What former DC editor Joseph Illidge works in today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New horror comic builds on political metaphors

The Daily Dead interviewed cartoonist Matt Bors, who's now producing a comic titled "The Toxic Avenger vs. the Noxious Offender", the latter which is the artist's creation, and this particular story contains quite an eyebrow-raising political allusion and metaphor:

Bringing The Noxious Offender into the comic book world is a huge deal for fans of the franchise. What made now the perfect time to bring him in to face Toxie?

Matt Bors: Doing the dark universe counterpart of a hero in comic books is almost a right of passage. After establishing the universe we are in and some new adventures like Toxie Goes to Washington, I wanted to circle back to something more character focused and there’s nothing more character focused than yourself, but as an asshole. Our Noxie is an incel school shooter—not typically hilarious stuff. We want to make him a real menace, an obscenely violent twisted version of our character who was broken long before he was melted by toxic waste. We are doing something different with Noxie and as the story goes on, readers will see how it fits within long-running plots we have had going since these comics launched.

This is sick, because it builds on stereotypes that have probably been common for years, that "nerds" are wolves in sheep's clothing, and somehow, they're all "right-wing" adherents. And if he's playing it for laughs, that only makes it all the more chillingly offensive. There've been a horrifying number of school shootings in real life in more than a quarter century since Columbine in 1999, and this is what the market is pushing? Repulsive.

For this mini-series, what real-world struggles did you want to tackle in this fantastical setting?

Matt Bors: Toxie and Yvonne are going to have a mutant baby, despite the risks of a toxic waste-based pregnancy, as Noxie arrives and violently takes over his life. As I mentioned, our Noxie is a school shooter—that’s how he dealt with his bullies in his universe and that has everything to do with his own upbringing. So we are dealing with some pretty heavy themes and we are leavening that with a lot of humor, action, and body horror. But we’re not being flip about it all either. As with my series Justice Warriors, I like to mix the highbrow and lowbrow. Real world issues in a weird mutant comic. The serious and the stupid can coexist. This is the promise of comic books.

Can you talk about your approach to mixing humor, ooze, and serious topics in the world of The Toxic Avenger?

Matt Bors: I come from the world of political cartooning, so I like punchy writing and talking about everything that is fucked up in our world—it’s a long list and we’re adding to it every day. I’m also a longtime fan of genre fiction—mutants and gore, please, but make it substantive. Make it about something. I don’t abide by the idea that something is more serious or literary by shedding jokes and genre and the more engaging elements of fiction, particularly movies and comics. These are vehicles for discussing and processing our world, but that doesn’t mean things have to be dour, doomer, or—worse—boring. To hell with that.

One has to wonder how a story about a character who's a school shooter is something to be impressed by, mainly because, if the antagonist (the word "protagonist" would be very inappropriate here) winds up costing the lives of innocents, then what exactly makes this a suitable tale? And even if the "star" takes on bullies, does that make it okay to celebrate gore galore and treat it all as humor? Nope. All that does is take away the seriousness of the issues involved. This whole comic is nothing more than another thing that's "f***ed up in our world".

What has your experience been with long-time fans of the franchise who are getting all-new adventures through your stories?

Matt Bors: I hear from Troma and Troma fans all the time and everyone seems to love it and be very supportive. Lloyd Kaufman and the fine people in the Troma offices are in touch regularly and give us their blessings. There wasn’t a lot done with the character for a long time and now we have a long-running comic book series, new movie, and a video game on the way. And this isn’t garbage pumped out for fan service—it’s new takes on the original material that fans can appreciate while bringing in new readers. I don’t think you have to have grown up on the movie to enjoy this comic book. You just have to enjoy weird, gory heroes.

There is nothing "heroic" in any of this propaganda, and it only gives the horror genre a bad name by playing the story for cheap sensationalism. What exact "fan service" is to be in this anyway? Only for corrupt mindsets, that's what. And all from somebody who's worked in political cartoons. This is just another item that ruins the whole medium and art form. When will some people wake up and understand that?

Frank Miller tells more to the Wash. Post

One of Miller's interviewers said in one of the recent articles about him that he's got no intention of slowing down with his career, even as he's reaching 70, and as the following interview from the Washington Post makes clear, he's not done with his current promotional tour yet:

The pages of a Frank Miller work are filled with crooked cops, murderers, desperate men and unhinged dark knights. You might expect the creator behind all that darkness to be a bit gloomy himself. Maybe he would be a recluse, like his hero, “Calvin and Hobbes” creator Bill Watterson.

As it turns out, Miller seems to like people. I watched him sign hundreds of autographs at the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival in D.C. on Saturday. He was gentle, chatty and generous with his time despite the crowd overflowing past its designated space inside the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

Unfortunately, Miller doesn't seem to like conservatives, and one in particular by the name of Donald Trump. You could reasonably wonder if any attendants are right-wing themselves, and if they let know this, what does Miller think of them?

Miller helped redefine the modern superhero with Daredevil and Batman before creating celebrated original works such as “Sin City” and “300.” Pop milestones like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” or Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies may not exist without Frank Miller.

His book isn’t a conventional autobiography but a collection of 16 lessons Miller learned while becoming one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Those lessons include knowing your ending, getting your hero into trouble fast and pushing against whatever it is that’s keeping you from what you want to make.

The lessons also include making mistakes: Miller would sketch out many drawings for months before he finally made something that pleased the old master.

But those mistakes don't include apologizing for writing Holy Terror 7 years after its publishing, or blatant attacks on right-wingers, do they? If not, what's his point about trying to stand your ground on the subject of those who'd try to prevent you from developing what you want to make?

“It’s created new opportunities for me to speak more freely to new people who are coming up,” Miller said. “One of the real joys is for me to be looking at drawings and hearing story ideas that people are working on themselves, and to give them some advice on where to go with it.”

I wonder what he'd say to known conservatives? Or anybody who wants to tackle challenging issues? Again, that's not something dwelled upon here.

Miller writes about how his own lessons come from everywhere. He writes lovingly about Adams and his other mentor, Will Eisner, creator of “The Spirit,” but he reaches just as readily toward painters such as Francisco de Goya, Japanese manga writers like Kazuo Koike and music.

If memory serves, he wasn't so loving in his take on Eisner when he produced the American Genius documentary. After "cementing" a putdown in a recording, why now is he suddenly and seemingly talking positively about Eisner again? There was even another certain leftist who came from Israel working in video games at the convention Miller attended:

Onstage, I relayed a question to Miller from Neil Druckmann, co-creator of “The Last of Us” game series and HBO adaptation, who said his story wouldn’t exist without “Sin City.” He wanted to know how Miller selects collaborators, particularly when someone is adapting his work. How does he make sure they won’t abandon the spirit of his stories?

“Friendships,” Miller said. “Most of them come from getting to know somebody … and getting a kernel of an idea that I know would be something both of us could feed each other on.”

Wonder what that left-wing Israeli expatriate was doing there, recalling Druckmann exploited the Last of Us sequel for political propaganda? And to think, that he drew "inspiration" from a series of GNs like Miller's. It makes me think of how, not only does nobody like them seem to consider Superman inspirational material, they don't consider the Fantastic Four inspiration either. Miller may have done some illustrations for at least one story in both of the above, but as the bulk of his work since makes clear, he has a darkness problem, and so do some of the folks who say they're inspired by his work from the 1990s.

