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.

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.

Back issue bins can turn up interesting items, but why not trade collections?

CTV News wrote about what people find in back issue bins, at conventions like FCBD and the Calgary Expo:

If you’re the right kind of geek, there’s a good chance you’ve spent some time lately rooting through comic book back issue bins.

Calgary Expo and Free Comic Book Day are just freshly behind us.

Maybe you were hoping the next flip would bring you a particular something on your list for a mere dollar or two.

Maybe a successful dive through the cheap reads means getting exactly issues 520 and 521 of Journey Into Mystery.

Or maybe you were flipping aimlessly, and it was by the Comic Book Gods’ good grace you hit on the “fear-filled final issues” of that specific Marvel Comics series that someone else either didn’t want anymore or couldn’t sell at face value.

It was a rescue mission, regardless.

How comic book collectors approach it is what can vary, says Bill Bateman from Alpha Comics in Calgary.

“While some are looking for anything to fill in the blanks in their collections, others are looking for that elusive rare book that may have been missed by the store,” Bateman told CTV News.

“Some people show up with a binder of notes showing what they’re missing, (while) some have apps on their phones that do the job a lot faster, and some just know all of the books well enough.”

Sure, there can be gems to find in back issue bins, but if the same issues have been reprinted in trade collections, why must we hear about would-be collectors zeroing in almost entirely on said bins and not searching for paperback/hardcovers reprinting the very same issues? Why not even whether anybody wants specific issues reprinted, if they haven't yet been? That's what I never seem to see these news outlets bring up, nor do they interview people who do. But trade collections or paperback/hardcovers are what comprise the bulk of my collection now, and I think it's working a lot better that way, because thanks to the Marvel Epic Collections and the more recently launched DC Finest archives, I now own hundreds, perhaps thousands of old issues reprinted through these forms of collections for older comics. And these news companies don't want to talk about how great those can be for everybody who hopes to acquire a complete run of various classic series? That's just the problem here.

Rhiannon Mesler says comic book bin diving “runs on the same machinery that powers a slot machine.”

Likewise, the University of Lethbridge marketing professor and expert in consumer behaviour and decision-making says, “the same machinery social media platforms have spent fifteen years optimizing.”

“What makes it irresistible isn’t the find. It’s the unpredictability,” she says.

“Neuroscientists have shown that the brain’s dopamine system fires hardest not when reward arrives, but when reward arrives unexpectedly.

“And that the dopamine signal actually peaks when the odds are roughly 50-50, when you genuinely don’t know whether the next comic in the box is going to be ‘The One.’”

They make it sound more like a game of hide-and-seek than searching for the best reading material. Another clue the speculator mentality plays a part in this whole affair, which effectively ruins any attempt to sound convincing in their fandom.

In addition to the above, ComicBook also told about a guy who, with aid from his dad, managed to purchase at least 400 of the Amazing Spider-Man issues printed up till around the mid-90s:

Many times, comic book collectors are only interested in building a collection for bragging rights or to hopefully one day make money off of the collectibles. However, there are other times when a collector has a more personal reason for collecting memorabilia, and it has a purer meaning than just looking for the big bucks. In some cases, the idea of collecting comics or other items of memorabilia is passed down through the generations. In those cases, it is more about the relationship between a person and their parents, and that makes completing a collection something that means so much more.

This was the case for a Redditor known as joeltheconner, who just revealed that he finally completed his Amazing Spider-Man run of the first 400 issues. He then added that he has his father to thank for this fact.

In his post, joeltheconner wrote that his dad was a comic book collector and would take him to comic shops when he was a kid. However, he said that he was never as interested in comics until he was nine years old. “At the age of 9. My dad gave me a copy of ASM 300 to read. I was hooked instantly,” he wrote. “From then, we started collecting together. For two years we took our vacations to Chicago so we could go to the big convention up there.”

Around 1998, he said he lost interest and stopped collecting, and then moved on. However, he admitted there was something his dad had said to him before that he thought was cool. They discussed having the full run of a specific comic book title. He chose Amazing Spider-Man and decided he would collect the run of the first 400 issues. That led to a few years ago, when his dad asked if he was still interested in completing that collection. His dad then did something that meant the world to him.

His dad had his “prized” Silver Surfer comics, and he offered to sell those to the local shop to get credit so that his son could work on finishing his Amazing Spider-Man run. “I honestly tried to talk him out of it, but it sounded like a really fun thing for him and I to do together again,” he wrote. “From the first time I stepped back into a shop, it took me right back and I was hooked again. 2 years later, today I bought the last book that I needed to complete the run.”

That book was Amazing Spider-Man #2, which was the first appearance of the Vulture and which was the first book where Spider-Man fought a superpowered villain (Chameleon was the first villain in the debut issue). This man’s dad gave up a prized possession to work with his son to help fulfill a dream. It was obvious that it meant the world to this man. “It’s so hard sometimes for sons to tell their fathers what they mean to them, and I’m going to figure out a way to really tell him,” he wrote. “But thank you, Dad. I owe more to you in this life than I could never repay.”

While it's great for dads and sons to do all sorts of things together, it's simply ludicrous how somebody would like to get as much of Spidey when it mattered in pamphlets, but not in trade collections, which at this point is precisely what I own. As of now, I own, for example, the first 12 ASM Epic archives, and have plenty more coming after that, and hope the ASM run will be more or less completed eventually, so that then, I can try to buy complete sets myself, though admittedly, at this point I'm hesitant to buy those collecting the Clone Saga, which, while it may not be as awful as some other artistic humiliations to come down the pike later, was still very damaging to the Spidey legacy, and certainly the part where Peter assaulted Ben Reilly in frustration and accidentally injured Mary Jane when she tried to get him to stop, after which Peter just ran out of the laboratory in horror instead of doing what he could to mend the damage to MJ. That kind of scene is far more reprehensible than claiming Ben was the protagonist all along between 1975-95 (and it was soon confirmed by writers that Peter was the protagonist within that time frame, not Ben, in their efforts to apologize to Spider-fans they alienated).

And I have plenty more Epic Collection and Finest archives I've bought, including a few dedicated to Superman's series and spinoffs, all 3 for Black Panther, several for Daredevil, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Dr. Strange, Justice Society/League, Punisher, Luke Cage, X-Men, Capt. America, Thor, Hawkman, Defenders, Moon Knight and even Excalibur. I also have several omnibuses to boot. And I hope other Spidey spinoffs like the 1976-98 Spectacular will see some Epic archives eventually too. That's what serious "collectors" should really be buying, and considering the back issues are highly likely to become increasingly expensive over time, if they really want to read this stuff, that's why they'll buy the trade collections.

