How is Elektra suddenly "scarier" than Punisher and Wolverine?

According to this brief on Softonic about new Daredevil issues, Elektra takes out a whole villainous mob without killing them:

In Daredevil #6 and #7, Stephanie Phillips and Lee Garbett fold Elektra into this new Marvel run by making one thing immediately clear: she’s dangerous in a way that has nothing to do with piling up the highest body count. “Of Moles & Owls” doesn’t sell her as deadlier than the Punisher or Wolverine in the usual numbers game. What’s unnerving about her is something else. She’s so exact, so disciplined, so tactical that she cuts through Mister Negative’s Inner Demons and leaves every last one of them alive. That’s the real point. Elektra decides exactly how much damage gets done, and she never loses control of it.

The issues also have her outplaying multiple factions as she works to secure Wilson Fisk’s ledger during a Hell’s Kitchen war that pulls in Silvermane, Tombstone, Hammerhead’s goons, and the Inner Demons. It makes the city feel like a live-fire chessboard, with Elektra still thinking several moves ahead of everyone else on it. If you’ve been following the noir-leaning, street-level direction Daredevil has taken since Stephanie Phillips and Lee Garbett launched their run in March 2026, these issues are easy to recommend. Even if Elektra’s return reads more like a sharp cameo than a full-blown comeback, issue #8 is already lining up Mister Fear, a drug threat at Empire State University (E.S.U.), and more questions tied to Wilson Fisk’s ledger.

Unfortunately, that doesn't make the story immediately entertaining. There's plenty of other superheroines who could've been written doing the same thing too, like Wonder Woman, Jesse Quick, Spider-Woman, Donna Troy, Invisible Girl, Psylocke, and Kitty Pryde. All that matters is whether it's written well, and at Marvel today, it's much too late for that. Plus, what if it turns out the artwork in this DD run is as terrible as some of the past decade's offerings?

This brief also ignores that there were times when the Punisher refrained from killing in order to appease Spider-Man, and it's not like Wolverine was depicted killing in all instances either. So why does Softonic think this news is going to automatically impress anybody, especially when the article doesn't seem written on merit?

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 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.

An artist from North Carolina who may respect what the Punisher was created for

Queen City News spoke with artist David Vandyke, who created a comic titled Mercer. What's interesting for starters is that:

In an era of digital art, he works by hand.

“I like the tactility of it, like I like feeling the paper,” Van Dyke said.

He's got a great idea there. While it's always possible to turn out good art with computers, old-fashioned techniques still matter, and can still result in something to appreciate.

He draws a comic book series called Mercer, which he co-created with Jason Seibel.

“It’s basically if the Punisher was a demon hunter type thing,” he says.

Whatever one thinks of the premise of Mercer, what Vandyke says here does seem to indicate he has respect for what the Punisher was created for, certainly far more than some of the leftists who messed up Frank Castle since the turn of the century, not the least being the late Gerry Conway himself.

Vandyke had a very terrible misfortune in the past 2 decades that influenced his decision to become an artist:

He has come far from the chilling conversation he had 21 years ago.

“The doctor literally came into the room and said, ‘Your life as you know it is over,’” he remembers vividly.

Vandyke broke his back in 2005 while working as a mechanic in Gastonia.

“I heard a pop, and something moved out of the corner of my eye, and I just turned and caught it,” he said of a devastating shop accident. “It was like a 400-pound transmission—and I caught it at a dead stop—and it annihilated the bottom two discs in my back.”

That crushed his dream of a drumming career.

At the same time, he was almost in denial.

“This is my identity; this is everything I’m supposed to be. Like, what do you mean [doctor]?” said Vandyke.

But one night, he picked up a pencil and reinvented himself.

“Like before music, what did you want to be?” he asked himself.

The answer is a comic book artist.

Instead of dwelling on depression and anger, he practiced drawing as his body healed.

“You determine your story,” he says.

I'm terribly sorry he suffered back injuries, and hope he's recovered as best as possible since. Taking up an artist's career is certainly a great way to make a comeback, and I wish him well in his new career.

What the Comics Journal says about Gerry Conway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 more examples of news propagandists exploiting Gerry Conway's rejection of the Punisher for their own leftist agendas

It's been a week or so since veteran comics and screen writer Gerry Conway passed away, and here's 2 more examples of leftists exploiting his rejection of his own creation, Frank Castle, for the sake of tearing down on crimefighting as a vigilante, Spider-Man's being built on this theme notwithstanding. First, there's Polygon:

Over the years, the character has been fleshed out by dozens of creators, multiple films, and even a popular Netflix TV series. Details and timelines have changed, but, through it all, Frank Castle has remained solidly in the realm of antihero. With hundreds of deaths on his conscience from his time as a shell-shocked vigilante, he claims to only kill those that "deserve it." Yet, considering the pretty clear PTSD he's suffering dating back to his first appearance, let's just say that he might not be of sound mind to make those choices.

Conway himself was actively outspoken for years around the misappropriation of the Punisher's logo by deluded militants vowing to take justice into their own hands. Both on his personal social media and through various interviews, he maintained that a violent police force would have no common ground whatsoever with Frank Castle. Deluded though he may be, Castle believes himself to be a complicated necessity in a world of bright optimism. In Conway's words, “He thinks he's doing right, but we know he's doing wrong.”

All this coming from possibly the same kind of people who do virtually nothing to make the neighborhood/city safer. What exactly is so literally wrong with terminating murderers and rapists? This kind of thinking is practically what led to the demise of Jason Todd in Batman back in 1988, even though it was never clearly confirmed he'd actually thrown a rapist off the roof in a storyline from several issues prior. Simultaneously, it's bizarre and hypocritical how the same propagandists never take issue with how Wolverine's been depicted killing plenty of similar villains in past comics, and nobody utters a word about that, if at all. Even Lobo at DC never seems to undergo this kind of scrutiny.

And then, interesting how they bring up optimism; the same people who go out of their way to defend Batman's angle at all costs, along with horror movie franchises and such like Aliens, and never had any issues with DC going miles out of their way to make their universe dark as possible in the worst ways over 2 decades ago. Also, what's so inherently optimistic in a universe where the Hulk and Daredevil reside and received such an emphasis? Or the X-Men and Dr. Strange? Somehow, it doesn't sound like an accident they brought up optimism. But, why do they think that bizarre exaggeration is actually going to make a great shield for their positions, built as they are on lapses in logic?

Next, there's Popverse, who begin with the following:

In 2022, Gerry Conway recounted meeting someone with "the Blue Lives Punisher logo — you know, the blue stripe variation on it" tattooed on their arm. "And then above it," he said, "They had tattooed 'I don’t read,' and then below it, 'Punisher comics.' And I thought, yep."

Was Conway telling the truth? Or a half-truth? Since he's gone, there's no way to ascertain it now, but if he was taking things out of context or lying about the tattoo saying "I don't read Punisher comics", that was very appalling, because it suggests he was trying to make out "right-wingers" to be inherently stupid and uneducated.

