J. Caleb Mozzocco
@jcaleb.bsky.social
Library clerk by day, semi-professional comic book critic and comics blogger by later in the day, asleep by night.
Wait, shouldn't that be "jackasses", plural...?
November 25, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Wait, shouldn't that be "jackasses", plural...?
I was just writing about the 1997 Batman/Spectre story from BATMAN #540 and 541 for Thursday's blog post, and I couldn't find a logical place to use this panel by Kelley Jones and John Beatty, so I'll just post it here. Isn't it awesome...?
November 25, 2025 at 7:05 PM
I was just writing about the 1997 Batman/Spectre story from BATMAN #540 and 541 for Thursday's blog post, and I couldn't find a logical place to use this panel by Kelley Jones and John Beatty, so I'll just post it here. Isn't it awesome...?
I love the 1995-1998 Doug Moench/Kelley Jones/John Beatty BATMAN run so much. Like, any random panel of it. This one, for example, features a great Moench sound effect lettered by Todd Klein, while Jones draws Batman leaping through a window with a batarang in his clenched teeth for some reason.
November 25, 2025 at 3:31 AM
I love the 1995-1998 Doug Moench/Kelley Jones/John Beatty BATMAN run so much. Like, any random panel of it. This one, for example, features a great Moench sound effect lettered by Todd Klein, while Jones draws Batman leaping through a window with a batarang in his clenched teeth for some reason.
It’s weird to run across scenes like this, in which Alan Scott expresses discomfort with talking about gay stuff with his son, now that Alan has been retconned into being a gay man himself. (This is a panel from 2010’s JSoA #43, written by James Robinson, of all people.)
November 21, 2025 at 7:30 PM
It’s weird to run across scenes like this, in which Alan Scott expresses discomfort with talking about gay stuff with his son, now that Alan has been retconned into being a gay man himself. (This is a panel from 2010’s JSoA #43, written by James Robinson, of all people.)
One of the characters in Kenny Ruiz’s STAR WARS: PATH OF THE LIGHTSABER is apparently an Endor truther, insisting Luke Skywalker beat the Empire, not the Ewoks.
Note a) how cute Ruiz’s Ewoks are and b) the face on the AT-ST:
Note a) how cute Ruiz’s Ewoks are and b) the face on the AT-ST:
November 21, 2025 at 5:13 PM
One of the characters in Kenny Ruiz’s STAR WARS: PATH OF THE LIGHTSABER is apparently an Endor truther, insisting Luke Skywalker beat the Empire, not the Ewoks.
Note a) how cute Ruiz’s Ewoks are and b) the face on the AT-ST:
Note a) how cute Ruiz’s Ewoks are and b) the face on the AT-ST:
Which artist has the best take on Jack Kirby’s Demon? My favorites have always been Norm Breyfogle, John McCrea and Stephen Bissette, but reading these issues of THE SPECTRE from the ‘90s, I think Tom Mandrake’s Etrigan is definitely a contender. Behold his version of The Demon:
November 19, 2025 at 11:12 PM
Which artist has the best take on Jack Kirby’s Demon? My favorites have always been Norm Breyfogle, John McCrea and Stephen Bissette, but reading these issues of THE SPECTRE from the ‘90s, I think Tom Mandrake’s Etrigan is definitely a contender. Behold his version of The Demon:
Look what came in the mail today! Between that huge SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection, the unexpected Jones inking of Jim Aparo in THE SPECTRE OMNIBUS (plus a Jones cover) and now DRACULA BOOK TWO: THE BRIDES, this has been a hell of a month to be a Kelley Jones fan...!
November 19, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Look what came in the mail today! Between that huge SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection, the unexpected Jones inking of Jim Aparo in THE SPECTRE OMNIBUS (plus a Jones cover) and now DRACULA BOOK TWO: THE BRIDES, this has been a hell of a month to be a Kelley Jones fan...!
These two lines from near the climax of Mark Waid, Christopher Cantwell and company's WE ARE YESTERDAY are a perfect encapsulation of the precise balance between awesome and dumb that I so enjoy in mainstream super-comics:
November 19, 2025 at 7:18 PM
These two lines from near the climax of Mark Waid, Christopher Cantwell and company's WE ARE YESTERDAY are a perfect encapsulation of the precise balance between awesome and dumb that I so enjoy in mainstream super-comics:
I read this a few weeks ago, and just finished writing about it. It’s really great. As a comics reader who is also interested in cryptids and American monster folklore, I found it damn near perfect.
November 19, 2025 at 6:33 PM
I read this a few weeks ago, and just finished writing about it. It’s really great. As a comics reader who is also interested in cryptids and American monster folklore, I found it damn near perfect.
Bad news on what the afterlife holds for critics from Etrigan:
November 19, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Bad news on what the afterlife holds for critics from Etrigan:
Pencils by the late Jim Aparo, inks by Kelley Jones! So, you get the stately figure drawings and great acting of Aparo, with a sort of spooky aura provided by Jones, and Jones' very busy backgrounds full of over-the-top details. I could contemplate these pages all night...
November 19, 2025 at 3:48 AM
Pencils by the late Jim Aparo, inks by Kelley Jones! So, you get the stately figure drawings and great acting of Aparo, with a sort of spooky aura provided by Jones, and Jones' very busy backgrounds full of over-the-top details. I could contemplate these pages all night...