So again, why are we still seeing this otherwise absurd news about people searching for back issues instead of paperbacks/hardcovers? That's another huge letdown with modern news coverage of comidom. Because in the end, it only hints they still don't take the medium seriously, otherwise, they would talk about all these reprint collections and how they can introduce new generations to older classics as a great reading pastime. And this demonstrates how the MSM continues to belittle the medium, by not highlighting a far more convenient approach to collecting notable stories of the past decades by today's standards. Unless something is done to dissuade speculators and collectors from back issues and try trade collections instead, the problem's going to continue for at least another decade or three.

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.

A biography of inker Vince Colletta

Apollo Magazine (archive link) spoke about a new biography for the late inker Vince Colletta:

The first comic strip with a recurring character appeared in 19th-century London: Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday (1884), a then-unusual combination of words and images. Yet while comic books were traditionally dismissed as a debased form of entertainment for American and Japanese adolescent boys (as well as the sources for a multi-billion-dollar film empire), a new book shows how they come with their own traditions and virtuosos. Drawn to Beauty: The Life and Art of Vince Colletta (Black Spring Press) explores the work of an illustrator best known for his work ‘inking’ Jack Kirby’s drawings in Marvel’s Thor and Fantastic Four comics. Colletta (1923–91) is regarded as one of the finest inkers – the artists who translate the sketches into the image that is printed on the page. He was renowned for his delicacy and for giving the final shape to some of Marvel’s most popular characters, before leaving to eventually become the art director of rival company DC. But it’s what he did in between the two roles that might have become most influential.

Kirby may be one famous figure who's never gotten enough wide recognition, but Colletta's another who could use some more too. So it's great to know he's also received a biography of his work, long after he passed away. And there's plenty more figures from better eras who could use some biographies too, and hopefully will see them in time.

Jack Kirbys visions were allegedly an inspiration for Riot Games' League of Legends characters

A guest writer at the Washington Post, who co-created League of Legends and co-founded its studio, Riot Games, brought up the history of the late, great Jack Kirby, now on exhibit at the Smithsonian, apparently for telling everybody how his work inspired their video game creations, and making a case against artificial intelligence:

The man behind this image is Jack Kirby, a Jewish comic artist who emerged from New York’s Lower East Side in the 1930s to become one of America’s most prolific and imaginative creators.

Since Kirby died in 1994, the worlds he envisioned have continued to grow in popularity, accounting for many of the biggest box-office hits in the 21st century. Kirby pioneered the visual language of modern superheroes — from Captain America to the Incredible Hulk to Black Panther — and revolutionized world-building itself. Today, any creator designing characters or imagining universes is likely building in part on Kirby’s vision.

There's something rather hypocritical for a newspaper that's hostile to Israel, the land of Kirby's ancestry, to be bringing up his ethnic background if they don't genuinely respect it. Chances are they don't have respect for Iranian dissidents either. That aside, it's supremely silly how the writer claims Kirby's worlds have skyrocketed in popularity when sales today make clear it's anything but that, and the Eternals film was a box office dud. Based on this, I hesitate to think what could become if the New Gods and even the Demon, some of Kirby's creations for DC, were adapted to live action.

Yet, unlike George Lucas, Walt Disney or even Stan Lee (his longtime collaborator at Marvel), Kirby’s name remained largely unknown outside comic fandom. Few among the tens of millions who watched “Deadpool & Wolverine” in 2024 knew that the X-Men universe was co-conceived decades earlier by this young artist.

Kirby may be finally getting his due.

“Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity,” the first major exhibition of his work, just wrapped up its run at Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center. A documentary, “Kirbyvision,” is underway. New York City last summer named a Lower East Side street corner after its native son, and several of his comics have joined the permanent collections at the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

His life story feels especially instructive now. As creative fields examine the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence, Kirby’s art exemplifies the unmatched power of human imagination.

That's the guy's reason for bringing him up? Because if he's not interested in researching and telling everybody how Marvel under Joe Quesada destroyed all of Captain America's potential beginning in 2002, along with what made other creations of Kirby's work, then what good does it do to make points about how AI is no substitute for human-illustrated art? I'm sorry, but this is all cheap stuff, that once again misses a chance to inform everyone what went wrong in the past quarter century.

At Riot Games, we originally built video games to deliver bombastic fantasies that embody specific archetypes or play experiences. Over time, we faced the challenge of retroactively weaving these diverse creations into a single, coherent world, worthy of storytelling.

It’s no small task to make a sad mummy, a star-forging dragon and a pyromantic schoolgirl feel as though they belong in the same universe. Comics have long solved a similar puzzle, uniting a Norse god, a billionaire inventor and even a talking raccoon and sentient tree into a believable ensemble. In that sense, our process drew from Kirby’s legacy: build boldly, then discover the connective tissue, the humanity and purpose that binds characters into something greater than the sum of their parts.

Kirby and his collaborators pushed us to treat narrative not as an accessory but as a responsibility, convincing us that the rudimentary characters in our early game could inhabit a universe rich enough to connect people across cultures and generations while asking timeless human questions.

Oh, another discussion of responsibility, without harkening back to where none was on display in the early 2000s, all shortly after September 11, 2001, when Quesada - and Bill Jemas - not only put Captain America in the Marvel Knights imprint, they even put him in a Blame America scenario. That was unacceptable, went against what Kirby stood for, and now, a quarter century later, all some technologist wants to talk about is how Kirby served as inspiration for video game designs. Sure, it can be great to draw inspiration from Kirby's visions, but if they really respect him, they wouldn't ignore just how bad use of Kirby's creations back in the comics became after the turn of the century until now. IIRC, the Knights imprint wasn't as monumentally successful as some apologists might make it out to be, recalling Cap's run under that imprint lasted possibly less than 2 years, and then the imprint label was dropped, but the damage had been done, and now it's gotten to the point where race-swapping propaganda has all but forced Steve Rogers out of the role. And that story where Cap was written saying "hail Hydra" is another repulsive moment in terrible comics history now soiling Kirby's creation.

Creative people are told AI will replace them. But AI has no lived experience. It can mimic and remix the raw material of human creativity, drawing on patterns it did not originate. That’s why its work, however dazzling, reflects the archive it was trained on rather than a life it has lived. It cannot create from personal memory, conviction or emotional truth, the forces that Kirby transformed into art. In the AI age, his legacy reminds us that while technology may assist the creative process, the most enduring universes are born not of algorithms alone but of human imagination, alive with the sparks that only come when people create together.

