It’s not unusual for me to get a phone call on the weekend from my Uncle Stanley, who is also my Godfather, I know this because every time I speak to him he brings it up no less than three times. To his credit I have also never had a conversation with him where he’s told me he loved me any less than three times either. When he calls me he often winds down the conversation by asking me “How’s your heart?”

Meaning…Am I happy? Am I where I want to be? Am I doing okay?

The tough thing about that question last year was I did not always have a great answer for him. 2025 is a year where I am very proud of how much I accomplished, but I also burned myself out, and learned a lot about work and my relationship to it. I plan on working hard this year, I started in earnest on a brand new project earlier this week, and I want to write more than I did last year, but…I am also going tfocused on myself outside of my career.

I went home in Thanksgiving for that reason, I knew I needed to start rebounding from 2025, celebrate the victories from it, but shake the dirt off from it. I am glad to report I succeeded in that endeavor. This is no small part due to the many friends and family members I spent the last month with who helped me touch a lot of grass (and snow, it was a beautiful New England December). I ate a lot of good food, I got back to the gym, I had meaningful time with friends, I met some of my friends’s newborn kids, I spent a lot of time with family, and I did a lot comic book reading for fun. A few comic book writing assignments I am excited about got finished up, but most of my time was spent clearing the decks for everything in 2026.

Those decks have been successfully cleared, I’m back in the saddle, I feel better, I feel ready to try to master the elusive work-life balance while also continuing my journey to become one of the best and most prolific comic writers of my generation. There are going to be a lot of project updates and news from me this year and as a reader of the Weekly Up-Dave you are going to see those updates first, and get the most in-depth behind the scenes stories about those projects.

I am excited, and I hope you are too!

I did have one little loose end from 2025 that needs to be resolved here and now, though…

My dear friend Pat sent in a question to the HoliDave Q&A that I somehow missed, and as a bonus I am going to answer that question right here and right now. Take it away, Pat.

Pat’s Question: With Jayson Tatum missing (at least) a large portion of the Celtics’s season, what storylines will you be following while watching a Celtics team with much lower expectations than recent years? And as a writer/editor, do you watch sports with storylines in mind in the same way you would watch a scripted TV series?

Dave’s Answer: I am answering this question the day after the Celtics trounced the LA Clippers and Jaylen Brown had a 50-Point game. Could I watch that game? No because I live in LA and it was blacked out on NBA League Pass…

Even with Jayson Tatum missing I think there’s still a minor (but shrinking) storyline about the possibility of him coming back this season which I don’t think he should do. The biggest storyline I am following is Jaylen Brown leading the team and putting up absolutely incredible numbers while doing so. Payton Pritchard going from being the little engine that could, to sixth man of the year, to one of the most reliable starters the Celtics have is another great storyline. Joe Mazzulla in general. I think he’s a fascinating man who despite trying to be as direct as they come only grows more mysterious and rich as a character as the years go on.

And then there’s the biggest storyline…the NBA counted the Celtics out this year as soon as Tatum got injured, we didn’t get a Christmas day game for the first time in years, and for the first half of the season we lived to the low level of those expectations. However, with Jaylen’s leadership, Joe’s tenacious coaching, great performances from Pritchard, Derrick White, and a mostly new cast and crew of players we are third in the Eastern conference and I think there’s a chance we go higher.

I am going to try to make my media diet a recurring feature of this Newsletter, that way there is always something to talk about, even on weeks where things are a little light. I am going to try to about a new comic I have read, an old comic I have read, a book I am reading, a tv show I am watching, and a movie I watched. I think we need more people talking about stuff they are enjoying, but also it will keep me trying more things because I will need to report back to you, dear reader! All right, let’s give this a go!

New Comic: The Partisan by Garth Ennis, Steve Epting, Jordie Bellaire, and Rob Steen from TKO. Cover above.

In 2022 Garth Ennis and Steve Epting teamed-up for the World War II set comic Sara. Ennis and Epting are two of the most prolific comic book creators of my life time, and I am a great fan of both, but that was the first time they worked together and it blew me away. Garth has written many a great war comic, and Steve Epting’s most notable work is on Captain America, a character who often finds himself in a World War II setting, so I should have known this would be a match made in heaven, but even that feels like an understatement. Garth Ennis and Steve Epting were one of the best creative teams I had seen in a long time, and I craved for more books by them.

This is why I was delighted to see the release of The Partisan, another World War II set story by two, also published by TKO press, this time with the great Jordie Bellaire doing colors instead of the also awesome Bettie Breitweiser. The Partisan is bar none the best new comic book I read in 2025, and I read a lot of awesome books this year. This book pulls no punches, shows that comics are capable of telling any story, at any level of complication and sophistication, and just made me want to do better work upon finshing the first first (of six) chapters. It is the work of two masters of their craft that I think everyone who loves comics should check out. With that being said…this is not a comic for the faint of heart. It’s brutally honest about the realities of World War II and what people had to do to survive, and to defeat the Axis forces. But if you can stomach it…you’re in for something utterly brilliant.