Conway's April 2026 passing has left a giant hole in the comic book community, and in looking back at his legacy, it's hard not to see his relationship with Frank Castle - who he co-created with John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru in 1974 - as less than triumphant. For his entire life, Conway held that the Punisher was not created to be emulated, and that the adoption of his logo by members of the military, police, and overarching alt-right movement signaled both a deep misunderstanding of the character and a moral failing of those institutions.

I'm not here to argue that he got any of that wrong. Even if he wasn't the guy who, you know, helped created the goddamn character, I'd take a look at today's headlines and be pretty convinced of his position. But what I am here to tell you is this - that as we remember Gerry, we should not only recall his critiques of the deeply confused wannabes that wear the Punisher's symbol - we should remember the time Gerry fought back.

That moment was in part the subject of a 2022 episode of the 99% Invisible podcast, which is where I got the opening quote to this article. The show, which is a psychological deep-dive into the ways design affects our lives and culture, decided to dedicate an entire episode to the Punisher skull logo, its usages by conservative groups, and of course, the comic book history that led Conway & Co to creating it.

To truncate the (very listenable) episode, Conway speaks about making the Vietnam War an important part of Frank's past, which he calls the "fundamental social crime that we [his generation] felt that the government was perpetuating," and the bitter irony that now members of the government are putting the Punisher skull on their squad cars and humvees. And after years of witnessing them do so, Conway found a perfect opportunity to counter their misusage, and in doing so, support a movement that those tough-guy claimants couldn't stand:

Black Lives Matter.

In 2020, as the nation saw a tide of protests inspired by the murder of George Floyd, Gerry took a stand in a way that only a comics legend could. That was the "BLM Skulls for Justice campaign," in which the seminal Marvel and DC writer tried to reclaim the logo "potentially as a symbol for justice rather than for oppression. That, while The Punisher was a very problematic hero, he was trying to fight on the side of right."

The BLM Skulls for Justice campaign gave artists of color - Demonte Price, Don Nguyen, Wess Hancock, and Sam Ines, to be specific - the opportunity to rework the skull logo into a symbol that stood against the alt-right, not bolstered it. By the end of the campaign, a number of redesigned skulls adorned merch like t-shirts and hats, and perhaps most importantly, raised $75K for the LA chapter of BLM. Now let me ask you this, reader - does that mean that Conway was successful?

No, or at least not ideologically. Also note how they obscure Floyd's criminal record, in one of the saddest cliches of modern times, which is to totally distort facts for the sake of political agendas. Oddly enough, the columnist does admit it's not like Conway's "campaign" was truly successful:

That's up to the individuals who come across this article to decide, and for my part, I think the answer is somewhere in the vicinity of: "not for long." The 'I don't read Punisher comics' guy is still doing his thing, most likely, and the logo is still being used in some outrageously toxic places (for example, as a personal motif of the current FBI drinker - sorry, director). But here's why I say this story matters. When Gerry Conway had the opportunity to stay silent about an important issue, he didn't. Whether or not the proverbial needle was able to move regarding the Punisher skull, he pushed. Listen to Gerry put the idea into his own words as he wrapped up that podcast interview.

"I’ve heard one or two people on Twitter," Gerry told his interviewers, "Saying that there’s literally no way that the Punisher logo can ever be anything except a symbol of oppression. I think that’s just, you know, no, come on. But even if that were the case, sticking your finger in the eye of the bad guys is always a good deal. And putting out sweatshirts that had the BLM logo with The Punisher logo is a, you know, it’s a pretty hefty 'F- you' to people who deserve to have an 'F- you.'"

Maybe the Punisher's skull being a symbol of something decent, or at least, a symbol not to be idolized, is a battle we've lost. Symbols can go that way. But as one of the greatest Marvel Comics creators seems to indicate here, maybe we can trade that skull for a middle finger, and maybe do just as well without it.

Well that has to be one of the most vile suggestions a would-be "journalist" could possibly make. And we wonder how good manners have deteriorated for many years, as less seem to be teaching any valid etiquette today. And somebody who makes a fuss over what he claims are "important issues", yet has none when it comes to the horrors illegal immigration into the USA has resulted in, has no business claiming moral superiority, let alone reading any comics himself. Come to think of it, what if he doesn't read Punisher comics either? Don't be surprised if quite a few leftists stay away from even the modern Punisher comics being turned out by Marvel, and from what I can tell, there's probably less at this point than before anyway. Besides, the real Frank Castle's tales pretty much ended when his last solo book did in 1997. Most annoying, IIRC, is that prior to the Punisher getting his own solo books, writers like Frank Miller and Bill Mantlo expressed dislike for the character in the very pages of the comics they wrote, all without considering it's not Frank's fault for the personality components he was built upon. Remarkably, writers like Steven Grant, Mike Baron, Carl Potts and Chuck Dixon showed more respect when said solos were launched, and the stories they wrote that I read portrayed Frank as anything but an insane man who didn't make distinctions between worser and lesser evils. What Mantlo did should honestly be expunged from continuity altogether, and now that I think of it, he was one of the earliest writers who put questionable politics into some, if not all, of his writings.

I guess if there's something really sad about Conway's passing, it's what he left behind - a political agenda he did not need to build up. Like various other comics writers today, he set a poor example by going out of his way to insult entire segments of fandom who did appreciate the subsequent stories starring the Punisher, which Conway didn't even write himself. So, did he believe successive writers who took even the most perceptive approach to how Frank could be characterized were wrong? Sadly, we'll never know now, and there's no telling how much longer Marvel's going to keep trampling on Frank Castle as a fictional character for the sake of woke brownie points.

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.

The Punisher's symbol continues to be something the left can't stand

A writer at the leftist Bleeding Cool site spoke about FBI director Kash Patel's new use of the Punisher symbol as part of a project with military medallions. And along the way, the writer made sure to indicate he's sadly approaching all this from a left-wing perspective:

As those of you who frequent Bleeding Cool know, Rich Johnston has been covering for quite some time the continued controversy over the use of the symbol used by the Marvel Comics character The Punisher, aka Frank Castle: the huge, white skull with elongated teeth. Specifically, how it continues to be used as a"call to arms" by law enforcement units, military groups, and right-leaning organizations across the country. We saw examples of it on display in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the demands for police reform and social justice, as well as during protests and counter-protests in Detroit and Charlottesville.

Umm, I can't tell clearly if virtually everybody right-wing made use of the logo for the sake of reactions to these far-left movements that did more harm than good to the USA and elsewhere. Also notice how Bleeding Cool's writer remains predictably superficial on what the BLM movement was actually like, and was even accused of acts similar to embezzlement. That's not getting anywhere.

It didn't matter that Gerry Conway, the character's creator, was vehemently against the symbol being used by these groups. The issue was even addressed in the comics in 2019 when Frank put two fawning, admiring police officers in their place: "We're not the same; you took an oath to uphold the law, you help people. I gave all that up a long time ago." Frank was looking to drive home the irony that those who have sworn to serve and protect would get inspiration from someone whose very existence goes against the laws they supposedly swore to uphold.