Yes, but this doesn't excuse how abysmal artistic merit's become in over 2 decades, and there's decidedly no excuses for a computer game producer obscuring that either. And if human imagination's going to be corrupted, can you expect AI to improve upon that?

I also looked at the reader comments, and for example, we have:

It’s hard to read any article about Jack Kirby that doesn’t reference how ill-treated and under-appreciated he was. He was constantly shuffling from company to company, most of which exploited his talent and failed to enable him fully. What we got was spectacular, but there was so much more that just wasn’t supported.

Yet none of that is as troubling as how Marvel took his and Joe Simon's creation, Capt. America, and exploited Steve Rogers for the sake of apologia for Islamic terrorism and Blame America propaganda. Speaking of Simon, he later reportedly drew a picture of Cap socking Osama bin Laden, and that's all buried today, 15 years after his own passing. Why, even Simon's hardly known outside comic circles by today's standards. Maybe even Will Eisner's in the same situation. Yet none of that matters to the Riot Games manager? For shame.

Another comment made a good point, but simultaneously risked contradicting it:

I watched a video essay recently talking about how Japanese Manga has surpassed American comics in most ways, because American comics are mostly locked in and unchanging. Spiderman can go on new adventures, his villains can come and go or rotate, but his story can never end. Popular characters can be killed off, but will be brought back, reducing any impact on the readers.

It had some good points, even if it ignored that popular and long running Manga titles do the same things at times, but they do tend to be the vision of the creator and last only as long as they are willing to work on them.

One of the strengths of American comics, I think, is that a new writer/artist can take an existing character and re-imagine them. The X-Men weren't as popular as they would become until Chris Claremont's epic run with them, for example.

Kirby is a titan and probably more impactful than Stan was.

Just what definition of "reimagining" would that be? Because there's only so many politicized "reimaginings" going on today at the expense of classic creations, whether it's race/sex-swapping or forcing LGBT and Islamic propaganda down the readers' throats, and the aforementioned Iceman stands out as a X-Men cast member who was a big victim of such propaganda. As for the point that manga can also emphasize resurrections, a point that should be made is that the problem with mainstream USA comics either killing off characters or resurrecting them is that they're not doing it organically or altruistically, but for the sake of publicity, and even worse is when a character who's on the good side is forcibly turned into a monster, as seen with 2 women in both Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled, Jean Loring and Scarlet Witch. Must I point out the latter is a Kirby creation? One more reason why the alarmingly forced approach to her in WandaVision and Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is sickening. So we have all these situations that cropped up since the 90s where heroic characters are killed/villified in contempt of the original visions, while only villains are allowed to be resurrected, or worse, somehow become heroes instead. That may not be so common now, but the damaging impact of such tactics is still proving hard to shake off.

All that aside, this does make a vital point that, if mangakas can write about resurrections, then it's not inherently wrong for USA comics to do the same, provided the goodies and their civilian co-stars are allowed the same privileges as villains could disturbingly get.

Here's one more reader comment:

I wrote about how Hitler did not start the hate against you know how but this is 2,000 years old but the media like WAPO want to pretend that Hitler started all this giving cover to religion to continue to preach their hate & WAPO censored it - let's see if this revised version makes it in

I assume this alludes to Islamic antisemitism, and it's already old news neither Marvel nor DC want to seriously tackle the issue, recalling how the former even went so far as to preach for the sake of the Religion of Peace with a race-swapped Ms. Marvel who's a Muslim, and the latter did the same with a Muslim Green Lantern, in a storyline that was also built on making "infidels" look bad. And all this at the expense of the Jewish community that created the comics now exploited for the sake of woke propaganda. Well if the Wash. Post censored any statement on that, go figure, they're still as repellent in their leftist politics as before.

With that told, much as I'd like to credit some video game producers for drawing inspiration from famous artists, their failure to defend classic creations from abuse spoils everything. Nor do they make a case for artistic merit, and why it's bad to resort to publicity stunts as Marvel/DC have been doing for quite some time. If how modern comics are written/illustrated doesn't matter, it's pointless to claim they're fans of Kirby, one of the best artists who brought about what they claim to be inspired by.

2 more crossovers coming from Marvel this year

Marvel simply refuses to cease with the endless flood of company wide crossovers, and IGN in turn refuses to take any kind of objective view of how negatively this affects their now sorely lacking creativity:

Marvel Comics took to the Comics Pro retailer convention to shine a spotlight on two of its biggest 2026 storylines, Avengers: Armageddon and Queen in Black. Both of these crossover events will help to define the ongoing direction of the Marvel Universe in the latter half of 2026.

First up, Avengers: Armageddon is a new limited series from Captain America writer Chip Zdarsky and artists Frank Alpizar and Delio Diaz. Aramageddon is being compared to 2004's Avengers: Disassembled in terms of being a major watershed moment for the Avengers franchise that will completely transform Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Armageddon builds on the fallout of One World Under Doom and ongoing story threads in Captain America and Wolverine: Weapons of Armageddon. As the world continues to reel from Doctor Doom's brief reign, Red Hulk decides to claim the kingdom of Latveria for himself. That sparks a global conflict that draws in the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and Wolverine.

...Meanwhile, Queen in Black is an event spinning out of the pages of Al Ewing's Venom series. [...]

Yup, a crossover based on the writings of one of the wokest writers of the past decade. And two crossovers is simply 2 too many. That this is being compared to one of the worst productions of Brian Bendis - one that degraded the Scarlet Witch - is telling. No matter how this turns out, it's not worth wasting money upon, and its being developed as a crossover at this point is a most serious problem, because of how as time went by, crossovers served to destroy creative autonomy and stand-alone storytelling. This is one of the main reasons Marvel and DC will never recover from the damage crossovers have resulted in long term, so long as they continue to stick with them so casually.

Some history of an early Fantastic Four issue's story and of Lee/Kirby, that may have unfortunately been exploited for political propaganda

A writer for City News in Canberra, Australia, tells about the 51st issue of Fantastic Four, but there's suggestions this item was written as a stealth political statement. First, here's something he tells about team leader Mr. Fantastic:

The thing is, nestled among those treasures, and appearing in Australian newsagencies in early August 1966, at exactly the same time I first appeared too, was the little known number 51.

It’s worth a small fraction of the others and is a lame and ordinary 20-page story introducing a villain (the evil scientist Ricardo Jones) who was so uninteresting that he dies at the end of the story and was never seen again.

