"Black Heroes Journey" exhibit in west Philadelphia

Billy Penn at WHYY reported about an exhibition of Africa-American themed comics at the University of Pennsylvania, and a new GN about the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, which is authored by artist Eric Battle:

Some people spend decades figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Eric Battle found his calling at a corner store in West Philadelphia when he was 5.

“I can still remember the day, like it was yesterday,” said Battle, now 59.

He was walking to the store with his mother and two sisters when he discovered a comic book spinner rack in the back.

“I ran over and flipped through the comics. And it’s been a love affair ever since, but that spawned my interest in drawing and reading and everything else,” he said.

That fascination grew into a career illustrating stories for Marvel and DC Comics, children’s books and graphic novels. Now, Battle is helping explore the history of Black characters and creators in comics through “The Black Hero’s Journey,” an exhibition that opened Oct. 15 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Battle is a co-curator of the exhibition, which runs through May 13, 2027, in the Goldstein Gallery at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. The free exhibition traces the evolution of Black comic book heroes and the people who created them, with a particular connection to Philadelphia.

For Battle, its opening also comes as he prepares for the publication of “Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear,” a graphic novel he spent more than five years illustrating.

Written by Christopher Benson, the book follows an anonymous Black writer investigating Till’s murder. It draws on Benson’s experience working with Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, on her memoir, “Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America.”

Till was a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was abducted and murdered in 1955 after a white woman accused him of making advances toward her.

His mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral so the public could see what had been done to her son. An all-white jury acquitted the two white men charged with his murder. Till’s death and the images of his battered body helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.

Benson is a journalist, attorney and associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. The book is being published by Megascope, an Abrams ComicArts imprint curated by John Jennings, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, and a friend of Battle’s.

This reminds me of 6 years ago, when propagandist Heidi MacDonald was spouting leftist talking points like "believe women", even though there have been cases where false accusations are made, and the Till tragedy is one of them, right down to how the jury clearly predetermined their verdict in Mississippi. I'm sure MacDonald knows perfectly well her MO was flawed, and since that time, it's become apparent Warren Ellis, another leftist whom she threw under the bus, was not guilty of the mass "grooming" she took part in accusing him of. That doesn't mean I like his work. But to make absurdly petty issues over stuff that was otherwise consensual only ends up hurting the cause of actual victims, and let's not forget when MacDonald defended the disgraced CBLDF manager Charles Brownstein years ago.

Now to return to the subject, while Battle's got an interesting project to run in a history exhibition, I found out that, when he began working in comicdom years ago, and tried to work in the majors, he didn't have the best assignment:

To break into comics, he traveled to New York City to show editors his portfolios.

“It took quite a while before I was able to get my first job in comics, but that’s how it all really started,” Battle said.

His first Marvel assignment involved Cable, the X-Men character, in backup stories written by Jeph Loeb.

That wasn't considered the best written X-Men material produced, since it didn't have much clear direction to it, and came at a time when the cracks were forming in quality storytelling. Also, let's remember Cable, as he first appeared as an adult in 1990, was developed by the dreadful Rob Liefeld in the last 2 years of New Mutants, and Loeb later proved himself one of the most overrated writers in comicdom, recalling the Hush storyline he wrote for Batman, one of his "all style, no substance" type of approaches. So if Battle's now working more in the independents, he should be glad, considering how below rock bottom Marvel and DC became ever since. I wish him good luck with this exhibition and the GN's publication, and I also hope he'll consider that even today, there's a lot more that needs to paid attention to in modern times as well, if we're ever to improve just how bad things have become again, and that's also something that can make for important material for graphic novels/comic books. Those who wish to improve society and retain civility need to show the courage to actually deal with serious issues in modern times as much as the past.

Daily Wire guest writer goes too easy on Tom King

Comics artist Matt Battaglia wrote on the Daily Wire about the Lanterns TV show the overrated leftist Tom King worked on, and while Battaglia may express disappointment with the TV program itself (and even that's very soft), he regrettably takes a lenient view of King as a writer himself, making it sound as though King literally has talent, which he doesn't:

HBO’s new television series “Lanterns” is revealing to a broader audience the limits of the superhero genre. The show tries to capture the spirit of the first season of “True Detective” (perfect television) while being shackled to Green Lantern’s expectations. Put those aesthetics on Batman or The Question, and it would work; slap them on a cosmic superhero whose power is fueled by imagination and a magic ring, and they begin to break under the weight of expectation.

The show is dour, but uplifted by a cast whose charisma tends to break what the script asks the viewer to believe and think. Kyle Chandler is obviously magnetic and shakes off any negative connotations some writers wanted to saddle the character with (old, racist, privileged, etc.; roll the clip). John Stewart is played well by Aaron Pierre and is given the reverse problem from Chandler: we are told he’s going to be great at the job, but his actions tend to say otherwise. It’s an odd framing for a story ostensibly about a superhero who comes with lots of baggage and expectations. Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner at least feels like he’s playing in the same sandbox his source material requires.

Umm, the politics they're forcing onto the material here wouldn't suit Batman and the Question either, and it's sad Battaglia wants to downplay the whole problem. No matter how good the performances seemingly are, the far-left leanings ruin everything.

This problem of missing expectations and weighing down heroes with such bleak, morally dubious problems and decisions is something of a hallmark of Tom King. Since his rise to prominence in the comics scene, he has been handed the reins to many a superhero property. King is a good writer; his stories are generally well received (except, of course, from his extremely vocal critics who think he single-handedly waged the war in Iraq); it’s just that his stories tend to be ill-suited to the expectations of the superhero genre.

Well isn't this an insult to the intellect. Who gives King's stories a good reception? Only the most loyalist of the critics and leftist audiences. This doesn't make a clear distinction between superhero fare and the indie comics King's written, and if his superhero stories are that bad, why should we think his independent comics are any better? Also, what makes Mr. Battaglia think we actually believe King fought singlehandedly in Iraq? Of course I don't think that's the case, and Battaglia sounds like he's trying to put down King's detractors despite how poor his writing is. Battaglia's downplay continues:

The issue with King’s writing and themes in the TV world is that his styling is finally running up against budget limitations. When paired with artists like Greg Smallwood on “Human Target,” Doc Shaner and Mitch Gerards on “Strange Adventures,” and Mitch Gerards again on “Mister Miracle” (these three being the closest analog tonally to “Lanterns”), the dour writing is buoyed by colorful, exciting visuals, even when the staging can become mundane (see the relatively low dynamics in “Mister Miracle” compared to the Jack Kirby high dynamism source material). Those visuals are entirely absent from “Lanterns”, the suits are drab, the power use is limited, this isn’t the big space opera stuff that is expected from the character.

King tends to mine the hero for guilt and regret, rather than heroics. His take on Adam Strange is a compromised man who ended up in over his head, making sacrifices that he couldn’t handle; His Mister Miracle is suffering from crippling depression and anxiety; Christopher Chance in “Human Target” is dealing with a terminal poisoning and trying to solve his own pending murder (spoilers: his murderer shares a good deal with Hal Jordan’s in “Lanterns”). His DC series “Heroes in Crisis” places all of the superheroes in therapy, and one of them is unable to handle all the pain that they are holding onto, thus creating a murder mystery.

He also leans on female leads who dominate their male counterparts. Mister Miracle and Big Barda at least veer into showing a supportive marriage, whereas Adam Strange’s marriage with Alanna is fraught with lies, similar to Chance’s relationship with Ice, which plays on the classic femme fatale trope.

Sorry, but from the art samples I've seen from King's books, it's uninspired, and telling us it's dour is actually putting it lightly. And if King's take on Human Target has anything similar to what occurs in Lanterns, that's just one more reason to stay far away from his comics. As for ladies dominating their male counterparts, let's be clear. It's not like Barda was ever written literally bossing around Scott Free. If memory serves, she was based partly on Jack Kirby's wife Rosalind, and a way for Kirby to express his love and respect for her.

None of these decisions are bad in and of themselves, and they’re all well done for the choices being made; they just tend to undermine the superhero genre to the point of crumbling. He dealt with many of these themes in his breakout book “Sheriff of Babylon,” which, I think, is a fantastic read dealing with the Iraq War. All the themes King keeps mining in superhero properties were present there, and they fit well. It’s a powerful book that remains relevant. The key difference is that “Sheriff of Babylon” deals with regular people; his other work deals with superhumans and the decision to reduce them to normal, flawed people, pushed to the breaking point and morally compromised to the point where they are indistinguishable from evil. Which may very well be his point – and it’s a point that Alan Moore makes in “Watchmen.” However, with “Watchmen,” Moore is using analogs of other heroes, while King is using the actual characters themselves and all their accumulated baggage. His stories would play so much better unchained from these legacy characters and all their weight.

Sugarcoating even creator-owned comics by folks with left-wing bents is no improvement. There's only so many creator-owned comics that unfortunately are built on divisive politics, and while it may be better if the themes King keeps relying upon were employed in indie fare instead, that still doesn't mean they're palatable even in independents. At least a vital point is made as to what's been common for years now - tinkering and tampering with established characters in ways that does not suit the personas they're usually known for, and certainly doesn't make them look admirable as they were created to be. But to say the heavy-handed trauma themes are "well done" still risks being too easy on the scriptwriters, and that's what's enabled them to all but get away with some of the worst things they've done all these years. We could do without that kind of lenience.

