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.

Biased interview with Supergirl screenwriter

Variety interviewed Ana Nogueira, the screenwriter of what now looks like a total botch job for a new take on Supergirl in movies. It may have been written prior to the official release of the film, but does have what to ponder, and shake heads at in disbelief and sadness. First:

Nogueira, an actor and playwright-turned-screenwriter, was originally tapped to pen a “Supergirl” script when Warner Bros. was developing the movie as a spinoff of “The Flash.” But when James Gunn and Peter Safran were named co-CEOs of DC Studios in 2022, they decided to take the DCU in a different direction — and brought Nogueira along for the ride. In fact, they were so enamored with her take on the Supergirl story — both in its original iteration and her revised pitch, based on Tom King’s “Woman of Tomorrow,” which follows Kara and a young alien girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) on a quest for vengeance — that Nogueira will also pen DC’s upcoming live-action “Teen Titans” movie, as well as a “Wonder Woman” film.

Notice how this sham of a trade journal's perpetuating the use of a masculine term, "actor", instead of "actress"? Well that's another problem with this day and age of Orwellian vocabulary, and it's very insulting to the intellect as much as it is to women. That aside, what was so awesome about a tale originally penned by a writer as awful as King, they just had to adapt that? And if the screenplay for Supergirl is that bad, I hesitate to think what a TT and WW movie will be like under her scripting. Now, here's what they say about the addition of Lobo to the story:

Lobo, the cigar-smoking alien bounty hunter played by Jason Momoa, was originally in the “Woman of Tomorrow” comic, but got cut from the story. Take me through the decision to add him back for the movie?

So that was brought to me. [Gunn and Safran] were like, “We want to do ‘Woman of Tomorrow,’ and we want you to find a way to put Lobo in. We think Lobo has a place in this.” I think their thinking was we know Jason Momoa is interested in this, and how can you turn that down? He’s so excellent in it, and you have to find a place when somebody is willing to go there. But at the same time, it also makes sense, because it’s intergalactic. It’s hard to bring Lobo to Earth — he’s always taken place in outer space — so they’re like, “This is an opportunity to bring in this character that would be hard to bring in.”

I knew Tom King had based the comic on “True Grit,” but originally, Lobo was the bounty hunter and Kara was the girl. Then he was like, “That doesn’t quite work.” He flipped it, and he brought in Ruthye. But when I was trying to bring in Lobo, I was like, “There is a third character in ‘True Grit’: Matt Damon’s character,” so if we follow that structure, there’s still room for this guy who is like a frenemy to the two of them. And Lobo is the ultimate frenemy.

From the panning reviews I've read so far, it looks like Lobo's only in the film to look "cool", and little else. Also, there were times in the comics of the past 4 decades where Lobo traveled to Earth, so I don't understand what's the point of this tommyrot. Besides, if they want to take creative liberties to depict Lobo journeying to Earth, they could've if they'd wanted to. That said, what's appalling in the comics is how Lobo was characterized post-Crisis, as some kind of leftover from the Soviet Union who led to the deaths of his fellow citizens on his home planet. This is why it would've been far better to leave him characterized as the Velorpian adversary he began as in the 3rd issue of Omega Men in 1983, pre-Crisis. Because how does his post-Crisis characterization truly count as a "hero"?

The film is about two young women learning to save themselves — and each other. But they also save all these other girls who’ve been kidnapped by the Brigands. How did that come to be?

So, that is not in the comic. I put it in for very boring writer reasons: in the comic, there’s this central planet where there’s been this horrific act in the past — essentially a genocide, an ethnic cleansing — and you find out that Krem was in some way involved. What’s really important about this is them coming and seeing loss that is not perfectly reflective of theirs, but just that deep pain that these girls have been through. And we also had to see that Krem is just like a total POS; that this guy is somebody that we are going to want to see meet a certain end. But I needed it to be something that was happening in the present and not the past, because in the comic, you can jump around to the past, but you can’t do that here. I needed something to feel really immediate, like there was saving to be done now.

I also wanted it to be something that specifically put our girls in jeopardy, so that they would be a target. Because otherwise, I don’t know why the Brigands would come after them. So, it’s those silly, boring writerly things that then end up leading to a larger plot. And it just tracked for me that the Brigands are an all-male race: What do they need?

Better scripting to portray them as convincing villains, and how interesting she admits, in a way, that the end result is boring. That aside, what are the chances the premise she wrote involving the "central planet" is another negative allusion to Israel and the USA, just like in the previous Superman film?

Also, if history items matter, prior to the official opening, Inverse wrote about how the Girl of Steel came to be in the Silver Age, and it also says:

It’s ironic that, despite the impetus of his origin story being his existence as the “Sole Survivor of Krypton,” Superman hasn’t been that in quite some time. Over the years DC Comics has slowly increased the number of Kryptonians who survived the destruction of their planet: General Zod was one of the first, debuting in Adventure Comics #283 in 1961, and since then they’ve added the entire city of Kandor (a population of thousands that accidentally avoided the destruction of Krypton when they were shrunken down and put in a glass enclosure by Braniac), H’el (a Kryptonian clone created by Superman’s father), and even Jor-El himself, transported through time by the machinations of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan (a creative decision that surely sent psychic shockwaves down Alan Moore’s spine).

Interesting there's no objective description given of what was also a recent take in the past decade on characters from the Watchmen, one that was quite pointless.

In her earliest stories, Supergirl resides at Midvale Orphanage under the secret identity of Linda Lee, only using her powers to aid Kal-El sparingly because he didn’t want her revealed to the world until she’d mastered them. Eventually she’s adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, makes her debut as Supergirl to the world in 1962’s Action Comics #285, and graduates from high school as Linda Lee Danvers; after her college years, Linda relocated to San Francisco and took up a variety of different jobs in her off-time from superheroics, including serving as a TV news camera operator, student counseling, and even acting. The 1970s was arguably the biggest period for defining Kara as a character – along with her relocation, she also received her first major villain: Nasthalthia “Nasty” Luthor, the stubbornly loyal niece of Lex Luthor who made it her mission to discover the secret identity of her hated enemy, Supergirl.

Kara’s popularity made her a mainstay in Superman lore, earning her two solo comics as well as appearances in other Superman books, but 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths brought her character to a shocking and tragic end. Years earlier, in an attempt to reconcile the canon inconsistencies that naturally arose from decades of different writers, Kara Zor-El and the Superman of the 50s through the 80s were retroactively labeled heroes of the reality Earth-One, while the original Golden Age Superman of the 1930s and his cousin (more on her later) hailed from Earth-Two – Crisis on Infinite Earths was an attempt made by DC editorial to totally erase the Multiverse, having felt the concept ultimately created more problems than it fixed. The reality-destroying villain of Crisis, a being known as the Anti-Monitor, posed so great a threat that heroes were recruited from multiple alternate Earths to stop him; in the battle, Kara Zor-El was fatally wounded while trying to save her Superman, and when the story concluded with the establishment of a new, singular DC Comics timeline, Kara’s existence and sacrifice were erased for decades.

You can reasonably wonder why they didn't draw ideas from the Silver/Bronze Age history for Kara instead of a shoddy miniseries by an overrated writer who spends too much time writing up contrived takes on trauma. Interesting they admit it was tragic that editorial had to mandate Kara's demise in COIE, and took such a casual approach to the whole notion any character who's supposedly a burden should go nowhere but into the grave. But seriously, it's disputable the Multiverse literally made things confusing when it's 2 or more dimensions involved, and even Marvel's had their share of parallel worlds. The article also brings up Earth-2 counterpart Power Girl's history:

After CoIE, Power Girl was folded into DC’s new Prime Earth, with a fresh backstory that presented her as the long-lived descendant of an Atlantean sorcerer. Naturally, this was a disappointment to fans, so when 2005’s Infinite Crisis (a direct sequel to the original) resurrected the concept of the Multiverse, Power Girl’s origin was again retconned to reveal that she had actually always been the Supergirl of Earth-Two, and had somehow survived the destruction of her original reality; this has remained her consistent backstory to this day, a tragic recontextualization that makes her a refugee of both Krypton and Earth-Two. Adopting the name Power Girl to differentiate herself from Superman (and stand on her own with the appearance of yet another Supergirl), Kara Zor-L’s presence in pop culture has largely been relegated to countless jokes about the overtly sensual nature of her costume, but on the page she’s an incredibly intelligent and authoritative character in her own right, with years of experience as a superhero that make her a stark, mature contrast to the frequent depiction of other Supergirls as impulsive teenagers.

And here, I'm not sure fandom was ever "disappointed" with the retcon for PG, so much as with how Infinite Crisis was such a repellent tale begun with a prelude story that forcibly killed Blue Beetle Ted Kord. IIRC, Arion, Lord of Atlantis, the character created by Paul Kupperberg and Jan Duursema in 1982, was the father figure in the retcon, and funny the writer didn't take the time to make that clear. The post-Crisis retcon to PG was tame compared to what came about when Identity Crisis did in 2004. As for PG being intelligent, isn't that thanks to the best writers? Another example of how they don't have what it takes to credit whomever they thought did the best jobs in characterization when given a writing assignment. Who knows, the Inverse writers probably wouldn't even credit themselves if they got the job!

It wasn’t until 2004 that the grandmother of Supergirls finally returned, receiving a rebooted origin in the pages of Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman series. Her initial post-Crisis origin involved Kara (chronologically older than Kal) being sent away from Krypton at the same time as her cousin, with space shenanigans delaying her arrival for decades and causing her to meet her younger cousin in adulthood while she has the appearance of a 16 year-old girl; later comics revised this by once again having her home of Argo City survive Krypton’s original destruction, only for her parents to send her to Earth before Argo City is forcibly integrated into the Bottle City of Kandor by Braniac. Her first appearance on Earth sees Kara train with Wonder Woman and the Amazons before she’s kidnapped by Darkseid who plans on making her one of his Female Furies — after being saved by the combined might of the Trinity, the new Supergirl goes on an odyssey of self-discovery around the world, encountering Power Girl, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League before she’s transported to the 31st Century where she temporarily joins the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Since her post-Crisis debut in the early 2000s, Supergirl has gone through a few more reboots and reimaginings, but most of them use her 2004 origin as a launchpad to integrate her into whatever new confusing company-wide reboot DC Comics is going through at the time. Across 70 years and multiple different characters holding the mantle, Kara Zor-El has remained one of the most popular characters in the Superman mythos, growing far beyond her initial conception as a “female Superman” to become a character with a vast library of stories in her own right, including her brief time as a Red Lantern as well as the recent Woman of Tomorrow arc the movie is based on.

Gee, doesn't this prove how unsuccessful DiDio's supposed caring about the character was in the long run? The company wide crossovers, which they didn't bother to clearly mention, were another problem that sunk the return of Kara Zor-El, not to mention the disgraced Eddie Berganza. Some could reasonably say the heavy-handed allusions to sexuality in the 2005-11 series could reflect how corrupt Berganza was, and he definitely helped bring comicdom down the horrid levels it's at now. And here we also have an example of no objective view taken on what stories were written up in the past 2 decades, not even the Red Lantern tale that spun out of the awful Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern. At least they admit what came since was confusing, though they don't mention it was just plain uninspired as a result of DiDio's forced darkening of the DCU.

Now onto a few more reviews of this sad catastrophe. Here's what a Forbes writer says about the film, and this one is absurd in its own bias regarding the source material:

I have not read the Tom King source material that inspired this story, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but I know it’s considered quite good and brilliantly drawn and inked. Supergirl is neither of those things. A dull blend of Guardians and an attempt to be Mad Max, but shot with increasingly ugly special effects that have been plaguing many blockbusters and layered on top of a script doing the original source material, and its actors, no favors.

Oh god, is this such a groaner. I've seen some of the art from the original GN, and it's some of the most dreadful, uninspired to come down the pike in the past decade, making Kara look very unappealing and sexless. Let's also not forget how King makes too much of a habit in his writing of relying on trauma themes, and coupled with that, it's exactly why the story makes for a most awful wellspring. Something tells me that, even if the reviewer did read the GN, he'd still be "diplomatic", which is pretty odd for somebody working as a professional reviewer to begin with. And yet, something also tells me that, if the screenplay were based on the writings of 20th century scribes like Otto Binder and his successors at the time, the reviewer would've been far less kind, as though relying upon a more optimistic vision in itself was a crime. And if so, that's very appalling, because it would compound the perception modern reviewers have a grudge against optimism.

There's also another review worth pondering, on 411 Mania, reminding everybody of one of the most decidedly rotten details about the previous Superman movie that's followed up on in Supergirl:

Unfortunately, Supergirl continues an ill-advised plot thread, first introduced in Superman, involving Superman’s parents. The last movie shockingly revealed that Superman’s parents sent him to Earth to conquer it and subjugate the human race.

The revelation is certainly a unique narrative choice, differing from past, more traditional interpretations of Jor-El. However, Superman failed to meaningfully flesh out that detail. Supergirl continues that plot thread to some extent, but it still doesn’t work. Basically, the new DC Universe opened a huge can of worms and has no idea how to deal with it.

It reminds me that 2 decades ago, when Dan DiDio, Eddie Berganza and Jeph Loeb launched the post-2004 take on Kara Zor-El in a new solo book, there was a storyline in issue 16 co-written by Mark Sable where it looked like Kara's father was doing terrible wrongs, which, if the following synopsis at Grand Comics Database is correct, was disgusting, because it claims Kara was forced to kill her mother and her father sent her to kill Superman?!? Well that was abominable, and so too was the premise for Jor-El in Gunn's Superman film. As a result, that's why, if Kara kills Krem in the new Supergirl followup, it not only reeks of moral hypocrisy, it perpetuates some of the most embarrassingly bad storylines to emerge when DiDio was still holding DC hostage to his whims. Also, note the continued use of "revealed", instead of "established", and that illogic is very grating.

Anyway, John Nolte at Breitbart's announced that this new take on the Maid of Might has become a global fiasco:

Supergirl didn’t just flop at the box office this weekend; it is a flop of epic proportions, an abysmal failure that will be remembered only as a failure.

With a disastrous $38 million domestic opening and an even more humiliating overseas take of $30 million, Supergirl is a bigger domestic flop than The Marvels ($46 million), The Flash ($55 million), Black Adam ($67 million), and Morbius ($39 million).

Supergirl’s global opening gross is just $68 million, which means it’s worse than notorious flops such as The Marvels (110 million), Morbius ($84 million), Birds of Prey ($81 million), and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ($80 million).

Get this: Supergirl’s global is not much better than Madam Web ($50 million) and Blue Beetle ($43 million).

The production and promotion budget for Supergirl is right around $250 million. That makes the break-even number at $450 to $500 million. Supergirl will be lucky to hit $200 million worldwide. Warner Bros. is looking at massive losses. [...]

Well, it certainly didn’t help as the hype machine kicked in that Supergirl star Milly Alcock — who has all the charisma of a sidewalk and the body of a 14-year-old boy — started opening her mouth about how she’s a victim of sexism and Supergirl is queer.

From what I've read of the movie to date, it doesn't sound like there's any love interest or romance in it, quite a contrast to how Kara hoped to find love with a boyfriend in the Silver Age stories. And that's another of the biggest problems with modern movies - PC mandates shun any chance of romance.

In the end, of course it's very sad the result is a movie that adds insult to injury 42 years after the failed Supergirl film of 1984 starring Helen Slater. Now, for all we know, it could take decades until they try again, and for all we know, even then it'll probably wind up being a case of "3 strikes and you're out". Sometimes, ever since the failed adaptation of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski in 1991, I've wondered if filmmakers and studios are deliberately making these lady-starring action epics bad in order to taint the source material. The new Supergirl movie could sadly be another hint at that.

Why is Absolute Batman so "addictive" to certain mainstream apologists?

Here's a writer at Dread Central who's telling why he allegedly finds Absolute Batman so "addictive":

As most of you regular readers know by now, I’m pretty obsessed with DC‘s record-breaking Absolute Batman. Not because it’s Batman. Not because it’s selling a ridiculous number of copies. Not because every issue seems to create another key appearance or first cameo for collectors to chase. I’m obsessed with it because after more than eighty years of Batman stories, writer Scott Snyder and artist Nick Dragotta somehow found a way to make the character feel new again.

The easiest explanation is Bruce Wayne himself. For decades, Batman has largely been defined by wealth. He was the billionaire who used unlimited resources to wage war on crime, and while that fantasy worked when I was younger, it feels increasingly disconnected from the world we live in now. The idea of a billionaire using his power and influence for good sounds nice, but it’s also become much harder to relate to. This version of Bruce Wayne changes that. He’s blue collar. He’s working class. He isn’t standing above Gotham looking down at its problems. He’s living inside them. He’s a product of the same broken system that created Gotham’s corruption, and he’s fighting back against it.

I'd noticed this stupid defense put to use before, and if there's anything it certainly fails to recognize, it's that there's also such a thing as wish fulfilment. Of course, the same people who apparently don't want Wayne to be a millionaire also don't want Spider-Man to be either, and no doubt, they don't even want Tony Stark to be wealthy. Why, now that I think of it, Matt Murdock as Daredevil was close to being wealthy, if only because for many years, he'd been depicted as well off enough to afford a townhouse with roof window through which he could go out to do acrobatics on his way to patrol as Hornhead. And I guess that's not acceptable to the modern SJW either, because it's all too close to being like Donald Trump, huh? I hesitate to think what they'd say about a woman being wealthy, and IIRC, Vixen's been characterized as such. What would or will they say about a heroine like her being rich?

But the more I’ve thought about Absolute Batman, the more I’ve realized Bruce Wayne is only the entry point. He’s what initially grabs you, but he’s not why you keep coming back month after month. The real magic is the world that Snyder and Dragotta are building around him, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen in mainstream superhero comics in a very long time.

I miss the part here about merit. Even in later paragraphs, it's not clear that's what they're selling this on. It still sounds more like they're selling it on the alternate universe theme alone, along with darkness. Which is actually what's been the norm for a long time now, and if there's something that hasn't received much emphasis for years now, it's a world that's bright and optimistic, like the Fantastic Four's. So what's the writer lecturing us about anyway?

The book never sits in one place too long. It’ll give you Batman smashing someone’s face through a wall and then immediately cut to Bruce lying in his mother’s arms. It’ll introduce a major villain, answer a question that’s been hanging over the series for months, tease three new mysteries, and somehow still find time for character development. The story is constantly shifting between action, horror, mythology, mystery, and emotional drama without ever feeling bloated or unfocused. [...]

What’s remarkable is that the speed never comes at the expense of character. The same issue can swing from “really bombastic, gross, or insane action,” as Dragotta describes it, directly into deeply personal moments that remind readers why they care about these characters in the first place.

In fact, Dragotta specifically points to those quieter moments as being equally important to the series’ success. While discussing scenes involving Bruce and his mother, he explained how the goal is to create emotional recognition in the reader. “Little Bruce cuddling up to his mom and having a reader goes, yeah, that’s how I used to cuddle with my mom.”

Gee, what's being told here that couldn't be told in similar ways in the flagship comics proper? Also, despite what the columnist says, it's doubtful they made this genuinely character based. Either way, here's the stunning part that could be applied to thousands of other comics, mainstream or otherwise:

That’s the part I think most people miss when they talk about Absolute Batman.

People focus on the oversized Batman. They focus on the action. They focus on the redesigns and the shocking reveals. What makes the book special is that it never loses sight of the people underneath all of it. For every giant action sequence, there’s a character moment. For every revelation about Gotham, there’s a revelation about Bruce. The spectacle gets readers talking, but the emotional core is what keeps them invested.

The closest comparison I can make isn’t another comic. It’s prestige television. Absolute Batman doesn’t feel like a monthly comic book. It feels like a serialized series that expects you to keep up. It expects you to remember details from ten issues ago. It expects you to connect the dots. It expects you to pay attention. Most importantly, it respects the reader enough not to explain everything twice.

Sounds like he's saying it's similar to a movie, which reminds me of the time when author Sean Howe said 14 years ago that if you make the comic look more like a movie, it's a recipe for failure. Doesn't that ever occur to these media phonies? That the horror genre gets such an emphasis here also isn't encouraging, nor is the talk of "gross". How can you get emotionally invested with that kind of nasty theme running amok any more than the divisive political metaphors?

At some point, the magic usually disappears. A creator loses focus. The mythology becomes bloated. Editorial gets involved. The story starts spinning its wheels. I’ve watched it happen for most of my life. So every month when a new issue of Absolute Batman arrives, I find myself staring at it for hours before opening it.

This is getting silly now, despite how some interesting points are made on how and why storytelling goes wrong. If he's going to merely stare for hours at the book he's received, he makes himself sound like a nut. And what good does it do to bring up editorial mandates when the same writers make no attempt to complain that kind of "oversight" has to stop? Or that talent matters and can't be sabotaged by said mandates? Replacing the flagship comics with alternate universe lines doesn't improve anything. It's only defeatist, especially when the excuse is to push more political metaphors that even the mainstream lines aren't immune to. And now, they actually reveal one of the story's most eyebrow raising setups:

One of the biggest developments in the issue revolves around Bruce’s growing realization that his father’s death may not have been random at all. The implication that Scarecrow was involved changes everything, but what impressed me wasn’t the twist itself. It was the realization that evidence of this has been sitting in the series from the very beginning. This wasn’t a surprise invented halfway through the run. It feels planned. It feels intentional. It feels like another example of Snyder and Dragotta trusting that readers are paying attention.

Then comes the skyscraper scene.

Bruce is standing on the ledge of a skyscraper (that he’s building as part of his day job) when his boss arrives with a group of investors. Another figure steps onto the ledge beside him.

It’s Joker.

And for a moment, everything stops.

Not just the story. Everything.

The issue stops. The room stops. The entire universe seems to stop.

Because this isn’t just a character reveal. This is the moment where the mythology expands again. This version of Joker isn’t simply another criminal. He’s a billionaire. A manipulator. A puppet master. A man who increasingly appears to be sitting above Gotham itself, quietly pulling strings from the shadows.

Then comes the bombshell.

He tells Bruce that he made him.

That Scarecrow killing his father wasn’t random.

That Batman isn’t some outside force pushing back against Gotham’s corruption.

He’s a product of it.

He’s another piece on the board.

What makes the scene work isn’t the shock value. It’s the relationship being established between the two of them. The suggestion that they need each other. That neither can fully exist without the other. It’s one of the oldest themes in Batman mythology, yet somehow this version feels fresh. More importantly, it feels earned because the series has spent 21 issues laying track for moments exactly like this.

This doesn't sound appealing. It just sounds stupid. As for the part about a wealthy villain, that's already been noted for some time now, that this comic's take on the Clown Prince of Crime is more like an allusion to Donald Trump. And when it's told Batman was a production of corruption, I'm sorry, but that's only insulting to the intellect, and does nothing to build confidence in the story putting emphasis on a dedicated crimefighter. If this kind of premise were applied to Spider-Man, it wouldn't work there either. What's more, that whole notion the hero and villain literally "need each other" is insulting to the intellect, and reeks of moral equivalence. Seriously, do we need villains as horrific as the Joker is usually characterized as? Of course not. One sure thing: a villain that awful should not be considered more valuable than a hero.

I trust Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta to keep building. I trust them not to waste my time. I trust them not to hit the reset button. I trust them because 21 issues in, they’ve earned it.

Forget it. Snyder didn't do anything worthwhile for Batman when he first wrote the flagship series 15 years ago, And the Absolute line only reeks of pretension. Not to mention that the whole notion hero and villain "need each other" is irritating, and quite possibly one of the biggest problems in marketing and storytelling that brought down Batman as much as Superman years before.

Masters of the Universe movie goes into box office freefall

So the latest live action adaptation of what began as a toy line that later morphed into comics and cartoons appears to be another financial dud, as Variety states:

“Scary Movie” easily secured the No. 1 spot over this weekend’s other major new release, Amazon MGM’s sword-and-planet adventure “Masters of the Universe,” which debuted at No. 2 with a soft $29.3 million in North America. The film also earned just $25 million from 86 overseas markets for a global start of $54 million. It’s an underwhelming start for a movie that cost nearly $200 million to produce, not including the marketing budget. It’ll require substantial staying power to justify its price tag, considering that theater owners get to keep roughly 50% of ticket sales.

”This is a soft opening for an action adventure with franchise and series potential,” Gross says, adding that “right now, the only fantasy heroes doing strong business are the biggest and most established superheroes, like Spider-Man, Deadpool, Wolverine, and Superman.”

“Masters of the Universe” is based on the Mattel action figure known as He-Man and marks the toy company’s second theatrical film after “Barbie.” Inaugural crowds were 66% male and nearly 40% were above the age of 45 — meaning that mostly fans of the ’80s toy and cartoon showed up. So “Masters of the Universe” will need to cater to broader audiences in the coming weeks in order to become profitable in its theatrical run.

Not so simple if it didn't make a big splash in its first week. The results so far are certainly telling.

Anyway, there are questionable elements in this new film, which is not bound to be a surprise for anybody who's paid attention to the woke trajectory Hollywood sadly took in the past decade. Let's begin with the following review - or what I can glean from something where the majority of the text is largely restricted by pay options - from the Wall Street Journal, which says:

As imagined by director Travis Knight—best known for another toys-to-screen saga, 2018’s “Transformers” sequel “Bumblebee”—and a battalion of screenwriters, the new He-Man, lost prince from the planet Eternia, is a meek cubicle dweller named Adam. He lives in Oklahoma City. He works in H.R., wears a pink shirt, and drives a yellow Subaru. The last gets better mileage than the running gag about his ordinariness, which is still being used in the closing minutes of the film. Adam, played by England’s Nicholas Galitzine (“The Sheep Detectives”) with Schwarzeneggerian bulk, never stops babbling about conflict resolution and creating space for meaningful dialogue. His office-dweeb jabber would be the most overdone gag in the movie were it not for the many references to the kinds of actions a fellow called “Fisto” might undertake.

No kidding. Well, it gets worse, as this review from Peter Travers points out:

Galitzine, a self-described “hetero” who won raves for playing a gay prince in “Red, White & Royal Blue” and a queer Duke in “Mary & George” with Julianne Moore, plays it straight here as hapless Adam, a clueless charm boy with an office nameplate that lists his preference for he/him pronouns. That one quickly went viral and not in a good way.

Gee, and it doesn't get any better with what's told in the following review from Region Free, about crude sex-related jokes involving genitals turning up, which I'm not going to highlight directly since what's described is so alarmingly vulgar. For something turned out in part by a toy company, how odd they want to inject crude lines into the mess, just because they want a PG-13 rating and believe that's the only way it'll sell. What that shows is just how lacking confidence many entertainment producers are, and it's doubtless been that way for a long time. And what makes it additionally insulting to the intellect is how, according to Screen Daily, the relationship between Adam and Teela is "chaste". How odd indeed. Yet that's been pretty much the norm for years now, to eschew romantic chemistry between the leads almost entirely, and points to either/both a lack of creative freedom for the writers/directors, or goes to show how creatively bankrupt they are at this point.

And then, from Vanyaland, we learn this film can't escape certain stereotypes that're apparently still acceptable among Hollywood leftists:

...Meanwhile, there are the scenes set on Earth, full of a simmering rage at the “feminizing” ways of corporate culture — “I have the power” reinterpreted as a seminar chant, conducted by Adam’s boss, a black woman with a shaved head and overly-cautious-yet-peppy HR demeanor — which is intended to provide a polar counter-balance to the hyper-masculine expectations of those on Eternia.

And I thought it was already bad enough the Golden Age of comics had some unfortunate stereotypes of black women with short hair, making them look far less attractive than their white counterparts. Obviously, the stereotype still exists, and, if the above description is any sign, has gotten considerably worse. What's so "feminine" about what they cite? It's nothing more than a slight to black women, and no doubt, a result of the woke notion that guys aren't allowed to admire even them. PC certainly leads to victimization.

Since we're on the subject of race-related issues, I also noticed the film's simultaneously got a case of race-swapping, with the mentor-like figure Man-At-Arms - who was white in original incarnations in toys and cartoons - changed to black with the actor Idris Elba in the role. It's rather ironic since Elba also claims to believe James Bond shouldn't be turned woke or its star have his race changed. But then, why didn't he make the same argument regarding the co-star he plays in MOTU? Is it because this is a minor character by contrast? Does that suddenly make it justified? Or was Elba too eager to receive a paycheck for a screenplay so laughable? They had a chance to introduce an original character who could fill the specific role here played by Elba, and instead, yet again, political correctness triumphed over organic writing. What a joke.

The studio's presumably planning a sequel spotlighting She-Ra, but I think it'd be better if it all stopped here, since PC is bound to influence such a project even worse than what this MOTU movie's already turning out to be. And if box office results say anything, it probably will grind to a halt anyway. Just another ridiculous merchandise-based movie starring actors and actresses I've never heard of, and the result of Hollywood's barrel scrapings in their desperation for what they can adapt to live action. Stuff like this is why it's better to stick with comics and other books instead, so long as they aren't woke.

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?

Another occurance in Venom's series that was uncalled for

Here's a sugary Popverse interview with Spider-Man editor Nick Lowe and writer Joe Kelly about one more thing they've done in Venom #256 (who knew any ongoing they prepared for that character could've gone so long by now?), which was to terminate the Paul Rabin character they shoehorned into the Spidey franchise just to serve as a paramour for Mary Jane Watson at the expense of Peter Parker:

After you have a bad break-up, whoever your ex ends up with next might get a little side-eye from you — for one reason or another. Three years ago in comics, Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker broke up, and the model-turned-Venom MJ has since found someone new in her life in the recently introduced Paul Rabin. This dovetailed into Mary Jane getting stories of her own, leveling up when she became the latest host of Venom.

But all the while, a certain segment of fans has had an unreserved scorn for Paul Rabin — at best, he is not a good fit to be the romantic partner of Mary Jane, and, at worst, he is an ill-fitting 'plot device' to keep MJ out of the magnetism that is her on-again, off-again romance with one-time husband, Peter Parker. But in April 1's Venom #256, the Paul Rabin haters got their wish as he was written out of Mary Jane's Venom series with a surprise (and surprisingly clear) death at the hands of the serial killer supervillain Torment as part of the recent 'Death Spiral' crossover event with the Amazing Spider-Man title.

Ahem. I may not like that C.B. Cebulski and company chose to do this for the sake of keeping Spidey and MJ apart, but that doesn't mean I support "projection" to the point of seeing the character put to death at the hands of the villain I assume was meant to be MJ's father. But don't be surprised if these propagandists have no qualms about making fandom look that bad they'd view a murder as a great thing just because it supposedly paves the way for reuniting MJ and Peter.

After a few weeks for fans to unpack it and to avoid spoilers, we spoke with Paul Rabin co-creator Joe Kelly (writer of Amazing Spider-Man), and Spider-Man group editor Nick Lowe to talk about it. Apparently, the idea to kill Paul Rabin originally came up as a way to add to the death total of 'Death Spiral,' but in it, they found a deeper story — and finale — for the Paul Rabin era.

"There were some pillars of the story that were there from the beginning," Kelly tells Popverse. "Once we were like, 'body count, body count,' we wondered who we were taking off the board. I don't remember if it was Al [Ewing] specifically who said it, and we were all like, 'Yeah, it's kind of a good moment.'"

"I think it may have been [Venom editor] Jordan White who suggested it, and then Al thought of the timing, or something like that," Lowe adds. "And we all were talking about how it's got to happen just to hurt the most, and to have the most complex emotional toll for all of it."

"Especially if he goes out trying to do something good," adds Kelly.

So that's what this whole story was about - mass death trails. Just another reminder what's gone wrong with the modern era, where horror supplants comedy and romance. As for "doing something good" before being sent to the great reward, unfortunately, it's too late to impress upon anybody now with that kind of angle, especially when the stories they've concocted are so jaw-droppingly contrived and forced. Besides, the chances they'll actually reunite Peter and MJ as a married couple at this point are very low.

Since Paul Rabin's debut in 2022's Amazing Spider-Man #1, and a four-plus-year romance with Mary Jane, all the while in the orbit of her ex, Peter Parker, it seems almost every Spider-Man and Venom comics reader had an opinion on the character. While some characters find it hard to gain traction with fans, Paul Rabin was what pro wrestling fans would call a heat magnet; readers either loved him or hated him.

For Nick Lowe, who has spent 25+ years inside Marvel Comics editorial and seen (and in many cases been a part of) several superhero stories that provoked this kind of reaction, he knew it was there - and that there would be a triumphant release of emotion for the 'Paul haters' at this moment.

"We were not shocked in any way by the reaction," Lowe says. "If anything, the Paul haters out there... being vocal is not their problem. The Paul supporters have also been vocal. They're not as large as one might expect the population, and much of it was tongue in cheek, but we knew it would be a big moment and get a big reaction from a good portion of the fandom."

"I don't really look at these things, but I expected it," Kelly adds. "The little birds out there tell me it was quite a day for a certain corner of the internet."

That's exactly the problem. They don't make any distinction between good or bad responses, what matters to them is if the audience pays any attention at all. Which beggars the query: doesn't merit matter? Alas, not to such PC advocates. Interesting they bring up how long Lowe's worked for Marvel, because one could say he came about at the beginning of the end for whatever was left of Marvel's merit, and it wouldn't be a shock if he were a prime choice of Joe Quesada to serve as one of the editors for writers like J. Michael Straczynski, who of course turned out some of the shoddiest Spidey stories, right down to the whole Sins Past debacle.

Before you ask if Mary Jane and Peter Parker will end up back together, let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's a Spider-Man family mystery happening, and, oh yeah, a landmark Amazing Spider-Man #1000 to come.

What a shock. As noted before, of course nobody expects a serious reunion under such disgraceful frauds, one more reason why there's no longer any ability to celebrate a landmark 1000th issue. A similar point could be made about Superman and Batman's 1000th landmarks. And all the while, the publishers are still nailed on the whole notion that serial fiction like this can only be published as pamphlets, and never solely as paperbacks/hardcovers.

And if there's something else about the late Gerry Conway worth noting, it's that it's a terrible shame that, among the things he did a 360 degree on in the past decade or more, he also threw MJ under the bus, and all that after he'd gone to all the trouble of killing Gwen Stacy in 1973 just to prepare the groundswork for pairing up Peter and MJ as a couple. Conway, to my knowledge, never panned Quesada and company for where they took everything with Sins Past and One More/Brand New Day, and one could reasonably ask, why would the guy want to take all the paths he did back in the Bronze Age if he didn't have any respect for the characters, as his refusal to speak against the modern management suggests? I realize Conway wasn't the only one who let down entire fandoms with his PC positions; there's plenty more. But that's why we're at such an abyss today, and it's not bound to improve anytime soon.

2 old interviews regarding the JSA

I found 2 interviews, one with the overrated David Goyer and the other with the late Len Strazewski, from an old Geocities JSA fansite that's now archived. First, here's the interview with Goyer:

Q2. How did you choose what storyline to start the new series with? Was it always intended to deal with the death of Sandman, and the rebirth of Dr Fate, or were there other ideas?

We always intended to begin the new book with the death of Wesley Dodds, but originally, this was going to be tied into a story involving the old Paul Kirk Manhunter clones. We shelved that (we'll be bringing it back later on) and decided to go for something much more epic -- the birth of a new Dr. Fate.

And that new Dr. Fate was Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl's son Hector Hall, aka the Silver Scarab, who about 5 years later, was put back in the grave along with Lyta Hall/Fury, by none other than Geoff Johns himself when he took up the writing chores almost entirely solo. So what was the whole point of bringing them back into the fold? And what's so wrong with Kent Nelson and Inza Nelson that they wouldn't reverse their atrocious fate in Zero Hour?

That aside, while it may be one thing to write up a demise for Dodds, the way he was depicted committing suicide to prevent a hefty villain from possibly assaulting him to get more information out of him was disgraceful and forced, as were the other deaths depicted early in the series' run. The problem with how they did it is that they seem to think these other characters were some sort of a burden with no storytelling value to build around, and in the end, instead of just quietly letting them be dropped into limbo, they can only think of putting them to death through murder. Even suicide's very appalling. Yet they resort almost exclusively to such fates instead of death by natural causes and auto accidents, just to show how uncreative they actually are.

Q5. How has the reaction to the new JSA comic been in the DC offices? Positive?

Generally, DC has been very happy with the book. Sales are quite good and they like the way the fans have been responding. They've given us fairly free rein to do what we want.

Q6. What did you think of the 1992 JSA series by Len Strazewski and the late Mike Parobeck?

I enjoyed the short-lived '92 JSA series, but I thought it lingered a bit too much in the past, recycling the same (quite small) JSA rogues gallery, etc.

That was one of the reasons we introduced Mordru and (in issue #6) Black Adam. Later on, we will see a new Injustice Society. We wanted to expand the JSA's rogues gallery.

Oh, so here he's stealthily putting down Strazewski's work, which was cut short by editor Mike Carlin, yet when somebody like Goyer comes along, suddenly there's no complaints. Funny Goyer says Strazewski's work lingered in the past too much, when Goyer/Johns/Robinson's JSA wasn't all that different, despite what they say. And a big problem was how it didn't built legitimately or organically, based on how it stuck with the status quo set by Zero Hout, and there were at least 3-4 series at the time introducing new characters to replace the older ones, including how Oliver Queen was replaced as Green Arrow by a newly created son. In retrospect, none of the replacements aged well.

Q8. Why did you decide to explore the return of a new Dr Fate, and not the return of another JSAer, for e.g, a new Hawkman, new Spectre or new Sandman?

We decided to bring Dr. Fate back because the Spectre issue was already being dealt with in Day of Judgement.

Hawkman was a larger issue which is being worked out as we speak -- but at the time we were pitching the series, DC still wasn't ready to give us the green light on a Hawkman resurrection.

As for Sandman -- well, Sandy needed to be in the book from the beginning for obvious reasons. And we were prohibited from actually naming a new character Sandman by Gaiman and the Vertigo folks. In the DCU, that name is exclusively Morpheus' now.

Well at least this tells something. To think that a so-called called auteur who was since accused of serious sexual abuse would have that kind of "creative control" at the expense of the flagship DCU would even have veto power over what characters could retain the Sandman codename. Of course, one can reasonably wonder how Goyer and company feel now that a guy they possibly looked up to as a genius was discovered to be quite the opposite? Do they still consider what he did with Lyta Hall throughly acceptable? I don't know, but the next part of the interview certainly makes clear what kind of woke advocate Goyer really is:

Q15. Some fans have claimed that Dr Midnite (Charles McNider) was possibly gay. What is your opinion on this situation?

It is my personal belief that McNider may very well have been gay. If we have the opportunity, we may address it one day in a story.

It's definitely eyebrow raising when somebody blurs the differences between fiction and reality that blatantly. The Golden Age Dr. Mid-Nite is a non-existant person, and like various other characters of the times, was written as a cypher, so how and why do phonies like Goyer jump to these conclusions? And who are these fans they speak of? Not me. Talk about putting words in the fanbase's mouth! Some could say the way McNider was written might make him look gay, but since he's a fictional character, there's nothing to prove, period, except for that some overrated modern writers are some of the most shameless people around. And Goyer did go pretty woke in later years to boot. And what he said about She-Hulk and did with Superman was inexcusable.

Now, here's the 2nd with Len Strazewski, and some of what he tells is far more impressive what Goyer had to say, and tells quite a bit about what went wrong at the time when the editors decided they didn't want to sell according to merit in the early 90s. This is about both the 1991 miniseries and the regular series the followed the next year:

Q4. Was this series received well by fans, and DC alike?

Fans liked the 1991 series and most DC editors ignored it.

Q5. And what about the 1992 series? What's the story behind that?

(After the 1991 series,) Brian and I proposed the 1992 continuing series set in the present. Mike Parobeck worked with me on THE FLY and also on the mini-series, and the 1992 series was created with him in mind. He designed the look of all the characters for the series.

Q6. And was the 1992 series well-received?

Fans universally loved the 1992 series and DC editors hated it because they (as a group) had convinced themselves that no one was interested in older heroic characters. History has proved them wrong, of course.

What's additonally ironic is that at least a few of the older characters who weren't slaughtered during Zero Hour were put to use in JSA, and when that occurred, no complaints were made, and the editors didn't balk at Goyer/Robinson/Johns making use of them. One could validly wonder if Strazewski wasn't PC enough for their tastes that Carlin for one had to be so petty. There is one part here that's unfortunate, however:

Q9. Regarding the lineup of the 1992 series, why were characters such as Dr Fate, Power Girl or the Star-Spangled Kid not included? Were there plans to have them appear in the future?

No special reason not to include them. Dr Fate would have shown up eventually. Power Girl and Star-Spangled Kid never interested me much.

With all due respect, it's ludicrous to say they "never interested" you much when it all depends what talent you can bring to the table and what stories you can build around them. Although, the reason why Power Girl wasn't in those 10 issues was because the disgraced Gerard Jones was holding her hostage to his repellent stories in JLA. As for Star-Spangled Kid, a creation of Jerry Siegel, the only problem there was that Roy Thomas had already put Sylvester Pemberton to death towards the end of Infinity Inc, though if anybody talented enough wanted to, there were zillions of decent ways to resurrect the guy from the grave (and Thomas himself may have once said he'd regretted what he did with Pemberton). Instead, DC editors allowed Johns to exploit the role for his female counterpart creation, Courtney Whitmore, and for some reason, if there was any character in the past decade whom editors didn't demand be given a PC costume design unlike what Starfire sadly got, it was Johns' creation, who wore a tank top outfit, begging the question, why does he get a pass while other writers/artists don't on such issues? Now, here's what Strazewski addressed in regards to the late Mike Parobeck's art:

Q12. Some fans have stated that Mike's JSA work was "too cartoony". Personally, I thought it fit perfectly, but do you have an opinion?

As noted above. He was brilliant and his style is now the most copied style in comics. Among others, DC Executive Editor Mike Carlin said Mike's work was not appropriate for super-heroes and that was one reason why the JSA series was cancelled. Carlin also said he didn't like my writing. He was mistaken.

Again, Carlin was clearly a bad omen for comicdom as an editor, if anything, and some of the later projects he worked on certainly played quite a part in draining all that made DC/Marvel work in the first place. And as I may have noted before, if older characters like Dr. Strange and Mr. Fantastic could be loved by so many readers back in the day, then it's false to say nobody liked reading about older heroes.

Q13. Have you read the current JSA series, by David Goyer and Geoff Johns? If so, what is your opinion?

I haven't read it and probably will not. It would be unfair, I think, to do so. If it is really good, I'd be jealous. If it is really bad, I'd be angry. If it was mediocre, I'd be sad. I've met the creators and they seem like bright, creative, young guys. I am sure they are doing as well as their editors allow them.

Hopefully, he didn't read it and years afterwards, I myself reevaluated whatever I did read from Goyer/Johns/Robinson and realized it was grossly overrated to begin with, and otherwise insulting to the intellect. And Johns later willingly took part in the time-altering crossover Flashpoint, which led to the New52, and in the process, erased his stories from continuity for the sake of a new one that led nowhere fast, and was eventually reversed along with at least a few other horrible mistakes like Identity Crisis. But by then, it was long too late, and the damage Johns in particular engineered on his part was truly reprehensible.

As far as I know, Carlin's never apologized for being such a hypocrite, and of course, neither have Goyer/Robinson/Johns. If Strazewski got alienated from comicdom because of all that, it's understandable. Some PC advocates for decades have really brought things down to insufferable levels, and repairing all that will take an epoch. For now, I hope Strazewski's JSA stories will be reprinted in the DC Finest archives, and as for the later JSA, that's best avoided and forgotten.

Why I hope Green Lantern's run in Action Comics Weekly isn't reprinted in the same DC Finest volume as the last few issues of the 1960-88 solo series

I recently thought of doing some more research on Jim Owsley (Christopher Priest)'s bottom of the barrel run on GL in Action Comics Weekly, and while I was at it, I found this superficial item on Biff Bam Pop:

Green Lantern, written by comic book hall-of-famer James Owsley and drawn by the legendary Gil Kane, picked up right where the character’s series had ended, only now, in the first chapter of the serial, the exploits of DC’s favourite science fiction space-cop was narrated by his ex-lover, now turned adversary, Carol Ferris, the Star Sapphire. The story traveled from deep space to planet Earth, the first chapter ending with the mutilation and murder of ex-Green Lantern Corps member, Katma, who also happened to be Green Lantern John Stewart’s wife, at the hands of the evil narrator. Quite the cliff-hanger.

Oh for crying out loud. Pathetic posts like these are exactly what enabled DC to get away with that in the long run. And unless DC made a serious effort of recent, then as noted before, they've never taken any steps to reverse the horrific damage left by where they put Katma Tui.

What's most devastating about the starting storyline is that it was illustrated by none other than Hal Jordan, Carol Ferris and Katma Tui's own original artist, Kane. And the atrocity was compounded when, in issue 603, GL smacks/punches Carol in the face/head. If you have a strong stomach, the horror can be seen here and here, in some panels from the issue, which are chilling even for their time in how they emphasize depicting a man hitting a woman. They're so horrific I decided not to post the images directly, so view at your own risk. It's angering because no doubt, the editors and publishers exploited Kane's willingness to participate as a shield for the loathsome storyline that resulted. Though Kane may have realized he was contributing to a terrible direction, and quit after issue 605, the damage was done. This was at least 15 years before Identity Crisis did something almost similar, when Brad Meltzer wrote Jean Loring inviting the Atom to hit her, and miraculously, we were spared the sight of a man hitting a woman in that abomination. But the whole notion a woman would be depicted inviting a man to assault her is still equally offensive, and one could argue that Owsley's story played a part in leading to the later situation. It certainly did not reflect well on whatever talents he had in writing.

I also noticed this troubling thread on Reddit about what Guy Gardner was written doing indirectly. That is, when Hal called him about the terrible news, Guy laughed. As though the writing couldn't have been worse. Even if Guy was written as a jerk at the time, that's still no excuse. It makes no difference whether it was editorially mandated; that Owsley would take the job to start with was abominable, as was Kane's willingness to illustrate it. One respondent said:

That run in Action comics was so bad it ranks as probably the worst I've ever read. Hal's old friends turn on him, Katma dies unnecessarily, everyone is out of character and the art is the only saving grace.

No, the art is wasted on something heinous, and one of the oddest things about the run is that it didn't seem verbatim to continuity in other flagship comics DC published at the time. Stunningly, this was edited by Denny O'Neil, around the same time he arranged for a phone poll to determine if Jason Todd, the 2nd Robin, should live or die in Batman. There were plenty of impressive moments in O'Neil's career as a writer, but as an editor, he certainly didn't get off on the right foot. And I don't think he ever expressed serious regret for either mistake. As far as I know, he certainly never commented on the topic of Katma Tui.

Anyway, I recently looked for updates on what the next DC Finest reprint archives would be coming along later in the year, and noticed that one of the volumes is for Green Lantern from around 1987, and it looked like the issues reprinted go up to 219, leaving off just 5 issues before the series' cancellation in 1988. If the final issues are eventually reprinted, what do they intend to add afterwards in the volume to come? If it's the Action Comics Weekly stories and 2 specials also written by Owsley, I would rather not spend money on those like the terrible "quality" of the tales doesn't matter. What I might find acceptable is if they decide to reprint the New Guardians spinoff that lasted 12 issues under the "New Format" imprint, along with possibly the Millenium miniseries that served as a hub for the crossover (which had some connections with GL), even though the former was very weak, though nowhere as horrific as the ACW stories. If they want to reprint the ACW stories, so be it; I just hope they don't intend to reprint them in virtually the same volume as the last 5 issues of the 1960-88 GL series.

