"Black Heroes Journey" exhibit in west Philadelphia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actor Samuel Jackson reflects on friendship with Stan Lee

Actor Samuel Jackson told People about how he got to know the late Stan Lee while appearing in some Marvel adaptations as Nick Fury:

Samuel L. Jackson is reflecting on his longtime friendship with the late Marvel universe creator Stan Lee.

While attending The Beast premiere at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles on Oct. 6, the actor, 77, learned that he’s just behind Lee when ranking performers in cumulative box office revenue across all film roles.

The late co-creator of iconic comic book characters including Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor and the X-Men had worked on around 200 films when he died at 95 in 2018.

While growing up on Lee’s work, Jackson never envisioned having the opportunity to meet him.

“Things like that happen that you never expected,” he told PEOPLE at the L.A. premiere. “Those are things that you can’t even imagine when you’re a kid and you’re reading the books and you see his name all over the place.”

“Never occurred to me as a kid growing up in segregated Tennessee, I would meet Stan Lee,” he added. “So when it happens, it’s not even a dream come true. It’s something beyond that.”

Jackson, who plays Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, described Lee as a “wonderful, charming person” while reflecting on what a delight he was to be around.

I think it's great Jackson got to meet a figure he admired, but I'm sure there's people who're wondering why he - or more precisely, the studio - had to take the woke race-swapping route when they cast Jackson in Nick Fury's role instead of creating a new character who could take more or less the same prominent role as a leading S.H.I.E.L.D field operative. Let's consider that the political correctness got worse in some way or other in how the Marvel movieverse went forward, with post-2018 movies being particularly dreadful, including the 4th Thor movie (and lest we forget, there too, some race-swapping occurred with Heimdall earlier on). Was it really that necessary? Of course not, and for all we know, Jackson could surely have been cast as Robbie Robertson, one of the senior editors at the Daily Bugle in Spider-Man's series as well, and unlike Fury in the comics, Robertson was created as Black. Since Robertson was depicted as more favorable to Spidey than J. Jonah Jameson ever was, Jackson could've been perfect for the role of Robbie.

So Jackson's admiration for Stan the Man is appreciated, but it's a shame if he won't debate whether the S.H.I.E.L.D director who'd previously led the Howling Commandos in the first series Fury headlined should've ever been race-swapped. Of course it's absolutely terrible Jackson had to grow up at a time when the mid-south was held hostage to racial segregation, but that doesn't mean established fictional characters created as white should be changed to Black/Asian/Latino as a way to apologize. It's always possible to create new ones and not have to rely solely on what's already been created for the same comics-based movies. That kind of PC mindset has long ruined even DC comics, and it's something that has be moved away from and the original incarnations should be allowed to be made use of again.

NYC street named after Spider-Man

JNS reports a New York assemblyman arranged to have a street named after Stan Lee's famous wall-crawler in NYC's Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens, which was depicted as Peter Parker's place of residence as far back as the late 1980s:

Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man, was born in Forest Hills, as the comic book backstory goes. The grandparents of New York state Assembly member Sam Berger also lived in the neighborhood.

“As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, who settled in Forest Hills and rebuilt their lives in Queens, I’m especially proud to see Spider-Man Way recognized in the very community they helped build,” Berger told JNS, of the newly named street in the Queens neighborhood in New York City.

“My grandparents may not have had superpowers, but they understood that with the opportunity to build a new life came a responsibility to give back and leave their community better than they found it,” he said.

Berger, who represents the area and advocated for the street naming, connected that legacy to the Jewish creators, who helped shape American comic books, including Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Joe Simon, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Lee penned the Spider-Man comics, while Steve Ditko illustrated them.

“Through their stories, they helped generations understand that our greatest strength isn’t measured by our powers or achievements, but by how we use them to stand up for others and make the world around us a little better,” Berger told JNS.

“That’s a legacy worth celebrating, and one that makes Spider-Man Way especially meaningful here in Queens,” he said.

But not meaningful to horrible figures like current mayor Zohran Mamdani, who've done plenty already to desecrate the memory of the aforementioned Jewish comics creators. Come to think of it, there's even a presumably Jewish city comptroller who's now doing the same, exactly what Mamdani wants. That has the regrettable effect of dampening the impact of Berger's work to have a street specially named after a comics character a Jewish writer created.

That said, Berger's work is admirable, but then, how about if there were to be a street named after Mary Jane Watson? After all the abuse Marvel under Joe Quesada seet in motion, it could be a great way to draw a special spotlight on one of Stan's most famous co-star creations. I'd strongly recommend Mr. Berger consider trying that out next.

Upcoming anthology spotlights musicians

DJ Mag announced the publishers of Heavy Metal magazine are putting out an anthology based on a music duo next year:

A new comic anthology exploring the world of Daft Punk is set for release in 2027.

Published by French science fiction magazine, Métal Hurlant, the 272-page edition features 26 comics and six articles inspired by the legendary electronic duo, with contributions from more than 30 comics creators. The collection brings together original stories, archival material and essays exploring science fiction, technology, and electronic music.

Available to pre-order via publishers Humanoids, the anthology features work the likes of Laura Pérez, Malachi Ward, Jonathan Djob Nkondo and Zep, as well as contributions from French artists Mœbius and Philippe Druillet.

Music does make a good wellspring for exploration in comicdom, so good luck to them in marketing this.

Daily Wire guest writer goes too easy on Tom King

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An online specialty store offering rare and irreverent comics

The Denver Post (archive link) spoke with the owner of an online store called Wig Shop, that offers rare items, and is even working on an adaptation of a fantasy novel originally published in the early 20th century:

Through Wig Shop, Alford, 42, has created a hub for fans of irreverent comics, abstract art, rare books and other printed curiosities. Many Colorado customers — myself included — have met him in person tabling at zine fests and book fairs up and down the Front Range.

No two items among the 1,300 he has sold — he’s assigned a catalog number to each one — are the same. They are made by artists around the country and abroad, who Alford finds through visual platforms such as Instagram and often use online print-on-demand services to publish their work, he said.

“Stylistically, I lean a little more towards silly, fancy, fantasy kind of stuff than horror or violent or sex stuff,” he said. “Sometimes it’ll dip between the two.”

The artists Alford reaches out to are usually receptive when he asks to sell their books in limited quantities, he said. But he has also published his own pressings under the Wig Shop name.

He recently collaborated with a Denver-area artist for the first time for his illustrated pressing of “The Gods of Pegāna,” a fantasy novella by Lord Dunsany first published in 1905.

“[H.P.] Lovecraft’s monsters all kind of came out of this story, and nobody really knows this book,” he said. [...]

“I love this idea of pushing the comics fan toward more refined stuff, and pushing the refined fan more toward the lowbrow stuff,” Alford said of his desire to make the art book.

While encouraging fandom to read something "refined" may be a good idea, I think that's taking a risk if he's implying adventure fare is "lowbrow". But I'll give him credit, if anything, for favoring fancy fantasy more than violence-prone fare. And if he can produce comics, whether original or based on classic literature, that offers more positive themes, that's very good. We need much more optimist fare in an era where darkness and violence have sadly become an all-too familiar staple cliche.