It's a shame the Daily Wire's taking an article from somebody who follows a predictable but still very sad playbook of "diplomacy". If Mr. Battaglia can't deliver a tour de force critique, he also obscures all the worst errors made over the past 20-30 years. That kind of soft approach can't continue.

Lanterns TV series villifies both police and policewomen, and even pulls an Identity Crisis

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart lets know what the finale for the James Gunn-produced Lanterns series is, and who was written killing Hal Jordan:

DC Studios’ HBO Max series Lanterns revealed who killed superhero Hal Jordan in the season finale this week and several many fans are shocked and disgusted over who the writers turned into a killer.

***SPOILERS***

The series, which holds an estimated $130 million production budge on eight episodes that took more than three months to shoot, has taken a lot of criticism since its debut for the massive amount of wokeism it has forced on viewers. The finale, however, revealed who shot the original human Green Lantern in the head and incensed many fans as it turned out that Hal’s purported love interest, Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald), was the murderer.

Most of the detractors are confused over the reveal because it does not seem to make any logical sense. Not only was Sheriff Kelly portrayed as a love interest for the man she murdered in cold blood, but the scene depicting the murder does not contain any threat to Kelly (or her son) being posed by Hal Jordan, who she then ruthlessly shot to death.

Without getting too far into the comic book weeds of this storyline, the plot of the season maintains that Kelly’s son is actually part alien (a Martian Manhunter), a fact that Kelly has tried to keep hidden from the world. In the controversial murder scene, Jordan reveals that he knows that her son, Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard), is part alien and that he wants to help her keep the boy’s secret and to protect him from danger.

But, in a shocking split-second decision, Kelly whips out her sheriff’s service pistol and shoots Jordan in the forehead, killing him, despite the fact that he was not acting belligerently or threatening her or Noah in any way.

The producers pulled an Identity Crisis, in reference to the abominable 2004 DC miniseries that degraded women, made heroes look bad, and was a left-wing metaphor for September 11, 2001. And here, in Lanterns, you could say they villify not just simply law enforcement, but a policewoman/mother too. WB's spending only so much money on something this repugnant? I hesitate to think what they'd do if Carol Ferris were the co-star.

I think audiences who care would be strongly advised to turn off the TV set. If there's a 2nd season in the works, it's better to avoid it entirely. This is one of the most horrifically forced and contrived programs supposedly based on classic comics characters, and compounds the damage that GL first seriously experienced in Action Comics Weekly back in mid-1988, marking its downhill collapse that continued for many years, and has never recovered from to date.

Actor who played Batman in 2022 now appears in film that makes clear he wasn't a good choice for the role

This may not be about comics per se, but what the following Front Page article discusses does bring up both Robert Pattison, who played Batman in the 2022 film, which was woke in its own way, and makes at least one allusion to a certain comics supervillain. It's about a film titled Primetime, which is supposedly about news writer Chris Hanson, who's served as host of the To Catch a Predator program on NBC:

The popularity of the long-running (over two decades) NBC News show To Catch a Predator, in which online pedophiles are lured to a sting house where camera crews and local police await them, has entered the stratosphere of pop culture consciousness. Its host Chris Hanson has appeared in or been parodied on many other shows such as The Simpsons and South Park, and his catchphrase “Have a seat,” or some variation thereof, is a familiar meme. The show is credited not only with snaring hundreds of potential predators of the underaged, but with raising awareness of the issue to an unprecedented degree. It has not been without controversy – principally an incident in which a suspect committed suicide as he was being swarmed at his home by a SWAT team and TV cameras – but To Catch a Predator and its host have generally been praised as a force for good and justice in America.

Now a brand new film drama has hit theaters in which Hanson and the show are presented as sleazy, sinister, and damaging to everyone involved and to society at large. Primetime, directed by first-time helmer Lance Oppenheim, stars Robert Pattinson as Hanson, whom he plays with a psychotic intensity that is never fully explained. Pattinson depicts Hanson as initially being obsessed with ratings (his jealousy of Dateline anchor Stone Phillips’ industry “stature” is made palpable) but not ultimately driven by them – unlike his slimy, gum-smacking producer Andie Bender (Bender, interestingly, is a fictional “composite” character, suggesting that the real-life producer[s] weren’t seedy enough to give Oppenheim the material he needed to demonize the entire To Catch a Predator enterprise). [...]

“I guess it’s not surprising that a Hollywood studio would act in such an exploitative or predatory manner,” Hanson told The Hollywood Reporter prior to seeing the film. “We’re talking about an industry that was led by perhaps one of the biggest predators to walk the planet, Harvey Weinstein. They’ll all pat each other on the back and say, ‘What a great job. This is really dark and mysterious and intriguing.’”

After seeing Primetime, a frustrated Hanson told Fox News’ Jesse Watters that the filmmaker clearly wanted to create a “horror-like film” which twisted Hanson into the “bad guy,” and had no interest in presenting the work Hanson did as positive.

This is certainly troubling and disturbing, considering that earlier, as mentioned, Pattinson played the Masked Manhunter in a film that, again, was regrettably woke, and for all we know, the Catwoman was probably just shoehorned in so they could forcibly alter her racial background too. And Batman himself, in that film from 4 years back, doesn't accomplish much on his own anyway.

That aside, there's valid questions to be raised whether it was in good taste for the Simpsons and South Park to be doing parodies of a host working on serious topics. Perhaps well before this new film, Primetime, two of the leading animated TV shows in the USA were belittling a program meant to inform people about serious crimes?

Although Hanson is justifiably offended by Pattinson’s portrayal, it is less revealing than the film’s depiction of the predators he catches. There can hardly be any criminal more repugnant than a pedophile, and yet we spend no real time with any in the film except two men, both of whom are humanized far more than Hanson is, and for whom we are clearly expected to feel sympathy. The first is Hanson’s target in the movie’s opening, a man rendered almost catatonic by Hanson’s entrance into the kitchen, who pleads that he has just recently divorced. Pattinson’s Hanson barely represses a cruel smile as he twists the psychological knife in his victim. “You know how this looks, right?” Hanson whispers. The ruined man eventually exits the house in a daze, only to be thrown to the ground by a swarm of cops. [...]

Primetime is not a big studio flick but an independent film production. Nevertheless, it is right in line with mainstream, contemporary Hollywood’s insistence on subverting good-versus-evil narratives and imposing moral equivalence under the guise of “nuance.” The good guys are far too often shown to be not just flawed but consumed by darkness themselves, like Primetime’s Chris Hanson; meanwhile, the bad guys are humanized and elevated to the point of starring in their own films – The Joker, for instance, played with a different kind of psychotic intensity by Joaquin Phoenix.

Well good that they brought that up, because for all we know, films spotlighting supervillains are potentially on their way to becoming the next avenue for humanization of monsters, if the upcoming movie based on Clayface is any suggestion. And let's not forget the recent film based on Kraven from Marvel; that could've been subtle propaganda too, and we sure don't need to be rooting for criminals. To think that the Joker would be "humanized" in a film of his own is inexcusable.

What's been told about where Pattison's gone next makes me lose whatever respect I might have for him as an actor. If there's a sequel to his Batman film in the works, I'll pass. If the first film was PC, it's hardly a surprise that Pattinson's new movie could be anything similar.

Alternate world Batmans are a subject of this year's Batman Day

The Post-Journal gave a report about a specialty store in Chautauqua County that's contributing to Batman Day. At the beginning, they even describe it in a way I'm not sure was emphasized when the event began a dozen years ago:

Batman/Batgirl Day is an annual event that celebrates and promotes everything related to Batman, according to DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.

What version of Batgirl are they talking about, by the way? Somehow, I don't think they're talking about the women who wore the outfit, like Barbara Gordon or even Cassandra Cain, probably the only 2 characters written well enough within a certain timeframe to qualify as representing the costume. After the early 2000s, lest we forget, things went downhill, even for Cassie.

Steffens explained that the comic book world has seen a seismic shift with the release of the Absolute Batman and Batman of Two Worlds.

"When the comic book industry issues a second or third printing of a book or storyline, it indicates they believe they have a successful product--something that people want," he said. "This latest Batman line is currently in its 12th printing, and I can't keep it on the shelf."

Unfortunately, he continues the failure to cite any actual sales figures, and I've got a feeling that a lot of the additional printings spoken of are done more to mislead than confirm the series is actually selling. When no sales figures are given, it's an open signal there's something embarrassing they want to hide. And to think that so much paper could be wasted over efforts to pretend otherwise.

Steffens believes much of the excitement around the latest Batman offerings stems from a storyline that explores two alternate universes--where different versions of Batman encounter each other.

"One Batman is reminiscent of the Justice League version; Bruce Wayne is his alter ego. He's wealthy, self-funded, wears a cape, and exhibits some restraint. He lost both of his parents at a young age, which drives his mission," he explained. "In contrast, the Absolute version of Batman is much younger; his mother is still alive, and he is utterly ruthless. The 'Bat' symbol on his costume can be detached, and he uses it like an axe. In one comic book, he even nails Scarecrow, one of his enemies, to a cross. I would recommend this comic book for readers aged 16 and older – it’s just that violent.”

Even if this is to be expected in the Masked Manhunter's tales ever since Denny O'Neil restored the series in 1969 to what it began as 3 decades prior, to say we should buy it because of the violence is taking a sad risk of perpetuating a serious problem that wouldn't work well if they emphasized this with Superman either. Speaking of which:

"While I'm more of a Superman fan, this is still a lot of fun," said Steffens. "Batman has an interesting history and allure about him – fans go nuts for him, and we sell a lot of Batman-related merchandise."

