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Satellite Sam #2
Satellite Sam, Vol. 2: Satellite Sam and the Kinescope Snuff
The second volume of Satellite Sam plunges further into the world of sex, addiction, and obsession, all behind the scenes of America's favorite daily sci-fi kids' show, "Satellite Sam." Michael White discovers his father was murdered - and his investigation drags dark secrets, shocking twists, and violent pasts into the light...
Collects SATELLITE SAM #6-10
Collects SATELLITE SAM #6-10
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2014
1 person is currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Matt Fraction
1,221 books1,864 followers"How he got started in comics: In 1983, when Fraction was 7 years old and growing up in Kansas City, Mo., he became fascinated by the U.S. invasion of Grenada and created his own newspaper to explain the event. "I've always been story-driven, telling stories with pictures and words," he said.
Education and first job: Fraction never graduated from college. He stopped half a semester short of an art degree at Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri in 1998 to take a job as a Web designer and managing editor of a magazine about Internet culture.
"My mother was not happy about that," he said.
But that gig led Fraction and his co-workers to split off and launch MK12, a boutique graphic design and production firm in Kansas City that created the opening credits for the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace."
Big break: While writing and directing live-action shoots at MK12, Fraction spent his spare time writing comics and pitching his books each year to publishers at Comic-Con. Two books sold: "The Last of the Independents," published in 2003 by AiT/Planet Lar, and "Casanova," published in 2006 by Image Comics.
Fraction traveled extensively on commercial shoots. Then his wife got pregnant. So Fraction did what any rational man in his position would do -- he quit his job at MK12 to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time comic book writer.
Say what? "It was terrifying," said Fraction, who now lives in Portland, Ore. "I was married. We had a house. We had a baby coming. And I just quit my job."
Marvel hired Fraction in June 2006, thanks largely to the success of his other two comics. "I got very lucky," he half-joked. "If it hadn't worked out, I would have had to move back in with my parents.
- 2009. Alex Pham. Los Angeles Times.
Education and first job: Fraction never graduated from college. He stopped half a semester short of an art degree at Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri in 1998 to take a job as a Web designer and managing editor of a magazine about Internet culture.
"My mother was not happy about that," he said.
But that gig led Fraction and his co-workers to split off and launch MK12, a boutique graphic design and production firm in Kansas City that created the opening credits for the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace."
Big break: While writing and directing live-action shoots at MK12, Fraction spent his spare time writing comics and pitching his books each year to publishers at Comic-Con. Two books sold: "The Last of the Independents," published in 2003 by AiT/Planet Lar, and "Casanova," published in 2006 by Image Comics.
Fraction traveled extensively on commercial shoots. Then his wife got pregnant. So Fraction did what any rational man in his position would do -- he quit his job at MK12 to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time comic book writer.
Say what? "It was terrifying," said Fraction, who now lives in Portland, Ore. "I was married. We had a house. We had a baby coming. And I just quit my job."
Marvel hired Fraction in June 2006, thanks largely to the success of his other two comics. "I got very lucky," he half-joked. "If it hadn't worked out, I would have had to move back in with my parents.
- 2009. Alex Pham. Los Angeles Times.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 12, 2018
I'm old enough that I can say discovering Howard Chaykin's American Flagg! was like discovering sex. Heck, it was probably better than that because there was none of the awkwardness around it other than trying to sneak into my room without my parents noticing. Chaykin's writing was so full of piss and vinegar but yet his characters were real. At least to a 13 year old discovering Chaykin's type of science fiction, they were real. With Flagg!, Blackhawk, The Shadow and my own personal favorite Time2, Chaykin guided a select generation through the politics of love and lust, of friendship and adversity, of heroes and of clay feet. Fairly or unfairly, Chaykin was the comic creator who wanted to get us out of our parents' basements and flail our way through the world like he had during the sixties and seventies. I don't think Chaykin ever showed us the worlds he did because he wanted them to be cautionary tales. He showed them to us so that we would follow him down the same screwed up and ridiculous paths that he went down.
