Marvel's abuse of Mary Jane Watson continues

Marvel continues to degrade the Spider-Man legacy by using Mary Jane Watson as a source of projection, and the worst part is that Popverse, unshockingly, is acting as an apologist for it. Case in point: the Death Spiral storyline, where MJ, in the Venom guise, is the one to terminate the villain Torment, with the problem being that it all sounds vaguely similar to the time when Wonder Woman broke Max Lord's neck in 2005 at the time of Infinite Crisis:

In the last few pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #27 from Joe Kelly, Carlos Gómez, Ed McGuinness, and Francesco Manna, MJ's Venom grabs the crossover's villain, Torment, dragging his body against the side of a building before throwing him down onto a roof, after he was about to hurt Aunt May and Mary Jane's own beloved aunt, Anna Watson. For context, Mary Jane's father, if we can even call him that, was an abusive man who left his daughter with emotional wounds she's bravely worked to heal in adulthood. Luckily for MJ, her Aunt Anna was able to step in as a mother figure for her. This is all to say that when Torment attacked May and Anna, he gave himself a one-way ticket to the afterlife via Venom Airlines.

Once on the roof, Torment rambled on about wanting to "help Peter" before making a threat against his life, at which point Mary Jane's Venom dropped him off the roof of the building, where he fell to his death. Now, killing someone this way is relatively tame for Venom as New York City's Lethal Protector, but it's a shocking moment for both the symbiote and MJ because they've been trying to rein in their more violent instincts. After seeing Torment dead on the sidewalk, Venom asks, "Was that you...? Or me?" implying that it's unclear whether the symbiote or Mary Jane or both of them were responsible for dropping Torment's body.

You might be wondering: Mary Jane Watson, murderer? Venom writer Al Ewing has been setting up this turn of events for MJ and the symbiote over the past year. In 2025's All-New Venom #9, MJ and Venom nearly murdered Doc Ock by drowning him in symbiote goo before Flash Thompson intervened, telling them, "That's not you. That's not either of you." After a moment, Venom said, "No. No, you're right. That's not who we want to become," before releasing Doc Ock. Sadly, with The Amazing Spider-Man #27, it seems that Mary Jane and Venom have become what they feared most.

Even if this is a murderous villain in focus who got sent to the afterlife, we're way past the point where this could've been plausible, and one of the worst things about this storyline is that the writers doubtless were banking on that it would all be divisive, not unlike the time when Jason Todd supposedly killed a rapist in Batman in the late 80s. Also note that, when a writer as woke as Ewing is involved, something is terribly wrong.

And is the columnist saying Torment is MJ's father?!? If memory serves, there was one time in past decades where the dad did appear as a broken old man, hopefully portrayed as repentant over whatever abuse he subjected MJ's family to, and if this new supervillain is the dad, they've ruined whatever perceptive impact the older Spidey story had. This also reminds me that about 26 years ago, Geoff Johns and David Goyer depicted Obsidian murdering his abusive dad in the pages of JSA, and while it may have been due to influence by a Golden Age villain named Ian Karkull, that shoddy tale still had no good impact at all. So why must we see this Spidey story as any better? It only proves Kelly's another writer who's overrated to begin with. Also, Karen Page's dad in Daredevil may have been depicted in a way vaguely similar in the late 60s (issues 56-7) that was more plausible, so this whole idea in Spider-Man isn't new so much as it's contrived and forced.

Another writer at Popverse is making things worse, lecturing that MJ is better off as Venom than as Spidey's girlfriend/wife:

Lots of people around the world relate to Spider-Man and Peter Parker, but I've come to realize that I share more of a kinship with the people around Spider-Man than the web-slinger himself. The guy frustrates me. He can be a lousy boyfriend, friend, journalist, you name it, and I hate feeling let down by his shortcomings. And this is precisely why, when I heard that it was Mary Jane Watson beneath the Venom symbiote goop, I felt an unbridled sense of joy. Oh my god, MJ can finally be free, I thought. And free she has been.

