A review of Frank Miller's new biography

Open Letters Review looked at Miller's new biography, Push the Wall, which may not be that long a book, and in the beginning paragraph, and the editor reviewing it appears to be disappointed, and certainly makes clear what they think of one project that years ago, I wanted to think was Miller's way of telling he'd found a valid subject to write about, until he sadly went the defeatist route several years after:

Writer/artist Frank Miller is legitimately legendary in the field of comic books, firmly stationed in a company of three dozen or so men and women who did landmark work. Miller was the creative genius behind black, nihilistic oddities like Ronin or Sin City, the genius behind signpost superhero stories like Batman: Dark Knight Returns or Batman: Year One, and the genius behind black, nihilistic masterpieces like 300 or the “Elektra saga” run in Daredevil. Any one or two of these would guarantee a creator immortality in the comic book field, so Miller’s status is secure no matter what sloppy, downright cracked work he might add to that body of work, incomprehensible things like Dark Knight Strikes Again or, God forbid, Holy Terror.

Sounds like the reviewer believes Miller should never have tackled the issue of Islamic terrorism, ever. And that's the problem, past, present or future. With the biggest one being that the reviewer doesn't even have the courage to make himself clear about that.

But with that said, is Miller really that "legendary"? Hardly. His obsession with the darkness - which today apparently stops at the most challenging of issues like the aforementioned - is honestly dispiriting, and if he didn't succeed in screenwriting in the long run, why must we believe he's that much of a legend? Lest we forget, he acted as apologist for somebody who definitely won't be one now, and the way he noticably remains fixated on a certain president for cheap reasons is dismaying and divisive.

This kind of status imbues his new memoir, Push the Wall, with inherent interest. The many thousands of comics readers who’ve enjoyed their work would very much like to see similar memoirs from all the other greats of the comics world. How fascinating and valuable it would be, for instance, if we had honest, grappling, detailed memoirs from figures like Bill Everett or Gil Kane or Jack Kirby.

Finishing Push the Wall, some readers will be thinking about how fascinating and valuable it would be if we had an honest, grappling, detailed memoir from Frank Miller. This sure isn’t that.

If the book's a disappointment, I can't say I'm surprised. When a guy turns as defeatist of recent as Miller has, you probably can't expect him to deliver the best of biographical material either, nor for that matter a good instruction in how to illustrate. And his art style's been so mediocre for years, whereas even Kane's art style was more comprehensive just years before he passed on at the turn of the century. But the reviewer's right about one thing: if we had serious biographies about Everett, Kane and Kirby, that could be a lot more interesting than what Miller has to offer at this point.

Miller organizes the book around 18 “lessons” about both life and working in the comics industry, and he fills in the inevitable pabulum of old-man-imparting-lessons with glimpses from his own autobiography: boyhood in Vermont, formative exposure to gritty New York and specifically the Greenwich Village of bygone decades, the initial scrambling in the comics industry, the burgeoning success after Elektra and Dark Knight Returns. And sometimes some of these memories, though decked out in the hack-purple prose that’s characterized Miller’s writing for fifty years, are interesting, particularly the Horatio Alger bits before he hit it big, when he was wandering around a pre-Bloomberg New York that would be all but unrecognizable to the city’s current wall-to-wall 1% inhabitants. “I arrived wide open to the strange gifts of the city’s seedy decline,” he writes in one such passage, “the Sodom and Gomorrah of Times Square, the hard-up characters hanging around fleabag hotels by Port Authority, the graffiti and urban dross in the subway, the misfits skulking in the East Village parks after dark, the crumbling, uneasy feeling of it all.”

Miller might not be the most eloquent of writers, but he’s articulate and sure as hell prolific; instead of tarping over the subject with something like “the crumbling, uneasy feeling of it all,” he could have written that feeling. His book is barely 200 pages; Saga Press would certainly have sprung for another 100.

Gee, that's not much of a page count. Whether this is a biography or an "educational" book, one would think a lengthier book would serve the goal better. Perhaps this does say something about Miller's otherwise overrated talents indeed. Interesting the reviewer alludes to NYC's current residents as "one percent", since based on where they're going lately under Zohran Mamdani, and reelected the disastrous district attorney Alvin Bragg by a comfortable margin, some could make a reasonable argument something is definitely wrong with the Big Apple today, though wealth surely is the least of the problems.

So what’s left are the lessons, and the bits about Miller’s professional life. But the lessons are mostly things Miller himself has very publicly, very repeatedly not followed. “Sometimes you have to work with others to grow,” he writes, for example. “You have to put yourself back into learning, back into wonder, back into some spooky action.” And the anecdotes from the professional comics world are so bland and sanded-down as to be virtually press releases. About his decision to kill off his massively popular character Elektra, he writes:

Exit Elektra. When it came to my decision to end her life, I have to say, it just felt like the right thing to do. Bringing this storyline to a conclusion was the most dramatic thing I could do for the story: the narrative demanded an exclamation point, so I gave it one, in the most lapel-grabbing way possible.

Not mentioned here, however, is that he actually revived her the following year, perhaps because some readers took issue with this, though afterwards, she was mostly in limbo for at least another decade before being put to serious use again, in Daredevil or other comics. By which time, she was depicted as having fully reformed, more or less. And Miller, to my knowledge, was unhappy about the new use for Elektra by that time. But considering how overrated he is in the long run, that's why his complaint is decidedly not worth listening to. And his favoratism for Batman over Superman has long become a cliche among some writers:

Or this, about his decision in Dark Knight Returns to turn Superman into a fascist lapdog:

At the time, Batman suited my creative vision for a superhero much more than Superman. I grew up reading and idolizing Superman. He was my first favorite superhero. But, truth be told, I had gotten pretty sick of the guy. He was just so ridiculously powerful, and his invulnerability reached the point of limiting him as a character for me.

Obviously, “it just felt like the right thing to do” and “I had gotten pretty sick of the guy” are serious disappointments, especially coming from an author who’s gotten a good deal of profitable mileage out of the crafted public image of a straight-talking maverick. There’s precious little maverick straight-talking in Push the Wall, and we’re unlikely to get a more satisfying follow-up. Although it’s at least theoretically possible that Frank Miller could strike again.

So long as he remains as absurdly biased as he's been for goodness knows how long, he won't deliver anything satisfactory, and probably hasn't for longer than we think anyway. I do recall Ronin had a decidedly mediocre ending where the demon called "Agat" turned out to be a robot who was possibly crafted subconsciously by the main protagonist?!? Seriously, that was pretty underwhelming, and defeated whatever fantasy-based premise the miniseries was supposedly built on. And in the end, Ronin was little more than an empty shell.

But what's really disappointing is Miller's superficial view of Superman, one that completely obscures the weaknesses to Kryptonite and magical energies that were established decades ago, if we go by what's quoted from the manuscript. If Miller wanted to, he could've written up a Superman script building on stuff like that for real, and in the end, all he does is insult plenty of hard-working writers and artists who came before him by practically depicting the Man of Steel as minion for fascism. He did something like that with Wonder Woman too in the All-Star imprint title spotlighting Batman & Robin from the late 2000s that only lasted a few years. Miller's inability to acknowledge that the writers are at fault for Superman being "ridiculously powerful" is telling, and if that's how he approaches the whole matter, he's made clear he comes from a generation that didn't make any proper distinctions between reality and fiction.

Another problem with Miller is that he sounds like the kind of scribe who only cares about his own work, and doesn't give a damn what happens with others' work, or how. That's another reason why comicdom fell into such dire straits; nobody respects the past efforts of previous writers and artists with better resumes from up to the turn of the century, and now we have a whole shambles devoid of consistent continuity and characterization in the mainstream for starters. Of course, even those creators have faults, like not showing the guts to take issue with their former workplaces if they feel something wrong was done, or worse, they practically enabled it by participating in degradation of their own creations, as Kane sadly did when he drew 5 of 6 parts of the first, very repellent Green Lantern story in Action Comics Weekly from 1988, where Carol Ferris as Star Sapphire slaughtered Katma Tui, whose death to date was never fully reversed. I don't think Miller's ever complained about whether his own work on Daredevil was disrespected by successive scribes, and so, even though he may be the kind of artist/writer who only cares about his own stories, there's plenty to suggest he still doesn't put much value on what writings he has that did matter. And those writings are decidedly way too few.

As for this new "biography", I think it's worth passing on. It sounds too short, and like Miller hasn't provided enough to think about. Which has got to be another problem with modern creators in the long run.

What the film director of the Dark Knight's doing now with the Odyssey makes clear he wouldn't be a good choice for it anymore

Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker known for his Batman trilogy, Dark Knight, nearly 2 decades ago, is soon going to be releasing a movie based on The Odyssey, and it looks like he's decided to join the woke bandwagon, based on the casting choices, as the following report from Breitbart makes clear. This may not be comics-related per se, but since Batman and a few other comics characters do come up in discussion (along with the actors playing them), that's why it could be a good idea to take a look:

In an interview with the Telegraph, Nolan insists that he is not at all worried over the criticism. When asked about the hubbub, he casually replies, “Comes with the territory.”

