Like many people, I am mostly familiar with Darryl Cunningham's work when it comes to non-fiction. Whether he was disproving absurd moon landing conspiracy theories or just relaying the life of a Russian dictator, he did a good job boiling down some complex elements into a fairly digestable narrative. But because I know him from that type of material, I was indeed curious to see what he might do with a straight-up science fiction story.

John of the Night is the story of the titular John, who discovers some "ripples" in space-time that seem to have originated some 3000 years earlier, in the 1960s, but could obliterate the universe. When he goes to inform his boss, though, he almost instantly finds himself at the wrong end of a several starships that blow his station into smithereens. While he and his daughter are able to escape the immediate execution, they have to race to keep ahead of John's boss's attempts to get rid of him. We learn of the war that was started by a group who believe the destruction of this universe will lead to the birth of a new and "perfect" one and that, when it comes to magic, belief is more important than reality. With the help of his daughter, John is able to thwart the universe's greatest assassin and ultimately save everything. Except perhaps himself.

I read the story before reading any background on it. I had no idea what Cunningham's intentions were or how he approached this compared to his non-fiction work. About a third of the way into it, I recall getting the strong sense that it reminded me of Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Obviously, there's little in the way of visual similarity, but the storytelling felt like Cunningham was relaying some of his core ideas about the fundamental nature of mankind, life, and even reality itself through an action-packed story much like Kirby had done in the Fourth World. It's not pontificating and there are in fact several fight scenes which just allow silent storytelling to take place with no monologuing or anything. I got the strong sense that, like Kirby, Cunningham was building up a story around ideas that he couldn't quite express directly. And sure enough, he expressly notes in the back matter that Kirby was a direct inspiration for some of his effort in the book.

What I also liked was Cunningham was able to casually throw in "corrections" to common storytelling problems when it comes to science. For example, at one point John leaves his daughter through a time portal and assumes she'll be able to build her own time machine to find him. And even though it takes her a month to do so, she shows up almost immediately. And that notion of time being, you know, relative remains consistent throughout the story, unlike many who play fast and loose with those kinds of ideas because their creators can't think of a decent way to generate tension otherwise. (I'm looking at you, Back to the Future.)

Despite the shade I'm throwing there, Cunningham does not do that. He doesn't call out any one story or franchise for being "wrong" about how any of that works. In fact, he's got any number of Easter eggs to other time travel/alternate reality stories from Star Trek to Red Dwarf, and from The Wizard of Oz to The Prisoner. There's a slew of background nods if you want to stop for a Where's Waldo style hunt.

On the whole, I thought it was a really interesting story despite the protagonist being kind of an asshole. We get a backstory explaining why eventually, but it's just an explanation, not an excuse. He's still an asshole, even to his own kid. (Which, interestingly, she recognizes and acknowledges, but continues to live with him anyway; but seemingly not in a toxic sort of way strangely.) But John ultimately does play the role of the hero, not only to the universe but also to his daughter and her mother. So as a reader, you still have good reason to cheer him on. And, seemingly as a bonus, Cunningham just so happens to include a lot of his ideas about the nature of reality in the process.

John of the Night should be in shops on September 2, 2026 but you can obviously pre-order it now. It retails for $19.99 US and is being published by Avery Hill. An advance review copy was provided to me by the publisher.

One of the things that's struck me about older comics is some of the cross-media attention they were given. I think many fans are at least nominally familiar with some of the serials that were produced using Superman, Captain Marvel, Captain America, and others, but less well-known are the radio programs that were popular around the same time.

The Adventures of Superman, of course, is one of the more well-known, largely by virtue of the titular character's popularity. He was, arguably, one of the first cross-media phenomenon. The old Fleischer cartoons are certainly well-known as are the serials and later TV show. So I think fans readily roll the notion of a radio show under that umbrella. "He was in all media, so of course he would have a radio show!"

But I don't know that fans today understand the importance and impact radio had back in the day. Unlike comics, radio programs could be listened to collectively and were a communal activity in a way that many other media -- certainly other media of the day -- couldn't be. So to have a character make the transition from comics to radio was a big deal, culturally on par with getting a blockbuster movie today.

Besides Superman, other comic characters that got their own radio programs included Batman, Blue Beetle, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Popeye, Blackstone, Archie, Dick Tracy, Gasoline Alley, Li'l Abner, Little Orphan Annie, Skippy, Terry and the Pirates, Mark Trail, Buster Brown, and the Gumps to name just a few! Perhaps surprisingly, considering how little is spoken of them in comic circles, they continued to be popular up through the 1950s!

What's striking to me is that any of them maintained any level of success at all! After all, comics are very much a visual medium and radio very much is not. Therefore you not only lose the visualizations provided in the strips, but the nature of the storytelling needs to be changed significantly. Think about that sequence from Action Comics #1 where Superman comes up to a locked room and the governor's assistant dares him to knock it down -- the subsequent panel shows Superman doing exactly that but without any dialogue or sound effects. While that sequence could be translated into a radio format, it would require some re-working for the non-visual medium.