Let's be real, none of us will ever catch Mary Jane Watson slipping. Her hair is always perfect, she can rush around the city in heels without getting a single rolled ankle or blister, and she's got a rock-solid moral constitution. But that isn't all she can be. And it's this element that writer Al Ewing has been exploring with the All-New Venom and its subsequent Venom ongoing series with MJ as the symbiote's unexpected host. As Venom, Mary Jane has redefined the significance of Marvel's most popular characters while also injecting a much-needed sense of joy and whimsy where there was once only trauma and sorrow. With MJ at the symbiote reins, her character has gotten the chance to directly address the damage that the symbiote wrought on her life when Eddie Brock and Peter Parker were its hosts, while also publicly being a weird, goopy freak protecting her fellow New Yorkers. Talk about a power fantasy!

Oh my god, is this utterly stupid. On the one hand, he writes a classic putdown of a hero because being one is somehow one-dimensional compared to a villain. On the other hand, he acts like MJ as a fictional character is literally portrayed as flawless, when there were times she's been depicted as sustaining injuries (like the time in 1974 where Harry Osborn took up the Green Goblin outfit) and other accidents, and the part about "rock solid moral constitution" is nullified by the very story in issue 27. If Spidey was depicted in the past as the kind of hero who usually refrains from killing, MJ was usually depicted as more or less the same, and this pretentious tale is clearly a cheap excuse to have a co-star in Spidey's world do what he might not be written doing. Worst of all, it was, again, doubtlessly written to be divisive.

Later on, in Venom #251 by Al Ewing, Paco Medina, and Frank D'Armata, the pair disguise themselves in Iron Man armor and zip across New York City on roller skates - because MJ knows how to roller skate, of course. "You're not having fun?" Venom asks her [and by extension, the more humorless of us] when she says, "This is ridiculous." "Symbiotes don't know how to roller-skate, remember? I couldn't do this without you." Indeed, the very best symbiote shenanigans have been only possible in these books because of the woman beneath the goop.

Mary Jane Watson has been through it. From growing up with an abusive father, to having the people closest to her become supervillains and superheroes, to watching Venom transform her partner into a violent man she was afraid of, to listening to Peter Parker whinge on countless occasions, New York City is lucky that this woman hasn't been consumed by her own demons. With everything her character has gone through, why wouldn't she become a host to Venom at one point or another? As Venom, Mary Jane challenges our understanding of the symbiote-host bond, taking it from a relationship built on toxicity with nu-metal blasting in the background to a place of nuance, reflection, courage, and creativity.

But the writers involved don't. Of all the shoddy "op-eds" Popverse could've written till now, this is one of the dumbest ever. Writing merit (and art) are what make anything involving Venom work, not because there's a woman now combining with the symbiote. There's nothing creative or courageous at this point about turning MJ into another Venom host, because all these changes have only served as a pathetic excuse not to deal with more challenging issues or even develop plausible relations between heroic characters and their co-stars.

Venom is many things: an alien symbiote, a lethal protector, an antihero, a destroyer of carpets, and above all, a creature who craves companionship. As monstrous and intimidating as Venom can be, the character is driven by the fundamentally human truth that we're social creatures. For all the talk of the supposed "male loneliness epidemic" today within toxic online spheres, the Venom symbiote can and will die if it can't bond with someone. At the end of the day, even the biggest, burliest, and goopiest of us need someone whom they can confide in, even if things aren't always smooth sailing.

And frankly, with all the waffling over the state of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's relationship (or lack thereof) at Marvel's Spider-Man office, perhaps the best thing would be for Mary Jane to cut ties with Peter entirely and fully embrace being Venom for the foreseeable future. If anything, it's a refreshing story about a woman's trauma that isn't traumatic to read. And as Venom, Mary Jane has the unexpected chance to develop into her own standalone character, no Peter Parker needed.

I think the best thing for the columnist to do is stop writing about comics altogether. Interesting he talks about a loneliness epidemic in toxic circles, because that seems to be an allusion to what PC advocates consider fans who're "obstacles" to the cruder, more degrading ideas they want to force upon corporate-owned characters, and tragically, as this Spidey tale makes clear, already have. The writer also implies MJ was never written with personal agency when she and Peter were married, and it's literally impossible. This also ignores that even recently, there were a few stories that depicted MJ working without Spidey around, and as the above makes clear, don't matter to the columnist in the slightest. The "op-ed" only perpetuates a classic propaganda cliche that a character can only work when portrayed as a villain, and that's repellent.

