My First Signing

This December, I will return to where I grew up in Western Massachusetts to not only do my first store signing at the amazing Comics N’ More in Easthampton, Massachusetts but also anywhere EVER. The Signing will be on Saturday, December 21st, 2024 from 1 pm-5 pm. Bring books of mine you have for me to sign, buy books at the store to celebrate a terrific small business during the Holiday season, and meet me comic book writer Dave Wielgosz!

Comics N’ More asked me if I wanted to do a signing back when Man-Bat was coming out, but that was a tricky time in my life, I was about to move back to California after a brief Pandemic stay in Massachusetts, but I knew that one day I would take them up on their offer. This felt like the year to do it, with the following books having been released this year, clears throat: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Black, White, & Green #3, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Black, White & Green Trade paperback collecting the full series, DC’s I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST CRISIS Halloween special, and Batman: The Brave & The Bold #19-20. Only issue 19 will be out during the signing but hopefully meeting me will convince you to check out issue 20. If you’re in the Western Mass area around that time come on through, I’d love to see you!

Sincerely, this is a huge milestone for me, it’s one more version of me saying “I am a full-time professional comic book writer, and full-time professional comic book writer signs their comic books.” I can’t wait to cap off this year of my professional life this way. Especially after the phenomenal experience I had at LA Comic Con this month, it made me all the more eager to go home to a local comic book store and do something similar. We’re going to have a great time!

Five Crime Movies I Love

Batman: The Brave & The Bold #19, the first part of a two-part Plastic Man and Wonder Woman team-up story titled “Man’s Underworld” written by me, drawn by Nikola Čižmešija, colors by Rex Lokus, letters by Steve Wands, and edits by the team of Ben Meares & James Reid comes out on 11/27/24 and FOC’s on 10/28/24. As I mentioned when it was announced it is going to feel like an episode of Justice League Unlimited by way of crime writer Elmore Leonard.

When I pitched the story I described it as a classic super hero team-up meets the Elmore Leonard classic book and subsequent film directed by Stephen Soderbergh Out of Sight. Other than super heroes…crime is my favorite genre. And Plastic Man certainly has his roots in crime stories, especially as he himself started off as a criminal before becoming a stretchy do-gooder.

With that crime influence, I thought this week I would the opportunity to recommend five crime movies that I love, that you might not know about. So I won’t be writing about Out of Sight, that’s a fairly popular movie. And before you ask, no I won’t be writing about my beloved The Departed, The Town, or even Gone Baby Gone, I’m going to try to go a little deeper in the genre than that. So let’s get started, and hopefully I can send you to see some great movies you haven’t seen before!

#5. Mean Streets, Directed by Martin Scorsese

I told you I wouldn’t be picking The Departed for this list, I never said I wasn’t going to pick a film by Martin Scorsese. So I am picking one that I love that I suspect younger folks may not have seen. 1973’s Mean Streets is Martin Scorsese’s third narrative feature film and in many ways it is the Rosetta Stone for the rest of his work. Definitely the first of his gangster movies, and a movie that examines masculinity, power, friendship, faith, and identity. Just as important this is Scorsese’s first collaboration with Robert De Niro who is electric in this movie. Harvey Keitel who is the lead character, is one my favorite actors, and deserves more praise in the greater Scorsese filmography, but you watch De Niro’s performance in this movie and understand immediately how this movie was the start of him becoming one of the most iconic and celebrated actors of the late twentieth century, and why he and Scorsese went on to make so many massive works together.

Mean Streets follows Harvey Keitel’s character Charlie, an up and coming gangster who wants to keep moving up in his criminal organization, but his relationship with his, to put it kindly, pain-in-the ass friend Johnny Boy played by Robert De Niro might compromise those opportunities. I saw this movie for the first time when I was fourteen years old. The Departed had taken the world by storm, and as you can imagine, was especially a hit in Massachusetts where I grew up. I wanted to know everything I could about Martin Scorsese’s work. My parents had let me watch Goodfellas, one of their favorite movies, and I went into an FYE at the Holyoke Mall and picked up a Martin Scorsese DVD boxset that had en eclectic collection of his movies, including Mean Streets. Scorsese is my favorite filmmaker, I wouldn’t call this a top-five movie from him, but I think it’s great, and it’s an essential watch if you are looking to understand the key beats of his filmography.

