FIVE IN A ROW

LegalDispatch 0.5

Well, I’ve managed to make it five newsletters in a row. This is actually starting to feel real and I have to say, it’s been a fun little experiment so far. Writing a weekly newsletter — scheduled to drop at the end of each week — is paying the dividend of prompting me to take stock of the week and think about the one upcoming.

So let’s get into it…

The big news this week was the release of the first issue of Last Flight Out. The response has been, quite frankly, overwhelming. I’m told it sold out at Diamond (the major comic book distributor) as well as Midtown Comics and TFAW (the two largest comic book retailers). Particularly gratifying was the fact that it received the best reviews of anything I’ve done in sixteen years of writing comics. Even the two “worst” reviews (according to Comic Book Roundup) rated it 4 out of 5 and said the story “manages to capture the current zeitgeist.” I’ll take it!

In terms of original writing, this week was mainly focused on writing a ten-page comic story for one of the Big 2. For those keeping score (i.e., read a previous newsletter), this and the script/outline mentioned in the previous newsletter constitute my first comic work-for-hire in quite some time and I’m having a blast.

This particular story is rather straightforward, but the way it’s told is anything but. In fact, I fully expected [redacted] to jettison it outright because the conceit is so “out there.” I employed a technique I’d attempted only once before with [redacted] but on a much more ambitious/aggressive scale. I’m really excited to see how this one turns out.

I know it seems (to me at least) like my focus has been comic books lately and while that’s arguably true, I also revised a feature pitch this week and I’m 98% finished with the television pitch for PROJECT GRANITE. I just need to finish up the deck, but I’m writing this newsletter instead because, priorities.

I have a bunch of projects on the 10 and 15 yard lines in terms of being completed, so my goal for the next week to two weeks is to be very diligent about working steadily and getting my decks cleared. Fingers crossed. Once I finish the PROJECT GRANITE deck, the next item up on the docket is the (similarly-codenamed but different except for setting) PROJECT MARBLE (another feature film pitch).

This week, I finished the audiobook of Billy Summers, the prolific Stephen King’s latest novel. I wasn’t digging it at the beginning, but that’s because I didn’t see where King was going with it. But once the table-setting is done, the narrative takes off like a rocket ship and ends with a narrative jiu jitsu move that is as brilliant as it is elegant.

I also absolutely loved Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. It’s the best standalone Marvel movie since Black Panther and there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s even better than BP. (ducks) Plus, the way 2014’s All Hail the King seamlessly links up to it (and it to HTTK) is just the latest universe-creation clinic Marvel is schooling everyone in.

I’m in a pandemic state of mind (who isn’t these days?), so here’s a listen to a song I wrote at the start of the pandemic sung by my phenomenally talented friend (and piano tutor) Laura Vecchione.

I designed these graphics today for the aforementioned PROJECT GRANITE deck. This thing’s barely yet a pitch, much less an actual, sold project, so I’m straining the definition of a “sneak peek” but what the heck…

That’s it for me this week. Thank you all (well, both of you) for subscribing!

Be good to each other.

Best,

Marc

New York, New York

9.10.21