Old Comic: Dr. Strange (1974) #56, #65-66, #68-69, #71-73 by Roger Stern and Paul Smith from Marvel Comics.

One of the Christmas gifts I got for myself was a subscription to the Marvel Unlimited Comic book service that gives you access to every Marvel comic up until the last six months. To date I have used it to look up smaller comics (single issues, short stories, annuals, etc) by comic artists that I loved that I may have missed.

The most substantial thing I have read so far is this run of Dr. Strange stories written by hall-of-fame Superhero comic book writer Roger Stern and drawn magically by the great Paul Smith. Like most comic readers…I deeply revere Paul Smith’s time on Uncanny X-Men with Chris Claremont, I think it’s my favorite era of Uncanny X-Men and maybe some of the best serialized super hero comics ever done period. I only discovered recently that Paul Smith did seven issues of Dr. Strange and I had to check them out, and boy was I not disappointed.

I have read a lot of superhero comics but when it comes to the sub-genres of superheroes I have the biggest blindspot when it comes to magic-leaning superhero characters, something I am looking to change in 2026. I have read Dr. Strange comics before, most notably my beloved Dr. Strange: The Oath by Brian K Vaughan and Marcos Martin, but not many. These seven issues by Stern and Smith were beautifully drawn with some of the most dignified, stylish, and quite frankly handsome renderings of Dr. Strange there have ever been. Roger Stern’s plots were well thought out, full of character, and were always about people falling prey to the negative impacts of magic, or being manipulated by dark forces they could not understand. Magic stories can get easily convoluted with rules and logic but not these…they were all straight forward and delightful reads. Awesome, classic Marvel comics, I could have read twenty more issues by this creative team. I know Roger Stern wrote more Dr. Strange comics and these issues may encourage me to go back and check those out.

TV Show I Am Watching: Sarah Squirm’s Live + in the Flesh on HBO.

A loud, off-putting, Pee Wee Herman-rendered nightmare of an hour full of aggressive jokes and even more aggressive interactions with the audience. I thought it was terrific and think if you are into freaky fun comedy you might too. Also props to the Prince of Baltimore John Waters for making an early appearance.

Music I’m Listening To: Bambi by Anxious

Fuck algorithms. Back in 2022 when Anxious’s debut album Little Green House came out, I was a fan of it and listened to it often, especially the track “You When You’re Gone.” The Connecticut Band’s follow-up album Bambi came out in February of 2025 and my music streaming app never made me aware of that. It wasn’t until I saw Bambi appear on the best of 2025 lists at the end of the year that I knew the album existed. I dove in as quickly as I could to make up for lost time and I was transported to another era.

Anxious had leveled-up as a band and crafted a great album, full of killer songs, with a fantastic structure that I listened to over and over again. Taking the best from emo, post-hardcore, pop punk, and more showing the world that they mean business. Little Green House showed a lot of potential, Bambi showed a vision for the future of this band and these genres of music I love. I am hoping I can see Anxious perform live this year, and I hope their third album is not far away. From one New England dude to a group of cooler New England dudes, great work, guys. My favorite song from the album, Head & Spine, is below. Enjoy!

You may remember that back at the end of December of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 I had written a two-part Plastic Man and Wonder Woman team-up story that ran in the pages of Batman: The Brave & The Bold #19-20, called “Man’s Underworld”. The story was drawn by the brilliant Nikola Čižmešija and colored by the awesome Rex Lokus. If you missed the story the first time around, it is now going to be collected in the Batman: The Brave & The Bold trade paperback titled “Tomorrow’s Heroes” alongside some other fantastic stories. You will be able to buy it anywhere comics and graphic novels are sold on April 28th, 2026.

Then! Don’t forget on January 28th I have a Green Arrow story in the Valentine’s Day anthology DC’s Supergirl Next Door that is drawn by Dylan Dietrich, inked by Wade Von Grawbadger, colored by Ivan Plascencia, and lettered by Wes Abbott. A truly outstanding creative team! The day after the story comes out I will be interviewing Dylan about the story, as it is his first published DC work! He did a fantastic job, and he is someone you will be seeing a lot more of in the future. And hopefully he is someone I get to work with more in the future as well.

That’s it for the first, and robust, Weekly Up-Dave of the year! I am already happy with how this new format is looking, I think it is going to lead to a lot of success in 2026 and pleasant posts for our readers. As always, I am looking to grow the Newsletter, so please feel free to share these posts on social media with your followers and recommend us to anyone who loves comics. We are going to have a lot of great content here this year, and I am going to be making a lot of awesome comics that we will be talking about here.

Until then?

Stay safe!

—Dave Wielgosz