What the Harvard Independent says about comics history

A writer at the Harvard Independent tells some history of how comics began as far back as a few centuries ago, and cites one of the most questionable European comics as something her parents got her into reading:

They also gave me a love for comics. Alongside traditional novels, I read the pre-teen series “Percy Jackson,” “The Adventures of Tintin,” and Japanese manga. I remember my dad buying “The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons,” two heavy tomes I spent hours paging through, wondering when I would finally understand the jokes I didn’t get yet.

My enthusiasm for comics is far from unique; many aficionados are far more dedicated to collecting and discussing comic books. “Tintin” has had relatively low popularity in the United States, so I never had much reason—or company—to expand beyond rereading my favorite issues.

That's interesting if Tintin wasn't big in the USA in her time, and considering how severely questionable its ideological viewpoints were, that's why it didn't really matter. It just wasn't all it could've been is probably one way of putting it. Another subject brought up is pretty surprising, however:

The first large-scale combination of pictures and words was—unsurprisingly for the Western world—the Bible. In the 1830s, London mass-printed “The Pictorial Bible.” Though illustrated Bibles had existed since the 15th century, none were as thorough as this version, which featured a picture accompanying almost every major scene; the number of illustrations leaped from around 30 to hundreds. Woodblock carvings, which required a huge initial investment in artists, accompanied biblical verses, but advances in printing technology let printers reproduce them quickly.

The goal of such a labor-intensive yet inexpensive Bible was to reach the largely illiterate masses of the time. Though literacy increased significantly in the next hundred years, only about half of England could read at the end of the 19th century. Even for literate Christians, a widely distributed pictorial Bible would have solidified iconography, characters, and settings in the common imagination.

Though the concept of a “comic” had not been invented yet, this biblical form foreshadows the reasons comics and graphic novels became so popular and pervasive as storytelling methods. They not only help readers understand a work’s core scenes and themes but also create cohesive interpretations. In turn, this makes discussion smoother (though not necessarily broader), allowing tight-knit communities to form around the same story.

I'm surprised a university paper that's bound to be as left-wing as you could expect would be willing to bring up religious themes in the topic, considering how badly minimized the Bible's been for surely even long before the turn of the century. That's certainly one credible achievement this article's making.

It would be a disservice to the genre to fail to discuss comics in the Eastern Hemisphere. Manga, a Japanese form of comics, has gained widespread popularity worldwide in recent years. The history of illustrative mediums in Japan is also tied to religion, as the first widespread pictures were created by a Buddhist monk in the 12th and 13th centuries. As Europeans came into contact with Japan, so did their artistic techniques, including the political cartoon. From then on until World War II, Japanese manga heavily featured political themes, especially nationalist ones, as well as inspirations from traditional folklore.

Japan’s defeat in the war led to a decrease in militaristic imagery, especially with the influence of manga artist Osamu Tezuka, who was inspired by American Disney movies and superhero comics. This movement helped the genre become the world’s best-selling comic format in the 21st century, surpassing the American-born Marvel Comics.

Interesting she puts it that way, because in a way, yes, manga's long surpassed even DC in sales, due to how both company managements destroyed the coherency and impact of their products, with distortions of continuity just the beginning of their downfall. So is it any wonder manga became more popular? Of course, even that may not last, and depending on the subject matter, certainly not if they start taking up the kind of Orwellian tactics that brought down much of USA comicdom.

Though many still dismiss comics as a juvenile genre, the combination of text and visual art can often tell a story more powerfully than either medium alone. “Maus” by Art Spiegelman is an autobiographical graphic novel about his experiences as the son of a Holocaust survivor. The medium allowed him to use animal heads as a visual allegory for different groups of people without ascribing human facial features. “Maus” was introduced as a comic in 1972 and published in book format in 1986, eventually winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. The recognition “Maus” received helped legitimize the graphic novel in the eyes of the public and academics, allowing future comic artists to tell their stories using this hybrid medium.

I think it was in 1980 when the beginnings of Maus first saw print, but what's regrettable here is Spiegelman's far-left politics, which dampen the impact it could've had, and it's disturbing how Spiegelman minimized 9-11 more recently. If he doesn't consider what occurred a quarter century ago a serious concern, it's hard to believe he's really serious about his concerns over what happened during WW2, or even WW1. Also, why does she say Maus validated the GN, but not the late Will Eisner's A Contract With God, which came much earlier? Seriously, it sounds too much like she doesn't have what it takes to research what could be a more challenging example. Spiegelman's an easy choice.

Anyway, the citation of the Bible is certainly interesting, and quite surprising for what again is surely a left-wing college paper, but apart from that, this is an article that's decidedly too reliant on easy examples, and not enough on harder, more challenging ones, and ultimately doesn't explore how artistic quality was brought down in the mainstream for starters. As a result, it's hard to believe people like these are really fans of the medium if they won't voice concerns about what went wrong over past years.

Luton's Comicon pays tribute to Steve Dillon

Luton Today says their local convention is going to pay tribute to artist Steve Dillon, who passed away a decade ago:

Luton Comic Con 2026 will pay tribute to one of the town’s most celebrated creative talents with a special exhibition dedicated to the life and work of legendary comic book artist Steve Dillon.

The exhibition, which Luton Comic Con CIC describes as a special final tribute to Dillon’s legacy, will showcase his remarkable career and lasting contribution to the world of comics.

[...] Dillon’s professional career began when he was just 16 years old, when he was hired to work for Marvel UK’s Hulk Weekly. His early Marvel UK work included drawing Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as work connected to The Hulk, before he went on to establish himself across some of the most influential British and American comics.

That's pretty interesting he had Nick Fury to his credits. But what else was he know for?

He would later become renowned for his work on titles including Judge Dredd, Hellblazer and The Punisher, as well as co-creating the acclaimed Preacher with writer Garth Ennis. His distinctive storytelling and character work made him one of the most respected British comic artists of his generation.

Would that be Ennis' take on the Punisher they're referring to? Because Ennis set in motion the destruction of Frank Castle, turning it into a political mess 2 decades ago, and his take is something to admire? Though it does make me wonder what the late Gerry Conway might've thought of it.

Whatever the quality of Dillon's art, the sad part's that he was apparently one of a whole ocean of scribes who veered to the darkness, as his resume suggests. So what's so "remarkable" about that? I don't see it. There's bound to be only so many artists and writers who dealt more with the bright side - and Superman's building on that angle - who don't get as much attention as artists like Dillon may be getting (Al Plastino, for example). Seriously, it's time to give them more spotlight too.

A lawsuit was filed against Ed Brubaker, but because of the politics involved, judgement should be withheld for now

Brubaker, a comics writer who's been in the business for 35 years, may be one of the most left-wing around, and overrated. But the following news on Deadline about a sexual/racial harassment lawsuit that's been filed against him contains clues why it may not be a good idea to take it at immediate face value:

What may or may not have gone down on Prime Video‘s upcoming Criminal now looks set to end up in a California courtroom.

“This action arises from the sustained sexual, racial, national origin, and religious harassment that Plaintiff ljaaz Noobu, a Sri Lankan American filmmaker with fourteen years of experience in the film industry, endured while working on the production of the forthcoming television series Criminal,” states a 12-claim complaint filed earlier this week in L.A. Superior Court. [...]

“Hired in February 2023 as a production assistant to showrunner and Executive Producer Ed Brubaker, Plaintiff came to the production eager to contribute his talent and technical knowledge to a marquee project, the pretty plainspoken jury trial-seeking document from Burbank attorney Fahim Rahman says. “Instead, he was subjected to a workplace made toxic and abusive by the very individuals entrusted with authority over it.”