At least the guy's willing to bring up the Man of Steel, who's been like a neglected stepchild for too long, as Batman was pushed over the edge of marketing for years now at Superman's expense. But if the craze over Batman is all due to the dark angle and not based on merit, that's insulting to the intellect, and compounds what's gone wrong for years.

Since the subject came up though, it's been reported by sources like Game Rant that the Absolute series would be going on hiatus after issue 25 for at least 2 months:

Following the scheduled release of issue 25 on October 28, 2026, Absolute Batman will officially be done for the rest of 2026, with no confirmed return in 2027 other than a TBP release collecting the most recent batch of issues. The story isn't over yet, as Beyond Ark M is still scheduled for a November 11, 2026 release and is deeply connected to Absolute Batman's mythology, but this is the first time the book is taking a major break.

Fortunately, Scott Snyder has already confirmed that Nick Dragotta will return for Absolute Batman 27, so if nothing else, there are still two more planned issues for the series. Realistically, though, the Absolute line has been a massive success for DC and there is no indication that Absolute Batman is winding down narratively. That hasn't stopped DC from killing great books with lots of potential early before, but hopefully they understand just how much good Absolute Batman has done for the comics industry.

The only truly troubling thing about Absolute Batman going on hiatus is the lack of information about its return. By all accounts, Scott Synder is hard at work on future issues, but too long a break could end up killing all the momentum built since October, 2024.

DC is Losing Their Best Ongoing

While it hopefully won't be long before Absolute Batman returns in 2027, the fact that DC's best ongoing series in a minute is silently and suddenly going on hiatus isn't a great sign – especially in a milestone issue like 25. It almost feels like DC is prepping the Absolute line for a premature end (the fact it's lasted this long is honestly a miracle from Darkseid). Fortunately, there's no indication that the likes of Absolute Superman or Absolute Wonder Woman are ending, so this could just be a way for the creative team to get a break.

What it can suggest is that this is meant to be a writer's vanity project, and they can take a break whenever they like, similar to how an indie creator could operate. Even so, this does suggest it's not doing as well as they want everyone to think, and naturally, they don't mention the political metaphors Absolute Batman builds on, something even the Absolute takes on Supes and WW could have as well. If that's why store owners are promoting the Batman version, there's a serious problem with politics driving their business practices that doesn't belong. And as for alternate world editions, are they implying the Absolute version meets other ones? We're way past the point that could work, and said political metaphors are another reason why it doesn't.

For National Comic Book Day, more news about speculators came up

Here's some recent UPI coverage of National Comic Book Day, which tells how, wouldn't you know it, there was quite a bit of auction-style news brought up as they discuss 5 times comicdom appeared in "odd news". First:

September 25 is National Comic Book Day, celebrating the heroes, villains and stories that have filled comic book pages for generations. UPI is marking the occasion with a look back at five times superheroes -- and their fans, collectibles and real-life counterparts -- made their way into Odd News.

You know, it's very ill-advised to make it sound like the villains are something to celebrate, yet that's what they're certainly risking here, and it's quite the dismay indeed. And then, there's the sugarcoating of speculation:

Also in July, the piece of comic book art that first introduced readers to the Marvel Comics hero Iron Man sold for a record-breaking $3,875,000.

Heritage Auctions announced the sale of the original Don Heck artwork from page 1 of Marvel's Tales of Suspense No. 39 from March 1963.

The final price set a new world record for the highest price paid for a piece of original comic art. The previous record of $3,360,000 was set by a piece of Mike Zeck art from 1984's Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars No. 8. The artwork, which depicts the first appearance of Spider-Man's black costume, was sold in January 2022.

Again, why must we hear about how much it sold, and not say, what the best stories throughout the ages are? And just a single page too. This is getting ridiculous, and no clue whether the audience for comicdom overall has grown as a result. Then comes the following about Wonder Woman:

A Georgia woman paid tribute to her favorite superhero by amassing the world's largest collection of Wonder Woman memorabilia: 1,581 items.

Guinness World Records announced in June that Cedartown resident Aleshia Wiley's collection of memorabilia, including comic books, Funko Pop figurines, action figures, specialty toys and branded merchandise, officially took the title.

Wiley said she likes that Wonder Woman stands for female empowerment.

"Wonder Woman is a beacon of hope for girls and women everywhere, and a reminder that we need to support one another more," she said. "She shows that true strength comes from within and together we have the strength of the Amazons. Over the years, her character has evolved alongside new generations, but one thing has always stayed the same: women can do anything, and together we are unstoppable!"

Now this beggars some challenging questions: does WW still stand for anything positive regarding women? It's been far from the case for years, and the stories haven't been entertaining in a quarter century, with Greg Rucka making it worse when he was writer for at least 3 years. Some recent problems and incidents explain why whatever "female empowerment" is supposed to mean now stand as a joke, and make clear women never really had the backing they needed. Certainly not from leftists. All that aside, can women in real life do virtually anything? Are they "unstoppable"? Sadly, reality says otherwise. And then, more items involving villainy come up on UPI's list:

Also in 2025, a 22-year-old comic book fan from Indiana earned a Guinness World Record for her collection of 2,318 items related to Batman villain the Joker.

Bloomington resident Megan Pierce said she started collecting in middle school, and soon she had amassed items ranging from action figures and comic books to Joker rollerblades, a skateboard and milk caps from 1966. [...]

She said her hobby has allowed her to make connections with Joker fandom figures including actor Mark Hamill, who voiced the character in several animated and video game projects, as well as other collectors.

They were manufacturing merchandise for the Clown Prince of Crime that far back as 60-plus years? Even if that was before the darker angle of Batman was restored in the comics proper, to emphasize a villain who was often written as a murderous man is disturbing. And what's so great about veteran actor Hamill anyway? It's long turned out he's one of the most disturbingly leftist activists around, and I don't want to admire somebody who seems to consider a villain the most ideal role to play. Certainly not a supervillain as nasty as the Joker's often been characterized. Why, even a villain with a seemingly honorable persona as Doctor Doom's been written with is a character to give pause about, mainly because even Doom's been written as a nasty monster too decades before.

If that's the kind of material UPI thinks is a big deal for NCBD, something is terribly wrong here alright.

Filmmaker Zack Snyder continues to discuss his comics-to-film adaptations

Variety interviewed film director Snyder, who's moved on from adapting comics to other projects, but still discusses his prior visions and how the industry's dealt with the adaptations since, while simultaneously discussing his latest movie, "The Last Photograph", which, unfortunately, is dark and sounds easily darker than the comics adaptations he directed, which is why a description of the new film may have to be highlighted here first:

The most common criticism I’ve seen is that there is a lot of violence and brutality toward women in the film and that it was excessive, which has led to accusations of misogyny being leveled against you. What do you say to that?

I mean, I don’t know. First of all, I would argue that the violence toward women and men is equal and that nobody is spared — men, women, children, everybody. The justice that’s doled out in the movie is in the same way that a hurricane doles out justice. To try and superimpose morality over it and want the violence to mean something — the meaning is that violence doesn’t work and doesn’t get anything done.

It really doesn't make much difference whether the men and women both suffer equally. What matters is that Snyder's given another clue to what problems he has with his MO: too much obsession with darkness. And who knows, based on that last line, if he's trying to say it doesn't work even when the goodies employ it as corporal punishment for what horrors the baddies committed? Now, here's a part that appears to discuss the otherwise unsuccessful Justice League film:

And to have this be added to it.

It was so loud — that part was so loud — that, in retrospect, asking, “How’s the movie going?” And they go, “Oh, it’s fine! They’re doing some reshoots.” And I go, “Oh, OK. Fuck it.” So, Debbie went and watched the Joss [Whedon] version of the movie, and to have her come back to me and say, “You can never see that movie,” and to realize then that it was 60 pages of rewrites that they did for it… I’ve never seen the movie, so I don’t know.

You’ve never seen Joss’ version?

I’ve never seen it. There was a point when the movie was released that was a low point for me because the pile-on effect was so insane. Not only did I lose my daughter, but also they’ve released this version of the movie that I had nothing to do with and my name is on a movie that I didn’t make.

Were you like, “What else?!”

“What else!” Literally. But there was this catharsis of, I met with this executive at Warner Bros. who’s long gone since — I won’t say who it was — and he said to me, “You know, Zack, I’ve got to tell you one thing: You were right about everything.” And I was like, “That’s kind of you.” And he goes, “We were fighting you, and in the end you were right.”

What were they fighting you on?

The whole vision for the DC universe and the way I made movies and everything. They did this attempt to control it — and I’m just talking about the regime that was there that’s no longer there. They had this massive IP that’s worth a ton and I can understand wanting to protect it as best they could since all their jobs depended on it working, and they’d put it in the hands of a madman — or so they thought — so the part of them thinking that, and this is going to sound horrible, “This thing that happened to Zack is a window for us to take the movie back now.”

Seriously, they "protected" it? If they had, even Identity Crisis wouldn't have been published, nor would Geoff Johns have been hired as a writer, or even Brian Bendis. Oddly enough, what they did "protect" was an editorial mandate that Superman couldn't have red tights, until a PC selection like Bendis was allowed to restore it in the comics proper. It's something that's actually alluded to in the interview, which I'll get to soon, but for now:

I do want to know what your thoughts are on the current state of the DC Universe. Have you seen “Superman” or “Supergirl”?

I haven’t seen the movies. It’s a little bit too personal for me. Too soon, I guess you could say. I do like James [Gunn]. And I do have an appreciation for his [vision].

