THE LAST LOST HUNT!

In less than a week, the final issue of Spider-Man: The Lost Hunt hits shops. It's a three-way showdown between Spidey, Gregor, and Aja Orisha. No, make that four way—because Mary Jane isn't one to stand on the sidelines.

I've had a blast with this series and I hope you enjoy our concluding chapter. (Will there be more new Spidey tales ahead for me? Time will tell...)

MILLAR TIME!

Had a very lengthy, deep-dive conversation with comic book great Mark Millar for his Millar Time podcast. We went down some familiar roads—talking about my career and favorite projects—and some unexpected: discussing God, life, the universe, and everything. Big thanks to Mark for a delightful conversation. Hope you all enjoy it!

GEEKTOWN

Here's Part One of a two part conversation I had with the Welcome to Geektown podcast, discussing the early days of my career, as well as some ancicent Spider-Man story about Kraven the Hunter.  Enjoy!

Update:  Part Two has been released and you can listen to it here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AVATAR MEHER BABA!

"To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance and benefit of others, by expressing, in the world of forms, truth, love, purity and beauty—this is the sole game which has intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments in themselves can have no lasting importance."

Avatar Meher Baba

 

ALERT!

Every once in a while, some imposter accounts show up on Instagram pretending to be me, so let's keep this short and sweet:  My ONLY Instagram account is jm.dematteis.  That's it.  Any others are fakes.  Please BLOCK and REPORT them.  Thanks!

COMIC BOOK COSMOS

I’ve been thinking about comic books these past few days.  I know, I know, it’s what I do for a living, so I’m always thinking about comics—but I’m thinking specifically of the incredible impact they’ve had on my life.  

As a kid, comics (and I include the comic strips that were my introduction to the form; reading the New York Daily News comics section every Sunday was a Weekly Event of Major Magnitude) entertained me, nurtured me, provided an escape from family dysfunction, exploded my imagination, inspired my creative self, and helped transform me into a voracious reader.  For that alone, the gods of comics deserve my eternal gratitude.

The icing on the cake is that, as an adult, they’ve provided me with a still-flourishing career, introduced me to an extraordinary group of friends, fans, and collaborators, opened doors into creative opportunities in television, film, and
prose—and so much more.

Not bad for a form of entertainment that, for a good part of my life, was looked down upon with mockery and disdain by many, if not most, adults.  Of course, comics have gone on to completely conquer the worlds of film, television, and video games, absolutely dominating our pop culture consciousness; but, for me, it all comes back to a kid sprawled out on the living room floor in his Brooklyn apartment—eyes wide, mouth agape—so entranced by those colorful pages that, like Alice down the rabbit hole, he fell headlong into other worlds and dimensions that quite literally transformed his life. 

So I raise a glass and give thanks to Dondi and Dick Tracy…Casper and Hot Stuff… Superman and Batman…Sgt. Rock, Sgt. Fury, and Sad Sack…Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and, well, the entire population of the Comic Book Cosmos. 

What a wonderful place to live. 

©copyright 2023 J.M. DeMatteis

THE PENULTIMATE HUNT

Spider-Man: The Lost Hunt #4—the penultimate issue in the series—is out Wednesday. Here's the hype, along with some preview pages. Enjoy!

DEATH AND REBIRTH! As Peter finds himself beaten and broken, all seems lost. But who stopped Gregor from landing a killing blow? Find out as we learn about the secret history of the Kravinoff Legacy and the mysterious figure who taught Sergei all he knew!

Written by: J. M. DeMatteis
Art by: Belardino Brabo, Eder Messias, Travis Foreman, Cris Peter, Marguerite Sauvage, Neeraj Menon, Dee Cunniffe
Cover by: Ryan Brown

DeMULTIPLYING!

The other day I shared an image of all the DeMultiverse single issues, and today I have the pleasure of sharing an image of the printed proof for our collected edition that includes all four first issues, a foreword by Tom DeFalco, intros to all the stories by yours truly, development art, scripts—and an amazing Liam Sharp cover.

So proud of this!  I can't wait for our Kickstarter backers to receive their copies!

DeMULTIVERSE DeLIGHTS!

Doing a Kickstarter is kind of like having a pregnant wife. You're so focused on the pregnancy, on the care and comfort of your mate, you sometimes forget that an actual living human being will be in your arms at the end of the process.

Today, thanks to Spellbound Comics' head honcho David Baldy, I received the first printed proofs for our DeMultiverse Kickstarter books and I feel like I just became a father.  To quintuplets!  So let's welcome Wisdom, Layla in the Lands of After, Anyman, The Edward Gloom Mysteries, and Godsend into the world.

I should have a printed proof of the collected edition tomorrow, David will be sending final orders off later this week, and our backers should have books in their hands by early April.  Thanks to David (the hardest working man in show business), to all my extraordinary creative collaborators on these stories...

...and, of course, all the folks who supported the Kickstarter with their hard-earned cash.  This really is a dream come true and we couldn't have done it without you!

MY WITS END

Had a wonderful chat with the Wits End podcast—talking about Jack Kirby, the DeMultiverse, and many other things.  It's embedded below,  Enjoy!

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—and I was out of work there for something like nine months. After I got back in the 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 pitched 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!