From the moment I first read it, it is my favourite comic book of all time and I read it about once a year, whenever my wife rereads Pride and Prejudice. It’s got fewer bonnets but more explosions so, you know, swings and roundabouts.

The story is simple. In every issue since number 1, Reed Richards, famed scientist and the leader of the FF, promises but fails to cure his best buddy Ben Grimm from being a monster made from rocks, known as The Thing.

I think a moment must be taken to point out that Mr. Fantastic didn't promise or practice curing the Thing in virtually every issue at the time, and certainly not within 2-3 decades of its debut, so why is this being exaggerated? That the writer seems to be putting down the story despite suggestions to the contrary is also galling. Here's more:

The story begins with Ben being so frustrated at never getting cured that he falls in with the Evil Scientist, who is jealous of Reed’s fame and fortune.

The scientist successfully turns Ben back into a normal man. Ben races to his girlfriend’s house to show off his normality and finally propose. Evil scientist is turned into the rock monster himself and impersonates The Thing, his plan being to destroy the hated rock-star scientist Reed Richards. [...]

Classic comics melodrama demands that when the evil bloke dies, Ben, about to propose to his girlfriend in his handsome human body, instantly turns back into the ugly Thing and fails to pop the question. Alicia, we know, doesn’t care what he looks like and loves him for him, but he never sees it.

When I was 11, life was often hard. I read that comic 20 times and felt such shame that I related more to the evil scientist than to Reed and Ben, our heroes.

I understood his loneliness and anger so much better than their easy success, belonging and having a best friend. I loved the redemption that could be gained from a single act.

Kindness to me is finding all those people who are behaving like the evil scientist, blaming everything for things they cannot grasp, and showing them all the love and respect we can, to open their own hearts.

People who have undergone unfair treatment, fear, and despair and seek recognition or refuge in our modern Australia – people who’ve been here for six years or 60,000 – there’s plenty here who need our love today more than ever.

But is there room for people who follow bad ideologies/religions and commit terrible crimes stemming from that? I get this strange feeling this was written as a form of apologia for Islam's entrance into Oz, and if it was meant for that purpose, that's very disturbing, considering all the damage that occurred in decades since till now. It's also disturbingly worrisome how the columnist implies he's sympathetic to people who commit crimes, and raises another troubling issue - there seem to be quite a few people like these who created a situation that got worse over the years where they pivot to loving the villains more, presumably because heroes are "boring"?!? That's practically what led to Hollywood glamorizing crime. Just what are people like these thinking? Is this how they thank Lee/Kirby for all their hard work? And just what "easy success" did Reed and Ben have? Considering the former failed several times to fully restore the latter to his human form for long, that's not exactly what I'd call success. Also, Reed had fallouts with wife Susan Storm, and while they did eventually mend fences, the whole notion everything was rosy in the FF's series up to the early 2000s is colossally exaggerated by these propagandists. Also, opening your heart to somebody who could follow an ideology built upon evil and oppression is naive and dangerous.

The above column, unfortunately, led to another one that appears to have been written even more noticeably for said apologia goals. First though:

How much of the resultant work was Lee and how much was Kirby, is a furiously debated topic in comic book circles. But what is clear is that it needed both of them to make it special.

Sadly, as the years passed, Lee would claim sole credit for the Fantastic Four, framing Kirby as simply an artist-for-hire. Kirby was deeply hurt and eventually left Marvel for DC. Fantastic Four continued under Lee and other artists, but the spark was gone.

And this is little more than another subtle putdown, when they make it sound like Kirby was the only artist who ever gave it energy. What about John Buscema, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Carlos Pacheco and goodness knows what other artists were involved up to the turn of the century? Anybody who's going to minimize the impact of FF the way both columnists have done is not writing these history pieces altruistically. I think it's a shame Lee and Kirby fell apart, but what the writer says in regards to the entertainment value going forward is still no excuse. And now, here's another clue this article was meant more for propaganda purposes:

Like Lennon and McCartney, the creative rift between Lee and Kirby was never fully resolved before their deaths. Which brings us back to Antonio’s characteristic question about kindness. How should two big egos work together?

While healthy to have, egos should never be left untempered. We know this since Renaissance times when the cloistered cathedrals of Europe interacted, often turbulently, with the polymathic Islamic world.

Gee, this sounds an awful lot like somebody's trying to make the Islamic world look far better in every way, at the expense of say, the Israeli world's innovations. Naturally, he never gets into what innovations or polymathism the Muslim world allegedly produced, when more honest research would make clear that's not literally the case. And is he implying the Christian church wrongly attacked the Islamic world, but not the other way around? Wow, this practically obscures persecution of Christians in Nigeria. The columnist should be ashamed. Towards the end of the City News column, here's what's additionally fishy:

I was 16 and saw a classifieds ad for “a box of Marvel comics”. Travelling by train to Strathfield, I walked several blocks to be met by a guy who explained that his uncle (a single man) had died and that they were selling his house contents.

What emerged were, not one, but several boxes of comics – a complete run of Fantastic Four from issue 22 to 116, plus other ’60s Marvel titles, all in excellent condition.

I can’t remember exactly what I paid – perhaps $100, which was a lot for a 16-year-old at the time – but I do remember the crazed, Joker-like, grin on my face as I shoved a fistful of $20 notes into the seller’s hand. It took two arduous trips to get them home and they’ve been with me ever since.

When I look at them now, I like to imagine that dead uncle smiling at me from above, pleased that his collection is still being loved and read, rather than sealed in a vault, awaiting a Sotheby’s sale. Some pretty strange teamwork, that’s for sure, but the world works better with strange teams.

Which is in no way a segue to my normal political milieu, to cheekily encourage a Greens/Liberals partnership. Mind you…

Ah, how fascinating. Sounds like this must be some stealth leftist propaganda as well, which only dampens the impact of the comics segment even more. And begs the question - was this article intended as comics nostalgia, or as political propaganda?

Some so-called historians sure know how to exploit the creations of people they may not like and insult everbody's intellect, all for the sake of advancing their ambiguous political goals. With the worst part being when they're not willing to be clear and state their exact beliefs. Such people, as a result, have no business commenting on comics history.

New mural in Stockton dedicated to the Fantastic Four

CBS News in Sacramento reports there's a mural that's been painted on a building in Stockton that's dedicated to the Marvel team that boosted Marvel's profile in the Silver Age:

As you're walking down Miracle Mile in Stockton, you may hear the sounds of colorful graffiti when all the sudden, you come across a striking mural.

