For Spider-Man's 1000th issue, Aunt May forgets who Peter Parker is

Comic Book Club tells the premise of the thousandth issue for Amazing Spider-Man:

In the cliffhanger of the last issue of Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker’s beloved Aunt May had a stroke. Well, thanks to a new preview from Marvel of Amazing Spider-Man #1000, we know what’s happened: she’s forgotten Peter Parker.

Alongside the preview pages, which include an appearance by May’s biological son Cormac, who has been appearing recently in the series, we’re also getting covers for the second printing, which will arrive on October 28 with pencilled versions of the covers by Pepe Larraz and John Romita Jr. (check out if the controversial cover looks better without the coloring). That’s because the issue has already sold over 400,000 copies to comic book stores [...]

Spider-Man faces his greatest fear and his most frightening new villain in decades… RAVAGE! Plus, some of the greatest creative minds on Earth honor one thousand issues of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN! NOAH HAWLEY (Alien: Earth, Fargo, LEGION) makes his comic book debut, Frank Miller and Peach Momoko collaborate for the first time, Stuart Immonen and Brian Michael Bendis return to Spider-Man together, and some of the best ASM creators return to the title!

It's much too late for introducing new relatives of the Parkers to the title, and with Bendis aboard, something's obviously wrong. Even Miller's involvement does nothing to improve what's clearly just more publicity stunts. I don't know if Mary Jane Watson shows up, but if Bendis and/or Miller are allowed to script a story where MJ appears, it's only plain dismay.

Just like it's long too late for there to have been a 1000th Superman issue, it's too late for a 1000th Spidey issue, and besides, what are the chances they'll soon be resetting it to a number one, as became a sad staple in the years since a number of Marvel titles were first relaunched in 1998? The customers have hopefully long learned why it doesn't pay to buy all these brand new relaunch premieres that won't amount to much on the speculator market.

A decade after Lara Croft was dumbed down for woke's sake, Tomb Raider's programmers still only care about just that

As somebody who's admired the original Tomb Raider series of computer games with Lara Croft, I've been as disappointed as the next person that modern programmers in charge of the franchise repeatedly only show interest in watering down her sexuality, and as the following news from the Straits Times reveals, they still go to all that trouble just to make a point about something that affected some, if not all, of the comics adapted from the game:

Lara may have beaten a path for more female heroines and encouraged young women around the world to pick up a controller, but in the early days, the publicity for the game leaned heavily on her shapeliness.

With the market for video games now expanded well beyond the stereotype of adolescent boys, the team behind the new game says this time they are focusing on Lara as a strong character.

“The way we’re rebuilding Lara, we’re trying to respect the fact that she’s female and we’re just trying to make her powerful, not as an object of sexual attraction,” said the game’s art director Arek Tomaszewski.

Eight years after the last instalment Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and ahead of an all-new entry planned for 2028, Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis aims to revisit the original adventure “through a modern lens”, Siqueira said.

I've heard that ambiguous narrative about "strong character" before tons of times, and all the game designer is doing is insulting the whole premise of Wonder Woman, to name but one most prominent example from comicdom. It reminds me that a decade back, Gal Gadot told how she encountered people online who claimed WW "can't be intelligent because she's attractive". And I guess she can't be strong for the same reasons? The directors of this new entry in the Tomb Raider series certainly seem to think so, even though, from the pictorial samples I've seen, ironically or not, Lara's actually wearing a shirt with cleavage (something I don't think she wore in the early games), yet her bosom doesn't look that big in most of the photos, so obviously, they've still got very icy cold feet about such petty issues. And that doesn't improve perceptions of the newer video games at all. Must I also point out that, even in the early years of Tomb Raider, there were women who played and practically designed it too, without issue?

So it's utterly disrespectful for modern video game developers to lecture the audience about what the franchise should be. As though it weren't bad enough even the animated cartoons have suffered repellent PC in recent years to boot. I think it'd be best for the franchise to cease as video games, or be sold off, because repetitively producing them according to PC dictates has not improved their reputation, and it's insulting to the intellect to make it sound like boys don't deserve a lady to love. Also, are we to assume the developers have no creative freedom, let alone courage? Well, that's another something you could glean from such a pretentious article. I think it's best to continue saving money on new game purchases if they insist on insulting players' intellect.

A sloppy article about Frank Miller's work on Daredevil

When it's not the Dark Knight Returns that's the overemphasized focus of so many puff piece news articles, it could be Miller's work on Daredevil instead, and that's what Inverse wrote about recently, since some recent TV shows drew from Miller's stories, but this is yet another news item that's decidedly not interested in maintaining consistency, let alone assuring us that Miller's work, good enough as it was there, isn't the beginning or end of what we could find impressive about Hornhead's original series, in sharp contrast to what came post-1998. First:

Whenever people discuss superheroes who have it rough, there are a couple of names that usually stick out. Spider-Man’s day-to-day life is notoriously bad, so the term “Parker luck” was coined because of it. Batman has had his back broken, several of his sidekicks killed, and consistently fights monstrosities and aliens all while just being a normal human being.

But it’s safe to say that few comic book characters have trials and tribulations comparable to those of Matt Murdock, aka Hell’s Kitchen’s own Daredevil. Those who love him can’t quite seem to stay alive, those who hate him can’t quite seem to stay in jail, and the Man Without Fear himself can’t quite seem to keep a handle on his own secret identity (a problem that has just recently followed him to the MCU in Daredevil: Born Again). But 40 years ago, one of the most celebrated comic book writers of all-time took it upon himself to drag Matt Murdock through hell and back, and in the process wrote not just one of the best Daredevil stories ever but one of the best comic arcs of all-time: the original 1986 Born Again.

Did it ever occur to them that if they describe DD's life as that bad, it could actually become less appealing to the audience? Also, since Batman does come up here, yes, there were a few, but if Spoiler's the one who matters, interesting there's no objective take here on a character who was a more notable recurring cast member of the Robin series begun by Chuck Dixon in 1993. And how Stephanie Brown was initially turned into a sacrificial lamb in the War Games/Crimes crossover, before this was eventually reversed 3 years later, and there were a few other bad directions that came at the time of Identity Crisis that were reversed later as well, though still too late at this point.

Since they speak of lovers, even Batman had at least one who was turned into a forced sacrifice in 2002 for the sake of a shoddy crossover, Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive. Her name was Vesper Fairchild, and if there's any way to handle such a curtain call for a character that's less than organic, it's crossovers. So it's not like DD's the only one story-wise who underwent such incidents, whether the writing was good or bad. And of course, even overrated writers like Kevin Smith have turned out some of the worst storylines in DD based on exactly what Inverse unobjectively spoke of: wiping out Karen Page in the Marvel Knights imprint just 5 issues in. And to Inverse's writers, it means nothing. By the way, if any of DD's adversaries were written cheating death, doesn't that make Karen's death extremely hypocritical?

When Stan Lee and Bill Everett first created Daredevil all the way back in 1964, they were responsible for many of the character’s everlasting traits: he’s a blind lawyer named Matt Murdock, his father was a murdered boxer named Battlin’ Jack, and he works alongside Foggy Nelson and secretary Karen Page at a legal firm named Nelson and Murdock. But the original depiction of the character was a quippy, lighthearted Spider-Man-adjacent swashbuckler – it wasn’t until the late 70s and early 80s, when the title was in danger of cancellation because of declining sales, that Frank Miller took over as writer and forever changed the perception of the book. Instead of fighting vampires or villains pulled from science fiction B-movies like Stilt-Man, Miller emphasized the psychological turmoil of a Catholic vigilante and fleshed out the contours of Hell’s Kitchen’s criminal underworld (converting The Kingpin from a Spider-Man villain into a Daredevil villain), ultimately giving the book a hard-boiled, seedy film noir atmosphere that was instantly popular and has influenced other Daredevil writers to this day.

Umm, I think even before Miller came about, it was dark enough. And while it may have come with a bit of a twist, Stilt-Man did make an appearance in DD during Miller's run, though a crook Miller introduced stole Wilbur Day's mechanics so he could make use of them himself. Even Dr. Octopus made one appearance in DD at the time. So let's not think the series ever strayed far from more sci-fi oriented concepts.

What's more, how is it Ann Nocenti, who succeeded Miller in writing later, didn't provide an enjoyable perception too? I think Miller's DD run is good, but I'm not buying that favoratism at all costs. And IIRC, didn't Mark Waid at one point write DD with a brighter perspective in the past 15 years? It may have been at a time when Marvel's artistic quality collapsed, but the lecture Inverse delivers again becomes sloppy. And one more thing about Waid's run: whether he wrote DD bright or dark, he did a terrible disfavor at the time with heavy handed leftism.