I wouldn't mind seeing more writing analyzing how various comics were able to make the transition versus how many simply applied comic strip characters to what were essentially existing radio scripts.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: How I Make Comics Review
https://ift.tt/zi97tYg

Kleefeld on Comics: Some Rat Queens Thoughts
https://ift.tt/jkgNLfC

Kleefeld on Comics: Mitsumasa Anno
https://ift.tt/C4D1EGh

Kleefeld on Comics: Kill Six Billion Demons Paratexts
https://ift.tt/kcVQy9Y

Kleefeld on Comics: Juneteenth Comics
https://ift.tt/A9XpBFE

Juneteenth is a federal holiday here in the US, but you'd barely know it from reading the comics page. These are all the comics -- and two of them argueably aren't actually comics -- that I've found this morning mentioning the day...

About a year and a half ago, I was contacted by Ronja Jokilampi, who was working on their Masters thesis and had some questions relative to my Webcomics book. I tried to answer them as best as I could -- although I have to admit I didn't have great answers then, and I still don't! But they've been working on their thesis since then and I learned last week that they indeed finished and have received their Master’s in Literary Studies! So first off, congrats to Ronja!

More to the point of my blog, though, the title of the thesis is Paratext in Paradox: Paratextual Elements and Functions in the Webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons. The academic study of webcomics is woefully lacking, generally speaking. One of the reviews of my own book noted, as one of his biggest complaints, that there weren't enough academic references in it... but then went on to add that there simply isn't much to reference in the first place! So it's worth noting when we get a thesis paper on webcomics in any capacity. More interesting, though, is that Ronja focuses in particular on the paratexts of Kill Six Billino Demons. The paratexts are basically all the stuff that's part of a webcomic, but not the comic itself! Everything from the ALT text on the images to the web site's FAQ to even the extra material over on an ancillary site like Patreon. I barely touched on paratexts in my book, doing barely more than citing that webcomics can have more options available that traditional comics. As far as I'm aware, Ronja's thesis is the first study looking expressly at webcomics' paratexts and how they're intergrated (or not) with the main comic.

Here's the paper's abstract...

The thesis analyses how Kill Six Billion Demons uses its paratext to expand the webcomic’s narrative toolkit beyond just the comic. The webcomic paratext is used for directing the comic’s interpretation, presenting both supplemental and primary narratives, creating aesthetic and comedic experiences, and breaking the borders between textual and paratextual spaces to create potent narrative effects. Building on the theoretical bases of Genette’s ‘Paratexts’ and Kleefeld’s ‘Webcomics’, Waites’ idea of paratextual narratives, and the categories of paratextual function introduced by Birke and Christ as well as Gross and Latham, the thesis is the first to create an extensive typology of a webcomic’s paratext. It is also the first piece of academic writing to focus on Kill Six Billion Demons, inviting further research on both the webcomic specifically and digital paratexts in general.

The paratext of Kill Six Billion Demons is shown to be unusually robust and influential to its text. While earlier research has claimed that paratexts function primarily to illustrate the author’s intent over the text’s interpretation to the reader, to assist in navigating the work, and to boost its sales, this analysis reveals further functions that challenge our understanding of the paratext as a solely pragmatic tool. The thesis gives examples of creative paratextual functions that demonstrate how the webcomic author can use the varied paratextual spaces that the webpage’s infinite canvas provides in ways that would be unfeasible in print comics. Paratextual space is used for textual functions and vice versa, creating a formal paradox that has the potential to both challenge and expand our contemporary understanding of the paratextual threshold.

The full thesis is available for download from the Helsinki University Library website under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. If you've got any interest in webcomics, it's well worth the read and gets into a LOT of material that I didn't have the space to touch in my book. (Full disclosure, though: my book is cited several times and Ronja gave me a special thanks at the very end.) I've been saying for literally decades now that we need more journalistic and academic discussions about webcomics, and I think we should all support anyone doing exactly that! Go check out Paratext in Paradox and, if you happen to be working on your own thesis, be sure to make some references to it, so we can continue to spread the good word!

The gent at the right is Mitsumasa Anno, a Japanese author and illustrator of children's book. From Wikipedia...

Anno was best known for wordless picture books featuring small, detailed figures. In the "Journey" books, a tiny character travels through a nation's landscape, densely populated with pictures referencing that country's art, literature, culture, and history. Anno's illustrations are often in pen and ink and watercolor, and occasionally incorporate collage and woodcuts. They are intricately detailed, showing a sense of humor as well as an interest in science, mathematics, and foreign cultures. They frequently incorporate subtle jokes and references.