"Behind us is the iconic Fantastic Four mural that is currently being worked on," co-organizer Orlando Molina said.

The Fantastic Four, the classic team from Marvel, is coming to life at another classic spot: Al's Comic Shop.

"It is inspired by the old comic book with The Thing on the front that claims that Stockton is the hometown of the Fantastic Four," Molina explained. "It's a very rare comic. Al's Comics, which is right here in the building, they have the comic and they had Stan Lee visit here and kind of do the stamp of approval."

Al's Comic Shop owner Al Greco can be seen in a picture right next to Marvel creator Stan Lee in 1986. That's when Stockton was officially recognized as the hometown and birthplace of these four hometown heroes.

This was a moment Greco pushed for and succeeded.

"It was a big day for Stockton. When Stan Lee came, he went to the city and they gave him a key. Then he came here and kind of signed all day for kids," Greco continued. "He was a nice guy. He was friendly. He had Spider-Man with him, jumping around."

Now isn't that great. Painting a mural on a local building is certainly more worthwhile at this point than reading the modern comics output from Marvel, and it's too bad the publisher couldn't have closed down in the early-to-mid-2000s, because that could've minimized the damage Joe Quesada brought about when he became EIC. So congratulations on this new mural being painted in the city. But it's a shame that Marvel's modern output dampens the impact that could've been had if they'd stopped publishing comics years earlier. If they had, Lee's legacy could've worked far better for this.

Artist Ben Harvey believes drawing covers for One World Under Doom was actually getting somewhere

The Chesnut Hill Local spoke with artist Ben Harvey, another artist who may do more work with covers than anything else, and he's one of those kind of sugarcoaters who won't admit he's working on an overrated crossover that does no favors for the previous stories of the past:

Ben Harvey was busy when Marvel reached out to him to create covers for the “One World Under Doom” comic books a little over a year ago. Working on multiple other projects at the time, the illustrator politely declined the opportunity. However, when Marvel insisted they could work around his schedule, Harvey relented. He is glad he did.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Harvey told the Local about the project. “It wound up being this huge event,” a multi-issue storyline with large ramifications for the comic book’s universe.

According to Harvey, “One World Under Doom” has gone to its third printing, an accomplishment that indicates just how popular the comic books are. With issue No. 9 — the final one in the 2025 event — releasing on Nov. 19, Harvey will be celebrating the release at Multiverse (8026 Germantown Ave.) in Chestnut Hill on Nov. 22 from 1-3 p.m. He will be signing comics, and the first 30 attendees to purchase the “One World Under Doom” comic also will receive a free Ben Harvey print.

Forget it, these crossover events have become so insulting, it would be meaningless to own a print that pretentious. Again, sales figures aren't given here, so one must reasonably wonder if the company's wasting money trying to make it look like everything's dandy. We're supposed to waste money on this shoddy item built on the concept of crossovers, which eventually ruined mainstream superhero comics? That kind of stuff has also made it nigh impossible to develop stand-alone stories that could be built on character drama, but apparently, none of that matters to an artist who's clearly only in the business for drawing coverscans.

In addition to Marvel, Harvey has worked with multiple prestigious publishing houses such as DC Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, and Valiant Entertainment. Outside of the world of comic books, he also has provided illustrations for Wizards of the Coast’s Magic the Gathering x Marvel crossover and partnered with Epic Games to produce loading screens for the popular video game Fortnite.

Harvey said these high points of his career so far have typically been unanticipated.

“I guess you could say I’m just happy to be here,” Harvey said. “I never realized going into this [industry] I would be able to reach such successes with my work.”

With “One World Under Doom,” the work has not just ended in success, but also provided Harvey with “solid job training.”

“Throughout this whole ride with Marvel, as you do more and more of these covers for them, it’s a learning process,” Harvey said. “Looking at that first cover, issue No. 1 all the way out to No. 9, I feel like I’ve grown a foot between all that.”

And once more, what are the sales figures for this shoddy crossover that had its share of political metaphors? Harvey's just as dismaying as various other artists who've sugarcoated these overrated events intended only for short-term headlines, and what's to learn from participating in a story with tasteless political motivations? That's hardly "solid" training, and if he's going to keep propping up the company despite all the bad directions they sunk into, that's one of the ways things have gone wrong with modern comicdom. No doubt, Harvey also takes a naive, fluff-coated view of DC and Valiant/Dynamite, even though they too have their share of ill-advised directions they won't take responsibility for. I've seen some of his art, which appears to be more of the computerized variety, though what's really sad is how he wastes his talents on unproductive crossovers like One World Under Doom. Something which'll only be forgotten by next year, and will have accomplished nothing lasting, contrary to what Harvey wants everyone to think.

The Conversation confirms One World Under Doom is a political metaphor of the worst kind

The Conversation ran an article about vampires in past comics stories, and also brought up how Marvel's recent directions with One World Under Doom are a leftist political metaphor, with Victor Von Doom a stand-in for a right-wing politician, and Donald Trump:

Vampires in American comic books retained this outsider status – invariably they were European immigrants like Morbius, who was born in Nafplio, Greece. In this way, comic vampires continue the literary vampire tradition of tapping into the fear of foreigners.

Doctor Doom: anti-immigrant populist politician

Comic book writer Ryan North explored a variation of this theme with Doctor Doom, the Marvel Comics’ super-villain, in issues of Fantastic Four released this year. Doom will be played by Robert Downey Jr. in the new film Avengers: Doomsday, due in 2026.

Doom rules Latveria, a fictional European country. He has recently declared himself Emperor of the World, supported by leaders of nations across the globe. Doom also uses Trump-style populism by propagating prejudice and fear-mongering against vampires. [...]

In One World Under Doom #3 (April, 2025) a group of superheroes and super-villains team up against their common enemy and find out how Doom has manipulated the world’s leaders. Using their own powers, they discover that he has not used magic, telepathy or mind control. He has merely negotiated with other leaders to become World Emperor. His populist policies have been embraced by the public.

This, along with the anti-vampire rhetoric and misinformation, creates a powerful allegory of the far-right ideologies that are currently being propagated by politicians across our own world. This current portrayal of Dr Doom as a proxy for public figures and politicians who use anti-immigrant rhetoric, harmful stereotypes and egregious misinformation, strongly suggests that they are the real monsters. Not the immigrants – or vampires for that matter.