Conway, interestingly enough, seems to have vanished from social media in the past several months; his X page hasn't been updated since last April, with a post he wrote against Robert F. Kennedy being the last so far. And why does the writer say the non-existent Castle was seeking to drive home irony? It's the assigned writer who was. Perhaps the biggest irony of all is when yet another phony expert talks about a fictional character like he's a real person. All that aside, most interesting how the subject of the criminals themselves whom Frank was portrayed meting out justice against is largely obscured in the citation of the 2019 story; that too is very damaging and misinformative, as the dialect quoted from the story makes it sound like Frank's literally a criminal himself.

In his autobiography, American Sniper, Chris Kyle discussed the meaning behind marking his equipment with the symbol during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. "We all thought what the Punisher did was cool: He righted wrongs. He killed bad guys. He made wrongdoers fear him. That's what we were all about," Kyle wrote. The symbol would be seen more on the military side, from Middle East encampments to frontline fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would also find its way into the military culture back here in the United States, corrupted even further by those who use it as a way of pushing radical, right-wing conspiracy thinking.

In 2021, Jon Bernthal, who portrayed Frank Castle/Punisher in Netflix's live-action Marvel universe, found himself in the middle of controversy over the very matter. The actor posted an image of himself by the signage for the Southwestern District Action Team in Baltimore, Maryland, a police unit (which you can check out below).

Look how they blatantly refer to conservatism as nothing more than conspiratorial thinking. And who knows how much damage this all did to the TV show, no matter how left-wing anybody working on it could be; one of the reasons it's better not to bother about a Netflix-broadcast program, since it could be liberal propaganda regardless.

For their part, Marvel Comics would address the matter by changing the symbol, debuting it in Punisher #1 in March 2022 (from writer Jason Aaron and artists Jesus Saiz & Paul Azaceta) as Frank became the leader of the Hand. From there, Frank would end up in Weirdworld, find himself briefly replaced by a new Punisher with a new skull logo, and even be the subject of a Vietnam-era story from Garth Ennis. In September 2025, Marvel Comics would officially bring back Frank Castle and the skull logo in Punisher: Red Band #1 (from writer Benjamin Percy, artist Julius Ohta, and cover artist Marco Checchetto). The move would come six months after the premiere of Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil) and Vincent D'Onofrio (Wilson Fisk/Kingpin)-starring Daredevil: Born Again, which saw Bernthal return as Frank – and also sporting the skull logo.

Interesting a writer as pretentious as Ennis would be the one to bring up the topic of Vietnam (and it won't be shocking if its as negative as possible), considering how rarely the subject is spoken about today, and movies/TV shows about Vietnam have almost entirely vanished since the mid-90s.

Now, it seems that FBI Director Kash Patel has reignited the controversy, utilizing the skull logo as the basis for a recent "challenge coin" he created. The medallions are created to signify a specific military unit or command, used to prove membership and passed along as a sign of respect or gratitude. Patel's "coin" features a skull with spiders for eyes and guns for the teeth, with "KH" at the top (with an "S" set between them) on the front. On the back, there's the FBI seal, the words, "Presented by the Director of the FBI Kash Patel," an image of an old Tommy gun from "The Untouchables" era, Patel's signature, and a blue "9." The medallions have already seen pushback on social media, with many arguing that Patel's FBI represents pretty much everything that Frank fights against. You can check out the "challenge coin" for yourselves online.

Not hard to figure out Bleeding Cool's writers are against this as well - and they even have the gall to make it sound like Frank Castle is a leftist despite everything - though one must naturally continue to wonder why Wolverine, another character who's slain dangerous criminals as well, keeps getting a free pass while the Punisher doesn't. After all, there have been times when Wolvie would operate outside the law, have run-ins with crooked law enforcement officials over the years, and none of the same people who're obsessed with hating the Punisher as a vigilante figure have any of the same qualms about Logan and his retractable claws as they do with a guy who's also made use of blades in some stories as much as guns. Obviously, there's also other characters even at DC who could qualify for the same kind of obsessive issue-making the anti-Punisher crowd keeps shoving, but again, only Frank seems to get the brunt of negativity. Now, that same negativity's led to leftists attacking the currently GOP-led FBI because Patel wants to issue skull-shaped medallions...and seriously, just because the skulls have big teeth, that proves indefinitely they were inspired by the Punisher's symbol? I think not.

From what I can tell, this is another case of leftists seeking excuses to invalidate any skull whose teeth they believe are literally inspired by the Punisher's symbol, and it makes no difference whether the design is coincidental or accidental, they just don't want to see it anywhere. Well maybe that's it's time for Bleeding Cool, and other such leftist sites, to stop paying so much attention to anything they believe is Punisher related. Maybe they should argue it's time for Marvel to simply cease turning out Punisher stories, or better yet, close down altogether. But they can't bring themselves to do that, because it would lead to closure of other outlets through which to channel their leftist propaganda.

As far as I'm concerned, Patel should remain firm on his new medallion designs, and not let petty complaints get the better of everything. It's definitely time though that all the Marvel universe be retired, and that's decidedly what Marvel lovers should really be calling for.

New Marvel Swimsuit special's interior (and insufficient) pages, unsurprisingly, feature very dull artwork

Bounding Into Comics says the interior pages of the new Marvel Swimsuit special for 2025, most unsurprisingly, suffer from sexless art, proving PC wokeness is still a severe problem to a certain extent at Marvel, and even the cover variants by J. Scott Campbell obviously don't provide enough alleviation:

In a disappointing but ultimately unsurprising result, Marvel Comics has fumbled its latest Marvel Swimsuit Special by filling its pages not with titillating beachwear artwork of various Marvel superheroes, but instead what is perhaps the most aggressively sexless collection of ‘pin-ups’ ever put to paper.

The first such special in 30 years, the newly-released Marvel Swimsuit Special: Friends, Foes & Rivals one-shot was touted by its eponymous publisher as “continuing the tradition” of their early 90s swimsuit specials, which ran across the early 90s and were known for presenting readers with page after page of gratuitous Marvel-themed cheesecake, all wrapped in a very loose but fun narrative that served solely to give a passing excuse as to why the featured heroes and villains were hitting the beach instead of each other.

And while the narrative of the latest special, as presented by writers Tim Seeley and Tony Fleecs with art from Nick Bradshaw and Rachelle Rosenberg, is admittedly enjoyable, the same cannot be said for a vast majority of its collected pin-ups.

Now, to be clear, this appraisal is not based on an vague idea of some generally accepted ‘sexiness threshold’. After all, as the old adage goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Nor is it rooted in a desire for said pin-ups to be more explicit, as Marvel Comics is still an all-ages publisher and thus it is understood that the content must err on the side of caution when it comes to such risqué materials.

Rather, it stems from the fact that while said pin-ups are all expertly illustrated, most of them are not only less enticing than any of the issue’s covers, but completely devoid of any energy, sexual or otherwise – which is the absolute last thing anyone wants from a swimsuit special.

On the subject of "all ages", I'm sorry, but this misses how, since the turn of the century, Marvel's become far less family friendly than before, if you take any jarringly violent content that's turned up since as an example. Why, even before that, were Daredevil and the Punisher "all ages" by that time? Nope. Things began to incrementally change in the Bronze Age when the CCA was modified.

