We begin July with a stop at my corner fire hydrant

I really wanted to use a lyric from “Too Darn Hot” for my subject line, but I’m doing a whole month thing and Cole Porter was frustratingly non-specific with that one. But it has been, in fact, too darn hot recently.

Thankfully, in several days I am escaping to breezier Cape Cod with my friends for our annual writing retreat! I plan to kick off a romantic fantasy novel while we’re there (with dragons!), and also eat my weight in seafood. It’s good to have goals.

Also, July brings both Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps to theaters. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love both of those properties (I wrote a whole dang book about Superman!), so please spare some thoughts and prayers for me this month that the movies will be good. I need this, you guys.

What’s New?

I was a guest on Superhero Ethics again, this time to talk about Thunderbolts* and mental illness. Spoilers, but I really loved the film, and appreciated seeing a Marvel movie be actually about something again. I also have a lot of thoughts about how the mechanics of the movie are so blatantly obvious as to be laughable, but it handles them so skillfully you don’t even notice while you’re watching, but that’s for a different newsletter.

What I’m Reading

Books: I’ve read a lot of good mysteries this summer, but my favorite is Hemlock House by Katie Cotugno. It’s the sequel to Liar’s Beach, a YA mystery loosely inspired by the first Hercule Poirot story, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, with Poirot replaced by Holiday Proctor, a teenage girl with a keen deductive mind. The books are narrated by her childhood best friend, Michael Linden, in the Captain Hastings role. Holiday is an unmitigated delight, a rare teenage girl who knows exactly who she is and what she is capable of, but Linden’s neuroses and failings make him an equally brilliant, painfully relatable character. The mysteries are clever, the confused and fraught romantic tension between Holiday and Linden is exquisite, and I’m bereft that there doesn’t appear to be a third book on the horizon.

Comics: I’ve been doing a massive Fantastic Four read-through to prep for the movie: I plowed through every issue of the main title since 1961, and now I’m making my way through various miniseries, spinoffs, etc. (Eventually I’ll have to read Ultimate FF. Sigh.) I reread the Spider-Man/Human Torch miniseries, which I probably read at least 15 years ago the first time, when I knew basically nothing about Marvel, and it absolutely holds up. Dan Slott is so good at writing something accessible to new readers that, when you know more, tends to be absolutely chockablock full of accurate continuity and Easter eggs. He reminds me a lot of Mark Waid in that way—and on that note, you should absolutely read Slott’s 2018 Fantastic Four run and Waid’s from the early 2000s. Also Matt Fraction’s FF, which isn’t about the actual FF but is genuinely better than his simultaneous Fantastic Four run.

What I’m Watching

I’m bad at watching movies and television, but will unhelpfully share that I saw two musical theater performances that you can’t watch anymore: Floyd Collins, a musical that has now closed starring Jeremy Jordan as a man who gets stuck in a hole and dies (spoilers, but it’s based on a true story from 100 years ago, so…), and a one-night-only concert performance of Hello Dolly! starring a couple dozen assorted Broadway stars. Floyd Collins was about as good as a musical about a man dying in a hole can be, but I’ll admit I liked Hello Dolly! better.

That’s it for this month! Stay cool, and see you in Metropolis.

<3

Jessica