Walt's UP? With Walt J.

A bodacious BlackFriday deal from Writer Walt (me!) Today, in my digital download shop, I am making PDFs of some of my books and comics absolutely freakin’ FREE. Go to: ko-fi.com/writerwalt/shop Download EARTH DUDE, HEROBOTS, etc., and read ‘em on screen at your ever-lovin’ leisure. All I ask in return is a comment, share or social media mention!

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 1

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

Happy Thanksgiving, all! We have much to be thankful for. ((And so we toast you with our coffee cups.)) - Walt and Randy

1 month ago | [YT] | 1

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

Whoever is writing signs for this grocery baking department is having waaaaay too much fun!

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 1

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

DANG GNATS!™ is the long-running webcomic by ‪@Walt-J‬ starring "two outspoken insects with too much time on their wings." They've been all over the web since 2001, but alas, not yet on YouTube. Until now! Here are 10 sample strips in the "gnat-imated" style. What's your fave?

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3 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 1

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

Here are a few panels from our KNOW PATROL™ poster #1, highlighting differences between sound-alike words. Starring KNOW BOY™ AND KNOW GIRL™. These super heroes for classrooms were created by Walt Jaschek aka ‪@Walt-J‬ (script and layout), Lorenzo Lizana (art), and Don Secrease (colors.) Get your KNOW PATROL™ poster here: waltnow.substack.com/p/the-know-patrol-poster-1-it…

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6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 1

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

Here is the introduction to my book THE DENNY O'NEIL TAPES: A CONVERSATION ABOUT COMICS, CULTURE AND AMERICA. It's on Amazon here: www.amazon.com/DENNY-ONEIL-TAPES-Conversation-Cult…

The year was 1970. A young comics writer was on the rise.

St. Louis native Denny O’Neil was a 31-year-old comic book writer in New York, experiencing burgeoning pop culture fame for his ground-breaking work on GREEN LANTERN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN and other DC Comics titles.

That summer, he returned to his home town on a media tour that included an extended, round-robin conversation with a small group of St. Lous comic book superfans – including me.

I was 15 years old.

And I recorded the whole thing.

THE DENNY O’NEIL TAPES is the first wide, mainstream publication of that interview, which was originally transcribed and published in 3 issues of GRAFAN, the mimeograph fanzine of our comic club, in 1970. It was seen by fewer than 100 people and never reprinted until now.

It's now on Amazon: www.amazon.com/DENNY-ONEIL-TAPES-Conversation-Cult…

The conversation focused on Denny’s process in creating his ground-breaking hits of the time; how they fit into the evolving pop culture zeitgeist; his views on artist, commitment and collaborations; the nature of what it means to “heroic;” and musings on the fate of the comic book industry itself.

As bonus, the book includes scans of the Denny’s original, typewritten script for GREEN LANTERN #63 (“This is the Way the World Ends,” 1968,) *gifted* to me by the writer after the interview. I also included select pages from the published issue, for comparison to the script (and edited-in-pencil by DC Comics’ Julius Schwartz!), and a glimpse at the workman processes of these brilliant creators.

With additional comic pages of Denny’s work from that era sprinkled through the interview to give to context, and a postscript inclusion of his complete Wikipedia bio, the book is, I hope, a small but worthy salute to the late, Missouri-born comics storytelling master whose whose career I followed for decades. (We met again at Webster University in the 2000s, when I was teaching, and he guest-speaking, but that’s another story.)

Here are some of Denny’s words from the tapes.

ON REVAMPING BATMAN AND SUPERMAN

“I think both Batman and Superman have accumulated a lot of unnecessary trimming over the years. They were characters who were equivalent to those automobiles Chrysler used to put out, with tail fins that shoot out as high as the Tower of Pisa, and 15 tons of chrome – unfunctional, too much there to work with. We looked at Superman and Batman from way back, the first issues, and we’ve tried to decide what made these characters popular in the first place. What is central to both of them? The process is getting to the stuff that I think, that Julie [Schwartz[ thinks, that Carmine [Infantino] thinks, is getting in the way of telling good, strong stories, and getting back to what the characters are essentially.”

ON ARTIST NEAL ADAMS

“The reason my stuff looks better when Neal is doing it is because Neal is a heck of a good artist and involves himself totally. It’s a matter of pride with him. He tells at least as strong a story in the pictures as you’ve told in the words. It’s more visual because Neal is more visual, and he cares more. I wish that I could distill Neal Adams and put him in a hypo and stick him in every artist in the business. It’s unreasonable to expect that all of them would have his technical skill, his talent, but I’d be satisfied if all of them cared as much as he does.”

ON ADDRESSING SOCIAL ISSUES IN COMICS

“I’m reacting. We’re all reacting. I’m desperately worried about pollution, for example. I’ve got a four-year-old son who might not live to be my age, unless we do something about this. If I were working in movies or some other medium, I would be reacting similarly. I don’t know that it’s we want to “preach.” There has been, of course, a qualified change. There used to be a time when comic never got into anything at all. The difference now is that if you have a story you want to tell about some social problem, and you can still make it an entertaining comic book, you can do it.”

ON WRITING “BAT LASH”

“It was a chance to do something that only comics can do and the medium has never done. Wil Eisner came close with The Spirit to the sort of thing we were trying to do, but we were trying to go one step past The Spirit. The book was written basically humorously, but we all had very serious ideas about who Bat Lash was. We all thought of him as more of a tragic figure than slapstick comedy. He was a poor bastard who was tied, chained and tethered by his own weaknesses, and he couldn’t do anything about them because he was too weak to overcome them. He had the makings of a very noble man, but because he was basically greedy and banal, he never exceeded the level of a very pleasant bastard.”

