Drew Baumgartner

@dbaumgartner.bsky.social

1097 Followers 834 Following

Assistant Editor at Marvel. I’m what the French call “les incompétents.” Opinions and terrible jokes are my own.

New York Times headline for the Hindenburg disaster altered to read “Hindenburg completes mostly successful flight.”
Tweet from Sep 4, 2024: The second law of thermodynamics is: [with more emphasis] you don’t talk about thermodynamics.
Tweet from Jul 2, 2024: At my best, I think about iconostasis *some* of the time, in part because many comics don’t have a lot going on at that level of composition. Wood has a much higher hit rate on that front.
Tweet from Jul 2, 2024: Wood’s mastery of composition is well documented, but I’m coming to appreciate the meta-composition of his pages (and especially individual tiers of panels) — what highfallutin comics scholars call “iconostasis.”
Tweet from Jul 2, 2024: Another stellar sequence from Wally Wood. [Image of a three panel sequence of Daredevil balancing on a high wire.]
Tweet from Jun 18: I didn't come here to make friends; I came here because the cat beckoned me.
Tweet from May 11, 2022: May we all wear our back hair as well as Wolverine. [Image from X-Men #137 of Wolverine without a shirt.]
Tweet from Mar 22, 2022: Balloon placements are my passion. [And an image from X-Men #1 where Magneto's head is completely covered by his own dialogue balloon.]
Tweet from Jan 23, 2022: Ducklings : Ducks :: Dumplings : Dumps
Tweet from Oct 1, 2021: It is pretty funny to see doofuses holding up Bond as a paragon of rugged masculinity like he isn’t most famous for having a particularly fussy drink order.
Tweet from Sep 27, 2021: “Send nudes”??? If he ain’t drawing you like one of his French girls, he’s a goddamned Billy Zane.
Tweet from Sep 9, 2021: Shampoo is the champagne of poos.
Tweet from Aug 16, 2021: For sale: baby oil, freshly squeezed!
Tweet from May 21, 2021: This 80-year-old board game has massive plot holes.
Tweet from May 21, 2021: I don’t know if there’s an established canon on what Professor Plum’s field of study is, but it sure as heck isn’t “what knife wounds look like.”
Tweet from May 21, 2021: Like, sure, random guests at a dinner party may not be able to tell if the blunt force trauma was caused by a lead pipe or a candlestick, but a rope? Has Colonel Mustard never seen rope before?
Tweet from May 21, 2021: What in the heck kind of state is Mr. Boddy discovered in that it’s not immediately apparent whether the murder weapon was a revolver, a lead pipe, or some rope?
Tweet from May 13, 2021: OB-GYN Kenobi
Tweet from Feb 24, 2021: Maybe he wouldn’t be Thor if he thtopped carrying that big hammer around.
Tweet from Jan 5, 2021: 2020 was rough, but at least it gave us the opportunity to explore new hobbies like staying hydrated or staring out the window waiting for something, anything to happen for the love of god
Tweet from Apr 21, 2020: I came here to chew gum and drop hints about wanting more gum, and I’m all out of gum, so...
Tweet from Apr 20, 2020: "On the playground is where I spent most of my days" is some Yoda-ass syntax
Tweet from Mar 18, 2020: Idiot me, holding a monkey's paw, unaware I'm in the Twilight Zone: I want to work from home *every day*
Tweet from Mar 5, 2020: In Mississippi, they just call him "John Hurt"
Tweet from Jan 24, 2020: Always a rideshare, never a ride.
Tweet from Jan 20, 2020: Garrote-y Kid.
Tweet from Jan 10, 2020: Literally nobody is on a first-name basis with Mrs. Claus.
Tweet from Jan 7, 2020: "Christmas movie" isn't a setting, it's a genre. And everyone who delights in claiming that Die Hard is a Christmas movie knows this -- why else would it be subversive (or interesting) to say it?
Tweet from Jan 7, 2020: I never feel like bringing this up when it's relevant, because I don't want anyone to feel like I'm attacking them specifically, but: Die Hard isn't a Christmas movie, and you know it.
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: And just to clarify: this isn't meant to castigate or gate-keep. There's no "right" way to format your script. As long as it communicates what you want it to, it's correct as far as I'm concerned. I just want folks to be aware of how things might affect collaborators downstream!
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: Shoot. I got too far into this to not have a takeaway, so: brute forcing the formatting of your scripts works fine when people only have to read them, but since your letterer is going to be copying+pasting from it, you'll save everyone time by learning how to use styles. 11/11
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: And that tabbing solution works well enough for screenplays or anything else that doesn't require somebody else to copy and paste from the actual Word document. So I get why writers might not even think twice about it. 10/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: It's a silly waste of time that gets baked into the process because the tab button is already on our keyboard but the styles are hidden in some menu somewhere that we may not even know to hunt for. 9/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: Don't get me wrong -- going through scripts with a fine-toothed comb is a big part of my job, but I'd much rather spend that time finding genuine mistakes, continuity errors, or room for improvement than hunting formatting nonsense that shouldn't be there in the first place. 8/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: I do everything I can to avoid sending letterers scripts in this condition (a quick find+replace on tabs [followed by two rounds of find+replace on double-spaces] cuts this down to mostly just reformatting for legibility), but that's also kind of a silly waste of my time, too. 7/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: In situations where this falls on the letterer, this eats up valuable time on petty character hunting, instead of, you know, lettering. Finessing the flow on the page, crafting bespoke SFX, or even just getting through more pages for more $$ in their pockets. 6/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: But inserting line breaks, tabs, extra spaces, or anything else like that within lines of dialogue slows down the lettering process because those are the types of things that can be copied and pasted into the lettering files, so need to be hunted down and deleted. 5/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: And I get why it's done -- the formatting makes the thing easier to read, and doing it the "right" way (by setting up and navigating the "styles" within Word) is confusing, fussy, and many Word users aren't even aware the functionality exists. 4/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: A tab at the start of a paragraph isn't the worst thing in the world, but I can't tell you how many scripts I see with line breaks and tabs within lines of dialogue in order to brute force the formatting. 3/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: Legibility is a key concern, but because word processing software isn't 100% intuitive, the shortcuts writers often take for legibility often sacrifice functionality when it comes time to letter. Namely: tabbing and other formatting jive. 2/
Tweet from Dec 30, 2019: Comics scripts are a funny thing -- they have to serve a lot of purposes over the course of the production of a comic. 1/
Tweet from Dec 18, 2019: Goats are just horny sheep.
Tweet from Dec 3, 2019: The water is rising faster now. LOL
Tweet from Dec 3, 2019: My boat is sinking, but I don't know morse code. AMA
Tweet from Nov 5, 2019: Martin Scorsese just wishes he had thought to put a Hulk in one of his movies.
Tweet from Oct 22, 2019: For sale: clown shoes, never worn.
Tweet from Oct 15, 2019: Do they have quieter roosters? I'd like to be woken up by a bird, but like, gently.
Tweet from Oct 9, 2019: Tasting is just wet smelling.
Tweet from Oct 3, 2019: Bruce Springsteen: Hey little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go away and leave you all alone? Mhmm I got a bad desire... 911 Operator: Sir, what is your emergency? Bruce Springsteen: Oh oh oh, I'm on fire.
Tweet from Sep 16, 2019: Weird that it always seems to be Millennials vs. Boomers when Gen Xers are the ones responsible for Blues Traveler
Tweet from Sep 13, 2019: Bane's "No one cared who I was until I put on the mask" speech, but about my mustache.