After briefly stepping away from the title, Frank Miller returned with what is maybe his greatest narrative contribution to the Daredevil mythos: 1986’s Born Again storyline, which played out from February to August in the pages of Daredevil #227-233. A culmination of everything he'd built up over his original five years writing the character, Born Again opens with the reveal that Karen Page, who had been absent from Daredevil comics since 1969 (she left Nelson and Murdock to become an actor after discovering Matt’s secret), has become an adult film actor and heroin addict. In the throes of her addiction, Karen sells Matt’s secret identity for a fix, and that information ends up in the hands of The Kingpin, who decides that if he can’t defeat Daredevil the vigilante, he’ll defeat Matt Murdock the civilian by systematically destroying his personal life.

Here too, we have quite a flaw in history. Karen made appearances in DD at least until 1972 and issue 86, and afterwards, she made several appearances in comics like Ghost Rider and Marvel Two-In-One (and one more guest appearance in DD 138 from 1976) until about 1978, before going into limbo for 7 years. Inverse has just confirmed ever further they're unqualified for history jobs. Also, notice how they refer to a woman becoming an "actor" instead of actress? I've seen that woke PC tactic in the past few years, apparently their whole sick idea of how to belittle the fairer sex in an era where LGBT ideology was pushed all over the place. One more problem undermining this puff piece. Near the end, it says:

Frank Miller didn’t just write arguably the greatest Daredevil story ever told, but he also changed the way that superhero stories deal with human drama. Matt Murdock is a running joke for comic book fans because he’s a character who can’t escape his own suffering, but over four decades ago, Frank Miller showed us that the reason why Daredevil can handle it is that the hero is the man underneath the costume, not the bright red costum he’s known for.

If Matt can't escape suffering, isn't that a problem? It's also one if Marvel's adamant about keeping Karen in the grave, after what happened to her in the Knights imprint. Supposedly, Aquaman's been a running joke because he could communicate with undersea animals, but I don't recall Hornhead ever been described as a joke. Are they aware the original costume was yellow in 1964, changed after 6-7 issues? You might think that's a joke, but the problems Matt faced as both superhero and lawyer certainly weren't. What's certainly a joke are the inaccuracies in the puff piece, decidedly another example of somebody who doesn't want to say a word in depth about the runs coming before and after Miller's. Seriously, what's so hard about discussing Nocenti's run in the late 80s-early 90s at length? This elevation of one specific run at the expense of others has long gotten way out of hand. There's also plenty about Spider-Man that hasn't been brought up by these tabloid news sites. On which note, maybe early Hornhead was "lighthearted", but "quippy" was something he could've been written as even well after Stan Lee relinquished the job to other writers. I assume they mean DD could be written dishing out wisecracks like Spidey and the Thing, and in the stories I read, Matt certainly came close.

So let's be clear. Of course I recommend Miller's DD run, but I'm not going to say what came before and after wasn't worth the effort and the price you could pay for the reprint archives. Just because there've been TV shows adapting notable Hornhead storylines is also not a reason to focus almost solely upon Miller's run either. The original comics scripts are what should count, far more than any two-bit TV adaptation.

Brand new Green Lantern stories are considered the "best"

Comic Basics listed several runs of Green Lantern from the past decades, only one of which is worth considering (Denny O'Neil's early 70s run), while some of the others are predictably fluff-coated takes on modern runs. For example, there's Geoff Johns' run:

Writer Geoff Johns revitalized the franchise by returning Hal Jordan to the spotlight in the miniseries ‘Green Lantern: Rebirth’. The overarching narrative expanded the lore by introducing the Emotional Spectrum and creating diverse new Lantern corps across the cosmos. Major comic crossover events such as ‘Sinestro Corps War’ and ‘Blackest Night’ elevated the title into a cornerstone of the DC Universe. Johns collaborated with prominent artists like Ethan Van Sciver and Ivan Reis to deliver high-stakes cosmic action and deep character development. This nine-year run transformed the mythology and established the modern foundation of the Green Lantern mythos.

Some "revitalization" alright. There were several jarringly violent moments in the run, and most particularly telling was when Johns exploited the title for forcing Islamic propaganda into it, in the decade following September 11, 2001. The story introducing Simon Baz even resorted to the cliche of a white supremacist being the actual culprit. This is what Johns cares about, not actual victims? What he did was definitely telling.

Also note how conservative-leaning artist van Sciver was part of the GL project at the time, and a case can be made that some would-be right-wingers have blame to shoulder for bringing comicdom down to such an awful level. Plus, when there's the totally uncritical take on company wide crossovers, you know something's wrong. Another reason this run can be considered worthless is that it hinged on Identity Crisis, and thus came at a time that was simply too late for bringing back Hal. Another example listed here is the 1994-2004 run:

Ron Marz drastically altered the franchise by penning the controversial ‘Emerald Twilight’ arc, which saw Hal Jordan fall from grace and become the villain Parallax. Following the destruction of the Green Lantern Corps, Marz introduced artist Kyle Rayner as the torchbearer of the final functional power ring. The decade-long run focused on Kyle learning to become a superhero while maintaining a relatable civilian life in New York City. Notable storylines introduced supporting characters such as Jade and examined the legacy of previous ring-wielders. This era redefined the mantle for a new generation of readers and established Kyle Rayner as an essential DC hero.

Gee, a run starring a character who came off little different in the end from how Hal's characterization was perceived - as a cipher lacking in genuine personality. Also note how the writer doesn't acknowledge the heavy editorial mandates that defined this run, coming as they did before Spider-Man was subjected to much of the same the following decade. These mandates included that Rayner could not have a "civilian" girlfriend at the time, only an established superheroine like Donna Troy for starters, and Jade afterwards.

Interesting how no objective view is provided for whether it was in good taste to turn Hal into a murderous villain, nor any mention of the notorious fridging scene for Alexandra deWitt, the girlfriend who was introduced only to be murdered by Major Force about 6 issues in. These kind of steps are exactly what ensured sales would otherwise plummet in the long run, and I'd seen legitimate arguments made over the years that the Rayner stories weren't the big deal some wanted all to think they were. If the fridging of deWitt was retconned away of recent, that in itself is miraculous.

Oddly enough, the paragraph is accompanied by a coverscan of the 3rd volume's premiere issue from 1990, which was written by the disgraced Gerard Jones. Do they realize that could haunt the Rayner run for a long time, and only compounds why the 3rd volume is so otherwise obsolete?

Next, there's one of the spinoff series, GL Corps:

Running alongside the central flagship series, Peter J. Tomasi penned a critically acclaimed ensemble title focused on the wider Green Lantern Corps. The narrative centered on veteran Lanterns Guy Gardner and John Stewart as they led the cosmic police force through galaxy-wide conflicts. The series provided essential perspectives during major events like ‘Blackest Night’ while highlighting the camaraderie and sacrifices of alien ring-bearers. Artist Patrick Gleason provided distinctive, kinetic visuals that brought life to massive space battles and alien civilizations. Tomasi’s work added emotional depth to secondary characters and proved that the franchise thrived beyond Hal Jordan.

Oh, do tell us about it. I've long learned not to be fooled by such balderdash, and look where things have arrived today, with a TV show that practically throws Hal under the bus for the sake of DEI ideology. And why are we being lectured that a series with connections to company wide crossovers was "essential"? Yawn.

When stuff like this is all they can think of highlighting, and not the Golden/Silver/Bronze Age stories other than O'Neil's, something is definitely wrong. But I guess that's what to expect when the whole franchise plummeted into the abyss beginning with the Action Comics Weekly run, and nobody in the press is willing admit severe mistakes were made. That's how both DC and Marvel have been able to get away with their worst acts for decades now.

A former director of Marvel films tarnished her entries by celebrating murder

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart reports a filmmaker named Lexi Alexander, who has some comics-related filmings to her credits, wrote obscene social media posts celebrating the murder of a deputy bank manager in NYC's Times Square:

Lexi Alexander, director of the 2008 Marvel film Punisher: War Zone, is taking heat for celebrating the stabbing murder of a Bank of America employee with an X post featuring Luigi Mangione’s face superimposed on a drawing of Batman’s bat signal.