In the memoir, he describes learning to respect film and its differences from comics. His early comics success led to work as a Hollywood screenwriter. While he appreciated the medium, he would later write his biggest original book, “Sin City,” as a black-and-white novel, in the hope that it was unadaptable to film. He didn’t want it better known as a movie.

And yet, it was adapted in the mid-2000s, though the sequel was a failure, and it doesn't seem to have been revisited on celluloid since. I do think there's only so much from even standard literature that shouldn't have to be known far more cinematically, so some could wonder if Miller sadly failed to resist the tug of Hollywood influence. And then, a certain matter of defeatism comes up in the discussion again:

Before Miller’s memoir, his comics provided the clearest insight into his mind, but his book makes those thoughts explicit, including his regrets. He looks back on “Holy Terror,” a much-criticized story written out of Miller’s anger after the 9/11 attacks. He now describes it as a rant. Would he ever write another such story?

“I hope I’m never inspired to do so again,” he writes.

Miller urges readers to push walls, especially the ones he helped build. He writes that it drives him “crazy” to see that his version of Batman is now enshrined as foundational.

Once again, Miller, in a way, continues talking out of both sides of his mouth - he urges wall-pushing, but he doesn't want to push it any longer with a GN that took on a challenging issue. But what's this, does he really think it's a shame DKR's vision wound up practically ruining the general take on Bruce Wayne in comics proper? Well he sure hasn't done enough to complain about it. Probably because, as I've guessed before, he doesn't seem to care much about most other takes on Batman save for his own. And to date, I can't even recall him ever chatting about Denny O'Neil and Steve Englehart's writings.

“For one thing, the title ‘Dark Knight’ started appearing in all kinds of comic books,” Miller said in our interview. “Beyond that, he became the unpleasant superhero for a long time. I essentially felt that I was in the business of knocking down walls, and I felt like people had used my work to construct new ones.”

Interesting he should tell this, because again, by the turn of the century, DC editors were practically forcing such a personality upon the Masked Manhunter, and only now, long after Batman's potential was ruined along with countless other mainstream creations, does he have the audacity to tell us this? It's too little, too late.

One more thing I thought of regarding Miller's early writings in Daredevil is the negative take he may have had on the Punisher, and the contrasting take he had when he drew an early Wolverine miniseries co-written with Chris Claremont in 1982. Which would make Miller another scribe with a bewildering double-standard on vigilante-style characters who kill, and it's something else he may not have addressed so far, and probably never will. For now, it's a shame that Miller continues to give signs he sticks with a defeatist position, and some could wonder if his recent positive comments on a movie or two drawing from his writings is another sign of the same. And his continued veering towards the darkness, save for certain challenging issues, is another problem he's got that makes much of his resume since the 1990s so unappealing.

A father-son partnership develops stories for inspiration to the Black community

The Philadelphia Tribune wrote about a father and son who've produced their own independent comics to serve as inspiration for the Black community:

Inspired by a collective classroom project, Leo J. Neal, then age 7, created a superhero comic book. Now, with the help of his father, Christopher B. Neal, the two have collaborated on “The Amazing Adventures of Captain Cold” where they aim to tell stories that uplift the Black community.

I hope DC doesn't intend to cause even an iota of trouble for them just because they're using a character name similar to that of a notable supercrook from the Flash. What I certainly do know is that in the past decade, there were at least a few cases where Marvel and DC tried to do stuff like trademarking the very word "superhero" to limit competition, and that was wrong. If we're past that issue, that's a good thing. They probably did it partly out of their failure to admit they were ruining their own products. Thankfully, the trademark was cancelled about 2 years ago by the US trademark board.

For the most part, Chris, 42, said he lets his son, now 9, bring his imagination to the books.

“I’ve been intentional about him (Leo) moving forward and for him to be a Black voice in this space,” said Chris. “His characters are Black characters that are his idea. He was intentional about that, because representation matters. I wanted to lean into his interests.”

Yes, it matters, but it shouldn't come at the expense of established white characters, as was the case at both DC and Marvel in the past 2 decades, all for wokeness that was devoid of entertainment value. Here, the considerable difference is that the guys producing these indie comics are creating their own protagonists, and not forcing them into the costumes of established mainstream characters artificially. That's why creator-owned comics like these have more potential today. Now, if only somebody would consider why specific nationalities and their cultures matter too.

Leo said he enjoys writing the comic book. “It’s not that hard with my assistant (his father),” he said.

The son won a 2026 Fan Award for Best Work for “The Amazing Adventures of Captain Cold.” According to Chris it showed Leo how much people loved his book.

“Manifesting his ideas and see how it makes sense,” explained Chris. “Our hope is to lean more into community service, activism, awareness. Where we see this going is him leaning into the ideas that he has.”

The dad explained that their journey and the stories they tell show that Black people can be owners of different mediums and portray who they are and what they represent. In addition, the dad said he has learned from and been inspired by his son’s creativity and passion.

Okay, that fan award hopefully makes clear DC's staff know better than to cause any trouble for them, which would be pretty rich after DC methodically destroyed their own quality over the past quarter century and more, all for the sake of political agendas and other repellent directions. I appreciate that a youngster's able to prove he's got potential for storytelling, and maybe when he's several years older, he'll find fortune the way some veteran writers like Marv Wolfman and the late Len Wein did when they were in their late teens. And there is an important idea to be found in how Black citizens can own businesses that include mediums.

Interestingly enough, this article also tells that:

When they’re not writing or creating, the father and son volunteer at Whosoever Gospel Mission, a Christian nonprofit on Chelten Avenue and other organizations. They’ve also started a garden and play tennis.

Religious adherence of this sort is something the mainstream's practically been blacklisting, and quite possibly erasing altogether from storytelling over past decades, unless it's Islam that's the focus. I think it's good the father-son duo are contributing to Judeo-Christianity in a time when leftists have gone out of their way to belittle it for the sake of degrading agendas. If faith is also an inspiration in their writings, that's another plus. As is playing sports like tennis. So good luck to them in developing more comics stories. The creator-owned industry could sure use more to help build it up.

South Carolina paper fluff-coats Steve Epting's career

The Lexington County Chronicle announced artist Steve Epting is attending a book signing for one of his latest projects, and they made sure to paint a fluff-coated picture of what he did with Captain America 2 decades ago as well:

“Steve Epting is a South Carolina native who has had a huge impact in the comic industry that ultimately led to these giant blockbuster Marvel movies,” Scratch N’ Spin owner Eric Woodard said in a news release. “We love promoting local creators, whether it’s comics, music or movies. We love bringing these guests to our store to have them available to meet with our community and encourage aspiring creators (who get) the opportunity to have a space to get their comics signed without having to go to a big comic convention.”

A multiple Eisner Award-nominated comic artist, Steve Epting worked on The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Velvet, Batwoman and Superman. He has contributed art for Marvel, DC, Image and many more publishers across the comic industry.

He’s best known for Captain America and his Marvel projects, where he teamed up with Ed Brubaker in co-creating The Winter Soldier, which led to the character’s appearance in the Marvel movie hit “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

Epting is credited with “forever redefining Bucky Barnes and allowing the character to become globally recognized with a recurring role in many films like ‘Black Panther’ and ‘The Thunderbolts.’”

Wow, such overrated mishmash that was part and parcel of a time when Marvel was on the decline, and we're told this is what made great movie material? It's actually enough to reevaluate. The problem was that, at the time, bringing back Bucky was for little more than replacing Steve Rogers as Cap, and this was before they took to serious DEI-pandering, with figures like the Falcon shoehorned into the costume. Also, wasn't the Thunderbolts film a failure? So what good does that citation do?