“But look,” Nolan continued, “these conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.” And he added that he felt The Odyssey was going to stir controversy regardless.

“But remember,” Nolan said, “I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman.”

“When I came on to Batman Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all,” the Oscar-winning director explained.

“What you have to do is honor the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can,” he exclaimed.

“In the end, fans of the property – even when we were doing something that was not what they would have done – enjoyed the sincerity of the attempt to put as good a version of it on screen as we could,” Nolan said.

“All I can do is make the best film I possibly can in the most sincere way. It’s very different from how anyone else would do it, but that’s what adaptation is,” he concluded.

Critics have pointed out several red flags in the upcoming film’s promotional materials: indications that the script leans heavily on a revisionist Odyssey translation by left-wing, feminist writer Emily Wilson; his casting of African actress Lupita Nyong’o to play the Greek character Helen of Troy, who is described as having pale skin and light blonde or reddish hair; and the casting 5-foot-one, 105-pound transvestite actor Elliot Page as Sinon, a Greek warrior who does not even appear in The Odyssey or in Homer’s other epic The Illiad. The character was created much later by Roman poet Virgil in his Trojan War epic The Aeneid.

When Nolan originally worked on the Dark Knight trilogy, I don't think he ever went out of his way to do DEI casting. So to say you "can't worry about it" doesn't work well when he's going out of his way to be so noticeable in his choices, right down to the casting of a woman who desecrated herself so badly. And if Nolan's not going to consider what Homer's Odyssey represents, then Nolan's only letting know that his leftism's come to the fore in the worst ways possible.

This subject was already brought up nearly 2 months ago by the Federalist as well, and at the time, they told that:

...the only relatively recent, large-scale adaptation for the screen was a made-for-TV film in 1997 with cheap production (just a small step above a typical episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with Kevin Sorbo). Despite its shortcomings, the movie at least stayed faithful to the source material and maintained a brisk pace as well as a spirit of fun.

Nevertheless, in an era of reboots, it only made sense for Hollywood to give the Odyssey the epic treatment it deserved under the direction of a guy like Christopher Nolan. He could enlist the necessary talent and apply the necessary cinematic techniques to do to Odysseus what he did for Batman.

But every piece of news, particularly the new lengthy (4000+ words) puff piece from Time magazine, has quickly eroded any hope this movie is worth seeing. With his horrible casting, drab cinematography, and intent to explore Odysseus’ inner demons, Nolan seems committed to ruining his most ambitious film yet. Rather than save American cinema from its current death spiral, he has somehow brought all of its worst qualities together in this new project.

DEI Casting

The most obvious offense has been his choice of actors. Outside of Matt Damon playing Odysseus, nearly every other person in this movie has little reason to be there. Starting from the top, Anne Hathaway is a mediocre actress with too little depth, range, or charisma to play Odysseus’ wife Penelope. The same should be said for Tom Holland, playing Odysseus’ son Telemachus. Although both of them have risen to fame playing likable young adults, they will be difficult to believe as a grief-stricken queen desperately waiting for her husband and an adult son growing up in his father’s shadow.

Of course, what has elicited more outcry has been Nolan’s brazenly woke casting for the other characters. To play Athena, he cast Zendaya, an actress who suffers from incurable “resting bitch face,” can’t act, and is too young and unserious for the part. For Helen of Troy, the princess whose superlative beauty “launched a thousand ships,” he cast Lupita Nyong’o, a mostly forgettable actress who is known more for appearing in the Black Panther movies than being a paragon of female perfection. If one had to guess why exactly Nolan picked these actresses, it seems that being a woman of color had something to do with it.

On the subject of the BP movie, I recall some people said it had a questionable approach hinting at social justice propaganda, and now, several years later, one can ask whether it had any impact in the long run, after its contrived sequel collapsed.

As for men of color, Nolan has this covered by casting the rapper Travis Scott as a bard in order to communicate “the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.” Considering that the epic poem is an art form that celebrates the ideals of an ancient culture with larger-than-life characters in a larger-than-life setting while rap is a contemporary art form that glamorizes urban decay, vice, and criminality, this connection is a bit of a stretch.

Nolan also made sure to represent the elderly with the inclusion of Charlize Theron as the ageless nymph Calypso and John Leguizamo as Odysseus’ lieutenant Eumaeus. At 50 years old, Theron evidently clings to her glory days of being a bombshell/action star. Meanwhile, John Leguizamo is an unfunny 65-year-old comedian best known for spouting leftist propaganda and whining about racism.

But the most controversial decision (to put it mildly) for casting has been that of Elliot Page, formerly known as Ellen Page. Setting aside the rumor that she might play Greece’s mightiest warrior Achilles, simply looking at Page after her transgender surgeries is highly distracting, if not outright disturbing. Here was a young attractive actress starring in big movies like Juno, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Inception now reappearing as a scrawny pubescent boy. With the transgender insanity behind us, most people would probably agree Page needs mental and emotional help more than a prominent role in a big-budget movie.

I think Nolan has a lot of explaining to do why, back in the day, he didn't go out of his way to do such forced, politicized casting, and now all of a sudden, he believes it's that big a deal, taking full precedence over merit. I guess it's because Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson's film went that route just a few years ago, so now, Nolan's decided to follow suit. Some moviegoers argued the Caped Crusader doesn't do much of anything in Reeves' film, and what Nolan's doing to the Odyssey now in his adaptation decidedly makes clear he's abandoned all qualifications for ever producing/directing films based on Batman again, ditto other comics characters. You could also ask what the whole point was of even bothering to adapt Batman back in the day if this is what Nolan thinks now. For all we know, his new path could have people one day look upon the Dark Knight film trilogy quite differently. It's pretty surprising there could be quite a few performers here whose names I recall from the live action comics films they appeared in, right down to Holland who played Spider-Man. But, they too seem to be following the woke narrative, and if that's how it's going to be, that's why, compared to actors and actresses of the past, they won't rate high in cinematic history in the future.

What the Comics Journal says about Gerry Conway

The Comics Journal wrote about the history of the late Gerry Conway's career, and among the subjects in focus, it includes the death of Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man during 1973, and a most interesting part that came afterwards, which hasn't always been noted clearly in history items coming in later decades:

A year into Conway’s run, that push toward adulthood took its most celebrated and controversial form with “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” in which Conway and co-conspirator John Romita killed both Peter Parker’s long-running love interest Gwen Stacy and longtime arch-nemesis Norman Osborne. The book became an immediate sensation: so shocked and distressed was the fan response that Stan Lee would briefly demand Conway bring back the character from death immediately (he did, kind of, in the form of a clone), and decades later it was still being used as a kind of critical shorthand for the moment Silver Age innocence in comics gave way to 1970s angst. But the scene that has always haunted me from that story isn’t about Gwen Stacy or the Green Goblin at all: it’s of Peter’s roommate Harry Osborne, delirious and desperate as he recovers from a drug overdose, begging his best friend not to walk away.

While TCJ may be one of the most left-wing periodicals around, it's amazing the writer would point out something most mainstream newspapers didn't: while Gwen wasn't resurrected, they did compromise with a clone. Strange why some MSM sources don't clearly acknowledge that. But the article fails to be clear about something else:

His output at DC was vast, peppered with an endless supply of new characters, from the successful (Firestorm, of TV’s Super Friends fame) to the less so (the streetwise era of the Justice League Detroit). “He was just always creative,” Harris said. “I remember in our plotting sessions, he would say, ‘Well, we could introduce a new character at this point.’ And he always had something in mind. I don't know if he had a backlog of them in his head, or if he created them on the spot. But it was fun to watch him come up with something.”

Wonder why they didn't discuss how Vibe and the Steel character created at the time were thrown under the bus by 1987 because George Perez didn't like the absurd accent applied to the former, in effect punishing the character instead of the writer? That was a very sad example of placing blame squarely on a fictional character, and it's one of the leading ways and reasons the industry's been brought down. And then, here's where, sadly enough, political bias shows up when the Punisher comes into focus:

Oddly enough, the Hollywood caste system being what it is, Conway was seldom involved with movie and TV projects based on his own comic book creations — one of whom in particular had been growing up without him. In 1974, Conway, along with artist John Romita, had created the Punisher as a vigilante antihero in the model of Don Pendleton’s Executioner novels. The Punisher appeared initially as a recurring foil for Spider-Man, and in later years Conway would maintain that the character was imagined as a one-off villain, and certainly not a hero in his own right.

To be sure, this wasn’t entirely ingenuous. The Punisher as originally conceived wasn’t a moral paragon, but he wasn’t a villain either, and when the character showed enough success to warrant a spinoff stories in Marvel’s black-and-white magazines, Conway obliged by writing him with the kind of hard-bitten grittiness that had made Dirty Harry a hit at the box office.