I also noticed another site writer was talking about how the now late Gerry Conway worked towards making Peter and MJ a couple after putting Gwen Stacy to death:

While Peter and Mary Jane had casually dated after her introduction, their relationship halted when Peter realized Gwen was the one he cared for. Peter and Gwen became an official couple, and Mary Jane began dating Peter’s roommate, Harry Osborn. However, Conway always felt MJ was the more interesting character.

“She seemed like she would be a real match for Peter on a verbal one-to-one give-and-take sort of level, and I never felt the same way about Gwen. I’m sort of the guy who never saw Gwen as a real serious match for Peter. She seemed more like Stan’s fantasy than mine. So, there I was, and I sort of put my hand up and said, ‘Well, why don’t we just kill off Gwen? That would be kind of cool. Then we could get Mary Jane into the book more.’ And there was no real serious debate about it. It was sort of like, yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

“You have to remember that Gwen had been Peter’s serious girlfriend for about five or six years, but the book had been out for about 10. So it wasn’t like Lois Lane, who had been there all the time. Peter had several girls in his life. He had Betty Brant sort of semi-seriously. Liz Allan had been an interest at one point. Mary Jane Watson had been around. So, while Gwen was his official girlfriend, for those of us who had followed the character from the very start, she didn’t feel like she was that integral to the character. To people who had been reading the book for the last five years, she was Lois Lane.”

While I think the death of Gwen was written as well as could be expected for a story of its time, it's annoying how Conway obscured the fact that writing quality is what made MJ's assigned personality more interesting than Gwen's. But of course, was it Gwen's fault for not having a great personality? I'm as much a fan of Stan Lee as the next person, but I recognize that like me and you, he had his flaws. Yet nobody wanted to improve upon his flaws in writing, as John Byrne and Chris Claremont later did with Wolverine in X-Men when they took over for writers like Len Wein? Well that's the problem. Make Peter and MJ a couple, but that doesn't mean killing Gwen to get to that point is the sole option in the whole universe. For all we know, they could've had Gwen pair up with Flash Thompson or even a new character they could create if they'd wanted to. And to say killing Gwen would be "cool"? Seriously, that's not in good taste. Even if one can write a death scene with talent, death is not something to celebrate.

And then, as though things couldn't get more absurd, Comic Book Club says Marvel's actually celebrating 60 years since MJ officially debuted on-panel, and look who one of the writers is:

Mary Jane. Wacky Weed. Reefer. Sweet Green. Marijuana has many names, and frankly it’s disgusting that Marvel is celebrating the 60th anniversary of this DEADLY drug with… Oh, I’m sorry, I’m being told this is the anniversary of the fictional character, Mary Jane Watson. My bad!

Anywho, because Mary Jane said a thing one time 60 years ago, the publisher will release the one-shot Mary Jane: Face It, Tiger #1, a celebration of all things MJ featuring all-new stories and a glimpse of what’s to come.

In the book, you’ll get stories from J.M. DeMatteis, J. Michael Straczynski, Ann Nocenti, and Ashley Allen, alongside art from Phil Noto, Alina Erofeeva, Andrea Broccardo, and Luigi Zagaria.

JMS alone is enough to shudder at this point, and I don't like how the writer makes jokes about how MJ's name was also a slang in the past for cannabis. Even Phil Noto's reason enough to avoid this, because like JMS, he's quite a leftist too. But the former, well...after all the insults to the intellect he heaped upon the Spidey franchise in his writings, to have him return even for a single special has long become insufferable. With all the repeated damage inflicted upon Spider-Man and MJ (and even Gwen) over the past quarter century, what is there to celebrate?

Anayway, Popverse has once again proven they're one of the most bottom of the barrel news sites to come about in recent years, and if they're to be considered a successor to the now defunct Newsarama, "op-eds" like the above prove they're easily worse. How they get their funding is mystifying, seeing how they're just as loyalist to the establishment Joe Quesada was part and parcel of, and claim as they may to being Spider-fans, this proves they most definitely are not.

Professional artists continue to take issue with AI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Canadian creators won't travel to the USA this year

CTV News says some Canadian artists and writers either don't want to travel to the USA this year, in what they call "tumultuous times":

Much can change in a year.

Last April, with talk south of the border about 51st states, tariffs and the like really only starting to ramp up, Canadian comic book artist Tom Grummett (Superboy, Robin) was “thinking very carefully” about attending U.S. trade shows.