Bank officer Erin Piacenti was fatally stabbed in Times Square, New York, shortly after celebrating her second wedding anniversary — and the day of her murder was her first day back to work from maternity leave. Piacenti, 32, was walking near West 42 Street and Seventh Avenue when 49-year-old Pamela Cisneros of Queens stabbed the young mother and another person in unprovoked attacks. Cisneros was later shot and killed by police after she threatened them with her two butcher knives.

After the murder, Alexander, who calls herself a “Palestinian filmmaker” (born in Germany to a Palestinian mother and father), jumped to her X account and posted a drawing of Batman looking up at the bat signal, but in the lighted image in the sky, there is instead an image of Luigi Mangione’s face. Mangione is now on trial for the 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. [...]

Palestinian American film maker celebrates the murder of a random white lady who worked in middle management at Bank of America.

32,000 likes pic.twitter.com/f7e4wxd54b

— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) September 1, 2026

Her X post is still on her timeline, but it has been restricted from being embedded.

In a followup post, she accused everyone who criticized her post of being a “Hasbara bot,” meaning someone working for Israeli propaganda operations. [...]

After Punisher: War Zone bombed at the box office (a $10 million gross to its $35 million budget), Alexander has mostly directed episodes of TV shows such as Supergirl, S.W.A.T., and How to Get Away with Murder.

Well just look at that. More comics creations have been tarnished and desecrated through poor employment choices. As if it weren't bad enough the Supergirl TV show from the past decade was clogged with far-leftism. This is whom the studios that own Marvel and DC are hiring? What this makes clear is that Tinseltown is in serious need of reform, which they're tragically unlikely to work on. It's also got to be telling this repulsive "filmmaker" also worked on a TV show with a title that itself makes light of a serious issue. Alexander's career as a film and TV director will hopefully be over after this horrific case, which strongly hints she's as anti-American as she's anti-Israel. And no doubt, she also hates the Jewish creators and publishers of the comics the films and TV shows she worked on adapted.

Actor Andrew Garfield repeats insult to Spider-Man, and Mary Jane Watson

The Daily Wire says actor Andrew Garfield, who'd played Spidey in the past decade, has repeated a woke pitch for how to tell the story:

Former “Spider-Man” star Andrew Garfield still thinks the character should be gay.

The 43-year-old actor said his mind hasn’t changed since the infamous interview in 2013 when he pitched that idea for the first time.

Garfield reflected on his initial comments during a press tour for “The Uprising,” as Entertainment Weekly reported earlier this week.

“It was an exercise in rebellion that I felt passionate about,” Garfield told the outlet of his previous comments. “I just still believe that anyone can be in that suit. That’s the point of why it’s such a kind of universally beloved character, one of the greatly beloved characters in the history of fiction is because you don’t see skin color, you don’t see gender, you don’t see sexuality. Anyone can project themselves into that suit.”

This is stupid. Even Black Panther's original costume was similar, and there are a number of superhero costume designs from past decades where you don't see what they look like at all, although, if the artists wanted to, they could draw breasts on a female protagonist to differentiate whether men or women are wearing the costume. But I guess in an era where women's sexuality is desecrated, Garfield must think insulting the fairer sex is easy.

“I like the idea of a place where everyone is being honored and everyone is being included, and it was just a kind of act of saying, ‘Well, why not?’ And you’ll be telling on yourself if you have a strong opinion either way,” the actor went on.

This was a reflection on his suggestion in 2013 that Spider-Man could be gay. Garfield even had a love interest picked out for the character.

“I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking about MJ. … I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’” the actor said at the time, referencing Spider Man’s love interest, Mary Jane. “Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking! … So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?”

I think this sums up 2 terrible things. He's insulted MJ's womanhood, and he also implies Spidey should be into underaged youngsters?!? Where has Hollywood's moral compass gone these days?

One of the commenters on the article said:

Andrew Garfield is the Spider-man superhero that never should have been and we never needed.

I will never watch his entries in the franchise ever again. He's just another two-bit actor who clearly lacks the confidence to sell his movies by merit, and clarifies this bankruptcy by following up on Joe Quesada's desecration of Stan Lee's creations. Assuming Garfield reads the modern comics, it wouldn't be hard to guess where he stands on the destruction of the Spider-marriage. What occurs in the comics has extended in a way to the movies.

Lanterns TV series is little more than a "white privilege" lecture

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart says the James Gunn-produced TV show supposedly based on Green Lantern has unsurprisingly turned out to be quite an outmoded political lecture:

Director James Gunn’s executive produced DC comics streaming series Lanterns has become one long lecture on “white privilege” and racism in America and fans are lashing out.

The HBO series is based on DC’s Green Lantern universe of characters, which features the Green Lantern Corps, a multi-species policing organization that patrols the universe to keep the peace. The first human Corps member was Hal Jordan, a character introduced in 1959, who was given the Lantern Corp’s power ring, which allows him to manifest a green energy that can be used in many ways as a weapon to fight enemies. The Corps was created as an extension of the original Green Lantern stories introduced in 1940 with character Alan Scott wielding the power ring.

Lanterns, though, seems to be following the codes of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and black victimology instead of the heroic Green Lantern Corps oath about fighting evil. And after only three episodes, fans are pushing back on the leftist political agenda interwoven throughout the third episode.

Why isn't it surprising that a character like Hal could eventually be subject to some of the worst PC possible, if he hadn't been before? But here we are, and the destruction of GL nobody's willing to admit occurred as far back as mid-1988 continues, this time in live action. The first 3 episodes feature the following:

Lindelof is apparently already indulging his penchant toward “revisionism” with this Green Lantern series, too. In the first episode of the new Lanterns series, we meet the once heroic Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), who has become a cynical, disheveled, drunk who no one likes and who is murdered at the end of the episode. Then in episode two we get a woman telling Jordan’s protege, black American John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), all about white privilege.

In the “white privilege” scene, viewers are told that white men have the “luxury” of being able to be “eccentric,” and “white men with money can do whatever the fuck they want.”

This may be cable TV, but wow, they went that far to fill it with expletives to boot? Ugh. I remember there was once a time when profanity on TV was kept mild, and even most cable programs I watched weren't that heavy-handed. What this additionally makes clear is that Gunn, as the overseer of the production, is quite fine with forcing vicious leftism down everyone's throats. If his Superman movie hadn't had subtle metaphors, this show would've. I don't see any need to tune for something that doesn't even put the word "green" alongside the Lanterns. It's also telling their contempt for Hal isn't all that different from what the writers of the Zero Hour crossover in 1994 expressed. If they don't respect Hal Jordan, there's no point in viewing any further.

Since we're on the subject, several weeks earlier, Tom King, who was one of the production staff, was interviewed by Inverse, and what he tells is quite laughable as it's predictable:

Talk to me about how the story of Lanterns became what we see in the show.

It started with me. I sort of had it first. And then we brought Damon [Lindelof] and Chris [Mundy] on. We threw out everything I had and started over — I mean, except for the theme. The three of us built a show. And then when we hit the ground with the three other writers, we were like, “Here’s what we have.” And they’re like, “Throw that all out, because we have ideas.” It was built organically that way, by listening to each other and to each person’s personal experience. We had these big ideas, and Vanessa [Baden Kelly] built that from her experience and made it sing. She gets all the flowers for that.

Some organism, I'll say. Even Denny O'Neil's run on GL was never as forced as appears to be the case here, and the difference is that back then, stories like O'Neil's reflected the times legitimately enough. Also, what's the point of their listening to each other if they're all left-wing? The "biggest" idea would have to be sending Hal once again to the afterlife, this time in live action.

Did you always know it’d be Hal training John to be his successor?

The central mystery we started with is, “Why does Guy Gardner have the ring? There’s these two other Lanterns. Why is he the one you only see in the Superman movie? How do we kind of explain that, where that starts, and where Hal is in the picture?” It was always, from the beginning, John Stewart and Hal Jordan, because those are the quintessential Green Lanterns. Due to two people, I think: Gil Kane, who created our ’60s Hal Jordan. That “Paul Newman” Hal Jordan — which is so embodied by Kyle — that’s very much [from] Gil Kane and John Broome, who invented him as kind of this ideal, ’60s masculine guy living on the edge.

And for John, Neal Adams. Neal was this total outsider; he was, like, a rebel. He’s like, “I’m not going anywhere where I’m not changing the game for the better.” He took hits for that in the comic industry. But he’s the one who got us paid and got us the first whiff of health insurance and got the old guard their art back… And that’s all in John Stewart. And then Dwayne McDuffie was the guy. Dwayne McDuffie had such control over his art. He’s the one who brought that Marine to [John] and brought that creativity to him — and brought that to children. A whole generation’s like, “Who’s Hal Jordan? John Stewart’s my Green Lantern.”