With claims that Noobu was subjected to cracks about rape and “demeaning stereotypes” for being the only Muslim on set and asked by Brubaker if the PA was a supporter of Hamas, the suit seeks a variety of unspecified damages. Also named in the complaint as defendants alongside Brubaker are Amazon Services, MGM, Criminal EP Phillip Barnett and others as defendants.

Now, Brubaker is but one of many pretentious scribes in today's landscape, and in hindsight, I don't like his Batman work from the early 2000s. But when I noticed the plaintiff's an Islamic adherent, I had to give pause to taking the claims at face value, realizing it's possible this could be trumped up accusations. That doesn't mean it's impossible for a non-Muslim leftist to abuse a Muslim though, recalling there was an incident in NYC over 15 years ago where a leftist attacked a Muslim cab driver, and a few years ago, a Pakistani Muslim in Seattle, Washington, nearly had his son taken from him for the sake of "transing". But it's clear in the long run that negativity from leftists towards Islamists is rare, especially based on where they're going now with choosing political candidates.

I do wonder however, what Brubaker thinks of Hamas? Or the plaintiff himself? That's what isn't clear from this article. Somehow, it's scarier to think what Brubaker could think, based on any leftist credentials he retains. But if it turns out the plaintiff comes within even miles of supporting such a repulsive bunch, then I'm not sympathetic to him.

For now, we'll have to withhold judgement and let any ensuing trial determine whether the accusations are factual or false. However this turns out though, I'm not interested in Brubaker's resume.

Film director defends comic adaptations

Variety reports film director Chloe Zhao, who worked on the unsuccessful Eternals movie, and is insisting on defending them as a form of entertainment:

When Chloé Zhao was growing up, she dreamed not of directing movies but becoming a manga artist.

“But I wasn’t very good at drawing. I wasn’t up to standard,” she said with a laugh during a wide-ranging masterclass presented by Cartier on Friday afternoon at the Venice Film Festival. “I wanted to tell stories. I didn’t think cinema was an option for me.”

Of course, Zhao found her way into film and directed acclaimed movies such as 2020’s Oscar-winning “Nomadland” and 2025’s Shakespearean drama “Hamnet.” She was eventually able to meld her passions with 2021’s Marvel adaptation “Eternals,” which starred Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Salma Hayek and Angelina Jolie and revolved around an immortal alien race sent to protect Earth from evil beings.

“I loved doing it,” she said of directing the movie. “For any of you who love anime, I know you know this was a girl’s dream come true. Comic books are the western equivalent of [manga]. They are very different, but I live in the west, and that’s what I had access to.”

Although superhero movies have waned in popularity since the pandemic — even “Eternals” fell short of box office expectations with $400 million globally against a $200 million-plus budget — Zhao sees the value in all forms of entertainment. That’s unlike, say, Martin Scorsese, who has infamously likened Marvel movies to “theme parks.”

“I do feel it’s important to not write off stories because we don’t consider them high art,” she said. “The purpose of storytelling for me, humbly, is to create containers for people … to try to process what they need to process. Archetypes are such a great way to do it — and we see them in myths — is because it’s something we all share.”

The problem is that political correctness has long taken over - even the Eternals movie had its own share of that - and it's drained the adaptations of whatever potential they had. If Zhao's creative license was restricted, that also says something about the film she directed, which was one of the first serious failures for modern comic adaptations to screen.

And since manga came up, it's vital to recall there've been at least a few Hollywood adaptations that were failures too, like the Saint Seiya film. That one, IIRC, wasn't even released with much fanfare. Some mangakas are also against following certain "western" principles. For all we know, the least successful adaptations of manga could've precipitated the failure of USA comics movies. Another problem is that the adaptations only seem to build on action and comedy themes, not unlike how animation is marketed in the west. If Hollywood's not willing to try out projects based on comics and manga emphasizing drama and romance, it just illustrates the failure of the western film industry to expand beyond certain themes and be more creative, not to mention give the audience something that could be more challenging.

So what's the use of defending comics-based live action films if they're going to remain so PC, and not expand to more challenging themes? There's whole shiploads of independent comics out there too that could serve as a wellspring, and they eschew all that for the sake of adapting mainstream comics that've been throughly ruined over the past quarter century. Indeed, what good does it do to watch live action adaptations when the original comics are being destroyed? If the original comics are turned stale, it just makes a mockery out of the idea to adapt them in the first place.

A former director of Marvel films tarnished her entries by celebrating murder

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart reports a filmmaker named Lexi Alexander, who has some comics-related filmings to her credits, wrote obscene social media posts celebrating the murder of a deputy bank manager in NYC's Times Square:

Lexi Alexander, director of the 2008 Marvel film Punisher: War Zone, is taking heat for celebrating the stabbing murder of a Bank of America employee with an X post featuring Luigi Mangione’s face superimposed on a drawing of Batman’s bat signal.

Bank officer Erin Piacenti was fatally stabbed in Times Square, New York, shortly after celebrating her second wedding anniversary — and the day of her murder was her first day back to work from maternity leave. Piacenti, 32, was walking near West 42 Street and Seventh Avenue when 49-year-old Pamela Cisneros of Queens stabbed the young mother and another person in unprovoked attacks. Cisneros was later shot and killed by police after she threatened them with her two butcher knives.

After the murder, Alexander, who calls herself a “Palestinian filmmaker” (born in Germany to a Palestinian mother and father), jumped to her X account and posted a drawing of Batman looking up at the bat signal, but in the lighted image in the sky, there is instead an image of Luigi Mangione’s face. Mangione is now on trial for the 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. [...]

Palestinian American film maker celebrates the murder of a random white lady who worked in middle management at Bank of America.

32,000 likes pic.twitter.com/f7e4wxd54b

— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) September 1, 2026

Her X post is still on her timeline, but it has been restricted from being embedded.

In a followup post, she accused everyone who criticized her post of being a “Hasbara bot,” meaning someone working for Israeli propaganda operations. [...]

After Punisher: War Zone bombed at the box office (a $10 million gross to its $35 million budget), Alexander has mostly directed episodes of TV shows such as Supergirl, S.W.A.T., and How to Get Away with Murder.

Well just look at that. More comics creations have been tarnished and desecrated through poor employment choices. As if it weren't bad enough the Supergirl TV show from the past decade was clogged with far-leftism. This is whom the studios that own Marvel and DC are hiring? What this makes clear is that Tinseltown is in serious need of reform, which they're tragically unlikely to work on. It's also got to be telling this repulsive "filmmaker" also worked on a TV show with a title that itself makes light of a serious issue. Alexander's career as a film and TV director will hopefully be over after this horrific case, which strongly hints she's as anti-American as she's anti-Israel. And no doubt, she also hates the Jewish creators and publishers of the comics the films and TV shows she worked on adapted.

NPR wants to blame tariffs for hindering specialty store in Ohio

NPR wrote about Alter Ego Comics in Lima, Ohio that's reportedly had problems with tariffs the Trump administration set in place for Canada, as a result of all the trouble the latter's government caused:

But these days, the reality of tariffs has encroached into that escape that Bowker seeks to offer.

"It's become a challenge to try and remain stoic and focus on the four walls of my shop when it seems like the world is on fire," he says.

For nearly a year and a half, small business owners like Bowker have dealt with both the financial cost and uncertainty caused by tariffs.

And now, Bowker is also dealing with how to seek tariff refunds after some of the import taxes he paid were struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year – and facing the prospect that an escalating trade war with Canada could soon drag him into another tariff storm.

"It unfortunately could be a major issue to an industry that has really been firing on almost all cylinders for the last couple of years," Bowker said.