The Canadian artist had just finished a comic book cover poking fun at the situation.

Now, he’s steering clear of the country that’s home to many of the comic book properties he’s worked on.

“We’re staying strictly in Canada this year and likely next year,” he said.

It’s not a small stance to take.

The biggest shows on the comic book convention circuit are in the U.S.

But Grummett says there’s too much confusion around travel.

“We have no idea how to approach the border. We checked into what sort of paperwork we needed and (got) multiple, different answers,” he said.

“They can deny you entry for up to four or five years, I hear, so why risk that?

“We’re quite happy to stay closer to home.”

Canadian comic book writer Jim Zub (Conan the Barbarian) says he’s still doing U.S. shows, but fewer of them these days.

He says he knows of “a bunch” of his colleagues who won’t go at all.

He says there’s a bit of “bracing yourself” before travelling south.

“No matter how many times I cross the border, I’ve got Trusted Traveller and it’s relatively straightforward, but you always have that little tense moment,” he said.

“What if this time it’s different?”

From what's told at the start, the political climate does possibly have something to do with this. And that's very galling. They're allowing their potentially leftist dissent impede upon everything. Not that such ideologues are a big loss to USA conventions if that's how they're going to go about their business. But it still makes for bad PR to refuse paying a visit to the USA because you don't dig Donald Trump's policies or anything similar. Do these Canadian artists/writers/editors really think they're going to improve relations if they act like virtually everything a right-leaning politician does is inherently wrong? Maybe not, but their failure to avoid divisive steps on their part certainly speaks volumes.

It'll remain to be seen if the above creators from the great white north come to realize they're not doing any favors for their reputation by refusing to visit the USA or anywhere else just because they don't like the host country's politics. But who knows, they probably won't, and what'll be really reprehensible is if the leftists in comicdom solely blame Trump for that kind of selfish attitude. I hesitate to think what they might say if they were invited to visit Israeli conventions. I hope they know to be polite about that.

So-called columnist at ComicBook goes much too far with entry about DC superheroes who allegedly were portrayed killing

Here's a writer at ComicBook who, in his sad attempt to make defamatory smears about 7 superheroes at DC who supposedly killed enemies, he went way overboard in his descriptions without even providing any concrete evidence to prove some were portrayed doing so, and on the other hand, doesn't even criticize one example of writing where this did happen. It begins with the following:

DC Comics molded the concept of superheroes into the unbreakable symbols of morality and hope they are today. Many of the tropes associated with the genre can be attributed to DC Comics, including the no-killing rule. Even when faced with certain death, superheroes will oftentimes refuse to take a life because it sets a bad precedent for how criminals should be dealt with and violates fundamental human rights. However, even in the ideal world of DC Comics, some superheroes are willing to kill their enemies. The reasoning behind these killings can range from the hero having no other choice to their corruption and becoming supervillains. Many of these heroes have racked up high enough body counts to rival or even surpass the deadliest of villains.

Although the idea of superheroes committing genocide sounds unbelievable, it’s happened several times in DC Comics. Sometimes those killed didn’t even deserve it and were instead innocent victims of a hero who turned to the dark side and unleashed their full power. Deaths that were undone or retconned will be included. With heroes like these running around, it’s no wonder that Batman has contingency plans to take down every member of the superhero community.

It's no wonder the columnist wouldn't take an objective view of something so tasteless. Anybody who takes such a casual view of mass murder certainly can't be expected to deliver a perceptive view from a critical perspective. But why, decades after the Phoenix story in X-Men at Marvel, does the columnist think it's "unbelievable" anybody at DC would go miles out of their way to try and ape it? Because in a way, that's exactly what they've been doing all these years themselves, or, even if the body count an individual character's had forced upon their reputation isn't as big, they certainly go out of their way to write up shock value stories where a goodie is forcibly turned into a baddie. That's what they did with Jean Loring, girlfriend/wife of the Atom, in Identity Crisis from 2004, and even before that, they did it with Carol Ferris in the Green Lantern stories from Action Comics Weekly in 1988. Absolutely sick. Now, here's an example proving they're not fans of the characters in focus, starting with Hawkman:

With a hero as long-lived and brutal as Hawkman, it’s unsurprising that he’s racked up an impressive kill count. Whether as a Thanagarian soldier or throughout his numerous reincarnations, Hawkman has killed numerous opponents in battle. Almost every villain Hawkman has fought has had their skull bashed in with his mace. The Justice League still must constantly try to keep the winged hero from killing more enemies. Hawkman’s most egregious act of mass slaughter was when he triggered an avalanche to bury an entire army of sentient undersea monsters before they could attack the surface world. Over his many lifetimes and countless battles, thousands of people have been the victims of Hawkman’s savagery.