As for Epting's new comic from Image, Hammerfist, which he produced with writer Rick Remender, what's it about?

The protagonist of Hammerfist is Mike Denton, “a dirtbag hitman, junkie and absentee father who’s spent his life chasing the easy fix — drugs, cheap sex and murder for money — while failing the one person who still believes he can be better: his daughter.”

“Now, on the eve of Black Noon — an ancient darkness that erases the light in all things — Mike has to drag himself out of the gutter, awaken a supernatural weapon powered only by love and fight his way through the living embodiment of evil to save her,” a description of the comic reads. “This unredeemable killer is forced to do the one thing he’s avoided his entire life: stand for something other than himself.”

Gee, yet another dark-laced product we could do without, one where a murderer is in the spotlight?!? Well that's got to be one of the worst ideas the market could turn out, and it's yet another example of too much attention paid to villainy at the expense of heroism. That the character's depicted saving his daughter and fighting another evil entity is no alleviation.

Epting's resume is decidedly overrated, and this kind of project doesn't improve it either. All we have here is another example of a newspaper making a big deal out of nothing, just because the guy lives in the area. Not every local figure is worth celebrating, and even Remender's no big deal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That crushed his dream of a drumming career.

At the same time, he was almost in denial.

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

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

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

The answer is a comic book artist.

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

“You determine your story,” he says.

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

Image restores its partnerships with Warren Ellis

Some news I almost missed is that British writer Warren Ellis, who was accused of sexual coercion 5-6 years ago is now, all of a sudden, working with Image again, as told on Comic Book Club:

Five years ago, writer Warren Ellis was accused by multiple people of grooming and sexual coercion. In the wake of these accusations, publishers — including Image Comics — cut ties with the writer. Until now, I guess, as Image has announced a brand new graphic novella by the writer.

Titled Ghost Drive Stations, the graphic novella features art by Lordess Foudre, and focuses on “a haunted investigator with no time for the modern world is sent to a research station in the desert to discover why it’s gone offline. What he finds is an experiment in immortality gone horribly wrong, with stakes both global and very, very personal.” So basically, vintage Ellis, who has walked this sort of ground many times before. [...]

As of 2023, he had not taken any of the steps laid out by the organization. However, in 2025, Image published a facsimile of Fell, and just last week the publisher announced the collection of one of Ellis’s Wildstorm titles. We have reached out to Image Comics for comment.

What could've convinced them to reverse course? An excellent question. What is clear is that, if no legal complaints were filed against him, then there isn't much of a case at all. Of course, it's odd in a way how Ellis wouldn't defend himself by filing a lawsuit against the accusers, since arguably, to post such claims as they did on a whole website dedicated to the accusations could be considered defamation by a legal perspective. Popverse says:

Five years since those aborted Fell plans, and six years since the very troubling allegations emerged, something has apparently changed to lead to Image to get back in business with Ellis for new comics, beginning with a November 2026 OGN illustrated by Lordess Foudre. This project would be the most significant new comics work from Ellis since the allegations were made; however, the writer has talked over the past few years about other new comics work being in progress with unspecified publishers.

Did he actually do any work during that time? I don't know, but he sure didn't seem to have what it takes to stand up to the accusations and launch a countersuit if he felt the accusers were being dishonest. Here's more:

At the time, Image Comics said it would not commit to any new Warren Ellis comics until the writer made "amends to the satisfaction of all involved" (and naming SoManyOfUs specifically). In the intervening years, Image has published a collection of older Warren Ellis comics, but now, five years later, Image Comics ramped up the relationship with the announcement of a new OGN and a reprint of another out-of-print comic, despite no appearance of "amends to the satisfaction of all involved," which it had publicly stated.

"A few people have asked me about past events in my life. It’s not my place to pick at it in public or speak for others," Ellis writes in the August 16 edition of his newsletter, Orbital Operations. "I will say that I got to apologise directly to a group of people and offer amends, which I remain very grateful for, and I keep that door open. I learned a lot and still am." [...]

In 2021, Image Comics said it had decided not to work with Ellis until he "made amends to the satisfaction of all involved." Now, with Image proceeding on new work with Ellis, it appears as if they feel Ellis has done enough for them to feel confident in working with him in 2026. It's unclear if Image believes Ellis has "made amends to the satisfaction of all involved," or if that boundary has changed.

I don't find Ellis appealing, but if trumped up accusations were made against him by the SoManyOfUs group, that was wrong, does a terrible disfavor for actual victims, and Image did not have to cut off ties with him. If the group was trying to extort Ellis, that too was wrong, and an example of cancel culture to boot. They may have said they didn't want to cancel Ellis, but that's what they did for a time, in a manner of speaking. That said, if Ellis thought they were unfair to him, then again, why didn't he sue them?

It'll be interesting to see if Ellis' newest work in a while will turn out to be "woke", since that'll only compound the impression he's suddenly got cold feet on anything that could be considered challenging subjects. Image may have resumed their partnerships with Ellis, but that doesn't mean he won't disappoint fans of his otherwise overrated works this time. And for all we know, his legacy, despite the current situation, could still be gone and never recover.

Frank Miller's relations with Jim Shooter

Here's a recent Hollywood Reporter interview with veteran artist Miller, where he continues his otherwise uninspired relay of what his relations with past comics veterans were like, and he even had the audacity to praise a certain overrated movie that unfortunately took plenty at the box office:

Miller has also been catching up on his moviegoing, and had seen Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which he calls “extravagant.” The creator behind Spartan story 300 knows his way around an ancient Greek myth or two (he can easily slip into expounding on Corinthian style helmets and their influence on Sparta) and says the movie “really did an awful lot right.”

Well this is a shame, but not all that surprising Miller would ignore some of the wokest workings in Nolan's new movie, which again, regrettably grossed plenty of dough, even if it did eventually go down in sales after 3 weeks. I have no idea if it'll turn the profits the studio's doubtlessly hoping it will, or whether it'll make waves in the USA in the end, but what Nolan's brewed up sounds so unappealing based on its eyebrow raising lack of sex, though I will say I'm relieved if it's not overly gory, although this article seems to indicate it may still have something disturbing. Which is reason enough for me to be discouraged. Maybe the problem is that no distinctions are made between sex that's in good or bad taste. Miller certainly doesn't seem interested in addressing all that. And it actually makes his superficial take on the film almost hilarious.

Your book is part memoir and part lessons in creativity. Why do it this way?

I got my career started by calling up Neal Adams’ office and getting a meeting with him. Neal Adams was the premier artist in comics at the time, and his art had a great effect on me as a child. And he was listed in the phone book. And I got to meet him that day, an hour after I called. And he looked over my drawings and told me they were terrible and sent me off. I redid them and I saw him again and again and again. And he was always a harsh critic, but every time he taught me more and more, sometimes doing drawings over them. And, and as the months went by, he got me my first job and he continued to be a sensei and an advisor to me on things professional and on how to deal with being an artist in the world and many other things. Years passed and I became successful. And one time, Neal and I were at a comic book convention and I just took him aside and I just said, “Neal, how do I thank you for what you’ve done for me? You’ve never asked me for anything.” And he said, “Oh, there’s only one thing you can do. Do the same thing for the next guy.” Well, this book really is my attempt to do the same thing for the next guy. And to commit to paper my experiences, my observations and, and the lessons learned in making comic books.