But during the early 2000s, the Punisher took on a second life of his own, becoming a kind of mascot for the American far right: “American Sniper” Chris Kyle boasted of putting the Punisher’s skull logo on his unit’s gear during the Iraq War, and by the time Donald Trump was in office, the image and character had become a meme on military and police-centric kitsch. By 2025, Kash Patel was putting the logo on challenge coins handed out to agents at the FBI.

Conway, whose own politics by then skewed toward the left, wanted none of it. “It’s as offensive as putting a Confederate flag on a government building,” he said. In 2020, amid the wave of protests following the murder of George Floyd, he decided, vigilante-style, to take matters into his own hands, selling a line of shirts bearing the logo with all proceeds donated to Black Lives Matter. A few decades earlier, it might have been different. Roy Thomas recalled that in the early ‘80s, Conway was something of a “definite Reaganite, not unlike myself.” In a field not always known for the capacity of its creators to grow and change with the times, Conway was a model of graceful evolution.

It is surprising if Conway supported Reagan back in the day, but sad then that he changed considerably, and sadder still that the writer's gushing over all that, and sugarcoating the whole Floyd affair. But of course, not surprising.

As for what's said about how Conway approached the use of the Punisher - both character and symbol - in later years, that's nothing new by now, but that the magazine would gush all over his pivot to the far-left is appalling. As I've said before, there were positive and decent moments in Conway's writings up to the early 90s, prior to the time he shifted to TV scriptwriting, and that's why it's a shame he had to go out of his way to follow an increasingly far-left narrative that did more harm than good for comicdom, and also Hollywood. At least now that he's gone, it's easier to separate art from artist, and perhaps to attribute the Punisher's creation more to Romita than Conway. In any case, it's a shame that even years before Conway disowned Frank Castle, writers and artists like Frank Miller and Bill Mantlo weren't doing any favors with the questionable way they approached the character, no doubt with Conway's approval. Yet all the while, Wolverine gets a free pass on what the Punisher didn't. Come to think of it, even Jason Todd, the 2nd Robin in the Batman books, didn't get a free pass on supposedly killing a sexually violent criminal in 1988. Todd, IIRC, was also created by Conway, and his apparent acceptance of what DC and Jim Starlin did to that character could easily say something about whether he really cared about his creations too. Even if certain fictional characters are created for corporate ownership, does that mean a creator should remain quiet? Of course not.

So it's regrettable Conway had to follow a position even Stan Lee did, and not speak negatively about the places he worked for. Now, we're long seeing the terrible results of all that silence.

Frank Miller makes the mistake of defending Neil Gaiman

Veteran leftist artist Miller was interviewed by the UK Telegraph at the Fastnet Film Festival in Ireland, and he still can't keep himself from pushing all the wrong buttons. First:

It’s hard to overstate Frank Miller’s cultural impact over the past four decades. It was Miller, the artist and writer behind The Dark Knight Returns, 300 and Sin City, who redefined comics from kids’ stuff into something darker and more adult – noirish, dystopian and morally ambiguous. Without Miller, Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan’s Batman films wouldn’t exist; without Miller, the whole movie superhero phenomenon might never have happened at all.

And I guess Denny O'Neil, Steve Englehart and Chuck Dixon don't matter, huh? Only Miller; how nice to know only so many other decent Batman writers don't count the tiniest bit. Predictably, no objective view of "something darker" and "morally ambiguous", as though that's totally above criticism. As for Miller himself, what matters to him? Left-wing "causes":

Still, he’d take that New York, “for all its despair and menace and its degradation”, he tells me, over the one that exists now. The city “in those dark Seventies”, he says, had a spirit of defiance, “a sense of shared safety and, well, there’s no other word for it, love. I don’t believe it does now. We have a militarised police, those horrific ICE agents are nothing less than a Gestapo, and the city itself has been so mismanaged for so long. As scary and grim as things were in the Seventies, there was not the overall stink of totalitarianism that there is throughout America today.”

Is the incumbent president an archetypally corrupt, money-grabbing Frank Miller political villain? “He’s grotesque,” Miller spits, comparing Donald Trump to Darth Vader without his mask. He invokes the characters that the co-creator of Captain America, Jack Kirby, conjured when the Nazis were rampaging across Europe. “Kirby several times recreated Adolf Hitler as a comic-book character. One of them was named Hate-Monger, and that one certainly applies to Trump, because he spews hatred, and he calls on that part of the human spirit in his rhetoric, and you see it on the faces of his followers – the naked racism, the naked sexism, the belligerence.”

It's so sad Miller continues to spew hatred at Trump for all the wrong reasons, and all without clearly backing up his complaints with concrete evidence. And all the while, Miller turns a deaf ear and blind eye to the Iranian ayatollahs, who preached what he speaks of, and Miller's ignorance only dampens whatever impact he must want his GNs to have. That Miller also attacks ICE and refuses, much like his other leftist colleagues he doesn't have the courage to distance himself from, to consider what heinous crimes any illegal immigrants have committed within the USA's borders. The really sad thing is that, if we take Mark Levin's criticisms as an example, there are valid issues one can make when it comes to Trump's managements, yet Miller acts oblivious to all of that. So again, if Miller believes Sin City's a masterpiece, why does he make it look like a joke as a result of his far-left stances? There's also quite a goof in this Telegraph article:

Those early days were exciting. New influences were flowing into Manhattan via the first Forbidden Planet comic-book store, where Miller mainlined the work of Japanese and European masters. His first creator-owned work, Ronin (1983-1984), was a sci-fi samurai mash-up set in contemporary New York that incorporated a wild mix of influences, with manga writ large. Some complain of cultural appropriation in borrowing from other traditions. Miller says, “I welcome any such activity. America is an amalgam of cultures… If we could, I’d love us to learn from Martians.”

Umm, doesn't contemporary mean "modern"? I read Ronin years ago, and putting aside for now that it was overrated, I seem to recall it was set in a future time. Maybe not that far into the future, but it was set years ahead all the same. Gee, what a stupid typo they put to use there. Surprising though, that Miller upheld drawing from foreign cultures, considering how limp his positions are on any subjects involving serious issues like what Sin City may be about. Unfortunately, that's about as far as he may go by now in defense of anything creative and challenging.

There’s a humorous, upbeat quality to Miller that belies the sometimes Stygian darkness of his work. His physical trials – his neck is bent by an undisclosed condition into a position that is visibly limiting – do not daunt him; he declares himself “reborn” as an artist, rather than compromised by his posture. He draws with dramatic vigour, using techniques that embrace the unpredictable. Blood spatters across his pages. Miller achieves the effect by dipping a toothbrush into ink and pulling back the bristles with his thumb to send droplets flying across his creations.

And we're supposed to be utterly impressed and thrilled by his use of bloodletting? What's so "unpredictable" about that? It's actually been quite a cliche for goodness knows how long. That aside, here's what they say about certain other parts of the content:

In Sin City (1991), the men are staggeringly brutal and the women are almost all sex workers. “As far as misogyny goes,” Miller says, “I laugh about it because all you have to do is just read my work. [The accusations] might be because I draw the women as attractive, but in Daredevil, for instance, who’s the most powerful character you remember? It’s Elektra… When it comes to Sin City, yes, I draw the women to be as sexy as possible, but they have their own neighbourhood that they police by themselves. They’re a pack of Amazons.” He is, he insists, not the least bit misogynistic himself.

He’s been accused of Islamophobia, too, after penning Holy Terror in 2011, a graphic novel that he writes “was created in a bloodthirsty rage” after the attacks on New York City on September 11. He had originally conceived it as a story in which Batman simply “kicks Al-Qaeda’s ass”, but instead it “sparked a fire of criticism, some of it warranted”. “It was a howl of pain and rage, and an inarticulate one. I’ll just leave it at that,” he tells me.

On the subject of how he draws women, yes, it's quite possible PC advocates over the years attacked him just for that, but apparently not for the violent content he's decidedly notorious for drawing in the Sin City series. As for the Holy Terror GN, again, it's regrettable he first decided to say 8 years ago that he regrets it, because for somebody who claims he's not a misogynist, he's letting a religious ideology wallowing in just that off the hook. It may have been "inarticulate", but that's surely because he never studied anything about Islam and didn't defend his work based on that. Making matters worse, the same guy who says he's not a misogynist then goes on to defend another writer who was accused of just that:

Generally, Miller is not interested in slanging matches. He says that it would please the media if “I spent half an interview” talking about the embattled writer Neil Gaiman – accused in 2024 of sexual assault by multiple women, which Gaiman denies – “saying, ‘He’s not just a terrible writer, he’s a bad person.’ You know, something crazy like that, when he’s a lovely person, he’s a terrific writer.”