It's an illustration of how tariff walls around countries continue to put pressure on main street American businesses more than a year after President Trump first unveiled them in a White House ceremony.

Has the comics medium really been on "all cylinders" in the past few years? Not via the majors, that's for sure. And if regular bookstores know how to handle these things, I don't understand how managers of specialty stores don't. Also, look what the store in focus is relying upon:

For Bowker, those initial "Liberation Day" tariffs meant paying more for the action figures that drive about 70% of his revenue. Think highly detailed foot-tall statues of Wolverine or Spider-Man made in China. At one point, Chinese goods were tariffed at 145%, though they've since fluctuated lower.

Since "Liberation Day," Bowker has paid his supplier more than $16,000 in tariffs. For a while he passed some of that along to his customers as a 3% tariff fee. Recently though, Bowker decided to get rid of the fee and just eat that extra cost himself because it was costing him business.

"The reality is our action figure business was down 50% last year," Bowker said. "And I have a feeling a lot of that had to do with tariffs."

Tariffs or none, I find it annoying how statues are emphasized here, when the story merit of the original comics are what should matter. Yet it's excruciatingly obvious NPR has no interest in such challenging issues. Wow, this is what the specialty store's business depends upon by and large? That's got to be telling, right down to how the action figures and statues are made in a communist-run country.

Today there are still other tariffs raising the cost of his action figures. And there's another possible tariff threat down the line – the growing trade war between the U.S. and Canada. Comics – including the ones Bowker sells – are primarily imported from Canada.

They are not included in this round of tariffs, but that could change if the trade war keeps escalating.

But nobody argues that perhaps comics should see more printing in the USA proper, huh? Canada isn't doing a favor by refusing to cooperate with Trump on business and trade issues, and he's encouraging Canadian businesses to move their operations to the USA. Maybe that's just what they should do, if Trump's willing to offer special benefits and bonuses. But that's not a concern to NPR, in all their biases.

At least Bowker is seeing a break from the tariff storm. Despite all these headwinds, Bowker says business this year is up. There's a comic book renaissance right now boosting his sales, driven by popular titles like Absolute Batman.

But while many customers are still buying, others are tightening their budget because of rising prices, caused in part by tariffs.

And no discussion of the $5-plus cover prices for the now outmoded pamphlets, right? I wonder how that doesn't matter or concern? It looks like NPR exploited this whole topic just for the sake of a pathetic attack on Trump's tax policies, and naturally, they have no interest in how DC's Absolute line builds on some bad political metaphors as well. So of course, one can only wonder if NPR gave a citation to Absolute Batman based on its political components. Here, they had a chance to shed some light on various independent titles, and what makes them click or not, and instead, we have to hear cliche upon cliche about Absolute Batman, and action figures that're no replacement for the actual comics themselves. This whole report is therefore a joke, and asks no questions helpful to USA business at all. It definitely doesn't offer any valid alternatives for comics.

Swiss comic for teaching students about AI

Geneva Solutions announced a special comic that's for teaching about AI, but also about wider cooperation:

A 48-page comic book, titled Critical Code, aims to educate students about the importance of multilateral cooperation. It has been distributed in Geneva’s secondary schools and across 15 other Swiss cantons.

Since 2023, international Geneva has faced challenging years, marked by thousands of job cuts across UN agencies, the Palais des Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and scores of NGOs, as well as relocations of key operations. The impact has been profound, forcing Geneva to rethink its future.

In response, the Foundation for Geneva – celebrating its 50th anniversary this year – has championed the creation of a comic book exploring Geneva’s international ecosystem. The work, published in French, German, Italian and English, is called Critical Code.

[...] The 48-page comic has already been distributed by the Department of Public Education to secondary school classes in Geneva and a dozen other cantons. Its goal is to “challenge young people to think about the individual and global implications of AI” while also highlighting the importance of international cooperation, much of which takes place in Geneva. As a key pillar of Swiss foreign policy, the comic also aims to showcase the often-overlooked strengths of international Geneva to the rest of the Swiss population.

Well I hope they're not intent on trying to set up another political outfit to substitute for movements like the UN, because they have been a bad lot for years, and so has the Red Cross. If the comics project is meant to provide a better idea for people, like encouraging them to do technological research, that's what could make it palatable. But they need to stop acting like the UN is virtually everything, when it's not. And if they think AI isn't the best example in technology, maybe they should just say so.

Stars of Marvel movies are making it hard to watch them in hindsight based on their anti-Israel attacks

Mark Ruffalo's easily the most well known actor to appear in comics adaptations like the Avengers movies (as the Hulk), who's recently been viciously attacking the land of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's ancestry. He's done it again in his attack on Paramount over his opposition to a merger with Warner Brothers, as told in this Jerusalem Post article:

US multimedia giant Paramount slammed Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo for invoking antisemitic tropes in an Instagram post on Friday in which he accused Israel of genocide and apartheid.

The outspoken anti-Israel ACTOR, known for his roles in the Avengers films, accused Paramount moguls David and Larry Ellison of “powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world” and warned of the danger of David Ellison’s bid to combine Paramount with Warner Bros. Discovery.

A spokesperson for Paramount said the company is “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong – they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind – and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”

In his post, Ruffalo referred to Larry Ellison as a “classic oligarch,” and he shared a video of Safra Catz, vice chair of Oracle, discussing the technological assistance the company provided to Israel following the Hamas-led October 7 attack.

Ruffalo encouraged his followers to “look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”

What Ruffalo's been up to gets even worse with his and several other actors' support for a jihadist:

Over 20 actors who have appeared in Marvel films have joined a campaign calling for the release of convicted Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, according to an Instagram post published on Friday by the group, freemarwannow.

Among the actors who have joined the "Freedom for Marwan" campaign are Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Doctor Strange; Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk; Ian McKellen, who plays Magneto; and Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and others. [...]

Barghouti is a former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a terrorist organization that carried out many suicide bombings and shooting attacks during the Second Intifada.

According to Israel, Barghouti orchestrated or was responsible for, among others, the following attacks between 2001 and 2002: the murder of a Greek Orthodox monk on the road to Ma’aleh Adumim; the shooting attack during a bat mitzva celebration at a banquet hall in Hadera that killed six Israelis; a shooting spree on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem during which two Israelis were killed and 37 people wounded; a shooting attack in Neve Ya’acov in which an Israeli policewoman was killed; the murder of an Israeli at the Bashkevitz coffee and spice factory in the Atarot industrial zone of Jerusalem; the suicide attack perpetrated by Daryan Abu Aysha at the Maccabim checkpoint in which two policeman were wounded; the shooting spree at the Seafood Market restaurant which killed three Israelis.

It's going to be very hard watching these performers from live action Marvel movies playing their roles for a long time now, based on what they've just done in the now, even if they're playing villains. Their ignorance is stunning, and most chilling is, what if they fully know what Barghouti did years ago?

A rabbi writing for VIN News described the whole repellent case as follows:

Imagine that the Superheroes known as the “Avengers” were fighting for the wrong side. Say, for example, for the Nazis. Well, it is not such a stretch anymore. But it is not the Superheroes – it is the actors who play them.

Somewhere in a publicist’s office, likely, in Hollywood – a decision was made. A list circulated. Names were added, one by one, each signatory presumably assured that the others had already looked into it.

Nobody looked into it.

More than twenty actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and a supporting cast long enough to fill a closing credit scroll — have signed their names to a demand that the United Nations and the governments of the world work to free mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti from an Israeli prison.

The statement voices grave concern for his imprisonment and his treatment inside it. Grave concern. That is the entire emotional range on offer, and it is expended in full on behalf of the man serving five consecutive life sentences for murder.

