destiny drops; maybe it’ll have improved in the years since? I don’t know — Crusade‘s literal ride into the sunset still feels like that’s where this series should have ended in my opinion.
Destiny is possibly the film I’m least pumped about seeing this summer (among the movies I pay mind to, that is); I don’t share an affinity with the character like others do, and I’m certainly no Lucasfilm fanboy. Besides, the prospects of an Indiana Jones movie without Steven Spielberg directing it feels wrong, James Mangold or no James Mangold. I always thought Indiana Jones would be the one venerated franchise that’d be left well enough alone — until 2008, that is. And here we are, again, 15 years later. Seems fitting, somehow, that studio scavengers would pillage the memory of Dr. Jones for the purposes of profit.
On the DoomRocket front, we have reintroduced our video game review arm LOAD FILE with new DR writer Aaron Amendola. Diligent DoomRocket readers will remember Aaron’s contribution a few years back when he tackled a certain sticking point in Crystal Dynamics’ 2015 reboot of Tomb Raider. I enjoyed Aaron’s balanced, fair-minded take then, and I’m so glad to finally have him on board now. Expect more from LOAD FILE in the year ahead, but in the meantime, enjoy his solid take on Mojiken’s dramatically 90s side-scroller A Space for the Unbound, and his interview with the voice of Zelda herself, Patricia Summersett.
More fantastic things to read from DoomRocket this week: check out Arpad Okay’s genial review of Skip and Loafer, Vol. 1, Misaki Takamatsu’s charming teen life manga; Kate Kowalski has written a striking overview of Lonnie Nadler and Jenna Cha’s big horror collaboration, The Sickness; and if I may toot my own horn for a second, you can read my takes on Ed Piskor’s not-so-gory new Red Room chapter, Ben Affleck’s outing in Robert Rodriguez’s mind-warping dud Hypnotic, and that new Spider-Verse movie people seem to love so much.
Note: For part one of this series, click this. For previous installments, click this.
THE ISSUE: Superman Annual #5 (“Outbreak, Part Six.”)
THE TEAM: Dan Jurgens (writer); David Lapham (pencils); Mike Machlan (inks); Glenn Whitmore (colors); John Costanza (letters). Edited by Jennifer Frank and Mike Carlin. Published by DC.
THE GIST: Superman is dead, and the void left in Metropolis by his absence is felt more keenly due to the unnerving presence of a caped cyborg who claims to be the one true Man of Steel. As this mechanical mystery man attempts to prove his bona fides with the local bigwigs (namely, Inspector Henderson and Lex Luthor II), two Bloodlines aliens, Venev and Gemir, come to the Big Apricot to feast on its cosmopolitan offerings. Among their victims: the late Sasha Green, resurrected by Gemir’s gluttonous bite, gifted a second chance at life and the powers to mimic myriad identities.
NEW BLOOD: Let’s talk about Myriad.
Sasha Green first appeared during the “Funeral for a Friend” storyline as the martial arts instructor for Lex Luthor II. Diligent readers will recall that the young Luthor — at the time a guise for the original Lex Luthor, cloned into a younger body — worked out his grief for his fallen enemy by murdering Sasha, who had previously knocked his ass to the mat in the training room. If you’d never read Superman Annual #5, Sasha’s death would have been little more than a standout example of Luthor’s cruelty, yet another reason to make sure he got his comeuppance (which he would, in the landmark Action Comics #700). Once Luthor finally fell, Sasha — not to mention all the other people who died so Luthor could hold on to power — might find a semblance of justice.
Well, Superman Annual #5 decided to dig her up. If bringing Sasha back to life as the New Blood called Myriad was Dan Jurgens’ plan for the character all along or he was simply on deadline for this goofy-ass event issue and needed someone — anyone — for his “New Blood,” I can’t say. I can say Sasha’s return serves the events of the ongoing Superman comics more than it does anything for Bloodlines; in fact, once Gemir stumbles across Sasha’s decaying body in a Metropolis dump and gives her his power-bestowing bite, the Art Adams-designed aliens take a powder for the rest of the issue. There’s no big Myriad/Cyborg Superman team-up, no Cyborg vs. Aliens fight. There’s just Lex Luthor feeling his grip on Metropolis begin to slip for a few pages.
Sasha’s death was disturbing, and her return as Myriad is a complicated goof. I’m still trying to figure out if a Bloodlines bite can resurrect people or if that’s just an unspoken aspect of Sasha’s metahuman powers.
