INCHING TOWARDS OFFICIAL

LegalDispatch 0.96

Apr 26, 2024

Howdy.

Well, I’m bathing in the afterglow of this week’s Supreme Court hearings on abortion access and absolute presidential immunity. When I was in law school and for about two decades thereafter, I revered the Supreme Court. More than that, I had faith in it. The founding fathers had brilliantly and successfully established a branch of government — the federal judiciary — that existed, if not above politics, than at least outside of it.

Doesn’t feel like that so much these days, does it?

Here’s a scenario for you: The Court issues a decision that gives a president immunity for so-called “official acts” like, as Trump’s attorney argued, inciting an insurrection to stay in office. Cut to 2028. Trump has been reelected (thank you, Gen Z!) and nearing the end of his second term in office. But those pesky criminal cases — to say nothing of cases stemming from whatever he’s done during his second term — still linger and it would be just safer to, y’know, remain in office. All he has to do is incite an(other) insurrection.

And the conservatives justices on the Court were strongly signaling that Trump v. United States (2024) establishes the precedent of immunity for such an act.

Not that the Roberts Court seems all that concerned with precedent these days, but ask any woman in America and she’ll tell you that the Court’s operational philosophy these days is “Precedent for me, but not for thee.”

WORK UPDATE

It occurs to me that I haven’t done one of these in a while. Here’s what I’ve been up to these past few weeks:

Rewrites on PROJECT MARBLE, a script doctoring job on a feature.
Story Area doc (like a short synopsis) for a TV pilot for a streamer which we’ll call PROJECT ATLANTIC.
Finished the lettering draft of the first issue and the first draft of the second issue of the PROJECT RECURSION creator-owned comic series.
Embarked on a series outline for a new ongoing comic series we’ll call PROJECT COUNCIL.
Finished and revised a pitch and visual deck for PROJECT GLOBAL, a TV pitch.

WWW.MARCGUGGENHEIM.COM

In my seemingly never-ending promotional efforts for In Any Lifetime, I’ve launched my very first website in over 10 years: marcguggenheim.com.

The site was designed and built by my friends at xuni.com. I think they did a fantastic job.

The site contains the usual kinds of things — review of past work and so forth — but I also wanted to include some interesting nuggets. So if you go to the Contact/Newsletter/Media page and scroll to the bottom, you’ll find a section called “Miscellany.” It includes — for shits and giggles and maybe a little education — a sample comic book script (X-Men: Days of Future Past-Doomsday #1) and the spec scripts for The West Wing and Star Trek: Voyager that I wrote when I was trying to break into the biz.

My plan is to add to this section periodically as ideas for content occur to me. (For example, I’ve got a prose Spider-Man story I’ve been sitting on for years.)

GREEN LANTERN

Well, there still hasn’t been an official announcement — and I don’t know if there will be; it’s only a short story, after all — of my short story in Green Lantern #13, but DC Comics’ July solicits made it semi-official:

I know that’s not the highest res image, so here’s the info:

GREEN LANTERN #13
Written by JEREMY ADAMS and MARC GUGGENHEIM
Art by FERNANDO PASARIN and MATTHEW CLARK
Cover by ARIEL COLÓN
Variant covers by SALVADOR LARROCA and GLEB MELNIKOV
1:25 variant cover by CHUMA HILL
Artist Spotlight Variant cover by JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ
$4.99 US | 40 pages | Variant $5.99 US (card stock)
ON SALE 7/10/24
HAL JORDAN IS THE LATEST CASUALTY OF AMANDA WALLER!
De-powered and back on Earth, Hal needs to find a way to get to the new power battery and recharge—but Thaaros has other plans, and now Hal is being hunted by the most dangerous aliens on the planet!
PLUS: The secret origin of LORD PREMIERE THAAROS, ruler of the United Planets, is at last revealed!

CENTENNIAL APPROACHING

As of this dispatch, we only have three more editions before the 100th newsletter. I’d love to make it special for all of you who have supported LegalDispatch thus far. If you have any suggestions, please sound off in the comments.

Leave a comment

Q&A

Craig Byrne:

The storyboards for that crossover have me wondering: Was there ever a concern that Hawkman and Hawkgirl looked a bit too much like Wolverine with those helmets? I mean, they looked like great Wolverine helmets, but, you know.

I do know. And, man, was getting those helmets right a real ordeal. And, to your point, I don’t think we ever got them completely right. But — and this may surprise you — I wish they’d been more Wolverine-esque. But more in the John Byrne vein:

Wolverine (John Byrne) | Wolverine comic art, Wolverine artwork, Wolverine art

However, when we originally tried that, it didn’t look right:

So we pulled back. Maybe too much or in the wrong direction. Like I said, those helmets were a bitch. Here’s some more process photos/designs for the Hawks:

Really wanted to go with this one, but the helmet posed insurmountable problems with the digi-double.

On a similar note: Who would dictate which characters got Funko! Pop figurines? Was always odd to me that Hawkman had one yet we never got, say, a Beebo.

You’re gonna make me cry all over my keyboard aren’t you, Craig?

The short answer is that I have no idea who made those decisions. Suffice it to say, they never made any sense to me and the lack of merchandise/consumer products for, say, Beebo always suggested a strong aversion to, well, money.

WOOKIEEPEDIA

No, that’s not a typo. Wookieepedia is a Wikipedia for the entire Star Wars Universe. Apart from the folks at LucasFilm, this is the most comprehensive and thorough source of information considering all things Star Wars. I daresay that it’s impossible to (safely) write anything SW-related these days without checking your story math against this site.

Back at Megacon Orlando, I had the privilege of meeting Julie, one of the geniuses who works on the site. We did a little interview the other day which you can check out below:

CENTENNIAL APPROACHING

As of this edition, we only have three regular dispatches before hitting magic Number One-Hundred. I’d love to do something special to mark the occasion but ideas have proven elusive. If you have a suggestion or request, please sound off in the comments.

LegalDispatch

INCHING TOWARDS OFFICIAL

LegalDispatch 0.96

Discussion about this post