If that next guy were Will Eisner, he sure hasn't done much to thank him, recalling he spoke about him negatively in the American Genius documentary. Also, what lessons learned? That he should never ever have developed the Holy Terror GN over 15 years ago? Now here's what he says about working with the late Jim Shooter at Marvel:

Speaking of mentors, Jim Shooter (the wonderkid who became Marvel’s polarizing editor-in-chief through the 1980s) was also one. Do you remember the first time you met him?

My first memorable encounter with Jim was at the Marvel offices. I basically came in and was sort of selling my services. I’d gotten some little job, doing some little three-pager of something like Doc Sampson and that had gotten his attention enough to want to keep me around. And, he gave me his lecture on storytelling. Everything was always storytelling with Jim because he felt comics had really lost track of their basic mission, which was to enchant and compel young readers with gripping stories.

He came in on a fairly loose pack of people who were all over the map creatively. And he worked to pull it all together into a more cohesive unit.

There were a lot of writer-editors and little fiefdoms at the time.

Right. He focused more than ever on the concept of a Marvel universe.

How did you guys work together?

He was eager to change things and I was eager to learn. And we both had strong opinions. I think one of the reasons we got along was we were both up for a good argument. Arguments can be a very creative thing and a very good thing.

Be that as it may, Shooter's focus on the concept of the MCU included pushing the whole concept of line-wide crossovers, something that's sugarcoated quite a bit these days without any objectivity, and no questions as to whether it helped Marvel and DC artistically to go galaxies out of their way to turn out repeated crossovers every year, and increasingly, more than one every year, effectively making it increasingly difficult to find any creative autonomy at either company. That's something Miller doesn't dwell upon, even as he tells why he left Marvel, for DC and later Dark Horse:

You left Marvel in a pretty high profile fashion twice. And I say high profile because your profile was very high and you were creatively cresting, twice with Daredevil. What caused you to leave that first time?

Well, I didn’t leave anybody. I chose to take a project to another publisher who was more amenable to kind of freedom I wanted to do it with. The message underneath all this was that it was important to demonstrate that talent is portable. Let me say that. When a publisher is releasing your work, that does not mean you’re saying an oath of allegiance to a military operation. It’s not a marriage.

But again, no in depth mention of but one of the ways creative freedom was turned into a thing of the past at the Big Two. Nor of how horrific it's become ever since figures like Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio originally took over as EICs, and has never recovered even after they left. Why doesn't Miller have the courage to get into any of that? Perhaps because he never had much respect for Marvel and DC's creations to begin with? After all, he only seems to care about his own stories, and few others. He does address something I can't recall hearing about before at Marvel:

Uh, speaking of stories that never happened, what happened with the Doctor Strange run you were supposed to have with writer Roger Stern?

On that one, I really had come to realize that I was just dying to write my own material. And, I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to start writing and drawing my own comics and, you know, start being a cartoonist rather than just an illustrator.

Even back then, I think it's better Miller didn't take part. He may have at least a few science-fantasy themed stories in his resume, but it seems like the stuff less emphasizing of that genre is what he's most known for, and maybe for the best. Somehow, his artwork doesn't seem like a good fit for even the Sorceror Supreme, though I realize he must've been considered based on the dark themed stories he's most known for. As for Stern, he was a talented writer back in the day, but he regrettably has appalling viewpoints too, like his positions on Mary Jane Watson, where he acted like she was a real person, and look what good it did for comics in general ever since. All because people like Stern, much like Joe Quesada, had to be so petty and pointless.

The time of Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and Maus is looked at like a revolutionary era at this point where comics were reinvented. How healthy is the comic art form now? Is the wall still being pushed?

Sure it is. I mean, it’s easy to look back on that time and say, “Wow, what a sunburst. That changed everything.” But in fact, that was a pretty small amount of work that we’re talking about that caused a big splash and that’s what people remember at the time. Because people tend to remember the stuff that really made a splash when they think back on a given period. We certainly have a pretty wildly diverse amount of stuff coming out now.

Well if there's anywhere the form isn't being pushed, it's at the Big Two. And if Miller meant what he said, why did he all but disown Holy Terror 8 years ago in a defeatist interview with the UK Guardian? It didn't even help prevent him from being shunned by a UK convention. Something he's never seemed to address either.

This year, there was upheaval at Dark Horse Entertainment, the home of your Sin City books. But you announced a new book that you’re writing, Invasive Species, with them. How did you decide to stay at Dark Horse for the new book and not take it elsewhere?

Well, the relationship was a good and strong one, and it served us all very well. I met with the people there. The philosophies of the company seemed to be close enough to what I’d always known them to be, and they certainly had the infrastructure to do a good job at it.

Going back to Sin City, the only thing happening now is the Western that is being drawn by Milo Manara, right?

Right now, yeah, but I’ve got a dozen ideas for new ones. Sin City is my life’s work, more than anything. Milo is well along. I just gotta teach him how to draw girls. (Laughs.)

Gee, I wonder how that'll turn out, and what Miller means? I remember when Manara got censored or cancelled at Marvel over an absurd illustration he did of Spider-Woman's butt, for a series that didn't get much fanfare, and was cancelled and forgotten pretty quickly. What if Miller's gone so woke, he'll want Manara to dumb down his art styles for the wrong reasons? Based on Miller's positive comment about Nolan's Odyssey adaptation, it wouldn't be too shocking if that were the case.

Here's also an extra interview Popverse did with one of Miller's business partners, Silenn Thomas, who oversaw the American Genius documentary, and what he's got to say about working with Miller:

You are CEO of Frank Miller Ink, COO of Frank Miller Presents. What does that entail besides… well… everything?

Thomas: Well, you said it. It entails everything, and as you know well, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

You've been working with Frank for a number of years, even before becoming CEO of his shingle. What have you learned about him as a creator?

Thomas: I met him on the movie 300, and one consistent thing with [Frank Miller] is that he is one of the hardest-working people I have ever met. His dedication to excellence is absolute.

Yeah, and look how that turned out for the adaptation of the Spirit comic strip, and also the Robocop sequels and the sequel to the Sin City movie. Certainly if we take his cinematic ventures into consideration. But if the comics matter, his artwork's long become mediocre, and it's hard to say he's dedicated to excellence based on that.

You directed the recent documentary Frank Miller: American Genius. What did you learn from doing it, and taking it on the road for screenings?

Thomas: I have gained a deeper understanding of comics and its culture. The project gave me an all-access pass. I saw the universe of comics in every corner of the world. Taking it on the road now at festivals, conventions, and schools has been exhilarating. It was a joy to make, and it is a joy to show.

And I guess Miller's regression to a left-wing advocate's also quite exhilarating and overjoying, huh? Such signs turned up in the documentary, and that makes it less appealing.

My editor Chris has told me of how much of a champion and protector you are of Frank in the worlds of comics, movies, TV, and even cons. Where did you learn to be such a carer while also managing the business side of things and standing up for people?

Thomas: At the rebel camp on Tatooine in Star Wars. All jokes aside, what else is there? I believe we are in a creator-driven era. At least, that is the side I’m on.

Trouble is, what if Mr. Thomas is only willing to champion and protect anybody who's as left-wing as Miller sadly remains? Some creator driven era it'll be then. These are yet more examples of why I'm just not impressed with Miller by today's standards, and would rather not work with him if I were in the business myself. And maybe a most prominent reason why, other than his troubling politics is that he's too obsessed with the darkness, and not enough with the lightness. Which has become a very sad staple of modern entertainment as we know it.