Enter Matt Fraction and his self-described "Howard Chaykin fanfic" Satellite Sam. Of all of the comics that have come along since the mid-1980s, Fraction’s Casanova may be the closest spiritual progeny of Chaykin. Casanova's sense of adventure mired in a certain level of self-deprecation echoes the best and worst parts of Chaykin's American Flagg! With Satellite Sam Volume 2, it's easy to nod along with the idea that it's "Chaykin fanfic" because it's easy to see how Fraction is giving Chaykin a story perfectly set up for his flair and sensibilities. From Michael Carlyle, the physical template of a Chaykin leading man, to the lingerie and sex, Satellite Sam looks like the ideal Chaykin comic that Chaykin would never write himself.
For as much as this is a Chaykin comic, it's equally a Fraction comic, as studied and constructed as anything in Hawkeye or Sex Criminals. Satellite Sam's default leading man Michael Carlyle basically inherits his old man's children's television show but he finds out that he knew nothing about who his father was or what he was doing. A collection of photos of a lot of women in lingerie leads Michael down an obsessive path. As he has Michael trying to figure out who his father was, Fraction shows us a man who might be more like his father than he wants to be. The central mystery of who killed Michael's father and why leads us to the larger cast and crew of the television show. This second volume begins laying bare everyone's secrets without getting Michael closer to the heart of the mystery.
Carlyle ends up being the default leading man of the series because he is the star of the television show, but it’s the television show that is ultimately central to all of the stories being spun out of it, of which Carlyle’s is just one. The TV show Satellite Sam becomes the true lead of this series as Fraction and Chaykin craft all of these stories revolving around the world of a television set. There's the dying man, the Italian immigrant, the man who's trying to hide his actual race. And then there's the poor girl who is actually on the same search as Michael, even if the two of them have no clue about it. Satellite Sam is a true ensemble cast, constructed more like an Aaron Sorkin than any other comic.
This second volume is all about movement- people are moving from one place to another and from one situation to another. Every character in this comic makes choices that end up moving them farther away from who they want to be. While he’s trying to be an amateur detective, Carlyle becomes a cad who is so ineffective that even when he stumbles upon some racy photos that give clues to what his father was up to, he can’t actually confront the people in those photos. He skirts around the issues so obliquely that his intentions are mistaken. Guy, the gay screenwriter, avoids being blackmailed by marrying the Italian immigrant supporting actress of the show just to make both of them look legitimate. The very light-skinned Eugene is so close to getting the television show that he wants that the secret that he’s actually black threatens to destroy everything that he’s been working for. There’s secret upon secret for the cast of Satellite Sam that prevents any of them from seeing what they should actually be doing.
Throughout the whole book, Chaykin’s rough and scratchy lines are the only things that feel honest. Beyond the suggestively sexy covers, Chaykin keeps the book lewd but never provocative. There’s enough blowjobs and lingerie present in this book to keep it well within that Chaykin wheelhouse but it never veers into Black Kiss territory. The sex never becomes just about the sex, which is what happens when Chaykin is left to his own, worst instincts. Instead, the sex becomes about the characters, as everything in this book is. It’s another display of personality and situations as Chaykin makes all of the sex more sad than provocative. Chaykin draws the golden age of television as being built on lost and deceiving souls. Taking Fraction’s walking and talking script (see any episode of Sorkin’s The West Wing,) Chaykin gives life to these characters; it’s a sad life but it’s still a life. He doesn’t just create this world. He really makes these characters act. They live and breath by his lines.
Fraction and Chaykin have created a story about people lost in their own lives. Satellite Sam V2 has them sinking even lower into their own despair. It’s full of characters who seem to be getting what they want but nothing is getting any better. In fact, it’s still getting worse. If this story bears any resemblance of truth, the golden age of television was built around miserable people. Fraction and Chaykin mine that misery, disguising it as a mystery of who killed Michael Carlyle’s father. That mystery feels like it’s there to add some excitement to a fascinating character story. With the television show actually being the title character of this comic, it’s TV that binds all of these cruel, ugly, damaged and lost characters together to create drama
Enter Matt Fraction and his self-described "Howard Chaykin fanfic" Satellite Sam. Of all of the comics that have come along since the mid-1980s, Fraction’s Casanova may be the closest spiritual progeny of Chaykin. Casanova's sense of adventure mired in a certain level of self-deprecation echoes the best and worst parts of Chaykin's American Flagg! With Satellite Sam Volume 2, it's easy to nod along with the idea that it's "Chaykin fanfic" because it's easy to see how Fraction is giving Chaykin a story perfectly set up for his flair and sensibilities. From Michael Carlyle, the physical template of a Chaykin leading man, to the lingerie and sex, Satellite Sam looks like the ideal Chaykin comic that Chaykin would never write himself.