That said, I've been able to look over more of the 2025 special myself, and while the examples BIC presents are uninspired - especially the page with Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman - there are at least a few more that're somewhat better (such as one by Josuha Cassara and Marte Gracia), yet one can validly argue that what sinks the special is how it keeps getting interrupted with action style pages and panels (at least 16 of those) that we'd expect in a regular title, but have no business being here. Now that I recall, the original 5 specials from 1991-95, in addition to being something like almost 50 pages, also began with something like splash pages and caption narratives to explain the self-contained premises. It wasn't like this new special at all, where the art quality of even the more comic-style panels is very mediocre and muted. Also, the whole 2025 special is probably less than 40 pages, and the aforementioned action-panels take up room that could've been dedicated to more artwork if the editors wanted to. It doesn't help that some of the color palettes and backgrounds in 2025's special look muted, in contrast to the more vibrant colors of the original specials, and some of the art isn't as detailed as the originals were. Also, unlike the originals, there's no narrative caption boxes here, humorous or otherwise.

And yes, 3 or 4 of the 2025 illustrations are reprints of stuff that was already previously published, so again, that's hardly accomplishing much. After this, I think what I'd really like to see is a paperback/hardcover reprint of the original 5 specials, at least a handful of whose pages have seen reprints over the years in other compilations, but not as part of a dedicated reprint project for the 5 Swimsuit Specials. So, perhaps what everybody should really ask for is that the originals see their own reprint, and let's hope they don't price it too high for a paperback/hardcover. As for the new one, truly the only good thing is the variant covers by artists like Campbell, yet that just gives a new meaning to judging a book by its cover. And if in the end, only the covers are worthy, then what's the use wasting money buying a special that in contrast to the original 5, could end up being forgotten soon enough? Time will tell if anybody's excited enough about this 2025 swimsuit special to cherish more like it.

A columnist who feels Dark Knight Returns did more to harm the industry than help

A writer at ComicBook argues that Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns only wound up hurting mainstream comics, superhero or otherwise, in the long run:

Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns is widely considered to be one of the best Batman comics of all time. It revitalized Batman and was the story that finally let him shake off the Silver Age, kid-friendly reputation in the public eye, which had stuck with him since the 1960s Batman series. It is easily one of the most influential stories of its time, which is the largest credit any comic book can have, considering it released around the same time as Crisis On Infinite Earths and Watchmen. This comic is almost universally beloved by Batman and general comic book fans, and yet, despite how great it was, at the end of the day it did near irreparable damage to the comic book industry that is still felt to this very day. I love The Dark Knight Returns, but it almost ruined comic books.

Well it's not literally the comic itself that ruined comics, since the blame mainly has to be laid at the feet of countless editors and other contributors who actually believed the path it took was the absolute role model to follow in later years, culminating in abominations like Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled. But seriously, DKR was the story that got Batman past the Silver Age? What about Denny O'Neil and Steve Englehart's Bat-stories of the Bronze Age? Well, I assume by the time DKR was produced, a lot of establishment press sources had become more organized, and knew how to look for and select the kind of overrated products they thought suitable for promotion as "holy grails" going forward. So, no matter what I think of Miller's resume, it's regrettable his so-called "masterpiece" was elevated to pagan status as if it were such a big deal. But in hindsight, I'd say it's nothing of the sort. Funny though, how it must've totally surpassed even his Daredevil run as something the mainstream make such a fuss over.

The Dark Age of Comics

The Modern Age of comic books is, like most ages, very loosely defined in when it started. This is especially hard to track for Marvel Comics, but with DC there is a much more concrete answer. Most generally agree that the Modern Age started with the release of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight Returns, three comics that were released within a year of each other and totally changed DC’s approach to how they made comics. Specifically, the latter two books started the Dark Age of comics, a subsect of about fifteen years at the start of the Modern Age, from about 1986 to the start of the 2000s. The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were unbelievably popular, and for good reason. Comic books were still shaking off the guidelines of the Comics Code Authority, which heavily censored the types of stories that could be told. These two stories threw those guidelines out to tell much darker stories with much more adult themes, and they were beloved for it.

And the only way to convince anybody these stories were to be taken seriously as adult entertainment was to emphasize darkness, or more precisely, themes like murder, sexual violence and graphic gore? Sadly, that seems to be the mindset that's held for a long time, and it's only done more harm than good to what we think of as entertainment for adults. What's overlooked here though, is that even before this, there were some independent comics that weren't attaching themselves to the CCA, including Nexus and Badger, and they managed to tell more mature themes too. I guess the problem here is whether mainstream could or should have to go out of its way for the sake of such mishmash. Seriously, is it that big a deal for mainstream publishers to tell stories so adult, they can't do it in separate products? Well, the point is alluded to in the following:

Yet while they were revolutionary, the rest of the comic book world took the wrong lesson from The Dark Knight Returns’ success. It introduced a grimdark and near hopeless world starring not original characters, but Batman, a foundational superhero. Batman had always been a symbol of hope against adversity, even in his darkest stories, but this comic reimagined him as a grizzled warrior fighting a doomed battle. The world is constantly facing the threat of nuclear war, the President himself declares Batman a criminal and sends Superman to bring him in, and everyone and everything is excessively violent. This dark tone inspired every single edgy and over the top redesign that the 1990s are infamous for. We saw a decade of heroes acting like agents of vengeance and rage, wearing way too much leather, and brooding far too much while being covered in far too much blood.

Now, the excessive edginess was a trend for everything in the ‘90s, but The Dark Knight Returns popularized it in comic books. But at the end of the day, that was just a passing fad. No, the real damage of The Dark Knight Returns was introducing the grimdark genre to superhero comics. Grimdark is defined as a subgenre of speculative fiction that has an excessive tone of violence, nihilism, and dystopian societies. Grimdark stories are hopeless by design, where the very soul of the world is uncaring and the heart of the human soul is selfish and untrustworthy. These types of stories are inherently incompatible with the superhero genre. From the onset, superheroes have been fantastical stories about people standing up to protect people from evil and save the day. They are literally built on a foundation of hope, and yet ever since the release of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, people have been obsessed with making superheroes as dark and gritty as possible, thinking that’s why they were popular. On some level it was, but a lot of people vastly misunderstand that Watchmen is not a fully grimdark story, just one with grimdark elements, but people will always clamor that Batman is meant to be a dark avenger specifically because of The Dark Knight Returns.

And when stories lack hope, how can one expect the wider audience to feel inspired? Tragically, there's a certain segment of the readership that's now running the asylum, and they led to massive damage, resulting in the aforementioned Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disasembled. Why, if memory serves, when Mark Waid was writing Fantastic Four at the time, he came close to telling stories that way, with one about Dr. Doom trying to use magic as a weapon against the FF, and leaving Franklin traumatized at least for the duration of his run. There may have been a leftist anti-war metaphor in his stories too, one more reason I'm glad I don't own his run, which came soon after what I consider the last decent era of FF had ended in 2002. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby originally created FF, it certainly was meant to be a story with a more optimistic view, the Thing's situation notwithstanding. And then, when Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada took over Marvel, they basically took that all apart.