Stephen Wacker supposedly has a plan to repair Marvel

Adventures in Poor Taste says Marvel's new EIC allegedly has plans for fixing Marvel's management, starting with the busloads of variant covers that became a ludicrous staple of the industry for well over a decade now. Near the beginning, the site predictably sugarcoats Wacker's pretensions:

It’s been no secret in the comic book industry that Marvel has been struggling for the last 2-3 years. They’ve been in a creative and sales malaise that has been discussed ad infinitum. People have been calling for big changes at the highest levels of Marvel Comics, and when they announced that Stephen Wacker would take over as Editor-in-Chief, many fans and insiders breathed a sigh of relief. Here was someone with a proven track record who could turn the ship around and send Marvel in the right direction.

There's no mention of Mary Jane Watson in this puff piece, and Wacker, as one of the Spidey editors, was obviously part and parcel of the continuing effort to keep her otherwise kicked to the curb. Based on that, it's reprehensible they're putting words into the mouths of fandom, if not insiders. But, interesting they talk about Marvel falling into a slump now, as if that never happened before, when Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso were chief editors.

Wacker also addressed variant covers:

He admitted he was biased and really loved variant covers. He conceded that many readers also enjoy variant covers. For these reasons, they aren’t going away.

Wacker does worry about the overuse of variant covers to the point that it creates confusion about what the actual main cover of a comic is. He pointed out iconic covers of the past and how you could picture them in your mind, but when comics have so many variants, that iconic nature can be muddled.

From now on, Marvel will be clearer about main covers, adopting the industry standard of “Cover A, B, C, etc.” to denote main covers versus variants. Gone are the days of mindlessly throwing endless covers at every book.

That still doesn't address editorial mandates like what MJ's a victim of. Sure, it can help to quit turning out so many variants that actually cost more money. But if the story merit inside the comic isn't up to snuff, you still can't expect readers to actually buy the products. And as this more or less confirms, even under Wacker, they're not willing to quit, specifically, producing and commissioning so many variants to put on the covers of pamphlets themselves, rather than publish them inside some comics, or even as wall paintings. I don't think the price of pamphlets has been clearly addressed here either, and despite how Wacker mentions manga, it's unclear they'll make a shift to paperbacks and hardcovers.

Wacker also brought up following what movie adaptations put to use:

Marvel comic fans have long complained that the comics seem to be taking their cues from the wildly successful and popular movies. In an endless push for synergy between the movies and comics, the comics are altered to fit the cinematic universe. Many have felt that the tail has been wagging the dog.

Wacker pointed out that after moving to California, the comic offices would physically be in the same building as the movie offices. According to Wacker, the MCU’s success has created the assumption that the comics should relate to and match the films.

Wacker emphatically stated, “That is backwards.”

In his first meeting with Kevin Feige, Wacker was told that it’s not their job to follow the movies. To reinforce that, Feige attended the Marvel Summit yesterday in New York and told them their job was to be 15 years ahead of the cinematic universe.

Marvel Comics should be the creative engine.

But if they follow distasteful mandates like keeping MJ and Spidey separated, they're not improving there, that's for sure. There's also the matter of continuity being in a shambles since the early 2000s. I got a bad feeling they're going to use any status Peter Parker and Mary Jane have in the movies as an excuse to keep them apart in the comics, and that's wrong, mainly because of how contrived and inorganic the jettisoning of the marriage was when One More Day came about, and lest we forget how badly MJ was insulted as a creation even after OMD. So if Wacker's adamant on his part about keeping Quesada and J. Michael Straczynski's loathsome separation of the Spider-couple in place, there's no need to keep putting money into their pockets. Besides, wasn't it more in the early 2000s, in comics like X-Men, where they forced a mandate into place that the cast had to wear suits similar to the 2000 movie? I get the feeling Wacker and company are looking for an all-too convenient excuse in modern times. And then he talks about creators:

To repair relationships with creators, Wacker brought up three main points: paying creators on time, backing them up when things get loud, and listening to their creative instincts and desires.

Wacker promised that next year we would see names on Marvel books that we have not seen in years, and in some cases ever. He does not believe in a house style and thinks the publisher will benefit from fresh, creative ideas.

Oh, here's a great query: will we see them take conservative-leaning creators like Mike Baron and Chuck Dixon off the blacklist? Quite possibly not, nor will we see them respecting the USA in patriotic terms, nor will they tackle serious issues like Islamic terrorism or prove they respect 911 Families, and if Wacker doesn't reinstate the Spider-marriage today, he won't tomorrow. What are we missing, exactly? This isn't fresh so much as stale.

Cosmic Book News said Wacker also wants to do what sounds like cliches with machines, but before we get to that, look what writer he's bringing back:

UPDATE: Wacker made his first big announcement at NYCC: a new Captain Marvel series from Ms. Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson, exactly what we flagged when he got the job.

So he believes a left-wing propagandist who was hired to write pro-Islamic propaganda is the perfect choice for new assignments? That says all you need to know that whatever Wacker's talking about is empty mishmash, and should be avoided at all costs.

Wacker says an unpublished script exists that Frank Miller wrote for Walt Simonson to draw, and it never got made.

“That script exists. It’s part one of two,” said Wacker, who calls Simonson part of his personal Mount Rushmore of comic artists. “When I had Daredevil, I was trying to get it done, but schedules didn’t work out.”

“Boy, that’s a white whale,” he added. “If I can get a Frank Miller, Walt Simonson story done.”

Oh, I think that's something Miller mentioned 2 months ago, a Dr. Strange story, but it's already much too late, and I've concluded Miller's overrated anyway.

Wacker says the first comic he ever collected as a kid was Shogun Warriors, Marvel’s licensed giant robot series from the late ’70s, which broke his heart when it was canceled after 20 issues.

As an editor, he tried to get giant robots back into the Marvel Universe, and an entire story was written and drawn before being shelved.

“It turns out we didn’t have the legal rights that we thought,” said Wacker, joking the robots were legally not Shogun Warriors. “It’s still too close for our legal department.”

Now he’s running the place.

“It is my life’s work in this new gig, this Editor-in-Chief gig,” he said. “I have to find a way to bring giant robots into the Marvel Universe.”

What, the Sentinels aren't enough? Even this is silly, because if you know where to look, the MCU's had giant bots lumbering around in some form or other decades ago, and if Wacker's trying to draw in manga readers who like mecha tales, he won't succeed if he sticks with the kind of leftism he's already hinted he'll be following. It's clear that, despite any claims that may be made to the contrary, it'll be business as usual, with conservatives forbidden to seek jobs at Marvel, continuity destroyed, and the Spider-marriage kept out of the picture. So there's still no reason to resume reading their output.

Portland, Oregon's role in comicdom

The Portland Mercury wrote some history of the city's role serving as a headquarters for various artists and writers, which is now the subject of a documentary:

It may surprise you to learn that Portland, Oregon, a mid-sized America city known for its rain and its many river spanning bridges, is a global hotbed for the production of comic books. A new documentary for OPB’s Oregon Art Beat, Indie Comics City: How Portland Built Its Own Comics Universe, which premiered at the annual Rose City Comic Con, tells how it happened, a story about the place of Portland itself, and the decentralizing modes of cultural production everywhere.

