Zubby Newsletter #50: Value-Packed Anniversary Edition

Posted by on February 18, 2024 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

Wait a sec, newsletter #50! Oh geez, this should be some kind of anniversary-sized special release…Bigger page count and a higher cover price, right?

Unfortunately, you’ll have to pay double for this installment, my friends…Double that $0.00 price tag and I’ll make sure you get everything you paid for. 😉

Delivering a Delve

Speaking of people getting what they pay for, I’m deeply disappointed that backers, creators, and a charity were misled by the Tales From the Quarantine comic anthology.

My longtime collaborator Max Dunbar and I put together a single page story for the anthology right at the start and have kept it under wraps this whole time, hoping the campaign would complete delivery to the many people who backed it in good faith, but that now seems incredibly unlikely, so here’s DELVE, a little fantasy story created during lockdown, with hopeful sentiments about the future despite dark times-

Story and Lettering by Jim Zub. Line Art and Colors by Max Dunbar.

Haunted By That Slogan

I had a really bizarre dream earlier in the week-
In the dream, the Wisconsin dairy council asked me to write an epic based on a new dairy superhero they developed called MIGHTY MILK.

I had to include their new slogan
“Milk is also in man”.

I told them the slogan was awful. They told me it was mythic and powerful.
The rep kept saying the slogan slowly, emphasizing different words-

“Milk is also in man.”

“Yeah, I get it, but it’s still awful.”

I told them I probably wasn’t the right fit for this project, but they were insistent that it had to be me. Like most dreams, it just vaporized unresolved, but I wanted to share so all of us could be haunted by it together from now on.

Honoring the Past


Hayden Mears from Starburst Magazine (the longest-running magazine of fantastic media) and I talked at length about Conan the Barbarian as an icon of prose and comics. There’s a lot of good ground covered here in terms of Conan’s pulp roots, mythic storytelling, Robert E. Howard as an architect of the original ‘multiverse’ concept, and how our creative team is trying to honor that in the new comic series-

A Page (and Series) I Love

On Thursday night on Comic Art Live they ran a piece I recorded with Kevin Sharp for a segment called A PAGE I LOVE-

I dug deep into my excitement for DOCTOR STRANGE #55 Page 13 from 1982, a stone cold classic written by Roger Stern and illustrated by Michael Golden:

Doctor Strange #55 is a masterclass in writing and drawing superhero comics, a done-in-one story that delivers on every page. You can still find it in back issue bins for cheap, which is great, because everyone should have a copy and every aspiring creator should study the hell out of it.

This issue is also Aldrin “Buzz” Aw‘s favorite comic and he has (wait for it) over 3000 copies! I love this video rundown on how this issue 55 collection began and his excitement as he walks through its quality and how it influenced the biggest artists of the ’90’s.

Doctor Strange is a bucket list character for me to write, and a big part of that is due to the quality of this era. Editorial can sometimes be cagey about giving writers their favorite characters because sometimes they’re such diehard fans that they don’t want to take big narrative swings or shake up the status quo, but if I ever get the chance to pitch on Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme I think I could honor the past while pushing out in unexpected directions.

Current + Upcoming Releases

Upcoming Appearances

Feb 29-Mar 3, 2024 Emerald City Comic-Con Seattle, WA, USA
Mar 16-18, 2024 Founders & Legends Lake Geneva, WI, USA
Mar 21-24, 2024 Gary Con Lake Geneva, WI, USA
Apr 25-28, 2024 Calgary Expo Calgary, AB, Canada

Have a great week!
Jim

Substack

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