I've been fairly flying through THE SPECTRE BY JOHN OSTRANDER AND TOM MANDRAKE OMNIBUS, which collects the first half of the series, and I just hit 1994's #16, which was a revelation. Its guest artists are a pair I know quite well but working in a combination I have never seen (nor imagined)...
November 19, 2025 at 3:33 AM
I've been fairly flying through THE SPECTRE BY JOHN OSTRANDER AND TOM MANDRAKE OMNIBUS, which collects the first half of the series, and I just hit 1994's #16, which was a revelation. Its guest artists are a pair I know quite well but working in a combination I have never seen (nor imagined)...
I run into Stephen Bissette in the strangest places…!
November 18, 2025 at 9:42 PM
I run into Stephen Bissette in the strangest places…!
I am fascinated by these attempts to reduce decades of complex comics continuity into a single splash and two sentences of text. Here's the Carol Danvers entry. I don't recognize her one costume, the one in the lower lefthand corner, with what looks like shoulder pads and...are those pouches...?
November 14, 2025 at 8:28 PM
I am fascinated by these attempts to reduce decades of complex comics continuity into a single splash and two sentences of text. Here's the Carol Danvers entry. I don't recognize her one costume, the one in the lower lefthand corner, with what looks like shoulder pads and...are those pouches...?
SPIDER-MAN: OCTO-GIRL Vol. 2 includes an eight-page "mini-comic" primer on the characters in the movie THE MARVELS by creators Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court. I only know who, like, three of these guys are...although I suspect I've read comics featuring some of the others (Like the Skrull Cap).
November 14, 2025 at 8:23 PM
SPIDER-MAN: OCTO-GIRL Vol. 2 includes an eight-page "mini-comic" primer on the characters in the movie THE MARVELS by creators Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court. I only know who, like, three of these guys are...although I suspect I've read comics featuring some of the others (Like the Skrull Cap).
The Superior Octopus, master of disguise.
November 14, 2025 at 8:11 PM
The Superior Octopus, master of disguise.
Here is Swamp Thing waterskiing on a lily pad behind a bad guy’s airboat, from a comic in the SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection.
November 12, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Here is Swamp Thing waterskiing on a lily pad behind a bad guy’s airboat, from a comic in the SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection.
According to an introduction to the SWAMP THING comics he and Kelley Jones made, writer Doug Wheeler said he first noticed Jones’ art in a HANGMAN comic that Len Wein had written and Archie Comics was showing off an NYC con, but that the publisher ultimately “chickened out” and never published.
November 12, 2025 at 6:46 PM
According to an introduction to the SWAMP THING comics he and Kelley Jones made, writer Doug Wheeler said he first noticed Jones’ art in a HANGMAN comic that Len Wein had written and Archie Comics was showing off an NYC con, but that the publisher ultimately “chickened out” and never published.
And so big…! Here it is with last month’s SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection and JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED Vol. 1 (a standard-sized super-comic trade), for comparison’s sake.
November 12, 2025 at 3:35 AM
And so big…! Here it is with last month’s SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection and JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED Vol. 1 (a standard-sized super-comic trade), for comparison’s sake.
It’s so beautiful…!
November 12, 2025 at 3:33 AM
It’s so beautiful…!
My reading of SWAMP THING is pretty spotty. Did the Swamp Thing movies of the 1980s play in the DC Universe too, or is Abby referring to some other, in-comic movie in this panel…?
November 11, 2025 at 4:53 PM
My reading of SWAMP THING is pretty spotty. Did the Swamp Thing movies of the 1980s play in the DC Universe too, or is Abby referring to some other, in-comic movie in this panel…?
"Who hasn't?" This more...jocular than usual Phantom Stranger appeared in Len Wein and Kelley Jones' 2016 SWAMP THING #6, on part of a splash page introducing he and some other characters into the climatic fight scene.
November 11, 2025 at 3:42 AM
"Who hasn't?" This more...jocular than usual Phantom Stranger appeared in Len Wein and Kelley Jones' 2016 SWAMP THING #6, on part of a splash page introducing he and some other characters into the climatic fight scene.
I just noticed how similar the hairstyles of Tobi and Yu, the little boys who star in GO-MAN: CHAMPION OF EARTH and SPIDER-MAN KIZUNA, are. They both have that Astro-Boy spike on the back of their heads.
November 10, 2025 at 7:12 PM
I just noticed how similar the hairstyles of Tobi and Yu, the little boys who star in GO-MAN: CHAMPION OF EARTH and SPIDER-MAN KIZUNA, are. They both have that Astro-Boy spike on the back of their heads.
Intriguing bit of back matter from the SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection, apparently part of Wein’s proposal for an ongoing. That whole list sounds awesome, but I’m most curious about #18, an odd choice of “creature” to put against Swamp Thing…
November 9, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Intriguing bit of back matter from the SWAMP THING BY LEN WEIN AND KELLEY JONES collection, apparently part of Wein’s proposal for an ongoing. That whole list sounds awesome, but I’m most curious about #18, an odd choice of “creature” to put against Swamp Thing…