My dad had several of Anno's books when I was a kid and they were truly impressive. I recall pouring over the fine linework and detail he would put into every page. Despite the stories being entirely wordless, they told very clear and concise tales and, in retrospect, very clear comic work told in an extraordinary manner.

I don't think I've ever seen Anno's name in association with comic book storytelling, and thought I ought to call some attention to his work for those who've never really made the connection between his work and the comic medium. My personal favorites were Anno's Italy, Anno's USA and Anno's Britain. Really masterful work, well worth seeking out.

I've seen a fair amount of general press coverage over the past month or so for a crowd-funding campaign for a new Rat Queens game, based on the comic created by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Roc Upchurch. Mostly the fairly usual "just republishing the press release" stuff, but the occasional interview and side commentary and such as well. Clearly based on some relatively aggressive PR work.

And all of it completely uncritical of the creators.

A quick recap if you're unfamiliar... Wiebe and Upchurch first launched Rat Queens in 2013. It's a sword-and-sorcery fantasy about four loud, raucous, sometimes drunk adventurers. That's part of the appeal -- that it feels like a group of friends sitting around the table playing Dungeons & Dragons. The other part of the appeal is that they're all women, so the whole book plays against the stereotype and showcases a form of female empowerment. It sold reasonably well (for an indie type book) when it launched and it quickly developed a devoted following. However, after about a year, Upchurch was arrested for domestic violence.

This was not a matter up for dispute. His wife had visible injuries, and he admitted his wrong-doing. He was ordered to go through six months of a counseling program by the courts. Wiebe "fired" him from Rat Queens, and got Tess Fowler to take up art duties. This is all a matter of public record.

In 2015, Upchurch solicited an interview with CBR in which he admitted -- using mostly passive, third-party language -- that he committed domestic violence and he was trying to do better. It came across to me like a poor man's "mea culpa tour" in which he would say "I'm sorry" and everything would be forgiven so he could return to his career. Except it was only the one interview, and given that Upchurch himself reached out to initiate it -- specifically with a female interviewer -- and that he never actually apologized for his behavior, it fell very short for me. Even moreso when his wife responded on her own blog citing several instances in the interview in which he said things that were provably untrue or misleading with deliberately no context. Contrary to his claim, she noted he'd had almost no interactions with their kids and certainly hadn't offered any financial support, and he hadn't talked at all about how he'd also cheated on her. Upchurch talked a lot about "moving on" and "doing better" but she saw no evidence of that.

One thing Upchurch was upfront about was that he was hoping to use that interview to get back into comics' good graces and start working again. And what came out indepenently later was that Wiebe had been working to get him back on Rat Queens. Which makes sense conceptually, as they were friends and co-creators of the series, but Wiebe was doing that initially without telling Fowler and -- once she learned about it third-hand and confronted him -- he flatly lied to her about it and only tried to back-peddle his words later when he couldn't otherwise weasel out of the lie. She left the book in digust and sold all of the original artwork for it super-cheaply so she could get rid of it and not have to look at/be reminded of that experience ever again. Probably at the insistence of the publisher, Weibe took a year off to give the book what's listed in Wikipedia as a "soft reboot."

(None of the details about Upchurch are mentioned in the Rat Queens Wikipedia page, by the way. It just says "Upchurch left the book after issue #8." There's more information about Fowler's departure and the 'controversy' there than about Upchurch!)

Now, that was all a decade ago at this point. I can't find any other comics work Upchurch has done in comics since then besides a single Rat Queens special in 2023 and a few covers. Upchurch's two oldest kids are in their 20s now and the youngest from that marriage, I think, must have just graduated high school. I don't know if he re-established regular contact with them, or what their relationships are like today. I presume the divorce papers he seemed unbothered to sign initially eventually made it through the courts, but I have zero clue whether or not the woman he left his wife for is stil in the picture at all.

Could Upchurch have genuinely and sincerely changed since all that went down? Sure, it's possible. I can't find any evidence one way or the other more recent than 2016. Did Weibe learn a lesson about open communications from his debacle with Fowler? I hope so. The original Kickstarter campaign for a Rat Queens game ended in 2021 and, while it hasn't been delivered and the originally contracted manufacturer seems to have gone AWOL, Weibe himself does seem to have at least been relatively consistent in ongoing monthly updates. But in the two years since he said, "I have rescinded the Rat Queens rights from Ox Eye Media and their partners" he hasn't delivered anything for that game either.

People are inherently fallible. We all make mistakes and do/say things we shouldn't. Over the course of ten years or more, one would hope that people would learn lessons from their bad choices though. But simply saying "mistakes were made" without any effort to own up them, much less offer any evidence that you've tried to correct for them does not cut it. It's just lip service offered in lieu of anything substative. Businesses do that kind of bullshit to avoid legal liability; individuals do that kind of bullshit to prop up their pride. Are you willing to wait a decade or more for someone to learn from their mistakes?