Wow, they sure love making clear they're not fans of the Winged Warrior, seeing how they make it sound like he was created from the very start as some kind of serial murderer, infinitely worse than the villains he took on. Carter Hall never smashed skulls with his mace or any other weapon in the Golden Age stories I read, and neither did Katal Hol in the Silver Age stories I read. I don't think they were depicted so horrifically in any stories published up to the turn of the century. And even if they were, whose fault is that? The writers/artists. But again, creator Gardner Fox never did what they claim in the stories he wrote, so the above paragraph is a blatant lie, giving specialty news sites a very bad name. Now, here's their hints they're not Green Lantern fans either:

Hal Jordan’s descent into madness is one of the most infamous instances of a superhero becoming a genocidal monster in comic book history. When Hal’s home, Coast City, was destroyed, the embodiment of fear known as Parallax took advantage of the hero’s grief and corrupted him, turning him into an intergalactic supervillain. Hal then proceeded to slaughter thousands of his fellow Green Lanterns to claim their power for himself. By the end of his rampage, Hal had killed almost every single Green Lantern in the universe. Although many of these Green Lanterns would eventually be resurrected and Hal would be redeemed, many people never forgot what Hal had done.

So Hal's guilty, but the writers/artists/editors (Ron Marz, Darryl Banks and Kevin Dooley) who forced this repellent story upon him have no responsibility to shoulder, and don't owe GL fans an apology? Gee, how considerate. No mention of how Katma Tui, though briefly resurrected in 1993, was put right back in the intergalactic grave soon after (assuming she'd ever actually been revived in the first place), and I can't recall Jim Owsley (Christopher Priest) ever clearly apologizing for being party to that atrocity either. So what's their point? (Saddest part about the ostensible brief revival is that it took place in the unbearable Gerard Jones' short-lived spinoff, GL: Mosaic. So maybe it doesn't count?) Next comes some drivel about the Spectre:

As the embodiment of God’s wrath, the Spectre has punished sinners in biblical proportions. With his infinite reality-warping abilities, the Spectre has inflicted numerous ironic and cruel punishments that killed many criminals or left them praying for death. The Spectre has been delivering this type of divine punishment throughout human history and is even responsible for the destruction of Sodom and the deaths of the firstborn sons of Egypt. The Spectre’s nation-level acts of genocide aren’t exclusive to biblical times either, as he once leveled the entire country of Vlatava, killing millions because he believed that they were already doomed to die soon of war and famine. Even for the personification of vengeance itself, that was egregiously cold-hearted.

On this, I think it can be said the columnist's not a fan of Jerry Siegel or even artist Bernard Baily, who co-created the Ghostly Guardian in the Golden Age. I hesitate to think what they'd say about Percival Popp, the bumbling would-be detective who was added in the middle of the 5 year run as a comedy relief character. Next, here's what's told about Dr. Fate:

Even as far back as the Golden Age, the Sorcerer Supreme, Doctor Fate, has wielded cosmic levels of power, resulting in numerous deaths. After destroying a series of nebulae that were threatening Earth, Doctor Fate traced them back to their source and discovered that they were created by an alien race called the Globe Men. To stop the Globe Men’s continual attempts to destroy the Earth, Doctor Fate used his magic to throw their planet into the sun. In just the blink of an eye, Doctor Fate exterminated an entire civilization and its billions of inhabitants without a shred of remorse. Thankfully, over time, DC writers eased up on Doctor Fate’s genocidal tendencies.

