AMARTITHI 2023

On January 31, 1990, I sat just outside Meher Baba's Tomb-Shrine in Meherabad, India, my head resting against the cool stone, surrounded by thousands of His dear ones, all of us joined in fifteen minutes of silence to commemorate the day when—twenty-one years earlier—the Avatar of the Age dropped His body to live on in the hearts of His lovers. It was a profound, unique, and unforgettable experience that bypassed the mind and settled into the deeps of my soul.

It lives there still.

Wishing a blessed Amartithi to my Meher Baba family around the world.

RETURN OF THE CREATURES

James Gunn has announced the first slate of DC movie and TV projects under his aegis and it would be a massive understatement to say I was surprised when I found out one of them is an animated TV series—all episodes written by Gunn—based on the Creature Commandos.

Creature Commandos was something I created when I first got into the business. I cooked it up as a pitch for Paul Levitz, editor of Weird War Tales, maybe six months after I started selling stories to the DC anthology books. It was a no brainer. The book was called Weird War—so what would be more perfect than classic monsters fighting Nazis in World War II?

Then came the infamous DC Implosion, when a good chunk of the comics line was gutted.  I was out of work there for something like nine months, so the "monsters fighting WW II" idea, which I never had a chance to pitch to Paul, was tucked away...but not forgotten. After I got back in the DC door, I started working with the brilliant writer/editor Len Wein (who went on to become both my mentor and dear friend), who'd taken over Weird War. Len was looking for an ongoing series for the book, I told him about Creature Commandos (don't think it had that title then. Len and I might have come up with it together) and he went for it, assigning the great Pat Broderick to bring the characters to visual life.

It’s amazing that, after all these years…decades!...these obscure characters from so early in my career are having a comeback. (In what form? Time will tell. And, no, I have no insider info.) 

 I look forward to seeing what Gunn & Company have planned.

OF MEN AND GODS

My friend Omaha Perez just launched a Kickstarter for his amazing graphic novel, Boddhisatva.  I enthusiastically wrote the foreword and you can read it below.  If you can, please support this worthy project.                                                                             

How to describe a graphic novel that evokes the sacred intensity of the Hindu epics, Jack Kirby’s cosmic fantasies, and Philip K Dick’s reality-shredding visions? Perhaps I just did. No, wait: Let’s add a John Lennon soundtrack with a Grateful Dead jam occasionally wafting in the background. Now we have something approximating the book you hold in your hands.

I first became aware of Boddhisatva some years ago. I was at a convention—either San Diego or Wonder Con, I don’t recall which—and a shadowed figure emerged from the crowd and, without stopping, tossed a comic book onto my table. I heard a voice—let’s imagine it echoed majestically from worlds beyond ours—say something like, “I think you’ll enjoy this.” And then this mysterious figure was once again swallowed by the throng—or perhaps ascended to the astral realms he called home.

Okay, it wasn’t Indra, Lord of the Fourth Heaven I encountered that day, it was writer/artist Omaha Perez—and, being familiar with my work, he guessed, correctly, that a story combining all the elements mentioned above would hit my sweet spot. I love writing, and reading, tales that explore personal identity—the eternal, essential question “Who Am I?”—and the very nature of reality, slipping into the cracks between what we take the universe to be and the strange and wonderful place it truly is. I was delighted to discover that Boddhisatva did all that and more. It’s an epic tale of men and gods, the sacred and profane, the grotesque and the unspeakably beautiful.

But nothing I write here can truly prepare you for what’s to come in this updated collection of one of the comic book forms most unique and memorable epics, produced by one of our most unique and memorable talents. So stop listening to me and take John Lennon’s advice, cribbed from Timothy Leary (who cribbed it from The Tibetan Book of the Dead): “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream…” Let Boddhisatva wash over you, seeping into heart and soul.

It’s a journey worth taking and one you’ll long remember.

Foreword ©copyright 2023 J.M. DeMatteis

AND THE HUNT GOES ON

It's a new year and there's a new issue of Spider-Man: The Lost Hunt coming your way on Wednesday. Here's the hype, straight from Marvel:

"Powerless! Peter must defend himself and MJ from the shadow that has fallen over them and their home. What powerful ally does Peter meet, and how are they related to the man hunting Spider-Man? And how does it all tie into the legacy of Kraven the Hunter? Find out as the hunt continues!" 

And here are some preview pages from the story. Enjoy!