When exactly did McDuffie have anything to do with GL? I don't know of any involvement he could've had. I thought it was the overrated Geoff Johns who retconned John into a Marine, and when somebody as awful as Johns is the one doing the scripting, it's only bad news. But far more telling has to be the way King puts down Hal for the sake of John. Sounds like he doesn't want anybody reading the Silver Age archives and judging for themselves at all. One more reason not to be taken in by King's propaganda, which even goes so far as to hint he dislikes what Broome and Kane created Hal Jordan as.

Lanterns does take some big swings with that premise right out the gate. This series takes place after Sinestro breaks bad and is defeated by the Green Lanterns, which is a huge comic story that hasn’t really been adapted on-screen. Did that ever feel like a risk?

I was at the first architecture meeting [for the DCU], when we’re just sort of all these writers sitting around the room. James Gunn’s first — and it was so instinctual to him that he didn’t realize what a revolution it was… But he started that first meeting by pitching us what his universe is going to be. As he’s pitching us Superman, the thing that he was saying is, “This is not an origin story. We’re not starting with Day 1. This universe has started. We’re on Day 20 of this universe. We’re on Day 80. We’re on Year 80.” He’s like, “People are tired of origin stories. People are tired of seeing that stuff over and over again. Let’s give them quality over explaining. They don’t need to be lectured at. They need to be entertained.”

Starting in the middle was always James’ way of saying, “Get to the meat.” You’re in a universe that lives. It’s like picking up a random comic book. And the Sinestro stuff, I love that because what separates DC from Marvel a little bit — at least in the comics I’ve been doing so much — is the idea of legacy, the idea that what you do affects the next generation. Who your father is affects who you are as a son, affects who you are as a father. It’s the idea that Sinestro was Hal’s coach, and Hal is John’s coach. Both of them have passed on the good and the bad to each other. Watching that flow the way we watch both our trauma and our greatness flow from our grandparents down to us was a wonderful part of that show.

Oh, so they followed up on the shoddy premise that began in the 2 worthless Emerald Dawn miniseries that were both quite jumbled in their consistency with one another? Let's also recall the disgraced Gerard Jones was one of the writers of those awful stories, which forcibly reduced Hal to a drunkard who spends a few months in prison for causing an accident. Indeed, what was so special about those miniseries that DC had to reprint them in trades for some time? After Jones was found out, they've gone out of print, and deservedly so. And what's told about Gunn's statements are just so hilarious, since despite what's claimed, he did lecture, and Lanterns is now proof of that too.

You also get some of that in the way this tweaks John’s origins, examining this idea of legacy in his relationship to his parents, and the privilege of being considered for a ring.

John’s origin has been fudgeable a little bit. Different people have done different things with it. It’s not like Batman’s “My parents were killed.” It has changed. We tweaked his origin story to give him that thing that Batman has, that thing that Spider-Man has: a hook. They can be like, “Oh, I understand this character because he deserves that, because a hook makes a great superhero.” And John’s one of the greatest we’ve ever had.

We played with this idea in the room, the odd idea that, with the ring — and Vanessa wrote this so well — sometimes you have to raise your hand. I remember reading that the first time, and I was like, “Oh my God. That’s the show.” That the ring chose Hal and he doesn’t think of the privilege of that, like, “Yeah, of course I deserve all this.” But John’s like, “There’s a difference between him and me. I know it’s not fair. That’s the way the world is.” A lot of parents have that conversation with their kids, and it’s a hard conversation to have.

Let me guess. Their idea of a "hook" was that John lose a parental figure too? I recall that it was established his mother was still alive in the last few years of the 2nd GL volume, though she was incomprehensibly dropped from the proceedings when the unbearable Action Comics Weekly feature went to press, and Katma Tui was repulsively slain, forcing Carol Ferris into a role she shouldn't have been in. They also seem to have built on a premise with the ring coming from the writings of Geoff Johns, who IIRC depicted the rings as choosing their hosts, instead of the original wearer, which for the GL Corps was the late Abin Sur. One more reason we could do without this TV mess.

Just before Lanterns, DC released Supergirl, based on your Woman of Tomorrow series. Did you work with [screenwriter] Ana Nogueira on that adaptation at all?

I was very purposefully hands-off on that project because, number one, I was in Lanterns. So that was my focus, supporting Chris to make Lanterns. And number two, I was so close to that material. I love that book that I wrote that I wanted to give them the freedom to create something. Because if I’m in there, I’m going to be like, “Let me tell you how it’s done.” And that wouldn’t have helped anyone be creative. I hate when people are doing that to me, so I wouldn’t want to do it to somebody else. Instead, I was like, “Beautiful people make beautiful work. Go forth and do your thing. I’ll be over here.”

Oh, some "beautiful" people they are alright. Also notice how King predictably remains oblivious to the catastrophe the Supergirl movie became, and won't ask whether his work was really any good to begin with. Is he also claiming there'd be no freedom to create something drawing from Golden/Silver/Bronze Age material, and only if it's based on his work, there is? That is just so dumb.

Nogueira’s working on a Wonder Woman movie as well. Have you gone hands-off with that, too?

For a while I had a job where I was a consultant — like a nerd consultant — so I worked on a lot of different sort of [DC] projects. But between Lanterns and Mister Miracle… I’m not involved in Wonder Woman except to say I hope it’s going to be utterly brilliant. I hope the people who are building it stay true to who that character is, because she’s just one of the greatest heroines ever created.

With the same screenwriter assigned, I doubt it. And I don't think King means what he says when he claims he hopes they'll remain true to what WW was built upon, seeing what a mess he made already in the comics proper, all for the sake of leftist agendas.

Even if Gunn hadn't been the executive producer of Lanterns, King's involvement is enough to avoid it, and the woke politics it builds on are so revolting, they make even the most questionable moments from O'Neil's writings look tame by comparison. It would be best if TV viewers would just change the channel, and read the earlier comics of GL from up to mid-1988 instead. And it's a shame many pseudo-historians won't admit much of GL's potential collapsed after that period.

Jewish entrepreneurs of the past helped build up toy merchandise as much as comics

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote about how Jewish industrialists played as much a part in building up the toy industry as the comics industry:

But even if my family didn’t spend Saturdays in shul, kids’ television immersed me in an unspoken Jewish culture, as Michael Kimmel explains in his new book “Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America.”

It’s a study of the mostly first-generation American Jews who led the toy industry in the 20th century, as well as the Jewish child psychologists, children’s book authors and comic book creators who, he asserts convincingly, invented the American idea of childhood.

“They created the childhood that they themselves never had,” Kimmel told me in a recent public conversation, part of “250 Years of American Jewish Life in America,” an online project of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History and 70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company.

The founders of iconic brands such as Ideal, Mattel, Marx, Hasbro, Kenner, Wham-O and Madame Alexander dolls shared roots in Yiddish-speaking Europe, and childhoods as the sons and daughters of immigrants.

“They were born in poverty on the Lower East Side, and you have all these stories of the scraps that they picked up off the street that they made into things,” said Kimmel. “They had these ideas that children were basically curious and creative, and that they should be nurtured.”

And commodified. Shut out of establishment industries and professions, Jewish entrepreneurs thrived in niches of their own making, capitalizing on and helping propel the consumer culture that exploded after World War I. German Jews ran some of the largest department stores, including Macy’s, Abraham & Straus and Gimbels, and Eastern European newcomers became the manufacturers, distributors and sales force that stocked their shelves with dolls, games, and gadgets.

The list of classic toys and Jews who developed them is almost comically long: Barbie (Ruth Handler), Lionel trains (Lionel Cowan), Mr. Potato Head (George Lerner), Yakity-Yak chattering teeth (Eddy Goldfarb), the pogo stick (George Hansburg), the Hula Hoop (Arthur Melin and Richard Knerr), G.I. Joe (Larry Reiner) and Play-Doh and the Easy-Bake Oven (the Steiner brothers: Albert, Philip and Joseph).

Since they cite Barbie toys, it's a shame a certain filmmaker named Greta Gerwig chose to humiliate them for the sake of a woke agenda attacking the "patriarchy". And it's also a shame the GI Joe toys have similarly suffered in live action filmmaking. I sadly suspect the history book in focus doesn't dwell on any of that, even though that could also provide something to learn from. The comics industry's also cited here, along with children's books, but there's one name in the latter part that's decidedly an embarrassment to include:

The Jewish entrepreneurs not only benefited from such views of childhood, but understood how to turn them into a business model. They were also pushed toward these new industries by a less uplifting force: antisemitism.

