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Kurt Busiek Profile picture
Kurt Busiek
@KurtBusiek
mostly over on bluesky these days. also still on facebook and tumblr.
Jun 9, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I saw a couple people arguing that if you raise the age for gun ownership you have to raise the age for all other legal markers of adulthood, or it's not fair.

I say thee nay, As we've worked it out, it's very helpful that people can be licensed to drive years before they're licensed to drink; it's very helpful that way.

There also seems to be (don't ask me to cite it) evidence that a later age for gun ownership results in fewer killing sprees.
Jun 9, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
On scientific grounds, we writers don't need to be as smart as Reed; we just need to say, "Look, he designed this cool machine!"

On tactical grounds, we don't have to think as fast as Reed, because we can take four hours coming up with a plan he comes up with in a split-second.* *plus, we're the writers, so we can make sure his great plan actually works; we run the world and the laws of chance and all that kind of stuff.

And on interpersonal stuff, well, Reed and Tony are both pretty dumb on that front. Geniuses can do real dumb things.
Nov 10, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
AVENGERS FOREVER exists because of Carlos Pacheco.

He was up for a contract renewal, and he told Bob Harras that he wanted two things: He wanted to do an Avengers project and he wanted me to write it.

At this point, we'd never worked together, and had barely met. Bob called me, and asked me if I was up for the project. I was hugely flattered, and told Bob that I had no time (this was very true), but for the chance to work with Carlos, I would make time.

Then we had to actually come up with a story!
Nov 9, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Today in the mail we got a large black envelope from Amazon… …and in the large black envelope was a fancy little black box…
Nov 8, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Zis is ze Scarlet Witch — who ‘ad always wished to be une actresse — faking out Luke and Danny. Naturally, D.W. recognized her pseudonym. Secrets of the Comics Revealed, Maybe: After this issue came out, the editor, Denny O'Neil told me that it had seen a nice bump in sales, that we'd gotten considerably more mail on it than other issues in recent memory, that the mail was extremely positive, and I should never...
Mar 7, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Just saw, on another social-media site, a comics creator who was venting about the character in KING CONAN getting a different name. He was absolutely furious that Marvel would “buckle” to the forces of “cancel culture.”

And I’m thinking, wait, what the hell difference does... …it make if the character has a different name? Does it alter the character in any significant way? Does it change the concept, the story? Does it do anything except not accidentally offend some of the audience?

No. So what’s the problem?
Mar 6, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Okay. Best Batman movie yet. Also best bat-cape yet.

There was one bit I’d have liked to have seen and one scene I’d have considered moving,* but no real complaints, at least not this soon after seeing it.

*ask me in a few weeks, if you care. After everyone’s had a real chance to see it.
Feb 28, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I think Stan’s collaborators had a lot more to do with creating the stories than they were credited for, and it’s worth remembering that and not perpetuating the error.

Stan was very, very good at what he did, and that’s worth remembering, too. But it shouldn’t be at the cost... …of miscrediting his co-writers and artists.

What Stan actually did was crucial to Marvel’s success. But any time he’s sweepingly credited with all the writing or all of Marvel’s success, it’s selling Kirby and Ditko and Heck and Colan and Romita and so on short.
Feb 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Seems like a good time for this... My biggest problem with this plot, admittedly, is the scene wherre Superman alters Galactus’s list of planets to eat so he’ll go eat some other planet rather than Krypton, and then worries about the moral implications but doesn’t do anything about them.

That seems to me like...
Nov 29, 2021 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
One of the things I like best about Jack Kirby’s creation of Him (later Adam Warlock) in FANTASTIC FOUR, aside from the work itself. is the story that Kirby concieved the character and plotted the story after talking with Steve Ditko about Objectivism. Kirby’s version, as plotted, was about a trio of well-meaning scientists who set out to create the new breed of man along Objectivist principles, and as soon as he’s “born” he kills them all because he’s completely amoral.

This was Kirby’s reaction to what Ditko was trying to...
Sep 18, 2021 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
I worked on this a tiny bit, unintentionally and years before it was ever contemplated, much less written. Since @TrumbullComic asked:

The central conceit of “The Gentleman’s Gentleman’s Tale” stems from a long drive, from San Diego to north of LA, as Neil and I were both going to visit Scott and Ivy McCloud (an evening which ended in the birth of the McCloud’s youngest child).
Sep 18, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
lady cop
doot doo doo-doot
doo-doo doo-doo
lady cop
doot doo doo-doot
doo-doo doo-doo
lady cop
doot doo doo-doot
doo-doo doo-doo
lady cop! I have been earwormed by this all day, so I thought I’d share.
Dec 20, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Every now and then I find myself wondering what it would have been like if the New Universe had been a universe a lot of readers wanted to buy. I mean, the opportunity was there. They just needed to pick a target audience that existed and create books that actually targeted that audience, instead of “books that had principles Jim Shooter wanted comics readers to like."
Dec 19, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Se7en Brides for Se7en Brothers

#HorrorRomComs Crazy Rich Aliens

#HorrorRomComs
Dec 19, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
You’ve Got Zuul

#HorrorRomComs Sleepless in R’lyeh

#HorrorRomComs
Dec 18, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I see people saying that if somehow Joe Biden weren’t inaugurated, like he was arrested by the secret non-Deep-State that Trump’s secretly Q-mmanding, then Kamala Harris couldn’t be president because she would have nver been VP, so Trump would win!

Oy. First off, if Biden were somehow incapacitated — even if he died — Harris would be inaugurated as President. That’s what she was elected for.
Second, if the winner of the election is somehow taken out of things, they don’t award the presidency to the loser as a consolation prize.
Oct 3, 2020 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
I feel like I’m split into two perceptions: On the one hand, the president of the United States has a potentially deadly disease and it’s apparently spreading like wildfire through his administration and that’s news that should shake and unnerve the world, including me, as a... …citizen.

And on the other hand, I feel incredibly distanced from it all, because I don’t actually feel like the United States has a president.

And not on “I don’t recognize that guy as my president” grounds; I fully recognize that he’s got the job.
Oct 2, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The press secretary said that out of an abundance of caution, Trump will be working from the presidential offices at Walter Reed.

I did a Google search, and on that admittedly-sloppy basis, this may be the first mention of "presidential offices" at Walter Reed in history. Has anyone heard of "presidential offices" at Walter Reed before?
Sep 29, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
What happened here, I wonder? Image The word back in the day (to the point that even I heard it, and I hadn’t broken in yet) was that Gene Colan would give so much space to the early scenes in a story that he’d have to cram the endings into too-little space. This is the second-to-last page of an issue, and that...
Sep 27, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Image Image
Sep 26, 2020 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
If you think it’s a valid argument to say “Well, why don’t they make White Panther comics, then? That’s hypocritical!” you probably shouldn’t be surprised that no one takes you seriously. And if you have to point to 10-page stories from years ago and wacky alternate-world annuals to say that all comics are doing the same thing, then you’re picking off a list your aggrieved leaders have fed you that you probably haven’t even read.