The documentary, helmed by OPB’s multimedia arts and culture producer Steven Tonthat, delves deep into the beginnings of local comics history. For the first 50 or so years of its existence, the comics industry was located along with the rest of the publishing industry: New York City. The artists who made the cultural load-bearing works that we associate with them—Superman, Batman, Shazam, Mad magazine, the EC Stable of bad boy books—worked liked sheepdogs, fulfilling a demanding monthly release cycle while supplementing their income with illustration work for magazines, book covers, advertising and any other clientele who needed a decent cartoonist for whatever it was they were trying to sell. Some of these comics artists worked in offices in the city, others plied their trade in home studios and delivered their pencil roughs to the main office where it would get inked, colored, and printed onto millions of forty page books that were distributed to drug stores and other retailers across the country.

Unfortunately, as could surely be expected, the report gushes over woke propaganda, which saw early examples in Oregon too:

Before the 1980s, Portland was a tertiary space for indie comics creators and cartoonists. The important early editorial cartoonist Homer Davenport, paraplegic gagman John Callahan, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, alt-comic sage Lynda Barry, and Rupert Kinnard—a queer comics pioneer who is profiled at length in OPB’s Indie City—all called Portland home at some time or another. These artists sourced work from local alt-weeklies, gay magazines, and esoteric, high-art focused labels like Fantagraphics—operations where wide distribution or even color printing weren’t front of mind. This is not to underplay their importance: their work still courses through the city’s comic scene, especially in the more zine-adjacent corners. But it was different from the highly rigorous, highly-edited milieu of DC and Marvel, with its colorful pages and ubiquitous distribution.

And no doubt, some of those early wokesters made inroads into mainstream, ruining it in their own way. Interesting they bring up the Simpsons creator, because he's quite a leftist himself, and as of today, I'm disillusioned with the Simpsons as a TV cartoon series, mainly because it's been running far too long, for possibly 37 years now with no end in sight. How many live action series see that kind of bizarre privilege?

In 1986, Mike Richardson, a longtime writer for comics and television, founded Dark Horse Comics in Portland. Dark Horse split the difference between the big distribution superhero publishers and the indie-comic scenes. In the late ‘80s and the early ’90s, Dark Horse published two kinds of monthly comic books. The major moneymakers were books based on big licensed properties, like the pre-Disney Star Wars literary universe, the adventures of terrible lizard Godzilla, and the Alien movies. The company’s other offerings were more obscure: creator-owned properties like Frank Miller’s Sin City, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and Stan Sakai’s rabbit-man samurai epic Usagi Yojimbo. The company eventually became America’s third largest distributor of comic books.

I find it interesting that, at least back in the day, adaptations of movies and cartoons were relatively higher sellers than comics with original concepts and creations, while Miller, Mignola and Sakai's creations less known, at least according to this article. Does that suggest the would-be fame they saw since is exaggerated?

Many of the people I spoke with at Comic Con were worried about the future of comics in Portland, where the coast-wide affordability crisis has dug deep into the city’s reputation as a fun, cheap haven for artistic pros looking to pay rent.

That's certainly eyebrow raising if there's a financial problem on the west coast, though if the folks in question are far-left advocates, some might find it hard to feel sorry for them. Whether Portland continues to prove a profitable burg for comicdom remains to be seen in the future.

Topics like Magneto, Kitty Pryde and Sabra at the NYCC

A writer on Times of Israel tells about his visits to Jewish-themed panels at the NYCC, and what he thinks of similar creations in the comics themselves. For example, Magneto:

Magneto brings a specific Jewish history into that broader metaphor.

Introduced as an antagonist in the original X-Men series, he acquired a more complex background under writer Chris Claremont, whose work established his history as a Holocaust survivor. His conflict with Charles Xavier became more than a contest between two powerful men. It became an argument about whether coexistence can protect a vulnerable minority, and what happens when someone no longer trusts that promise.

That history helps explain Magneto’s worldview without excusing every action he takes. A survivor’s fear of renewed persecution is understandable. His willingness, in some stories, to dominate or endanger others remains open to moral judgment.

X-Men: Magneto Testament takes readers back before those arguments, to the child who had to live through the catastrophe.

Written by Greg Pak and illustrated by Carmine Di Giandomenico, the five-issue series appeared in 2008–2009. It follows Max Eisenhardt, the boy who will become Magneto, through Nazi persecution and Auschwitz-Birkenau. His efforts to protect his family and Magda, a Romani girl, place individual relationships within the machinery of genocide. The collected edition includes historical endnotes and a teachers’ guide.

I think the saddest part of this is how the writer does not address how writing quality went downhill post-2000, and whatever redemption Magneto saw in writing back in the 80s was taken apart, with the last storyline prior to leftist Grant Morrison's shoddy run in 2001, "Eve of Destruction", being one of the worst renditions, lowering Erik Lensherr to a nasty, one-dimensional cliche. And then Wolverine's depicted stabbing him to death. In the "modern era" stories, it turns out Magneto survived, or it was a classic clone established taking his place earlier, but it does little to mend the bad taste Scott Lobdell's last X-Men story at the time left behind. A writer like Pak, who's a product of the modern PC era, does not make me feel encouraged to read whatever he turned out, no matter how he portrays Magneto. In any case, why doesn't the modern PC destruction matter to the columnist? Next comes Kitty Pryde:

Jewish identity within the X-Men is not confined to catastrophe. Kitty Pryde, also known as Kate, provides another important example. Marvel’s official biography identifies her as a Jewish girl from Illinois whose grandfather survived a Nazi concentration camp.

Her presence makes room for a Jewish character whose life encompasses friendship, leadership and adventure. Jewish representation should have room for inherited memory and for the ordinary business of living.

Must I point out even Kitty fell victim to PC tactics the columnist seems uninterested in addressing? I'm sorry, but when you gloss over what went wrong in later years, and act like it literally doesn't matter, that only makes the impact soggy. What really makes it sad is that here, Kitty went on to become a notable member of Excalibur, surely one of the most surreal Marvel series of all, and years later, that was all turned into a sad mockery. Now here's Sabra:

Sabra introduces a different dimension: Israeli identity.

Created by writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema, Ruth Bat-Seraph appeared briefly in The Incredible Hulk #250 in 1980 before her full introduction in #256, cover-dated February 1981. A mutant associated with Israeli intelligence, she wears a costume inspired by Israel’s blue-and-white flag. Her name draws on the term for a native-born Israeli, associated with the prickly pear: a tough exterior and a sweet interior.

Her significance is easy to understand. Israel has a place within Marvel’s imagined world, and an Israeli woman can occupy the role of superhero.

Her early portrayal also deserves scrutiny. In her first full appearance, the death of an Arab boy becomes the occasion for the Hulk to challenge her understanding of their shared humanity. The story’s treatment of the conflict is blunt, and Israeli comics creators have criticized the character’s limited depth.

Recognizing those shortcomings does not diminish the value of Israeli representation. It establishes a higher expectation for it. An Israeli character should have an interior life, relationships and moral complexity, rather than carrying an entire country’s meaning in every appearance.

