Poster Service, or: Appreciating George Perez

Plus: 'Succession,' 'Wheel of Time,' and Happies!! [View this email online]( [Pop Culture Happy Hour]( by Glen Weldon Welcome! It was the week when we were [drowning in conjecture]( over the fate of a certain television character, especially after this very intense (and interestingly timed?) [New Yorker profile]( threw more wood on the fire tossed more water into the Tuscan infinity pool. It was the week the great artist [Ann Dowd climbed up into her Garrett](. It was the week we were given [an answer in the form of the question]( “What is … ‘kicking the can down the road ?’” And it was the week you could imagine Drake doing that part of [the Drake-meme]( where he’s in the left box wincing at what’s in the right box, [which in this case was The Grammys](. Let's get to it. Opening Argument: Poster Service, or: Appreciating George Perez An image started popping up on Twitter this week, as images are wont to do. This one I not only recognized, but felt as an ache, as muscle memory. I knew every square inch, the thickness of every line, the curve of every shape, the hue of every color, having stared at it intently for hours upon hours back in my old college dorm room, in the late Mesozoic, when ichthyosaurs swam the turbid seas. It’s a [poster of the superhero team The New Teen Titans]( as they were depicted in a 1980s run of comics written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Lopez. Some quick background: The Teen Titans, as originally conceived, consisted entirely of the kid sidekicks of top-tier DC Comics heroes: There was Robin (Batman’s li’l helper), Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman’s), Aqualad (Aquaman’s), Kid Flash (Flash’s), Speedy (Green Arrow’s), etc. This group, with some personnel changes, had been around since the groovy go-go-boot 1960s. When Wolfman and Perez rebooted the Titans in 1980, they instituted some changes. Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash were still on-board, but the roster now swelled with new characters the two men co-created for the series: Cyborg, a half-man/half-machine with a chip on his shoulder; Starfire, an alien princess with literal firepower and a sunny disposition; and Raven, a haunted, emo empath struggling to reckon with her demonic father’s legacy. (Another member, Changeling, had been kicking around the comics for years, but Wolfman/Perez gave him a new lease on life as an annoying, big-ego/low-self-esteem, adolescent, sexist horndog.) (Changeling was the worst, you guys.) At the center of the Teen Titans poster in question sits Titans Tower, the group’s on-the-nosingly T-shaped headquarters on an island in New York City’s East River. Around it, the Titans swirl into action: Robin and Wonder Girl swing out towards the viewer on her lasso, Starfire soars along the left side of the poster, leaving a trail of fiery … hair (it doesn’t make sense but it looks cool, trust me), Cyborg strikes a power pose, Kid Flash zips out at us, Raven bamfs into existence at the bottom of the poster, Changeling becomes a bunch of different green animals (long story); and young Terra, a girl with earth-moving powers who came aboard late, beams out at us from her perch just above Titans Tower. (Decades-old spoiler alert: She looks cute and innocent; she isn’t. She’s trouble.) I read every issue of The New Teen Titans avidly, back then; many did. It was DC’s most popular book for a long stretch. The secret? Well, there was Wolfman’s take on the Titans as a group of angsty, horny teenagers who were forever squabbling with one another. New Teen Titans was one of the first DC books to adopt the Marvel playbook, in that sense. It would not be the last. But me, personally? I used to roll my eyes whenever a Titan would start complaining about their personal problems. “You’ve got super-powers and perfect bodies and you’re all unbelievably hot!,” I would grouse to myself. “You have nothing to complain about! Stop whining!” (I didn’t realize it at the time, but reading The New Teen Titans would prepare me for, later in life, following fitness models on TikTok and Instagram.) No, it was George Perez’s artwork that kept me coming back. Some comics artists are born iconographers, who excel at creating individual images -- striking cover art and splash pages -- that distill characters to their most iconic, most dynamic essences and leave the viewer agog. Other comics artists are excellent storytellers, shaping narrative through successive images with close attention to facial expression, body language, lighting and focus. Perez is a master of both, loading his panels with the kind of meticulous detail that rewards close inspection, while able to deliver a big, emotional gut-punch when necessary. His style might be called hyper-realistic, which seems odd when one’s subject is people who fly and zap and bamf and turn into green Capuchin monkeys. But there’s something about the fineness of his characters’ features, and the way he captures muscles straining with effort using only line and shadow, that makes his superheroes seem more alive, more vibrantly real, than any live-action version can ever, or will ever, hope to realize. Heroes exist in their purest, platonic form on a Perez page. Every other version is a shadow on a cave wall. I bring all this up because this week, [Perez took to social media]( to announce that he has inoperable stage three pancreatic cancer, and that his doctors have estimated