The revolution of hyper-violent, disgusting comic books that try to recapture the magic of The Dark Knight Returns with its grimdark world has given us some of the worst comics to ever exist. Beyond that, this story broke through the stereotype that comic books were made for kids, but because of how it did that, everyone is convinced that the only way superhero stories can be made for adults is if they are grimdark, which makes no sense. The Boys, The Killing Joke, and every Punisher title released after it are all trying to sell the idea that this is what adult comic books look like. They have to be hyper-violent, overly sexual, and tell the reader to their face that things are bad and can only get worse. This doesn’t make these stories bad, but it does make the people who shout how these are more mature comics by default very annoying. Everyone still says that Batman can’t be a happy character or smile, and that is in no small part because of this comic book.

I don't deny there's valid issues to take even with the Punisher, though I will say in its favor that some stories from the 1987-97 era did have a sense of humor, and I can't say it emphasized hopelessness the way some of its other dark-laden neighbors did. Even the Swamp Thing was never as dismal in most renditions up to the early 90s. I do find it problematic though, how this column complains about "overly sexual", because while it can be an adult subject in its own way, and not always suitable for children, it's still a minor issue compared with all the hyper violence and gore that became more common in the 90s. When the subject of sex becomes offensive is if it's put to use the way it was in Identity Crisis, where sexual violence, as noted before, was minimized, all for the sake of a metaphor sympathetic to villains, and as noted, it was a 9-11 metaphor too. Surprisingly enough, even some leftists were willing to admit as much.

If writers of Batman weren't/aren't allowed to depict him smiling and laughing, any such editorial mandate is obviously wrong. Though I wonder if some of the most overrated leftist writers are allowed to script Bruce Wayne that way, presumably if their politics and any written in-story coincide with their Orwellian beliefs? For now, a vital point was made earlier that there was once a time when Batman was written with respect for the concept of hope and trying to build a better future, and after DKR, much of that was thrown out the window. And Superman was damaged as a symbol of optimism.

I love The Dark Knight Returns, but ever since its release there has been an unyielding community who argue in bad faith that superhero comics should be like it or they’re made for babies. It’s an insane statement, but sometimes it even seems like the comic book industry itself agrees, constantly greenlighting stories that try to become the next The Dark Knight Returns by being as “mature” as possible. This is a great story in a vacuum, but the damage it did to comic books is almost entirely unforgivable. Superhero stories are meant to be hopeful. They don’t always need to have the perfect happy ending and save everyone, but they should inspire hope. Grimdark stories can’t do that, and The Dark Knight Returns unfortunately cursed us with far, far more grimdark comics than there should ever be.

On this, I can certainly agree. To be sure, the "community" spoken of is the same one that upheld the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman for a long time, and look where that's gotten to now. In more than 15 years, Batman has practically been put to the forefront of emphasis in pop culture, while Superman was all but kicked to the curb. Sometimes, I wonder if even characters like Robin/Nightwing were sidelined in the process, if only because the former was meant to represent a more optimistic side as well. Why, even the Outsiders probably underwent a similar marginalization because some of the cast from that notable mid-80s series also represented optimism more than Batman did.

Today, it often seems like Batman is constantly the first and foremost superhero cited, while Superman all but gets 2nd billing. This whole problem even hints at another one - an inability of a certain segment of audience to find science fiction appealing, unless it adheres to certain PC mandates. I say that if only because Batman's not a superpowered character like Superman is, and science fantasy elements weren't heavily emphasized in Batman's stories. When he did appear in stuff with more emphasis, it was in team up series like the Brave and the Bold, and the subsequent, aforementioned Outsiders, though even there, he was phased out halfway through, while the team mostly continued without him for the 2nd half. I'm as much a Batman fan as the next person, but again, this is just way too much, and the PC emphasis that Batman fell victim too has only hurt the Masked Manhunter even more as a creation.

And this, of course, is why mainstream comics have collapsed, and I hope independent creators are trying to take a more optimistic route, because otherwise, how will we fix the damage going forward?

Now Marvel brings back Frank Castle as the Punisher to the living world

ComicBook reports Marvel is moving away from the woke, defeatist vision social justice advocate Jason Aaron forced upon the Punisher - which saw Frank Castle causing himself to disintegrate - and bringing him back to the living world in a new miniseries that, unfortunately, is emphasizing gory violence:

Punisher is back from the dead and on a blood revenge tour in his new Marvel series. Frank Castle is back in the public eye after Jon Bernthal reprised his role as the street-level vigilante in Daredevil: Born Again. Bernthal is also starring in and writing a Punisher Special Presentation for Disney+, so there’s more Punisher on the way on the small screen. As for the comics, Marvel is bringing Frank Castle back from the dead in Punisher: Red Band, a five-issue limited series by writer Benjamin Percy and artist Julius Ohta, the current creative team on Hellverine.

Each issue of Punisher: Red Band will come polybagged for explicit content, as Marvel promises that the comic will be the most violent in Punisher history. Frank Castle will also return to his classic costume, ready to unleash his brutal brand of justice on the criminal underworld.

On the one hand, it sure is sad they'd have approved Aaron's direction in the first place, though Gerry Conway made it easy for them to go along with it. On the other hand, as though it weren't bad enough this is being done far too late to matter, they're making things worse by presenting us with an alarmingly violent vision, as though that'll make things any better. Something tells me this new take on Frank Castle will only end up making the creation look worse than need be, quite possibly as more a lunatic than a guy who's suitably helpful to innocents when needed.

As far as I'm concerned, the Punisher ended in the late 90s, and what's come since has only done a terrible disfavor, mainly because of how successive writers have held the character hostage to leftist agendas, and never relented on them.

The history of Mike Baron's Flash run (volume 2)

Cowboy State Daily tells the history of the 2nd Flash volume's storyline where the villainous Vandal Savage antagonized 3rd Flash Wally West, in a storyline written by Mike Baron at the time the Scarlet Speedster series was being relaunched in 1987:

Former Thermopolis resident Brett Belleque was shopping for comics at a Goodwill store in Salem, Oregon, when he picked up the oldest one it had: 1987’s The Flash (Volume 2) No. 2: “Savage Showdown!,” written by Mike Baron.

“I’m a Batman and Flash guy, so I picked it up and started looking through the pages,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Lo and behold, there was Thermopolis, Wyoming. I had to read it twice. It blew my mind.”

Thermopolis is a genuine point of contention in this comic book clash between Wally West, the third Flash, and perennial DC Comics villain, big-bad Vandal Savage.

In a story where a supersonic speedster fights an immortal caveman, Thermopolis might be the strangest thing in the story.

I own the whole tale myself as part of a paperback titled "Savage Velocity", and it's pretty good (one day, I may want to buy an omnibus reprinting this and some of William Messner-Loebs' followup work). Baron's work on Flash at the time was impressive, though some may understandably question the wisdom of depicting Wally West running an affair with Christina McGee, a scientist who was possibly a dozen years his senior. (This of course was subsequently dropped, and Linda Park, who was more around his age, became the girlfriend when Messner-Loebs took up writing.) The run was also notable for depicting Wally developing a massive need to eat, in order to keep his superpowers working properly. This would continue under Messner-Loebs, though afterwards, it was certainly downplayed.