For the five people he was convicted of murdering, the statement has nothing. No sentence. No clause. No name. Twenty-plus celebrated artists, working presumably with the assistance of professional wordsmiths, produced a document about a quintuple murder conviction that manages never to acknowledge that anyone died.

I'll never be able to watch a lot of these particular movies ever again, realizing just how far into the abyss the twisted perspective of the actors in the Marvel movies goes. They've desecrated the memory of many Jewish comics creators with this abominable act of theirs, and it's stunning they'd even take the roles they did in comics adaptations to begin with. The Marvel live action movies aren't aging well, as a result of what the actors who played the casts in the films have been doing lately.

Update: VIN News announced the Israeli foreign ministry condemns the Hollywooders glorifying Barghouti:

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday denounced a Hollywood-backed campaign calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah figure serving five life sentences for directing terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada, saying celebrities cannot rewrite his criminal record.

“Hollywood can manufacture superheroes. It cannot manufacture Marwan Barghouti’s innocence,” the ministry said in a statement posted on social media. “Five murder convictions. Five life sentences. Five victims of his terrorist plots.”

The ministry urged the public to remember the victims rather than “glorify their murderer.”

The rebuke followed a new wave of support for the “Free Marwan” campaign from more than 20 actors linked to Marvel films and television productions, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton and Ian McKellen. Campaign organizers say more than 200 cultural figures — actors, musicians, writers and directors — have signed on since Barghouti’s family launched the effort late last year with groups in the United Kingdom. [...]

The Foreign Ministry’s statement did not name individual actors but framed the celebrity drive as an attempt to recast a convicted terrorist as a political prisoner. “Remember the names of the victims,” the ministry said, “instead of glorifying their murderer.”

An absolutely correct point to make.

Video game about boy trapped in comic book unfortunately also trapped in horror genre

InvenGlobal tells about a video gaame titled Yurei, which is about the following:

Yūrei is a psychological horror game set within the haunted pages of a comic book, developed by Team Yūrei. The game was created over five months by ten second-year master's students from Cnam-Enjmin, the National School for Video Games and Digital Interactive Media in Angoulême, France.

Players must follow the comic's progression, reading the story to reach its end. The comic book, which is stuck to the protagonist Jun's hand, constantly speaks to the player, sometimes offering hints and at other times presenting challenges to solve. It acts like a narrator, yet it may also force you to make sacrifices.

The premise of being inside a comic itself may be clever, but making it part of an overused genre is not. It's regrettable the horror genre continues to be what's used as a theme for these kind of computer games, when here, if they'd wanted to, they could've turned it into a fanciful adventure with a brighter setting, yet they stick to potentially violent themes instead. That's the biggest problem with modern entertainment, and no telling how to convince anyone why it needs to change.

And I hesitate to think what they mean by "sacrifices".

Joe Simon's pro-Israel publication in the 1960s

The Canadian Jewish News wrote about the history of a comics-style project the late artist Joe Simon of Capt. America fame worked on following the 6-Day War in 1967 that was favorable to Israel:

After the 1967 Six Day War, the originator of the comic book hero Captain America produced a spoof on the war and its political aftermath. A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Tel Aviv was a 66-page satirical magazine created and edited by Joe Simon that sold for 50 cents.

Its pages contain photographs of Egyptian and Jordanian leaders with comic-style word balloons and corny jokes. For example: “The height of Israeli gall: while waiting for negotiations at the UN to begin, one of them opened a kosher restaurant in Damascus.” The magazine reflected the swagger across the Jewish world following Israel’s miraculous military victory.

Simon was no stranger to controversial humour. He edited Sick magazine throughout the 1960s which in its first issue described itself as “a grim collection of revolting humour.” It contained tasteless, politically incorrect humour much like the standup routines of controversial comics such as Lenny Bruce, who apparently purchased 100 copies of each issue that included excerpts from his routines. [...]

Simon used his pen and his sense of humour to stand up for the Jewish people. In his Funny Thing magazine, he includes this legal disclaimer:

“The captions in this publication are entirely fictitious. As for the characters, they should live and be well. Except, maybe, for one or two…”

Now that's amazing. The application of word balloons to live action photography is something the satirists at MAD magazine did too at times. Let's also recall Simon was a conservative in his time, and after September 11, 2001, he'd drawn an illustration similar to the cover of the premiere issue of Captain America Comics where, much like Simon and Kirby drew Steve Rogers punching Hitler, Simon drew Cap punching Osama bin Laden. The question now is whether that illustration was ever made public, or if we'll ever see it on display today? If his estate or anybody else responsible for retaining his artwork is withholding that Simon item, that's wrong.

For now, this is a pretty interesting bit of history of what Cap's co-creator did in the years afterwards, and from what I know, Simon did work in comics and other similar forms of entertainment at least until the mid-70s. His support for Israel, along with supporting the USA, is something important to appreciate.

French cartoon film adapted from Legendaires broadcast on Canal Plus

Sortir a Paris announced an animated film based on a comic called The Legends is airing on Canal Plus:

The Legends, the animated film adapted from Patrick Sobral’s comic, is airing on Canal+ on Friday, July 31, 2026 at 9:06 PM. Directed by Guillaume Ivernel, the feature marks the first time the adventures of Danaël, Jadina, Gryf, Shimy and Razzia leap from page to the big screen in the magical world of Alysia.

Released in French cinemas on January 28, 2026, the film draws on the Delcourt-published saga, a touchstone of contemporary French children's comics. Now airing on television, it invites families to experience this adventure — a blend of magic, humor, and action — designed for viewers aged 6 and up.

The Légendaires used to be the planet’s greatest protectors. But a curse left them trapped in the bodies of ten-year-olds, just like everyone on Alysia. Stripped of their adult forms, Danaël, Jadina, Gryf, Shimy and Razzia must join forces to confront the sorcerer Darkhell and free their world from this eternal childhood.

The story keeps the core ingredients that made the comic a hit: a team of heroes with very different personalities, an accessible fantasy world, spectacular battles, and humor born from tensions within the group. The characters’ transformation into children also fuels a narrative about trust, friendship, and the need to cooperate despite their disagreements.

That certainly sounds a lot more faithful to its source material than some mainstream USA comics adaptations can be. And it's hopefully a lot more respectable to what's in good taste for children than what comes out of Hollywood these days too. Maybe best of all though, is that it's not airing on a bad network like Netflix happens to be. Broadcasting it there would only be bad news. It's better than the cartoon remain on French channels like Canal.

Where the mid-90s adaptation of Tank Girl stands today

A writer at Men's Journal talks about the 1995 film adaptation of the British comic called Tank Girl, which was not a success, but is apparently the kind of movie that's since found a "cult following", as could probably be expected of some films of the times:

Arriving decades before the box office successes of Wonder Woman (2017) and Captain Marvel (2019), Tank Girl (1995) was a pioneer of the female-led comic book film, or pushed back their popularity for another 20 years — depending on who you asked.

There's just one thing not brought up - despite the huge box office gross 7 years ago, the Capt. Marvel movie is not considered an artistic success, and the sequel certainly buried any further chances for additional sequels for now.

Tank Girl was based on the British comic book series and strips of the same name by artists Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett — the latter of whom would go on to further global prominence as the visual co-creator of the virtual band Gorillaz — first published in 1988. Set in a post-apocalyptic Australia, the series is led by the titular character (real name Rebecca Buck), who, along with mutant Kangaroo boyfriend Booga, navigates the lawless outback in a series of misadventures in an abandoned military tank.