And this is supposed to be a bizarre anti-Trump metaphor? What's also bizarre is how a science-fantasy concept is being turned around entirely for the sake of this mishmash, and we're supposed to believe all vampires are "misunderstood" along with the illegal immigrants they serve as metaphors for? Does that mean Mr. North believes the Islamic religion is also "misunderstood"? If that's his position, I hestitate to think what he thinks of Zohran Mamdani's election as New York City's mayor. The part about world leaders and the public supposedly accepting Doom's leadership as a metaphor for Trump is also absurd, because in reality, not every world politician or members of the public have done so.

Since the subject of One World Under Doom came up, Comic Book Club Live announced Scarlet Witch will be taking up the role of Dr. Strange, which was previously taken by Dr. Doom:

Written by Steve Orlando with art by Bernard Chang, the new series will find the one-time Scarlet Witch picking up the mantle left behind by Doctor Doom after the end of One World Under Doom. Leirix will provide main covers for the series, and Russell Dauterman has returned to the character for the new costume design, as well as covers depicting Wanda’s advisory council: Clea, Chthon, Wiccan, and Papa John (for the pizza thing).

[...] This marks the latest in a long line of Sorcerers Supreme in Marvel Comics. Back in 2009, Brother Voodoo took over in New Avengers #53, with Doctor Strange eventually taking back the mantle. In 2017’s Doctor Strange #381, Loki was made Sorcerer Supreme by the Vishanti. Then after Doctor Strange took it back again and then died, Clea took over, then gave it back to Doctor Strange, and then Doctor Doom took over, and now Wanda. Cool!

They're much too late, and this only turns Wanda into another character lacking agency, as the step only makes it look like her role as Scarlet Witch never mattered. Which once again only makes clear the writer wants everyone to care more about the costume than the character. But all this does is make a mockery out of past Dr. Strange tales that were never for the sake of 15 minute media attention, and the artwork for this new book starring Wanda looks so otherwise sexless, it's clear it won't amount to much even on that level. One could easily argue Dr. Strange has become the 2nd most misused superhero after Captain America, based on these publicity stunts for stories that aren't built on plausibility or merit.

Marvel's apologists predictably defend entombing the Silver Surfer for sake of a gender-swapped protagonist, and a political metaphor

Superhero Hype is defending and sugarcoating the death of the Silver Surfer for the sake of a female replacement, claiming it was all "fitting", and making matters worse is that this story has a leftist political metaphor for illegal immigration:

Marvel Comics has just killed off one of its most powerful heroes. In many ways, this is unsurprising, given a giveaway title. However, the hero in question, long associated with the Fantastic Four, did die a worthy death.

The death came in the closing pages of Death of the Silver Surfer #5 by Greg Pak, Sumit Kumar, and Tiago Palma. The series has centered around the growing madness of billionaire Dennis Harmon. A tech magnate, Harmon had used his fortune to outright purchase the American agency B.A.N., the Bureau of Alien Neutralization.

Under Harmon’s direction, B.A.N. began trying to forcibly remove all aliens from Earth rather than fighting hostile alien invaders. However, while hating all superhumans, Harmon held a special hostility for the alien hero Norrin Radd. This culminated in him attempting to open a cosmic rift that he hoped would disintegrate the Silver Surfer. However, the rift threatened to devour the whole Earth in the process as the Fantastic Four and Avengers watched helplessly.

What Fantastic Four character was killed off by Marvel?

With a title like “Death of the Silver Surfer,” it was a foregone conclusion that Norrin Radd would meet his end by the series’ close. The only question was just how he would die. Ultimately, Radd died by sacrificing himself to close the rift from the inside. However, with his final act, he bequeathed the Power Cosmic to B.A.N. Agent Kelly Koh.

And this is why they believe the "death" of Norrin, even if it'll eventually be reversed, is "worthy"? Wow, to think that a metaphor for people like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and problems with illegal immigration would actually and instantly make this whole shoddy direction justified. What they say is something only somebody who never cared for the comics creations would say.

Koh had shared Dennis Harmon’s hatred of aliens and superheroes. However, she lost all faith in the righteousness of her mission when faced with Radd’s endless compassion for his enemies and Harmon’s indifference to random people dying in the pursuit of his vendetta. In the end, she joined with Norrin Raad to save innocent lives. However, the series’ ending makes it clear she is not ready to join forces with the Fantastic Four or Earth’s other heroes.

There is a symmetry in Norrin Radd’s death. Once, he sacrificed all he was to save his home-world of Zenn-La. As the Silver Surfer, he defied Galactus to save Earth and became a cosmic hero. It seems fitting then that he should die defending the world that made him a hero. It is also worthy that his final act was changing a former enemy into a hero that would follow his example.

And I guess all the hostile aliens Radd fought in past tales, not the least being Galactus himself, weren't worth the effort? Sigh. This is such tommyrot, and the way they talk about aliens already on earth as though they themselves couldn't possibly have hostile ones among them is insulting to the intellect. One of the respondents in the comments section saw through this awful mess, and said:

It started off decent, but finished terribly. This mini series was definitely trying to get you to sympathize with those that violate our nation's sovereignty. What a horrible message, a new horrible character, and a horrible ending. I don't think this took place in the 616 universe, as the Surfer has been appearing in some other comic series. Hopefully this is the last we see of this again or the new character that nobody wants.

Well it's not that nobody wants the character, but that nobody wants her being forced into roles where she doesn't stand on her own. That's the problem with how this newest character with an alliterative name was "created"; she doesn't stand on her own as a result. Another said:

Ah. Ok. So ... the villains are basically caricatures of ICE and Trump.

Brilliant.

We need more Leftist propagandizing in the comics. There isn't nearly enough.

What it proves is that, under C.B. Cebulski, the far-left rhetoric that was present when Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso were Marvel's editors never went away. It's the same situation at DC. Nor do they discourage their writers and artists from engaging in this kind of mishmash. The same people who say AI's a problem have no interest in preventing heavy-handed political metaphors from being shoved into their comics, and if AI came up with a far-left political tale, they quite likely wouldn't have a problem with that either, so long as it followed their specific political narratives. Worst, as Superhero Hype's writer makes clear, he won't ask them to tone down the politics either, and that's exactly why these embarrassments will keep going, including the "sacrificial lamb" mentality that's now resulted in a story where the Silver Surfer's sent into the afterlife for the sake of a poorly written metaphor.

Marvel replaces Silver Surfer with a woman, all to match what the FF movie featured

Cosmic Book News comments on Marvel's latest laughable attempt to change their specific comics for the sake of reflecting movies that have long fallen out of favor with the audience, here being the now unsuccessful Fantastic Four film starring leftist actor Pedro Pascal, who sullied the proceedings with his relentless political drivel:

Just when I’m about ready to give Marvel Comics another shot (Imperial and related titles are decent), the woke weirdos running the company go and remind me why I stopped reading in the first place, as they churn out more garbage that turns me off completely.

