You Knew It Was Coming: Lethem Hired By Marvel

I have high hopes, but whether it's good or not, I'm glad he's putting his money where his mouth is instead of just using comics for pulp credibility or nostalgia symbols (if that is indeed what he's doing in Fortress of Solitude and Men & Cartoons, neither of which I've read yet).

fortress is of course playing with the genre "Great American Novel" amongst others

Finally got around to reading the first issue. Pretty good! It didn't blow minds or anything, but it's way solid and the writing wasn't too wordy or look-at-me (and the art seems pretty unique?). Never read the original.

i like how the cover is kind of masquerading as 1x indie comic

HOLY S#!T

I really enjoy that Omega series!

Went into the CITY to deliver my 'Omega the Unknown' cover to Marvel.For some reason I thought it was on Fifth Ave at 17th, but it was 37th. When things like this happen I tend to take the long walk and look at the city, which I did.

Lots of sights. Smart people, dumb people, pretty people, ugly people, freezing hotdog and sausage vendors, smokers hanging out in clumps outside buildings like cranes and jackals by watering holes, Yellow cabs nowadays with designy flowers on the hood running red lights, polite drivers deferring to pedestrians, pedestrians abusing the privilege, giant hairy ugly dwarf smoking a stogie 'blocking the box' with his Hummer2, the Empire State Building from underneath where you can't see it as happens to ants passing by Paul Bunyan's foot, guys trying in vain to collar passersby to discuss global warming, hip hop dudes in million dollar leather jackets with full congo jungles scenes embroidered thereupon on their way back to the ghetto, crazy faddists in those skeleton body hoodies which when zipped up become grim reaper burkas, normal looking girls with babies they were crazy enough to have by these calaveras, fucking idiots on cel phones not minding personal space. The reds, the grays, the blues of NYC in winter. The beautiful fresh cold air gridded with contrails.

At Marvel they directed me around the corner to some vaguer hole in the wall they called 'the mezzanine'. Mezzanine? It was a door through a janitorial area. There was a locked glass door at the end of the corridor with a card entry slot. There on the floor, by the door, was a pile of packages, but also some thrown-out pizza boxes in the same pile. I knocked politely about 3 times then banged the shit out of it until the irate kid who was supposed to be manning that station appeared, yelling at me that I could've thrown it on the discarded pizza boxes and I told him no thanks. Is this any way to run a Death star?

posted by gary

so Omega's over now. it didn't get less convoluted at the end, and the silent finale felt more like petering out than the affecting conclusion he was probably going for, but there was some really good stuff along the way.

I gotta reread the whole thing - I didn't quite suss out what was going on there in the last issue.

OK - this was great - like really great. Mind is blown. But I also have to admit that I have no idea what that book was actually about. Can anyone help me?

(also I've never read anything else of Lethem's except Gun, With Occasional Music like 15 years ago, so I have no idea what frame of reference he's coming from exactly - guess I should read Fortress of Solitude?)

i would rather see chris claremont writing for the new yorker, frankly
― strng hlkngtn, Monday, May 2, 2005 9:39 PM (4 years ago)
^when you're right, you're right.

I've read this at last, about a decade after it ended. I found it pretty terrific.

I was thinking just the other day that it was time Omega The Unknown came back. I suspect that the new series is going to be Deep Thoughts about Comics and Childhood and Masculinity though rather than pot-fuelled stories of Omega vs the space mutants.
― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, May 3, 2005

Tom Ewing is admirably knowledgeable about comics but his prediction in this one case wasn't correct. The comic has nothing directly to say about masculinity (which come to think of it has never been a great JL theme as such), and doesn't play on nostalgia and 1970s childhood as Tom seemed to fear it would. It's pretty much a self-contained exciting adventure with intelligence and digressions. Though I think I agree with nhex above that some of what is actually happening is not that clear.

I remember loving this, although it was over a decade ago since I last read it. IIRC it's a well-drawn and well-plotted coming-of-age story and at the time it made me think, why aren't more comics like this?

At the same time I kind of put it alongside the Lapham Batman story, City of Crime, as a really exciting longform story where the author seems to be above sticking the landing on the end of the story.

E.g. It's 11 issues of complicated plotting followed by a will-this-do final issue