Baseball franchises being turned into comics collectibles

From this Major League Baseball announcement, it sounds more like Zero-Zero Entertainment, the publisher of these comics, is interested in catering to the speculator market as much as the mainstream industry itself:

Calling all comic lovers and baseball fanatics: All Baseball Comics is debuting a collection of three officially licensed books to expand your collection.

Centered on the thesis that baseball is “the story of America,” the trio of issues features one spotlight on each of the Yankees, Dodgers and Cubs. They are available for preorder now on baseballcomics.com. Issues are listed at $19.99 apiece for standard printed versions, while a signed variant cover is also available for $49.99.

The history of these teams may be well worth telling, but marketing the comics as collectibles instead of history stories is the grave error made here. And seriously, people have to pay that much for something only 32 pages long? This is only taking advantage of customers for the sake of quick bucks, and does a disservice to the very sport they claim to be honoring.

What's more, if they can't tell a story that's the length of a paperback, which could be 50 or 100 pages, then they've proven they lack the talent and dedication needed to honor the sport of baseball. I'm sorry, but this is nothing more than a foul ball rife with cheating customers. 3 strikes and you're out. Once again, the medium's being exploited for profit instead of talent and dedication, and this only proves the point all the more why comics have to stop relying on the pamphlet model.

Digital comics are allegedly still a big deal

Publisher's Weekly wrote about the market of digital comics, and says it's ostensibly improving after a slump:

Less than three years ago, the lights on digital comics seemed to be getting dim. In November of 2023, Amazon announced the impending shutdown of the Comixology app—the platform that had accounted for the large majority of digital comics sales from every major U.S. publisher for the past 10 years.

But a new digital landscape was quietly developing, as both longstanding comics publishers and upstart digital retailers carved out new approaches to producing, selling, and reaching an audience for online comics. Could 2026 be the year that the comics industry fully comes into its digital era? We talked with publishers and retailers to find out.

The problem is that no sales figures, even digitally based, seem to turn up in this item, and that's the common modern weakness in such puff pieces. Though it does say here that:

Meanwhile, at Sweet Shop, another new retail platform that launched in beta in late 2025, Kenny Meyers has a different approach. In contrast to Neon Ichiban’s suite of features, Meyers believes that the key to digital success is to keep the app and market as simple as possible.

“There’s a lot more to [digital comics] than gimmicks,” Meyers says. “People just want, in my opinion, very simple, elegant ways to discover comic books.”

If the digital market avoids gimmicks like multiple variant covers, that's a good thing, but do people want entertainment value? That's what seems to be missing here. And then, once again, they sugarcoat DC/Marvel sales:

DC Comics has hardly been a late bloomer when it comes to digital comics. The company sold its first single-issue digital comic more than 15 years ago, and was among the first publishers to embrace day-and-date digital sales. In 2007, they even (briefly) attempted to launch a digital-first slate of all-original titles—the short-lived Zuda imprint.

Today, DC is coming off a heady year of growth, fueled by sales of its new Absolute Universe imprint and the surprising success of its digest-sized DC Compact Comics. By the end of 2025, the publisher even overtook Marvel in comics shop market share for the first time in years.

And as new readers came to DC, new digital sales followed. “We're finding an almost equal number of new readers coming in through physical and digital at the same time,” general manager Anne DePies says. “And once the digital readers come in, we've had meaningful success in seeing that they are purchasing across our ecosystem.”

Like other comic companies, DC doesn’t provide public figures for its total volume or revenue on digital sales, but DePies says that digital’s relative share of DC sales has remained remarkably stable over the past decade. That’s true of most other major publishers as well: at Dark Horse, VP of publishing sales Mark Bernardi says that digital readership leveled out to around 5% of sales many years ago, and has stayed in place ever since. At IDW, the share is a stable 10%. Image is a bit of an outlier; publisher and chief creative officer Eric Stephenson says digital sales have never recovered from a slide that started when Amazon bought Comixology.

I'm sorry, but failure to provide any public sales figures, which has been the norm for several years now, does nothing to convince. The ICV2 page they point at doesn't give sales figures either, and 5-10 percent is nothing to marvel at. Mainly because again, no sales figures are offered, yet they clearly hope everybody will take their word at face value. Any sales figures provided for the Absolute line were also laughable, as I recall. None of which matters to a puff publisher like Publisher's Weekly, unfortunately.

I'm sure the digital market has potential for the independent market, however. Perhaps provided, of course, that it's not a company like IDW turning out the products, seeing how far they've fallen in quality over the past decade. Yet there's suggestions the digital market, in the end, is doing no better than the print market, certainly if there's no genuine quality to accompany it.

Houston's Third Planet specialty store

The Houston Chronicle took a look at Third Planet Comics, a local specialty store that's been in business for about 5 decades:

There aren't many places left where you can walk in and be immediately met with old-school nerd culture. But at Houston's comic book stores, there are the latest offerings from Marvel, DC, and countless smaller independent companies; bins filled with older discounted comics to sift through; and rare comics worth lots of coin displayed like trophies on the wall. Even as they vary, comic book stores carry those familiar markers, creating a refuge for fans.

I'm sure there's worthwhile stuff to find, but when they say Marvel and DC's latest is what to find, that's where they hugely disappoint, even if it's not surprising they'd take such a superficial view of the Big Two in their modern incarnations. Although there is something interesting told in what follows:

Third Planet Comics, which has become a Houston landmark over its 50 years of operating, is huge; calling it a comic superstore is almost an understatement. The store seems to house everything nerd culture encompasses—comic books, manga, video games, Gundam build kits. You name it, Third Planet probably has it, or can get it for you. In the middle of a weekday, regulars and first-time customers ventured in and out, clearing out their boxes of comic subscriptions, browsing, bringing in old comics to see what they are worth, and parents passing on their own curiosities to their children. [...]

"We have something for everybody here," Johnson said. "I have people coming in saying they've been to other stores and they can't get things because that store doesn't like the product."

Now that's interesting what they tell. You could reasonably wonder if it alludes to independent comics and other creator-owned products that might be turned out by perceived right-wingers, and if the store in question despises them for that. That's not a good example for business, and this is what some possibly left-wing owned stores are relying heavily on modern Marvel/DC output for? So they don't have to rely too much on creator-owned products that might come from folks they don't agree with?

I sincerely hope Third Planet avoids any politically motivated decisions, because in the past decade, it certainly damaged business and its image. That's something that now needs to be mended. If the Houston store remains neutral, if anything, that'll be a good, responsible position.

Bone creator Jeff Smith apparently believes conservatives want to censor his productions

Jeff Smith, the cartoonist who created Bone over 3 decades ago, was interviewed by El Mundo, and says it's one of the most censored comics in the USA. But he also uses the occasion for a political rant:

"Bone has been one of the most censored books in the US. I know, it's ridiculous, right? They see something in it that they don't approve of. Well, they can go to hell," he explodes, who for five years collaborated with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund precisely to advocate for freedom of expression. "In my comics, I don't promote any political ideas. I only value friendship," he rejects. Although he has no problem taking a stand: "I'm optimistic: Trump will be gone soon and we will return to being Americans. It's a disaster."

He worked with an outfit as bad as the CBDLF? In that case, I'm not sure Bone, which he may have stopped writing as an ongoing series, is worth buying. And what are the odds he's aware it's the left that's censoring far more, but can't bring himself to openly admit it?

