Paul Morton / Saul Salt

A Realistic Take on a Fantastic Family: Revisiting James Sturm & Guy Davis’ Unstable Molecules - Reactor While the movie promises a bright 1960s aesthetic, we're looking back at a darker take on the team's origins...

My new essay about my fav FF comic, just in time for the new movie. reactormag.com/a-realistic-...

Alumni Letter to Columbia University's Administration and Faculty Regarding Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung We, members of Columbia University’s alumni, write to condemn the unlawful detention of Mahmoud Khalil, as well as the threatened deportation of Yunseo Chung. The threats facing Mr. Khalil and Ms. Chu...

If you know any Columbia alumni — any school, any year — please ask them to sign this petition.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Animated Animals and the Post-Human World - Reactor The two best films this awards season, both honored at the Golden Globes, both likely to be honored again at the Oscars, ask the same question: What does it mean for a culture to survive catastrophe? ...

My piece on Flow and its antecedents.

reactormag.com/animated-ani...

“This Will Be Fun.” On the Life and Times of a Comics Master, Jules Feiffer In the summer of 1946, Jules Feiffer, then 17, determined to make a career in comics, entered the studio of his hero Will Eisner. At 29, Eisner was an eminence in an industry that had just moved on…

I'm writing his biography now. Here's my remembrance: lithub.com/this-will-be...

“This Will Be Fun.” On the Life and Times of a Comics Master, Jules Feiffer In the summer of 1946, Jules Feiffer, then 17, determined to make a career in comics, entered the studio of his hero Will Eisner. At 29, Eisner was an eminence in an industry that had just moved on…

I'm writing his biography for FG. Here's my remembrance: lithub.com/this-will-be...

“This Will Be Fun.” On the Life and Times of a Comics Master, Jules Feiffer In the summer of 1946, Jules Feiffer, then 17, determined to make a career in comics, entered the studio of his hero Will Eisner. At 29, Eisner was an eminence in an industry that had just moved on…

Here is my remembrance of Jules Feiffer, who I got to know very well at the end of his life, while writing a book about him for Fantagraphics.

lithub.com/this-will-be...

I've seen that...and the opposite.

How Peter Gillis’ “What If Captain America Were Not Revived Until Today?” Speaks to Readers in 2024 - Reactor A prescient warning from Cap.

Love you! But, Marvel started telling this joke in the early 1970s, as I explain midway through this article: reactormag.com/how-peter-gi...

Libraries are awesome. They are way more than just a place to borrow books from. They are community centers and also usually safe places for a lot of people to go. They help with GEDs, they are voting centers, they teach so many things!

Spider-Man bounded by Riverside, Morningside, Teacher's College and Labyrinth Bookstore. Spends most of the time in the Butler stacks, takes photographs for the Spec, avoids protests, annoyed his classmates don't do the reading in LitHum.

Parting Glances: Mourning the Work We Didn’t Get from Queer Director Bill Sherwood It’s not clear when Bill Sherwood knew he was closer to the end of his life than the beginning. He was sure he had contracted HIV early on—at least he told some of his friends he was sure—though th…

Agreed: A piece I wrote about it. lithub.com/parting-glan...

Mind blowing fan theory: Empire of the Sun, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan exist in the same universe.

States of Desire, The Line of Beauty, Waiting for the Barbarians, The Drowned and the Saved, Cancer Ward, In Search of Lost Time, Road to Wigan Pier, The Piazza Tales, War Without Mercy (Dower), The Return of the Native

Twenty books that influenced/stayed with me: One Hundred Years of Solitude, A Hero of Our Time, Fathers and Children, The Brothers Karamazov, A Sportsman's Notebook, War and Peace, Disgrace, American Pastoral, Portnoy's Complaint, The Plot Against America...

During World War II, the deadliest conflict in human history, people played sports, went to movies, gardened, studied Latin.

As they did before and since, even now as billions live in abject poverty. We have a limited time on this earth. Make the most of it.

FYI: The Conclusion of Bendis' initial final issue of USM (#133) was accompanied by a long-form interview conducted by me. I am pleased to be a small part of Spider-Man history.

How Peter Gillis’ “What If Captain America Were Not Revived Until Today?” Speaks to Readers in 2024 - Reactor A prescient warning from Cap.

I wrote a piece about him earlier this year: reactormag.com/how-peter-gi...

Oh, she's really MAGA now.

Patti D'Arbanville was in Warhol's movies in the 60s. In the 90s, she played a tough Republican lieutenant on New York Undercover, mentor of hot af detectives. 2004: a mafia boss on The Sopranos.

This is one of the most eclectic acting careers in history, and I am waiting for her next big moment.

Flynn: Robin Hood
Fairbanks: Zorro
Stewart: Prof. X

But yes, it's up there.

If anything, it's one of life's great joys to take pleasure in words written long before you were born. I particularly dig the cocktail parties at Thomas Hardy's apartment. "Paul! May I introduce you to Eustacia Vye? You'll make wonderful frenemies...I mean friends."

You're looking for blurbs? I'm not sure if there isn't a celebrity who doesn't like comics.

FWIW: I lived on a dorm floor with a communal, gender-neutral bathroom from 2000-2001. No one died.

The best list is from the 1940s-1970s: filmmakers Orson Welles, William Friedkin, Alain Resnais, Federico Fellini; writers Ken Kesey, Kenneth Koch, E.E. Cummings; Paul McCartney

Still talk to the person you went to prom with? No, but I wish her well.
Did you skip school? Occasionally, but I don't remember doing anything interesting with my free time.

If you could go back, would you? I would kill for a high school do-over. I would have made friends with different people. I would have been open about myself, less on guard. I would have read less and written more. I would not have killed myself to get into a prestigious college.

Where did you live? Potomac, Maryland. Borrowing a joke from Fresh Prince of Bel Air: South Central Potomac.
Were you in the band or choir? No, but I knew some very talented musicians.
Ever got suspended? No. That would have been the end of the world for an Ivy-focused dude like me.

What kind of work did you do? My first paying job was a summer internship right after high school graduation. My uncle had a extremely promising tech company, which had enjoyed a very impressive IPO. You haven't heard of it.

I'd like to introduce myself to my hopefully more professional/friendlier social media home. This one is the high school questionnaire.
Class of: 1999
Did you know your current love: No.
Type of car: A green Ford Escort with a six-CD changer, filled with Dylan.

We can move on. But I've always been rankled by one question: "How far was he willing to go?" If the cops had found a suspect, would he have said, "Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's the guy."

I actually know a manipulative jerk who faked a hate crime, so this is a little sensitive for me.