[...] With predominantly non-Australian accents and actors, alongside the rejection of the dry British humor of the comic and its overt violence and sexuality, the Tank Girl film was a far cry from what the fans of the comic book expected. With abysmal critical reviews and a revenue of $6 million against a $25 million budget, the movie venture was largely considered a total failure, particularly by Hewlett and Martin.

Hewlett, who was just 22 years old when MGM studios first approached him about a film adaptation, reflected in 2006: “The script was lousy – me and Alan Martin kept rewriting it and putting Grange Hill jokes and Benny Hill jokes in, and they obviously weren’t getting it. They forgot to film about ten major scenes so we had to animate them … it was a horrible experience.

In a 2017 interview with Vice, Hewlett elaborated, “They played that game of looking for things that are cool, buying those things and then turning them into something else.”

“Which is what Hollywood does. If they were to stick to the actual storyline of the original idea of Tank Girl, then you’d probably have an X-rated movie on your hands, and what they want is a family movie they can open and have a big box office weekend with,” he continued. “They take out all the essence – all the good ingredients – and then turn it into something else.”

There have been R-rated adaptations of several comics over the years, and IIRC, the 1998 Blade movie may have been a rare example to date for a Marvel adaptation. So, while the statements given by the comic's creators may be a bit naive, the fact is that given the chance, Hollywood will dumb down these adaptations considerably, or just plain make a shoddy film. It reminds me that a few years before the Tank Girl film was produced, there was an adaptation of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski novels starring Kathleen Turner that was similarly catastrophous, and stuff like that makes me wonder if some Hollywood studios have so much money, they're not against injuring the popularity of the source material with an awful film. Undoubtably, there are plenty of abortive adaptations whose producing studios have only so much contempt for the zygotes and creators, they're willing to damage the original product's potential. With some early female-led adaptations being the biggest victims of a Hollywood studio's refusal to comprehend what made the source material work in the first place. Just this year of course, we saw how well the new Supergirl adaptation worked out. And that was based on a story written by a very bad writer, by contrast.

It would be far better if some creators would prove they can resist the temptation to have a film adapted to live action, and depending on the situation, even to animation. After all, there's still plenty of examples today where a notable creation can be watered down very badly in Hollywood, and it's gotten considerably worse in an era where stuff like that is described as "woke". So maybe the time's come for comics creators to start reevaluating whether it's even a good idea to begin with, to have their properties adapted to the silver screen. If there's a chance a bad adaptation could send the comic into obscurity, that's why it's just not worth it to approve an adaptation. That said, it's interesting how it's become another film to find a cult following in the 30 years since it was made.

Indian cartoonist's work nominated for Eisners and Harveys

Scroll wrote about Charbak Dipta, an Indian cartoonist whose self-published comic was nominated for Eisner and Harvey awards:

West Bengal-based Charbak Dipta was nominated for the Best Digital Comic category in the 2026 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for The World of Lublu (published in Bengali by Book Farm as Lublur Prithibi). Named for the pioneering comics creator and graphic novelist Will Eisner, the Eisner Awards are considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry. The winners were announced on July 24 at the San Diego Comic Con International.

“Charbak Dipta is not the first Indian to be nominated,” scholar and cover designer Pinaki De remarked about the Eisner Award nomination, “but the fact that his work is done entirely in India, originally published in Bengali for a regional market, makes it so special. To think that anyone here can also make it without extensive ‘foreign’ connections augurs well for the future of Indian comics. In that sense, he is a trailblazer.”

The World of Lublu has also been nominated for this year’s Harvey Awards for Digital Book of the Year. This prize is named after pioneering American cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, and no book-length, creator-owned work from the subcontinent has been nominated for either before, let alone both. Dipta hails from Bongaon – a town near the Indo-Bangladesh border, two hours from Kolkata. [...]

He started out as a cartoonist at The Times of India in Kolkata. He has, since then, worked as a commercial illustrator for tabloids, magazines, and publishers like Scholastic – book covers, cartoons, children’s picture books, and work-for-hire gigs ranging from Nordic mythology to Malgudi Days-esque tales to gangster narratives, while also committing to rigorous online outreach for each of his works, public appearances, and curated exhibits.

This is the daily bread of the commercial illustrator: a figure with a long and under-recognised history in India who has always worked across formats, languages, and markets with a versatility that does not easily lead to publishing boutique graphic novels. Dipta grew up on Indrajal Comics, Chacha Chaudhary, and the Bengali stalwarts, Narayan Debnath and Mayukh Chowdhury. The former designed cosmetic labels before becoming a one-man comics industry, while the latter moved fluidly between illustration and adventure serials. The tradition continues into the present in figures like Debashish Deb, Onkarnath Bhattacharya, and Uday Deb – commercial artists who straddle children’s illustration, political cartooning, graphic novels, merchandising, and branded work with the same promiscuous dexterity their predecessors mastered.

His later western influences and encounters with the Bengal School of Art and folk traditions aside, Dipta understands that survival in this ecology means taking on every role simultaneously. The mass market that could move hundreds of thousands of a single issue per month has fragmented considerably. What remains is a precarious ecosystem in which the aspiring cartoonist must also be the illustrator-for-hire, colourist, letterer, cover designer, and even publisher and translator of their own work in order to move across national boundaries.

This is certainly interesting background history, and what's additionally impressive is that Dipta helped develop the translation for one of the most famous GNs produced by the guy who founded one of the aforementioned award ceremonies:

The most satisfying loop in this story is his recent translation of Will Eisner’s A Contract with God (1978) into Bengali, completed almost simultaneously with his own nomination for an award bearing Eisner’s name. Dipta pursued the Eisner Estate himself, driven by what he saw as a structural parallel between Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue and his own Kolkata.

“The raw pain, resilience, and daily struggles of the Jewish immigrants in Eisner’s work resonate perfectly with the lived experiences of East Bengal refugees settling into the colonies of West Bengal post-Partition,” Dipta explains. “The damp, congested tenement living on Dropsie Avenue mirrors the narrow alleys, centuries-old decaying mansions, chaotic street noise, and tightly knit human relationships of North Kolkata.”

Translating Eisner also meant contending with Eisner’s lettering, blocky type that weighs on the images in very idiosyncratic ways. For a cartoonist of speed such as Dipta, who also letters his own work, one imagines this to have been both a technical challenge and a philosophical one. How does one carry the visual texture of a voice from one script to another without losing its grain? The artist always precedes the critic. Let’s leave it there.

We must also give the guy a lot of appreciation for recognizing the value of Eisner's most notable GN from the late 70s, at a time when he'd resumed comics development after working in the army and businesses more often during the 50s and 60s. Of course, it's a shame the Eisners have been abused as an award event in past years, recalling they nominated DC's offensive Identity Crisis from 2004 for awards 2 decades ago. I can't recall if it actually won any, but if it did, that was wrong, plain and simple, and explains perfectly what's gone wrong with even award shows nowadays. We have to hope their board of directors has moved away from associating with such atrocities, but that doesn't mean they aren't still heaping awards on other bad mainstream and conglomerate-owned comics that don't deserve them. It's good if they're now providing appreciation for indies that're hopefully in better taste, and Dipta's work looks like just what those seeking better taste could be looking for.

So congratulations to him for finding wider recognition for his art career, and good luck to Dipta in the future on comics illustrating.

The winner of this year's Fnac France Inter Comic Award is a story about an illustrator

Fnac Darty, a site run by the French books and music retail chain, announced their choice for this year's comics award under their sponsorship:

The graphic novel *Au-Dedans* (Editions 404) has just been named the winner of the 7th edition of the Fnac France Inter Comic Book Award. This debut graphic novel by Will McPhail, an illustrator for *The New Yorker*, is a refreshing and moving story centered on Nick, a withdrawn young city dweller who slowly begins to open up to the world.

