Hello, and welcome back to the Weekly Up-Dave! The Newsletter home of comic book writer, Boston Celtics fan, appreciator of pop punk/hardcore/post-hardcore, American Sitcom lover, and film fan Dave Wielgosz. That’s who I am. Was that opening written by AI? No. The formality is because this is our 75th post since I rebranded the Newsletter the Weekly Up-Dave, and with all great anniversary issues, I am trying to be new reader friendly. So I am opening with this very succinct description of who I am.

Do I have anything special planned for this week? No, I am just going to write you a damn good post, and go from there. It’s been a very busy year for me, for those catching up, and for those just joining us. Last month my first creator-owned mini-series Showdown debuted from Ignition Press, and that’s largely been the focus of my publicity and internet outreach.

Outside of that? Earlier this week I wrote the last script for my second creator-owned project that we’ll hopefully be talking about later this year or at the beginning of the next year. Like Showdown, it’s something I have been working on for a little while, and am very excited to share with the world. We have an exceptional artist working on it and when you see the work…it’s going to knock you out.

Once that project wrapped up I immediately started working on a new secret project that is also a ways away from being announced. So the best news is? I am working a lot right now. The less good news for my Newsletter is? Outside of Showdown, and next month’s Detective Comics 2026 Annual, I can’t talk about a lot of it right now. But next year? I think basically every Weekly Up-Dave post will be about a new project, a new issue coming out, and a new interview with a different collaborator. You’re going to have to trust me on that.

In the meantime I am going to be interviewing as many of my Showdown collaborators as I can. I am also going to be interviewing my Detective Comics 2026 Annual short story collaborator Fran Mariscal. And I think I can say here…this July…I am going to be at San Diego Comic Con for the first time EVER in my career and as a lifelong comic book fan. So you can expect a long post about that in the future with pictures. Also you can expect me to post where I am going to be and where I will be SIGNING at the show.

There’s also always a chance a few more small/random comic book writing jobs may come my way before the end of the year. While I am happily working right now…I am always game to take on new challenges as I email editors saying that very same thing every few months.

As always, I am trying to grow the audience of the Weekly Up-Dave. Subscriber growth has been slower this year than last year despite me having more projects to talk about which is…odd. While I am on Bluesky and Instagram, I would someday love for this to be my primary internet outlet. Bluesky is great, but I don’t think I’m very good at it to tell you the truth. Instagram is nice because there’s a lot of interaction there from my peers, fans, and people from my life, but I can’t post long form the way I can here.

But we will find a middle ground. We will get more readers. Consistency is the key, and I don’t plan on discontinuing the Newsletter anytime soon. During the summer I may take a random week off here or there, but disappear completely? I would never. Not on you, dear reader.

When I was a young child in the late nineteen nineties we used to get much more mail than we do now. Most of it? Junk mail. People trying to get you to subscribe to magazines, sending you coupons so you would try a new store that had opened in the area, and sometimes they would just be scams. Much like junk emails and phone calls today.

At our house, the mail would come in the afternoon and my dad would say “Dave!” loudly enough so I could hear it from my bedroom. I would skitter down the stairs, collect the mail that had come in that day and bring it to him to go through. The best days were when we would get a lot of junk mail where our last name was spelled in a variety of incorrect, and tortured ways. My dad would read the misspellings loudly, and then throw the pieces of junk mail across the room, like David Letterman would throw pencils out the fake window of his Late Night set. It always made me laugh.

As you can guess it is far from unusual for people to misspell and mispronounce my last name, it’s been a very regular part of my life. So regular that I named my LLC a phonetic pronunciation of it, “Will Gus”. Despite that, and despite my name printed in hundreds, if not now thousands (admittedly the low thousands), people still misspell it.

HOWEVER, this past week that didn’t happen. Two weeks ago you may recall that I had a surprise comic book drop. Justice League: Heroes of the Pitch. A comic done in collaboration with DC Comics, , and Fox Sports written by me, drawn by Serg Acuńa (who I did a terrific interview here last week, check out our archives) colored by Hi-Fi, lettered by Pat Brosseau, and with cover art by Pop Mhan. The comic saw the Justice League teaming up with a team of soccer players to play a game against the DC villain Mongul and an alien soccer team he had put together. It was a very fun project that gave me the opportunity to merge a lifelong love of super hero comics with my love of sports.

What I did not see coming was that the comic book would be covered on the Sports Illustrated website, and The New York Times’s Athletic website. An incredible honor and highlight of my career on it’s own. Serg alerted me to The Athletic one, I immediately sent the article to my brother Josh, and then Josh immediately sent it to our parents on a group chat. We were all very happy.