I wonder if Gunn and company used Snyder's premise of Superman killing Zod in 2013's Man of Steel movie as justification for having Supergirl kill the villain Krem in the new movie this year? The problem, of course, is that now, a different movie canon was set up, and in the context of what Gunn's producing, it makes Supergirl look awful, with less of a moral compass than Superman, since in the Silver/Bronze Age comics of the past century, her viewpoint and MO were little different from his. For now, it's got to be telling that Snyder's favorable to Gunn, considering that, even if the latter seemingly employed a more optimistic view than the former, the problem is that there were still subtle politics attached as strings, and that's not a good confidence builder. Now, about the costume issues:

He consulted with you on Superman’s suit, right?

He asked me a question about the underwear. You know, I can’t even remember now, but I think it was about the underwear. Sorry, but I’m going to do a little diatribe. “Watchmen” is a superhero deconstruction film — neuroses, sexual impotence around their costumes, the fetishism, everything. You can’t undo that. I think about everything that way. So, the underwear on the outside of the superhero costume comes from Victorian strongmen. The Victorians were so prudish that they’d wear flesh-colored leotards and then put the underwear over it. That’s how it started. It was really just a reflection of the Victorians not wanting to show any real skin due to their prudish fear of nakedness. So to me, that’s such a dinosaur. We don’t feel that way anymore. We live in an era where we’re OK without putting the underwear on. But maybe we’re not OK! Maybe the message is that you put the underwear back on Superman because we haven’t moved on from our Victorian prudishness. But I thought we had!

I wonder what Snyder thinks of how Warner Bros. denied him creative freedom for having the red tights be part of the movie costume, and then at least a few years later, all of a sudden, studio, publisher or both has the sheer audacity to have them restored post-New52, using a woke writer like Bendis as the justification? It's enough to wonder, Snyder went to all that trouble to make adaptations that don't exactly rate as classics today, all so the company could insult everybody's intellect with a "give and take" approach? Well, that's what the "diatribe" suggests. Interestingly, both interviewer and interviewee discuss the lack of sex in a lot of major movies today:

There is sex in your movie and there isn’t a lot of sex in movies anymore.

This is one of my big things: Sex in movies is weirdly gone. I don’t understand it.

And there’s plenty of sex on TV, but not in movies.

And it’s on TV! TV shows can have sex but movies, for whatever reason, can’t. What happened? I’m an ‘80s kid and grew up with “Body Heat,” “9 ½ Weeks.”

I’m a ‘90s kid and grew up with “Basic Instinct” and “The Last Seduction” and “Wild Things.”

Eroticism in movies has somehow been stomped out, and I don’t understand it. We watched “Excalibur” the other day and it’s a very sexy movie. It’s erotic.

Make Hollywood Movies Sexy Again.

Make them sexy again! I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know why TV gets a pass.

“Game of Thrones” had so much sex that it coined the term “sexposition.”

Crazy sex. Crazy sex.

Is it the MPAA?

I don’t know what it is. You know what needs to happen? The same thing that happened with the R-rated movie. So, R-rated movies now have lost their stigma — “The Odyssey,” “Obsession,” whatever it is. Now, we need an NC-17 movie that’s a hit.

Well they didn't impress me when they brought up Game of Thrones, because if memory serves, that has a lot of sexual violence in it, which only gives sex a bad name. Since they mention it, TV's still allowed to write up sex scenes? It remains to be seen if that'll last. For now, what I do know is that, if anybody's ever thought comics adaptations were an okay and/or challenging project in which to feature sex scenes, the woke crowd sure did a splendid job putting the kibosh on all that. They certainly made it difficult to make romance movies too, no matter the suitability level for children/family. IIRC, there may have been implied sex in the 1989 Batman movie, but since that time, most comics adaptations for the silver screen are far from taking such challenges. For now, Snyder simply doesn't understand that it's the very leftist crowd he comes from that's been pushing anti-sex propaganda for as much as a quarter century now, and it's led to a steep decline. Maybe what he could argue is that the time's come to give sex a more positive - if not perfect - name, and that could provide a more encouraging environment in which to explore the themes. Similarly, maybe somebody could argue that Japanese anime/manga producers have to give sex a better name too.

But what Snyder doesn't seem to discuss is that violence, by contrast, has increased in nearly all movie genres over the past decades, and even his own new movie seems to build on that. Perhaps it occurred to him that maybe the time's come to tone down the most graphic of violence for a change, and make distinctions between that and sex that's in good taste?

Now that you’ve made “The Last Photograph,” are there other films you’re still dying to make? Do you still want to make a “Rick and Morty” movie?

I do want to make a “Rick and Morty” movie. It would be fun. For the longest time, I’ve been trying to make “The Fountainhead” into a movie or into TV show because it’s too long. I’ve written it.

That’s not going to help with the right-wing allegations.

I was going to say! That’s not going to help. But it’s an undeniably great book. What people don’t realize is that “The Fountainhead” in the 1950s was like “Harry Potter” now in terms of popularity. It was off the charts. Even just the why of that is worth it. And “The Fountainhead” is an insane melodrama. That’ll probably be my magnum opus. I’ll probably die on that one. And “Escape From New York” is what we’re working on right now.

An important clue why Snyder quite possibly had no issue with stealthing a cameo by the Asian DEI replacement for Ray Palmer as the Atom, Ryan Choi, into the Justice League film, along with an important reminder that he's sadly not all that different from countless Hollywooders in his undoubtably leftist politics. On the other hand:

How did your Christian Science upbringing inform your superhero films? Because you do depict your superheroes as gods.

It’s this alchemy of Christian Science and Joseph Campbell — however you want to mix those together. Christian Science, in the end, is metaphysics. It’s probably closer to Buddhism than Western Christianity or Catholicism. It’s about the miraculous. The one thing about Christian Science is, it’s very much about: The works that I can do, you can do too. I’m the son of God but so are you. It’s very much, like, Jesus is just a dude who figured it out. That influence on Superman is that we’re him — in “Man of Steel,” especially. Yes, he’s godlike, but he still faces the exact same problems that we face. In the end, he loves his mother and wants to find love with Lois and have a job and be a person. Even though I do glorify the version of Superman at its best, I also try at the same time to put you in that position because I believe that we all are Supermen and we all are gods on Earth. I think that’s probably the influence in some ways.

Isn't the Christian Science sect the one that became notorious for refusing medical treatment, based on bizarre beliefs to the contrary? And this was what Snyder was raised under? Good grief. Superman may be depicted as bulletproof in past comics canon, but he was anything but impervious to pain, when one takes both Kryptonite and magic energies into consideration, which not many PC advocates today do. It's actually ill-advised to tout Superman as "godlike", because that only enforces what PC advocates like to weaponize in their efforts to belittle the Big Blue Boy Scout as "inferior" to Batman. Who, if memory serves, Snyder was more favorable to in some of his screenplay drafts. At the end of the interview:

You said once that the only way you’d do another superhero movie is if you could do an adaptation of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns.”

The reason why it’s “The Dark Knight Returns,” if anyone would ever let me do it outside of the DC Universe since it’s a novel that just happens to have superheroes in it, is if I could do “Watchmen” and “Dark Knight Returns,” those two books next to each other, to me, represent the complete cycle of the superhero comic book medium. You can do no more than those two books. “Watchmen” came at the beginning of the superhero movie phase, so it would be super fitting to have “The Dark Knight Returns” come now, at what I would say is possibly — I don’t want to call it the twilight, but we’re down the road of the superhero movie genre, and I think audiences would understand the why of it. Let’s not forget: “The Dark Knight Returns” was written for a comic book audience that was very exhausted by comic books in the same way that “Watchmen” was, so having that movie written now for people who are exhausted by comic book movies would be a good time.

I'm so tired of hearing about DKR all over the place. Besides, didn't Miller later write 2-3 sequels and even a prequel in the past 2 decades, such as Last Crusade, Dark Knight Strikes Again, the Master Race and the Golden Child? They probably didn't get as good a reception as DKR got, yet they certainly helped overflood the market with more of the same cliches Miller's known for. If the audience is tired of superhero film fare, why should they care about yet another Batman movie of this sort either? Besides, most of the more recent superhero films aren't exactly built on the most inspiring story premises, and that's why you can't be surprised if their light's dimmed.

In the end, if there's something imporatant to say, it's that I'm most terribly sorry Snyder lost his daughter, and offer my condolences, but it doesn't change that he's one of the most overrated filmmakers of the modern era, his films are no big deal, and unlikely to register high in history records in decades to come. And then he goes right along and makes yet another violence-prone movie called The Last Photograph, and we're supposed to be impressed with the more noticable lurch to darkness? Please. That's as predictable as his own comics films turned out to be.