Kimmel said that many comic-book artists originally wanted to work in advertising, but advertising agencies in the 1930s and ’40s were notoriously hostile to Jews. Like toymaking, comic books became a Jewish industry. Underpaid Jewish artists and writers — including Jack Kirby, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Will Eisner, Stan Lee and Lily Renée — dreamed up Superman, Betty Boop, the Spirit, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Spider-Man and The Thing, among dozens of others, often giving these superheroes and comic characters coded or actual Jewish backstories.

The same pattern appears in children’s literature. Kimmel counts 42 titles on the New York Public Library’s list of the 100 most important children’s books of the 20th century that were written by first-generation Jews, including Sydney Taylor, Maurice Sendak, Jack Ezra Keats, Jules Feiffer, Esphyr Slobodkina and Norman Juster.

While it's great the writer reminds us about the comics side of the Jewish industrialists, it's a shame he had to bring up a figure like Sendak, whose children's books, IMO, were tasteless, and worse was his politics. The article even cites the Fat Albert cartoon based on the disgraced Bill Cosby's comedy sketches, and even Lil' Abner cartoonist Al Capp, who regrettably turned out to be a pervert, and I honestly don't think it's such a good idea to provide such figures with citation, even if it doesn't make sense to erase them from history altogether. It only undermines the impact of the article, and if the book by Kimmel brings them up, that can be problematic. At least Capp is long gone, which makes it easier to read his work for anybody who cares.

Kimmel's book also makes space for a certain children's TV program on PBS:

Kimmel ends his book with “Sesame Street,” which he sees as a kind of culmination. The groundbreaking children’s show was developed by Joan Ganz Cooney, whose father was Jewish, with the assistance of Gerald Lesser, a developmental psychologist born to Jewish immigrant parents. The show was in some ways an antidote to the world of Saturday morning cartoons. It prepared pre-schoolers for success in kindergarten with the addictive, engaging style of commercial television. And instead of advertisements for toys, its “commercials” offered lessons in letters, shapes, counting, social skills and concepts such as “near” and “far.”

There was a time when Sesame Street, famous as it is for its use of the Muppets, was a great item for children to view and learn from. But that too has been largely ruined in the past decade by wokeness, which would make it another Jewish creation along with mainstream comics that's been destroyed for the sake of leftist agendas. And nobody in the modern Jewish-American community seems to have any issue with the creations of their past brethren being appropriated for the sake of repugnant political agendas and other ideologies.

Kimmel's book may be quite interesting from a historical perspective, but I have a sad feeling it may not build on objectivity from a modern one. And that's decidedly a problem. How are we to fix modern errors if nobody's willing to acknowledge what went wrong since the turn of the century, and nobody in the Jewish community cares what happened?

Stars of Marvel movies are making it hard to watch them in hindsight based on their anti-Israel attacks

Mark Ruffalo's easily the most well known actor to appear in comics adaptations like the Avengers movies (as the Hulk), who's recently been viciously attacking the land of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's ancestry. He's done it again in his attack on Paramount over his opposition to a merger with Warner Brothers, as told in this Jerusalem Post article:

US multimedia giant Paramount slammed Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo for invoking antisemitic tropes in an Instagram post on Friday in which he accused Israel of genocide and apartheid.

The outspoken anti-Israel ACTOR, known for his roles in the Avengers films, accused Paramount moguls David and Larry Ellison of “powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world” and warned of the danger of David Ellison’s bid to combine Paramount with Warner Bros. Discovery.

A spokesperson for Paramount said the company is “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong – they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind – and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”

In his post, Ruffalo referred to Larry Ellison as a “classic oligarch,” and he shared a video of Safra Catz, vice chair of Oracle, discussing the technological assistance the company provided to Israel following the Hamas-led October 7 attack.

Ruffalo encouraged his followers to “look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”

What Ruffalo's been up to gets even worse with his and several other actors' support for a jihadist:

Over 20 actors who have appeared in Marvel films have joined a campaign calling for the release of convicted Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, according to an Instagram post published on Friday by the group, freemarwannow.

Among the actors who have joined the "Freedom for Marwan" campaign are Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Doctor Strange; Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk; Ian McKellen, who plays Magneto; and Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and others. [...]

Barghouti is a former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a terrorist organization that carried out many suicide bombings and shooting attacks during the Second Intifada.

According to Israel, Barghouti orchestrated or was responsible for, among others, the following attacks between 2001 and 2002: the murder of a Greek Orthodox monk on the road to Ma’aleh Adumim; the shooting attack during a bat mitzva celebration at a banquet hall in Hadera that killed six Israelis; a shooting spree on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem during which two Israelis were killed and 37 people wounded; a shooting attack in Neve Ya’acov in which an Israeli policewoman was killed; the murder of an Israeli at the Bashkevitz coffee and spice factory in the Atarot industrial zone of Jerusalem; the suicide attack perpetrated by Daryan Abu Aysha at the Maccabim checkpoint in which two policeman were wounded; the shooting spree at the Seafood Market restaurant which killed three Israelis.

It's going to be very hard watching these performers from live action Marvel movies playing their roles for a long time now, based on what they've just done in the now, even if they're playing villains. Their ignorance is stunning, and most chilling is, what if they fully know what Barghouti did years ago?

A rabbi writing for VIN News described the whole repellent case as follows:

Imagine that the Superheroes known as the “Avengers” were fighting for the wrong side. Say, for example, for the Nazis. Well, it is not such a stretch anymore. But it is not the Superheroes – it is the actors who play them.

Somewhere in a publicist’s office, likely, in Hollywood – a decision was made. A list circulated. Names were added, one by one, each signatory presumably assured that the others had already looked into it.

Nobody looked into it.

More than twenty actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe — Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and a supporting cast long enough to fill a closing credit scroll — have signed their names to a demand that the United Nations and the governments of the world work to free mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti from an Israeli prison.

The statement voices grave concern for his imprisonment and his treatment inside it. Grave concern. That is the entire emotional range on offer, and it is expended in full on behalf of the man serving five consecutive life sentences for murder.

For the five people he was convicted of murdering, the statement has nothing. No sentence. No clause. No name. Twenty-plus celebrated artists, working presumably with the assistance of professional wordsmiths, produced a document about a quintuple murder conviction that manages never to acknowledge that anyone died.

I'll never be able to watch a lot of these particular movies ever again, realizing just how far into the abyss the twisted perspective of the actors in the Marvel movies goes. They've desecrated the memory of many Jewish comics creators with this abominable act of theirs, and it's stunning they'd even take the roles they did in comics adaptations to begin with. The Marvel live action movies aren't aging well, as a result of what the actors who played the casts in the films have been doing lately.

Update: VIN News announced the Israeli foreign ministry condemns the Hollywooders glorifying Barghouti:

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday denounced a Hollywood-backed campaign calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah figure serving five life sentences for directing terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada, saying celebrities cannot rewrite his criminal record.

“Hollywood can manufacture superheroes. It cannot manufacture Marwan Barghouti’s innocence,” the ministry said in a statement posted on social media. “Five murder convictions. Five life sentences. Five victims of his terrorist plots.”

The ministry urged the public to remember the victims rather than “glorify their murderer.”

The rebuke followed a new wave of support for the “Free Marwan” campaign from more than 20 actors linked to Marvel films and television productions, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton and Ian McKellen. Campaign organizers say more than 200 cultural figures — actors, musicians, writers and directors — have signed on since Barghouti’s family launched the effort late last year with groups in the United Kingdom. [...]

The Foreign Ministry’s statement did not name individual actors but framed the celebrity drive as an attempt to recast a convicted terrorist as a political prisoner. “Remember the names of the victims,” the ministry said, “instead of glorifying their murderer.”

An absolutely correct point to make.

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.

Animation can be a great spot for superheroes, but only if they aren't subject to PC

Indiewire says there's animated series based on superhero fare that's more interesting than the live action film adaptations, but unshockingly, they sugarcoat the presentations, beginning with what the Supergirl movie was adapted from:

“Supergirl,” the second film in James Gunn’s developing DCU and one of the biggest box office bombs of an otherwise strong year for movie theaters, isn’t the worse movie I watched in 2026. But it’s probably the most disappointing. An adaptation of an acclaimed standalone series called “Woman of Tomorrow,” “Supergirl” has a great lead in Milly Alcock and nothing else worth remembering. Whereas the comic it is based on is stunningly bright and beautiful to look at, “Supergirl” is a murky, brown-tinted eyesore. Its generic plot strands the character in a sci-fi universe that feels microscopically small, populated by third-rate archetypes the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies would barely have time for. There are interesting threads to unravel regarding Kara’s grief and anger, but the story she’s stranded in doesn’t have time to do that in any meaningful way.