For as much as this is a Chaykin comic, it's equally a Fraction comic, as studied and constructed as anything in Hawkeye or Sex Criminals. Satellite Sam's default leading man Michael Carlyle basically inherits his old man's children's television show but he finds out that he knew nothing about who his father was or what he was doing. A collection of photos of a lot of women in lingerie leads Michael down an obsessive path. As he has Michael trying to figure out who his father was, Fraction shows us a man who might be more like his father than he wants to be. The central mystery of who killed Michael's father and why leads us to the larger cast and crew of the television show. This second volume begins laying bare everyone's secrets without getting Michael closer to the heart of the mystery.
Carlyle ends up being the default leading man of the series because he is the star of the television show, but it’s the television show that is ultimately central to all of the stories being spun out of it, of which Carlyle’s is just one. The TV show Satellite Sam becomes the true lead of this series as Fraction and Chaykin craft all of these stories revolving around the world of a television set. There's the dying man, the Italian immigrant, the man who's trying to hide his actual race. And then there's the poor girl who is actually on the same search as Michael, even if the two of them have no clue about it. Satellite Sam is a true ensemble cast, constructed more like an Aaron Sorkin than any other comic.
This second volume is all about movement- people are moving from one place to another and from one situation to another. Every character in this comic makes choices that end up moving them farther away from who they want to be. While he’s trying to be an amateur detective, Carlyle becomes a cad who is so ineffective that even when he stumbles upon some racy photos that give clues to what his father was up to, he can’t actually confront the people in those photos. He skirts around the issues so obliquely that his intentions are mistaken. Guy, the gay screenwriter, avoids being blackmailed by marrying the Italian immigrant supporting actress of the show just to make both of them look legitimate. The very light-skinned Eugene is so close to getting the television show that he wants that the secret that he’s actually black threatens to destroy everything that he’s been working for. There’s secret upon secret for the cast of Satellite Sam that prevents any of them from seeing what they should actually be doing.
Throughout the whole book, Chaykin’s rough and scratchy lines are the only things that feel honest. Beyond the suggestively sexy covers, Chaykin keeps the book lewd but never provocative. There’s enough blowjobs and lingerie present in this book to keep it well within that Chaykin wheelhouse but it never veers into Black Kiss territory. The sex never becomes just about the sex, which is what happens when Chaykin is left to his own, worst instincts. Instead, the sex becomes about the characters, as everything in this book is. It’s another display of personality and situations as Chaykin makes all of the sex more sad than provocative. Chaykin draws the golden age of television as being built on lost and deceiving souls. Taking Fraction’s walking and talking script (see any episode of Sorkin’s The West Wing,) Chaykin gives life to these characters; it’s a sad life but it’s still a life. He doesn’t just create this world. He really makes these characters act. They live and breath by his lines.
Fraction and Chaykin have created a story about people lost in their own lives. Satellite Sam V2 has them sinking even lower into their own despair. It’s full of characters who seem to be getting what they want but nothing is getting any better. In fact, it’s still getting worse. If this story bears any resemblance of truth, the golden age of television was built around miserable people. Fraction and Chaykin mine that misery, disguising it as a mystery of who killed Michael Carlyle’s father. That mystery feels like it’s there to add some excitement to a fascinating character story. With the television show actually being the title character of this comic, it’s TV that binds all of these cruel, ugly, damaged and lost characters together to create drama
April 27, 2015
Fraction and Chaykin's period piece of sex, suits and swearing at the birth of live TV has a strong middle act, with protagonist Michael White swapping one addiction for another. The ostensible mystery - Who Killed Satellite Sam? - becomes ever more of a MacGuffin in this volume, but it hardly matters: as with part one, you read for the texture more than the plot.