Nick is an illustrator whose life oscillates between his personal projects and a day job at an advertising agency. He spends his time in cafés and craft beer bars, aware that something is missing from his life: other people and their inner worlds. Much more than a critique or a simplistic autobiographical account of a millennial’s life among other millennials, this slice of Nick’s life focuses on the divide that separates us all from one another.

It sounds like something even Japanese mangakas could explore, and just the kind of idea even USA creators should. Congratulations to the artist who conceived the tale.

A superficial article about Doonesbury history, and a sloppy one

Earlier this year in May, The Forward wrote about how cartoonist Garry Trudeau dealt with Jewish-related issues in Doonesbury, mainly spotlighting Mark Slackmeyer, possibly the 3rd regular cast member who debuted shortly after Mike and B.D in 1970:

Trudeau’s “Megaphone Mark” — who sported long hair and a bushy beard —was modeled on Mark Zanger, the leader of the Yale chapter of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). Mark’s first act in the strip is to take over the office of President King, the WASPy president of Walden College, who was based on the actual Yale president, Kingman Brewster. Over the next few months, Trudeau increasingly used Mark’s clashes with his father Phil, a New Jersey stockbroker desperate for his son to “succeed,” to dramatize tensions within postwar Jewish life.

Phil represents a generation of upwardly mobile Jews who believed acceptance in corporate and suburban America required conformity, restraint and the concealing of ethnicity. Mark, by contrast, is openly confrontational, culturally self-aware, and seems uninterested in assimilationist respectability.

Mark’s Jewish identity was not made explicit until the middle of 1971, when he and his college buddy Mike Doonesbury attend a talk by a famous religious crusader. Asked why he has not yet chosen to join the fold and lead a proper Christian life, Mark deadpans, “I’m Jewish.”

At Yale, Trudeau hardly knew Zanger and had much less in common with him than he had with Kingman Brewster, whose ancestors sailed to America on the Mayflower. Trudeau was descended from three generations of Ivy-League-educated physicians. Like his father, the hardworking family doctor Frank Trudeau, the cartoonist attended St. Paul’s — one of the most blueblood of all New England prep schools. And though the young Yalie, like the genteel Brewster, opposed the war in Vietnam, he wanted nothing to do with radical politics.

But Trudeau identified closely with some of the personal struggles of Megaphone Mark. After all, he was also bucking family tradition by becoming an artist rather than a doctor. As Trudeau told me, some of Mark’s quarrels with his father hit close to home. Consider the line that Phil tells Mark in the fall of 1973: “Life is not to be enjoyed, it’s to be gotten on with!” Those words came verbatim from the mouth of Frank Trudeau, though, the younger Trudeau said, “my father and I ended up getting along pretty well and later came to laugh about such harsh comments.”

A key reason why Trudeau saw a part of himself in his Jewish cartoon character is that this ultimate insider also knew what it felt like to be an outsider. For many American Jews of the postwar era, especially those attending elite institutions historically dominated by WASP norms and values, Jewishness came with a sense of conditional acceptance, of not fully belonging. Trudeau had an emotionally similar experience at St. Paul’s, where he felt deeply estranged from the school’s rigid social hierarchy and its obsessive emphasis on athletic status. As the cartoonist later stressed, his four years there were “a tortured time for me.” He hated the school’s culture and never felt fully at home within it.

While this is interesting history, Trudeau diminished whatever impact it had when in the mid-90s, around January 18, 1994, he wrote Mark telling he was homosexual (with Zonker Harris providing a narrative), which is odd, since, while there was a strip around February 10, 1976 where Joanie Caucus was talking to Andy Lippincott, who told her he was homosexual (Trudeau later wrote him passing away from AIDS in 1990), Mark may not have been established as such at the time. What that would suggest is that Trudeau basically retconned one of his strip's established cast members for the sake of an oh-so vital agenda. It adds nothing to the character, and only makes previously established points moot.

Interestingly, if it matters, I'm not sure there were ever any notable lesbian characters highlighted in the strip, unless we consider a cameo by the real life Rachel Maddow, though that's hardly an achievement if it's not a fictional character who could make a more plausible regular. And if there weren't any recurring lesbian cast members in Doonesbury, it beggars the query - why do only homosexual men matter here? And why, if gay men did matter, Trudeau had to turn an established regular cast member into such, but couldn't create a new one like he did with Lippincott back in 1976? Sometimes, I wonder if comics writers like William Messner-Loebs have to shoulder some blame, since he turned the Pied Piper in Flash gay around 1990, rather than introduce a new character who could fill that role. Arguably, Messner-Loebs was one of the earlier examples of a writer who went "woke" in his approach, and it's certainly led to a lot of damage by this point, with Obsidian from Infinity Inc. being one of the biggest victims, since Gerard Jones, who retconned Todd Rice in 1995, turned out to be a criminal, and a lot of the stories Jones wrote were very bad.

Next up, in the past month, the Los Angeles Review of Books discussed the new history book about the now 56-years-old comic strip, and there's at least a few errors here, such as:

Doonesbury’s Slackmeyer came out as gay in 1976. It seems almost quaint now (and then again, not) that Slackmeyer paralleled rock stars like Lou Reed and Elton John, who felt comfortable enough in their own professional spaces to proclaim their queerness with pride. But this was the very first gay character in comics, and dozens of newspapers simply dropped the strip. Their editorial boards deemed it inappropriate for family reading, as if sexual orientation were inherently salacious. Trudeau refused to apologize or put his character back in the closet. He accepted the economic cost of moral clarity. Not content to be absorbed into the system, Trudeau gladly risked loss of distribution for the sake of truth-telling.

Oops, that's incorrect. It was Lippincott, not Slackmeyer, who was the first gay male character in the strip, perhaps also in all comic strips of the times. Most mystifying, I couldn't find any mention of Lippincott in the article. What gives on that? The glaring historical error aside, where do they get off lecturing everybody homosexuality's literally appropriate for children? Have they by any chance noticed what turned up in school libraries in past years? Do tell us about it. And then, there's another potential error here:

In Peanuts, the adult world feels incomprehensible, their speech reduced to onomatopoeia. In Doonesbury, the adult world tilts hypocritical and borderline psychotic, the source of colossal betrayal and moral rot. When Trudeau deployed abstract visual cues to depict presidents—Reagan as an empty brain, Bush Sr. as a “point of light,” Trump as a sentient toupee—he pointed Schulz’s abstractions at a new target: that power is often visually represented by its absence, by the void where thought should live.

I know Trudeau developed a gimmick where he'd depict some politicians as "invisible men", with certain symbols to replace them (Dan Quayle was depicted as a feather, meant to allude to what Trudeau thought of his personality), but I don't think it included Trump, and certainly not of recent, if the panel from last month says anything. But how disturbing that Trudeau's depicting Trump conversing chummily with a character named Trff Bmzklfrpz, a dictator from a fictional country called Berzerkistan, who's supposed to be murderous and antisemitic. Would he have written a leftist politician maintaining such friendships? Something tells me that, despite this, Trudeau doesn't have anything concrete to say about Trump's administration making a deal with Syria's current dictator, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was a terrorist before, and there's bleak signs he hasn't changed. All that aside, the "joke" Trudeau made about Trump believing something's been named in his honor is one of the cheapest I've ever seen in the newspaper strip to date. What's that about "incomprehensible" again?