I just don't understand why we keep getting lectured about why the overrated Tom King's tale is a modern "classic". The artwork I've seen is certainly overrated. And King's stories about "trauma" are forced and contrived. And we're not told anything in regards to that.

Even more galling: as “Supergirl” was tarnishing the character’s reputation in movie theaters, a great adaptation of the character was airing on Adult Swim. “My Adventures With Superman,” an animated series reimagining the early career of the most famous superhero on the planet. Ostensibly, Clark Kent is the main character, but Season 2 introduced Kara (voiced in the show by Kiana Madeira), and the currently airing Season 3 — which airs its season finale this Sunday — sees her take center stage. And she rules: reimagined as a former brainwashed intergalactic conquerer attempting to atone for her misdeeds, the show’s Kara is charming, funny, badass, with a meaty arc about atoning for her misdeeds and a super cute romance with Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid) that slots right in with the show’s bright, optimistic tone and focus on these character’s day-to-day struggles contrasted with the sci-fi operatics. If “Supergirl” the movie only scratched the surface of the character’s potential, “My Adventures With Superman” takes the time to really examine what makes her tick.

“My Adventures With Superman” is one of three animated shows adapting popular comic book superheroes that ran over the course of this summer, along with “X-Men ’97” on Disney+, which concluded its second season earlier this week, and “Batman: Caped Crusader” on Amazon Prime, which premiered its second season in late July. Pitched to a slightly older audience than usual for an animated comic book series, teenage up as opposed to for children, these shows aren’t flawless. But as comic book film studios continues to struggle to adjust to a world where they are no longer the center of the entertainment landscape (give or take “Spider-Man”), these shows demonstrate that these characters are better suited for serialized storytelling in the first place.

Would this be the cartoon where Jimmy was changed from white to black? And where Lois Lane's turned into a short-cropped tomboy? In that case, I regret to say, but this puff piece amounts to little more than misleading the audience by obscuring how the production is allegedly optimistic with strings attached. It's also worth considering that, if Kara Zor-El was changed from an innocent girl to a former conqueror, brainwashed or not, that too, unfortunately, is tasteless. It's also symbolic of the modern era's inability to appreciate a simpler concept of a character who could be written with flaws and mistakes, but doesn't have to be written as that guilty of wrongdoing as Kara sounds characterized here.

One of the major criticisms of superhero cinema for the past decade has been its resolute sameness: while certain MCU movies may have loose genre window-dressing, they’re fundamentally tonally similar in their quippy characters and excess spectacle. But all three of these series have strong art direction and visions for these characters that feels spiritually true to the source material but also provides something fresh and new that fans haven’t seen before, and are all radically different from one another.

Heavily inspired by early 2000s anime, “My Adventures With Superman” is the bright, zippy, lighthearted offering. The show takes the characters and their battles seriously, but it provides a wonderfully comforting take on Superman that also heavily foregrounds the love story between Clark and Lois; it’s a rom-com as much as it is a series about fighting invading aliens. It works because of how well-drawn these versions of the characters are, and because his relationship with Lois was always what made the seemingly invulnerable Clark feel most human. If the 2025 James Gunn “Superman” film sometimes strained to reinvent the character’s optimism for modern audiences, “My Adventures With Superman” makes that challenge look effortless.

But again, we're not being told about the character design, and that's being dishonest with the readership, for the sake of virtue-signaling. They may not have done to Kara's hair what they did Lois', but that's still no excuse, and that Lois' ethnicity may have also been changed only further (she looks darker complected in the cartoon) confirms the disrespect the producers actually have for Siegel and Shuster's creations. The writer also made sure to take a biased look at the aforementioned Marvel cartoon:

“X-Men ’97” is another successor of a ’90s kids’ cartoon, albeit a direct sequel. The 1992 “X-Men” animated series that aired on Fox during the decade was a foundational series for fans of the Marvel superhero team, providing definitive versions of the mutant protectors in all their messy, soapy excess. “’97” picks up where the series left off, but again ages up the content for adults who grew up with the series for a much darker tone. The animation emphasizes fidelity to the original show and the time period’s garish aesthetic in general, for a show that, more than almost any film, truly feels like picking up and reading five random issues of a comic run from 30 years ago.

Not all of these series are of equal quality. “My Adventures with Superman” has been the most consistent of the three, a nice good time throughout all three seasons without ever being exceptional. “Caped Crusader” Season 1 was a promising start, but Season 2 ramped up the stakes and serialized storytelling for a much improved follow-up. “X-Men ’97,” meanwhile, had a near flawless debut season, but a divisive Season 2 that struggled with unfocused storytelling and weaker stakes, albeit with a standout fourth episode that ranks among the best of the series (the show’s production was likely marred by the firing of head writer Beau DeMayo during work on Season 2 for allegations of sexual harrasment).

No surprise they'd sugarcoat X-Men 97 as well. They made Rogue otherwise sexless, drew Storm with a mohawk forcibly, and even the treatment of Morph was reprehensible. The part about the darkness predictably goes by without objectivity, and seriously, what "fidelity" is there truly here? And why does the writer talk about being "unexceptional" when Jimmy's ethnicity was changed, while Lois was made to look unattractive, and Supergirl gets a questionable premise shoehorned onto her? Such dishonesty indeed.

I'd spoken before about why brightness and optimism can't come with strings attached, yet that's exactly what the producers of My Adventures With Superman did, and it's disgraceful how Indiewire's writer doesn't have the courage to admit it's ludicrous, divisive, and conflicts with entertainment value. Animation can certainly be a great venue for superheroics, but not if woke changes are forced onto established creations. There was once a saying that change must be consistent with what came before, and the Hollywood phonies who turned out these items certainly aren't proving much different from the live action moviemakers who race-swapped and sex-swapped any of the characters in specific adaptations.

Art Spiegelman continues his far-left act

The UK Guardian interviewed far-left cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who says America's in need of a "counter-revolution", which sounds very appalling coming from his perspective. And when he began drawing comics again after a hiatus in the post-911 years, this is what he did:

He produced a series about 9/11 for the German magazine Die Zeit, which was later run by other European magazines and American Jewish weekly the Forward. On one page he describes himself as “equally terrorised by al-Qaida and by my own government”. He felt that other American publications were too quiescent in the aftermath of the attacks, and not yet receptive to his fear that the US government was using 9/11 as cover for a massive crackdown on civil liberties and to launch xenophobic wars. “Sigh! It’s hard to be an artist who is consistently Seconds Ahead of His Time,” he writes in the foreword to In the Shadow of No Towers, a book that compiled these comics and is being reissued to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11. (Although, he says, it may come out late – a shipment has been held up in the strait of Hormuz.)

Why was he so alert to the implications for US civil liberties? “Well, my tendency is not to trust the government, so that came easily,” he says. “But it also seems so obvious, like all of a sudden there were police cars and military trucks on Canal Street. We were being told where we could walk, where we couldn’t walk, what we could say, what we couldn’t say. It’s visceral. It’s not like: ‘OK, I’ve read this book on propaganda and here’s how it works.’” Spiegelman notes the direct link between the post-9/11 security crackdowns and some of the excesses of the Trump administration: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ice, was created in the aftermath of the terror attacks.

Sounds like he doesn't respect special rules set in place for security reasons. And he seemed less offended by al Qaeda's behavior than by his government's. Very troubling. Let's be clear. The Bush administration did do some bad things. But to say it was inherently wrong to deploy security measures in the USA meant to prevent further jihadist attacks at the time is very disturbing, and takes away from the more serious issues involved. Though if Spiegelman doesn't trust the government, is that only when a right-wing government's in office? Does a left-wing government count?

Also note how he's indicated he's anti-ICE, and that too says something, considering how many sex offenders infiltrated the USA, and some of al Qaeda's terrorists also got into the country through lax immigration policies, and, with the spread of Islam in the USA, things could chillingly get worse. Is that what Spiegelman wants? I don't know, but the following is very chilling:

When it comes to 9/11, however, Spiegelman’s perspective has shifted. He no longer views the day as an “end of the world moment”. “It was a big deal. But it was a small big deal compared to the big deals that are going on now,” he tells me. “I’d much rather be in New York than in Iran, for example.”

