Five Things

Five Things: A Summer Dispatch from North Hollywood

Hey folks, we have a summer of blockbuster posts, interviews, and announcements ahead, but this week? I do not have a ton to say, so I am doing another installments of Five Things, this one called Five Things: A Summer Dispatch from North Hollywood. Just a random write-up of five things I have found myself enjoying lately, and maybe you will too. Let’s dive right in!

1. Scott Frank is one of my favorite writers. The screenwriter behind movies like Out of Sight, Get Shorty, Minority Report, The Lookout, Logan, and Script Doctor behind even more great movies. In the last decade or so he’s turned his attention to writing and directing TV series. His newest show Dept. Q on Netflix starring Matthew Goode is fantastic. I have felt a little exhausted by long crime procedurals with endings that are…less than satisfying, but Dept. Q is really the antidote for those shows. Much like how The Pitt made me excited for the medical drama again, Dept. Q reminded me why we love a great detective show starring a bitter bastard in the lead so much. I highly recommend this one.

2. This summer I am reading plenty of comics and books. I kicked off my book reading with Fahrenheit-182. The memoir about and co-written by Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus and Dan Ozzi. I was a huge fan of Dan Ozzi’s book Sellout, and I’ve been a lifelong Blink fan so this was must-read for me. The book was charming, funny, at times quite sad, and it showed me a lot about a guy who has been in my life for a longtime that I did know about. Sometimes in the Blink 182 dynamic it’s easy to write Mark off as the less complicated, less dark of the trio, but this book shows that we all have our different darkness, and we all have things that make us incredibly bright as well. A fun summer read, and on top of shining a light on someone I thought I knew well, it also has some great insights on the music industry of the 90’s and 00’s which is fascinating stuff.

3. I am reading a lot of comics right now. The market is full of great books by creators at the top of their game. Every week when I talk to my brother on the phone we spend a healthy amount of time talking about the comics that we’re reading and we both stopped this week and talked a great deal about how much we’re enjoying the current Aquaman run by writer Jeremy Adams and artist John Timms. For those who don’t know the premise of this run is that Atlantis is completely gone, and Aquaman goes on an inter-dimensional journey to find where it went. It’s an epic, swash-buckling, fantasy-leaning take on the character, and I love it. This is quickly shaping up to be one of my favorite Aquaman stories and runs of all-time, I think it’s a really special superhero run, it seems like it’s getting a lot of love, but I wanted to boost it a bit if I can. I never worked with Jeremy while I was at DC, he started working there at the end of my time as an editor, but he’s quickly become one of their best writers. I have worked a lot with John Timms, on Harley Quinn, and it’s so fun to see him thriving on another DC character.

4. The WTF with Marc Maron podcast is coming to an end this fall and I am…pretty bummed about it. I commend Marc for going out on his own terms, but…the show has been in my life since I was seventeen years old. Right now there are absolutely too many podcasts, I cannot argue with that, but when a podcast is good? It’s one of my favorite mediums. And for over fifteen years WTF has been one of the best podcasts, one of the best interview shows ever, and a standard bearer. There are hundreds of episodes that inspired me, taught me something important, and quite frankly kept me going as an aspiring writer. It’s a podcast with over a thousand episodes. And I have loved most of them. Thanks, Marc. LOCK THE GATES!

5. I have seen a lot of awesome movies this year and it looks like there are even more ahead. I think this is shaping up to be a great movie year. Two weeks ago I saw Wes Anderson’s The Phoenecian Scheme. I am a big Wes Anderson fan, I have seen all his movies multiple times, and I have seen all his movies from Moonrise Kingdom onwards in the movie theater. I had a good time watching The Phoenecian Scheme, it’s not my favorite Wes Anderson movie, but I will admit I want to and need to watch it again. He’s started to make movies that need to be watched multiple times to be properly appreciated, and I love that. To me the best part of the movie is Michael Cera, who delivers the best Wes Anderson movie performance since Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel, he is excellent and having the time of his life and that alone will make it worth the rewatch. I hope when I watch it again I love it more. The last movie Wes Anderson made, Asteroid City, has only grown in my estimation since I saw it, becoming one of my favorites of his, one of my favorite movies of this decade thus far, and one of my favorite movies about making art and telling stories. I would love if upon rewatch I had a similar awakening about The Phoenecian Scheme. But after first viewing…it’s fun, delightful, kind of a Wes Anderson action-movie, and something I think is definitely worth your time.

This has been Five Things: A Summer Dispatch from North Hollywood!

I hope you got a cool recommendation out of this.

Next week I will be back, and I will be interviewing comic artist Joey Vazquez. Joey and I teamed-up on a Superboys team-up story for the upcoming DC’s Kal-El-Fornia Love and we are going to tell you why you should pre-order it before the FOC date of Monday June 30th, 2025. You’re going to have a great time, we’re going to have a great time, and you are going to buy our awesome comic book!

Stay safe!

—Dave Wielgosz