When the reporter takes to interviewing Baron, Nexus and Badger are brought up:

Baron’s other comic achievements include Nexus, an award-winning comic series he co-created with Steve Rude, the costumed crimefighter Badger, a Vietnam War veteran with multiple personalities that he continues to write for today, placing it among the most successful and longest-running independent superhero comics.

“Badger’s only superpower is that he can talk to animals,” he said. “Jeff Butler wanted to draw Druids, but Capitol Comics wanted a costumed superhero. So, I thought, ‘why would anybody put on a costume and fight crime? They have to be crazy.’ And bam!”

Regarding the former, one can only wonder if it would win awards or any kind of positive regard today from leftists, since there were some who turned against Baron later, and refused to give him any kind of support, moral or otherwise, when he developed Private American as a crowdfunded independent comic. Nexus was a sci-fi metaphor for the Communist era, and in the past decade, Communism became more acceptable among leftists, ironically or not. I wouldn't be shocked if the same bunch had no interest in Badger either.

When Mike Gold was hired as an editor by DC Comics, he hired Baron to write for Wally West’s version of the Flash. With an immense toy chest of characters, settings and plots at his disposal, he wrote Flash with the same approach he always used when writing comics.

“I take their characters very seriously, try to stay in character, and honor the heritage,” he said. “I approached Punisher as a straight crime comic. There was no time travel or dinosaurs or nonsense like that.

“I ripped stories from the headlines, so Punisher went up against drug smugglers, serial killers, motorcycle gangs, and crooked reverends and bankers. He fought Daredevil and Kingpin, but those are also fairly realistic characters.”

Baron took Flash seriously too. Even with the superpowers, magic and the immortal caveman, the story is pretty grounded for a comic.

Though depending how you see it, the storyline with Chester P. Runk (Chunk), the chubby engineer who gets combined with a matter transmitter that enables him to become a human teleportation device was surreal as you can get. If there was something I appreciated about Loebs' followup run, it's that he brought back Chunk, and made use of him as a recurring cast member for some time, and it's a terrible shame that later writers like the overrated Geoff Johns forced Chunk into a mighty awful story or two years later.

As for the Punisher, a shame they don't get into how, by the turn of the century, Marvel's contributors by that time were ruining everything the Punisher was all about, including Garth Ennis and Jason Aaron, whose stories should be avoided at all costs. It's decidedly also a shame if Baron never wrote about topics like Islamic terrorism, unless maybe Marvel editorial refused to accept any such story pitches. Nor do they get into the whole issue surrounding Private American. But, here's why Baron stopped writing Flash after a year or so:

Baron wrote 14 issues of The Flash before moving on to other projects. Even in the infinite possibilities of the DC Universe, there were only so many places he felt he could take Wally West.

“The only reason I gave up Flash was that I didn’t know what to do with the character,” he said. “That would not happen today, but I gave it up because I didn’t know what to do with the character.”

This brings up an interesting subject that's not really new: writers who don't know what to do, or what kind of storylines they can write employing specific characters. IIRC, it was the reason given by Gerry Conway when he was writing Spider-Man in 1973 that led to Gwen Stacy dying at the hands of the Green Goblin at the George Washington Bridge in NYC, and I think Marv Wolfman once said he left writing Superman after a year or so in the late 80s because he didn't know what else he could write for the Man of Steel. There's something worrisome about saying you don't know what to do with a major or minor character, because it may have led to later, corrupt editorials exploiting such notions for casually killing off any character they thought was expendable, which is objectionable, because it's not like writers are or should be obligated to make massive use of a character they can't think of what do with. All they and the editors need do is just put the characters in limbo if it really matters, or they can just relegate them to minor use like brief conversations around an office.

That said, I'm convinced such a notion as not knowing what to do with various characters was really a shield for taking character drama apart, by the very same who pretend they do want to specialize in character drama. Such laziness has to cease, and editors/writers who defend such reprehensible conduct have to be called out for it.

Anyway, that said, I highly appreciate that a press source is drawing attention to one of the more overlooked storylines in comics history, one that writers post-2000 did not respect in any way. And those who'd like to read Baron's take on the Scarlet Speedster are lucky it's been available in trade collections for some time.

Leftist writer who worked on Punisher developing comic at Image about "revenge"

The Hollywood Reporter announced leftist writer Matthew Rosenberg, who previously worked on the Punisher, is now developing a comic at Image with a pretty long title:

In a comic run that was published in the mid and late 2010s, writer Matthew Rosenberg and artist Stefano Landini took the character of Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, away from his crime roots and put him deep into the Marvel Universe on a mission of revenge.

Revenge is still on the Rosenberg and Landini’s mind, but in a very non-Marvel way, as the duo reunite for a creator-owned comic titled We’re Taking Everyone Down With Us. The all-new, six issue miniseries will kick off in March 2025 from Image Comics with an extra-length first issue.

The story follows a 13-year-old girl named Annalise who’s left all alone in the world after her mad-scientist father is killed by the world’s greatest spy. Now, alongside her dead dad’s robot bodyguard, Annalise has a choice: try to lead a normal life for the first time ever or seek revenge and maybe overthrow the world order in the process.

“There’s only so many great motivating factors in stories and the most powerful ones are love and revenge, so when you can have a story that has both…,” said Rosenberg, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter from Dublin, Ireland, where another one of his creator-owned comics, 4 Kids Walks Into a Bank, is filming as an adaptation starring Liam Neeson and Jack Dylan Grazer. “We wanted to do a pretty brutal revenge story that has a lot of love and compassion and see how those ideas touch each other.”

It won't be the least bit shocking if it all draws from a left-wing notion of what "revenge" should be. And if Rosenberg's got a film adaptation in the works, it figures somebody like him would get all the offers in Hollywood that a conservative likely wouldn't. Would that "world order" happen to be "right-wing"? Well it won't be a shock if that's what the story's a metaphor for. One more reason why the brutality in this new miniseries is bound to be very alienating.

And what's this about the Punisher having "crime roots"? It was already established he worked outside the law and was wanted by it, even if he went after violent criminals who practically deserved whatever they got. The mission of revenge was also well established as being Frank's respone to his wife and child being murdered by mobsters, until Jason Aaron was permitted to take even that much apart. There's nothing to be excited about coming from another modern leftist scribe who's got no love for Marvel, and whom the media are sadly promoting as the best new "talent" based on his politics. This new item from Image only makes clear why they've long been irrelevant.

"Marvel Rivals" doesn't feel like a comics video game

A reviewer at AV Club is disappointed with the new Marvel Rivals computer game, which he says doesn't feel like Marvel, yet more like Overwatch:

There’s a fun game you can play while playing the (frequently unfun) new online shooter Marvel Rivals. I call it “Hey, Which Overwatch Character Is This Weird Version Of A Marvel Person Semi-Actionably Ripping Off?” [...]