My favorite part? Sports Illustrated and The Athletic both spelled my name right. A highlight for everyone in my family as far as I’m concerned. Thanks to editor Michael McCalister for the unbelievably cool writing opportunity, and to the editorial staff at both Sports Illustrated and The Athletic for running those pieces I’m going to post below. The comic is still for sale online at Dick’s Sporting Goods’s website. https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/usmnt-x-dc-worlds-collide-dc-comics-justice-league-heroes-of-the-pitch-graphic-novel-26dccucasu0ochg84xzjs/26dccucasu0ochg84xzjs?sku=28807805

This summer I have three issues, and a trade paperback collection coming out. Not to shabby, if I say so myself!

First up, because I haven’t talked much about it since it was announced, is the Detective Comics Annual 2026. This one is on-sale on July 29th, 2026, and the final order cut-off date is July 6th, 2026. I wrote a back-up story pencilled, inked, and colored by a tremendous artist named Fran Mariscal. Our story hasn’t been discussed much in solicits and I am going to keep it that way. All I can tell you is…I think it’s a really strong Batman short story done in the spirit of projects like Legends of the Dark Knight and Batman: The Animated Series. And that Fran’s artwork is UNBELEIVABLE. I am going. to post his Batman study again here because it’s amazing, when you see the pages they are going to take your breath away. And I will be interviewing Fran here at the end of July.

The main story on this issue is a Batman and Lobo team-up by the incredible team of Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott. Tom Taylor has had a fantastic run on Detective Comics with Mikel Janin, and everytime he works with Nicola Scott it’s really special, so I have no doubt the lead story is going to be spectacular. And I feel very fortunate to be sharing a book with two incredible creators. The main cover for the issue is by Nicola Scott & Annette Kwok, with variant covers by Guillem March, and Javier Fernandez. Two more of my favorite artists.

You may remember last year I was fortunate to do not one but two original horror stories with my friend and artistic collaborator Riley Rossmo, and the amazing colorist Iñaki Azpiazu. The first was a story called “Tiny, Little Men” featured in BOOM! Studios’s Hello Darkness #12, now collected in the Hello Darkness Vol. 3 Collected Edition, on sale and available now. The second story we did was called “There’s an Alien in my Basement,” that was published in EC Comics’s Cruel Universe 2 #2 from Oni Press. The story follows a reporter who goes to interview a man who lives on the fringes of American society and claims to have discovered an alien. It’s a story I am extremely proud of, and one you have another opportunity to check out.

The story will be published again in the EC Cruel Universe Vol. 2 Collected Edition on sale in book stores on July 14th, 2026, and in comic stores on July 15th, 2026. The book also features stories by stellar creators like Chris Condon, Melissa Flores, Greg Pak, Claire Roe, Charlie Adlard, Rian Hughes, Brian Level, Sarah Gailley, David Rubín, and more. Here’s the cover for the book by the always phenomenal Lee Bermejo and the first page of “There’s an Alien in my Basement.”

Then of course we have the main event of Showdown #2 and Showdown #3. Showdown #2 releases on 7/8/26, instead of the previously stated 6/24/26. If you already ordered it? You don’t have to worry about that and your store should have it. And then Showdown #3 FOC’s on 7/6/26 and is on sale 8/12/26. Both issues feature a main cover by Steve Lieber (issue 2 cover colored by Dillion Snook, issue 3 cover colored by Jack Cole) and a variant cover by series artist and co-creator Tadd Galusha.

Issue 1 set up our conflict. Trish Sullivan has returned to her hometown of South Harmon months after her brother Michael died. She seeks out her former classmate, and former High School star football player, Harvey Harlowe who she blames for her brother’s death. Trish challenges Harvey to a showdown, the two of them enter a fight, and only one of them leaves. They have both been carrying around guilt since Michael died, and neither of them can keep going on the way they have been, and they think this showdown is the only way to settle that. In the first issue Harvey accepts the showdown offer, and now we’re going to see the 48 hours that Trish and Harvey have before their final battle. Issue 2 follows Harvey’s first 24 hours before the showdown, and issue 3 follows Trish’s first 24 hours before the showdown. They are both character pieces that give you way more background and history on both characters, how they grew up, who they grew up around, and what brought them to this violent point. I am proud of both issues, they’re two of the strongest comics I have written so far, and the work that Tadd Galusha, Triona Farrell, and Clayton Cowles did on the issues makes me feel confident that these will be two of the best issues you will read this year. Do not miss them.