This is disgusting, because it minimizes the tragedies and losses of 911 Families, many of whom recently launched a petition to have NYC mayoral incumbent Zohran Mamdani barred from the 911 Memorial, based on some of the most offensive things he's said and done that also minimize the repulsive incident from a quarter century ago, along with the memory of the actual victims. And Spiegelman's comment on Iran is fishy. Does he believe it wrong for the Trump administration to take down a barbaric dictatorship? I don't know what Spiegelman believes in fighting for at all.

Around 50 minutes after Spiegelman fires up his Nespresso machine, he finishes making two coffees, and we carry them up to his sunny roof terrace, which as he promised has beautiful views of downtown Manhattan. Spiegelman muses that the US’s volatile politics might reflect humankind’s natural tendency to self-destruction. “I guess, after a while, you get restless, so if you get too comfortable you create problems for yourself, even in more mundane, small-time life, never mind as a nation. At this point, we just had the bad luck of having a megalomaniac walking onto the scene,” he says, of the Trump presidency. American politics is, after all, “entertaining if you don’t give a shit, if you’re nihilistic”.

Spiegelman’s mood is sombre as he discusses how Trump has “very effectively dismantled” the country’s democratic ideals: “Whatever the ideals were, we never lived up to them, but at least we had them. Now it’s all so cynical and sordid and stupid.” The president “is cutting off civil liberties and using his powers to squelch dissent and enrich himself in such thoroughly illegal ways, it’s kind of mindblowing”, Spiegelman says, and he finds himself watching in alarm as the “plutocrat in chief” and his “few dozen toadies” get ever richer while ordinary Americans struggle and suffer a “new indignity every day”. He has no hesitation in describing the Trump administration as fascist. “It’s fascism,” he says. “It’s not nazism, per se, but it has a template that it’s following. And it does have to do with othering, which is the basis of what Maus is about, it’s: ‘OK, you guys are mice, we’re cats.’” Maus is among the many books to be banned by various Republican school boards in recent years, but Spiegelman says he has a “predilection” for producing the kind of art people will seek to ban. Sales of Maus spiked in response to the bans.

“I tend to be pessimistic, but this is worse than most things I know,” he says of American politics. “I just don’t see how we get out of this.” The media are struggling with how to convey the stakes in this post-truth era, he explains, the courts are packed with Trump appointees, democratic norms have been destroyed, and there is no effective opposition. The Republicans are “at this point the equivalent of made men in the mafia,” Spiegelman says, “they’ve committed a murder, they’re complicit in something and they have to keep moving as a complicit unit, so it’s very hard to get someone to blow the whistle and say ‘This is crazy.’” The US needs a “counter-revolution”, Spiegelman says. “But I don’t know where to look for it because the Democrats are so timid.”

*Shudder*. That sounds like he wants riots, as if there weren't enough already 6 years ago. And no concrete evidence is given for the claim the Republicans "committed a murder", nor whether the courts are literally packed with Trump appointees, but not Biden's appointees. This is very troubling, and Spiegelman's hatred for right-wingers is very noticeable, making this much sadder.

The Daily Cartoonist notes there's a flaw in their claim Spiegelman was the first cartoonist to win a Pulitizer for Maus:

As we all know the Pulitzers had been handing out Prizes to cartoonists for 70 years before Spiegelman got his. Some quantify Spiegelman’s Pulitzer by explaining that he was the cartoonist to get a Pulitzer outside that Editorial Cartooning category as his Pulitzer was a Special Citation. But even that must be further narrowed down to the first cartoonist to receive a Pulitzer prize for a specific graphic novel since Dr. Seuss had earlier been awarded a Special Pulitzer for his body of work.

And I can't recall Spiegelman ever speaking in Theodor Geisel's defense after a number of the latter's children's books were withdrawn from publication because of alleged stereotypes. The Guardian's errors shouldn't be surprising though; they're a horrible newspaper of poor quality as it is.

Spiegelman's given signs he has a despicable, narrow viewpoint that totally absolves leftists of any mistakes they make, even as he says the Democrats are too timid to carry out his ideas of how to manage business. I have no interest in buying his products, and seriously, I don't find his artwork appealing anyway. The worst part is how guys like him never seem to speak of groups like 911 Families, and don't consider how actual victims of serious crimes feel about anything. His political views are insufferable, and if Trump is what he cares about, it's all he's going to care about. One more reason there's no point in wasting time on any comics and cartoons he illustrates.

Marvel failed the X-Men long ago, yet Collider thinks it's only recently this happened

Collider argues that Marvel is now failing the X-Men, as if it hadn't already happened, though it's interesting they take issue with one of the most overrated, pretentious leftist writers of modern times, Gail Simone, in their look at what she wrote in recent X-Men stories. The article doesn't begin well:

Comic books have come a long way since their advent in 1933, but they have evolved significantly over the last ten years as the industry has grappled with writing stories in a post-Comicsgate era. Still, some of the most celebrated titles have found themselves falling into familiar and oftentimes uncomfortable patterns.

When the writer starts subtly blaming Comicsgate, something's obviously gone wrong. That's just a distraction reducing the seriousness of the subject.

Few writers embody this evolution more uniquely than Gail Simone, whose early commentary helped redefine how gender and agency are understood in mainstream superhero media. In 1999, prior to her professional writing debut, Simone launched the website "Women in Refrigerators," coining a phrase that forever altered comic book criticism. Sparked by the infamous death of Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend Alexandra DeWitt (who was murdered and stuffed into a refrigerator in Green Lantern #54) the term described a pervasive industry trope where female characters were routinely killed, maimed, or otherwise de-powered purely to advance the emotional arcs of male heroes.

Simone’s sharp critique propelled her into the industry itself, where she swiftly became a powerhouse writer for both DC and Marvel, crafting acclaimed runs on titles like Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman, and even Deadpool while proving that female characters could anchor the same complex narratives as their male peers.

That legacy makes the last two years of her run on Uncanny X-Men all the more jarring. As the first woman to be the mainline’s sole writer, Simone benefited from a degree of “plot armor,” so to say, which allowed her early missteps to be given a pass. However, this run has slowly become a depressing descent into the very creative pitfalls she spent decades dismantling.

Rather than propelling the mutant flagship forward, Simone's work succumbs to clunky prose, dated characterizations, and a frustrating reliance on regressive tropes that feel out of character for not only the franchise, but Simone as a writer. Perhaps most glaring is how the narrative falters under the weight of subtle microaggressions and tone-deaf interpersonal dynamics, which begets the question of how an icon of feminist comic commentary could deliver a story so strangely out of step with her own established standard.

Unfortunately, she continued to work with DC even as they performed many of the same offensive acts she was supposedly against, and even her work on Birds of Prey may have contained allusions to Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis, which dampens the impact of whatever she was supposedly trying to reverse. It's also worth considering her real life politics are another contradiction that make a joke out of her alleged mission. Even the artwork in some of her later projects became noticeably bad. So why do they suddenly say she's stumbled into "creative pitfalls"? She was sadly always a left-wing phony, and her attacks on J.K. Rowling only made things worse. And the writer appears to have forgotten one more chilling trope: when a girl is turned into a villainess for the sake of it. Another something I don't think Simone ever made a convincing effort to dismantle in her scriptwriting, and she never made a convincing effort to give ladies a complex narrative to rival the male cast members.

The most immediate, and perhaps least egregious, casualty of this run is the regression of Rogue and Gambit, whose iconic relationship is flattened into a hollow caricature. Rather than leading the team as a formidable leader in her own right, Rogue is reduced to little more than a domestic "tradwife" existing solely in relation to her husband. It quickly becomes evident that the narrative prioritizes making Gambit look effortless and cool instead of allowing Rogue to command respect as an actual leader.

Let me get this straight. The writer believes Simone turned Rogue into a "conservative" stereotype? Something tells me the columnist's not being altruistic. Besides, Rogue's potential as a character was damaged 3 decades ago, and Scott Lobdell could be considered the culprit. It's one thing to pair up 2 superhero figures, but another to do it in such sloppy fashion as Lobdell did it, which undermined characterization. It's interesting though, that the woman who wrote this Collider item actually feels Simone's doing stuff that's allegedly anathema to a leftist agenda, when she claims there's "microaggressions" in the script, and the talk of a "tradwife" also gives strong clues where this is really going.

