Cinema's back!

Good morning!

Especially good because I’ve got a piece out for The New Yorker today! I had the pleasure of working with my very own alternate-timeline Variant and frequent collaborator, Evan Allgood, dreaming up a few superheroes to fill out the next Avengers roster.

We pitched this piece all the way back in Fall of 2019 and it was slated to be published mid-2020 but because of the pandemic (and delay of Black Widow specifically), it’s taken almost two years for this Shout to see the light of day.

One of the nice parts of revisiting a two-year-old comic is updating any dated references. At the time we first drew it, virtually every headline had to do with Trump’s presidency. Luckily for us, the ensuing years have had no shortage of soul-crushing dumpster fires.

[2019]

[2021]

I know it’s not quite a billion-dollar movie franchise installment, but it’s nice that our little love letter to superhero movies finally gets its moment in the sun. You can read the whole comic here:

P.S. Loki is a better time-travel show than Doctor Who. Oh, and for what it’s worth, better than WandaVision too 👀 I said what I said.

Squidward Dream Cruise

I made shirts! This idea came to me almost three years ago and I’ve been too lazy / too bad at drawing to make anything I could be proud of until now. We’re running low on a few sizes but I’ve got a restock coming in July 16th. Order yours now!

A Brief Review of Pixar’s Luca

OK, I’m only bringing this up because I feel like this movie has flown under the radar thus far. On its surface, Luca just looks like a Little Mermaid / Ponyo knockoff but it’s so much more than that. The story takes place in a quaint seaside town on the Italian Riviera where Luca discovers an exciting new world above water. It doesn’t feel like a Pixar film in the way that Soul did before it but that works in its favor. You get to spend time falling in love with this town and its quirky traditions and residents with the same wide-eyed wonder as Luca.

If anything, the movie feels like an homage to Studio Ghibli. The town’s name, Porto Rosso, is basically an explicit reference to Miyazaki’s 1992 film, Porco Rosso. This isn’t to say Luca feels derivative. On the contrary, it’s a credit to the story, art, and character design. I mean, tell me these two aren’t just Ghibli characters…

Everything about this movie seems to push against the conventional Pixar film while packing the same emotional punch. You don’t need imaginative new worlds and abstractions to explore the very human themes that Luca treads and I can’t recommend it enough. Stream it on Disney+ if you can!

#BringDannyHome

[Portrait by Amy Kurzweil]

Danny Fenster is a journalist from Detroit and managing editor of Frontier Myanmar. On May 24th, Danny was detained by the military in Myanmar and sent to Insein Prison in Yangon, a political prison notorious for its human rights abuses. His family has only recently been able to confirm his safety with the U.S. Embassy in late June and it’s recently been discovered that he was arrested based on false information. Regardless, journalism isn’t a crime. Sign the petition to call on our government to prioritize his safe return home.

You can find more information and follow updates at https://bringdannyhome.com/

All the best,

Evan

www.evanlian.com

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