The Four Color Media Monitor

According to this Popverse article, DC management, led as it seemingly is by Jim Lee, is trying to keep a straight face regarding the entrance of Superman (and Lois Lane) into public domain in less than a decade:

Nonetheless, a Superman will be public domain in 2034… but speaking during an appearance at NYCC 2025’s retailers day on October 8, Lee didn’t seem overly concerned about it happening.

Speaking about problems facing DC Comics in the future, Lee said, “Yes, characters will fall into public domain. It's already happening. We've all seen these unsettling knockoffs of Mickey Mouse floating around online. But here's the truth: the character isn't the magic. The storytelling is. The world-building is. Owning Superman isn't the same as understanding Superman — knowing how he moves, how he speaks, what he stands for.”

He went on, “Anyone can draw a cape. Anyone can write a hero. That's been around as long as comics have been, and it's called fan fiction. There's nothing wrong with fan fiction. It shows how deeply these characters live inside all of us. But Superman only feels right when he's in the DC universe, our universe, our mythos. That's what endures. That what will carry us into the next century.”

Despite what he says, Superman and everything else haven't felt right in terms of talent and merit for a long, long time. Sure, anybody and everybody can draw heroes and heroines. But only if there's merit involved and the publishers don't force a PC vision upon the proceedings will the finished product win over the audience. Despite his rather predictably claims to the contrary, Lee and company obviously don't have the courage to admit they've long failed the test of merit in the past quarter century, and brought the DCU down to shoddy levels, just as Marvel has theirs. And look who's talking about fanfiction. They brought their universe down to just that in the most negative ways possible.

In addition to the above puff piece, The Verge simultaneously reports from the NYCC that Lee's claiming DC won't support AI technology:

DC Comics president and publisher Jim Lee said that the company “will not support AI-generated storytelling or artwork,” assuring fans that its future will remain rooted in human creativity. “Not now, not ever, as long as [SVP, general manager] Anne DePies and I are in charge,” Lee said during his panel at New York Comic Con on Wednesday, likening concerns around AI dominating future creative industries to the Millennium bug scare and NFT hype.

“People have an instinctive reaction to what feels authentic. We recoil from what feels fake. That’s why human creativity matters,” said Lee. “AI doesn’t dream. It doesn’t feel. It doesn’t make art. It aggregates it.”

Even this is awfully rich coming from somebody who had a hand in forcing tasteless leftist politics into the DCU, and largely canned creativity for the sake of PC art designs and storytelling. One more reason their products are unreadable today. Let's not forget they blacklisted conservative writers like Chuck Dixon and Mike Baron in the past 2 decades, and even some liberals obviously weren't immune to the PC excising. If they don't matter just because of their politics, what's that about creativity again?

Also, according to Comic Book Club Live, even editor C.B. Cebulski, in one of his few public statements today, claims Marvel's against use of AI technology too:

Yesterday at the New York Comic Con retailer day, DC Comics Publisher Jim Lee issued a strong statement about the publisher’s use of AI — or rather, firm stance against it. Today at New York Comic Con? It was Marvel’s turn, as Editor-in-Chief CB Cebulski explained that the company also won’t use the emerging technology.

During a Spider-Man panel which Cebulski was sitting in on, the Q&A section opened with a fan asking the Editor plainly whether Marvel will issue a statement on AI, in light of Lee issuing a statement the previous day.

“Yes, we’ve never used AI,” Cebulski said. He went on to elaborate, calling out multiple people in the crowd from Marvel’s office who regularly scan Marvel art for AI discrepancies like “six fingers.”

Continued Cebulski, “They’ve really gone to great lengths to detect AI… We never used it, we will not be using it, and we don’t condone it in the Marvel Comics division.”

But do they condone woke ideologies and other dreadful forms of storytelling? Even they haven't recovered from the woke disaster they've long become, and with the way their stories became so pointless, what's the use of their continuing as a publisher today any more than DC? I get the strange feeling we may one day discover AI was put to use in some of their recent comics, Cebulski's claim notwithstanding, and if that turns out to be the case, Cebulski will also come off looking like a laughing stock.

No questions seem to have been asked about what Marvel's management thinks of their creations eventually becoming public domain, even though they have at least a few that'll enter public domain soon after Superman does. But when that happens, it'll be just as well, though even better when the entire DC/Marvel universes all enter the same. Then, we can only hope somebody with talent and understanding will do justice for all the characters who were slighted since the turn of the century.

Labels: bad editors, conventions, dc comics, history, marvel comics, moonbat artists, msm propaganda, Superman, technology, women of dc