And what "friendship" does he value? If he's hostile to conservatives, then his statement's called into question. Also, if he can't avoid heavy handed politics in real life, that claim about promoting any in his comics is meaningless too. Another artist who's only doing a terrible disfavor to the medium's image when he leads such a double-standard.

Postal video game being adapted to a comic

Go Nintendo reports one of the most violent video games ever produced is being adapted, sadly enough, to the comics panels:

Running With Scissors, creators of the (in)famous POSTAL series, in partnership with the renowned artists at Roditeli Productions, release an official digital preview for the first-ever POSTAL comic book series, giving fans a 19-page preview of the diabolical action arriving in late 2026.

With tens of millions of copies sold across the POSTAL game franchise, the greater POSTAL universe has expanded through sequels, spin-off games, a documentary film, and a movie. Now, the POSTAL Dude will make his comics debut in a series produced/co-written by Kevin Roditeli (SWAT Kats, X‑O Manowar, Bad Omens: Concrete Jungle) and co-written by Rob Cannon (Freak Snow, Anime Animay).

The POSTAL Dude makes his way through what appears to be a normal Monday until his fragile peace of mind is shattered once again – this time by an ad for a sinister dating app that sends him into a spiral of conspiracy-fueled madness.

I looked at several pages from the preview, and what a surprise, it does feature bloody acts of violence not all that different from what the game could feature. And the publishers of this tommyrot actually believe this is normal and acceptable?

On top of that, must virtually every video game of this sort be adapted to the comics medium? Of course not. Yet these wastes of trees keep getting made, regardless of how many people even buy them to begin with. I wish more people would wake up and stop plunking their money into even the video game itself, because this is getting very irritating already if and whenever anybody just buys these comics unquestioned, as though it literally must be done. Let's be clear. Nobody has to buy these kind of comic adaptations at all, and a game as jarring as Postal shouldn't have to matter to anybody.

Paul Newman's last live action movie was based on a GN

Men's Journal spoke about one of the late actor Paul Newman's last movies, Road to Perdition, based on a GN by Max Allan Collins, and also a cartoon he worked on:

Newman’s role as John Rooney marked his final live-action feature film. The Hollywood icon voiced Doc Hudson in Pixar’s animated film Cars in 2006 before passing away in 2008 at the age of 83.

Collider highlighted Newman’s work alongside the rest of the cast as a major reason the film still holds up. [...]

Decades later, Road to Perdition remains a quiet high point in several careers. For Newman, it closed out a lifetime of work with one final, memorable big screen performance.

Good for him. And that's great to know he provided voice acting for a cartoon as well. I'd seen several movies he made decades before, and Newman was a very admirable performer, a lot more talented than some of today's Hollywood actors. If only they'd learn from him.

SDCC panel on Jewish influences in comicdom

San Diego Jewish World writes about a panel at the SDCC discussing the Jewish influences in comics history:

Comic-Con attendees packed a panel room to learn about the often-overlooked role that Jewish creators have played in shaping the comic book industry.

Mark S. Zaid, Esq., an Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide advisor, comic book historian, author, and creator of GI’s Rabbi); Danny Fingeroth, former Marvel editor and writer, author of Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero; and Dr. Andrew Fogel, historian of popular culture and author of Superman’s Jaw presented an engaging PowerPoint lecture titled “The Jewish Experience in Comics: Characters and Creators.”

The presentation explored how the Jewish identities and experiences of many of comics’ most influential creators shaped the stories they told and the heroes they created. The panel traced the origins of iconic characters such as Superman, the Thing, and Magneto, examined the personal histories of Golden and Silver Age comic book creators, and discussed whether Jewish cultural identity was intentionally woven into their work.

It's worth wondering if modern audiences appreciate all this in an era where Islamic antisemitism sadly rose after October 7, 2023. Similarly, do modern film audiences even appreciate the Jewish role in building Hollywood? The article unfortunately also brings up an ideologue who's dampened the impact of his notable GN:

The speakers also addressed how publishers approached sensitive subjects such as the Holocaust and examined the lasting influence of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Will Eisner’s groundbreaking graphic novels on Jewish storytelling in comics.

While Eisner's writings hold up well, Spiegelman's recent, repellent politics can have the effect of damaging whatever impact he expected Maus to have for years to come. That said, who knows if anybody at these convention panels appreciates that Eisner's last GN, The Plot, also did research on Islamic antisemitism?

One of the panel’s most fascinating discussions centered on Nazi Germany’s reaction to Superman. Fogel displayed a German Secret Service newspaper article attacking Superman’s Jewish creators. Germany eventually banned Superman, portraying him as a symbol of capitalist propaganda designed to brainwash American youth. The article specifically criticized Jerry Siegel’s Jewish identity, referenced his circumcision, accused him of using Yiddish rather than German, and labeled him an Untermensch (subhuman). The publication argued that Superman was not the true Übermensch (superman), claiming he violated the laws of science by defying gravity, lacked proper masculinity because of his circus-like costume, and represented irrationality rather than Aryan ideals.

It's interesting they bring up this specific history, because "Nazi" was an acronym for "National Socialists". Do the panelists know that, and did they specify? And what's their own take on capitalism in an era where it's been all but shunned? It's also interesting the Nazi propaganda they cited considers science fiction and fantasy storytelling anathema to their beliefs, indicating they also despised entertainment written for positive reasons.

At the end of the article:

This was one of the most informative and thought-provoking panels I attended at Comic-Con. My husband joined me for the presentation, and despite attending Comic-Con for nearly 20 years, he walked away having learned numerous new historical connections between Judaism and comic books. It was an eye-opening experience that offered a deeper appreciation for the people and stories behind some of the world’s most recognizable superheroes.

Unfortunately, I have a sad feeling that whatever objectivity the panel had ground to a screeching halt when it came to modern issues, and wouldn't be shocked if the panelists would not say even a word about Islamic antisemitism, and whether it should be subject of any kind of comics storytelling. That's why these panels aren't as informative as they could be, yet nobody will point that out.

Artist who worked on TMNT charged with assault on reporter in Maine

Maine Wire reported that one of their staff was assaulted at an anti-ICE protest by somebody who turned out to be an artist who worked on recent Ninja Turtles comics, an artist by the name of Bob Tkacik:

A Maine comic book artist is facing a criminal assault charge stemming from the alleged attack on a Maine Wire reporter covering an anti-ICE protest in Biddeford earlier this month.

Bob Tkacik, a freelance comic book artist known for his work on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, has been charged with assault in connection with the July 13 incident involving Maine Wire reporter Jon Fetherston. The case is expected to be heard in Biddeford District Court unless it is resolved beforehand through the York County District Attorney’s Office.

According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, Fetherston was covering an anti-ICE demonstration in downtown Biddeford when he was allegedly struck with a skateboard, shoved, spat on, and repeatedly harassed while livestreaming from the scene. The attack reportedly knocked his cellphone to the ground and interrupted his live coverage. The incident has since been cataloged by the Tracker as an assault on a journalist and damage to journalistic equipment.

The alleged assault quickly drew national and international attention. The incident was covered by Fox News and Newsmax, while Britain’s Daily Express also reported on the attack during Fetherston’s live television coverage, bringing broader attention to concerns over the safety of journalists covering politically charged demonstrations.

The Maine Press Association also condemned the violence, issuing a public statement denouncing attacks on working journalists and reaffirming that reporters must be able to cover news events without fear of intimidation or physical assault. The organization called violence against members of the press unacceptable and urged respect for the First Amendment and the role of journalists in a free society.