But I have a bad feeling that, unfortunately, DC has already made their decision on what'll be archived alongside what else when it comes to GL, and if so, that'll be another humiliation for GL fans who recognize that what came after the 2nd stand-alone GL volume ended was largely awful, and then will have to hope a separate, alternate compilation of the last issues will be printed they can buy instead. On which note, I recently had the fortune of buying something similar with Hawkeye from 2012, reprinting a 1994 miniseries written by Chuck Dixon along with some stories from Marvel Comics Presents, because the 4th Epic Collection starring Clint Barton also contains stories written up to 2008, including a series that I once was unlucky to read in the early 2000s that was awful. I so did not want to buy an archive for what I consider worthy stories starring Hawkeye with "strings attached", which is what the 4th Epic Collection unfortunately does, and thankfully I won't have to now. But what about GL? If DC avoids reprinting the remaining issues in Finest archives alongside the ACW abominations, that'll be a relief. But if they do reprint said issues alongside said abominations, they'll be adding another insult to the GL legacy alongside some of the worst that came afterwards, like the awful run of the early 90s. And that'll be a shame, mainly because, who knows if said remaining issues will ever see a separate, independent archive that can serve as an alternative for anyone who'd rather rightfully avoid the ACW atrocities?

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.

C.B. Cebulski brought Brian Bendis back to Marvel

Publisher's Weekly wrote a fawning interview with the dreadful Bendis, in which we learn who brought him back to Marvel employment. First:

For comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis, the 21st century has been an ongoing education. The writer who first broke big at the turn of the millennium at both Marvel Comics (with his marquee series Daredevil, Alias, and New Avengers, not to mention co-creating the 21st century Spider-Man, Miles Morales) and Dark Horse (where his creator-owned series Powers blended capes with crime fiction) became virtually synonymous with superhero comics over the following decades.

That's a clue to how he's one of the early examples of "woke" writers who created characters like Morales not as their own agencies, but as DEI pandering. I also recall an interview he gave a decade ago where he brought up "whitesplaining and mansplaining", and this was just shortly before Jason Aaron became another noticeable example of a woke writer. I guess that's what Bendis considers an "education", huh? Powers, IIRC, was supposed to be a "noir" tale about investigations into superhero type figures being killed, and after once reading about the premise of the chapter "Who Killed Retro Girl?", I would rather stay away from such smut. It only gives the whole crime noir genre a bad name. It's a shame overrated writers like Bendis are the ones considered worthy of practically taking over a whole franchise and deconstructing it all according to how they see fit.

You’re coming back to Marvel Comics after a decade away. Does it feel gratifying to be a kind of emeritus figure there?

[Marvel editor-in-chief] C.B. [Cebulski] called with exactly the call you would hope for. "Hey, we were thinking of something and we thought, ‘I wish Brian was here.’“ Ever since then, it's been lovely.

I had the oversized [experience] of walking into Marvel [when the company was] in bankruptcy, and just standing there while they rebuilt themselves into what they are now, which is a crown jewel of pop culture. The opportunities were everywhere, and I'd have been a fool not to try everything. I'm glad I did, but it became all-consuming.

Well, it's no longer bizarre somebody as woke as Cebulski himself obviously is would be willing to rehire a figure like Bendis unquestioned. If Aaron's currently not working for them, don't be shocked if Cebulski decides to rehire him soon as well. And it's more like unintentional comedy to say Marvel rebuilt themselves as a publisher, because since the turn of the century, they sank into repetitive line-wide crossovers, never asking if it was a healthy example to begin with, and in the past decade, became alarmingly censorious/deleterious in their approach, with repellently poor artwork being just the beginning, as was the erasure of the Spider-Marriage. As a result, even the live action movies don't age well, because if the zygote's thrown under the bus under the impression moviegoers only care about the live action adaptations, then the movies and TV programs look hypocritical in hindsight.

You started teaching classes at Portland State, and then you created a revived Jinxworld through your own website. Community is clearly something that you're focusing on.

David Walker and I have this class at Portland State University [a writing course for comics and graphic novels] where we literally drag in every one of our friends, and everyone shares their knowledge. It does feel like part of the journey involves education. It brings me an enormous amount of joy.

Ah, the same Walker who exploited their comics for his far-left politics? Again, this says all you need to know that Bendis is as bad as the other wokesters who came after him like Aaron, and again, Bendis did give hints just how repellently leftist he is too. Whatever he's got in store this time, it's bound to be as awful as before, and just compounds why it's a terrible shame Marvel didn't close down in the early 2000s, which could've minimized the damage they'd undergone since. As for Cebulski, I have no idea how much longer he'll continue as EIC, but it's long been apparent he's no salvation for what Stan Lee and his ilk worked hard to develop in the time.

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.

Green Lantern in live action is now adapted by producer who despises the color

John Nolte at Breitbart addresses the subject of how a TV producer who apparently dislikes comics is in charge of a new show simply titled "Lanterns":

It has been revealed that HBO’s upcoming Green Lantern series is run by a guy who hates … green.

Executive producer Damon Lindelof (pictured) hates green so much that instead of calling the series by its legendary comic book name, Green Lanterns, he decided to call it … Lanterns. [...]

Lindelof has made no secret of his contempt for the color green. “It’s called Lanterns, because we all agreed that the ‘Green’ was stupid, so now it’s just Lanterns,” he said on a podcast.

Also, as you can see in the trailer, Lindelof’s Lanterns is a neo-Western, but in the comic books, the Green Lanterns are space cops.

Why?

Well, DC Studios co-chief James Gunn thinks that whole space concept is absurd. “It’s a very grounded, real show,” he said of Lanterns. “It’s taking this outlandish concept of space cops with magic rings and putting it in as close to reality as it can possibly be.”

Why does Hollywood continue to hand beloved franchises over to people who hate the franchise?

You could also ask why nobody cared about the abomination called Zero Hour that Hal Jordan was forced into over 3 decades ago, turned into a deadly villain for the sake of replacing him with a younger counterpart who was badly written and characterized at the time, that being Kyle Rayner. And things became worse even after Hal was resurrected, no thanks to Geoff Johns.

I wouldn't be shocked if the produers of this new Lanterns TV show didn't like Marvel's most surreal comics either, like Excalibur. "Grounded in reality" is exactly what's gone wrong, and become far too commonplace in how entertainment is crafted these days. Science fiction's been ruined by such hysteria. Nobody knows how to balance these things out at all.

I'll be staying far away from this new TV show, and this news is certainly telling as to what's wrong with filmmaker Gunn by extension. Which could explain why his takes on Guardians of the Galaxy won't age well, and why it's better to read the original comics instead.

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.