The screen adaptation renewed that discussion. Shira Haas played Ruth Bat-Seraph in the 2025 film Captain America: Brave New World. Although the film changed her background to a former Black Widow operative, it retained her Israeli identity. Claims that the released film erased her nationality therefore miss an important fact.

Umm, even if her nationality was retained, the way the overall movie was written was very poor, dragged the character down with it, and that Bat-Seraph had no super-powers of any kind in the finished product also made a mockery of the proceedings. Also, it sounds like the writer's putting words in the mouths of Jewish comics writers by making it sound like they criticize the fictional character instead of her creators, Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema, for writing her with such limited depth, employing moral equivalence, making it look like Israelis literally don't care if Islamists end up costing their own, and one of the stupidest moments in that story is when the Arab boy Bruce Banner was talking with says he doesn't even read books. The Times of Israel's writer obscures just how embarrassingly bad that all was, and it didn't end there. In 1991, almost 8 years after her last appearance, Peter David wrote a Hulk story where Bat-Seraph was a guest again, and made a bizarre claim that Israeli men beat their wives in frustration over the wars that go on. Even that was poorly written/researched focus, fully obscuring what the Islamic religion's built upon.

Also, perhaps an argument can be made that Israeli/Jewish representation doesn't matter when there's insufficient merit in the finished product? Sabra's appearances at the time had very few positive moments, and unlike the Arabian Knight, introduced shortly after her, she never got a stand-alone story in anthologies like Marvel Comics Presents, recalling the Knight had a story in the early issues titled, "The Demon in the Dunes". It should also be noted the Knight's debut story was more favorable to him than Sabra's was to her, and no objective view was taken of how the Knight's 3 wives-through-polygamy wore niqabs. When Contest of Champions came about, that actually depicted the Knight as negative towards Sabra, but even then, the writing was still very weak, right down to how the Knight was the one who got to snatch up one of the artifacts the heroes in the tale were after. And then, look who's participating in panels at the NYCC itself:

These conversations will also have a home at Comic Con. According to the announcement Roy Schwartz shared, “The Year of Jack Kirby: A Star-Studded Celebration!” is scheduled for Thursday, October 8, from 5:45–6:30 p.m. in North–Room 408. The announced participants include Chris Claremont, Jim Starlin, Adi Granov, Dean Haspiel, Jeremy Kirby and Schwartz.

“Jewish Identity in Comics” is scheduled for Sunday, October 11, from 12:15–1 p.m. in North–Room 406.1, with Alex Segura, Julian Voloj, Michal Schick, Neil Kleid, Sarah Singer and Schwartz. Attendees should check the convention’s current schedule for changes.

Far-left Segura is part of the proceedings at NYCC? Well I didn't think what was already in description about the convention was appealing, so I guess this is just an extension of the dreadful farce. What I do realize is that he's probably trying to compare illegal immigration from bad places like the Islamic world to anti-Jewish persecution, and if so, that's wrong and offensive to the intellect. Mainly because, if the illegal immigrants have no intention of abandoning the Religion of Peace, then how can they possibly be called "refugees" when they're actually hell-bent upon forcing their twisted beliefs upon civilized people? Near the end of the article:

Magneto’s childhood asks us to remember the human being beneath a frightening reputation. Kitty Pryde makes space for Jewish life beyond persecution. Sabra raises questions about how Israeli identity can be visible without becoming a caricature.

Again, that "human being" was thrown out around the turn of the century, and some of Sabra's appearances in the 45 years of her creation were caricatures. Even Shadowcat hasn't always fared well, but the buffoon writing the Times of Israel item simply won't show the courage to lament how anything from Marvel and DC since the turn of the century was massively damaged for the sake of woke garbage renditions. But it's nothing new to me that quite a few "historians" are rather unconvincing and don't make very good commentators either on pop culture, never examining the positives and negatives in depth. That's why some history books might offer a meatier look at past conduct pre-2000, but then, if they were published more recently, they never take an objective look at the newer writers and editors in charge to see if they're doing a good job or not, if at all. And that doesn't bode well for the industry's artistic health.

Veteran Star Trek actress will be writing IDW adaptation based on her character

Variety reports actress Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, will be writing an IDW comic spotlighting her character and role:

Gates McFadden is returning to the iconic character Dr. Beverly Crusher. Variety has learned exclusively that McFadden is penning the limited comic series “Star Trek: Crusher” with IDW Publishing.

The comic, which also hails from artist Megan Levens and colorist Charlie Kirchoff, is set to debut in summer 2027. It marks McFadden’s comic book writing debut. The series will bridge the gap in the character’s history between the end of the movie “Star Trek: Nemesis” and the Season 3 of the Paramount+ series “Star Trek: Picard.” [...]

The announcement of the comic book comes as the “Star Trek” franchise is celebrating its 60th anniversary, with the original series having premiered on Sept. 8, 1966. Paramount has already held a number of events in celebration of the milestone, including screenings of fan-favorite episodes, television specials, and more. [...]

McFadden famously portrayed Dr. Crusher across six of the seven seasons of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” appearing in over 150 episodes of the beloved sci-fi series. She went on to play Crusher in all four “TNG” movies — “Star Trek Generations,” “Star Trek: First Contact,” “Star Trek: Insurrection,” and “Star Trek: Nemesis.” She returned to the role in Season 3 of “Picard,” where it was revealed SPOILER ALERT that Crusher and Capt. Picard had a relationship years earlier that resulted in the birth of a son, Jack Crusher.

I seem to recall Picard was considered pretty bad, and having Michael Chabon as a producer clearly spelled trouble for it artistically. Connecting this story with that particular recent TV series is a big mistake, but you couldn't possibly expect these folks to admit it.

This may be the 60th year since the Trek series officially began, but the Trek franchise has been so infected with wokeness in its own way, even going as far back as a movie produced around 2009, that it's clear at this point this IDW comic is unlikely to impress, and even then, unlikely to sell in millions. Lest we forget IDW went the woke route in the past decade, and it's hurt them in the long run, and lost them at least a few licensing deals for what to adapt, like GI Joe and Dungeons and Dragons. It's a wonder they're even still in business now, because whatever they're producing doesn't make me feel encouraged to try it out.

A modern take on a Bengali classic

Stir World interviewed artist Charbak Dipta, who's currently working on comics like Heshoram Hoshiyaar, based on a classic Bengali story, and developing a modern take on it in panel format:

Srishti Ojha: Can you tell me about your decision to adapt Sukumar Ray’s Heshoram Hoshiyaar into a comic book medium?

Charbak Dipta: Bengali kids like me have grown up reading this story. The story is 100 years old now, so I wanted to bring it back and present it in a new and colourful way for today’s kids. It’s only four or five pages long, but in that short text there are so many visual elements, including some illustrations and sketches from Ray. It was really fun to turn these few pages into a complete graphic novel.

Srishti: So much of your work—from Heshoram Hoshiyaar to Lublur Prithibi references visual art and literary works. What draws you to these references?

Charbak: I like to reference famous paintings and works in my comics, such as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) in The World of Lublu or the movie Nayak (1966) by Satyajit Ray. This comic has a lot of Easter egg references scattered throughout as well.

I like this practice because kids can enjoy seeing the colourful illustrations and stories, but underneath there is a lot of philosophical thought and social and political references. When they grow up, they can understand the undercurrents and the subtext. I try to do this so that adults can also be attracted to the work, and I can cater to both generations with a single book. The World of Lublu and Heshoram Hoshiyaar are cross-generational books.

I think it's very clever and admirable to draw from literature and paintings for inspiration, and building on philosophy can also be a great idea. On the subject of political allusions, that can work provided it's in good taste.

Srishti: Often, adaptations for TV or film in animation or live action are considered the ‘next step’ for comic books and graphic novels. Now that you are experimenting with motion comics and 360° comics, would you be open to such adaptations?

Charbak: I don’t consider it a next step because comics themselves are a powerful medium. They don’t need support from other industries like animation or film. There have been offers which came to me for filming Lublu, etc., but they did not progress much. If someone approaches me, I’ll discuss it, but I’m not very keen on trying to get into film or animation.

Many people have asked me why I don’t try animation, VFX, gaming or these historic, constructed industries. There is no comic industry as such in India—it’s very fragmented and like a cottage industry.

I have stuck to this medium for over 10 years out of pure love for it. It’s not a stepping stone for me; it’s not the higher level; it is all the same.

While animation can be a far better venture than live action, Charbak is doing the right thing to stick with comicdom and not stray far from it. After all, we do need all the talented creators we can get to keep the medium going, even in foreign countries.

Srishti: In India especially, comics don’t enjoy the same support, funding or popularity as art forms like film and animation. What are your hopes for the Indian comic industry as it establishes itself domestically and nationally over the next few years?

Charbak: I think Indian comics should be more original rather than imitating existing Western graphic novels and comics. For example, Shakti Man and the Bengali comic Batul the Great, two of the most prominent Indian comics, are imitations of Superman and Desperate Dan (a British comic book), respectively. I hope Indian creators can explore more original themes and characters that suit Indian themes and Indian settings in the way Japan and Korea do with manga and anime, allowing them to export their culture to the world. We need more original comics to show the world what we have.

I think the support of the government, through funding and investment or a new national award for comics, can revolutionise the Indian comics landscape by encouraging Indian creators. Support from the media is also very important to grow the industry.

Publishers also need to take more risks. I went to English publishers working in India with The World of Lublu, and all of them rejected it. Then it got nominated for the Eisner, and now the conversations with English publishers are finalised. They should publish different, out-of-the-box subjects instead of the same old stories like biographies and adaptations of old classics. That’s how the industry can grow.

He's right, if anything, that sticking with local inspirations is far better than trying to imitate the western world in its current incarnations, certainly in the USA, where political correctness resulted in disasters, both artistic and financially. So I hope Charbak and other artists like him will find success in building up the comics industry in India more than it already is now, and one day elevate it to the status of Japan's. That could help tremendously.

The history of the Super Why cartoons and comics

Animation Scoop interviewed Angela Santomero, an animator who created the Super Why cartoons 2 decades ago on PBS, and which has been adapted to comics as well:

Jackson Murphy: You created “Super Why!” back in 2007. What have you loved about the overall impact this brand has had over the last 20 years?

Angela C. Santomero: Oh my God. You’re gonna make me cry. It was my Master’s Thesis when I was at Teachers College at Columbia University — the idea that we did have a longitudinal study that proved that kids were learning to read from the show, but also, of course, that they were loving the show and loving to read. All of the stories that I’ve heard from parents over the past 20 years have been amazing.

Provided it's not something where wokeism was forced upon it, it'll make a great source for adaptation to comics, and a good source for children's reading.

JM: So there’s been such a rise, I feel like, in the last 20 years, since “Super Why!” started, of comic book movies. Superhero movies. And kids really being interested in this look and this style of storytelling. Have you seen that firsthand, especially now diving into the new show?

AS: Yeah. And what’s so fascinating is we wanted to bring that idea to preschoolers — you could start reading with a comic book and that it is just as legitimate as reading a… chapter book. We did an episode on the original show that was written by Alex Breen, who’s also a co-creator on this series. Kids LOVED the comic book aspect. We had so much fun with the villains — mischievous, really. That idea of how we can get kids to read and the skill to learn to read and all those tools through this format became something we really got excited about to do as its own series.

JM: Were there fascinating aspects for you and your team of specifically bringing this look to life? Did you look at a lot of comic books and study that?

AS: Yes. We’re so research-based, so we dive in from a content analysis, “What’s been done for preschoolers?” Or the fact that five year olds are watching Batman. How do we deliver on that level of action adventure to really make sure we’re delivering on that comic book sensibility, but also be true to the mission of the series, which is to teach kids to read?

I take issue with the part about having fun with the villains, however, because again, that's taking a serious risk of glorification of badness. And youngsters are watching Batman cartoons? Well of course I realize the animated series of the 1990s was a Saturday morning style product, but all the same, should the Masked Manhunter be considered totally children's material? In the comics, it's been far from that for a long time. There was an animated Superman series that came at least a few years after Batman's began, and I honestly wonder why that doesn't get the same regard as Batman's cartoons. Just because it may have less episodes, that makes it less important? Please.

JM: I’ve seen some activities online / social media for “Super Why’s Comic Book Adventures”. What goes into marketing these days with activities for kids?

AS: A lot of it is reaching out to the parents and making sure the parents understand the depth of what we do and how much fun / how much your kids will love it. Social media is about engaging. “Which character are you?” And while we’re doing that, we’re explaining who the characters are so parents have that tidbit of information to think, “Maybe I should be putting this on for our kids.”

It all depends on if they retain any suitability level that was kept before, and don't succumb to the whole notion of promoting LGBT ideology in the cartoons and comics proper. Then, they'll have a valid entertainment product for children alright. As for social media, I hope they realize it's not all fun and games. There's all sorts of predators and other horrific people lurking about there, and if any sane countries are drafting laws to prevent children from becoming vulnerable, that's important. Even if they're talking about marketing to adult parents on social media, it's still strongly advised to be careful in how you deal with the topic of social media.

Here's also an interview from Total Licensing:

There are worrying statistics around the level that children are reading at. How will the show help that?

Those statistics keep me up at night — too many of our children are reading below grade level. But here’s what thirty years has taught me: kids don’t dislike reading. They dislike feeling powerless.

When a child uses her letter sounds to defeat The Eraser, or unscrambles words to set things right, reading stops being homework and starts being a superpower. Every episode is built on the real foundational skills — letter and letter-sound knowledge, phonological awareness, phonics and decoding, spelling, vocabulary — but children experience them as play. If we make reading feel powerful at four by being Super You, they’ll love it at fourteen.

Have you worked with researchers, parents and educators on the show?

Always — that’s non-negotiable for me. Everything I’ve ever made starts with watching real children. We worked with PBS KIDS to do formative research with kids and parents in scripting: if a four-year-old doesn’t get it, we go straight back to the drawing board. And we worked with top-tier literacy advisors to make sure every skill in every episode is the real deal. Our children deserve nothing less than our very best.

I should certainly hope she's worked with parents, and sane parents too at that, because in this day and age, it's vital that an atmosphere that's safe for children in animation and comics be retained. If anybody thinks animation can be used for telling adult stories, it should be in what's written and marketed for adults, and not children. I'm sure it's possible to make different types of cartoons and promote them for different audiences without any confusion, and if marketers haven't done it yet, they'd do well to distinguish between age gaps now.

I wish Santomero well in promoting the comics adaptations, and hope she retains a family friendly angle that I assume the cartoons followed as well. Then, reading can become an important challenge for children even on paper.

What's at this year's NYCC

Newsweek spoke with people working at this year's New York Comicon, who predictably fluff up the whole subject:

Over 20 years, D'Lando has watched superhero cinema rise, anime move into the mainstream, and once-dormant interests return with new force; through each cycle, he said, New York Comic Con has tried to remain “at the bleeding edge of pop culture,” serving as “a central nervous system for fandom” whose energy depends on thousands of people experiencing a moment together.

If anime became mainstream, it's only within the context that the comics mainstream's plummeted in quality. But it's sadly possible for anime to become PC, and for these conventions to enforce it that way. Also, have they noticed fewer superhero movies are finding success these days? And what if any particular old franchise becomes subject to PC as well? Does that not concern them if it happens?

Anime’s “exponential explosion” during the past five to seven years has brought brands including Bandai, Viz and Crunchyroll into prominent positions, while collectibles and trading cards have surged. “Comic books are back in a big way this year,” D'Lando said, citing DC Comics’ Absolute line, and he repeatedly returned to the medium in the convention’s name.

To claim comicdom is literally back, without even citing what mistakes were made in the past, only makes for more unintentional comedy. We're lectured the Absolute line is such an utterly big deal, but no questions are ever asked whether collectibles make a good example compared to talented storytelling. Even trading cards can be called into question. It can easily be argued that, if the interviewee's not interested in seeing the Spider-marriage restored, that can be quite telling. As a result, what's this about a comeback, again?

“Our Artist Alley is one of the best in the country,” he said. “We have over 500 of the biggest comic book artists in the world.” For D'Lando, the priority remains explicit: “It’s really important to me that we are still a comic convention.”

His own reading list makes the institutional argument personal. D'Lando cited James Tynion IV’s Tiny Onion operation and writer-artist Daniel Warren Johnson, whose rise he has followed from earlier convention appearances; when promising creators emerge, he said, experience often reveals where their work may lead.

I think the citation of Tynion says it all. These are the kind of "creators" we need to be told are on the favorites list of the organizers? Says everything you need to know about how "creative" they are too. Tynion's known foremost for emphasizing horror themes, and this is all they can tell us about? Even Johnson's a questionable choice, based on a Wonder Woman story he produced for DC. And there's another fishy item that turned up:

“People will fight for things and say, ‘Hey, this is a really important community piece for the show,’” he said, while other advocates may point to a publisher announcing a new book or a creator “that’s really burst onto the scene.” The rejected slate remains formidable: “The version of New York Comic Con that’s all the stuff that is on the cutting-room floor would be the second-best comic convention in the country.”

Those arguments can identify a community before its size becomes obvious. A staff member once championed HBO’s Our Flag Means Death, sensing its importance to a devoted and underserved audience; after ReedPop brought guests from the series, fans traveled from across the United States and abroad. “We were all just bowled over with the response,” D'Lando said. “I need to be at this event. I need to be with my community and with my tribe,” he recalled attendees saying.

From what I know, the above HBO series set in the 18th century was LGBT themed, and even the pirate theme it builds on can be considered questionable. You could say the problem with the NYCC as it stands now is that it's hardly a kid-friendly venue, let alone family-friendly.

Of course, when the manager cites figures who dabble in the horror genre as the ideal examples, that's when it's clear something's wrong in any event. So even if they still emphasize comics more than movies and music, the problem is that they're not varying the diet, and not giving the consumer much to choose from. Why, who knows if conservative figures are even welcome as special guests? NYCC has only proven why conventions may not matter much anymore, and certainly not the majors. As a result, they're little better than the SDCC over in California.

Spider-Man isn't still standing, since it all fell down long ago

Deadline interviewed screenwriter Noah Hawley, who penned one of the entries in the 1000th issue of Spider-Man, and while his tale may mention Mary Jane Watson, it's only in passing. First:

Undoubtedly, Spider-Man is having a moment. As Spider-Man: Brand New Day continues its record-breaking theatrical run, recently becoming the highest-grossing film in North American box office history, the Amazing Spider-Man #1000 is generating major demand of its own, with more than 400,000 orders ahead of its release today, and Marvel already moving to a second printing. (The issue also features a fortuitous interview between Tom Holland and Destin Daniel Cretton prior to the current accolades).

For “Still Standing,” Hawley teamed with artist Patrick Gleason to imagine a Peter Parker decades removed from the Spider-Man fans have long known. Now in his 80s and living at Forest Hills Nursing Home, Peter can feel the pull of the life he left behind, while his son and grandson offer reminders of the life he built beyond the mask. But as Peter looks back, one regret continues to haunt him: the death of Gwen Stacy. The story finds Peter confronting his memories and the possibility that they may not be as reliable as they once were. When a woman who appears to be an older Gwen Stacy enters his life, Peter is forced to confront the past in a story that carries the bittersweet weight of a hero reckoning with his own mortality.

It's kind of hard to appreciate a tale spotlighting Gwen when everything's been done to desecrate not just her dignity in J. Michael Straczynski's Sins Past storyline from 2004, but also MJ's, since the same tale made her look like a liar who'd kept a bizarre secret from Peter for many years. Back in the early 2000s, there were a number of stories from the majors that were either inconsistent with past continuity, or distorted it altogether, and Sins Past was but one of those. They may have seemingly jettisoned the Sins Past premise in the past several years, but their adamant refusal to restore the Spider-marriage still speaks volumes.

And how is just 400,000 orders having a "moment"? If some previous landmark issues saw more than that, it's clear there's less enthusiasm now for Spidey. Especially if all they can offer up is yet another tale shoving Mary Jane out of the picture, and dredging up the Gwen issue ad nauseum. Come to think of it, after a few years, the writers had moved past the whole Gwen demise trauma in the Bronze Age, and it's not like it was repeatedly hauled out over the years in all instances, even if and when the clone developed by the Jackal turned up. If the orders see significant drops after the 1000th issue, that will only confirm all the more this isn't working out.

Also, interesting they cite a son and grandson...but no daughters? Apparently, even the future-era Mayday Parker isn't acceptable to them as a lady legacy now. That's the perception they're giving.

DEADLINE: Your story, I feel, belongs in the same vein of Jeph Loeb’s Spider-Man: Blue, in the sense that Peter is still reflecting on his relationship with Gwen Stacy. But the story also takes it one step further, as he still acknowledges his life with MJ, his own mortality in old age, his son who doesn’t pay much attention to him, and his grandson who indulges him… So, how did you parse what your story was going to be about? And what’s the emotionality you were trying to capture here?

HAWLEY: I started with the issue number. Spider-Man #1000 makes Spider-Man an old man on some level, and there was something about that legacy where it’s like, well, let’s give him the dignity of old age. We’ve forced him to be this eternal youth for us on some level. And that’s where my head went to this idea that he’s passed on this legacy to his son, who then passed it on to his grandson. And all of us, even the maestros at a certain age, your kids are like, “Oh, Dad, it’s enough already with the old stories.” But the grandchild loves to hear the old stories. You know what I mean?[laughs].

DEADLINE: Right.

HAWLEY: So there was something about that dynamic between [his own living family, after MJ passed away]. Also, the story is about the idea that Peter can see the path from where he grew up to where he is now, yet the one thing in his life that still eats at him is Gwen’s death and how he feels he failed her. So, it’s a bit like Legion, in the sense that, when it starts, you meet a man; he’s in a psychiatric institution, he’s either mentally ill or he has superpowers, and we don’t know which one is true. He’s seeing things that aren’t there. He is hearing things that aren’t there.

In Spider-Man, you have a guy who’s in his 80s, and he’s in a nursing home, and is he getting dementia. Is something else happening to him? I think the audience would like to think of him as still sharp and that he’s just being manipulated. And then throwing in an older Mysterio into the mix—so many of these supervillains wear a mask all the time. Who would even know what Mysterio looks like? So that idea that there’s just somebody right next to him who’s preying on him, I thought that was a really insidious idea.

Somehow, this doesn't sound very encouraging, any more than any other shoddy story that's come about ever since Joe Quesada gave JMS the keys to the kingdom. Also note how, while MJ may be mentioned (here, it's solely as initials, from what I can tell), she's still very much out of the picture. That doesn't build confidence at all. Also, what dignity is to be found in elderly age when they've spent the past quarter century taking apart everything that made Spidey work in the first place, abused MJ as a character very badly, to the point where she has no agency, as the premise of her passing away long ago clarifies? Indeed, despite any stories where they may make it look to the contrary to date, they have otherwise kicked MJ's agency to the curb, mainly through denial of exploring a full relationship between her and Peter. And Gwen, for some reason, is made into an object for focusing on Peter as a miserable man, which seems to be the PC crowd's whole notion is the only way Spidey should ever be characterized - as a guy whose life is otherwise depressing. That kind of bizarre, controlling mindset is exactly what led to the dissolving of the Spider-marriage.

Oh, by the way, does that line about Mysterio suggest he's disguised himself as Gwen's lookalike? I think I know another reason why it's better to stay far away from this "landmark" issue. Spidey is definitely being manipulated, and it's been a sad staple ever since JMS became the writer, and even before, as the Clone Saga suggests.

DEADLINE: What was the most challenging aspect of putting this story together?

HAWLEY: Well, again, it’s the economy, right? It’s how do we get these three big thoughts across? One is our Spider-Man is in his 80s. He has a son and a grandson, so that legacy continues. He’s in a nursing home. He meets [a person who presents themselves as] Gwen, but it can’t be because she’s dead. And even if it is issue #1000, you can never assume that people know the backstory. But I was told this run is already sold out before the debut, and they’re printing more copies. It’s going to be a keepsake item, so people who might not even know much about Spider-Man are buying it. So, part of the challenge was: how do you get in enough clarity for less-informed readers without it being boring?

And for the twist, for example, when Gwen is being attacked and Peter goes to her room, how do you make sure that what’s happening is clear for the reader? I can use all the words I want to describe it, but visually, you really want to make sure the reader is like, “I think it’s an attacker, but what’s going on?”

What if it's the clone of Gwen originally written up by Gerry Conway around 1975? Or again, what if it's Mysterio? Or better still, who cares? Hawley's insulting intellects, and clearly doesn't have confidence in any history writeups, online or off, about Spidey, for people to know the backstories. On the other hand, interesting how he hints he realizes this looks more appealing to the speculator market, and is pretty much going along with it sans any discussion of whether there's merit to the tales inside.

DEADLINE: Does it make you nervous that this is going out into the world with that much sales success surrounding it? 400,000 copies sold and then some… that’s no joke.

HAWLEY: I feel good. You can never predict if anyone’s going to like a thing, but the vision that I had has been fully realized, and so that’s what matters the most.

Sorry, but while it may be higher than some sums today, it's still a joke. It's rare today for a pamphlet to sell over a million, and even then, there's telling clues it's only according to how much specialty stores order. And look at how the guy hints what he's really happy about is that his vision has been brought about, not whether anybody embraces it at the readership level.

DEADLINE: Do you have a hard-and-fast rule for adapting things to different mediums like this?

HAWLEY: Look, my philosophy always, when I was doing Legion or Alien even, it’s like the danger with adaptation is that you take issues 120 through 130 of a comic book, like the beloved Dark Phoenix Saga, for example, and you turn it into a two-hour movie, and inevitably you have to compress some things and change some things, maybe consolidate some characters. Whatever you change will make people angry. I have a friend who worked on Star Trek who said, “Nobody hates Star Trek more than a Star Trek fan.” There is that idealism of, “All right, what you got?” But my thing was always, “Look, if I take the character of Legion, and I don’t try to tell you stories you already know, but I create new stories with characters you love, isn’t that a gift? Where you’re like, ‘I’m going to do something. I’m going to move past the ghost of Ripley and tell you an entirely new world-building story that has Xenomorphs in it, or I’m going to take you on a journey with Legion that will ultimately involve Professor X, but the story has to stand on its own two feet before he comes in.'”

And so that was my thought here with “Still Standing,” to offer people something different, something that maybe nobody else would. And they can like it or not. But I also felt like people are going to buy issue #1000 who maybe haven’t bought a comic book since they were 16, and now they’re 50. And so they’re thinking about getting old, and so here’s a story that feels relevant to them [laughs].

I don't like how he keeps up the cliche of telling everybody the Phoenix Saga is "beloved". Because I don't find it appealing, if only because of how Chris Claremont exploited an established character I thought I was supposed to be rooting for, and originally turned her into a murderous maniac before the setup was retconned in 1985 to a cosmic entity taking Jean's place. And what's so "different" about a story where MJ continues to be marginalized?

Hawley's also hinting at a double-standard on a story needing to stand on its own 2 feet when he implies he's virtue-signaling about having gotten his geriatric-themed story into print. Some of the older folks he alludes to could also quite possibly be those most alienated by 2007's One More Day, and that's the Spidey equivalent of any Trek tale that made sci-fi fans angry, if they were that badly written. What's the whole deal with angering fandoms instead of making them happy? No wonder the Spider-marriage continues to be trampled upon. There's nothing Hawley's offering here that's encouraging, that's for sure, and he predictably takes no critical stance on any of the worst stories ever published since 2001.

DEADLINE: Your version of Mysterio is a good example of that reflection in old age. He’s doing these things to Peter that are so hurtful, and eventually, he actually recognizes that.

HAWLEY: There’s a lot of regret going on here. Mysterio thinks that he’s finally getting his revenge in torturing Peter. He thinks it’s going to give him a sense of closure and pleasure, but it turns out that it really didn’t do either of those things. It was just mean. And I guess he’s looking at his endgame too, and he was like, “Well, maybe I’m not that guy anymore.” There’s something about the redemption of it all. I’ve created a lot of villains in my day, and I’m always looking for points of empathy for a viewer or reader because when you have a villain, it usually means violence is coming. And we’re trained, certainly in America, to believe that the only way to really resolve conflict is black hat versus white hat in the town square at noon. But I never want violence to feel like a good idea.