#4. Animal Kingdom, Directed by David Michod.

For the majority of my high school and college years one of the main places I got my foundational pop culture recommendations was from John Siuntres’ Word Balloon podcast. Where he did, and still does, interview some of the biggest comic book creators in the world. (I still have a dream of doing the show someday myself.)

The talks about comics, and the craft of making them was the thing I showed up for when I started listening, but as I became a regular listener I equally looked forward to John and his guests (especially Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, and Matt Fraction) talking about what TV shows they were watching, the movies they were looking forward to, and what books they were reading. As a matter of fact, I wanted to see The Departed because so many adults in my life were talking about a movie in a way I hadn’t experienced before, but also because Bendis and Brubaker had talked about how the movie was such a return to form for Martin Scorsese.

The Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom was similarly a Word Balloon recommendation. Ed Brubaker had said it was one of the best modern crime films he had seen recently, this was back in 2009 or 2010. Then I found the DVD on sale at a Blockbuster’s going out of business sale, something that would become more regular. I watched the movie and loved it.

Animal Kingdom, written and directed by David Michod, follows J who following the overdose of his mother goes to live with his grandmother nicknamed “Smurf” who is the queenpin of the Cody crime family that is made up of her three biological sons and their longtime family friend Baz. The family is under constant police surveillance and over the course of the movie we watch the crime family implode and fall apart, with J being a fantastic entry point into this world of Australian crime. The movie introduced me, and I think the world, to amazing actors like Jacki Weaver, Joel Edgerton (who admittedly had been in Star Wars at this point), and an unforgettably terrifying performance from Ben Mendelsohn. Also a great Guy Pearce performance, who is another actor who deserves more credit than he often gets. Look at his filmography! It’s outstanding.

I know I’m talking about movies on this installment of the Newsletter, but I also want to say that my brother and I are huge fans of the Animal Kingdom TV show that ran on TNT for many years that was based on the movie. It was fantastic, and I miss it terribly. You can watch that on Amazon Prime.

#3. Mona Lisa, Directed by Neil Jordan.

This movie is the freshest to me on the list, as of the writing of this I watched this movie about a month ago, and it is my favorite thing I have watched this year. It’s a movie I have thought about constantly since I finished it and have recommended to anyone who would listen to me. And now I’m recommending it to you, dear reader! Neil Jordan’s 1986 Neo-Noir film Mona Lisa.

The film stars the late, and truly great Bob Hoskins as George, a criminal who was just released from jail. George wants to re-establish a relationship with his daughter who he lost touch with while he was in prison, and he wants to get taken care of by the criminal outfit that promised to do right by him when he went away. That criminal organization, led by the sinister Denny masterfully played by Michael Caine, makes George the driver for a call girl named Mona Lisa who has an elite clientele. Mona Lisa unforgettably played by Cathy Tyson, who makes everything in the movie work. It’s a great movie, but if anyone else played the titular character, I don’t know if it would’ve packed the wallop it did when I watched it.

George and Mona Lisa form a deep, complicated connection, that often threatens to become romantic. You watch George, who Hoskins plays perfectly as a not very traditoinally smart, but loyal, well-meaning, and deeply angry man who doesn’t understand anything about the world he’s in, unable to see the big picture, unable to see his part in things, and unable to understand how relationships work in a way that is so relatable and compelling. Watching this movie really made me miss Bob Hoskins, it also made me understand why Chris Claremont always said he would make the perfect Wolverine, not to make this comic book writer’s Newsletter about comics.