his life expectancy at six months to a year. So that’s why my old dorm room poster, and so many Perez images, started making the rounds on Tuesday. But it wasn’t simply an outpouring of appreciation, because it came paired with a distinct sense of urgency: George Perez is still around, and we’ve been given a chance to let him know, before he leaves us, exactly how much he’s shaped not just superheroes, but the lives of all of us who love them, forever. Recently, [many of us at NPR lost a friend]( and it happened so suddenly we didn’t have an opportunity to express to her even a fraction of everything we could have. It’s something that only compounds the sense of loss. So the fact we’ve been granted this grace period with Perez seems all the more precious, and urgent, and merciful. Because it turns out that poster on my dorm room wall didn’t just hang there. It reached out to others who knew and loved his work as they passed by, inviting them in. Its mere presence circumvented my social awkwardness; I made instant, enduring, lifelong friendships that began with some nerd poking their head in and opening a conversation with me about George Perez and his output: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Wonder Woman, The Avengers, The Infinity Gauntlet, and many more. That poster is long gone, but somewhere in a storage facility in the wilds of Northern Virginia, my copies of his entire runs on New Teen Titans, Wonder Woman and Crisis are waiting for me. All those pages, crowded with life. All those panels, teeming with emotion and color and light and shadow. This weekend, I’m taking a drive. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- We Recommend: Lookit: No one -- no one -- is more surprised than I am that I’m recommending a rom-com, much less a Christmas-themed rom-com. The thing is, though? [Single All The Way]( on Netflix, seems to have been genetically engineered in some vast underground laboratory specifically to bond to my personal pleasure-receptors. It’s gleefully awash in a very specific species of Hallmark/Lifetime cheesiness that is entirely intentional and knowing. Its queerness is endemic, matter-of-fact, never forced (there’s a [blink and you’ll miss it reference to the film Clue]( for example, that is simply asserted, not insisted upon). Mostly? There are jokes. Actual jokes! Good ones! And charming performances from Michael Urie, Philemon Chambers, Kathy Najimy, and Jennifer Freaking Coolidge. Also: Schitt’s Creek’s Jennifer Robertson gets a chance to open up and put some healthy distance between herself and Jocelyn Schitt! Also also: That hot guy from Brothers and Sisters is jacked now! I liked the film [In the Earth]( more than some people, but then, I’ve been on a folk-horror kick and this movie threw enough curves to seem like a fresh take. Basically, while a virus is ravaging England (I know, I know, keep reading!), a scientist goes into the woods to look for a missing colleague who may have some connection to it. Mysterious stones, rituals, hermits, and no small amount of body horror ensue. I liked the moody, atmospheric sense of dread it generates, and while I’m still not quite sure what the ending’s getting at, exactly, it was a good, creepy ride. Watching [Queen of the Universe]( of Paramount Plus, a singing competition in which the competitors are drag queens, one gets the sense that pure, shambolic chaos is bubbling juuuuust beneath the surface, waiting to erupt at any moment. The judges, including RuPaul stalwarts Michelle Visage, Graham Norton and Trixie Mattel, are great, and it’s refreshing to see queens actually belting at the top of their lungs, instead of lip-syncing for their lives. Song choices have proven less than iconic, so far, but you do get the sense that the season is building to something. What We Did This Week: [Succession image]( Macall Polay/HBO On Monday’s show, Linda, Barrie Hardymon and Andrew Limbong kicked off this year’s Books We Love (nee Book Concierge) with a roundup of [some of their favorite 2021 reads](. On Tuesday’s show, I talked with NPR editor Natalie Escobar about Amazon’s [The Wheel of Time](. On Wednesday’s show, Aisha, Linda and I [unpacked this season of Succession]( which we like a lot more than some other critics. (Still time to check out [Linda’s recap of the penultimate episode]( before Sunday’s season finale.) On Thursday’s show, Stephen, NPR Music’s Ann Powers and NPR TV critic Eric Deggans [went back to where they once belonged]( talking Peter Jackson’s doc, The Beatles: Get Back. On Friday’s show, I talked to Aisha, Stitcher’s Daisy Rosario and Alt. Latino’s Anamaria Sayre about [the new (in some ways, old in others) West Side Story]( plus What’s Making Us Happy. Coming next week: The most, um, contentious spirited discussion of the merits of [It’s a Wonderful Life]( you’re likely to come across this season, and we’ll [check in with Hawkeye](. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - What’s making Daisy happy: [The How to ADHD YouTube channel]( - What’s making Anamaria happy: Her new puppy wearing a cone. Which … you can’t really experience, so uh, [here’s this instead]( - What’s making Aisha happy: [South Side on HBOMax]( - What’s making Glen happy: [Sort Of, also on HBOMax]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. [Find a Station]( --------------------------------------------------------------- What do you think of today's email? 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