I used to help Marvel Comics promote Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy about 15 years ago (great comics that have never been the same). That all changed when Disney bought Marvel.

Out went all our favorites, and in came the “All-New” all woke Marvel, which killed the brand. It’s the same crap that Kevin Feige adapted post-Endgame that has been a complete disaster for the MCU. All those dummies hate comics. It shows.

Now to further sync up Feige’s crappy MCU with the crappy Marvel Comics – to fit with The Fantastic Four: First Steps movie that nobody watched – Marvel Comics is killing off the Silver Surfer, replacing Norrin Radd with the “All-New” female Silver Surfer. Sure to be a big hit, just like the movie. All those FF movies fans are going to run to their LCS to buy this, right? Guess what? They don’t even know what a LCS is.

I haven’t read any of the issues – don’t plan on it – but the first issue was released in June. Next month sees the fifth issue released, maybe the last, which apparently introduces the new female Silver Surfer. Yeah, she looks like a dude.

[...] The character has butch short hair. Looks like cosmic powers in the arms, hands, and neck. The character art actually shows boobs, but hey! Check out the official cover! No boobs! They’re covered.

It’s so unbelievable I can’t help but laugh.

Yet it really isn't funny how the artists are dumbing down the new character's femininity so badly, and making her look alarmingly unappealing in spite of what they say. I must take issue, however, with the notion Marvel was doing well up until 15 years ago, because several years before that, Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas took over, and Spider-Man was just one of the biggest victims of their early wokefests, as was Mary Jane Watson. Doesn't that count as something awful that happened during their management? And let's not forget Avengers: Disassembled. Let's also not forget DC went downhill around the same time either.

Marvel's attempts to mimic certain elements from movies adapted from their comics isn't new. A quarter century ago, when the X-Men movie came out, they changed the team's costumes to black leather-style outfits, and worse was when Grant Morrison was assigned to write "New" X-Men, while a few others bad writers like Chuck Austen were assigned to Uncanny. I think even the Spider-Man comics later began depicting Peter Parker as though he had organic web shooting like the films, and DC too has their share of pointless attempts to mimic movie elements at the expense of talented writing and art. None of these changes led to any long range success or serious increase in moviegoers reading the comics. So why do they think this'll be any different? In the end, it's just a sad excuse they're using for getting rid of Norrin Radd, probably in their efforts to drag the Marvel franchise down ever further, and in this case, they're not even trying to offer a decently written replacement at all.

College writer thinks comics movies feel like comics again

A writer at The Vidette of Illinois State University claims live action comics movies feel like comics again, and while the article's little better than most of these college publications, it does have some eyebrow raising parts:

Other films deserve to be part of that discussion, such as “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Captain America: Civil War.” While many of these films are of high quality, many don’t feel the same as reading a comic book. That probably sounds confusing at first glance, but let me explain.

Yes, these films have superheroes and feature events that are very unrealistic, but they do not make me feel immersed in the world very much. They just feel like regular movies that are carried by sheer star power, with the names of popular characters attached to them. They feel like they are just playing it safe for the general audience.

Don’t get me wrong, the general audience does matter because they contribute the most to the box office success of these movies. However, I want studios to allow directors to take creative liberties and make something as wacky or wild as the comics we love to read.

After all, these films are adapting stories where people who can fly are battling aliens, not exactly the most realistic. As a result, why would you not want to go bonkers with those types of ideas?

Well isn't that a surprise. Somebody admits live action's not the same as illustration and animation, and even I got that feeling at times watching what I did in the past, including the late Christopher Reeve's Superman films (though let me note that only the first 2 are good, and the other 2, along with the 1984 Supergirl film, were sadly botched). But perhaps more surprising is that the writer actually wants creative liberties taken with the movies. Depending how you view that part of the whole discussion, creative freedom, to say nothing of liberties, was all but taken away in the past several years for the sake of PC narratives. For Marvel, this mainly began with the Captain Marvel movie, which was based almost entirely on how Marvel mandated Carol Danvers be written since 2012, and was made even worse by forcing Islamic propaganda into a series starring a contrived successor to the role of Ms. Marvel. It's amazing any attempts to adapt such concepts to live action have largely been failures so far, and even one of the video games featuring the Muslim Ms. Marvel didn't fare so well. That shows the audience is not interested in lecture-laced propaganda.

It's also surprising the writer's okay with unrealistic ingredients, which should make clear that, if it's okay for Japan to do surreal stuff, then it's okay for even Marvel to do the same, and indeed, despite much of the absurd, lecturing propaganda of recent, they did in past decades. All that matters is whether it actually does a disfavor to certain issues and events in real life.

But with that said, here's where the article begins to turn into a farce:

The most recent examples of this are James Gunn’s “Superman” and Matt Shakman’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”

Watching both of these films felt so fresh as comic books were unraveling on screen in terms of action, dialogue and even how colorful the world was. A common critique that I have seen is that these films move quickly in terms of progressing the story.

While that is true, I do enjoy that these films embraced how wacky they inherently are. That element makes them stand out amongst the many comic book films that have been releasing lately.

Well sorry to say, but if the Superman movie for starters was supposed to be surreal, it ruined everything with its appalling political metaphor for real life, and the FF movie ruined everything with both the actor playing Mr. Fantastic and the sex-swap for the Silver Surfer, changed from Norrin Radd to Shalla-Bal. On the latter, let's be clear. If Shalla-Bal matters, it's entirely possible to write up a prominent role for her in a film like this without doing it at Norrin Radd's expense. Instead, the filmmakers discarded Stan Lee's actual creation for the sake of PC pandering that hasn't improved the fortunes of these latest live action adaptations.

Science-fantasy can certainly be a great way to explore all sorts of wacky ideas, but when you let real life seep in without taking an informed and rational approach, everything's ruined. If the studios making these films still intend to go ahead with sequels to Superman, for example, despite the mediocre box office results, that will be almost amusing, in a way, because it shows they don't want to admit they made mistakes. But it certainly won't guarantee what's to come will be any better than before from an artistic perspective.