Onetime DC employee who wrote a terrible Adam Strange tale turns up again

The Comics Journal interviewed Richard Bruning, one of DC's former managers (and husband of the onetime editor Karen Berger), who, while it goes curiously unmentioned, had a handful stories to his credits, including a repellent miniseries from 1990 starring Adam Strange, which saw humanoid co-star Alanna killed for the sake of it, though that story was reversed several years later. Though I couldn't seem to find any mention of Adam Strange here, the discussion does bring up the following, along with early efforts in digital artistry, and how Paul Levitz actually thought this guy was worth keeping for employment:

There had been a couple of novelty efforts at computer art in comics by that point. There was Shatter for First Comics, and then an Iron Man graphic novel [1988’s Crash] at Marvel…

Pepé Moreno approached us after Shatter came out, and we did Batman: Digital Justice. I got to work with him very closely on it, and I started learning a lot about how those tools could work. He and Mike Saenz [artist of Shatter and Crash] were pushing the boundaries of what these machines could handle. I don't even know how they pulled off what they did, and it was certainly crude in some ways, but it was a necessary step to get to a technological level that would give you art worth looking at. All those things convinced me that this was a real turning point in my industry publication and communication. I was getting very impatient with DC dragging its heels. I had become friends with another graphic designer, Dean Motter from Canada, and we had been talking about forming a business and opening up studios in Manhattan. He was moving down from Toronto and wanted to live in New York.

That was around 1990?

Yeah. I decided to go out on a limb and resign, and then set up a studio with Dean. Fortunately for me, Paul liked what I did, and he signed me up to an exclusive contract for the comic book business [at DC]. I couldn't work for any other publisher, but I got paid every month whether I worked or not, which was kind of cool, and it certainly helped financially in getting a business started.

You must have made a compelling pitch to him.

I didn't pitch it, he pitched it to me. I had a very successful run for those five years at DC, and I had become fairly high profile within the company, which was a very small company at that point. I think Paul saw something in me, and he didn't want Marvel to have it. Basically, he thought it was to his advantage as a businessman to keep me off the market for the competition. That was an incredible honor, and I left on good terms with him. He was happy just to have me still doing freelance work for DC, and not working for Marvel or anybody else.

What's curious about the mention of "freelance" work is that it sounds like Mr. Bruning's obscuring the time when he wrote the aforementioned Adam Strange miniseries, Man of Two Worlds, which was pretty shoddy, and while Alanna's fate was reversed later on, as noted, that doesn't change the fact that it was artistically an embarrassment. But that's exactly why it's a shame if Comics Journal's writer and Bruning himself deliberately obscured his writing portfolio and all but limited the discussion to the business side of things. That only suggests they don't have the courage to discuss what mistakes were made in writing, and possibly art, and how to improve upon said mistakes in the future.

As for computerized artwork, there may have been some achievements, including the aforementioned Iron Man special, but some of the more recent efforts from the past 20 years or so are utterly worthless, recalling an artist named Adi Granov who specialized in stuff like that for Marvel. Other artists like Greg Horn only seemed to do cover art, and while that alone might be okay, it hardly helps in the long run. Digital art may have some potential, but Marvel decidedly didn't make good use of it by the turn of the century. Now, here's where he first brings up how he had a role in getting rid of DC's symbol that was retained from 1977-2005, though recently was restored, certainly on the DC Finest archives. It was the Vertigo line where this first occurred:

Tell me about the process of developing the Vertigo design. Was the idea that you wanted to set this off as visually something distinct from the main DC branding?

Yes, that was one of the things we decided early on. We did not want the DC bullet on the Vertigo books.

You said that you always had problems with that bullet.

Paul thought that some identification to DC [was necessary]. I didn't integrate it into the Vertigo logo per se, on the covers and such, but there'd be a little “DC” in a different typeface just right above or right below the Vertigo logo on the covers. There was that presence or indicator that DC was part of it. We worked that out with Paul, and it worked out fine. It was just a matter of figuring out how to do a line of books that people know are from DC, that will appeal to people who don't read DC comics. How do we get them to want to try it out? Creating a specific identity was really important.

One of the ways was we did this was to use only painted covers. There were very few painted covers on regular comic books, partially because they are not economically feasible, and also because people wanted their line art to maintain [consistency] for the superhero titles. We were able to start commissioning painters to do covers, and that immediately gave the book a different feel and look. The editorial stuff was all Karen.

Oh, I remember some painted covers on books like Avengers and New Teen Titans, and I'll say that those examples were among the better of their kind, if only because they weren't forced, unlike the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, which featured stunningly dull cover illustrations, whether painted or not. Why Bruning and company seemed to think it was such a big deal for an imprint that was allegedly aimed at adults I have no idea, because if they did it almost routinely and by editorial mandate, that risks insulting intellects. And speaking of Sandman, that's mentioned here:

It seems like that was pretty intrinsic to the Vertigo line from the beginning. There was this system, especially for some of the bigger titles like Sandman, where you would get collections coming out almost as soon as the story arcs concluded in the monthlies.

There was a lot of back and forth on that, because it wasn't the normal way that DC did things. They usually let time pass. It wasn't very important when you collected a certain volume of The Flash, but we could tell that we were picking up new readers all the time. We didn't want them to feel out of touch with what was going on in the books as book sales rose. We pushed very hard to get the books collected early. We would go to all the different comic dealer meetings and expos and talk to the retailers about this. The retailers were very explicit about the fact that if we give them volume one, and then three months later we give them volume two, and then volume three, they can push those books out the door all day long. That was the general consensus from the retailers. So we had a really strong ally in that, and it helped us firm that up as a publishing platform.

And a comic as overrated as Sandman truly was is exactly what they just had to collect instantly. All they did was hint they considered the superhero fare less valuable, compared to a comic that was more like a political lecture a number of times. But of course, they won't admit that, will they?

Most annoying of all is how the same publishers wouldn't consider the time may have come for making a shift to paperback/hardcover only, or even Graphic Novel format, if that sums it up better. Why waste so much money on two formats, rather than consider what could become more viable sales and business-wise?

Would you say that Paul was more reluctant to push for collected editions, while Jenette was more gung-ho in favor of it?

Yes. Jenette was by nature, a very gung-ho person. You could get around Paul by going to Jeanette, and then Jenette would convince Paul that it was a good idea, and he'd throw his hands up and go, “All right, whatever you want.” She was a wonderful agent of change. Without Jenette coming into the company when she did, I doubt DC would still be around. I mean, it almost folded in the late ‘70s. It was her enthusiasm and ability to take a risk – and Paul's ability to take a risk, too. He was not risk-averse. What you were trying to do just had better be nailed down. Don’t just wing it.

But, really, it was a good time. And the people there - Dick Giordano and everybody - were very supportive. Superhero editors were never very happy with Vertigo. Somehow they saw it as competition, or I think they saw it as thumbing our noses at the superhero books. That wasn't true. We were just doing our thing.

Oh, were they ever, if we take the Sandman as an example. It's one thing to write an adult comic, but another entirely to act like horror and dark, jarring violence are the only ways to do it. Even the heavier use of profanity in the Vertigo line is enough to raise questions. Now, here's more on what Bruning said about DC's most significant symbol:

You finally got to live out your dream of abandoning the bullet after all that time. And of course, it immediately ran into criticism from just about everywhere.

Yep. There is no pleasing people. I stand by my position that if you are stripping away the nostalgia that all of us, including myself, grew up with, the Bullet, structurally, doesn't work very well. There is too much negative space to it. Everything gets tiny if you start to reduce it. The little hair lines start to break up. It just becomes a little clump of things. And that's why on the design, I wanted a big clear “DC.” Whereas on the Bullet, the “DC” seems unimportant compared to the band with four white stars on it. I've worked with it physically more than most people have. I saw that early on that there were a lot of internal structural problems with the design itself, and I stand by that.

Well that's still nothing compared to the artistic mess DC became by that time, which Bruning and interviewer conveniently left out. But if the "DC Bullet" symbol matters, they were making peanuts out of an otherwise okay symbol for putting on the top corner of the comics, and considering Mr. Bruning otherwise didn't offer much positive by the mid-2000s, it's awfully hypocritical of him to make petty fusses about symbols when the company under DiDio plunged into repellent disasters. Years ago, I didn't even know they called it a "bullet"; I just thought it was a "diagonal" coin-like symbol. Since then, it's made a quiet comeback, now put to use on archives like the DC Finest series. So what's Bruning celebrating anyway?

It's striking to me that here we are in 2026, and yet after all this time, it feels like publishers have thrown up their hands at the idea of finding a new format that specifically works with digital readers and phones, and everything else. At the end of the day, comics still look like comics did 30 years ago.

Right? It's a unique format, and it is hard to get it to accommodate other means of presentation. People who buy comics are aware of a certain amount of a collectible nature in them. I think people wanted to be able to buy and hold the comics, and digital comics never gave them that. They didn't feel like they had anything. Comic book people have a physical collector sort of mentality. And I do, too. I love seeing the books lined up on my shelf. So yeah, that one hasn't been cracked yet.

Interesting they brought this up, because it's an important clue how digital comics on the web haven't caught on successfully, and certainly not the Big Two's. At the same time, they also hint at the misfortune of the speculator market, which largely ruined comicdom beginning in the early to mid-90s. And lest we forget, if they think anybody's going to care about digital when their stories are otherwise bad, they have to think again. When artwork becomes bad, and company wide crossovers keep getting churned out entirely unquestioned, that's why digital sales won't work. Next, wouldn't you know it, Mr. Bruning even lauds a man who turned out to be a bad omen, who ruined the storytelling, and whom Mr. Bruning apparently had a hand in approving for employment:

Around the same time that Zuda launched, Dan DiDio became executive editor at DC. I'm wondering how that played out in terms of your role.

I was one of the few people who interviewed Dan before he was hired. Paul wanted my take on him. Dan is another super smart guy, knows comics inside and out; he had even been doing a little writing, as well. He was pals with Jimmy Palmiotti, so he'd been given a few assignments here and there. Dan had big ambitions. I was very enthusiastic when he came on board, partially because the whole Mike/Denny/Archie thing hadn't worked. And then Archie tragically died from cancer. Denny was just – God love him, but he was kind of checked out. The burden was falling on Mike, but Mike had been carrying the ball for years by himself, and it's a hard job. Marvel couldn't keep anybody in place for a long time as editor-in-chief. There was turnover every year or two.