Toward the end of the movie there’s a few things that happen that I don’t think have necessarily aged perfectly, and I think are worth having a conversation about, but overall…I just adored this movie. And I strongly suspect it is one I will return to. I watched this on the Criterion Channel, and if you have that service? I couldn’t recommend this movie higher.

#2. Deep Cover, Directed by Bill Duke.

Deep Cover pulls no punches. Of all the movies on the list, I think this 1992 masterpiece directed by Bill Duke has unfortunately aged the best of the movies on this list, and it is shocking to me that is movie I did not know anything about until last year when I saw it got added to the Criterion Collection. It’s an amazing movie, and it will leave you both riveted and uncomfortable for all the right reasons in equal measure.

Laurence Fishburne, one of the great American actors which again made me so shocked I knew nothing about this movie, plays Russell Stevens Jr, a Cincinnati police officer forced by the DEA to go to Los Angeles and go undercover as a drug dealer and infiltrate the operation of one of the West Coast’s most infamous drug kingpins. In order to get in good with the syndicate, Fishburne’s character forges a bond with a lawyer and drug trafficker named David Jason played brilliantly by Jeff Goldblum, in what I truly believe to be the best performance of Jeff Goldblum’s career. And like all great crime and Neo-Noir movies, we watch everyone slowly destroyed by this impossible situation they have either placed themselves in, or were forced by circumstance to be in.

Deep Cover is a phenomenal Neo-Noir, a tremendous crime movie, but it’s so extraordinary at showing the complicated nature of the American justice system, the police force, the drug war, privilege, and so many things that so many other movies and TV shows have tried and failed to give depth and nuance too that again…I was shocked that this movie isn’t talked about more. I think it’s a travesty honestly. I recommend you go watch Deep Cover as soon as you can.

#1. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Directed by Peter Yates.

I didn’t list The Departed, I didn’t list The Town, and I didn’t list Gone Baby Gone. Instead I am recommending to you the original Boston crime movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle, directed Peter Yates, and based on the novel of the same name, my favorite novel, by writer George V. HIggins. This movie is the template for the Boston crime film, and is one of the greatest American crime films ever made, hands down.

The movie follows Robert Mitchum as Eddie Coyle, a small-time criminal, who is facing serious jail time for some crimes he committed. To get his sentence down he regularly meets with an ATF agent and gives up details on other criminals in the greater Boston area. Mitchum’s performance as this down on his luck, loser small-time criminal is mesmerizing. His life is so small, and unimportant, but you understand why he’s trying to hold on to it despite giving up on an honor among thieves code. There’s several thrilling action sequences in this movie, but there’s a scene I will never forget, where Eddie Coyle who is well over six feet tall, is leaving his house and says goodbye to his wife who is like…five foot six inches tall at best, he towers over her, and he just picks her up and swings her around. It’s a very brief scene but you can tell this guy loves his wife, and his meager life. It’s worth selling out his values to protect.

My favorite performance in the movie, though, belongs to the legendary Peter Boyle who plays Dillion, a Boston area bartender/owner who is deeply connected and has his fingers in vast parts of the crime world. He’s so measured and at moments frightening, it’s a performance that I will never forget.

Go watch this movie as soon as you can but also read George V. Higgins original novel. Again, it’s my favorite book, but it’s also just a tremendous read and a page burner.

All right, that’s it for this week!

Next week I am so excited, we are going to be running an interview with my Batman: The Brave & The Bold collaborator, Nikola Čižmešija. Over the course of the interview, I got to know Nikola a lot better, and it’s a great look into how one of the most prolific comic artists working today approaches his work!

And why are we doing all the content that we are doing on the Newsletter this month? Because we want you to read Batman: The Brave & The Bold #19 and #20 which features our Plastic Man and Wonder Woman team-up story “Man’s Underworld!” Issue 19 FOC’s 10/28/24 and is on sale 11/27/24. Issue 20 FOC’s 11/25/24 and is on sale 12/25/24. Thank you!

Stay safe!

—Dave Wielgosz