Where the second volume improves is serving up more interesting characters - while the main plot takes a leisurely route, there are revelations and developments for Gene, Kara, Maria, and Dick that make Satellite Sam a far stronger ensemble piece and make its 1950s seem vivid, even if each individual twist is more trope-y than surprising. But that's period drama for you. A breezy conjuration of place and tone, though close consultation of the character guide is still recommended to make most sense of it.
Where the second volume improves is serving up more interesting characters - while the main plot takes a leisurely route, there are revelations and developments for Gene, Kara, Maria, and Dick that make Satellite Sam a far stronger ensemble piece and make its 1950s seem vivid, even if each individual twist is more trope-y than surprising. But that's period drama for you. A breezy conjuration of place and tone, though close consultation of the character guide is still recommended to make most sense of it.
May 30, 2015
I'm still not 100% on what's going on in this series. Meh.
2.5/5
2.5/5
September 26, 2024
Well I thought the story would get more interesting, but it didn’t. I also read Volume 3. Yes , you reach a conclusion, but it feels incomplete. On the plus side the art did improve somewhat to better identify characters.
April 7, 2021
A dirty tale about dirty secrets gets dirtier, but it doesn't get any better.
February 15, 2015
Thank heavens for a better cover than Satellite Sam, Volume 1! This volume is a great deal more explicit, I find, so I'm still not sure my copies will continue to live at my house. Given the cover and the photo montage within, I felt for sure that the sapphic overtones were going to lead to a big plot reveal, but not in this volume at least. Micheal White obsessively puts lovers into positions from his father's photos...to find the murder? or as an attempt to get off? I think it's the latter at this point? That bit's unclear. However, I did find it easier to keep up with the book's rhythm in this volume as it jumps through time and locations and among different character's stories. Again, there are character summaries in the back, which help to read before starting each issue if you take time between them. Satellite Sam's large cast reveal several social problems in the 50s including sexism and the role of women in the workforce, racism and passing and immigration, persecution of homosexuals, the contrast of squeaky clean lives on camera and tawdry romps out of the spotlight, also the on-ging ick of campaign funding and bedding for business. All this is, of course, in addition to the whole TV world shift from New York to LA and syndication, etc. So...there's a lot of interesting things going on in very retro-looking black and white...with heaps of adult content.
March 14, 2015
I'm kinda torn by this series b/c as I'm reading it I'm more often than not confused as to who's who and why this person is doing that but especially reading the back and forth at the end w/ Fraction and Chaykin I really appreciate what is being attempting here. if nothing else there isn't anything like this out there. and I just love the time period and how the whole book is put together. it's just the story and characters I don't care for but I'll probably keep reading if only to figure out who killed the old pervert. (seriously, for a book that's at its heart a murder mystery I seriously think it's the weakest element.)
July 3, 2015
Mostly the same review as volume 1- I kept going because I had vol 2 already checked out. I liked this more, though - the art is still confusing but gorgeous, but the story really started to pick up. Now Michael is starting to get obsessed with father's sex secrets and photos, which is going about as well as you'd think, people are still underestimating Libby, and Gene's story is super interesting. I want to know what Libby knows, I want to know what happens with Gene and while I don't care much what happens with Michael or Guy, I'm interested in enough to try and track down the finale. Guessing it'll be out this fall.
November 28, 2014
A third smut, a third drama, and a third hilarious; a little mystery, a little romance, a little struggle for equality; this is basically the perfect story (complete with a little Tijuana Bible, for funzies). Fraction and Chaykin are an incredible team and I kind of wish they would write all the comics from now until forever. This may not be for everyone but it's really good.
January 18, 2015
I somehow missed the publication of issue #10, and having just read it I realized it's been so long since this storyline started I've apparently forgotten whole chunks of it. I'll probably do a re-read before the five-part finale starts in February, so this rating and review is temporary. Though I'd be surprised if the rating improves: somehow this comic never grips me sufficiently.
November 23, 2014
The early days of live television! Beautiful women in lingerie! Bubble helmets! What's not to love?
July 5, 2015
I'd follow Matt Fraction into Hell.
September 10, 2015
I've honestly given up on trying to tell any of the characters apart
May 25, 2015
Individual issues on comixology
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews