Marvel turns out the latest modern swimsuit special

Following up on the revived swimsuit special of the past year, Marvel's now publishing one for 2026, and Flickering Myth's got preview pages, but again, there's signs this'll be anything but a celebration. For one thing, as AIPT notes:

Kicking things off is Daniel Kibblesmith and Alessandro Miracolo for “Beach Bashed,” featuring a beach party hosted by Namor. A great opening page shows off a ton of heroes enjoying a pool, including the Watcher. Kibblesmith gets plenty of nods to Marvel events and character relationships throughout the story, with a main focus on Namor’s attempt to find Sue Storm. It’s a light tale for sure, but one that ends in a way only Namor could pull off.

If memory serves, Kibblesmith's one of the SJWs they employed earlier, and while it may seem like he's now willing to abandon that kind of stance, there's still signs the artwork is uninspired and otherwise sexless, and they still rely on the panel format used in the 2 earlier specials. It reminds me that, while some of the artwork in the Winter Break Special was marginally better, that special was still undermined by how they kept interrupting the artwork pages with a "story" that took up at least 15 pages, leaving the overall special with barely 16 or 17 pages of winter-based illustrations of various Marvel cast members, considerably less than the original swimsuit specials had over 3 decades ago. And the drawing of Elektra in the Winter Break special was particularly dull.

So again, I'm not sure why they're keeping on with this now, as they fail, beyond contributions from artists like J. Scott Campbell for variant covers, to offer anything that's seriously impressive. It underscores how poor the art world's becoming these days, at least according to how the mainstream hires them. And what do they mean by Namor being the "only one who can pull it off"? Isn't that provided the writer actually does a good job? Something that's been terrible lacking for over 2 decades now.

Rob Liefeld whines again

Popverse says dreadful artist Liefeld is complaining that he's not listed as a writer/artist in one of Marvel's latest archives for New Mutants:

Rob Liefeld has never been shy about his opinions on... er, anything, really. But for our purposes, he's never held back on his opinions over how the work he did at Marvel has been handled by the company. Take, for example, a recent expression of his frustration regarding his work on the '90s X-Men title The New Mutants, in which Liefeld introduced perhaps his most famous creations, Deadpool and Cable. According to the seminal artist and Image Comics co-founder, a new collection of said comics miscredits him egregiously.

Liefeld's thoughts came via a social media post made June 6, in conjunction with Marvel's advertisement for an upcoming comic book omnibus. Specifically, that omnibus is The New Mutants Volume 4, which as some fans brought to Liefeld's attention, only credits him as an artist.

"Yes," said Liefeld, "despite writing the best selling issues of New Mutants ever published I am not listed [as a writer]."

But wasn't Louise Simonson the writer at the time? The only issues where he appeared to have credit as writer - or perhaps more precisely, as plotter - were the last 3, issues 98-100, and even there, it wasn't alone. It was with Fabian Nicieza. And I also noticed, interestingly enough, that issues 92 and 97 had Bob Hall and Guang Yap, respectively, credited as artists, not Liefeld. So it sounds like Liefeld's once again trying to give tabloid news sites like Popverse more material they can exploit for trivial matters, and simultaneously, Liefeld's trying to pretend he's one of the finest artists around, even though he's not. Rather hiliariously, he even admits he only "wrote" the last 3 issues in 1983-91's New Mutants:

Thus began a series of posts in which Liefeld not only voiced his annoyance of the oversight, but reminded readers of the success of the comic book the omnibus collects.

"It was through my writing that issues #98-100 sold 2.2 million copies," Liefeld said in another post. "That is more than the entire year previous to my joining. New Mutants was selling 110.000 copies in a sea of X-books selling 350k and above."

No kidding. It sold that much with his otherwise awful art? Well, I do recall the P.T. Barnum phrase "a sucker is born every minute", but even so, if anybody actually bought stories where it's not clear he was the writer per se as Nicieza was, it's a terrible shame they had to help prolong the dreadful career of such a pretentious artist.

Finally, Liefeld stepped back from his own experience to point at other artists who've conveyed their exasperation not just with the comic book industry, but with Marvel itself.

"In closing, Marvel treats creators like shit," Liefeld concluded, "They always have. Jack Kirby sued them. For two decades. The estate wants to sweep it under the rug now that they settled, but it turned Jack’s stomach. Steve Ditko sued Marvel. They can’t help but create the magic makers like shit."

Oops, did he really say "create" instead of "treat"? And since when was Liefeld a "magic maker" with that awful art of his, where he couldn't draw feet, let alone consistent panels with coherent art? Liefeld, alas, appears to be pretty arrogant, and with that kind of approach, is it any wonder he's otherwise on the sidelines now? It's a real shame Marvel had to hire him to work on at least 2 comics in their unsuccessful Heroes Reborn "experiment", which was like a textbook example of how mainstream publishers aren't marketing and selling on merit. Liefeld's only making clear he doesn't think his sloppy, derivative art is an embarrassment to the whole concept of artmaking. Yet all these pretentious news sites see fit to lavish attention on him they likely wouldn't give to writers like Chuck Dixon, or even artists like Brandon Peterson and Kirby himself, who're more talented than Liefeld ever was back in the day.

All we learn from this is that Liefeld's got a pointless grudge against Marvel, proving they shouldn't have ever done business with him in the first place. And Image shouldn't have let him take part in the company's founding.

Ohio Maltz Museum's exhibition for Jewish comics contributions

NPR-WOSU covers an exhibition of Jewish comics contributions at the Maltz Museum in Ohio. It was also organized by a historian who was involved in getting a NYC street named after Jack Kirby:

“Icons in Ink, The Jewish Comics Experience,” on view at the Maltz Museum in Beachwood through Aug. 23, is a revelation and a celebration, albeit with some limitations and questionable aspects.

The show’s core material is conveyed through colorful, large-scale graphic layouts resembling magazine pages that reach from the height of one’s knee to above one’s head. The layouts are filled with text and reproductions of pages from comic books. It’s an eye-grabbing approach that produces visual overload at times. Also, transitions from one section of the show to another occasionally lack continuity and flow.

But when it comes to the core goal of highlighting Jewish contributions to comic book history, the show delivers fascinating and sometimes surprising insights.

Organized by Roy Schwartz, a New York-based pop culture historian, the exhibition opened in 2023 at the Center for Jewish History in New York and is now in the middle of a five-year national tour.

It brims with Schwartz’s zeal to highlight the Jewish roots of what he described in an interview as “a unique American art form,’’ and “the bastard child of literature and art.’’ His expertise includes having written the 2021 book, “Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero.’’

For Cleveland, Schwartz and the Maltz expanded the show to highlight the city’s role in the evolution of comic books, in collaboration with Samantha Baskind, the Cleveland State University professor of art history known for her extensive scholarship on Jewish contributions to the visual arts.

Hidden meanings of Superman

Naturally, Superman, the brainchild of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish high school students in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood who invented the “Man of Steel’’ in the 1930s, is a major focus.

Superman’s birth on the doomed planet Krypton and his parents’ effort to save him by launching him to Earth is a familiar tale. It may not be widely appreciated, however, that the story echoes that of the finding of Moses, and that Superman’s name at birth, Kal-El, is a Hebrew phrase often interpreted as “voice of God’’ or “vessel of God.”

Superman’s powers evoke the myth of the Golem, a massive, Samson-like humanoid purportedly molded in clay by a 16th-century rabbi Prague to defend Jews from pogroms.

As the show points out, Jewish fans have certainly understood such signals.

Somehow, I'm not so sure they do, seeing how some of those who stick with leftism are so hostile to Israel, their country of origin, that it's hard to believe at this point they care about any "signals". Speaking of which, this exhibit features at least 2 comic creators who decidedly aren't worth seeing there:

Also featured in the Cleveland section of the show are printed works and original drawings from Harvey Pekar’s ironic and self-deprecating “American Splendor” series, Peter Kuper’s hilarious “Spy vs. Spy” episodes in Mad Magazine and Terri Libenson’s Jewish-centered narratives in series, including “The Pajama Diaries.”

Cleveland Heights native Brian Michael Bendis is represented by outstanding works including a spectacular 2006 ink drawing for an Avengers episode depicting an explosion on a crowded street in what could be Downtown Cleveland.

When somebody as awful as Bendis is included, despite how overrated and atrocious his writings were on - but not limited to - series like the Avengers, something is terribly wrong. What's so "outstanding" about his cheap approach to science fiction? It's also troubling that somebody like the late Pekar was included, despite his negativity to Israel that he practically wove into a GN titled "Not the Israel my Parents promised me". These are the kind of "creators" whose works we need to see? Nope.

Conspiracists and paranoiacs might see the show as piling on more evidence for the hate-filled fantasy that Jews supposedly control everything from Wall Street to Hollywood.

On this, it's bizarre said conspiracists would want anything to do with Jewish creations, if that's how they feel, and have no interest in producing their own entertainment products that hopefully aren't laced with prejudicial visions. And then, in a very sad hint at where this NPR affiliate really stands, they say it needs an "update":

It’s also striking, given its attention to the social and political context of comic books in prior decades that “Icons in Ink’’ doesn't bring its story fully into the present.

The show’s generally triumphal tone feels oddly off-key amid the recent uptick in anti-Semitism on the left and right, and the post Oct. 7 backlash against Israel.

Debate over Israel’s military conduct in Iran, Gaza and Lebanon, or settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, has inspired authors and pundits of all political persuasions.

“Icons in Ink’’ hasn’t been updated to reflect the turmoil. It could be said that because the show was organized in 2023, there hasn’t been enough time for a significant response to current events from Jewish creators of comic books or graphic novels to warrant attention.

But it seems to be a missed opportunity that the show doesn't mention the conflicted feelings about Israel that Pekar explored in “Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me,’’ published in 2012 as one of his last books.

There’s also no mention of the three-page spread criticizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza published in The New York Review of Books in February 2025 by Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the Holocaust-related graphic novel “Maus,’’ whose work is otherwise lauded in the show at Maltz.

Such publications and others like them represent an intriguing opportunity to revise “Icons in Ink’’ as it continues to travel. The exhibition argues successfully that the Jewish experience in comics needs to be understood more deeply.

Given that goal, some freshening could make the show even more relevant and up-to-the-minute. After all, as the exhibition demonstrates, Jewish comic book creators and graphic novelists have been pulling no punches for decades in messages both overt and subtly coded.

When they insist Sacco's a recommendation, and no right-wing creators like the late Joe Simon are mentioned at all, or even Will Eisner, that speaks volumes as to where they really stand on this. It's actually amazing Pekar's screed didn't turn up at the exhibit, but even so, he's hardly somebody I'd consider a perfect choice any more than Spiegelman. Also note how the news site omits issues like Jews being murdered by the Religion of Peace, and all they care about is making Jews look like the sole ones responsible for anything bad happening post-October 7, 2023, while obscuring the more serious issues caused by said religion.

I'll give Schwartz and company this: they may have deliberately avoided some of these issues because they realized Pekar's POV was divisive, and it wouldn't do any good post-10.7.2023 to bring something like that into the mix. Even so, if they didn't bring in something that could provide a more positive viewpoint on Israeli issues like a Japanese mangaka's publication, then it's otherwise a defeat, though not in the way NPR wants to frame it. What they say about the exhibit in that context is shameful, and if that's their position, why'd they even bother to cover the project?

Professional artists continue to take issue with AI

Creative Bloq reports on what real life artists have to say about AI at a convention in Lake Como. Trouble is, some of those quoted are some of the most pretentious, or worked on projects that do no favors for their reputations:

The spectre of AI is creeping into every aspect of our lives, and it has felt for some time as if artists and creatives in general are on the front line. We’ve heard how comic artists such as Stanley 'Artgerm' Lau have even told us, “In the future, there will be fewer artists like me – real artists”. [...]

David Mack, artist on Daredevil and creator of his own Kabuki series, who’s been a regular at Como for many years now, had this to say about AI and how it could affect both this show and in a wider context his own work and career: “I'm just focused on my work, making my work the way I like to make it, so I don't really have an interest in using it [AI], and I just like making stuff by hand. We're not machines, we're people.”

He adds, “We can't do everything precisely. Probably because of [AI], people who make handmade art will be more in demand. That'll be a more precious commodity because not everyone can replicate it. Talking about the tactile nature of things and a real 3D material object that exists in the physical world. People like that, and that'll probably be even more treasured, in the future, if more and more people lean towards prompting things on AI to magically just make something.”

I think when somebody who worked with Brian Michael Bendis on several issues of Daredevil and Avengers is one of the interviewees, it's hard to understand why we're supposed to care, since such work is basically meaningless. Certainly it would be great if what he tells will be so in the future. But that depends on whether they're talented or just overrated. And Mack is the kind of artist who decidedly belongs in the latter category.

As for Artgerm, he may have more talent in his own way, but he's also, most unfortunately, lent said talents to covers that were stapled onto poltical propaganda. That has the effect of dampening the impact.

British artist Gary Frank, whose career has included drawing Hulk for Marvel but who has now won plaudits as artist on Image’s Hyde Street, part of Image’s Ghost Machine imprint, had his own take on AI: “I think AI is possibly something which has its uses. I don't think that any of those uses include making art, because art is a human thing. The worry I've got is not so much that AI is going to replace people like me, because I'm known and people know I'm a real person.”

He explains it's the next generation of artists who could suffer more, saying: “My worry is the next generation coming through. So we're going to have to compete with dishonest actors who are using AI to fake stuff. We've already seen a little bit of this in the comic industry with people using AI to fake covers. So it's more whether it ends up making it difficult or impossible or damaging the prospects of young people coming through.”

Oh, and isn't Ghost Machine the insufferable Geoff Johns' project? Frank may be a talented artist too, but if this is what he's turning to lately, that also sours the milk. I just don't understand why artists like these are the ones the journalists are turning to for information on the topic...or maybe I do? Is it because their politics skew left?

Now that I think of it, what newer generations of artists could have to worry about is if AI is seen as a perfect substitute for real life talent based on politics. In other words, if a right-wing artist is looking for work, and the company is left-wing managed, they'd pass over him/her and resort to AI instead if that's what it took to avoid hiring somebody whose political platforms they hated. Not that you could expect artists like the above to comment on that issue, unfortunately. But no doubt, it's a valid subject, and some people are going to have to start asking whether it could happen.

University paper predictably recommends the weaker Daredevil stories post-2000

The Beacon of Wilkes University wrote about Daredevil stories they recommend, and while there's at least two worthy citations, the rest come from the post-2000 era where Hornhead's stories went down the drain. And, the writer runs the gauntlet of making it sound like fictional characters are real people:

Daredevil is such a complex and interesting character. This is because no matter if he’s defending the public during the day as the attorney Matt Murdock or thwarting evil on the dark streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil, his faith in his Catholic upbringing and his heroic morals are always put to the test. His rogues gallery is also really interesting from the iconic Kingpin and Bullseye to lesser-known villains such as the Owl and Mr. Fear, Daredevil’s stories consist of such great villains that perfectly juxtapose that of the seemingly unbreakable will of the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

No, DD alone is not complex and interesting, it's the assigned writers who make him that. A similar point can be made about the recurring villains. Regarding Matt's Catholic background, modern writers have certainly put that to the test through forced leftist politics. And when the writer gets around to citing Frank Miller and David Mazuchelli's Born Again story, she says:

There’s a reason why this is one of the most iconic Daredevil stories of all time and that’s because this story arc is a turning point for the character. Without giving too much away, Matt Murdock is put through the wringer by his arch-nemesis, Kingpin. This story also includes a character death that shook the comic book world.

The police lieutenant Nick Manolis? Born Again was certainly one of the best DD stories, but what she says about Manolis, a minor character who made barely a dozen appearances between 1980-86, could just as easily have been said about Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man, and was. And come to think of it, if an innocent character dies or worse, is that something to celebrate? Of course not.

Now, what else is cited here? As mentioned, far newer stuff post-2000:

These next few recommendations are going to be entire comic book runs of Daredevil rather than story arcs. The next I’ll recommend is Mark Waid’s Daredevil run. This run is much lighter in terms of storytelling since Matt Murdock has been through a lot of low points in previous stories. In this run, Daredevil teams up with some other favorite Marvel heroes like Spider-Man and Captain America. This is a really great run to read up on since not only does it feature great storylines, but it also features the viral, “I’m not Daredevil” Christmas sweater.

This next one is a bit divisive among fans, but I think it’s pretty good all things considered. The Charles Soule run of Daredevil picks up right after Mark Waid’s run and while I don’t think it’s as strong as the Mark Waid run, I think it’s a lot of fun and takes a lot of risks with the character. This run also introduces one of my favorite Daredevil villains, Muse. Muse is an Inhuman who is also a serial killer who turns his victims’ bodies into art projects.

Oh, that's just what we need, like we need only so much more of this in Batman to boot. As for Waid's run, what devastates that is that, despite claims to the contrary, he shoehorned in leftist propaganda at the time, in what was quite likely a precursor to how Marvel approached writing the Muslim Ms. Marvel series - write it seemingly bright and optimistic, and use that as a potential shield and excuse for turning out Islamic propaganda. When the publishers are only willing to explore an optimistic/lighter view with strings attached, that's wrong and insulting to the intellect. If Waid's ever apologized for that, I have yet to find out. And one more citation given in this university puff piece is about Chip Zdarsky's run:

There are so many things to love about Zdarsky’s Daredevil series such as the incredible artwork by Marco Checcetto in various issues and several great moments and events such as the major street level hero crossover event, “Devil’s Reign”. Another thing I love about this run is how Zdarsky elevates the character of Elektra Natchios and how she even becomes Daredevil alongside Matt Murdock.

See, this too is another tired modern cliche, where a character is robbed of personal agency and identity for the sake of putting them in another character's costume, which I once described as a case of the company asking readers to care more about the costume than the character. IIRC, even Black Panther was put in the DD costume at one point. And no clear explanation from the university writer on how this amounts to merit-based storytelling.

Maybe most puzzling of all is why Ann Nocenti's run in the late 80s-early 90s receives no mention here. She turned out some pretty good stories, and even created the villainess Typhoid Mary. Some could reasonably wonder if Nocenti goes unmentioned because it would undermine the PC narrative of the past decade that women were supposedly excluded from the industry. It's also appalling how the original 1964-98 volume is otherwise largely obscured here, because undoubtably, there's plenty one could say about it as a whole, right down to how Bullseye was created in the mid-70s, yet the only story that matters here is Miller's. Seriously, while his run was satisfying, and far better than what he's known for in later years like Sin City, it's insulting to the intellect to obscure almost everything and anything else in the pre-2000 DD run. At least the writer doesn't go gushing over Kevin Smith's Marvel Knights run, where he obliterated Karen Page. On which note, DD was probably the only series to run as long as it did under the Knights imprint when it was first in use around 1998-2006. Most other characters/series that were put under the imprint by Joe Quesada didn't last as long, if at all, and Black Panther's series of the times was moved back to the flagship imprint after a year. As a result, one can reasonably question whether it was the gigantic success pseudo-historians claim it was at all. Besides, lest we forget that the Capt. America run under the imprint was some of the worst anti-American propaganda ever produced.

After looking at this college paper's take on DD, I'm honestly not sure the writer's a DD fan at all, since like countless other writers of her sort, all she can think of recommending is the easiest and most obvious moments in old/new publication, and won't even discuss the pre-2000 volume in its entirety, nor any of the other specials and miniseries connected with it. That's why these college papers are such a joke.

Alexandra DeWitt's 1994 death in Green Lantern may have been retconned away

Superhero Hype lets know that DC, surprisingly enough, appears to have done one thing decent of recent, and that's abandoning the original premise used for setting up Kyle Rayner as the forced replacement for Hal Jordan during Emerald Twilight. More specifically, what originally became of his first girlfriend, Alexandra deWitt, who was repellently murdered by Major Force in 1994, when he throttled her and stuffed her corpse into a refridgerator:

The possible retcon came in “City of Angels,” by Jeremy Adams and V. Ken Marion. The story centers around Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, as he returns to Earth and his hometown of Los Angeles. Joining him is Odyssey the Time Bandit, who is assisting him in tracking fugitive aliens as part of her parole.

While stuck in traffic, Kyle begins to relate his life story and how he became a Green Lantern. He speaks of being raised by a single mother and how art was his only outlet. However, one key event of Kyle’s history goes unmentioned in his recollection.

While discussing his youth, Kyle mentions his first love, Alexandra “Alex” DeWitt. Kyle tells Odyssey of how his sketches of Alex got him a job as a comic book artist. However, Alex grew tired of supporting them both, as Kyle’s dream job didn’t pay well. She also disliked Kyle’s becoming a shut-in, as he stayed home to meet his deadlines instead of going out with her. Both issues led her to dump him.

What Green Lantern death did DC retcon?

In the new story, Kyle tries to impress Alex by showing up at her favorite club. However, this doesn’t work. She doesn’t believe he’s really changed his ways. However, this trip wound up changing Kyle’s life in another way. After the awkward artist stepped outside to get away from the crowds, he was entrusted with the last Green Lantern ring.

[...] Green Lantern #33/#600 seems to change this history. When Odyssey asks what happened next, Kyle does not mention Alex’s violent death. Indeed, he does not mention her at all. Instead, he talks about how becoming a Green Lantern taught him that “sometimes your dreams aren’t just one thing.”

If they really have produced a story retconning a cheap, obnoxious setup - one that was entirely unnecessary for "defining" Kyle - that is admittedly amazing, because it was uncalled for to begin with, one of the worst things the then editor Kevin Dooley oversaw (and also writer Ron Marz, and artist Darryl Banks), and most tellingly, what occurred going forward was held hostage to economy writing, since the only girlfriends they'd give Kyle at the time were Donna Troy, and then Jade. Editorial mandates of that sort never work out well, and that kind of approach is what otherwise brought down superhero comics, since in terms of character growth, they were written into a corner by that kind of character casting, which was increasingly forced. As a result, while this new approach is laudable, Kyle Rayner still doesn't stand as his own character, because he was the product of a mindset that, despite what might seem to be the case, demands that the reader care more about the costume than the character wearing it. Also note that much of the "characterization" Kyle received was contrived and forced, and despite what the apologists might claim, he bore no more personality in the scriptwriting than Hal Jordan allegedly lacked.

Also interesting about this possible retcon is that, as seen in the panel, Alexandra's drawn pretty hot, and the artist wasn't held hostage to the kind of wokeness that Donna Troy was subjected to of recent, and come to think of it, Starfire too. That said, this still doesn't excuse how Hal was forced into the role of a deadly villain back in the day, depicted murdering at least a few other GL Corps members, and then sent into the grave for a time, and later being shoehorned into the role of the Spectre, replacing Jim Corrigan. And that's just another example of how even classic cast members had their personal agency revoked by blatant editors and writers.

Does this mean Alexandra DeWitt will turn up alive later, in whatever they're planning for publication? I don't advise buying DC's modern output so long as they continue to be held hostage to far-left ideologues, but it will be interesting to see if current writers are trying to mend some mistakes as an apology to GL fandom. The premise of Emerald Twilight, along with the maltreatment of Hal in 1994's Zero Hour, will have to be jettisoned as well. Why, it might be more beneficial to rework Kyle and Alexandra into non-superhero cast members, and also non-costumed protagonists. Mainly because even Alexandra had no agency in the handful of issues where she appeared back then, when she served as nothing more than a plot device to be slain by Major Force just to serve as "motivation" for Kyle. There's a lot of things that went wrong with DC around the time of Zero Hour that writers involved with it won't admit, but aren't impossible to mend. And the best way to do that is simply to jettison some of the bad ideas from canon. If writers who care would like to hear what could be done, I'm always open to offering them ideas how to work things out.

A supposed throwback to past teenage movies that only gives them a bad name

The Daily Dead interviewed Jude Ellison Doyle and Caitlin Yarsky, the writer and artist of a new horror comic titlted Dead Teenagers, and in discussing the premise:

The unfortunate friends in the new five-issue comic book series Dead Teenagers don't have a choice, as they're forced to relive their 1997 prom night in a lethal time loop that kills them thousands of times through increasingly bizarre methods, with everything from a giant lizard to malevolent mannequins resulting in their violent demises before they reboot and live through death all over again with one goal in mind: to break the vicious cycle and figure out why for them, as Bowling for Soup sings, "High school never ends."

Perfect for fans of Happy Death Day and ’90s slashers, Dead Teenagers is a blood-splattered ride down memory lane that is fun, heartfelt, and easily one of my favorite comic books of 2026. [...]

It's interesting to note that Happy Death Day was scripted by the aforementioned Scott Lobdell, in one of at least a handful of forays he did into screenplay writing. And if that's the kind of slop he thinks makes for great entertainment, it just explains what's wrong with Lobdell's MO in the long run. If he hasn't had any involvement with writing the X-Men in a quarter century, it's for the best.

Thank you for taking the time to answer questions for us, Jude and Caitlin, and congratulations on your new comic book series Dead Teenagers! I love time loop stories and really dug the first issue of this series. When did you initially come up with the idea for this mind-bending story?

Jude Ellison S. Doyle: There were a lot of origin points for this story, not least the fact that I’m now a grown-up and have a lot more compassion for teenagers and my own teenage self than I used to, but the truth is, I thought it would be fun to have a high-school reunion for slasher teenagers where they all commiserated about the most embarrassing ways they had died. I wanted to see someone cope with the existential horror of realizing they were only created to be drowned in a toilet by the enraged mutant son of their mean landlady, or something. Then I realized they would have to be alive in order to look back on their deaths, and that sort of slowly folded out into this idea.

What disgust, though obviously a moot point. This is what the entertainment industry's all about? Seriously, if this is all that can be marketed to teens, if that's really what they're doing, something's horribly wrong.

Dead Teenagers swaps the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia to look at the past through a nightmarish lens that pulls no punches. How important was it for you both to tap into the horrors of nostalgia with this story?

Jude Ellison S. Doyle: I think we romanticize “the teen years”—or OUR teen years—as this ideal point in time when you were just grown-up enough to have fun and fall in love, but not yet adult enough to have any real problems. Even people who had really horrible teenage experiences tend to project that image of carefree youth onto other people. I do.

The truth is, though, that nearly anyone who grows up enough has the experience of looking back at their teen years and realizing that things were really screwed-up and hard back then, sometimes in ways they didn’t even have names for at the time. Forms of sexual violence that we protest today were normalized, or slurs and other forms of bigotry that we consider horrible today were part of everyday conversation; just look at those famous John Hughes movies, where every other line is a rape joke or a gay joke.

Being a teenager isn’t any easier or safer than being an adult, even if you don’t always have the vocabulary to name what’s wrong. So that’s what Dead Teenagers is about: the characters are slowly realizing that all the violence they’re growing up with, which they’ve taken almost for granted, isn’t actually normal or okay.

Caitlin Yarsky: Horror may be the most fitting genre to contextualize and express the dark side of growing up. Like Jude said, being a teenager isn’t any safer than being an adult. It’s really often less safe, depending on our environment and the people around us. We don’t have autonomy or control over our lives at that time, and talking about it can be scary because we don’t know who we can trust. I think horror can help convey that feeling of helplessness and fear, while also reminding us that we’re not alone.

Since they bring up the late screenwriter Hughes, who later turned to copycatting his own Home Alone movies to the point of being repellent or plain boring, isn't that interesting they make it sound like all movies normalized jokes about sexual abuse, though I will say that in retrospect, I do think those that do - and Hughes turned out at least one, the Breakfast Club, where it was implied Judd Nelson molested Molly Ringwald under a table - made a disgusting, embarrassingly bad mistake that's only hurt moviedom in hindsight and made things difficult for more recent filmmakers, who're no doubt terrified of dealing with sexual issues, based on what a certain filmmaker who directed the most recent James Bond movie falsely said about Thunderball.

But was virtually all the dialogue in Hughes' teenage-themed films like what this Doyle's claiming? I don't recall what I saw being all that bad. So it sounds like another somebody is just exaggerating if that's what it takes to justify his or her shoddy positions on what constitutes "entertainment". Because despite what they say about violence not being okay, and not something to take for granted, it's clear they still believe what they're setting out to do is "fun". It's not. There's plenty of ways to teach that violence is not the answer to everything and that the whole notion it's wonderful to commit heinous acts is offensive and wrong, morally or otherwise, without making it all out to sound like the story's written for cheap sensationalism. When a writer takes that kind of path, then whatever moral lesson is allegedly in store is contradicted.

As for being a teen not guaranteeing safety, well of course being a teen isn't any better than being an adult, and the past decade's served to teach that the hard way. But that doesn't mean comics writers should be obsessing over the horror genre and not at least providing teens or anybody with some kind of solace and relief from what a sadistic world this can be. Funny how the same people turning out these horror thrillers don't have any issue with savages like Iran's, in example, by sharp contrast. And is there something wrong with a direction that offers teenagers something to feel happy about romantically? If Doyle's saying that's wrong, it's atrocious, and again, an example of how many pseudo-scribes today have no sense of mirth, nor do they wish to be happy.

While working on Dead Teenagers, were you both influenced or inspired by any other time loop or high school stories in film, television, books, comics, or video games (horror or otherwise)?

Jude Ellison S. Doyle: There are a lot of straightforward teen comedies that I looked to for inspiration. I think Clueless and Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You are just effortless, beautiful movies that don’t get the critical respect they deserve because they were made for teenage girls. I also think of Final Destination as a comedy, though that’s probably my problem. I also, strangely, pulled from superhero comics; I loved X-Men comics as a kid, particularly the teen series Generation X, because the characters had that found-family dynamic, and the inter-scene banter was often just as interesting as whatever they were fighting.

Caitlin Yarsky: All of the media Jude mentioned was inspiration for me too. I was also a big Buffy fan and read a ton of Goosebumps, Fear Street, and Stephen King books. There were movies like She’s All That and shows like Clarissa Explains It All that will always live in my head rent-free.

Caitlin, you created a great variant cover for Dead Teenagers #1 that pays homage to the iconic ’90s film Pretty Woman, and I understand that you’ll be honoring other ’90s films with a variant cover for each upcoming issue. Can you give us a tease of which ’90s films you’ll be celebrating on future covers?

Caitlin Yarsky: Haha I’m not sure how many I can spoil, but I’ll say that Clueless is in the mix!

I find it very unappealing when somebody draws inspiration from a scribe as unendurable as King's turned out to be. I may have watched 2 or 3 movies based on his novels in the past, but that's decidedly it, and I'd rather have nothing to do with him today. Interesting though that the writer actually loved X-Men, right down to the spinoff Lobdell wrote back in the day that may be considered one of the few better items in his resume. Were his forays into the horror genre what influenced this comic? Whatever, I don't see how something as revolting as what they describe could pay tribute to comedies and dramas that were far from horror thrillers in their time. What is clear is that the influence of horror continues to be chillingly dominant.

Ultimately, what do you hope readers take away from this comic book series?

Jude Ellison S. Doyle: Fun, hopefully. It’s a dark time and we could all use a break. But also, I want people who don’t normally see themselves or their teenage struggles portrayed in the media to feel seen, and I want to give us all a little encouragement to reckon with our formative traumas and leave our safe zones and grow up.

Caitlin Yarsky: Entertainment for sure, but as Jude said, there are deep themes in here that I hope resonate with people who may feel unrepresented or unheard. I hope people find it exciting and fun, but also meaningful and something they would want to revisit.

If it's so dark today, why do they want to heap more upon us? The mere mention of "fun", as noted before, only contradicts any supposedly positive messages they're trying to convey. Seriously, this is repulsive. And what does she mean by "unrepresented and unheard"? The following near the end may give a clue:

With Dead Teenagers #1 being released in comic book shops on March 18th, what other projects do you both have coming up that you can tease for our readers, and where can they go online to keep up to date on your work?

Jude Ellison S. Doyle: I’ve written a whole bunch of things in the last year—aside from Dead Teenagers, there’s Be Not Afraid, which just wrapped up at BOOM!, and DILF: Did I Leave Feminism, which is my obligatory non-fiction book about my transition. [...]

What?!? Does this mean the writer's a woman who took the transsexual route too?!? Boy, there sure is something mind-bogglingly wrong with this whole picture then. So the writer/artist claim this horror tale is meant to be "fun", despite jarring violence being anything but, and then they expect supposedly positive messages to work? Sigh. One must wonder if there's certain left-wing "feminists" who got so disillusioned with the belief system, yet actually thought self-hatred of their sex was any more acceptable, to the point they desecrated themselves in the past decade. For all we know, that could be the fallout from feminism, that it failed to make women proud to be what they are, and only led to worse in the long run.

Anyway, it's shameful how there's quite a few scribes in comicdom who're obsessing with the horror genre, and telling these specialty sites in turn exactly what they'd love to hear. I don't think John Hughes movies of the past 4 decades are perfect, but emphasizing the horror genre does not an improvement make. What the twosome who put out this loathsome comic are doing is despicable.

The role of Detroit, Michigan in comicdom

NPR-Michigan Public wrote about what role a city like Detroit played in producing comics, and tabletop games:

When people think of Detroit, they might think of the city’s reputation for auto manufacturing or Motown music—but what about comic books? Two recent exhibits at the Detroit Historical Museum showcase the city’s lesser-known influence in comic books and tabletop gaming.

Curated by Billy Wall-Winkel, “Heroes vs. Villains” explores Detroit’s comic book history, showcasing more than 60 comic artists with ties to Michigan. The exhibit features artists like Jerry Bails, known as the “father of comic book fandom,” and Shel Dorf, the founder of San Diego Comic-Con, among others. A companion exhibit, “Worlds of Palladium,” profiles Detroit-based publisher Palladium Books, a pioneer in the tabletop roleplaying game community.

“We had folks here in Detroit that were just absolutely obsessed with science fiction and fantasy,” Wall-Winkel said. “We had folks that wanted just to convince everyone else that comics [were] a legitimate art form.”

Trouble is, anybody who thinks they succeeded in convincing they are a valid art form failed, if we look at this from an artistic perspective, and how the mainstream was devastated by political correctness. The only thing the specialists convinced anybody about was that comics make a great wellspring for extended media potential like movies and TV programs. And for a while, yes, that was a success. But by the turn of the decade, the fortunes of Marvel's movieverse began to recede under the weight of wokeness,

The exhibit also features the work of Detroit comic artists who worked for Marvel and DC, including Jim Starlin, Rich Buckler, Keith Pollard, and many more. Wall-Winkel’s personal favorite is writer Dwayne McDuffie, who pioneered minority representation in superhero comics through Milestone Media.

Be that as it may about McDuffie, something that disappoints me is that he was still quite a leftist, from what I know. But, if it matters, it's admittedly disgusting how Dan DiDio fired McDuffie over an Orwellian Thoughtcrime after the latter indicated he wasn't happy writing Justice League in the mid-2000s, because of horrible editorial mandates forced upon him. The worst part is that DiDio all but got away with doing so, and who in the mainstream holds him accountable for disrespecting a POC today over a petty issue? Let's not forget Frank Miller inexplicably hired him as an editor for a self-titled imprint Miller launched a few years back, and if it was a flop, DiDio's involvement alone is arguably why.

As noted, the article also brings up tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, and how such concepts have overlapped with comicdom:

Palladium Books was founded in 1981 by Detroit artist Kevin Siembieda, a time when tabletop gaming surged in popularity. The publisher is most known for tabletop games like Rifts or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness, which was the first licensed product of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons allow players to act out fantasy adventures together, fighting monsters while playing as their own original characters. Dungeons & Dragons, in particular, has been having a mainstream moment after featuring heavily in the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” as well as the success of its own 2023 feature film. According to Wall-Winkel, fans of video games often turn to tabletop gaming as a more expansive way to explore fantasy and science fiction worlds.

Predictably, they won't get into how the franchise also encountered political correctness and was watered down in the past decade for the sake of leftist propaganda like "inclusivity", as though it were never there, and some of the silliest things about this direction are that they acted like the Drows, Orcs and goodness knows what other anthropomorphic villains in the franchise literally had to see positive depictions, as though they weren't there to begin with. D&D, for all we know, will probably be brought down hard in time by all this wokeism.

Without a doubt, Detroit's got plenty of interesting comics contributors abound who could make good subjects for this exhibition. But, if there's one whom I hope they haven't gone out of their way to highlight, it's Geoff Johns, whose writings in mainstream in the past quarter century were so inexcusably crude and insufferable, they'd make a very humiliating addition to the exhibition as a result. From what I can tell, Johns doesn't seem to be on the list, and if he's absent, that's fortunate. No need to sully the exhibition with the work of somebody as blatant as he proved to be in the long run.

That told, it's still a shame there's so much more an article like this could've brought up, and predictably, they wouldn't because it doesn't fit the superficial, PC narrative they follow.

A shameful misuse of Carnage in Spider-Man

Coming Soon announces that one of Marvel's latest "events" might see Spider-Man being combined with Carnage, as though it weren't bad enough Mary Jane Watson was being turned into another Venom:

Spider-Man is about to transform into one of the scariest Marvel characters of all time.

Marvel Comics is getting ready to launch a new Spider-Man, Venom, and Carnage crossover titled Death Spiral. The event begins with an Amazing Spider-Man/Venom: Death Spiral one-shot that is being released next month, before it then continues in issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Venom throughout the spring.

In Death Spiral, Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Mary Jane/All-New Venom, and Eddie Brock/Carnage will be targeted by a super-powered serial killer named Torment. The event comes from writers Joe Kelly, Al Ewing, and Charles Soule, with artwork by Ed McGuinness, Carlos Gómez, and Jesús Saíz.

What is Spider-Man about to transform into?

Now, Marvel Comics has unveiled the cover art, done by McGuiness, for Amazing Spider-Man #27, which will serve as the finale to Death Spiral. The cover reveals that Spider-Man and Carnage — a notoriously evil character who has a long history with Peter — are about to bond to become the Amazing Spider-Carnage.

When woke writers like Ewing are listed, it's pretty apparent this is going to be awful anyway. And plots involving serial killers have become way too much as well. This is repellent, and is clearly their idea of how to ape the past decade's storyline where Dr. Octopus switched bodies with Peter. It only explains why Marvel would be better off being closed down for good.

A fluff-coated take on DC's so-called revival of the Golden Age Hawkman

A writer at ComicBook did a sugar-drenched take on DC's "revival" of Golden Age Hawkman Carter Hall, courtesy of the most overrated scribes they employed at the time, Geoff Johns, James Robinson and David Goyer:

Hawkman was the first leader of the Justice Society of America, making him one of the most important characters of the Golden Age. He was joined by his girlfriend Hawkgirl as a hero, something that would be repeated numerous times over the years by other characters. Hawkman is a legend, one who has been abused by the vagaries of DC continuity worse than anyone else, including someone like Donna Troy, which is saying something. One Hawkman retcon was so damaging that it destroyed the character in the eyes of fans. However, 24 years ago, DC would put out a story that would begin the process of fixing the character, bringing him back to the forefront of the DC Universe.

“Return of Hawkman” Made the Icon Tenable Again

JSA was the hottest team book of the ’00s. The book started in 1999 and played off the concept of legacy, bringing together the surviving Golden Age members of the team and the descendants of those who died. Fans loved the book, but there was a Hawkman-sized hole in the team. Hawkgirl was there, but it wasn’t the same. At this point, Hawkman had been destroyed as a character for numerous reasons, with the main one being that the character was much too confusing to work with anymore.

And this is a weak, defeatist take on the subject that completely ignores how, if the publishers wanted to, they could have jettisoned all the storylines that made a horrific mess of any DC Hawk, and simultaneously, they didn't need to publish Zero Hour at all. Though this does make clear that one of the worst crossovers in history - one that also made a horrific mess of Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan - wasn't exactly published for the purpose of clearing up continuity any more than Crisis on Infinite Earths. On which note, does the writer recognize what he says could also be said about Hal and the GL series? And what happened with those was easily worse, morally or otherwise. From what I can recall, unlike Hal, Carter was never turned into a murderous monster named Parallax, nor was Katar Hol, the Silver Age counterpart.

And talk about not being the same when it comes to Hawkgirl! That's because in a way, Shiera Sanders, the Golden Age Hawkgirl, had been all but destroyed as a character too, perishing during ZH when Carter and Katar were "merged", and we're supposed to buy into the notion she'd been reincarnated in the body of her niece, Kendra Saunders. Unfortunately, much like with Hawkman, the issues involving Hawkgirl were handled according to a bad form of "canon" from 1994 that should've been abandoned wholesale, though of course, there was much worse that came down the pike the following decade like Identity Crisis, where even Hawkman was mistreated badly.

The way Geoff Johns and James Robinson wrote their series, in hindsight, was pretentious at worst, as the artwork by Rags Morales was overrated too. Perhaps even Tim Truman's 1989 miniseries was a big mistake as well, because let's be clear. It is possible to write distinctions between the Hawks of the Golden and Silver Ages, and if it really mattered, the editors could've written the Halls into retirement, along with several other Golden Age heroes. And if they had to be sent to the afterlife, it could've been through natural causes or auto accidents.

With this puff piece, ComicBook sure has solidified their place next to CBR in its current incarnation as one of the worst tabloid-style entertainment sites in the business. Besides, they completely ignore that in the past 15 years or so, writing's become awfully woke, even for the Hawks. I've noted before that it was only at the dawn of the 1990s where the backstory of the Hawks became a horrible mess. If all that stuff could be jettisoned, it is possible to make repairs. That's why as of today, I don't consider John Ostrander's Hawkworld series from the 90s a worthy incarnation for Katar Hol and Shayera Thal either. I recently bought the DC Finest archive containing stories of the Hawks from the 60s, and that's decidedly a far better form of canon than what came 3 decades later. If the Silver Age Hawks matter, that would make a better base from which to build premises today. And when the Golden Age Hawks are hopefully reprinted in similar archives, that can provide a good source for building upon as well.

A dreadful choice for best of 2025

A writer at Superhero Hype chose what he claims is the best of 2025, and his selection of Dr. Doom material from the past year sounds pretty predetermined:

2025 was a red letter year for Doctor Doom. His profile was boosted publicly by the hype surrounding the upcoming MCU movie Avengers: Doomsday. HIs star also rose in the comics, where he dominated the Earth in the One World Under Doom miniseries. And yet, for all this, his finest turn in 2025 came as part of an unlikely team-up with Rocket Raccoon.

Written by J. Michael Straczynski, with art by Will Robson, Doctor Doom & Rocket Racoon #1 finds Rocket summoned to Latveria. Doom is in a contemplative mood, and has come to question the nature of existence. In short, he seeks the meaning of life.

However, for all his knowledge, Doom is a master of Earthly science. This is where Rocket and his own brilliance with alien technology come into play. Rocket, for his part, thinks Doom is nuts, but he’s willing to indulge just about anything if the money is good.

Doom and Rocket are an odd couple, to say the least. However, the pairing makes sense under Straczynski’s pen. Both characters are largely amoral, yet can be pressed into playing the hero. This leads to the development of an odd friendship that defies logic, yet fits both characters perfectly. Beyond that, the story delves into some truly deep philosophy.

Robson’s artwork further highlights the paradoxical nature of the story. The image of a talking raccoon standing alongside a Wagnerian figure in full plate is frankly ridiculous. It is the sort of thing that only works in comics. And yet, it does work.

Yeah right, and all because JMS is the writer, and based on that, the columnist wants it to. At least that's my perception of what's going on here. Surely it's not appalling we have a case here of a presumed goodie who's making a Faustian pact with a villain? Atop all that, it's sad how a Hollywood scribe who played a part in bringing down Marvel and DC in the 2000s has been welcomed back by C.B. Cebulski to writing the former's creations, all for the sake of endless line-wide crossovers that brought down Marvel in the long run.

The article even fawns over Gail Simone's writing in X-Men, and says:

I’ve honestly never been much of an X-Men fan. The franchise has often exemplified the worst excesses of superhero comics, with writing that presumes you already know the characters. Uncanny X-Men #17 does not do this. Indeed, it’s a simple one-shot story with an interesting new villain.

This is confusing, because IIRC, there were times when some characters in X-Men and other such comics would have an introduction written for them multiple times, explaining what their powers are and what they could do. That's not "presuming we know" the cast of characters, but rather, assuming we don't. Of course, today, if you know where to look, you'll notice some examples of mainstream comics where they couldn't care less if you didn't know any of the characters, because they intend to obliterate any characters they consider literally expendable through a crossover or some other shoddily written event, as was the case with Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled 2 decades ago. And such a direction, when taken, is disgraceful as it's insulting to the intellect.

All that aside, this is another puff piece that seems to be deliberately written just for promoting an overrated writer who wasn't worth all the fuss when she began. And then, there's also the choice of the Titans Annual:

Donna Troy is notable among DC Comics’ characters for being one of the few heroes created by a continuity error. Her backstory has become even more muddled over time, thanks to various reboots changing the history of the Amazons. She’s been everything from a baby rescued by Wonder Woman to an evil clone meant to replace her. Titans 2025 Annual #1 sought to once again clarify this, creating a definitive history for Donna in the DC All-In era.

Writer/artist Phil Jimenez has often said that Donna Troy is his favorite superhero. That is made more than clear over the course of this issue. It is an obvious labor of love, made all the more miraculous for how it details some fairly complicated history and makes it accessible. The artwork is simply gorgeous as well. [...]

As I noted some time ago, the character design for Donna was watered down and mediocre, so it's decidedly not hard to guess the fawning commentary was deliberate, and the columnist expects virtually everyone to buy into his puff piece without question. This is why such news sites aren't serious sources for information, and only multiply the insults to veteran artists and writers. If that's how Jiminez is going to draw Donna, then his claims she's his favorite character are phony. And Donna's backstory is muddled? Well gee, maybe they should blame previous editorial boards and writers, Dan DiDio included, for all that.

On the other hand, Bam-Smack-Pow says Image was the best of the year:

This year, Image Comics may not have made as much money as the big two, but they were the best comic book company of the year. Superman, Batman, and the Absolute Universe are always among the top sellers of the month. For example, a title starring Batman was in four of the five best sellers in November 2025 (DC / Marvel - Batman / Deadpool #1 (One-Shot), Batman No. 3, Absolute Batman No. 14, and DC K.O. Knightfight No. 1). Nevertheless, you can’t discount the impact titles from the Energon Universe have made in 2025. It was so good that the universe is getting an adult animated series.

Some of these comics based on licensed merchandise like GI Joe/Transformers may be worth the effort, but that doesn't mean everything's recommendable there. For example:

Of course, comic book fans want stories with characters using unfathomable abilities to defeat overpowered villains. Image Comics doesn’t deprive readers of stories like that. Titles like Ludo Lullabi’s Ghost Pepper, along with Benito Cereno and E. J. Su's Blood and Thunder, are two comics that provide the sci-fi adventures you may crave. However, they also publish more “grounded” comics like Doug Wagner and Daniel Hillyard’s I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer. There are still fantasy tales, but without having a hero flying or breaking steel with their hands.

With titles like those, it's clear not all is rosy at Image, and when they promote horror thriller fare so blatantly, far more than anything optimistic, it's sad.

Another thing to love is how Image Comics uses its social media. Image doesn’t just promote the comics. They make sure to show real people who have read and reviewed the comics. The best part is that the reviews are genuine. You can tell they mean what they say instead of doing it to get a paycheck. It’s easy to see those videos and be drawn into what they’re highlighting because it’s coming from an actual comic book fan.

I think that's awfully naive and jumping to conclusions too. There's all sorts of "professional" critics who can be biased and predetermined in their positions, so it does little good for Image to make use of their reviews for social media promotion. And if they don't sell in millions of copies, then like the mainstream, they haven't exactly accomplished much.

So again, there may be more overrated slop being fawned over by specialty columnists this year, and what's really sad is how they won't champion the visions of veteran writers of the past who did better than what the mainstream's offering today. And while I'm sure Image has some palatable stuff, that doesn't mean we should take a naive view of their output either.

A most insufferably biased essay about James Robinson's overrated Starman series

The Comics Journal wrote an atrociously biased take on the pretentious James Robinson's Starman series from 1994-2001, in two parts so far, and it contains some troubling lines suggesting this was written from quite a leftist perspective. For example:

Starman is a story about the United States. Not the one we learned about in civics class. Not the golly-gee willikers, apple-pie-and-baseball bullshit that Ivy League-educated, far-right populists talk about while deifying “the founders” and pretending that history is only what you learned it was in first grade and anyone who tries to teach anything more complicated than that is desecrating those buried in Arlington. No, this is “The Old, Weird America” as Greil Marcus titled one of his books.

Well, what's this? A lecture in the vein of claiming patriotism is bad? Well that's what it sounds like. And why is the writer making it sound like Ivy League universities are inherently right-wing? If you took a look at the sorry state of modern colleges, that can refute what they're lecturing everyone with here. In any event, whatever form of "America" was being emphasized in Robinson's Starman series does not appeal to me, and definitely not today.

It’s easier to place all that weirdness “over there” in its own space so the rest of us can pretend that it doesn’t exist. Those weird stories with strange artwork and designs can exist ... somewhere else. That way the DCU can function in a vaguely “realistic” manner drawn in a vaguely realistic fashion. Comics are serious, after all. Far too serious for romance or humor or wackiness or surrealism.

I don't think the above was meant as a joke. It's just irritating in how it's implied "realism" is the only way, ditto "seriousness". Does this also mean Marvel's Excalibur from 1988-98, which I consider one of the most surreal adventures they ever published back in the day, was just a bad idea all over? This is insulting to the intellect, and belittles the work of past writers who emphasized merit and entertainment value first and foremost. Without that, how could even "realistic" work well? And then, as if it couldn't possibly get worse:

Art emerges from a cultural space. I believe that culture shapes behavior, or as Heraclitus argued more than two thousand years ago, geography is destiny. In the 21st century, something like Starman wasn’t of interest. A loving couple like Ralph and Sue Dibny solving crimes wasn’t of interest. Raping and murdering them, though? DC’s Identity Crisis and Marvel’s Civil War were made while the United States was a nation at war. Stories about superheroes behaving like horrible villains in the name of righteousness. Comics about “good” people doing monstrous things. That’s not a coincidence. Art is not created in a vacuum.

And here's another, and by far one of the most repellent moments in this essay, because the writer brings up those past crossovers/events and what occurred in their pages in such a casual manner, as though sexual violence were a trivial issue, along with the divisive politics both IC and CW contained. It does confirm though, that both miniseries were meant to be political metaphors. In one of the accompanying footnotes, the writer tops it off with, "The fact that the nation’s leaders were intent on acting as though we were not a nation at war meant that like repressed emotions, it comes out in other ways." So let's see if I can understand what's going on here. Because certain leftists disliked the policies that came up at the time from a Republican-led government, that literally justifies shoehorning established characters into terrible roles and situations? Also insulting to the intellect is how it's implied crime-solving couples is literally worthless as a storytelling concept.

Before we go further, since it's been a few years since the series ended, a recap for those who forgot what the comic was about (or haven't read it yet). Starman was about Jack Knight, but it also tied together the stories of every superhero ever named Starman. One of whom was Jack's father Ted, an inventor turned Golden Age superhero who is now retired. Another was Jack's brother David, who was killed in issue #1.

Assisting Jack in his super heroic efforts of truth, justice, and well, stuff: The Shade, a former Flash villain who Robinson writes as a complicated antihero whose life and mysterious past becomes central to the series. There's Sadie, with whom Jack falls in love, and in the final issue, retires to be with her and their child. The O'Dare family, who are all cops. Charity, a fortune teller. Plus the ghost of a pirate, a superpowered ex-con, and various other figures who appear over the course of the 80+ issues.

On the other side of the ledger was The Mist, a Golden Age supervillain now an aged man with a failing memory, who with the help of his two children, Kyle and Nash, stage a series of attacks in the opening story arc. A destruction-filled crime spree that included the murder of David Knight, aka Starman. Then Jack killed Kyle. Nash becomes the new Mist, swearing vengeance by planning to — well, we'll get to all that.

And I don't see what the big deal is here about turning the David Knight character into a sacrificial lamb. That only precipitated a very bad trend/obsession/habit that cost the original Supergirl, and the way writers continued over the years to do so, as though it were inherently wrong to have created these characters in the first place, was nothing short of repulsive. In hindsight, what stories I read from Robinson's Starman series were so empty and pointless.

Here's the 2nd part of this shoddy essay (and I won't be surprised if a 3rd is in preparation), and something decidedly eyebrow raising about artists is brought up:

Rereading the comic, it was a great showcase for artists. It was never defined by the artists, not even Harris, who co-created Jack and drew roughly half the run. The fill-in issues worked because they were very much written to the artists, and stood out from the regular run. I mentioned earlier that one of Robinson’s great skills was the way he took so many tones and styles and managed to make them part of this larger thing. This is one of the things I meant.

Today the writer is considered the author of the comic and treated like that by companies. Rarely are artists filling in and written to and allowed to go crazy in the way that Robinson let them. It may have been in service to the writer’s vision, to the series’ structure and plan, but it was a vision that allowed for many approaches and a significant level of collaboration.

Perhaps that's another problem with some overrated comics of their times, like the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, recalling there were several notable artists who drew stories for that too - it seemed to serve more as a showcase for artists to draw what amounted to nothing, all for the sake of promoting artists who could be as overrated as the writers.

Reading through the first few years of Starman, I am reminded how much comics have changed in the years since. There are story arcs, single issue stories, two or three issues stories, issues that are designed to transition between story arcs and catch up with multiple characters. A time before comics would “write for the trades”. That shift — and I say this as one who since the 1990s would wait for the trade — has not been a good thing.

Umm, even when comics aren't written for the trades, that doesn't mean they can't be awful. And the half-hearted way at least a few of the characters were handled in Starman was atrocious. And there were bad storylines 3 decades ago that weren't written for trades per se, like Emerald Twilight, something overrated writers like Robinson never seemed to complain about. Interestingly enough, the article actually admits there's something wrong with the Starman series in more ways than meets the eye:

One of the sources of superhero comics are old boys adventure tales. I keep thinking about this strange lineage of stories that stretch back to Daniel Defoe in the 18th century and Alexander Dumas in the 19th. That leads to Jack London to Joseph Conrad to John Buchan to Graham Greene to John Le Carre to Robert Stone to Viet Thanh Nguyễn.

One reason they were boys adventures was because there were no girls allowed. Which brings me to Starman’s great failure. There are plenty of things that, in reading the entirety of the series over a short time many years later, may not hold up as well as one would hope. That read differently in chunks than monthly. That didn’t age well. Some plotting that didn’t work as well as they thought. All of this is to be expected. The big failure and disappointment of the series is the female characters.

I wrote earlier that the book is the story of Jack and Ted Knight, of fathers and sons. It does get into Jack and David’s relationship and the complex nature of brothers over the course of its run. That complex relationship of loving someone even though you may not like them. The series’ main problems is that none of the female characters have the depth or complexity of the male characters.

Nash, who after the first story arc becomes the new Mist, is the biggest disappointment. When we meet her in the first story arc she is the stuttering daughter helping her father and her brother. Her brother Kyle is the light of her father’s eye. The one who will become The Mist, the second generation supervillain who will take on his father’s mantle. Later in the series we see The Mist’s misogyny when he speaks of his daughter in a way that makes clear why she might have grown up stuttering and seeking a certain invisibility, even as she was desperate to gain her father’s approval. While she might say that she is taking on her father's mantle, it’s the death of her brother that inspires her and drives her.

Nash goes about being a villain in a familiar way, as though following a script. She stages heists. She kills a few superheroes. I think most characters in superhero comics tend to be one note, flat characters. Is the flatness of her character deliberate? For years I’ve heard about this need to make villains complicated. Yes, people who disagree with me have as deep and rich inner lives as I do. I’ve lived through decades of pop culture that was entranced by Hannibal Lecter and has regurgitated a million serial killers who are interesting and complicated. The truth is that they’re not. Political and business leaders literally laugh like cartoon characters when presented with evidence that they’re hurting and killing people. They may be sentient, but it’s hard to think of them as well-rounded human beings with complicated feelings and inner lives.

Is Nash the product of her environment? Incapable of being a full, complete person and playacting out relationships, imitating her father and other villains? Was she an intentionally flat, boring shell of a human being who lacks an inner life?

The most notable thing about her is that she rapes an unconscious Jack. She does for the purpose of becoming pregnant. Something we would see in the pages of Tom Strong from Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse a few years later. It remains uncomfortable thirty years later. Some of that is simply because it is rape. She does it to a man, which makes it about power as much as sex, which, yes, is always the case. Her plan, to get knocked up by Jack and then to raise their son to be a villain who will kill his father, is one of those plots that I guess makes sense?

No it does not. If anything, what's described here is sick. It's the kind of "product of its time" that gives management of female cast members a bad name. It could also explain why a character like Doris Lee was never made use of, and was apparently established as having been retroactively murdered in the story. For now, what they say about the Nash character is certainly repellent. Note the part about her killing at least a few superheroes, and even raping the star of the show, and something is definitely wrong. I hesitate to think, what if she'd been written as a lesbian, and wound up invoking offensive stereotypes about lesbians while homosexual men were let off the hook by contrast? The part about her resorting to rape of a man, whether conscious or not, is another irritating problem with this pseudo-Starman series - while such things are obviously possible in real life, here it amounts to shock value and cheap sensationalism that can obscure the even more pressing problem of men violating women, based on how contrived and forced it was. And that Nash would be written obliterating any superhero characters who could be minor is another signal what's wrong with the tale: it's all an excuse to rid DC of any characters they consider "useless". All by people who don't have the courage to admit their "talent" in writing and art is completely lacking.

The Mist and Starman. Two elder figures, shaped by the First and Second World Wars, respectively, still alive at century’s end. Both heralded for their actions, but one emboldened by what he did during the war, the other weakened by it. The two men cast shadows over the decades, and over their children, each losing their firstborn son, who sought to take their father’s place. Each then replaced by their second-born.

In that framing, Nash’s plan to have a baby with Jack who will then kill Jack, makes a certain sense. The way that opera and myth have a logic to them.

In the end, The Mist returns. While Ted Knight gave up his role and let Jack find his own way, we see The Mist driven by hatred towards not just his old foe, but his own daughter and grandson. And that hate literally consumes him, as he intends to destroy the city and everyone in it.

The city is saved by Ted, who sacrifices himself, after holding his grandson in his arms for the first and last time. Before encouraging his son to find his own path forward. In Ted’s final act of bravery, he uses a device to lift the Mist and the building with a bomb in it above the atmosphere where it can safely explode. In his last moments, Ted Knight becomes a star.

Considering that the final issue of the comic was released in 2001, at the turn of the millennium, that’s not a meaningless fable.

It is meaningless. And both Starman and Mist are "heralded"? What does that mean, that the villain is admired for his criminal activities? Sorry, that's just further compounding all that's wrong with it. Not to mention that what Nash had planned for Jack gives motherhood a bad name. And that Ted would be turned into a sacrificial lamb for the sake of a bizarre series like this is disrespectful to original creators Gardner Fox and Jack Burnley. So the hero can't die from natural causes and auto accidents; it can only be as some kind of pyhrric victory where a villain is made to look like he's in some kind of "fun" rivalry with a villain. It reeks of moral equivalence.

Perhaps the comic’s biggest failure is Sadie, or rather, the failure of Sadie as a character. She’s the character who Jack falls in love with. He goes into space for her in search of her brother who everyone else thinks is dead. He gives up being Starman and moves away for her. Not just for her, but she’s one reason he moves and realizes it’s time to give up being a hero. A character like that should jump off the page. Their relationship should burn.

I call her the comic’s big failure because she comes off fairly flat.

Gee, if the ladies in Starman are that poorly written, why doesn't the essayist think this comic is a failure? Even the father-son-brother relationships in this tale were dreary and went nowhere in what I read. The main problem is that otherwise insulted the whole superhero theme, right down to the cosmic rod originally used by Ted in the Golden Age tales; also note how Jack takes to using a large pole-style device as the series continues. Perhaps that's another problem: the series has a condescending view of superheroic themes, including the costume worn by Ted.

What would it have meant for Robinson to center Sadie and her romance with Jack in the comic? My gut says that the comic would have been cancelled. This is me being cynical, but I don't think that I’m wrong.

There are two stereotypes to acknowledge about romance stories. One is that the romance genre is largely written and read by women. The other is that it is a largely unserious genre that has led to women having unrealistic views of romance and men. Romance is a genre with tropes and expectations. Unlike other genres like mystery, crime, westerns, thrillers, etc., romance, which remains largely written by and about women, as a genre is not considered art and remains looked down upon.

I will admit to reading very few romance novels in my life. Like all genres, good writers are able to use tropes and expectations but can write thoughtfully about people. Great romantic comedies and dramas work because they understand their characters and while they contain tropes, they are telling the stories of people. Genre contains tropes and myths that are important to cultures. That's why they continue and continue to be passed on.

If romance books give girls and women unrealistic expectations, that implies that men have “realistic” expectations. Or takes as a given that whatever men think/believe is "the norm.” What are those expectations? How do we get those expectations? Supposedly women believe in a prince charming who will come along and save them. I won’t lie, some people think that, or want that.18 A romance is all about fighting over expectations versus reality, and the demands people place on each other, and how to live in the world. That’s not subtext, it is literally the text of everything from Nora Ephron to Jilly Cooper to Jane Austen. The bad books and movies may feature poorly drawn characters uttering bad dialogue, but it is the subject.

Romance in men’s stories, and boys stories, are often side stories. If they appear at all, the romance is secondary. The object of the romance is secondary as well. The relationship is secondary to the plot. Secondary to the character's passion. Secondary to the character’s destiny. What the main character does is the most important thing. The romance must fit into the man’s life and purpose that already exists. Men look for someone who believes in them, their passion, their purpose. Who will support them in their quest. The romance is not about negotiation and conversation, but about passion and choosing.

Is this an argument that romance and relationships should be a minor aspect of our lives for everyone? Or that men should see romance and relationships as a minor aspect of our lives? Because whatever one’s thoughts on monogamy and compulsive heterosexuality, those are very different things.

I don't know about the romance genre, but drama is something that's been marketed to men as much as women, and has succeeded more or less with adults in the west, including incorporation of romance. Of course, if drama is what Starman is supposed to be, it fails. I think it's quite a stretch to say romance has never appeared in men/boys stories, because what about Superman and Lois Lane, Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson? Romance has appeared in stories for men/boys, more or less, and has been appreciated by many of the same, though today, it's certainly been ruined beyond belief by wokeness. Which is decidedly what the Starman series from Robinson represented too. And if the columnist didn't read much romance, how can he be certain women have "unrealistic" expectations, or that even have "realistic" ones? Interesting he speaks of poorly drawn characters with bad dialogue, because that decidedly describes Robinson's shoddy Starman series too.

I wonder sometimes what it means to love superhero comics as an adult? Heroic stories that lack a third act, a resolution, where one faces the consequences of all that has come before. Is this love for comics, which often translates into — if not paralleled by — a love of serialized and procedural stories. Adventure and crime stories featuring the same characters. Who may or may not age, for whom time may or may not continue, but one episode to the next, they continue having new adventures and solving new problems.

Much has been written for decades about the embrace of superheroes in the United States in the post-WWII era and what it means and represents. The embrace of superheroes in popularity writ large in the culture in the 21st Century is often seen in relation to a decline of American power. It remains to be seen what happens next. As the United States declines in economic and cultural power, will they continue to be embraced or will the genre decline?

That's for the moviegoing public though, which is different from people who visit comic book shops. Does our embrace and interest in superheroes represent an arrested development? There is a term I learned years ago, Peter Pans, for adult men who aren’t playboys or fuckboys. They aren’t against marriage. They might want kids. Maybe? Maybe not? They’re in no rush. It’s a bemused term tinged with sadness used to describe some men. I wonder if a love of procedural stories and superheroes, full of ongoing stories and last minute saves, is either a sign of such arrested development, or a contribution to it. Swimming in stories without a third act, without resolution and consequences, do we see that, even unconsciously, as a model in our lives? Does it prevent us from what we should be and need to be doing?

If you're going to write up stories like Robinson's at the expense of what themes made them work in the first place, you don't love superhero comics as an adult. And unfortunately, there's a certain segment of society today, moviegoing or otherwise, who are anti-marriage, even anti-child-bearing. Another reason why this pretentious piece falls flat is because it then veers into a more noticeably political diatribe, and even brings up one such item from Warren Ellis, an Iron Man miniseries he wrote, along with the IM movie from 2008:

Ted was a fragile figure. I don’t mean that mockingly. He had a mental breakdown. One tied to the murder of Doris Lee, his first love, but also to his work on the Manhattan Project. Here’s where I think that Robinson’s Britishness come into play. I was reminded of the Warren Ellis and Adi Granov miniseries Iron Man: Extremis and the series’ take on the military-industrial complex. The idea that Tony Stark and his father were pushed into developing and building weapons from an early age. That this system doesn’t want the best and brightest to design new cities and energy sources, and bring about a Star Trek-like future. Instead it’s focused on weapons, and to a lesser degree, consumer goods. I would argue that this critique — even if just a few pages buried in six issues that consists largely of lengthy fights, an obvious reveal, ending with Stark having new fancy powers — makes this the fourth most subversive comic Marvel has published.

Compare that to the Iron Man film, where the elder Stark’s role in the Manhattan Project is a part of why he’s so great. Rather than question the systems around Stark and militarism, instead we have movies that were used to help promote the military and American militarism and privatized war.

I hated the first Iron Man movie. That put me in a distinct minority among people I knew. The Afghanistan in the film had nothing to do with the actual country, but was instead Dick Cheney’s wet dream. The same cartoonish fantasy used to sell the Afghan and Iraq wars. A lawless place where Muslims of many languages and cultures came together to be evil terrorists whose ultimate goal is …something. Something evil, obviously, even if makes no sense. In Iron Man it involved obtaining weapons, attacking Americans, and rounding up villagers. They’re terrorists. We don’t need to think about who they are or what they want. They don’t make any sense. We just need to kill them. And we need bigger and better weapons to do it.

The second Iron Man film included an Elon Musk cameo and featured Tony Stark declaring “I've successfully privatized world peace.” How did we go from a Republican President pushing through tax cuts for the rich and planning destabilizing wars to today when we have … a Republican President pushing through tax cuts for the rich and planning destabilizing wars? Where people who once supported those wars now think they were a horrible mistake, and that the country’s real enemies are the people who protested that war believing it would be a horrible mistake.

Well, this certainly is another clue what's wrong with this whole pointless commentary about the Starman series. I knew the Comics Journal was a leftist periodical that had to be taken with a grain of salt, and this isn't improving things one bit. In hindsight, while the movie may have established that the terrorists in the 2008 film were being employed by figures like Obadiah Stane, it is rather surprising they would allude to serious issues like Islamic jihadism, because today, it's become far less likely, if at all. Nor would they invite Musk for a cameo in their films, let alone Donald Trump. But no matter the standings of the Comics Journal, what they're writing here is a complete slap in the face to advocates of freedom, including victims of Islam, and that also includes victims of 911. The essayist completely blurs what's wrong with the Religion of Peace, disregards victims of the same, right down to victims of honor murders, and even shoehorns in anti-conservative propaganda to boot. He even refuses to consider that there were people at the time of 911 who thought Iran was a more pressing concern than Iraq, and that was dealt with earlier this year. So Starman, along with the Ellis-penned IM miniseries, is what he considers fabulous? Absolutely shameful.

I was eager to read Batman: Face the Face, the first comic of Robinson's in a while, and was just unimpressed. Anyone could have written that. This is part of what was behind Airboy. The comic got attention for the nasty transmisogyny, which I will not defend, and honestly sits uncomfortably in the story. I think it’s worth noting just how angry and nasty the book is in general. I won’t say it’s Robinson lashing out at the comics industry and himself, but it kind of is. It might open with a sad and almost over-the-top tone, but I think that obscures the sadness at the heart. This feeling that his career has come to an end, his marriage has come to an end, he hates himself, and feels like a failure.

As someone with career and money troubles, who lives alone and has been known to wallow, who has had depression and suicidal ideation for most of my life, I can relate.

Well I can't. Because it does nothing to encourage and inspire, or give somebody a reason for happiness. Interesting they bring up the alleged "transphobia" topic involving the Airboy comic Robinson wrote, because that was tasteless regardless. But while Robinson's an artistic failure, the problem is that in a way, he's the kind who's been failing upwards. Why else would he have gotten the jobs he did?

I’m guessing that Robinson didn’t invent that above dialogue out of thin air, but quoted it directly from someone. How sad is it that this was what so many editors took away from that? How pathetic that people who make comics had only the most surface level understanding of the book. After Starman wrapped up, Robinson stepped away from comics briefly and it’s hard to blame him if this was how the industry responded. I don’t think he meant for comics to be a stepping stone to something else, something “better,” but he wrote a great comic series and got to conclude it on his own terms. Why should he turn around and try to do that again? He tried to do something else. If editors didn’t understand what he had accomplished, why work with people who don’t appreciate you?

When he returned to comicdom later on, he was given the keys to retconning Alan Scott into a gay man in Earth 2, a series that didn't last long. With that kind of obsessive PC direction he took, exploiting other people's creations for his petty politics instead of at least creating new ones, how could anybody consider him an "auteur"? Robinson's not the only one, of course, who's done stuff like this, taking advantage of other people's creations to convey questionable beliefs and directions. But he only made bad situations worse, and simultaneously, the editors/publishers have to shoulder blame for enabling these situations and doing nothing to reverse them.

Anyway, this is one of the grimiest, stupidest essays I've ever read from the Comics Journal, and only makes me glad I don't own stories like Robinson's today. He was like a precursor to Geoff Johns, and did work with the latter on JSA and Hawkman in the early 2000s, which were also overrated, and made clear why I'd rather stick with the older stories than read their modern slop. So I guess it's ironic if Robinson's career sputtered in the end, seeing how he hasn't written much in the past decade. Unfortunately, seeing as he's a SJW in his own way, he's probably not disappointed, because such people are more interested in bringing down the quality of past creations than in building up better storytelling. As for the Comics Journal writer, he certainly knew how to exploit the subjects for conveying his own awful politics, and makes clear why the magazine is such an embarrassment.

What good does it do to invite artist Bart Sears to a specialty store?

The Rome Sentinel (NY) reports the veteran artist Bart Sears will be attending a New Hartford specialty store's event:

Longtime comic book artist and Ithaca native Bart Sears will be visiting Ravenswood Comics in New Hartford for a signing and art event from noon to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 6.

Sears has been an artist in the comic book industry since the 1980s, drawing such comics as “Justice League International,” “Turok: Dinosaur Hunter,” “Conan the Barbarian,” and many more. He has worked for major publishers like Marvel and DC Comics and has produced his own, creator-owned works.

I seem to recall some of Sears' artwork was very dismayingly "puffy", making Capt. America, for example, look as dreadful as Rob Liefeld's artwork, and IIRC, even his character design for Power Girl in Justice League back in 1989 was awful. I have no idea if Sears' styles have improved in the 2 decades since, but what's so great about this guy that a specialty store has to make a potential joke of themselves by inviting him? If I were in charge of the store, I definitely wouldn't want to invite Liefeld. Only talented and competent artists need apply.

Perhaps this can serve as an important lesson for store managers and other folks arranging conventions, that they shouldn't make fools of themselves by sugarcoating artists whose styles are in questionable taste. After all, Liefeld for one was a prime example of an overrated artist who sullied the industry 3 decades ago, though the real culprits are the editors and publishers who hired him in the first place. But, it does explain why Sears was hired by Marvel/DC years before too, and considering how bad artwork's become under their managements now, Liefeld and Sears were just the beginning.