I've read a lot of the Golden Age tales, and I don't recall seeing those "genocidal tendencies" they speak of. Where do they get off fabricating such lies? Is this an allusion to post-2000 atrocities? Either way, this is disgusting how they even employ a bizarre double-standard: they seemingly acknowledge writers are accountable for what a fictional character's written doing, yet they still make it sound like said character's a real life person. The repulsion continues with this drivel. And then, there's Captain Atom:

Captain Atom is one of the strongest and most ruthless members of the Justice League, whose near-limitless power makes him a serious threat. After suffering from life-threatening injuries that warped his mind, Captain Atom went mad and became the supervillain Monarch. With his immense power, Monarch killed everyone in the city of Bludhaven before making plans for multiversal conquest. To build an army, the Monarch kidnapped numerous heroes from across the multiverse and forced them into gladiatorial death matches, where he recruited the winners. Monarch’s rampage was only halted during a battle with the Monitors and Superboy-Prime that ended with Earth-51 and its billions of inhabitants eradicated. While Captain Atom has since regained his sanity, his time as a villain cost countless innocent lives.

This may have happened years after the Armageddon crossover from 1991, possibly around the time Infinite Crisis was published, but once again, their continued remaining with the shoddy cliche of failing to take an objective view of what they describe is despicable. So too is their take on Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen, whose cast was actually revived in the past decade, presumably to prevent Alan Moore from ever regaining the rights to the overrated 1987 story:

The power of godhood and a complete disconnection from humanity is a dangerous combination. In Doomsday Clock, after leaving the Watchmen universe, the omnipotent Doctor Manhattan traveled to the DC Universe and sought to make changes there to satisfy his curiosity. After killing Pandora, Doctor Manhattan arranged for Alan Scott’s death so that the Justice Society and its members would never exist. Doctor Manhattan also orchestrated the deaths of Superman’s adoptive parents in a car crash. Finally, he erased the entire Legion of Superheroes’ timeline, making it so that trillions of people were never born. Doctor Manhattan’s machinations threatened to cause the DC Universe to tear itself apart. Luckily, Superman managed to convince Doctor Manhattan to undo all the damage he caused and restore everyone he killed or erased.

Be that as it may, this is still just as insufferable as any of the other examples, and downright boring. Lastly, there's Superboy-Prime, presumably the one seen circa Infinite Crisis:

There was a time when Superboy-Prime was the greatest threat the DC Multiverse has ever encountered. However, in recent years, he’s undergone a significant redemption arc, bringing him back to his heroic roots. Still, even if he’s acting as the new Superman and guardian of Metropolis, the blood on his hands is incalculable. On top of having previously killed Superboy and Earth-2’s Superman, Superboy-Prime is infamous for his multiversal rampage that saw numerous universes destroyed and trillions of people dead. If all that wasn’t enough, Superboy-Prime also killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Green Lanterns. Even with his reformation, Superboy-Prime still struggles with his darker impulses while trying to be a real hero.

This, if so, was doing little more than turning another cast member into a sci-fi variation on the Joker. And again, no questions as to whether this story was ever in good taste to begin with. That's why it's sick, sick, sick.

If there's anything that can be learned from the above drivel, it's that the specialty press has quite a few phony fans running amok, who don't appreciate what prior generations of writers and artists did for entertainment, nor any consideration given that their livelihoods practically depended on the hard work they did. Why does anybody even advertise on these awful news sites, let alone read their "contributors"? What ComicBook posted to their site is some of the most loathsome forms of contempt for the works and creations of classic veterans, and it's stunning they're still in business after all the humiliating columns they've written in tabloid style.

What a Catholic commentator has to say about Marvel/DC history while discussing Voyage Comics' contributions to the medium

A writer at the Catholic World Report discusses Voyage Comics, the publisher specializing in religiously-themed stories, and along the way, has what to say about past Marvel/DC publications with allusions to leftist ideology. Some of which are admittedly quite interesting to ponder, including a certain aforementioned tale from 1986 that led to a disturbing form of editorial mandate the following decade or so:

Back in the late 80s and into the 90s, even as an unphilosophical teenager and avid consumer of comic books, I was well aware of flaws in the fantasy worlds of Marvel and DC.

I can, for instance, recall seeing through the thinly veiled propaganda of an “X-Men” graphic novel entitled God’s Country, the villain of which was a small-minded religious bigot who refused to tolerate super-powered mutants. One storyline of The Legion of Super-Heroes depicted a xenophobic dictator taking over the Earth, resulting in a terrible regime whereby hapless space aliens were persecuted.