Yes, moviegoers are tired of superhero fare, but mainly because of the divisive PC

Statista wrote another superficial look at the collapse of superhero film fare that refuses to address whether the films in question could be woke:

According to The Numbers, adaptations of comic books and graphic novels accounted for just 15.6 and 3.2 percent of ticket sales at the North American box office in 2023 and 2024, down from 29.9 and 31.0 percent in 2021 and 2022, respectively. While some argue that this is due to “superhero fatigue” after a decade-long overabundance of DC and Marvel movies, others say it’s just “mediocre movie fatigue”, suggesting that many of the latest installments of popular comic book franchises have been lazy cash grabs.

This year’s box office performance of major comic book adaptations such as “Superman” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” would suggest that audiences are still open to enjoying a good superhero blockbuster. Both movies received generally positive reviews and are among the highest-grossing films of the year so far.

On the surface, they may seem as high grossing as can get, but the problem is that today, when film and marketing budgets are so staggeringly expensive, it's not always enough to recoup the heavy costs. And again, nobody in the mainstream's willing to discuss in depth whether wokery and even performers who make divisive political statements have responsibility for whatever financial damage the film's suffer. Has anybody discussed whether they believe the sex-swap for the Silver Surfer plausible enough for the Fantastic Four film or not? Or whether the political statements of its star, Pedro Pascal, cost First Steps heavily? Or whether the Superman movie suffered similar problems in-film? If not, then one can't be surprised it all went south quickly.

Sure, the mediocrity itself was a damaging factor, but that's based on the wokeness that overtook much of moviedom over the past decade, and plenty of movies fumbled as a result. Yet the news site won't acknowlege any of that either, so they can't be surprised if there'll be quite a few more films coming up soon that suffer similar problems.

Even in Britain, there's specialty auctions

The BBC reports there's an auctioneering company that's selling tons of old pamphlets on the speculator market, just like in the USA:

Hundreds of 1960s comic books are set to be auctioned later this month, with an estimated total value of up to £7,000.

The line-up is made up mostly of Marvel comics and is due to go under the hammer in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on 29 September.

Superheroes featured include Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, X-Men, the Avengers, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Doctor Strange, Daredevil and Thor.

There are more than 50 lots - with highlights including the Fantastic Four #48, #49 and #50, which feature the first appearances of the Silver Surfer and Galactus, valued at between £400 and £600.

And they're going to be sold to the highest bidder and locked away in vaults till they're sold round and round again, huh? Unfortunately, even in the UK, that's likely to end up being the case, when here, they have a chance to donate them to a local arts museum instead, and everyone can see these famous old treasures of the 20th century for themselves. This continues to do a disfavor for Stan Lee's resume, and it's tiring decades ago how auctions keep making headlines like these, when the buyers have no interest in purchasing these so they can build up a history display for museums.

The blockbuster blunder

Flickering Myth asked what could've gone wrong with recent live action film adaptations that didn't perform as expected, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they hint they're resorting to the excuse that Coronavirus is still the reason:

Hollywood has spent the past half a decade in a post-COVID era, facing an exacerbation of a problem that was already well in motion. Fewer people, particularly younger generations, are buying cinema tickets. The once Golden Goose, known as the comic book movie, seemed like an unshakable money spinner. Even a C-tier comic like Guardians of the Galaxy, that most Joe Publicans had never heard of before the film adaptation, could make over three-quarters of a billion dollars.

In a post-Avengers: Endgame landscape, with furious oversaturation of product, it seemed like audiences were burned out. Was it simply quantity (never-ending, relentless, Homer Simpson eating donuts in hell) quantity? Maybe. Was it the generally massive dip in quality, with many of the films feeling half-heartedly churned out and feeling decidedly like an executive board meeting of barely considered ideas chucked at the screen? Very possibly, but more likely a combination of both factors alongside something more.

Well first, if they're suggesting Coronavirus had anything to do with it, the answer is anything but that. The answer is increasingly poor quality, and divisive political ideologies. On which note, they acknowledge one of the latest films to do so, Superman's newest adaptation, underperformed, and Fantastic Four easily worse:

Superman was a whole different beast, with one of the A-list, top-tier, grand pantheon characters with a long and rich history in comics, TV shows (let’s not mention Dean Cain’s transition from Superman to Ice-man), movies and more. The iconic blue suit, red cape and perfectly coiffed hair is an image that travels the world over, as well as Batman, arguably better. Yet box office expectations felt tempered from the beginning, with the internet descending into a bitter trade of barbs between hopeful new fans, jaded old Reeve fans and (worse) Snyder-bots. They’re nothing if not loyal to his vision and Henry Cavill’s portrayal.

Finally, we had the Fantastic Four, of high standing in pop culture and probably at the lower end of A-tier comic book characters as far as public recognition. In some regards that one had the added luxury of having only dreadful film adaptations to follow. As far as critical response and fan appreciation, the only way was up. [...]

Superman had far bigger boots (and a cape) to fill, though. A much bigger legacy character and officially the DC Universe relaunch under head honcho, James Gunn (who also directed the film). Reviews, as I said, are very good. Fans out the door, who hadn’t already made their mind up before the first set picture, were also largely satisfied. Joy of joys, it opened big and it needed to because the film, all in, cost a fortune (as these things generally do). Everything was right…

So what went wrong? It’s the death knell these days, and it’s that killer drop off. Very rarely, especially at the big blockbuster level now, do films hold their levels. Now, Sinners was deemed a big success, in part thanks to its more moderate budget but largely because it had impressively low drop-offs in those opening weeks. Superman fell hard. Mere weeks later, Fantastic Four: First Steps came out, and Clark and co fell off the proverbial cliff.

Fantastic Four also opened fairly impressively, above rather downbeat early predictions, but again, the drop-offs in week two, three, beyond, were killer. It also seemed to suffer from a real turnaround in public opinion for Pedro Pascal, suddenly deemed to be in too much, to be too odd in media circuits, but worst off (apparently) for expressing left-leaning opinions. Even ones of inclusivity and kindness that mirror the general messages most comic books and characters have promoted for nearly a century. Go figure.

I'm amazed this news source admits these movies have turned out to be financial failures in the long run. But no surprise any mention of ideology is muted, and this could include the gender-swapping of the Silver Surfer in the FF movie, something that may have been all but overlooked. The acknowledgement of Pascal's divisive statements is as close as it gets to giving some clues why these 2 films were failures, along with the Thunderbolts movie (why there's an asterisk in the title is puzzling). If only they'd show the courage to argue whether they think the ideologies Pascal for one was upholding are divisive, but that's bound to take a long, long time, if it's ever debated at all.

Maybe it would do some good to argue for now why moving back to simpler arthouse movies would be a better idea. Maybe even why movies could use a return to more emphasis on "action hero" films. So far, however, nobody seems to be considering that.