Oh good grief, does he realize he's giving serious detractors a statement to use against him? The same artist and writer who said earlier he's not a misogynist destroys his defense by acting as an apologist for a man who turned out to be scummy. Is Miller doing this because he's worried his recent documentary, American Genius, will suffer in sales due to Gaiman's contributions to it? Well that's partly Miller's fault, as he probably didn't think to vet most of the people who chipped in while preparing the production.

Now the memoir is done, he’s writing a story for the 1,000th issue of Spider-Man in September. Does he still feel affection for those old characters? “Oh God, yes,” he says. “That’s the stuff I grew up on. I’m so fond of it.” And does he think the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been bad for print comics? “I don’t know how good it’s been for movies,” he says with a sly laugh.

What of the prospect of a real “superman” in the near future, as robots and AI continue to advance? “It’s not gonna be that,” he says. “AI is a false god… [and] it’s making for some bad writing.” Meanwhile, this thoroughly human creative engine is still thinking about what he wants to do next – Beowulf, perhaps. Or Der Ring des Nibelungen. “There are an awful lot of stories,” he says.

Well Miller's offering up some very bad commentary ensuring he won't be the most famous creator to come about in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. One of the worst things about modern comics movies is that they did come at the expense of the zygotes, and while Miller may claim to have affection for even Spidey, his failure to address the erasure of the Spider-marriage can speak volumes. It won't be shocking if the 1000th Spidey issue spoken of turns out to be heavily mandated, with C.B. Cebulski prohibiting a reinstatement of the marriage with Mary Jane Watson. So why tell us about the upcoming "anniversary" or even about his new memoir, Push the Wall? After this insult to the intellect from a guy who doesn't seem to understand the importance of consistency, I'd rather not waste my time on either. Miller's problem is that he simply won't keep his mouth shut, and recognize that obsessions like his with figures like Trump doesn't make him a realist. Miller's only proving he's one of the most disappointing artists in comicdom today, and then, if his recent projects were failures, we shouldn't be surprised why. With a few exceptions like Daredevil and maybe Batman: Year One, he is pretty overrated as an artist and writer. And his defense of Gaiman is very troubling.

Why is Absolute Batman so "addictive" to certain mainstream apologists?

Here's a writer at Dread Central who's telling why he allegedly finds Absolute Batman so "addictive":

As most of you regular readers know by now, I’m pretty obsessed with DC‘s record-breaking Absolute Batman. Not because it’s Batman. Not because it’s selling a ridiculous number of copies. Not because every issue seems to create another key appearance or first cameo for collectors to chase. I’m obsessed with it because after more than eighty years of Batman stories, writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta somehow found a way to make the character feel new again.

The easiest explanation is Bruce Wayne himself. For decades, Batman has largely been defined by wealth. He was the billionaire who used unlimited resources to wage war on crime, and while that fantasy worked when I was younger, it feels increasingly disconnected from the world we live in now. The idea of a billionaire using his power and influence for good sounds nice, but it’s also become much harder to relate to. This version of Bruce Wayne changes that. He’s blue collar. He’s working class. He isn’t standing above Gotham looking down at its problems. He’s living inside them. He’s a product of the same broken system that created Gotham’s corruption, and he’s fighting back against it.

I'd noticed this stupid defense put to use before, and if there's anything it certainly fails to recognize, it's that there's also such a thing as wish fulfilment. Of course, the same people who apparently don't want Wayne to be a millionaire also don't want Spider-Man to be either, and no doubt, they don't even want Tony Stark to be wealthy. Why, now that I think of it, Matt Murdock as Daredevil was close to being wealthy, if only because for many years, he'd been depicted as well off enough to afford a townhouse with roof window through which he could go out to do acrobatics on his way to patrol as Hornhead. And I guess that's not acceptable to the modern SJW either, because it's all too close to being like Donald Trump, huh? I hesitate to think what they'd say about a woman being wealthy, and IIRC, Vixen's been characterized as such. What would or will they say about a heroine like her being rich?

But the more I’ve thought about Absolute Batman, the more I’ve realized Bruce Wayne is only the entry point. He’s what initially grabs you, but he’s not why you keep coming back month after month. The real magic is the world that Snyder and Dragotta are building around him, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen in mainstream superhero comics in a very long time.

I miss the part here about merit. Even in later paragraphs, it's not clear that's what they're selling this on. It still sounds more like they're selling it on the alternate universe theme alone, along with darkness. Which is actually what's been the norm for a long time now, and if there's something that hasn't received much emphasis for years now, it's a world that's bright and optimistic, like the Fantastic Four's. So what's the writer lecturing us about anyway?

The book never sits in one place too long. It’ll give you Batman smashing someone’s face through a wall and then immediately cut to Bruce lying in his mother’s arms. It’ll introduce a major villain, answer a question that’s been hanging over the series for months, tease three new mysteries, and somehow still find time for character development. The story is constantly shifting between action, horror, mythology, mystery, and emotional drama without ever feeling bloated or unfocused. [...]

What’s remarkable is that the speed never comes at the expense of character. The same issue can swing from “really bombastic, gross, or insane action,” as Dragotta describes it, directly into deeply personal moments that remind readers why they care about these characters in the first place.

In fact, Dragotta specifically points to those quieter moments as being equally important to the series’ success. While discussing scenes involving Bruce and his mother, he explained how the goal is to create emotional recognition in the reader. “Little Bruce cuddling up to his mom and having a reader goes, yeah, that’s how I used to cuddle with my mom.”

Gee, what's being told here that couldn't be told in similar ways in the flagship comics proper? Also, despite what the columnist says, it's doubtful they made this genuinely character based. Either way, here's the stunning part that could be applied to thousands of other comics, mainstream or otherwise:

That’s the part I think most people miss when they talk about Absolute Batman.

People focus on the oversized Batman. They focus on the action. They focus on the redesigns and the shocking reveals. What makes the book special is that it never loses sight of the people underneath all of it. For every giant action sequence, there’s a character moment. For every revelation about Gotham, there’s a revelation about Bruce. The spectacle gets readers talking, but the emotional core is what keeps them invested.

The closest comparison I can make isn’t another comic. It’s prestige television. Absolute Batman doesn’t feel like a monthly comic book. It feels like a serialized series that expects you to keep up. It expects you to remember details from ten issues ago. It expects you to connect the dots. It expects you to pay attention. Most importantly, it respects the reader enough not to explain everything twice.

Sounds like he's saying it's similar to a movie, which reminds me of the time when author Sean Howe said 14 years ago that if you make the comic look more like a movie, it's a recipe for failure. Doesn't that ever occur to these media phonies? That the horror genre gets such an emphasis here also isn't encouraging, nor is the talk of "gross". How can you get emotionally invested with that kind of nasty theme running amok any more than the divisive political metaphors?

At some point, the magic usually disappears. A creator loses focus. The mythology becomes bloated. Editorial gets involved. The story starts spinning its wheels. I’ve watched it happen for most of my life. So every month when a new issue of Absolute Batman arrives, I find myself staring at it for hours before opening it.

This is getting silly now, despite how some interesting points are made on how and why storytelling goes wrong. If he's going to merely stare for hours at the book he's received, he makes himself sound like a nut. And what good does it do to bring up editorial mandates when the same writers make no attempt to complain that kind of "oversight" has to stop? Or that talent matters and can't be sabotaged by said mandates? Replacing the flagship comics with alternate universe lines doesn't improve anything. It's only defeatist, especially when the excuse is to push more political metaphors that even the mainstream lines aren't immune to. And now, they actually reveal one of the story's most eyebrow raising setups:

One of the biggest developments in the issue revolves around Bruce’s growing realization that his father’s death may not have been random at all. The implication that Scarecrow was involved changes everything, but what impressed me wasn’t the twist itself. It was the realization that evidence of this has been sitting in the series from the very beginning. This wasn’t a surprise invented halfway through the run. It feels planned. It feels intentional. It feels like another example of Snyder and Dragotta trusting that readers are paying attention.

Then comes the skyscraper scene.

Bruce is standing on the ledge of a skyscraper (that he’s building as part of his day job) when his boss arrives with a group of investors. Another figure steps onto the ledge beside him.

It’s Joker.

And for a moment, everything stops.

Not just the story. Everything.

The issue stops. The room stops. The entire universe seems to stop.

Because this isn’t just a character reveal. This is the moment where the mythology expands again. This version of Joker isn’t simply another criminal. He’s a billionaire. A manipulator. A puppet master. A man who increasingly appears to be sitting above Gotham itself, quietly pulling strings from the shadows.

Then comes the bombshell.

He tells Bruce that he made him.

That Scarecrow killing his father wasn’t random.

That Batman isn’t some outside force pushing back against Gotham’s corruption.

He’s a product of it.

He’s another piece on the board.