It was bad enough when a would-be historian who'd written about the Ninja Turtles committed a criminal offense several weeks ago. Now, an artist who worked on the comics themselves has also tarnished its legacy with an offense of his own. What makes this additionally disturbing is that the same victim had also been threatened by a mosque attendee in the state, and other attendees were also hostile to him. I don't know if he's a right-leaning journalist, but his chilling experiences certainly make clear something's horribly wrong over there. Including how Tkacik's given clues as to what he thinks of law enforcement. Based on which, you could wonder why he even drew Ninja Turtles to begin with.

I looked around to see if there were any past articles about Tkacik, and found this interview on Capes and Tights from 2023, where it says that:

While you have other professional work, some people know you for your ability to draw turtles. Is this something that your enjoy being connected to and what is the best part of being so connected to the turtles community?

To be perfectly honest, it is an honor to be known for this. I think the TMNT community is full of incredible storytellers, artists and enthusiasts, and I can genuinely say, for everyone I’ve met through this connection, I am immensely grateful. I’ve made a lot of very good friends through this work, and I couldn’t be happier.

Is it an honor for him to now be known for breaking the law, and assaulting a news reporter without provocation? The interview says Tkacik published an indie comic of his own, and it'd be strongly advised not to buy it now after what he did, delivering the industry another embarrassing moment. We must hope this terrible incident brings his career to an end, and that the Ninja Turtles franchise holders will no longer allow his employment after what he did. This is exactly why more serious demands must be made by businesses in comicdom for creators to uphold the law, and avoid politicized issues like these. Comic book publishing cannot afford this kind of negative publicity anymore. Would this have occurred if Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman were still in charge of their creations? I don't know, but perhaps this sad case could suggest why some franchise creators just shouldn't sell off the rights to their products.

Eisner awards nominated pretentious scribes

Perhaps I was being too optimistic when I hoped earlier that the Eisner awards was coming off their biases of the mid-2000s. Oregon Public Broadcasting says 3 local scribes, one who's definitely overrated, were nominated:

Three of Portland’s prominent comic book creators, Rupert Kinnard, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Sarah Shay Mirk, are nominated for Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards — the Oscars of the comic industry, named for one of the first comic artists in American history. This week, they’re traveling to San Diego Comic Con to speak on panels, sign books, and attend the awards ceremony on Friday night. [...]

While DeConnick’s book FML is up for Best Continuing Series, both Mirk and Kinnard are nominated for Best Comics-Related Book, which Mirk described as “the nerdiest, wonkiest category.” For DeConnick, this nomination is one of many throughout her career after winning the award for Best Single Issue in 2022. For Mirk, this marks nomination number four.

DeConnick's one of the scribes who ruined Carol Danvers as a superheroine in the past decade, all for the sake of "feminist" agendas, and wokeism. And what's this Kinnard known for?

Kinnard created the first Black queer comic strip characters, although he didn’t know he was first at the time. Born in Chicago in 1954, Kinnard moved to Portland in 1979 and helped start the queer newspaper Just Out.

He created The Brown Bomber, a nineteen-year-old superhero sporting basketball shorts and a home-made cape, and Diva Touché Flambé, a mystical grade school teacher who knocks sense into closed-minded streetgoers with her power of slapthology.

Together, the duo form Cathartic Comics, a strip that ran in newspapers in Portland and San Francisco, calling out injustice with wit, wisdom, and pride through an intersectional Black queer lens.

What's so special about that in the view of the leftists now running the Eisners? This is all woke cliche by today's standards. And then, here's what Mirk's known for:

Sarah Shay Mirk is a nonfiction comics journalist, publisher, and teacher at Crucial Comix living in Portland since 2008.

Their book Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison chronicles the experiences of former Guantanamo Bay prisoners and staff in the form of a graphic novel.

There's something mighty fishy about this book. What if it's apologia for terrorism, since many Islamic terrorists were incarcerated at Guantanamo, to keep them away from the USA's borders?

Kelly Sue DeConnick is a New York Times Bestselling comics author, known for her reimagining of the character Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel.

Her 2026 nomination for Best Continuing Series is shared with David López, the co-writer of FML, a graphic series from Portland-based publisher Dark Horse Comics.

"Reimagining" is precisely the problem, since, not only was Danvers made to look alienatingly masculine in the past decade, her background was forcibly changed as well. And forced, abrupt retcons were becoming pretty common beginning in the early 2000s, with some of J. Michael Straczysnki's machinations in Spider-Man just the beginning. Also notice how they don't refer to Danvers as Ms. Marvel, which is what she was originally titled in the late 70s when the late Gerry Conway first launched the original series at the time. What's so special about scribes who don't care about the source material? This only clarifies the Eisners continue to remain corrupted in whatever values they once had, and serve leftist causes more than anything else. That's why they're not worth paying attention to, any more than the Oscars in Hollywood.

San Diego artist attends Comicon for 35th year

ABC 10 News reports a California artist named Erik Arreaga is attending the SDCC for the 35th time:

Chula Vista comic book artist Erik Arreaga is drawing attention at Comic-Con this week for his 35th year in attendance.

Arreaga is hoping his new projects will keep San Diego comic book artists on the map.

Arreaga's said he's draws his inspiration for his comic book characters from the 1990s.

"So I feel that I carry that era here. My artwork has been known to be very gritty, dark, but with some great motion," Arreaga said.

And wouldn't you know it, this guy even runs the gauntlet of making me wonder if darkness is what he specializes in. I just don't understand why quite a few of the scribes who've made headlines like these always seem to care more about darkness than light. Then again, maybe I do understand - because the press favors those who do. And that's appalling.

But he is not staying in the past. He is creating characters that live beyond the comic book page — including one who exists exclusively on social media.

"I have a character that is not really in the book. You have to follow her on social media," Arreaga said. "I feel we have to move forward with creativity in our books and just bring in the new generation who are all on social media into comic books."

Well I hope he doesn't think his writing should be made to resemble social media. In the past 2 decades, I'd noticed at least a few stories where the writing was described as resembling a message board argument, such as a story Geoff Johns wrote in the Flash, and he's one of the most pretentious, overrated writers to have ever littered comicdom.

And if he really believes creativity matters, why did he turn to cliches like darkness? Any creator who can't be more open minded about brightness is not being seriously creative. I would hope there's a lesson in this, that modern creators who really want to prove they're creative will be willing to prove they're ready to work in optimism even more. Food for thought. Superman, for example, has been all but marginalized in terms of vision today, and that's something that has to be mended.

Indian cartoonist's work nominated for Eisners and Harveys

Scroll wrote about Charbak Dipta, an Indian cartoonist whose self-published comic was nominated for Eisner and Harvey awards:

West Bengal-based Charbak Dipta was nominated for the Best Digital Comic category in the 2026 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for The World of Lublu (published in Bengali by Book Farm as Lublur Prithibi). Named for the pioneering comics creator and graphic novelist Will Eisner, the Eisner Awards are considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry. The winners were announced on July 24 at the San Diego Comic Con International.

“Charbak Dipta is not the first Indian to be nominated,” scholar and cover designer Pinaki De remarked about the Eisner Award nomination, “but the fact that his work is done entirely in India, originally published in Bengali for a regional market, makes it so special. To think that anyone here can also make it without extensive ‘foreign’ connections augurs well for the future of Indian comics. In that sense, he is a trailblazer.”

