#jordan morris

[kaluwa-del-conte]

[Line art below if anyone wants to print and color]

[saleszulu76]

Daniel Avshalumov @ Wilhelmina NY by Jordan Morris for Yearbook Fanzine #15, Dec. 2018

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Bowen McCurdy and Jordan Morris’s “Youth Group”

NEXT SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Youth Group is Bowen McCurdy and Jordan Morris's new and delightful graphic novel from Firstsecond. It's a charming tale of 1990s ennui, cringe Sunday School – and demon hunting.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250789235/youthgroup

Kay is a bitter, cynical teenager who's doing her best to help her mother cope with an ugly divorce that has seen her dad check out on his former family. Mom is going back to church, and she talks Kay into coming along with her to attend the church youth group.

This is set in the 1990s, and the word "cringe" hasn't yet entered our lexicon as an adjective, but boy is the youth group cringe. The pastor is a guitar-strumming bearded dad who demonstrates how down he is with the kids by singing top 40 songs rewritten with evangelical lyrics (think Weird Al meets the 700 Club). Kay gamely struggles through a session and even makes a friend or two, and agrees to keep attending in deference to her mother's pleas.

But this is no ordinary youth group. Kay's ultra-boring suburban hometown is actually infested with demons who routinely possess the townspeople, and that baseline of demonic activity has suddenly gone critical, with a new wave of possessions. Suddenly, the possessed are everywhere – even Kay's shitty dad ends up with a demon inside of him.

That's when Kay discovers that the youth group and its corny pastor are also demon hunters par excellence. Their rec-rooms sport secret cubbies filled with holy weapons, and the words of exorcism come as readily to them as any embarrassing rewritten devotional pop song. Kay's discovery of this secret world convinces her that youth group isn't so bad after all, and soon she is initiated into its mysteries, including the existence of rival demon-hunting kids from the local synagogue, Catholic church, and Wiccan coven.

As the nature of the new demonic incursion becomes clearer, it falls on Kay and her pals to overcome these sectarian divisions over the protests of their guitar-strumming, magic-wielding leader. That takes on a special urgency when Kay learns why the demons are interested in her, personally, and a handful of other kids in town who all share a secret trait.

I confess that as someone who lived through the 1990s as a young man, there is something disorienting about experiencing the decade of my young adulthood through the kind of retro lens I associate with the 1950s or 1960s. But while the experience is disorienting, it's not unpleasant. McCurdy's artwork and Morris's snappy dialog conjure up that bygone decade in a way that is simultaneously affectionate and critical, exposing the hollowness of its performative ennui and the brave face that performance represented even as the world was being swept up in corporate gigantism.

McCurdy and Morris are really onto something here, implicitly asking us why the 1990s gave us Buffy and Sabrina (and The Coven, etc etc) – what was it about that decade in which Reaganomics and globalism consolidated the gains of the 1980s, where the climate emergency took on its undeniable urgency, where media monopolies mastered the art of commodifying counterculture faster than it could mutate into new forms?

Morris's writing really shines here. If you enjoyed Bubble, his earlier outing based on the post-apocalyptic comedy podcast of the same name, you will love this one:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/21/podcasting-as-a-visual-medium/#huntr

Morris is also half of Jordan, Jesse Go!, the long-running podcast where he and Jesse Thorn do a weekly ha-ha-only-serious goofball schtick that never fails to smuggle in really clever and insightful ideas amidst the poop jokes.

https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/jordan-jesse-go/

John Hodgman calls nostalgia a "toxic impulse." Church Group deftly avoids nostalgia's trap, managing to be a period piece without falling prey to the Happy Days pathology of ignoring the many flaws and problems of its era. And of course, it's a hoot and a blast.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/16/blight/#the-dream-of-the-nineties

[draconian62]

The Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #1

Lol no you're not. You're AT LEAST in your late twenties if not early thirties

She was 3 years older than Peter when she got bit.

[escapethemojoverse]

Why would Spider-Man and the Predator even need to fight? Luckily for us, Spidey has brought his old pal* Kraven to even the odds. Jordan Morris joins to discuss Predator vs Spider-Man. Later we get the rundown on Predator: Bloodshed (one of the very best comics of the year) and a preview of Jordan's new Amazing Venom out September 30th!

Episode 138: Predator Vs Spider-Man with Jordan Morris! | Escape the Mojoverse: An X-Men Comics Podcast

Episode 138: Predator Vs Spider-Man with Jordan Morris! | Escape the Mojoverse: An X-Men Comics Podcast

[smashpages]

The Web of Venom one-shot by Jordan Morris, Ramon Rosanas and Luke Ross arrives April 8, with a cover by Stefano Caselli.

Read more

[geekcavepodcast]

"Spider-Versity" - Norman Osborn Teaches Spider-Heroes How to Defeat Himself

Marvel Comics has announced a five-issue limited series in which a selection of Spider-Heroes will be trained by Norman Osborn and Spider-Woman. Spinning out from Joe Kelly's run on Amazing Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity is written by Jordan Morris and Joe Kelly and drawn by Pere Perez. The limited series is considered an essential chapter lead up to Amazing Spider-Man #1000 later in 2026.

Norman Osborn has just had a turn being Resolute Spider-Man and can now feel his "looming descent back into madness . . . Miles Morales, Spider-Gwen, Silk, Araña, Spider-Boy and Spider-Girl have one thing in common – THEY AREN’T READY. According to former Resolute Spider-Man Norman Osborn. So he and Spider-Woman are going to train them to meet the next threat – the only way the Green Goblin knows how. Because the next threat might well BE the Green Goblin!" (Marvel Comics)

Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #1 (of 5), featuring a cover by Giuseppe Camuncoli, goes on sale on April 22, 2026.

(Image via Marvel Comics - Giuseppe Camuncoli's Cover of Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #1)

[readtilyoudie]

BUBBLE