ON THE FATE OF THE COMICS INDUSTRY

“We may be on a real Ragnarök trip. The end may be very soon. But I think there are a lot of things that can be done. A lot of business things – things that should have been done ten years ago. But 10 years ago [in 1960,] Superman was good for 750,000 copies, and the money was just rolling in. I guess at that time they didn’t see any need to engage in what I feel are very simple, basic business practices that would tend to build an audience and get the magazine displayed. Practices that would broaden the base of the operation, so that if you had a bad year with the comics, you don’t stop altogether.”

Don’t worry: there were also a lot of laughs in the interview, too, with the affable master.

Denny died in 2022 after a long, award-winning career as comics writer and editor, but his work, characters and influence live on in both the DC and Marvel universes. This book is a snapshot of his early ascendency.

www.amazon.com/DENNY-ONEIL-TAPES-Conversation-Cult…

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2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 3

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

Breaking Bad. Better Call Saul. The Mandalorian. More. Actor Giancarlo Esposito @thegiancarloesposito elevates them all, with an unassuming yet mesmerising, “still-waters-run-deep” style of villainy we’ll be enjoying and studying for ages. He’s super-nice in real life, of course, and it was great to get pics with him. “What would you like to do?,” he asked of our photo shoot. “Let’s do a smiling shot and a serious shot,” I suggested. Voila!

He also was gracious to Randy, who told him she remembers him from “Trading Places.” And to me he said, “You look dapper.” I’ll take it!

#breakingbad #bettercallsaul #mandalorian #comiccon #photoshoot #gusfring #moffgideon #moffgideoncosplay #hankpym #hankpymcosplay #marvelcosplay #dapper #dappermen #eyewear #glasses #vests #funmoments

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2 years ago | [YT] | 5

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

Poster post! I just scored this "Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" poster. I love it! (More than the movie.) See how much it is on Amazon today via my affiliate link: amzn.to/4jzDWYY

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2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 4

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

Since I’m cosplaying Hank Pym again, I thought I would actually read a biography of the guy who brought the character to life in the MCU! The book is "Michael Douglas: A Biography" by Marc Eliot. Grab it on Amazon with my affiliate link: amzn.to/4mL8BoJ

I’m reading the hardback now, and will report in again with conclusions when I’m done. It’s a very well-researched and written biography. So far I’ve gobbled up the introduction, the first part (“Parents”,) Part 2 (“Connecticut to Santa Barbara”,) and Part 3 (“Into the Cuckoo’s Nest.”) Next up: “Action Star!”

Lots of fascinating information in the book’s extensive Filmography, too. Here, for example, were Micheal Douglas’s Top 10 Domestic Box Office Grosses — as of 2012.

Fatal Attraction (1987) - $157 million
Traffic (2000) - $124 million
Basic Instinct (1992) - $188 million
The War of the Roses (1989) - $84 million
Disclosure (1994) - $83 million
Romancing the Stone (1984) - $76 million
The Jewel of the Nile (1985) - $75 million
You, Me and Dupree (2006) - $H75 million
A Perfect Murder (1998) - $68 million
The American President (1995) - $60 million

The book came out before "Ant-Man" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp," which surpassed all that; the former's domestic gross was $180,202,163, and AntMan and the latter's was $216,648,740. (I looked it up.)

If you’d like to read this biography, too, it’s on Amazon, of course. amzn.to/3kQ22WM That’s an affiliate link; I get some kind of small cut if you buy it. (Though I’ve been an Amazon affiliate for years, I don’t think I’ve yet made a full dollar there. That’s okay, I don’t make money with the cosplaying, either: some things are born of passion, enthusiasm and fun.

Hey, that just might sum up Michael Douglas's qualities, as well.

To be continued, Pym-fans!

2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 2

Walt's UP? With Walt J.

How do you pronounce "Jaschek?" Many people are asking. Watch this video: https://youtu.be/L9qfwaPHyHU?si=79IAE... Or read this transcript:

Here's a Q&A with me about the pronunciation of my last name. In an interview conducted by... me!

Q. How do you pronounce Jaschek?

A. Well, much of my family here in the U.S., including parents, pronounces the “s-c-h” combination as an “s” sound, like ja-sic, with a short “a” sound, as if to rhyme with “classic.”

Q. But you do not pronounce it that way?

A. No.

Q. Why is that?

A. During college, I started to embrace that odd “sch” consonant combination as a “shhhhh” sound, like the “sch” in Schwab or Dr. Scholls or Anheuser Busch, makers of Busch Light, thinking that this would actually help pronunciation, not hinder.

Q. So did it help, then?

A. Not at all.

Q. Is it true that your high school gym teacher would call you “JAZZ-check” in a high-pitched nasal, and that you felt that “JAZZ-check” was some alternate version of yourself that ran laps in a jock?

A. That is true. How did you get that information?

Q. We hear things.

A. Hmmm.

Q. Do you often see your name misspelled as Jassik, Jasik, Jashek, Jaschek or Yashek?

A. It’s like you’re reading my mind.

Q. You know, in its original, Germanic language, the “j” would be pronounced like a “y.” As in, "Ya-shek."

A. True.

Q. So you do it that way?

A. No. I can’t really yustify that. I mean, justify that.

Q. So, in that case: how DO you pronounce “Jaschek”?

A. Me?

Q. Yes.

A. I have no idea.

Q. [Sigh.]

A: I was hoping you knew.

[SFX: Muted trombone.]

P.S. It really doesn't matter how you pronounce it. As long as you share, like, subscribe -- and live long and prosper.

Walt

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Walt Jaschek is an American writer of comedy, comics, and copy. He resides and creates in St. Louis, Missouri, living happily, or at least peacefully, with a name nobody can pronounce.

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2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 2