When you say that Denny was checked out, what do you mean?

I'm not trying to insult Denny. He was very nice man, but he just didn't seem like he was engaged in his work, shall we say. When I had a Batman project that I was working on, he felt a little too hands-off for me. At least, that’s how I view what an editor does, and he had his assistant doing most things. Again, I'm not trying to slag him, but just I think he was tired. He was tired of doing superhero comics.

As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Bruning is belittling O'Neil, though there's valid arguments to make that even O'Neil made serious mistakes. Also note how Bruning, by contrast, is more favorable to DiDio, and that's as telling as it's disgusting. If he's talking about Mike Carlin, it can be validly argued he was a failure, based on how he threw the late Len Strazewski under the bus, and I don't think Archie Goodwin, whom I assume he's alluding to, did a good job with them either, based on his being an editor of the pretentious James Robinson's Starman series. But to say DiDio was galaxies better than them, and knew comics inside-out, when he lacked a moral compass and relied heavily upon crossovers, that's insulting to the intellect.

The other big thing that was going on at that point was the merger of WildStorm into DC, which also brought Jim Lee into the company. How was that playing out?

That was funny. I hadn't been back long when Paul called me and said, “This is quiet. Don't tell anybody, but we're buying WildStorm, and I want you to help be the liaison to their offices to try to integrate them into ours.” We had never tried to do that before. Milestone was the closest thing where they had their own little editorial setup, but Jim had a very well-established shop that did everything. It was Jim that DC seemed to be buying. They were buying more Jim than they were buying WildStorm properties.

I went out to La Jolla every couple of months and just hung around there for three or four days, met with people, asked them if I could help them with anything, and if there was anything New York should be doing for them. We'd go over cover sketches, we'd go over marketing materials, just trying to point them in a direction, not tell them what they had to do.

A lot of good that did in the end. The Wildstorm universe didn't see much success when they bought it, or even tried to merge it into the DCU proper, and for something like 15 years now, it's largely vanished into the land of the forgotten. So what "success" is Mr. Bruning talking about even here?

If you look at the way DC looked when you came in ‘96 and the way it was when you left in 2010, do you think your time there was a success or a failure?

I'd like to think there were few failures. Something can be a success and be a commercial failure. If you achieve your creative goals, then it's a success. If people don't buy it, they're stupid. I was very fortunate there. I just felt like they gave me a lot of rope to hang myself, and I never hung myself, and they backed me. Even if I did something really stupid, they would say, don't do that again, and then let me move on. I'm eternally grateful to people like Jenette, and Paul, and Dick, but Paul probably the most of all. He was the one who brought me back for the 15-year tenure.

I think for me, the end really came when Warner Brothers decided these movies are really fucking big deals. The Batman trilogy was just setting the world on fire. That was the clarion call for corporate to come in from the West Coast and start telling us how the new place was going to be run.

He can say whatever he likes, but I think Mr. Bruning knows the failures were plenty when it comes to the comics themselves, and the company wide crossovers were also a standout example of that. And while the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy may have been a success, there were other adaptations that were failures, like the Jonah Hex and Green Lantern movies, to name early examples in modern times.

And it's very insulting how Mr. Bruning acts like they achieved artistic success in the past 3 decades, when early examples of destruction like the mishandling of Green Lantern can clarify otherwise. For the Flash, the plummeting down came when Geoff Johns became writer. And lest we forget the most repulsive example of the 2000s, Identity Crisis. Mr. Bruning's declaration the audience is "stupid" for not buying is also poor conduct, because you don't use insulting words to describe consumers who aren't interested in your output when it effectively becomes repellent. No doubt, he also has some responsibility for bringing in even more "woke" writers of the times, and artists. Based on that, he's another former employee of the majors who won't be missed, based on what pretentions he foisted upon the DCU, which includes his aforementioned Adam Strange miniseries, which he didn't even have the courage to discuss. That's very telling as to how much he merely whistles in the dark.

I think This Man, This Collection's take on Man of Two Worlds sums up pretty well why the story aged poorly:

In Bruning’s introduction to the collected edition of this story, he defends himself by stating his childhood love of the character, and that he was trying to apply the same approach to storytelling that that Alan Moore applied in Watchmen and Swamp Thing or that Frank Miller did with The Dark Knight Returns. But in his zeal to tell a more “mature” Adam Strange story, Bruning loses track of what made the character appealing in the first place. That opinion was clearly the one that prevailed, given what happened next. After this mini-series, Adam Strange dropped out of the DC Universe completely; his next appearance was a few years later in a supporting role in Green Lantern #75, when Kyle Rayner moved the floating city of Ranagar back to the planet. In 1998, in Mark Waid hit the reset button by bringing Alanna back to life in two-issue story in JLA. Aside from Adam’s daughter, everything of consequence from Adam Strange had been undone.

So he basically "cliched" the audience by applying more darkness than need be, and surely worse yet, making Adam far less heroic, if at all, and making Ranagar's council look repellent too. The part about the Zeta-beam being designed to teleport a guy to Rann for the purpose of serving as a breeding stud also conflicts with the original takes from the Silver Age. This posting misses, however, that there was a Hal Jordan-starring GL story written by the disgraced Gerard Jones printed in 1993, prior to the Rayner run, where Adam made an appearance, and that story stunk of fishy stuff too. And Bruning didn't even have the courage to discuss any of that in his Comics Journal interview. It's fortunate that dreadful story was jettisoned, but unfortunate the DCU had to collapse afterwards due to the machinations of an editor Bruning himself had a hand in appointing a quarter century ago. As a result, Adam Strange and company still suffered a terrible injustice, as did many other DCU cast members.

Batman's Knightfall becomes an animated cartoon

Inverse told some history of what may be one of the better offerings of the 1990s, the time when Batman's Knightfall event introduced Bane, the hefty villain whose main achievement at the time was breaking Batman's back. A story that's now subject of animated films. The writer spoke with the animation producers, but strangely enough, neither Bane's co-creators Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan, nor any other connected writers and artists of the time are named for their jobs here. For now, let's take a look at the beginning paragraphs:

Without a doubt, the 1990s were a period of extreme transformation and experimentation for the comic book industry. And depending on who you ask, it wasn’t exactly a great one. The era was dominated by gimmicks like foil and glow-in-the-dark covers, murderous edgelord antiheroes with big guns, hundreds of pockets, and odd things strapped to their legs. This was also the era in which both DC and Marvel became increasingly aware of the spectator market of comic book purchases. DC’s 1992 stunt, The Death of Superman, was designed to sell a special edition comic book, just as much as it was designed to shake up internal narrative continuity. Similarly, in 1994, Hal Jordan went mad with grief after the destruction of his entire city and became the villain Parallax, slaughtering most of the Green Lantern Corps in the Emerald Twilight storyline.

And yet neither event was as daring and complex as the most iconic destruction of one hero from that decade: the breaking of the Bat in Knightfall, a trilogy of storylines that played out over the course of 1993 and 1994 and across no less than seven distinct DC titles. Now, 33 years after Knightfall began, and 14 years after the live-action film The Dark Knight Rises adapted aspects of the storyline, an animated DC film trilogy is faithfully bringing Knightfall to life.

If there's any problem with the 2nd paragraph, it's that it has the effect of making you wonder if the writer really does find what's told in the 1st reprehensible. And Emerald Twilight definitely was. Amazing they admit the Death and Return of Superman was a stunt, because not every mainstream news site's willing to clearly admit that. Also disturbing is that it served as a lead-in to Emerald Twilight, based on how the destruction of Coast City took place in a connecting tale.

It’s impossible to understate just how shocking Knightfall was at the time of release and also how much it permeates Batman media. It’s referenced in the Arkham games and, again, is the partial basis for 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises.

Krieg remembers working across the street from New York’s Forbidden Planet Comics, going in so broke that he’d “just read the comics from the stands.” Morales, somebody who “grew up with the story and was a fan as it was happening,” describes his reaction to joining the project as one of “amazement.” Knightfall was a turning point for the industry as much as it was a turning point for the character of Batman himself – it depicted a vision of the character on the verge of extreme burnout and exhaustion, working beyond his limits while ignoring the lingering trauma of Jason Todd’s murder and Superman’s death.

Neither of which examples are very good, because the former was a cheap way of jettisoning a character based on that he supposedly sent a rapist to his death for scaring an innocent woman into committing suicide. And the latter was just a cheap way of getting short range attention for the Man of Steel, in a year long storyline that later saw the Toyman murder Cat Grant's son. We certainly didn't need the latter example put into effect, mainly because it does leave a bad aftertaste.