What makes the scene work isn’t the shock value. It’s the relationship being established between the two of them. The suggestion that they need each other. That neither can fully exist without the other. It’s one of the oldest themes in Batman mythology, yet somehow this version feels fresh. More importantly, it feels earned because the series has spent 21 issues laying track for moments exactly like this.

This doesn't sound appealing. It just sounds stupid. As for the part about a wealthy villain, that's already been noted for some time now, that this comic's take on the Clown Prince of Crime is more like an allusion to Donald Trump. And when it's told Batman was a production of corruption, I'm sorry, but that's only insulting to the intellect, and does nothing to build confidence in the story putting emphasis on a dedicated crimefighter. If this kind of premise were applied to Spider-Man, it wouldn't work there either. What's more, that whole notion the hero and villain literally "need each other" is insulting to the intellect, and reeks of moral equivalence. Seriously, do we need villains as horrific as the Joker is usually characterized as? Of course not. One sure thing: a villain that awful should not be considered more valuable than a hero.

I trust Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta to keep building. I trust them not to waste my time. I trust them not to hit the reset button. I trust them because 21 issues in, they’ve earned it.

Forget it. Snyder didn't do anything worthwhile for Batman when he first wrote the flagship series 15 years ago, And the Absolute line only reeks of pretension. Not to mention that the whole notion hero and villain "need each other" is irritating, and quite possibly one of the biggest problems in marketing and storytelling that brought down Batman as much as Superman years before.

A clue how AI doesn't make the best source for recommendations

A writer at Tom's Guide says he asked ChatGPT to list some comics recommendations based on an analysis of his personality. The results are about what you could expect:

After ChatGPT dove into my biggest personality traits, it also pointed out that I value consistency, enjoy larger-than-life characters, am a truth-seeking individual, love character archetypes like “The Enlightened Warrior” and more. With a full read of who I am and what I’m into, the chatbot finally listed out an array of perfect comic book reading material split out across the roadmap I presented it with:

5 'start here' comics: Kingdom Come, Batman: Year One, Invincible, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.
5 Comics that challenge my worldview: Transmetropolitan, V for Vendetta, The Invisibles, Maus and DMC.
5 Comics that perfectly match your interests: Planetary, Batman: The Court of Owls, East of West, Saga and Black Science.
5 underrated gems: The Manhattan Projects, Tokyo Ghost, The Human Target, The Strange Talent of Luther Strode and Global Frequency.
5 comics that could become lifelong favorites: Planetary, Kingdom Come, Watchmen, Invincible and Batman: The Long Halloween.

And no Superman in sight. Come to think of it, no Robin or Huntress in sight either. Indeed, why don't the spinoffs from Batman's world count? And if larger than life matters, why not Colossal Boy from Legion of Superheroes and Nuklon from Infinity Inc, based on their enlarging powers? I also don't find the citation of Warren Ellis-penned GNs appealing either, nor the citation of V for Vendetta and Saga. Also note that Marvel seems to be out of these results, and that too is decidedly troubling.

So what's the use of AI if it's going to offer such predictable results? What's so wonderful about all this darkness in selection either? This is just miserable, and while DC/Marvel, lest we forget, collapsed years ago, that an AI program would be so obvious should make clear AI's not the best at everything when it can only recommend a majority of dark titles.

Without merit, USA comics won't have "everlasting" appeal

The North State Journal (Raleigh, NC) wrote about why American comics are so great:

Pick one up. Be seduced by its glossy cover. Gaze upon the impossibly muscular body clad in a skin-tight suit. Our hero or heroine will surely be soaring, shouting, blasting a villain into next week.

They are ridiculous. They are addictively great. Comic books, of the superhero variety, are 100% American.

Compare the thin comic book to Europe’s graphic novels, and they come off looking flimsy, infantile. Compare the American comic to Japanese Manga and they appear innocent in their fixation with heroism; they hark back to a departed American age.

Once a nickel, a dime, a quarter, now the price of a latte, they are objects of American consumer capitalism. The comic is literature in junk-food version.

Well it used to be, but that doesn't mean it was always perfect even back in the Golden Age. And if you consider how, by the turn of the century, they were on their way to putting far more forced emphasis on leftist ideologies, that's why it doesn't make much sense now to say they're objects of capitalism. The American age in question has sadly departed, and they're not fixed on heroism like they were before.

Yet what truly makes them American objects is what plays out in their 32 pages month after month, decade upon decade.

When the Fantastic Four took their fateful space journey in 1961 and “cosmic rays” transformed the quartet into unwilling superheroes, comics entered a weird realm where the all-powerful were also the unwilling, decidedly modern victims of science and circumstance.

Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine (the list goes on) were given supernatural abilities that made them outcasts, obliging them to be flawed messiahs.

They were, by some quirk of the American character, bound to Peter Parker’s moral imperative: “With great power comes great responsibility.” They are versions of an American Sisyphus, bound to saving us over and over again.

What could be more American — that might, when lashed to a sense of justice, eventually, makes right? So honorable, so naïve.

Well now even the phrase from Spidey's 1962 premiere has been throughly trashed for the sake of pointless directions, not the least being the erasure of the Spider-marriage. When the paper, possibly a college-type one, won't get into any of those issues, something is decidedly and terribly wrong. There's no justice to be found in modern comics when they force in so much leftist ideologies at the expense of coherency.

To this day, though the tone is darker, Marvel and DC, the two mammoths of comics, continue to reimagine the American character.

Once side attractions in a world of leading white men, Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey and Susan Storm have in recent years emerged as leaders to reinvigorate the Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four sagas. Absolute Wonder Woman has broken ground with beautiful art. Miles Morales is Spidey for a new generation.

And when they make such ambiguous statements about these leading ladies, something is wrong here too. Note the absurdity of bringing up what I assume is Spider-Gwen, some kind of otherworldly take on the 616 universe Gwen, without even making anything clear, or asking if it really does favors for the Spidey franchise. Also, not all art is good today, what with the woke damage of the past decade still being felt, and the Titans' title in the DCU is one that's suffered as a result. And they don't have a problem with the darker tone? That's practically what brought down comicdom in the long run. Also, do they have a problem with white men? One can only wonder if the writer's saying he considers Peter Parker expendable.

Yet the central fissures remain.

Bruce Wayne can’t connect with anyone other than his butler; he is the lonely individual in an atomized America. Steve Rogers bears the burden of representing the “Greatest Generation” from World War II. He is a Captain America forever out of place, even in his own land.

And could there be a more iconic tech magnate toying with humanity’s fate than Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor and his delusions of grandeur? If only our world had a bespectacled Clark Kent keeping an eye on things. Just in case.

Umm, even this is flawed if they'd consider there were stories where Bruce had affairs with ladies like Vicky Vale, Silver St. Cloud and even Catwoman. Where do they get off using that kind of laughable lecture anyway? The writer's also oblivious to how there were several stories over the years where Marvel tried to replace and harm the reputation of Capt. America for the sake of publicity stunts, and it goes without saying that today's dialogue for a lot of the regular cast doesn't feel like that of the older comics anymore.

So what's the point of this article? Practically nothing, since like a lot of other such modern articles, it won't explore what went wrong over past decades, nor will it take an objective view of Marvel/DC in their modern form. Once again, comicdom's getting nowhere fast as a result of all these phonies writing about what's hardly coverage of history.

Batman: The Killing Joke gets an expensive prestige edition designed like a camera

Digital Camera World wrote about a special edition of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's Batman: The Killing Joke, that's designed like a camera and comes with a possibly unshocking price tag:

The most iconic Batman serial of all time, The Killing Joke, is getting an oversized prestige edition themed like a film camera (with removable lens and leather case) for an eye-watering €15,000 – approximately $17,500 / £13,000 / AU$24,400.

While other caped crusader comics are arguably better (check out The Dark Knight Returns and Year One), what makes The Killing Joke the most iconic Batman graphic novel ever is its cover – featuring a rictus-grinning Joker pointing a camera at the viewer.

Drawn by Brian Bolland, it's one of the greatest comic book covers the medium has ever seen – and it reflects the Joker's twisted use of photography to psychologically torture Commissioner Gordon, in what serves as the villain's most widely accepted origin story.

The 1988 comic, written by similarly iconic Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), has inspired everything from action figures to an animated movie – and now the essential Batman story is being presented in the most prestigious of prestige editions, styled after the Joker's fictitious Witz film camera.

Described by publisher Argent Comics as "the world’s first giclée-printed comic book," only 52 volumes will ever exist – 47 for sale to the public, with 5 archive copies for Argent and DC.

If memory serves, it's also the story where Barbara Gordon was turned parapalegic when the Joker shot her, and what Moore may not have intended as canon per se was soon turned into just that by the editors, with the earliest appearance Babs made in a wheelchair I can recall possibly being an issue of John Ostrander's Suicide Squad, at least 2 years after the Killing Joke was published. While there were decent stories that followed where Babs was in the spotlight like Birds of Prey's first several years, some could reasonably argue whether it was a good idea to just take a potentially questionable story and shoehorn in into continuity proper.