New Movies I Watched: Tuner, Directed by Daniel Roher. Tuner is my favorite movie of the year so far. A tremendous, tight, disciplined, and clever crime story following a piano tuner with perfect pitch, and a mysterious hearing condition, that also gives him the ability to listen to the gears in safes and crack them. When his mentor falls ill, he joins up with a group of thieves stealing from rich people, paying for his mentor’s medical bills, and funding his romance with a brilliant virtuoso piano player and composer student.

There are so many dramas that claim to have the feel of peak American dramas from the seventies, and then they do not live up to that lofty promise. This movie does. It absolutely feels like a great seventies American movie, and I see myself watching it multple times. The lead performance by Leo Woodall is one of the best I have seen in sometime. He’s quiet, measured, never goes over the top, and the whole movie rests on his shoulders and he carries it marvelously. I highly, highly recommend you seek this one out in the theater or see it the second it’s available on streaming services.

Obsession, Directed by Curry Barker. This movie has a fantastic simple premise. A guy who is in love with one of his female friends, who clearly doesn’t share the same feelings, makes a wish to make her love him, and it goes horribly wrong. Like all movies what makes this movie work is not just it’s idea, it’s the execution. If this movie was made ten or twenty years ago we would have spent about a third of the movie’s runtime seeing how awesome this awful wish is. The character would enjoy the product of the wish he made, there would be some really gross sexual stuff that would make us uncomfortable in retrospect, and it would be a while before everything started going wrong.

The most impressive thing about this movie? Everything is wrong the second the wish is made. Writer/Director Curry Barker expects you to know this type of wish is gross, and very problematic. And he explores how gross and problematic it is from multiple angles and never pulls his punches. For any male filmmaker this is already impressive. For a male filmmaker in his mid-twenties? Almost unbelievably sophisticated and mature. This movie is tremendous. And the performance by Inde Navarette by Nikki, the person afflicted by the wish, is already in the running for best performance of the year.

Old Movie I Watched: Walker, Directed by Alex Cox. Right now I am in the process of developing and typing up new pitches. When I do that, I start watching and reading a lot of diferent things to really get my brain going. One of the main places I go for inspiration? The Criterion Channel streaming service. They always have a number of stellar movies I want to watch, especially this month, they have four different playlists of movies I’ll be making my way through: Odysseys, Starring Courtney Love, Weddings, and Alex Cox’s Punk Rock Provocations which is where I’ve started this journey with his movie Walker. This movie rules. It is a stellar and absurdist take down of colonization, American foreign relations, arrogance, the fragility of men, and old west style storytelling. Lead with a tremendous performance by Ed Harris, one of my favorite actors.

New Comics I Read: Criminal-Five Gears in Reverse by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips. There are a lot of problems in this world that we are all currently living in, but the fact that it feels like we get two, sometimes three original graphic novels a year from the powerhouse creative team of Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Jacob Phillips is not one of those problems. It’s one of the things that’s keeping me going!

The team returns to my favorite of their projects: Criminal to tell a dark, unpredictable, and ultimately character and relationship rich story about one of the more fringe characters in the Criminal Universe…Ricky Lawless. Who we’ve mostly seen in other Criminal stories as either a child in the stories that focus on his father Teeg Lawless in the seventies/eighties or he looms over his brother Tracy Lawelss’s modern day stories as a ghost (because he died). This story finds Ricky alive and far from well as he runs afoul of a crime boss which gets him and his girlfriend in deep shit and requires Ricky to go on a mission for the crime boss that goes terribly wrong. There are many volumes of Criminal and to date? I think Five Gears in Reverse is one of their very best yet. An excellent addition to the series.

Escape #7 by Rick Remender, Daniel Acuña, and Rus Wooton. It seems like Rick Remender has a goal to make a big, longform creator-owned comic series with all of my favorite comic artists, and I have really enjoyed most of them. His most recent of these projects? Escape with artist Daniel Acuña is one of my favorite current comics, one of my favorite Rick Remender creator-owned comics, and it’s some of the best comic art coming out right now, Daniel Acuña is operating on another level. In the tradition of books like Juanjo Guarnido’s Blacksad, this series follows a massive war being fought in a world of anthropomorphic animals. We follow soldier and bomber-pilot Milton Shaw who is trapped behind enemy lines try to escape. And every issue has been tense, thrilling, darkly written, and tremendously painted by Acuña.