Anyway, Sasha earns her moniker through an ability to absorb the personality of anyone she touches — and maybe their likenesses too, for a time, I can’t say. Her first victim (?) is a housewife she encounters at a Metropolis health club, and we see Sasha turn into this woman for a time before reverting back. Later, she touches a gang member but doesn’t change into his form — though she does inherit his yen for the ladies. Plus, this kid is shot right as Sasha touches him, so she feels the searing pain of his wound right up until she kills him with her bare hands to be free of it. So psychic links are a part of her powers, too.
Is Sasha — not Myriad, but Sasha — a killer? She kills again before the issue is out (see WORST BIT), and we don’t see much of her again to assess what’s in her mind and heart as she becomes this New Blood anti-hero type. We know she’s an amnesiac, so the one thing she doesn’t have is memories of who Sasha Green was, but deep down why is it so easy for her to kill, beyond touching the minds of killers? Isn’t there some sort of interior conflict there? Worse than being a footnote in Lex Luthor’s story is being one of the more forgettable characters of Bloodlines. If she had to come back from the dead at all, Sasha Green’s story deserved more oomph than what she got in Superman Annual #5.
BEST BIT: Watching Lex Luthor squirm as the Cyborg Superman and Inspector Henderson get close to the truth of Sasha’s death. This is the real hook of this annual; Superman’s dead and so is Sasha — Lex is sitting pretty. Then here comes four guys claiming to be his hated enemy, one of them a formidable cyborg who has no ethical qualms about hacking his corporate database where he stashes all his secrets. And what’s he doing? Investigating the death of a woman he killed just to feel strong, a random, murderous flex come back to haunt him. Superman comics once had a sense of soapy fun; ongoing subplots like Lex Luthor II’s murderous deeds were a sensationally sordid subplot for the otherwise upbeat neverending battle that was the Triangle Era.
WORST BIT: Myriad! Her powers stink, and there’s no knowing what they’re meant to be in service of — nor is there a way to suss out her plans for this second life she’s been given by the end of the issue. Among her three inherited personalities, two are killers and one’s a sweetly dotty housewife — the cool, confident Sasha Green doesn’t seem to factor into who she is now. Also: when she discovers that her doctor is actually a Luthor-hired assassin, Myriad, via psychic link, tells this phony doc to kill herself. Two wrongs don’t make a right, Sasha!
FUN FACTS: There’s a Myriad in the Amalgam Universe, a character fusion of DC’s Triplicate Girl and Marvel’s Multiple Man (sorry, Sasha) and member of the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099; the mystery of Sasha’s death would eventually end up on the desk of one Lois Lane in future Super-issues; Myriad teams up with Tommy Monaghan — aka Hitman — in Bloodbath #2 (though we’ll save her fate for a later installment); Cyborg Superman is, in reality, Hank Henshaw, a techno-maniac who has a real hate-on for the real Superman; if you’ve read this issue then you know the Cyborg is using then-President Bill Clinton’s endorsement as a source of legitimacy (they met in Superman #79!); there’s no explicit mention of Steel’s Bloodlines brush-up in Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #2, but we get the impression that their nightly feasts are beginning to pile up in Metropolis — literally.
DOES IT RIP? As a surprise plot-twist issue for devoted fans of the Superman comics from this time, this is a solid issue. Largely, it’s a follow-up on one of Lex Luthor’s more cruel and vindictive acts, and when Jurgens and Lapham show Lex sweating over the consequences of his actions due to Sasha’s sudden return, it’s a hoot to read. (Also: it rocks to see the mastermind behind Stray Bullets direct his noirish gaze at Metropolis.)
Less impressive is how this issue ties into the bigger Bloodlines schematic; after six long annuals, we’re still in the dark as to what these Bloodlines aliens might do to secure their new Earthly meal ticket. Is world conquest on the table? Do these galactic goofs have any ambitions beyond slurping on spinal fluid? This issue doesn’t bother with any of that. They nibble on Sasha, reanimate her corpse in the doing, and fly off to their next meal. Maybe they’re getting bored from all this set-up, too.
NEXT UP: Green Lantern Annual #2, where Hal Jordan investigates a series of slaughters in Coast City, and DC introduces the New-Blood-iest New Blood yet: Nightblade!
That’s all I got for this week. Hug your friends. Read any good comics lately? Drop them in the comments or write me: ja****@********et.com.
More HOT PRESS:
HOT PRESS 4/12/23: The final sprint of The Flash, Peter Bagge’s Hate, and Anima’s DC debut
HOT PRESS 2/16/23: Top Ten, quick thoughts on that Flash trailer, and the devilish DC debut of Argus
HOT PRESS 1/26/23: New Superman, a DoomRocket Update, and more Bloodlines