For now, this is yet another speculator market farce in the making, and nobody should be buying this photographing joke just because of the silly design they used on the cover material. And seriously, is Moore really that "iconic" a writer? Not really, and he hasn't been in a long, long time.

Jack Kirby gets a street named after him

Much like Stan Lee received a street named in his memory a few years ago, JNS reports the late Jack Kirby has now received a street named after him, part of a project the law firm agent Roy Schwartz and the American Jewish Historical Society worked on getting approval for:

It is no small thing to get a street in Manhattan named after you, but the creator of such timeless superheroes as Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Ant-Man, the Hulk and Iron Man received that honor on Monday, when the Lower East Side block where he was born was named “Jack Kirby Way.” [...]

“Widely recognized as the most prolific and arguably most important creator in the history of the comic book medium, Jack Kirby is also one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century,” according to a new exhibit on his life and work at Manhattan’s American Jewish Historical Society.

The exhibition, “The Jack Kirby Way: How a boy from the Lower East Side became the King of Comics,” is co-produced by the American Jewish Historical Society and the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. It will be on view through Nov. 30.

One of the artifacts on display in the show is the original “Captain America” comic books, issues 1 through 10. Joe Simon, who co-created the character and many more with Kirby, owned the issues on display.

The iconic first issue of “Captain America,” published in March 1941, shows the superhero punching Hitler in the face, before the United States entered the war. Many Americans had not yet come to support the idea that the Nazis needed to be vanquished.

Based on this report from Breitbart from last year, some could reasonably argue the same sadly holds true for today when it comes to the Islamic Iranian regime, in example. If Kirby and Joe Simon were alive today and created Cap in modern times, the sad but possible reality is that the Star Spangled Avenger wouldn't get the same kind of positive regard seen in the Golden Age any more than any other Marvel/DC heroes created since.

Its publication led to death threats to both men by the German-American Bund, Roy Schwartz, a board member of AJHS and the person who drove the effort to get the street co-named in Kirby’s honor, told JNS.

The police, when contacted by Kirby and Simon, refused to do anything to help, according to Schwartz.

Then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia contacted the comic book artists and promised them personally that they would be kept safe. LaGuardia’s mother, Irene Luzzatto-Coen, was a Sephardic Jew.

And on this, it's vital to note that even today, that's not always the case in NYC, where this stuff has become a particularly sad staple ever since Zohran Mamdani was elected the 1st Muslim mayor in the Big Apple, and what he's been doing now would be hurtful to Kirby. Do the organizers of the campaign to have Jack Kirby's birthplace named after him realize that, if they don't have any concerns over what came about even before October 7, 2023 and Mamdani's election, then this whole campaign's otherwise meaningless?

As a little boy growing up in Tel Aviv, Schwartz was obsessed with comics, including Kirby’s, he told JNS.

American relatives would mail him new releases, and he learned English by reading them.

Now employed by day as “a mild-mannered chief marketing agency for a large law firm,” as he told JNS, he is the author of “Was Superman Circumcised?” and other books and essays exploring Jewish aspects of comic book history.

Schwartz was the driving force behind the labyrinthine bureaucratic process by which city agencies approved a co-named New York City street.

“There was enough red tape to circle Galactus several times,” Schwartz told JNS.

Captain America was and remains his favorite superhero, Schwartz told JNS, a few feet away from the newly-renamed street sign.

But predictably, they won't get into how, less than a decade after Kirby's passing, Marvel under Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas spared no expense taking apart much of what made Cap work in the first place, lacing the series published under the Knights imprint with anti-American propaganda, something that's continued until even recently. Equally bad is how they repeatedly tried to "replace" Steve Rogers with PC tokens. So what good does it do for Schwartz to just make the statement without bringing up how sad it is that Cap, along with tons of other Marvel/DC properties, major and minor, were effectively destroyed for the sake of woke leftist propaganda? Why, what if Mamdani had anything to do with the red tape encountered? In that case, Schwartz would be wallowing in the exact cowardice that all but victimized Kirby in his time by not showing the courage to discuss anything.

Golin, executive director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, is a long-time, major Kirby fan.

“I love all of his work. It continues to blow me away, and he was so prolific,” he told JNS. “He is so Jewish, so if you take pride in the accomplishment of fellow Jews, then he’s someone you should know about.”

But does this guy appreciate where Marvel/DC went with Kirby's creations post-2000, including the New Gods? I seem to recall Jim Starlin wrote a miniseries called The Death of the New Gods 2 decades ago, and that wasn't exactly what Kirby got into the business to do. Such a story was a slap in the face to his legacy, just as much as what became of Cap, because if memory serves, Big Barda was meant as a tribute to Kirby's wife. I recently bought an archive of Kirby's work on the New Gods from the early 70s, and that's the kind of work that counts. I will not waste time and money on the post-2000 stories that did a terrible disservice to Kirby's efforts. Also, look who turned up as guests at the event:

Less elaborately dressed but honored with seats on the dais were Schwartz, Tom Brevoort, executive editor and senior vice president of publishing at Marvel Comics; Marvel artist and writer Jim Steranko; and former DC Comics president and publisher Paul Levitz.

While Steranko's a decent visitor, that a leftist like Brevoort, who actively defended Marvel's deconstruction of Kirby and Lee's work, would attend is disgraceful and embarrassing. Even Levitz, who fulfilled quite a bit of the same when he was a leading executive at DC (and was an apologist for Planned Parenthood), isn't exactly somebody I'd consider welcome there. Yes, I do recall he was willing to sign a petition in defense of victims of October 7, 2023, but there's still no telling if he's fully reevaluated his past mistakes, and so far, he's never publicly said so. Worse, both Marvel and DC continue to employ people throughly unsuited for the jobs, and that certainly doesn't reflect well on Brevoort, considering he still works for Marvel.

Kirby certainly is worthy of a street named after him. But not all the people involved are worthy of backing his legacy.

A creator who's gender-swapped an established character in his own franchise tells us the industry's too reliant on already established franchises

Popverse says Robert Kirkman, co-creator of Invincible, spoke at the ComicsPro convention about how the industry's too reliant upon long-established franchises like Batman, Spider-Man and Transformers for comics and other such ventures:

Batman is one of the most popular characters in the comic book industry. Absolute Batman was the top-selling comic of 2024, and Batman’s monthly adventures regularly garner huge numbers, topping sales charts. Looking at data like that, it seems like the Dark Knight is a positive thing for the comic book industry. However, Robert Kirkman believes the overreliance on characters like Batman is hurting the medium long-term.

Kirkman, who co-created Invincible and The Walking Dead, explains that focusing on decades-old characters (which he admits he does as well) has kept the industry from exploring new things.

“Things have their day and then settle down,” Robert Kirkman says during a keynote speech at ComicsPRO 2026.

“I sometimes think the original sin of this industry, the thing that holds it back the most, is that we as an industry often refuse to move on. Batman was created in the 1930s. Spider-Man was created in the 1960s. Transformers was created in the '80s. Invincible was created in the 2000s. All of these started as new ideas. They had their peaks in popularity, and they’ve had new peaks and new valleys to varying degrees of success ever since.”

Of course, as long as Batman and Spider-Man bring in huge sales numbers, it’s doubtful that Marvel and DC will be giving them less of a focus anytime soon. Still, Spider-Man debuted two decades after many of DC’s most iconic heroes, and Invincible made his first appearance 40 years later. It might take a while, but the next breakout character is just waiting to be created.

But they don't actually bring in enormous sales numbers, and for years already, the supply of pamphlets printed up - and presumably sold - rarely go above a million copies. Interesting they cite Batman again instead of Superman, because all they've done is confirm a continuing problem with how the industry's similarly become too reliant upon the darkness in marketing. And Kirkman predictably doesn't address how Spidey's story quality and merit long collapsed, even before One More Day. So too has Batman's. If he won't address those creative issues, what he's telling won't carry much weight.

The argument presented by Kirkman at the convention does itself have value, but let's consider Kirkman's dampened the impact of his own by resorting to gender-swapping on the Invincible cartoon (and perhaps the comics are next?), instead of introducing a brand new female character organically without doing it at the original male character's expense. And what next, will the sex-swapped take even turn out to be a lesbian? Which would only compound another serious issue with modern entertainment: it's become disturbingly hostile to heterosexual relations/romance, if they even explore the concept of romance at all. How does Kirkman expect to improve upon an overt resort to nostalgia if he himself resorts to another sad cliche of modern times in Hollywood? Some established franchises have even suffered from worse than what Kirkman's cartoon series is now turning to.

