SNEAK PEEK! X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN — SECOND GENESIS #2
Ed Piskor’s tour de mutants continues…
A NEAL ADAMS CHRONICLES birthday salute to an incredible artist who deserves far more recognition… — UPDATED 1/14/26: Artist Rudy Nebres, born January 14, 1937, turns 89! Perfect time to reprint this piece from his birthday in 2024. Dig it! — Dan — By PETER STONE Rudolfo D. Nebres, who is turning 89, was a huge part of Continuity Studios as well as a huge part of my comics career. He penciled and inked comic books, advertising storyboards and animatics while I was working with him. He was a consummate professional in every sense of the word. He would arrive every morning at exactly the same time, take off his coat, and get to work. Then, when his day was done, he put on his coat and went home to New Jersey and his family. He was never one of those young, single artists who stayed all night to finish a job. He knew it would be there in the morning. Rudy, born Jan. 14, 1937, was quiet and somewhat intense because, in the end, he was there to do a job. He was there to ink, or sometimes to pencil. It didn’t matter if he was inking a woman holding a product in a kitchen or a demon trying to kill a superhero. He gave every single piece he worked on the same intensity and skill. Sometimes Neal Adams needed a storyboard penciled and Rudy was available. So, Rudy would pencil it and Neal would ink it. Based on an art director’s rough sketches, Rudy could turn a standard storyboard into something real and wonderful. This from a man who used to draw Conan, the White Tiger, Shang-Chi, Iron Fist and so many more. In the years that Rudy worked with Neal, they were well-suited for each other. Neal needed an inker who could draw and Rudy was definitely that. He had studied Fine Arts in the Philippines and worked extensively at DC Comics, Archie and Marvel Comics. He had even worked in the Tony DeZuniga studio for a time. So, Rudy and Neal could create finished pieces of exceptional quality no matter who did what. Neal could pencil or ink and Rudy could ink or pencil. They could not be more different as men, but they were perfectly suited for each other in terms of art. Neal’s...
Scott and Dan hit up the comics racks from 53 years ago… This week for RETRO HOT PICKS, Scott and I are selecting comics that came out the week of Jan. 14, 1973. Last time for RETRO HOT PICKS, it was the week of Jan. 7, 1992. Click here to check it out. (Keep in mind that comics came out on multiple days, so these are the comics that went on sale between Jan. 11 and Jan. 17.) And dig that banner by Walt Grogan — new for 2026! We’ve got four of them — one each for the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern Ages. So, let’s set the scene: The adversaries in the Vietnam War were close to ending the conflict. On Jan. 15, President Richard Nixon, saying progress had been made in peace negotiations, announced that offensive action in North Vietnam would be suspended as of Jan. 27. That said, on the same day, the Navy carried out a bombing attack on more than a dozen Vietnamese bridges. Peace talks in Paris had resumed earlier in the month but were almost derailed when National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was dressed down by North Vietnam’s chief negotiator Le Duc Tho over the Americans’ Christmas bombings at the end of 1972. (Operation Linebacker II, the largest campaign involving heavy bombers since World War II, resulted in at least 1,600 civilian deaths. It was the last major U.S. military operation of the war. Still, a peace deal was reached later in January.) Meanwhile, as Nixon prepared to be inaugurated for his second term, Watergate continued to heat up. On Jan. 11, former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, one of the leaders of the White House Plumbers, was the first major player to plead guilty in the scandal. Four days later, four more took pleas: Bernard L. Barker, Frank A. Sturgis, Eugenio Martínez and Virgilio Gonzalez. This as whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was on trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers — which tore the lid off the nasty secrets of the country’s involvement in Vietnam, and which led to the creation of the Plumbers to begin with. (Charges against Ellsburg would ultimately be dismissed.) Thousands of miles away, in Italy, Mossad agents on Jan. 14 learned of a Palestinian Liberation Organization plot to shoot down a jet taking Israeli Prime Minster Golda Meir to...
Ed Piskor’s tour de mutants continues…