If there was anything peculiar about the death of Jason Todd, it's that, if he was trying and failed to defuse a bomb left by the Joker, it didn't disintegrate Todd at all. His body, though badly scarred and dripping with blood, was still largely intact, considering that in reality, it could've been blown to smithereens if struck at close range by an explosion. Batman comics can be as surreal as their more science-fantasy emphasizing couterparts, but if "reality" is really a big deal to the higher echelons, they sure didn't follow through with it there. Though it's decidedly fortunate that, when Bane broke the Bat's back in 1993, it wasn't portrayed graphically. Today, in the Geoff Johns-influenced era, that could all turn out much differently. And back to the cartoon adaptations, there's a notable character who's also making an appearance in them:

Even with those concessions, Batman: Knightfall – Part 1 is still extremely accurate and retains a key part of the original storyline overlooked by most adaptations: Jean-Paul Valley, the replacement Batman who gets a high-tech Batsuit as an upgrade but degenerates into a savage, vicious killer in the mantle. The character debuted two years before Knightfall as an unassuming college graduate, unwittingly raised since birth by the mysterious Order of St. Dumas to become the assassin Azrael. While Bane is the villain with all the pop culture recognition, Azrael was always intended to be the storyline’s final antagonist, an ideological battle between Batman’s strict moral code and the amoral ruthlessness of the antiheroes like Spawn and Cable popular in the 90s – and the movie sets up that conflict firmly by making Jean-Paul the saga’s third main character.

Azrael is introduced in a brutal cold open where Batman catches him in the middle of murdering a gang of criminals and offers him psychological help when he realizes his troubles. According to Morales, that opening “gives you a sense of Azrael and how violent he can be, how he’s not Batman but a darker version that kills. Then it shows you Batman in his peak form before we start to take him down later. I thought it was valuable to establish that this is how good Batman is, and this is how good Azrael is.”

Wow, that's their whole idea of an achievement, huh? Interesting that Azrael's the character who kills more noticeably, and unlike Jason Todd, Valley wasn't bumped off like Todd was, though at the end of the solo series created for Azrael, Valley was put to an end, and his role was later filled by a character named Michael Lane in the mid-2000s. Some could probably wonder if the arguments against killing violent criminals symbolized with Azrael is what led to the leftist hostility against the Punisher years later, even as Wolverine continues to get a free pass on the same acts Frank Castle was depicted performing. It hasn't done mainstream superhero comics any good, of course, and we've seen the effect it's had on readership and sales since.

Much as I think Dixon and Nolan turned out a significant addition to Batman lore of the time, it doesn't sound from this interview like the cartoon producers are truly grateful to the aforementioned twosome, and at this point, what's the use of a cartoon adaptation anyway, in an era where the zygote was ruined by PC and bad management?

Why the late artist Darwyn Cooke took the job drawing Catwoman's 3rd volume

Since the subject of pretentious writer Ed Brubaker recently came up, I found this fluff-coated Popverse article from last May, telling why the late artist Darwyn Cooke accepted the assignment of drawing the Catwoman volume Brubaker wrote in the early 2000s:

Catwoman has nine lives, and one of her most notable lives was her 2001 revamp by Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke. The character’s previous run had mostly portrayed her as a cunning thief in skimpy clothing, but Brubaker and Cooke gave her a new look, a new supporting cast, and a new mission as the protector of Gotham’s East End. According to Darwyn Cooke, who passed away in 2016, this was a dealbreaker for him.

“Going back to Catwoman, when I was asked if I wanted to get involved in that, I said, ‘On one condition. She has to be completely redesigned. And I have to know that the writer believes, as well as I know, that this is a book that should be aimed at women, not at teenage boys,’” Darwyn Cooke says during a panel at Toronto Fan Expo 2009.

“And I said if that’s the approach we’re going to take, then I’m happy to get involved, because this is a great character, and it gives us an opportunity to build her back up and redeem her as a person and get girls reading comics again and excited about a character that they can relate to. I’ve always felt that this is an important thing that any sort of creator should be trying to consider.”

It’s good to have nine lives, and it’s even better if one of them is penciled by Darwyn Cooke.

I think a challenging query to be raised here is - what's so wrong with writing a story appealing to teen boys? Or, who says the same approach won't appeal to teen girls as well? In hindsight, I'm really not impressed with Cooke as an artist, and IIRC, at the time this took place, DC made efforts to do away with the blue shadings from previous designs for Batman's costume, and make entirely black. Catwoman's costume underwent a similar change, of course. But was her previous outfit really skimpy? I think during the 80s, Selina Kyle had one with cleavage, but I don't recall if what she wore in the 90s drawn by Jim Balent had, so this is another unshockingly sloppy take on history.

That said, did women really flock en masse to Brubaker and Cooke's take on the Feline Fatale? Perhaps the following I found on CBR's forums from 2016 can give a clue:

I did some research on Catwoman's sales from 1994 to 2016 on comichron.com and diamondcomics.com. I've been wondering why Catwoman sales have been so low, especially why they plummeted a few issues ago since they've been the best issues I've read in many years. Now it is assumed the comic is cancelled because it was not mentioned as being included during the Rebirth event.

Catwoman vol 2 (1993-2001) maintained much, much better sales than vol 3 or vol 4. In fact, the final issue of vol 2 in 2001 (the worst selling of the series) sold almost as many copies as vol 3 issue 25 (by Brubaker) in 2003, about 26,000 copies. The 90's Catwoman never ranked below 100 in the monthly Top 100 Comics chart. It only dropped below a rank of 75 around the Fall of 2000. It almost always sold as many issues as Robin, Supergirl, Birds of Pray, often outselling them and usually outsold Wonder Woman consistently.

Volume 3, which ran from 2001-2008, did not sell near as well. Its sales dropped from 49,000 copies of issue #1 to 26,500 copies of issue #12 in only a year. It consistently ranked well under 75 on the Top 100 chart, oftentimes dropping below 100. Its final issue only sold 15,000 copies.

Volume 4, the New 52, sold a little better than vol 3. Issue #1 sold 53,670 copies, but issue #20 was down to 26,900 copies, ranking 85th on the chart and was then one of the 3 worst selling DC titles. Sales from that point on were consistent until issue 42 only sold 22,000 copies. Then issue 47, Frank Tieri's first issue, plummeted to only 15,000 copies, ranking 166 on The Top 200 chart for December 2015.

These sales figures make it pretty obvious that the stories told and the artwork used used in Vol 2 in the 90's was significantly* more desirable than that of Vol 3 & 4.

I believe there were a few problems with Vol 3 from the beginning of it. First, I believe the new costume was simply unattractive. Darwyn Cooke said he wanted to tone down Catwoman's sexiness and make her look more practical and utilitarian. And he gave her bug-eye goggles. Catwoman became the opposite of sexy and I think that was a bad idea.

Next I think focusing on Catwoman in the role of a vigilante sworn to protect Gotham's seedy East End, where she has a controversial history of working as dominatrix, probably wasn't ideal for most comic readers. I think it was too dark and controversial for general audiences to get into. This was not the Catwoman that the public was used to seeing, and not what they wanted for her comic. She has always been glamorous and sensuous. She was fun because she was naughty, but still helped people often. This new Catwoman was a complete opposite, so people didn't buy it.

Vol 4, the New 52, had prettier artwork but the same bug-eye goggles, Emma Peele outfit, and bulky boots. She was a theif again but she was younger and dumber. And she was having sex with Batman while the two of them kept their masks on in the first issue. Yeah because when you wear a mask over the top half of your face, the person you are frequently screwing will never find out your true identity. This is just bad writing, which simply got worse over the next few years and the sales kept dropping.*

It's tragic that the past few issues have such low sales, and that Catwoman won't be included in DC's Rebirth. Frank Tieri's issues have been recieving great reviews, especially issue #50.

But I hope that DC has big plans for Catwoman to make her more attractive, more exciting, and more successful.

Thoughts??

Unfortunately, as the wokeness of the past decade made clear, there was no reason for optimism, and besides, Identity Crisis also led to ruination. IIRC, there was a story with Catwoman shortly afterwards where a retcon took place claiming she'd been influenced by Zatanna, quite possibly at Batman's request, to reform Selina. In other words, according to that tale, Selina did not reform of her own accord and thinking, which makes a mockery and insult to the older works of better writers.

Cooke's claims also ring hollow when you consider that at least a few women actually worked on the Feline Fatale years earlier. For example, Mindy Newell, and then Jo Duffy, who wrote the first 14 issues of the 90s series. So Cooke and Brubaker were insulting a woman who had no issue with depicting Selina Kyle as sexy. A most disgraceful distortion Cooke pulled there, and if memory serves, Brubaker not only implausibly revived Holly Robinson, a character originally seen in Frank Miller's Year One tale from 1987, Brubaker even turned her into a lesbian for the sake of it.

Now I'll give Cooke this: he did the right thing to say he didn't want to see the kind of one-sided sexual violence seen in Identity Crisis become normalized as offensive, sensationalistic plot devices. But if he once said he didn't want to see once heterosexual characters be turned LGBT overnight, he contradicted that, in a manner of speaking, by working with a writer as overrated and exploitive as Brubaker, who did something like that, certainly in Gotham Central with Greg Rucka, where they changed the Renee Montoya character to lesbian. Cooke also continued to work with DC even after Identity Crisis came out, and it can be validly argued that in doing so, Cooke wasn't following through on his arguments convincingly. Besides, he also once led a chummy connection with the disgraced Gerard Jones, and that too doesn't reflect well on Cooke in hindsight.

Cooke may have made a few valid statements, but he was apparently an early example of a wokester, and one can only wonder what he thought of his take on Catwoman selling considerably lower than the volume drawn by Balent, and first written by Duffy. Cooke not only insulted the aforementioned two, he also insulted plenty of other, more talented artists who came before Balent, like those who drew Catwoman in the 1970s. Having artists like Cooke on the job is sadly not better at all.

And as for the mention of Frank Tieri, wasn't he the writer who derailed Wolverine in the last 2 years of the 1988-2003 series? One more reason why I'd rather not buy his take on Catwoman either.