Umbrella Academy: Plan B #4 by Gabriel Ba, Gerard Way, Dave Stewart, and Nate Piekos. Umbrella Academy is always going to rank as an all-time comic for me. And even though the new mini-series are often years apart, I will always show up when a new one shows up. I love this world that Gerard Way, Gabriel Ba, and Dave Stewart have made. This rich, endearing, often times ironic, smart, and wickedly funny universe centered on this family of adult super hero screw-ups. This volume where the Umbrella Academy faces off against their counterparts in the nefarious Sparrow Academy has been particularly fun, and I hope the fifth series is not far behind this one.

Old Comic I Read: Batman-Sword of Azrael By Denny O’Neil, Joe Quesada, Kevin Nowlan, Lovern Kindzierski, and Ken Bruzenak. Back in 2008 in advance of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight coming out in theaters the marketing train for that movie was big and AWESOME. One of the best things to come out of it was a special on the History Channel where they interviewed pop culture experts, psychologists, and comic creators about the psychology of Batman called Batman Unmasked. And the person on this program who was most captivating? Legendary Batman writer and editor Denny O’Neil, a hero of mine I have spoken about many times, and I imagine I will many more. The most fascinating thing Denny said about Batman, was that he said one of the character’s greatest appeals was that he was a crusader for good who dressed like a demon. As a fifteen year old? I thought this was one of the smartest things I had ever heard.

I thought about this a lot recently as I read DC’s brand new gorgeous collection of one of Denny’s best and most seminal Batman stories: Sword of Azrael. Where we find Batman combatting a character expected to crusade as an angel on Earth, Azrael (who has taken up much more of my comic career than I expected, and I’m delighted by that). This story and Batman: Venom, both came out in the nineties, are both two of Denny’s best Batman stories, and set up mythology that would become integral to Batman for almost four decades to follow. The story is excellent but the biggest thing to write home about? The incredible art by Joe Quesada with inks by Kevin Nowlan. Quesada most changed my life as the editor-in-chief of Marvel comics but damn…he was also a PHENOMENAL comic artist. As a diehard Daredevil fan I am glad he spent so much time drawing and contributing to that character’s mythology but after re-reading Sword of Azrael, you absolutely wish he had drawn more of Batman and you imagine hundreds of comics that never existed. But this one does. And it’s great. You should pick it up.

New Podcast I Listened To: Funny You Ask with Ike Barinholtz. Readers, it’s been months since WTF with Marc Maron wrapped up and I am still looking for a funny podcast to fill it’s place in my rotation. This week I gave Funny You Ask hosted by hilarious actor, writer, and Celebrity Jepoardy contestant Ike Barinholtz. The premise of show is that he brings on a fellow comedian or actor (I listened to his episodes with Nick Kroll and Adam Pally, two of my favorites) and he asks them questions about things they claim to know about. They often end up not knowing the answers to the questions, but Ike sweetly leads them to the right answer, and then they discuss the topics of interest. In the backhalf of the show the guest asks Ike a wide arrange of true and difficult trvia questions that he is not coached on ahead of time, that’s where the show really takes off for me. I like it, I might stick with it, Ike is great!

New Music I Listened To: Sandbox by the All-American Rejects. I have been completely delighted by the All-American Rejects reunion and return to the world of music. I have always loved their music, but I have also loved that in their return they have tried to upend music touring in the United States by playing house parties, parks, school gyms, and anywhere that will have them to circumnavigate the deeply problematic and greedy big ticketing companies that are bleeding us all dry and prevent us from seeing as much live music as we would like. And it feels like they have made an admirable difference on that front. That’s truly punk rock to me!

Sandbox is the Rejects’s newest records and there’s a couple great earworms on here, terrific singles, but my favorite thing about the album is four songs that pack a punch and remind me of my FAVORITE All-American Rejects song…The Last Song. Those four songs? Search Party, Lemonade, For Mama (the best on the record), and Staring Back at Me. The whole album is worth listening to. Those four songs? Gems.

WOO! How about that?

I felt like I was long overdue to sit down and write a full, in-depth, and multi-layered installment of the Weekly Up-Dave. I am glad I took the time I did that this week, and I will endeavor to do that more in the future. As I mentioned at the top, most of my posts have been dedicated to Showdown. And a lot of my posts will continue to feature that. But I have a lot going on and a lot to talk about so I will try to make all my future posts as diverse in content as this one is.

I will see you back here next week.

Until then?

Stay safe!

—Dave Wielgosz