It’s like violence is problem-solving without an idea. And so when you build empathy, when you see, well, there’s no such thing as a villain. There are. Historically, there are some true psychopaths. But for the most part, you have people with grievances or people who feel wronged and who are trying, like a lot of people, to fill a hole they just can’t seem to fill, and they’re just bitter. And every time that Spider-Man takes them back to jail, they’re like, “See, I’m the victim.” Which is a very Fargo mentality for villains. It’s like, “I’m the victim.” So I guess I wanted to put these two old men in a room after the fighting was done and to go, not, “I’m sorry,” but maybe all that villainy was just a waste of time.

Oh, and here we get a fishy lecture about violence not solving problems. But isn't it supposed to be the problem? This is confusing and reeks of leftist propaganda. Although plenty of real life criminals are practically indoctrinated to where they consider themselves "victims", that completely obscures that comitting the worst acts like murder and rape do not make somebody a better person, and Hawley's not addressing that matter, yet hinting he even puts moral equivalence into the tale. In that case, is actor Gerard Depardieu to be literally excused for his sexual offenses of the past? How about Jimmy Savile? Absolutely not. And even if Mysterio only robbed banks in past stories, is that inherently okay? Of course not. Why reduce the whole matter of Spidey and his rogues gallery to one of mere "rivalry" as though it were all just a spat in the playground? Even eldery age is no excuse for this absurdity Mr. Hawley's brewed up. We're supposed to emphasize with a criminal? That's the whole problem here, because again, it risks letting the worst offenders off the hook.

DEADLINE: Bloodborne and Elden Ring will never see me coming, that’s for sure. And last but not least, you mentioned Tom Holland earlier. This comic issue includes an interview with Destin Daniel Cretton and Tom about Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which is now one of the highest-grossing North American films of all time. What say you about its success?

HAWLEY: It comes back to the optimism of the character. It’s interesting because that story is about “everybody’s forgotten me, and I’m trying to be OK with that, but I’m lonely on some level.” And then it’s also clearly setting up some elements for the next Avengers movie. It’s a good time in the theater, which I think is what’s driving people to see it, especially at this scale, and Tom Holland is so likable, right? And not to [get into their business], but it’s also about who he is married to, and the year they’ve both been having. You want to see him and Zendaya together because it feels like a lived-in relationship on and off-screen. But either way, the movie delivers, and that’s the headline.

Considering optimism went out the window after Quesada became EIC, I'm not sure what the point is here. As for the movie, seriously, Peter and Mary Jane are married there? Wow, isn't that just so generous after all the trouble Quesada led to in a quarter century. It's interesting that what Straczynski wrote has since been archived in the Marvel Modern Era Collections, effectively differentiating it from what comes before. The DC Finest archives don't seem to have that kind of an early 2000s gap, which is a flaw by contrast.

Even if Peter and MJ are married in the live action movie, that's unfortunately no substitute for the disaster the comics have long become, and Mr. Hawley's story from the 1000th issue sounds quite unappealing, right down to how Gwen's memory was decidedly drawn up very unnecessarily in a future age where Peter's an old man. So as I may have said before, there's no reason to celebrate this "milestone" issue when it's clear they're not interested in making Spider-fans happy. Serious publishers and writers do. As Hawley and company make clear, they're not. So to title a story "still standing" is meaningless.

Some history of Animerica magazine

Aftermath tells some history of an early magazine that gave coverage of Japanese anime, Animerica, which was in publication from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s:

Animerica Magazine was the closest thing the West had to a Reader’s Digest for otaku, by otaku. The monthly magazine, published by Viz Media, by and large did everything I strive to do in covering anime and manga: write explainers for universe readers, elucidate why a show or its creators matter through easy-to-read columns, exclusive interviews with voice actors and animators, and put folks on to when the new hotness will drop and where they can check it out. The issues I copped had one major difference—and one that hit me as a bit saddening to read in retrospect. Animerica Magazine is the last vestige of an industry for that kind of neuron-firing bliss you can get from scrolling through a webpage. You can only get this visual splendor by flipping through its pages.

Each issue of Animerica Magazine followed a format that’s equal parts pleasantly archaic and entirely backward compared with how online publications prioritize anime and manga. Instead of anime and manga (if they’re lucky) existing as a tucked-away vertical covered by one person in a staff filled with writers and content geared elsewhere, anime and manga are the magazine's centerpiece. Duh, it’s in the name. It's both humbling and heartening to flip through a magazine and see how much work and interest was put into a medium compared to how today feels like we’re still catching up to covering the medium in earnest. Much of my wistful nostalgia is encapsulated by Animanga’s layout. [...]

Even with the hindsight I have as an anime journalist, I found myself learning new information from a magazine two years older than myself. Chief among them was learning why Dragon Ball Z came to the U.S. before Dragon Ball (tldr: more action), the initial episode order (26), and how the Saban version of the show was marketed to 8- to 10-year-olds, hence the censorship. Hearing all this insider information from Gen and Cindy Fukunaga, the husband-and-wife duo who led its U.S. production in the halcyon days of Funimation, felt like an archaeologist brushing dust off a T. Rex tooth. The magazine had the wherewithal to dedicate four pages to illuminate readers on the many puns in its characters’ names and a mini-history of its video games back, a testament to the forward-thinking Animerica had in its coverage of a series that’d become synonymous with the genre.

On the subject of Haim Saban's onetime production studio and localizations, I don't find them appealing in retrospect, and today, I make an effort to avoid his editions, if and when I watch anime. One of the most annoying things about some early examples of localization dubbing is that the USA producers would attach all these ridiculous bells and whistles like third person narrators and other sound effects that might not appear in the original edition, and of course, there's the little matter of removing all that's Japanese about certain dubbed productions, which strongly suggested at the time the USA marketers didn't consider Japanese culture even remotely compatible with US culture. Japan does have its flaws, and there's examples where I came away feeling angry, but there are still plenty of positives you can find by distinguishing. I've got a feeling that, if a country like Bulgaria had even half the industry Japan does, the USA's distribution specialists would still do everything they could to drastically alter even cartoons from Bulgaria so they'd be all but unrecognizable in US localization, with no cultural aspects emphasized, if at all. Though I do wonder why a leftist like Hayao Miyazaki's the one who got to determine and champion his visions, while most other animators didn't.

Animerica may be long gone, but I'm sure it had advantages in print that online sites don't always have, with the main one being that you can sit down on a couch and relax, reading various news articles and interviews that gave insight into how the anime industry was doing at the time. But, modern web technology clearly won out, and now, not many specialty magazines exist in print for the subjects. Though arguably, if we bring up Wizard, they probably did more harm than good to comics in their 2 decade print journey based on the favoratist approach they had, laced with crude humor at times, yet if they were still around today, they'd doubtless go "woke". Perhaps even Animerica would do the same? They wouldn't do anime/manga any favors if they did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DC is Losing Their Best Ongoing

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

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