And let's not forget Kirkman's also the co-creator of the Walking Dead, a horror-themed franchise. That's another sad issue with how modern entertainment's being marketed, and that too is something both comics medium and Hollywood have become far too reliant upon. That too needs to cease. Perhaps it's time they "moved on" from the horror genre too? For now, Kirkman needs to rexamine his MO and ask whether he's undermining his points by turning to the same playbook as his fellow leftists have pushed upon entertainment for years already. And he could also consider developing comics with romance themes, and show the courage to explain to everybody why romance is worth it.

Gerry Conway dead at 73

Conway, one of the most notable comics writers to come about in the past 60 years, yet also sadly one of the most vehemently leftist, has passed on at age 73. According to ArtThreat:

Gerry Conway, the legendary comic book writer who created the Punisher and penned the iconic death of Gwen Stacy, has passed away today at age 73. The Brooklyn-born icon shaped Marvel’s entire narrative trajectory over five decades. [...]

At just 19 years old, Conway took over The Amazing Spider-Man series, replacing Stan Lee himself. He wrote the flagship title for over three years, producing some of the most consequential Spider-Man stories ever published. During his run, Peter Parker matured from a teenager into an adult grappling with real emotional stakes and devastating losses. Conway understood that superhero stories worked best when characters suffered authentic consequences.

His masterpiece came in Amazing Spider-Man #121, where the Green Goblin murdered Peter Parker’s beloved girlfriend Gwen Stacy after discovering Spider-Man’s secret identity. This moment became the defining tragedy of the Spider-Man mythos, influencing the character’s psychology for decades. Conway didn’t shy away from showing that heroism carries costs.

Be that as it may at the time, this glosses over how, according to author Sean Howe's history book from about 15 years ago, Gwen Stacy's death did cause controversy with some circles, as Stan Lee attended a college convention at the time, and some of the audience was furious. Conway said that after Lee "threw him to the wolves", Conway wasn't up to attending conventions himself for a while. This led to a compromise where Conway himself, IIRC, wrote up the story in 1975 where a clone of Gwen Stacy was developed by the Jackal, and in what became more notorious 2 decades later, the Ben Reilly clone of Peter Parker himself. But was Stacy's death really the most defining tragedy in Spidey history? What about uncle Ben Parker's? Stan's premise was that Peter felt so guilty for not stopping the burglar at the studio building earlier, he decided to become a dedicated crimefighter to try and prevent similar tragedies from occurring. He may have failed to save both Gwen and her dad George later, but the whole notion Gwen's murder at the hands of the Green Goblin was what literally or solely defined Spidey, is an unsurprising exaggeration.

Gerry Conway, working with artists John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru, introduced the Punisher in The Amazing Spider-Man #129 in February 1974. What began as a one-off antagonist evolved into Marvel’s most iconic anti-hero. Frank Castle was originally hired to kill Spider-Man, but Conway gave the character moral agency and a tragic backstory. Later, with artist Tony DeZuniga, he fully developed the Punisher’s origin story in Marvel Preview #2.

The Punisher became far more than a Spider-Man villain. Today, the character anchors multiple film and television franchises. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige highlighted how the Punisher inspired Daredevil and other MCU projects. Conway’s willingness to create morally complex characters transformed how comics approached storytelling.

But this glosses over how Conway, in all his regrettable far-leftism, later disowned Frank Castle and condemned anybody who appreciated the justice-dedicated direction Frank stood for. More on which anon. For now, here's something very awkward that comes up:

Conway brought unprecedented emotional maturity to mainstream comics. He didn’t treat superhero stories as simple escapism. Instead, he explored how ordinary humans cope with supernatural power, loss, and moral responsibility. His work on Tomb of Dracula (which launched Dracula into Marvel canon) and supernatural tales proved comics could handle darker, grittier storytelling. He elevated Carol Danvers in Ms. Marvel #1, laying groundwork for her eventual transformation into Captain Marvel. Conway fundamentally changed how heroes were written across both Marvel and DC Comics, where he co-created Firestorm and wrote Justice League of America for eight years.

And this is where they really make a clumsy claim. Conway never wrote Carol up as the kind of sex-negative figure "feminist" writers of the past 15 years forced her into for the sake of a woke agenda, while appropriating the role of Ms. Marvel for the sake of Islamist propaganda. Conway, galling leftist though he was, did at least depict Carol with dignity as a woman, and artist Dave Cockrum on his part made her beautiful. That's the real way to respect women, though I do wonder if Conway himself changed drastically in the decade before he passed on. And if so, that's a terrible shame. His kowtowing to a woke position on the Punisher certainly suggests what else he might've thought of his own past writings and creations by extension, and that includes Power Girl from 1976 in the DCU.

Now, here's what Comic Book Club has to say, and at least 2 parts to take issue with here:

Along with co-creating The Punisher, Conway is likely best known for his work on the notorious Clone Saga, where he created Ben Reilly and the Jackal. However, a far more impactful story for the publisher was writing the story “The Night Gwen Stacy Died” in The Amazing Spider-Man. He’s also credited with launching Carol Danvers as Ms. Marvel, and pursuant to the recent DC/Marvel crossovers, is responsible for writing what is considered the first ever: Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man. [...]

More recently, in 2020 Conway spoke out about the misappropriation of The Punisher emblem, helping launch a drive to take back in the symbol during the prime of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Wrote Conway, “For too long, symbols associated with a character I co-created have been co-opted by forces of oppression and to intimidate black Americans. This character and symbol was never intended as a symbol of oppression. This is a symbol of a systematic failure of equal justice. It’s time to claim this symbol for the cause of equal justice and Black Lives Matter.”

When leftists want to, they can sure retain some pretty selective memories about what they believe makes a great political position to admire a writer for. And while Conway did conceive the premise that led to the 1995 Clone Saga storyline, he wasn't actually part of the writers group that did all that mess years later. Terry Kavanaugh was one, and Tom deFalco might've been another, though he was certainly EIC at the time that embarrassment came around. What Conway did was very sad, considering how the BLM movement did more harm than good for everybody, yet some in the medium went miles out of their way to apologize for it, Conway included. And that wasn't just remaining "stuck in the past". It was also a show of contempt for many decent Americans.

Deadline says:

His work on Ms. Marvel in the late ’70s launched the series that repositioned Carol Danvers as her own cosmic hero. It established Danvers as one of the most powerful forces in the Marvel Universe and laid the groundwork for her to eventually become Captain Marvel.

I don't think he ever portrayed Carol as powerful as Thor or the Hulk, let alone Superman. Nor did Chris Claremont, who took over the writing shortly after. So what're they trying to prove?

The Hollywood Reporter says:

He had already been working on the Spider-Man-centric Marvel Team-Up when Stan Lee put him in charge of Marvel’s flagship Amazing Spider-Man. He was only 19 at the time. A year into the job, he wrote the two-parter “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” which killed off Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy and the villain Green Goblin, too. It is considered by many to be one of the most important stories ever published by Marvel, one that still resonates today. A few months later, Conway introduced Frank Castle, aka the vigilante The Punisher, as well as the villain the Jackal. He was so prolific in the 1970s that if you read a Marvel or DC comic back then, there was a very reasonable chance it was written by him.

Oh, he wasn't the only one. There was also Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Steve Englehart and Roy Thomas, and the former told the following:

Wolfman was at first a competitor for writing assignments opposite Conway, later becoming a friend. Posting on Facebook Monday, Wolfman recalled struggling to break into comics and getting work and said it was Conway’s feedback that turned things arounds for him. But accepting feedback from a young teenager was a hit to his ego.

“I was like 19 or 20. Gerry was like 14,” Wolfman wrote. “Why should I listen to this kid? Putting aside ego the answer was simple. He was getting lots of assignments and I wasn’t.”

Wolfman would later become not only a key Marvel writer, working Tomb of Dracula and Fantastic Four, as well as also acting briefly as an editor in chief, he in the 1980s was DC’s top writer, creating New Teen Titans and Crisis in Infinte Earths.

After his unsatisfying stint as Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Conway bounced between Marvel and DC, eventually doing more and more work at the company where he began his writing career. At DC, he wrote for its flagship title Justice League of America for eight years and co-created the heroes Firestorm and Power Girl, the latter Superman’s cousin from an alternate universe.

In 1983, he introduced Jason Todd, a character who took over the mantle of Batman sidekick Robin from the original Dick Grayson. Todd was later controversially killed off after fans voted to off him in a telephone poll, though the character was resurrected in the early 2000s.

Yes, but it wasn't with the best intentions, recalling the onetime writer Judd Winick, also a big leftist himself, admitted he lied about supposedly supporting Todd's survival in 1988 some time after Infinite Crisis went to press in 2005. And if memory serves, not only did Todd see a retcon to his origins before being offed, Killer Croc also underwent something similar - he may have been written as the murderer of Todd's parents pre-Crisis, but post-Crisis, this was changed to Two-Face.