Weirdly, the one itch the game doesn’t scratch is my love of Marvel. Sure, it’s fun to hear Yuri Lowenthal (Spider-Man), Josh Keaton (Iron Man), and Steve Blum (Wolverine) reprise roles from earlier Marvel games (including my beloved Midnight Sons). But Rivals is so interested in recreating the Overwatch dynamics that it rarely, if ever, feels like the superhero throwdown it should be, either in its fluff—with weird lore, costumes, and a time-tossed array of levels pulled from alternate universes that just happen to look a lot like OW maps—or its play. These don’t look, or feel, like any Marvel fights you might be familiar with from comics, TV shows, or films, and that’s because they’re not trying to be. They’re re-skinned Overwatch, and that’s a real bummer in a universe where a genuine Marvel hero shooter game still doesn’t really exist.

It's really no surprise these newer computer games don't feel like Marvel. That's because of all the wokeness they increasingly adhered to as the years went by, relying on newer stories and how characters were portrayed, and if they rely on how the movies approached the characters, rather than say, how Stan Lee and Roy Thomas did, that's another huge mistake. Why, even the increased focus on heroes fighting each other got way out of hand long ago, and that too makes this whole affair discouraging.

And come to think of it, when one takes into consideration that not many Marvel superheroes use guns, save for Nick Fury and the Punisher, maybe that's why the whole notion of modeling this game after a first-person shooter is another mistake? But the worst mistake of all is assigning only so many "reviwers" who couldn't care less about the classic material to comment on these topics, when they don't really have a proper grip on what originally made Marvel's comics work so well decades before, and no chance they'll ever complain how Marvel lost direction as a publisher under phonies like Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas. As a result, articles like these don't have much impact even to argue why these new computer games aren't worth the bytes they're published on, and don't make a good substitute for the comics.

Joker film sequel's failure said to supposedly reveal double-standards when it comes to female-centric fare

Movieweb wrote about the box office failure of Joker: Folie a Deux, and they argue superhero films with female leads are held to higher standards. And they also reveal a certain director, most unfortunately, defended the sequel, and making matters worse, they pulled the woke card act on racial issues:

On October 6, the Sunday after Joker: Folie à Deux opened in theaters, the movie was looking at a terrible box office weekend and an even worse audience reaction. The Hollywood Reporter posted a story about how director Francis Ford Coppola liked the Joker sequel. The caption on The Hollywood Reporter's X account said, "Hang in there, Todd Phillips." Many called out The Hollywood Reporter for the framing of this story, particularly in response to how they covered the box office fallout to The Marvels in 2023, particularly with the headline "Why ‘Marvels’ Director Nia DaCosta Bailed on the Cast-and-Crew Screening." The article seemed to put all of the blame for The Marvels flopping on DaCosta and was accused of misrepresenting the situation. This certainly highlighted how white male directors are treated kinder than women of color.

Oh for heaven's sake. Do we really need to hear this nonsense again about how white men have it better, sans all discussion of artistic quality? There's tons of male directors who haven't fared well, and Steven Spielberg's recent remake of West Side Story was catastrophous. Must I also note how disappointed I am with Coppola for lending support to the Joker sequel? And here I thought he was among all those famous filmmakers put off by the overabundance of superhero fare! Supervillain fare is much worse though, and that goes without saying. If we're supposed to be rooting for criminals, that's awful.

Still, it also spoke to another case of how female-centric superhero movies are treated far more harshly than male-led ones. While The Marvels was a box office disappointment, it performed better on its opening weekend than Joker: Folie à Deux; headlines about The Marvels were much more doom-and-gloom. Everything was put on the shoulders of The Marvels, where Joker 2 was treated as a one-off. The release and fallout of Joker 2 highlights a sexist double standard in how people talk about female-led superhero movies, one that is sadly as old as the genre itself. Long story short, when a male-led superhero movie like Morbius, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, or Joker: Folie à Deux flops, is because of several factors. When female-led ones like The Marvels, Birds of Prey, or Madame Web flop, the blame is solely on whom the lead is.

Oh for heaven's sake. Since when weren't the male leads of various live action adaptations accountable for failure? Far as I'm concerned, a non-actor like Dwayne Johnson has some responsibility to shoulder for the Black Adam movie's failure, and the scriptwriters do too, based on all the wokeness they shoehorned in. Of course, if that's how they feel, why doesn't Movieweb's writers do a whole essay on how quite a few pretentious male performers are to blame for a superhero film's failure? And overrated as the Wonder Woman movies were, I don't recall anybody massively blaming Gal Gadot for the 2nd film's failure, awful as it was. On which note, Movieweb does get around to that film, in any event:

In 2017, after 76 years in comics, Wonder Woman finally got her solo feature film with Patty Jenkins's feature film, Wonder Woman. Despite being part of DC's Trinity alongside Superman and Batman, she had struggled to make it to the big screen. Superman and Batman had multiple films by the time Wonder Woman got her solo movie. Wonder Woman remained stuck in development hell even though lesser-known heroes from DC's pages, like Swamp Thing, Constantine, and Green Lantern, got the big screen treatment. Meanwhile, the MCU wouldn't have a female hero in a film title until their 20th film, Ant-Man and the Wasp, with the following movie, Captain Marvel, being the first female-led solo project in the franchise after 11 years.

For years, the poor box office and critical performance of female-led superhero movies like Supergirl, Catwoman, and Elektra were used to justify not greenlighting a Wonder Woman or Black Widow film. The common idea was those movies did poorly because audiences didn't like female-led superheroes, and not that the actual quality of the films was bad. Bad movies based around male-led superhero movies never stopped the genre or were blamed for their box office disappointment. Films like Batman & Robin, The Spirit, and Jonah Hex never risked other male-led superhero movies like The Flash and Green Lantern getting made.

This is how it goes, as male-led superhero movies aren't forced to carry the weight of the genre on their shoulders as their female-led counterparts are. Three Punisher movies were made and bombed before Wonder Woman got her solo film. Madame Web was bad, but it is not like Morbius is any better. Moreover, individuals on the internet tried to blame Madame Web for being bad because it was about a group of women, but the same reasoning isn't used for box office and critical disappointments like Joker 2, 2019's Hellboy, or The Flash.

Strange, wasn't the 1st adaptation of Swamp Thing back in 1982? What's that got to with all this? As for the Flash film, I don't think star Ezra Miller's going to find many more roles after what he was accused of, and is tragically getting away with. Something they don't correctly acknowledge here is that Jonah Hex, Spirit and Green Lantern, at their time, remained with just one entry, little different from any failed film starring superheroines. Plus, they forget Hex can't be considered a superhero in the same way as the modern day counterparts, since it's a western. Though as I recall, the film absurdly gave Hex the ability to briefly revive the dead just so he could interrogate them or something?!? Gee, as if things couldn't have been more badly handled.

Furthermore, to say Madame Web's a flop because it was about women is monumentally stupid, and throughly ignores any and all lady-led films and even TV shows that were successful. What about Charlie's Angels and even Charmed? They may be TV-based (the former did have a film adaptation in 2000), but don't they count? The reason was simply because the studio wasn't building on merit and talent. From what Movieweb's telling here, you'd think these were gay men blabbering the nonsense; why would a heterosexual man have an issue with a movie starring a girl, especially if she's hot? That's something Movieweb's propagandist doesn't answer. It just doesn't make any sense. After all, considering films starring women continue getting made all the time, doesn't that contradict their claim?

