Chip Zdarsky is quitting.
After being soundly thrashed* in this year’s Eisner voting for Best Journalistic Presentation by none other than THE BEAT, he’s packing it in with ZDARSKY COMIC NEWS, the absolutely hilarious news zine that was the Marvel Age of this age. Writing in his Substack:
Okay, so the BIG NEWS this week is for ZCN:
In his greatest battle yet, Chip faces off against his work/life balance! Will he finally stop producing a free magazine by himself every month and pay some attention to his five beautiful sons, Chad (7), Charles (8), Chip Jr. (12), Chucky (15) and Champ (31)? The answer won’t surprise you! Plus, we talk to Charles Soule, I guess. FINAL ISSUE.
That’s right! Now that my dumb little magazine is old enough to vote (if issue numbers were years), I’m wrapping up ZDARSKY COMIC NEWS. It wasn’t an easy decision as I truly love making it, but boy oh boy there are only so many hours in the day and for some reason my editors don’t take “but I’m making my free magazine this week” as an excuse for missing deadlines?? Also, this is starting to get in the way of my new passion: making homage covers.
ZDN, as it was called, was launched a few years ago to great mirth, and industry acclaim, suckered in by Zdarsky’s chipper demeanor and status as one of contemporary comic’s most beloved authors. But as time went on, Zdarsky used his bully pulpit as a platform to promote his own personal interests such as other good cartoonists, worthy comics and mulch.
Luckily, his reign of terror was stopped when the Beat prevailed at the Eisners, ensuring a golden age of peace and harmony.
So I got one word for ya, ZDARSKY!
SUCK IT!
As for Zdarsky’s new offshore entity, making homage covers, let’s take a look at that, shall we?
You know how comics these days are joyless, with characters always in distress or sad or angry? Remember the good old days of happy comic book characters?! Well I sure do! So, the first homage in my series WHEN HEROES WERE HEROES, pays tribute to this classic CAPTAIN AMERICA ANNUAL #8 cover:
Here is the original:
and here is Zdarsky’s puny remix.
I want to say one thing: that original cover by Mike Zeck with inks by John Beatty is a HOLY SPITBALLS Masterpiece! The Grand Comics Database lists the colorist as unknown but that person deserves a raise! In an era when some people still had to cut frisket, whoever colored it took Zeck’s dynamic, inventive design and made it somehow even MORE dynamic and inventive, without shading, grading or anything other than flat color. It’s a masterclass.
That ZDARSKY, doubtless scampering out of a Timmy Horton’s as we speak, should dare to bring his unbridled appetite for mirth and smiles to this masterpiece is nothing less than an outrage to the history and heritage of heroic comics and the great American values which we treasure.
The ZDARSKY COMIC NEWS era may be over, but as we were just saying, people like to have a comics magazine they can hold in their hands – so they can get jam all over the pages and fold the cover back, even while crimping the corners to be able to reference that thing they wanted to tell Sally about. Jamming, folding, crimping: things ZDARSKY COMIC NEWS was good at. No bird ever had to directly soil the floor of their cage while ZDARSKY COMIC NEWS was around. Let ZDARSKY go back to making his best selling comics and being an international superstar who people love hanging out with.
Leave the COMICS JOURNALISM TO US, ZDARSKY! We don’t need sleep! or money! And we have no important deadlines with editors at major publishers working on world famous heroes to distract us from our tasks. You’re not man enough to eat gruel and live in an abandoned favela, and you know it! Here at The Beat, we were born ready!
• Honestly maybe we beat it by one vote. We’ll never know.
BODY BLOW
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