If Mike represented the political sell-out, Mark Slackmeyer represented something more urgent: the moral witness to governmental impunity. Originally a campus radical and DJ at Walden College’s radio station, Mark came out in 1976, a move that became a watershed moment for the funny pages. But the 1980s deepened the crisis. As the Reagan administration ignored the burgeoning threat of AIDS—the president refused to even speak the word in public, and homophobic legislatures debated whether infected people deserved treatment—Trudeau used Mark to bear witness. While Bible-thumpers attacked the “morality” of the afflicted, treating AIDS patients as deserving of their fate, Trudeau faced the grim realities of suffering and death. One 1985 panel still grates: Mark stands at a closed-casket funeral for a lover, his face a hollow, blank mask of exhaustion. The caption: “I’m just so tired of being brave.”

When they repeat the error with Mark's history twice, it starts becoming funny enough to fall off the couch laughing. Why wasn't the establishment of Lippincott as gay considered a "watershed moment", according to their poorly researched effort? That aside, what proof do they have that "bible-thumpers" took such a denigrating position? According to Religion Dispatches, that was far from the case. And why no provision of the 1985 strip in question, so we can ascertain the given year is accurate? The following isn't very accurate either:

When B. D.—the strip’s resident conservative and permanent helmet-wearer—lost his leg in Iraq, 35 years of character history freighted the injury. This wasn’t a policy abstraction; it was a friend’s tragedy. Trudeau became a fixture on Ward 57 of Walter Reed hospital, interviewing veterans and their families, detailing their trials and the government’s responses. Following B. D.’s journey through PTSD, Trudeau earned the title “archangel of Walter Reed” from the military establishment itself.

But here’s the paradox Kendall fails to articulate: Trudeau opposed the Iraq War vehemently, yet his humane treatment of its victims earned him establishment gratitude. When you become a “humanist,” you often lose your “teeth.” The military appreciated Trudeau’s compassion for wounded soldiers even as they pursued policies that kept wounding them. They could separate the caricaturist of their commanders from the chronicler of their suffering. They used his moral clarity about individual pain as cover for endless wars.

Regarding B.D, we once again have an error at hand, or at least a lack of historical clarity: in April 21, 2004, after 34 years, Trudeau drew the guy's helmet being removed after he lost a leg in the Iraq war. On the other hand, I don't think Duke and Ching Huan have been seen without their glasses in all the time they've been recurring cast members. Whatever, it's disturbing how the reviewer turns to claiming wars are "endless" because of the USA's conduct, not because of the foreign autocrat tyrants and ideologies that begin them. Such propaganda only lets savages off the hook, and proves the journal's not altruistic. Also, was Trudeau's reason for opposing the war in Iraq because he didn't think they were as dangerous as Iran's turned out to be? If so, I have yet to find him actually saying so. His turn to victim-blaming in the past decade after the Charlie Hebdo massacre certainly didn't help matters.

In 2014, Trudeau stepped away from his daily grind to work on HBO’s Alpha House, and most papers carried reruns of his greatest hits. He still writes a Sunday strip. Mike’s daughter Alex entered the cast, while the Duke (a play on gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson) lived long past his writerly role model to serve as as the proconsul of an Iraqi city. Like Donald Trump, the Duke acts like a monument to the Great American Grift. By the time Trudeau reached the Trump era, satire entered a predicament that made exaggeration almost impotent. Even late-night comics weary of ridiculing Trump, and logic simply vaporizes in the face of his daily harangues. Trudeau’s solution treated Trump as monstrous subtext—an unstable virus distorting his characters’ daily lives rather than a target for direct parody. It was a graceful retreat, but it also admitted defeat.

Sounds like somebody wishes the strip continued daily for longer, if that's what it took to ram Trump for ambiguous reasons. I sometimes wonder if Trudeau stopped drawing daily strips because he had little else to tell in this day and age, and his resort to cheap jokes at this point with Trump certainly proves he's way past his prime.

Doonesbury may have run for a longer time than strips like Peanuts, but has since proven overrated and pretentious, as the swipe at Trump makes clear. Even long before that, from what I could tell, it had long hit bottom. So what good does it do to write up a history book about it when the chances are it won't take an objective viewpoint?

An Indian comic building on imagery from a film

The Times of India announced the production of a concept art comic based on a film titled Ramayana:

Team 'Ramayana' has fans counting down the days to their big trailer launch this week. While kicking off the countdown to July 24 when the official trailer will debut online, fans have been busy turning the film's concept art into impressive first looks.

Following the grand event in New Delhi on Saturday, the makers unveiled a special comic book that offers an in-depth look at the mythology-inspired world of the film. The illustrated book showcases detailed concept art for key characters, kingdoms and locations, giving fans a closer look at the ambitious adaptation. Soon after images from the comic surfaced online, social media users began transforming the illustrations into real-life depictions using AI image-generation tools. [...]

The comic, unveiled during the film's promotional event also offers readers a detailed introduction to the kingdoms of Ayodhya, Mithila and Lanka, while also revealing character illustrations accompanied by brief biographies and mythological backgrounds.

If you think there's a good side to AI, then moviegoers having fun producing AI-generated imagery based on the comic panels that could resemble real life is indeed a better example of how to make use of the concept that's been gaining traction in the past 5 years or so. And a comic emphasizing concept art for the movie is certainly a great idea too.

National library of Florence to host Italy's biggest comics archives

The Florentine announced the national library of Florence will be host to Italy's hugest comics archives:

Florence has taken a major step towards becoming Italy’s leading centre for the study and preservation of comic books following the donation of the private archive of Gianni Bono to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

The deed of donation, signed on June 9, transfers one of the most comprehensive and significant collections of Italian comics ever assembled into public ownership. Amassed over decades by Giovanni Attilio Bono, known as Gianni Bono, the publisher, historian, scholar and one of Italy’s foremost experts on comics, the archive is unrivalled for its size, breadth and rarity.

Known as the Fondo Bono, the collection comprises more than 800,000 items, including comic books, magazines, book series, scholarly publications, and Italian and international editions. It also contains original editorial material such as manuscripts, scripts, story outlines, sketches, archival documents, original artwork, posters, promotional material, fanzines and other rare documents charting the history of Italy’s most important comic book creators, characters and publishers. Much of the collection has already been documented in the Guida al fumetto italiano database. [...]

Through the acquisition, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze is laying the foundations for what it hopes will become the Italian Library of Comics, a national centre dedicated to the preservation, study and promotion of comic art and publishing.

That's great. I'm sure Italy's got plenty of their own comics and even animation samples that could use a good archive where everybody could take a look to see what they're like. Congratulations to the library in Florence for this achievement.

Marvel moves from NY to CA, and replaces C.B. Cebulski with Stephen Wacker as EIC

The Hollywood Reporter's announced changes are being made at Marvel, none of them anything to be optimistic about, in both location and staffing:

After calling the Big Apple home for almost 90 years, Marvel Comics is moving out of New York City. And heading to Hollywood.

The relocation was revealed to staff at a town hall Thursday at Marvel’s New York office in Midtown, where employees were informed that its publishing division will be pulling up stakes and transferring operations to Burbank, California, the current headquarters of Marvel Studios and corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company.

Just like DC, right? Considering how artistically and politically bad their owner became over the past decade, this is nothing to take pleasure at learning, unfortunately. Nor is the news of who'll replace C.B. Cebulski as EIC, after he retained the role for nearly a decade:

The development is accompanied by a changing of the guard at the top. Stephen Wacker, a respected veteran comics editor who also earned an Emmy nomination for his work in the company’s forays in animation, has been named Marvel’s new editor-in-chief, replacing outgoing chief C.B. Cebulski, who had steered the division since 2017. Cebulski will still remain part of the family, however, as he will be moving to Japan to spearhead the company’s push into manga, among others things, as editor, Asia originals.