How much longer do these ideologues intend to keep pushing this silly clickbait cliche that nobody wants movies starring superheroines? None of this is helping, and again, throughly ignores the lack of talent and merit in today's Hollywood. Maybe the best question of all is, what's the use of making these movies at all, regardless of whether a man or woman is the star? It's all just a whole waste of billions of dollars on so much sound and fury that signifies nothing in the end.

What's so great about Garth Ennis?

A writer at Slash Film, one who may have also written an offensive puff piece for Anime News Network previously, fawned over the writings of Garth Ennis, the creator of The Boys, who's also notorious for despising superhero fare:

Garth Ennis, the writer behind "The Boys" and "Preacher," has been called the Quentin Tarantino of comic books. On the surface, both men tell stories filled with violence, profane dialogue, crass comedy, and their fans love them for it. I've adored Tarantino since I first encountered him — no movie, from "Reservoir Dogs" to his latest (and favorite of his own films) "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood" — has broken that spell. My feelings on Ennis are more of a journey; I dismissed him in my younger days but I've since settled on the more positive side.

On this, I wonder what the writer would say if he knows Tarantino does at least have the fortunate understanding of the terrible situations Israel's faced, as seen on October 7, 2023, which stands in stark contrast to what the columnist's beliefs are. That said, I can't say I'm a fan of Tarantino's resume, because I find his notion of humor very crass, and violence off-putting. This certainly is quite interesting the columnist views Ennis' writings as something he overlooked years ago, and now embraces more fully. In that case, what about writers who've dealt with comedy without putting to use the kind of nasty ingredients Ennis is known for? Just head-shaking.

A key piece of Garth Ennis' reputation is that he's the comic writer who hates superheroes. Since we Americans often think of "superhero" and "comic book" as synonymous, this seeming contradiction stands out. Ennis is not Alan Moore, who loved superheroes as a child but became disillusioned with them, either; he never read cape comics as a kid and so, when introduced to them as a teen, only saw them as ridiculous. Why else would he write a comic like "The Boys," an exercise in subjecting superheroes to his trademark creative and vulgar death scenes?

And that's positive why? I think I've long missed the part where Ennis' apologists explain why there's anything entertaining about seeing people being put to death. Why, what if a writer came along and wrote jokes about sexual abuse? Would that be acceptable? Of course not. So it's hard to understand why death is considered something funny, if the victims happen to be the good guys. Sexual violence definitely isn't funny, and what's truly reprehensible about the apologists for cheap sensationalism is that they never consider how victims in real life can feel if they know the terrible experiences they went through were being minimized for the sake of sick laughs. And do Americans still consider superheroes and comics synonymous? If anything, not many care about the theme anymore, based on where Marvel and DC sent them, to woke-land. It's also questionable whether anybody not introduced to superhero tales in childhood would only consider them ridiculous upon reaching their teenage years. Besides, there's plenty of teens - certainly in past decades - who appreciated an adventure with hot women as stars or co-stars. Now, even that's being trashed by the leftist PC crowd.

Now, I first heard of Ennis when I was a preteen superhero dork. Before I'd even bothered to read his comics, I was turned off. Reading that the one superhero he likes is the Punisher "confirmed" for me the perception I'd built up of him as an edgelord who just likes blood and guts, being too cynical to write anything else. Well, I was wrong and short-sighted. (Garth, if you're somehow reading this, mea culpa and apologies.) Part of my transformation was just listening to Ennis speak in interviews; the soft-spoken Irishman I found had none of the immaturity or venom I'd imagined.

It sounds like the writer may be of the crowd despising the Punisher because Frank Castle represents all a modern liberal despises. What is clear is that, somewhere along the way, the columnist suddenly decided bloodletting was entirely okay. By contrast, I find the kind of crude violence Ennis specializes in atrocious (I also can't stand video games like Mortal Kombat, but that's another story). That said, after what the Punisher's been through under PC writers like Jason Aaron, one can reasonably wonder if Ennis would consider even Frank the only superhero he cares about today, if it turns out he's willing to embrace the same PC narrative his USA peers are now. It has been a while since Ennis had much to do with the Punisher, after all.

I've also since actually read more of Ennis' work (which, again, I should've done in the first place). "Preacher" is a masterwork that finally won me over to the beauty of the late Steve Dillon's art. I've still never been able to quite enjoy "The Boys" comic, but I appreciate it as some needed counterprogramming to the superhero Big Two, especially since I have been able to enjoy "The Boys" TV show.

Preacher, Garth Ennis' messy masterpiece

Ennis' writing is much more meaningful than I'd imagined too. This is where he again intersects with Tarantino; some dismiss them as reactionaries because their dialogue isn't PC, but pay closer attention and you'll notice the righteous rage animating them. The violence in their stories is often inflicted on evil that deserves it. Just as Tarantino uses his canvas to invent punishment for Nazis and antebellum American slavers, Ennis does the same to Christian fanatics and corporate America.

Now as plenty of realists may know, there's no chance writers like Ennis would ever depict Islamic terrorists as fanatics in their scripts, so it's bewildering why the columnist is drawing comparisons between Tarantino's visions and Ennis' approach to Christians. Sounds like there's an awfully offensive analogy taking place there. And as for corporatism, where's the columnist been all these years? In the past decade alone, corporations stateside have taken up the very left-wing viewpoints he goes by, and not many liberals see a need to take issue with them anymore. And when the columnist talks some more about a comic Ennis wrote called Sara, which is about a communist-employed sharpshooter, it's told that:

There's a lot of World War II historical fiction there, but "Sara" gives a perspective that isn't quite so well-tread: the Soviets'. They were just as vital in defeating Nazi Germany as the other Allies. When Americans think of World War II battlefields, we think of Omaha beach on D-Day (especially thanks to "Saving Private Ryan") and bombed-out German cities. "Sara" takes place in snow-blanketed forests; Chapter 1 — "Words To Live By" — opens with Sara perched on a treetop waiting for her perfect shot. The conflict is familiar but the battlefield feels new.

Sorry, but this sugarcoats all the evil the commies were guilty of, even before WW2. Some could say the only problem communist Russia had with Nazi Germany was that the latter was something like a rival gang battling for their turf, and that the commies could not have. Similar points could be made about how they view Islam.

Ennis hates Captain America ("The Boys" viciously lampoons him with Soldier Boy), but clearly even he recognizes Epting's talent.

But can Epting have much talent, any more than Ennis, if he's willingly going to participate in another disgustingly negative allusion to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's masterpiece? All these attacks on the superhero genre have gotten way out of hand, without even clearly explaining why we're supposed to consider Ennis' takes on them any better. And the columnist only suggests he's not much of a fan of the Star-Spangled Avenger either.

There's really nothing special about Ennis, except in the sense that his questionable visions must have some admiration among certain leftist crowds. Ennis is just another modern leftist who doesn't know how to appreciate escapist fantasy as developed by past generations, so it's bewildering why he even worked in superhero comicdom at all. He's just another overrated scribe from Europe, who was likely only hired based on the woke beliefs he may harbor.