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.

What former DC editor Joseph Illidge works in today

Newsweek interviewed veteran editor Joseph Illidge, who worked on the Milestone imprint 3 decades ago, and is now running a company titled Illuminous:

For more than three decades, Joseph Illidge has moved between the creative and corporate engines of comics, and while his résumé includes Milestone Media, Batman, Spawn Universe, and a slate of original graphic novels, his latest venture begins with a deceptively simple question: What if the story someone has carried for years finally received the architecture, talent and business strategy required to become real?

Illuminous, Illidge’s production and creative-services company, is built for those dormant epics, whether an entrepreneur has imagined a sprawling fantasy saga or an experienced comics creator wants to strengthen a new world before publication.

“There are so many people out there” with a “nagging idea,” Illidge told Newsweek, and because many cannot see a path from private inspiration to publishable intellectual property, he wants the company to make such possibility tangible.

The company grew out of a career spent protecting established characters while opening doors for new ones. Illidge began at Milestone, whose founders created an inclusive superhero universe amid an industry that had marginalized them and their identities, and he sees a direct connection between that entrepreneurial example and Illuminous.

“It really stems from starting my career at Milestone,” he said. “Starting my career at a company like that really led in a straight line to Illuminous, and founding that company so it could provide empowerment for a new generation of creators [and] veteran creators.”

I should hope they're actually trying to develop something meaningful, years after Dan DiDio almost singlehandedly ruined DC, and Joe Quesada similarly ruined Marvel. But if it's DC/Marvel we're talking about, Illidge failed epically to protect established characters, some of whom saw new ones built on DEI brought in at the expense of the old ones. An Asian Atom, Black Firestorm and Latino Blue Beetle, in example, introduced through forced and contrived situations, and they've largely vanished since, though at the same time, DC seems opposed to fully reinstating Ray Palmer and Ted Kord to their roles, not to mention some of their civilian co-stars like Jean Loring. If Illidge is obscuring what came at the time of Identity Crisis, he's done a terrible disfavor.

“Comic books are the fastest and relatively least expensive way to get an idea to market, to start identifying and growing an audience and building a community,” Illidge said. “It is the beginning of how intellectual properties and projects are identified by other companies for adaptations.”

Illidge sees opportunity in an entertainment economy whose attitude toward originality can shift with a pair of hits. He pointed to Sinners and Weapons, two 2025 films whose success followed an era of “peak IP” thinking, when studios favored reboots and familiar franchises.

“Suddenly the narrative changed, and Hollywood wanted original ideas again,” he said. “We’re not at a time of fatigue of stories. What people do want is an original take on the familiar genres.”

Well if Hollywood's relying on darkness and the horror theme, as a title like Sinners could suggest, I'm not sure "original" ideas are seriously being considered. What's certainly lacking is more comedy stories, along with more optimism. Something that isn't clear so far from what Illidge is telling. Also, it can't be built upon woke themes, or contrived DEI. Also, if adaptations are what he cares about, that's unfortunately a problem. What has to matter first and foremost is the comic story itself. I seem to recall AWA Studios, founded as it was by Bill Jemas and Axel Alonso, built on the hopes of producing comics that could be adapted to other mediums, and that only undercuts the potential of the comic itself.

A creator’s first meeting with Illidge moves quickly past spectacle, since he begins with two questions whose answers expose the story’s emotional foundation: “Why this story?” and “What’s the theme of your story?”

Half of his clients, he said, arrive without a clear theme, while others treat premise and theme as interchangeable; once the distinction emerges, however, the entire project gains direction.

“We’re going to discover [the theme] together,” he tells them. “Once you know what your theme is, which is really the underpinning of your story, you’re truly off to the races.”

His framework is ICWTC: idea, character, world, theme and cast. The idea defines the project; the lead character gives readers someone to follow; the world creates pressure; the theme clarifies the story’s deeper argument; and the cast either supports or challenges both protagonist and theme.

“In any story, you need a primary character for the audience to care about,” Illidge said, adding, “For drama, the world has to create tension for the character. The world cannot be in the character’s favor; it has to be the character’s macro enemy.”

In that case, I hope he recognizes just how artificial DC and Marvel's "plans" were in the past quarter century. Why, come to think of it, while an argument about need for a lead to care about is valid, shouldn't entertainment value be the foremost importance? It should also be noted DC/Marvel weren't interested in actually getting audiences to care about the characters when they turned out Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled. Even before that, I can't say they actually wanted anybody to care about Kyle Rayner as a 3rd Green Lantern, no matter what nonsense they spouted 3 decades ago. And lest we forget, Emerald Twilight was all done at Hal Jordan's expense, a decade before they subjected a number of other characters to the same, this time under the confidence that, because the characters in question were more minor, nobody would give a damn. That's but one of the reasons the atrocities of the 2000s are so offensive.

Illidge then describes how he hires whom he believes are the perfect artists for the job:

As the story takes shape, Illidge begins looking for artists whose work carries the project’s tone while inviting readers into its world. “Art brings people to stories, and the writing keeps them there,” he said.

The right collaborator can also reveal possibilities a writer never envisioned, which is why Illidge urges clients to reject a command-and-control relationship with the person drawing their book.

“Try to think of the artist as your partner,” he said. “They are going to do things you could not have conceived, and it’s going to surprise you.”

Brian Hitch provides Illidge’s clearest example of visual authorship becoming industry architecture. Hitch’s naturalistic work on The Ultimates, created with Mark Millar, helped establish a cinematic vocabulary later associated with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while his earlier work on The Authority demonstrated how forceful design and widescreen composition could make superhero spectacle feel immediate.

He considers artists with such overrated resumes the best choices? Oh for heaven's sake. This also reminds me of the time author Sean Howe argued almost 15 years ago that making comics look like movies is a losing formula. So why must we hear somebody who worked with Mark Millar on stories emphasizing shock value is a great choice? Only if Hitch can prove he's willing to try out something less forced and more inspiring than what the aforementioned stories turned out to be.

Illidge’s years editing Batman comics trained him to balance interpretation with the nonnegotiable principles that make a character recognizable across generations. Readers arrived through Adam West’s colorful television version of Gotham, Frank Miller’s harder-edged comics, Tim Burton’s 1989 film and Batman: The Animated Series, yet each audience expected an essential core to survive.

“As a caretaker of the intellectual property, which is what an editor is, you have to be the guardian of those rules,” Illidge said.

Batman’s rejection of guns and killing offers the clearest boundary, though Illidge frames such rules as engines for drama. A gun destroyed Bruce Wayne’s family, while his parents’ lives in medicine and social work anchor his reverence for life; therefore, a writer can push him toward a moral precipice while preserving the choice which defines him.

This only compounds the perception Illidge builds too much on cinematics and drawing in the same audience. And again, considering DC's stable of creations went south due to contempt by DiDio in the past 2 decades, it's awfully rich for Illidge to say he was a "caretaker". Also, seriously, did virtually all readers take to the Masked Manhunter's tales just because of the West TV series and Burton's film? Or even Miller's contributions? I wouldn't be that narrow in assumptions. Some could also argue that if villains like the Joker aren't brought to an end, then it only weakens the whole premise of Batman not killing. Then, look what else Illidge apparently worked in as writer:

Writing Bloodletter inside Todd McFarlane’s Spawn Universe showed Illidge how a new creation can honor a franchise while filling a space its founder has yet to imagine. After McFarlane explained the universe’s rules, Illidge and his co-writer found the final piece of their story.

“The job was to create something additive,” he said, describing the goal as an idea the universe “hasn’t even occurred to [its creator] it needs until we present it.”

A mature intellectual property, in Illidge’s view, eventually becomes large enough to welcome other writers, artists and producers, whose additions create fresh dimensions without erasing its identity. Robert Kirkman wrote The Walking Dead comic, while its television incarnation grew through a larger creative team; David Chase created The Sopranos, whose writers included Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner before they built major series of their own.

So Illidge considers the horror genre a great wellspring? That's unfortunately also a problem, much like if he only saw Batman as the ideal franchise to edit, but not Superman.

Illuminous extends beyond story development because a finished comic still needs legal guidance, publicity, marketing and a route to readers. Illidge’s network becomes part of the service, connecting clients with specialists once the project is ready to enter the market.

“If I work with you to develop your idea and realize your idea, and then cast you to the wind, and you don’t know what to do with it in the landscape, then I’m not being of service,” he said.

Crowdfunding, especially Kickstarter, has widened access by letting creators reach audiences directly, while webcomics and vertical reading formats offer additional entry points for projects which may never fit a traditional publisher’s list. Even so, Illidge cautions against launching an entire universe at once. Marvel’s interconnected mythology grew over decades, whereas a new creator still has to earn attention one powerful story at a time.

“Start with the one story, the one potent story, and then work your way out,” he said.

On this, I wonder if he respects conservative writers and artists? Would he be willing to publish say, Mike Baron's Private American? If not, that would sum up quite a problem with his own MO.

In the end, if there's any flaw in Illidge's approach to publishing, it's if he views comics as more of a wellspring for moviemaking. But that's just another mistake that's brought down comicdom. I think working in the independent scene can have its advantages, but if Illidge follows a PC narrative, he's not doing enough to fully realize the potential of creator-owned comics any more than the mainstream. And will he ever admit what went wrong in the 2000s? Probably not. It's also very problematic if he thought the genre Spawn's built on makes for great storytelling, but not what Superman was. That's a problem indeed.