The World of Lublu has also been nominated for this year’s Harvey Awards for Digital Book of the Year. This prize is named after pioneering American cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, and no book-length, creator-owned work from the subcontinent has been nominated for either before, let alone both. Dipta hails from Bongaon – a town near the Indo-Bangladesh border, two hours from Kolkata. [...]

He started out as a cartoonist at The Times of India in Kolkata. He has, since then, worked as a commercial illustrator for tabloids, magazines, and publishers like Scholastic – book covers, cartoons, children’s picture books, and work-for-hire gigs ranging from Nordic mythology to Malgudi Days-esque tales to gangster narratives, while also committing to rigorous online outreach for each of his works, public appearances, and curated exhibits.

This is the daily bread of the commercial illustrator: a figure with a long and under-recognised history in India who has always worked across formats, languages, and markets with a versatility that does not easily lead to publishing boutique graphic novels. Dipta grew up on Indrajal Comics, Chacha Chaudhary, and the Bengali stalwarts, Narayan Debnath and Mayukh Chowdhury. The former designed cosmetic labels before becoming a one-man comics industry, while the latter moved fluidly between illustration and adventure serials. The tradition continues into the present in figures like Debashish Deb, Onkarnath Bhattacharya, and Uday Deb – commercial artists who straddle children’s illustration, political cartooning, graphic novels, merchandising, and branded work with the same promiscuous dexterity their predecessors mastered.

His later western influences and encounters with the Bengal School of Art and folk traditions aside, Dipta understands that survival in this ecology means taking on every role simultaneously. The mass market that could move hundreds of thousands of a single issue per month has fragmented considerably. What remains is a precarious ecosystem in which the aspiring cartoonist must also be the illustrator-for-hire, colourist, letterer, cover designer, and even publisher and translator of their own work in order to move across national boundaries.

This is certainly interesting background history, and what's additionally impressive is that Dipta helped develop the translation for one of the most famous GNs produced by the guy who founded one of the aforementioned award ceremonies:

The most satisfying loop in this story is his recent translation of Will Eisner’s A Contract with God (1978) into Bengali, completed almost simultaneously with his own nomination for an award bearing Eisner’s name. Dipta pursued the Eisner Estate himself, driven by what he saw as a structural parallel between Eisner’s Dropsie Avenue and his own Kolkata.

“The raw pain, resilience, and daily struggles of the Jewish immigrants in Eisner’s work resonate perfectly with the lived experiences of East Bengal refugees settling into the colonies of West Bengal post-Partition,” Dipta explains. “The damp, congested tenement living on Dropsie Avenue mirrors the narrow alleys, centuries-old decaying mansions, chaotic street noise, and tightly knit human relationships of North Kolkata.”

Translating Eisner also meant contending with Eisner’s lettering, blocky type that weighs on the images in very idiosyncratic ways. For a cartoonist of speed such as Dipta, who also letters his own work, one imagines this to have been both a technical challenge and a philosophical one. How does one carry the visual texture of a voice from one script to another without losing its grain? The artist always precedes the critic. Let’s leave it there.

We must also give the guy a lot of appreciation for recognizing the value of Eisner's most notable GN from the late 70s, at a time when he'd resumed comics development after working in the army and businesses more often during the 50s and 60s. Of course, it's a shame the Eisners have been abused as an award event in past years, recalling they nominated DC's offensive Identity Crisis from 2004 for awards 2 decades ago. I can't recall if it actually won any, but if it did, that was wrong, plain and simple, and explains perfectly what's gone wrong with even award shows nowadays. We have to hope their board of directors has moved away from associating with such atrocities, but that doesn't mean they aren't still heaping awards on other bad mainstream and conglomerate-owned comics that don't deserve them. It's good if they're now providing appreciation for indies that're hopefully in better taste, and Dipta's work looks like just what those seeking better taste could be looking for.

So congratulations to him for finding wider recognition for his art career, and good luck to Dipta in the future on comics illustrating.

How publisher Z2 brought rock musicians to comicdom

Spin magazine wrote about the New York comic publisher Z2, which had a hand in bringing rock stars into comics, and trying out various projects, although there's troubling details turning up here:

The cultural connection between comics and music runs deep, from Kiss and their infamous 1977 stunt in which the band teamed up with Marvel to release a zine infused with each member’s actual blood, to My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, who worked at a comic book store and interned at DC Comics before he became a rock star (and later wrote the award-winning The Umbrella Academy).

More recently, Tom Morello, Puscifer, and even the world’s greatest rock ’n roll band, the Rolling Stones, have recognized the reciprocal relationship that fans have with both mediums. Earlier this month, the Stones released a limited edition of their latest album, Foreign Tongues, as a nostalgic Marvel collab package with inserts featuring Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America, Thor and Hulk.

Comics have inspired the biggest musicians in the world to create, to embody colorful characters, and to conquer worlds both real and imagined. So it was only a matter of time until someone with a passion for both sought to harness their undeniable superpowers into a fan-focused business model. New York based Z2—which will have a huge presence at Comic-Con International in San Diego this week—has built an empire by creating partnerships with the biggest names in music, releasing graphic novels and collectibles with top-tier artists and pop-culture icons. Distributed globally via Ingram, their impressive roster reps every genre and era including Gorillaz, Blondie, Elvis Presley, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Primus, the Blues Brothers, Tori Amos, Type O Negative, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, the Grateful Dead, Machine Gun Kelly, Sublime, RZA, Mötley Crüe, the Doors, Kool Keith, Cypress Hill, Babymetal, Major Lazer, Sturgill Simpson, Poppy, and Yungblud.

I do know there have also occasionally been allusions to rock songs in comics of the past, and the U-Foes in the Hulk were inspired by a song titled "Waiting for the UFOs". And no doubt, there is plenty to consider from a historical viewpoint as to what potential the connections with any kind of music could have with comicdom. But Z2 annoys me when their representative brings up what must be one of their most prominent products:

The graphic novel, called Murder Ballads, was a noir-style tale about a record label owner who crosses paths with two blues musicians. The soundtrack featured a vinyl release as a companion, led by an undiscovered elder soul man Auerbach discovered named Robert Finley. Bernstein says it was “a lightbulb moment” and a new direction for the company.

“It was like, wait, this is what we’ve always wanted to do,” recalls Bernstein, who interned at Marvel Comics when he was 16 before going on to work in the music world, doing art direction for magazines including Guitar World, Revolver, Alternative Press, and Loudwire. “I had a lot of relationships with music artists already. That’s sort of the secret sauce here. I knew a lot of the musicians, so we were able to bring them over here. We already worked together and had built a trust.”

Whenever an emphasis is put on titles involving murder and violence, it becomes appalling, because it suggests the music world, rock-based or otherwise, has also succumbed to the kind of PC mindset movies and comics themselves have. Also note the talk of infusing actual blood into a magazine when KISS worked with Marvel, and that too has something unpleasant about it.

Music may be a great wellspring for comicdom, but as the above details involving dark themes suggest, the rock genre's advocates take a cliched route that isn't healthy in the long run. If the focus were pop music, would that genre's advocates offer a more inspiring perspective for comcidom? We could only hope. For now, this is another example of how those who could've impressed more than they did fell terribly short, and would do well to reevaluate their approaches if they really want to impress a wider, more open minded audience in the long run, and try themes that are more optimistic. Otherwise, what variety is there in entertainment at all?