Rogue's dialogue (and Remy's, admittedly) is weighed down by heavy-handed, exaggerated Southern phonetics that read more like mocking stereotypes than authentic regional voices. Compounding this domestic imbalance is the awkward insertion of Calico; forcing an infantilized teenage mutant into their immediate living situation pushes Rogue further into a suburban foster-parent trope, taking her even further away from the frontlines of mutant leadership. The narrative comes across as off-putting as Calico is written in a deeply juvenile way which includes seeing the teenage mutant crawling into bed with Rogue and Remy — a couple she has only known for a few months.

This superficial obsession with making Gambit look cool constantly sacrifices basic narrative logic for cheap, unearned hype. A glaring example occurs during a major battle sequence in Uncanny X-Men #32, where Remy abruptly transforms into the "Wyvern" — a monstrous form that has been teased relentlessly for nearly ten issues and hyped up on promotional art. Instead of delivering a dramatic, satisfying payoff to all of that teasing, the transformation arrives suddenly at a moment that makes little sense within the flow of the story.

The panel they presented doesn't show Gambit in bed while Calico's there, and Rogue's role in that segment is clearly meant to play something like a big sister figure who cheers up a protege who'd been suffering from a nightmare. I don't find Simone's writing appealing today, but it sounds like the columnist's looking for cheap excuses to tear down on motherhood/sisterhood. Nor does it show Gambit looking cool, which I assume means he's battling baddies. But that's not what happens in the material I've seen so far. In any case, if the writer's delegitimizing Gambit as a character by acting as though he's a real person, she's just perpetuating the rock bottom lapse in logic that's been going on for decades.

Most striking is the treatment of Monet St. Croix, a Black Muslim woman whose established characterization has always centered on bodily autonomy and a fierce opposition to incarceration. Reducing her to the temporary warden of Graymalkin — a fascist concentration camp where mutants are detained until human authorities arrive — completely guts the core of her identity, reframing a hero of liberation as an enforcer of state-sanctioned violence.

Monet, from what I know, was not created as a Muslim adherent in 1994. I think it was Peter David who was allowed to force that retcon onto the former Generation X cast member, 15 years ago. What occurred is similar to how heterosexual characters like Obsidian in Infinity Inc. were retconned into homosexual characters. What happened to Monet is atrocious in the extreme, and that the columnist appears to be fine with that also speaks volumes. In the Islamic world, women are treated as 2nd class citizens, and we're being lectured about "bodily autonomy" and opposition to incarceration? I'm sorry, but what's written sounds so deliberate, and again, like a lecture. If the writer's going to take such an accepting view of the Religion of Peace, then this article is politically motivated, though it does have some eyebrow raising details to tell:

Another recurring pattern in Simone’s Uncanny X-Men run is the abundance of cultural insensitivity and subtle microaggressions woven into the dialogue. Asian characters are routinely subjected to lazy, exoticized tropes. Of note, Logan casually refers to the young Japanese mutant Deathdream as a "manga kid,” which Simone glibly responded to criticism by framing it as Wolverine “incorrectly” calling him that. This casual bias rears its head again with Calico’s most recent interactions with Pietro Maximoff. Calico treats Pietro — a character of Romani heritage and a man of color — with a smug, condescending superiority (despite being in a moment of crisis), dismissively refusing to even view him as a true mutant.

Rather than celebrating the rich diversity that has long defined the franchise, these characterizations alienate readers, reducing an ambitious flagship era to a series of uncomfortable missteps. While there is some narrative explanation for Calico’s behavior, it is nevertheless jarring to see a blue-eyed, blonde-haired white woman othering a character who is, historically, the son of a Holocaust survivor. Coupled with the optics of tethering her to the franchise’s most cookie-cutter Southern couple, it feels as though Simone is doubling down on an inherent and accepted bias about Southern ideals.

Watching an industry titan like Gail Simone, whose entire legacy was built on dismantling harmful tropes, fall into these exact creative traps is a deeply disheartening turn for modern comic criticism — especially as she argues with fans of her writing on social media. Yet this failure does not rest solely on her shoulders; Marvel shares equal responsibility for allowing one of its most iconic flagships to languish without editorial discipline or vision.

Honestly, it's hardly a surprise if Simone doesn't respect any of the better qualities of X-Men from the past. Let's recall said quality definitely collapsed since the early 2000s, along with cohesion of continuity, and characterization. But truly, Simone never "dismantled" any harmful tropes, and she added insult to injury for the Atom by fully accepting the assignment of writing a DEI-pandering character of Asian background shoehorned into Ray Palmer's costume in 2006. It was cancelled about 2 years later, and 2 decades later still, nobody cares about a social justice pandering production. But if Simone really is resorting to harmful tropes, should this be a surprise? What it can suggest is that, if she was part and parcel of DC and Marvel's earlier embarrassments, and never took issue with what DC did to any female character not written by her, then she never had faith in her alleged positions to begin with. No wonder she's so overrated.

Since the X-Men is a subject, here's also an article on IGN telling why the X-Men don't have a role in a Wolverine video game:

While there are many mutants famous for being members of the X-Men in Marvel’s Wolverine, in the video game’s story the X-Men do not exist. Rather, Logan is a former member of Team X, the mutant black ops unit that includes the likes of Sabretooth and Mystique. Yes, Jean Grey is in the game, but she is not part of any group called the X-Men because it hasn't been formed yet. Put simply, don’t expect Cyclops to turn up in his comic accurate suit, dropping from the Blackbird under orders from Professor X back at the X Mansion.

But why? Why not have the X-Men exist in Marvel’s Wolverine? In an interview with IGN, narrative director Walt Williams said Insomniac was keen for the mutants in the game to not have a safe place to go to, to not benefit from being superheroes, but rather remind players that mutants exist on the outside — and Wolverine himself, who this game is all about, is perhaps the biggest outsider of them all.

“So Team X is canonical,” Williams began. “It is Logan's first team in his history. It was a black ops team from the '70s made up of wetworks mutant workers. So in telling Wolverine's story, we wanted to bring it back to the beginning of where his story really began in that long string of teams. Because as we know, he's been a member of many teams by this point in his 50-plus year history.

Well that's part of the problem with the comics since the early to mid-2000s, if we take the terrible Brian Michael Bendis' work on Avengers as an example. Several mainstay characters were dropped in favor of hilariously obvious choices like Wolvie and Spider-Man, with Scarlet Witch the biggest victim of jettisoning, yet the same people doing these interviews don't take an objective view of that, and it's no excuse for forcibly omitting his own team from reference. If they want to make this game a solo adventure, so be it, but I don't see why the X-Men have to be downplayed, or written out that forcibly.

“But really what we were looking to do is, because superheroes have become so mainstream at this point in just pop culture and everything through TV shows, comics, movies and everything, that even especially with our own Spider-Man games, these are characters with superpowers that a lot of the world has accepted, that they are celebrated. They have parades, they are honored and stuff. But mutants at the core are outsiders, even within the Marvel universe.

He acts like this has to be the norm at all times, and cannot be changed. Another decided problem. It's exactly what led to the Spider-marriage being thrown out with bath water 2 decades ago, and Mary Jane Watson paying a heavy price in the process.

It’s a detailed answer to a question that fans have been wondering about ever since Marvel’s Wolverine was revealed. And so, while you’ll get co-op gameplay with Jean Grey, she’s not in the story as Marvel Girl or wearing a suit we’ve seen from the X-Men comics. And without the X-Men knocking about, Logan and Jean are free to explore their own romantic relationship — assuming the game itself goes that far — free from Cyclops’ death stare.

Indeed, Williams confirmed to IGN that there is no Logan, Jean, and Scott Summers love triangle at play in Marvel’s Wolverine.

“I don't want to get too much into spoilers because obviously there's a whole story that we want everyone to experience as they play through it,” Williams said. “But I think it's safe to say that we are focusing on just Logan and Jean's relationship in Marvel's Wolverine.”

Gee, so that's what is considered a big deal? Up to the turn of the century, I can't recall if Wolverine was ever seriously seen pursuing a relationship with Jean, and Chris Claremont wrote Logan noticing she and Scott were an item in the late 70s, to the point where Logan quietly discarded some flowers he'd brought her in a trash bin at a hospital when Cyclops was around. It was only when Mark Millar being helming Ultimate X-Men that all of a sudden, exploring a love triangle became a big deal, because in this alternate universe, practically depicting Logan as morally bankrupt was somehow a great idea. But that alternate universe line was little more than one of the most overblown tales of its sort, and came at a time when mainstream was declining.

And it's a shame we once again have examples of MSM sources not admitting the X-Men went downhill long ago.