Both changes are meant to reinvigorate the comic book side of the company, which has been overshadowed in recent years by the success of Marvel’s movies, and by a creative slump that saw it lose its position as comics market share leader for the first time this century. Marvel chief Kevin Feige’s installing of the new leadership and the relocation of its comics side to Disney’s Burbank base represents a long-term investment in what he believes underpins the source of Marvel’s storytelling. [...]

Among those joining the Burbank headquarters will be Wacker, who is making his Marvel return after leaving the company in the early 2020s to lead Jonathan Hickman’s worldbuilding project 3W3M and then co-founding the entertainment studio Stone Kite.

A beloved editor with strong talent relationships, Wacker spent over fifteen years at Marvel, overseeing Spider-Man comic runs that included the best-selling “Brand New Day” and “Superior Spider-Man” eras. He was also editor on Daredevil and Hawkeye when those titles won Eisner Awards and was involved in the introduction of Kamala Khan, also known as Ms. Marvel.

"Respected and beloved"? Wacker's the same editor who was part and parcel of the effort to run the Spider-Man franchise into the ground, and they shamelessly gloss over one of the worst editorial mandates Joe Quesada forced upon Spidey when he was EIC. It's just like them to distort and obscure the worst of what was brought about. And all these years, they kept repeatedly dangling carrots as to whether Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson would be reunited as a married couple, which they never did, and Cebulski recently allowed things to become worse by approving a story where MJ's turned into another Venom host. These kind of shock value stories don't improve a dire situation, and that's going to be part of Cebulski's "legacy" going out.

Since Wacker, of course, was party to the degradation of Spidey, he's unlikely to reverse any of Quesada's worst steps of the past quarter century, and unlikely to restore the Spider-marriage. And even if he does, that alone won't make Spidey's adventures readable again. For all we know, Wacker could ramp up the wokeness by galaxies, as though it weren't bad enough already, and he was instrumental in shoehorning Islamic propaganda into the MCU with a character whose instant solo series wasn't marketed on merit, and at least 3 projects translating the Muslim Ms. Marvel into live action films, TV and video were flops, with the Marvels movie becoming a huge dud. Of course, the MSM will doubtless not have anything critical to say about his upcoming run as EIC, and chances are that, much like the now outgoing Cebulski, Wacker won't give many press interviews, if at all. At least that'd be a comfort in a sense, since Quesada gave only so many years ago where he was unendurable. Forbes also addressed the move, and said:

In one way, it is unsurprising that Disney is uniting Marvel’s publishing and film units in Burbank. Comic-based movies, media and games supplanted comics publishing as the economic driver of the business two decades ago. Longtime rival DC decamped from New York to Burbank in 2015, a move also accompanied by a change in company leadership. An internal Marvel company survey revealed that more Mavel creators now hail from the West Coast than from the region nearby New York, and in any case, geography has become largely irrelevant to the production of comics. [...]

Cebulski’s departure was also not a surprise. Though the Marvel editor could claim a range of creative and commercial successes in his decade-long leadership of the company, Marvel’s sales have slipped in recent years, falling behind DC for the first time in a long time according to industry sales data. With longtime Marvel President Dan Buckley stepping down in May, replaced by Brad Winderbaum (head of TV, animation, comics and franchise) and David Abdo (general manager, comics and franchise), it seemed likely that Marvel would get new editorial leadership sooner rather than later.

Wacker will step into the role once held by industry legends Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Jim Shooter among others. Wacker has been behind some of Marvel’s most interesting and popular comics of the past few decades, including Brand New Day and Superior Spider-Man. He is well-liked within the industry and well-regarded by creative colleagues both at Marvel and on other stops in his professional career including at DC and Jonathan Hickman’s 3W3M.

As surely expected, they too sugarcoat the worst atrocities to come out of the Quesada era at Marvel, and it wouldn't be the least bit shocking if they're fully in the boat for the worst of the overabundant company wide crossovers that're doubtless coming up in Marvel's schedule now. I'm sure there's something to the claim Wacker's "well-liked" inside the industry, since he's bound to be a knee-jerk leftist who could do everything they consider acceptable. But after the Spider-marriage was thrown out so blatantly, do they really think he's popular and well-liked within Spider-fandom? Naturally, the real-life J. Jonah Jamesons at Forbes won't acknowledge that issue.

Anyway, hiring a new EIC doesn't guarantee fortures will improve, if no merit or respect for fandom and past creators isn't emphasized. Sales of mainstream comics have been declining for years, to the point where it's bewildering Marvel and DC are even still in business as publishers. I'd noticed rumors Disney might shut down Marvel as a publisher, but for all we know, they're bound to continue pointlessly for still another decade or so. And within that time, sales, along with "merit", are bound to fall ever further.

Marjane Satrapi, artist of Persepolis, passes away at 56

The UK Guardian reported that Iranian-born artist Marjane Satrapi, who created the GN Persepolis, died at just 56:

Marjane Satrapi, the French-Iranian artist, film-maker and graphic novelist whose acclaimed memoir Persepolis helped reshape international perceptions of Iran, has died at the age of 56.

In a statement provided to French news agency AFP, relatives said she had “died of sadness” after the death of her husband, the Swedish producer Mattias Ripa.

Ripa died on 8 April last year. Later that month, a series of messages posted on Satrapi’s Instagram account revealed the phrase: “For I lost the love of my life.”

Tributes have been paid to Satrapi from across French politics and culture following news of her death. President Emmanuel Macron said Satrapi was “a great artist who turned her Iranian childhood into a universal tale,” adding: “With her childlike perspective, her irony, her tenderness, her inner demons, the author created a moving world with which readers identified.”

Writing on X, Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the French National Assembly, said: “Marjane Satrapi had turned her work into an act of freedom. With Persepolis, she had given a face and a voice to the Iranian revolution, proudly carrying the fight for women’s freedom and dignity. France loses an immense artist. To her family, to her loved ones, I offer my most sincere thoughts.”

Born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran, near the Caspian Sea, Satrapi was raised in Tehran by her father, an engineer, and her mother, a dress designer. As a teenager, she left Iran after her parents sent her to Europe to continue her education, hoping to spare her from the restrictions imposed under the Islamic Republic. She eventually settled in France, arriving in 1994 and later becoming a French citizen in 2006.

Throughout her life, Satrapi was a vocal opponent of Iran’s clerical establishment.

In 2000 she published Persepolis, a comic book memoir that became an international publishing phenomenon. It told the story of a rebellious and outspoken young girl navigating the upheaval in Iran after the shah is overthrown in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The story follows the protagonist’s attempts to understand the country’s violence and ideological control before she is sent alone to Europe at the age of 14.

Satrapi told the Guardian in 2024 that Persepolis was about making western readers reflect on the humanity of Iranian people, that, “Oh, they’re actually human beings like us”.

The memoir sold millions of copies, established Satrapi as one of the most widely read Iranian authors in the world, and its success challenged many western assumptions about Iranian society and culture.

She was clearly one of the few who showed the courage to speak out against an Islamofascist regime like what Iran's been for 47 years, and it's rather hypocritical for somebody like Macron to suddenly offer her praise for her GN, considering he didn't do enough to oppose Islamofascism himself, and wouldn't help in the recent war against Iran.

It's sad she's died too young, because here, the Islamic regime and terrorist machine in Iran is hopefully falling apart, and will ensure future generations of women who don't want to be forced to follow sharia dictations like having to wear niqabs won't have to. That's what makes Persepolis so valuable as a comics biography, and it remains to be seen how many more around the world who actually believe in civilized values will agree on that. Including the Guardian themselves, considering their leftist stance doesn't exactly speak the positions of Satrapi.

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.