But back to Conway, it's a real shame he had to be such a vocal leftist on social media, because decades ago, he did offer some impressive stories throughout his comics career, and unlike say, Bill Mantlo, I can't recall Conway ever being as heavy-handed with what political allusions he did put in, although when he went on to become a TV writer, I vaguely recall viewing an episode of a TV show where he did inject an allusion to the leftist standings he went by. That aside, while again, he may have proven an impressive comics writer in the time he originally worked on various Marvel/DC series, it could be said that, in a way, he disowned some of his work, and never spoke out against the modern editors like Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso, who took apart much of what even he worked hard to write up. Did it sit well with Conway how J. Michael Straczynski humiliated both Gwen and Mary Jane Watson? I can't recall him ever publicly addressing that badly-aged run on Spidey by JMS, and if Conway wouldn't defend Lee's hard work, or even Jack Kirby's, that says all you need to know how defeatist Conway proved to be in the end. And some could reasonably wonder if it's because Conway's ultra-leftism got the better of him.

All that said, it is sad Conway's gone now. And I wish he hadn't employed social media just so he could take divisive positions better left at the door. Although, in the past year or so before he passed away, Conway did seem to have stopped posting on any social media site. I suppose now that he's gone, it'll be easier to read the comics he left behind, and no longer worry about the Punisher being tainted and made a mockery of by Conway's boilerplate leftism. If anything, I would hope future generations of creators will at least learn from Conway's mistakes, and not take divisive political positions in the forseeable future.

More examples of how claims Absolute Batman's an utter success are a silly farce

Popverse decided to follow up on a previous news report that DC's Absolute imprint's supposedly selling like hotcakes, and simultaneously admit the "New52" canon from 2011 wasn't exactly the success they surely want everyone to think it was:

According to public reports from its distributor at the time, the 'New 52' Batman #1 sold just over 225,000 copies in September 2011. Over its 52-issue run (not including annuals, specials, and spinoffs), Snyder's 'New 52' Batman run never once dipped under 100,000 copies sold in the first month of each issue's release - something subsequent Batman runs haven't been able to keep up with, based on the limited evidence publicly available. Either way, those numbers don't include any copies sold outside of that window, which would include reprints, digital copies, non-US editions, and collected editions.

Absolute Batman, however, sold just under 400,000 copies in its first six weeks of release back at the end of 2024, and demand has continued that DC recently reprinted it for an eleventh time. According to sources familiar with sales figures, DC's Absolute Batman has settled into the range of selling roughly 300,000 print copies per issue, going on two years later.

"We’re over a year into these titles, and the sales on multiple titles are going up issue to issue — sometimes by really startling amounts," Conroy tells Comics! The Magazine #1, without giving specifics.

Snyder, who made his career thanks to the success of the 'New 52' Batman run, honestly didn't think Absolute Batman would come close to matching that.

So they merely continue the comedy, right down to implying the whole New52 direction taken in the early 2010s was literally a success, when here, they mostly abandoned its "canon" at least a few years later, and reversed some of the directions taken with Identity Crisis. They admit there's hardly any proof of what they claim, but continue to make a joke of their news coverage anyway.

Even if Snyder's Batman run didn't fall below 100,000 in copy orders, what's told still doesn't prove it was a literal success. At best, it's just wishful thinking, and at worst, it's all an insulting joke, pretending it's all as successful as what movies make. And all this is their idea of a substitute for making an argument in favor of switching from pamphlet issues to paperback/hardcover books. In reality, it's just more sad jokes that don't do any favors for comicdom.

What a Catholic commentator has to say about Marvel/DC history while discussing Voyage Comics' contributions to the medium

A writer at the Catholic World Report discusses Voyage Comics, the publisher specializing in religiously-themed stories, and along the way, has what to say about past Marvel/DC publications with allusions to leftist ideology. Some of which are admittedly quite interesting to ponder, including a certain aforementioned tale from 1986 that led to a disturbing form of editorial mandate the following decade or so:

Back in the late 80s and into the 90s, even as an unphilosophical teenager and avid consumer of comic books, I was well aware of flaws in the fantasy worlds of Marvel and DC.

I can, for instance, recall seeing through the thinly veiled propaganda of an “X-Men” graphic novel entitled God’s Country, the villain of which was a small-minded religious bigot who refused to tolerate super-powered mutants. One storyline of The Legion of Super-Heroes depicted a xenophobic dictator taking over the Earth, resulting in a terrible regime whereby hapless space aliens were persecuted.

Quite aside from the obvious virtue-signaling, I was also put off by the superficial and trite conflation of issues such as trans-humanism and extra-terrestrial life with the “gay rights” movement. Do slogans like Coexist! and Can’t we all get along? really represent the only response to the presence among us of alien beings endowed with godlike powers?

In any event, an issue of The Incredible Hulk would finally cut to the chase by featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury bragging about his organization’s acceptance of homosexuals.

To be sure, even in the mainstream comic book industry, there have been exceptions that veer from the reservation of liberal ideology. I still have an old issue of Batman, wherein the hero tracks down an insane criminal who would solve the homelessness problem … by killing off all the homeless. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting comics that part ways with leftist ideology are excessively dark. For example, Frank Miller’s iconic The Dark Knight Returns is laced with gratuitous obscenity and over-the-top violence, making it impossible to recommend this otherwise fascinating account of an indomitable, haunted man resuming his obligation to protect his home city from chaos.

Interesting the guy does have a problem with Miller's resort to jarring violence in the story, though I hardly consider DKR a title worth the time, if only because of what it led to years later, though of course I realize it's not Miller and his story who're literally and/or solely to blame, but rather, any editors and publishers who came within even miles of forcing successive writers to adopt a path where Bruce Wayne would be portrayed as a nasty control freak, almost entirely lacking a sense of humor or any kind of happiness amid the darkness. That direction also led to the horrific mistreatment of Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, because if memory serves, there were storylines where it was implied superhero missions are unsuited for younger protagonists, and all this in a world that was otherwise meant to be surreal. IIRC, even in Geoff Johns' Teen Titans title, this shoddy path was alluded to at one point.

I think the columnist goofed with the title of the X-Men GN, which I believe is actually "God Loves, Man Kills", originally published around 1982, and was the 5th in the Marvel Graphic Novel series that lasted until about 1993, comprising at least 75 stories. And since that came up, one can only wonder if Chris Claremont would've written up a villain who was a Muslim adherent? IIRC, when Claremont later wrote an unsuccessful 2nd volume of Gen13 that came after September 11, 2001, he added a character who was a Muslim to the cast, indicating Claremont was an early example of a writer who went woke in comicdom. And where exactly in the Hulk was Nick Fury boasting about welcoming LGBT agents into S.H.I.E.L.D? Perhaps in the 1990s, when it was more likely such propaganda would turn up, and the late Peter David was known to be a supporter of such ideologies. It is a shame he had to make such a big deal about it, even if at the time, most writers like him originally did it more subtly, unlike the very disturbingly contrived and forced way it's been handled since. Although, lest we forget, the disgraced Gerard Jones was one shoddy writer of his sort from the times who did it, as mentioned, in a very contrived and forced manner, at the expense of a more talented writer (Roy Thomas)'s creation from Infinity Inc. And that was definitely wrong. For all we know, what Jones did may have precipitated the alarming trend among leftist writers of changing a heterosexual character to homosexual, and it eventually led to the damage even X-Men's cast underwent. And even before all that, there was a time when William Messner-Loebs changed the Pied Piper from the Flash to gay in 1990. Just because this was a reformed crook who underwent an alteration of personality, does that make it inherently acceptable? Of course not.

Happily, Voyage Comics avoids political correctness on the one hand and runaway sex and violence on the other, instead opting to celebrate heroes both more down-to-earth and more wholesome than what we typically find in Marvel and DC. Also, intriguingly, heroes are placed not in the immediate “now” but are situated within historical fiction; the “Lionette” and “Phantom Phoenix” titles are set in America in the period between the World Wars.

...A sick popular culture very much needs a Catholic presence, and one way to maintain such a presence is by imprinting artifacts of that popular culture with a Catholic vision. Certainly, our history and culture are replete with real-life heroism, protagonists, and images, which warrant our children’s attention more than do Spider-Man or Green Lantern.

On this, I would disagree just in how he implies Spidey and GL in and of themselves aren't worth our children's time. There was once a time they were relevant, and when most writers/editors didn't force extreme political beliefs into the stories under the confidence that, because these were corporate-owned, they could get away with it. But that began to collapse over time, with GL an early victim of PC post-1988, and Spidey the next victim years later in the early 2000s, when J. Michael Straczynski got his mitts on the writing assignment. I think back to that time and feel disgust at all the apologists who defended and justified JMS' writing, at least until the whole Sins Past debacle came around, and only then may they finally have conceded it wasn't worth the paper wasted to print it. Today, it's definitely aged poorly.

So it's great to have religious stories to tell from that specific perspective of what figures can be considered heroic. Even so, I don't think the columnist should be telling all this at the expense of the hard work figures like Stan Lee did in his time. That kind of bias never helps.