Quite aside from the obvious virtue-signaling, I was also put off by the superficial and trite conflation of issues such as trans-humanism and extra-terrestrial life with the “gay rights” movement. Do slogans like Coexist! and Can’t we all get along? really represent the only response to the presence among us of alien beings endowed with godlike powers?

In any event, an issue of The Incredible Hulk would finally cut to the chase by featuring S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury bragging about his organization’s acceptance of homosexuals.

To be sure, even in the mainstream comic book industry, there have been exceptions that veer from the reservation of liberal ideology. I still have an old issue of Batman, wherein the hero tracks down an insane criminal who would solve the homelessness problem … by killing off all the homeless. Unfortunately, some of the most interesting comics that part ways with leftist ideology are excessively dark. For example, Frank Miller’s iconic The Dark Knight Returns is laced with gratuitous obscenity and over-the-top violence, making it impossible to recommend this otherwise fascinating account of an indomitable, haunted man resuming his obligation to protect his home city from chaos.

Interesting the guy does have a problem with Miller's resort to jarring violence in the story, though I hardly consider DKR a title worth the time, if only because of what it led to years later, though of course I realize it's not Miller and his story who're literally and/or solely to blame, but rather, any editors and publishers who came within even miles of forcing successive writers to adopt a path where Bruce Wayne would be portrayed as a nasty control freak, almost entirely lacking a sense of humor or any kind of happiness amid the darkness. That direction also led to the horrific mistreatment of Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, because if memory serves, there were storylines where it was implied superhero missions are unsuited for younger protagonists, and all this in a world that was otherwise meant to be surreal. IIRC, even in Geoff Johns' Teen Titans title, this shoddy path was alluded to at one point.

I think the columnist goofed with the title of the X-Men GN, which I believe is actually "God Loves, Man Kills", originally published around 1982, and was the 5th in the Marvel Graphic Novel series that lasted until about 1993, comprising at least 75 stories. And since that came up, one can only wonder if Chris Claremont would've written up a villain who was a Muslim adherent? IIRC, when Claremont later wrote an unsuccessful 2nd volume of Gen13 that came after September 11, 2001, he added a character who was a Muslim to the cast, indicating Claremont was an early example of a writer who went woke in comicdom. And where exactly in the Hulk was Nick Fury boasting about welcoming LGBT agents into S.H.I.E.L.D? Perhaps in the 1990s, when it was more likely such propaganda would turn up, and the late Peter David was known to be a supporter of such ideologies. It is a shame he had to make such a big deal about it, even if at the time, most writers like him originally did it more subtly, unlike the very disturbingly contrived and forced way it's been handled since. Although, lest we forget, the disgraced Gerard Jones was one shoddy writer of his sort from the times who did it, as mentioned, in a very contrived and forced manner, at the expense of a more talented writer (Roy Thomas)'s creation from Infinity Inc. And that was definitely wrong. For all we know, what Jones did may have precipitated the alarming trend among leftist writers of changing a heterosexual character to homosexual, and it eventually led to the damage even X-Men's cast underwent. And even before all that, there was a time when William Messner-Loebs changed the Pied Piper from the Flash to gay in 1990. Just because this was a reformed crook who underwent an alteration of personality, does that make it inherently acceptable? Of course not.

Happily, Voyage Comics avoids political correctness on the one hand and runaway sex and violence on the other, instead opting to celebrate heroes both more down-to-earth and more wholesome than what we typically find in Marvel and DC. Also, intriguingly, heroes are placed not in the immediate “now” but are situated within historical fiction; the “Lionette” and “Phantom Phoenix” titles are set in America in the period between the World Wars.

...A sick popular culture very much needs a Catholic presence, and one way to maintain such a presence is by imprinting artifacts of that popular culture with a Catholic vision. Certainly, our history and culture are replete with real-life heroism, protagonists, and images, which warrant our children’s attention more than do Spider-Man or Green Lantern.

On this, I would disagree just in how he implies Spidey and GL in and of themselves aren't worth our children's time. There was once a time they were relevant, and when most writers/editors didn't force extreme political beliefs into the stories under the confidence that, because these were corporate-owned, they could get away with it. But that began to collapse over time, with GL an early victim of PC post-1988, and Spidey the next victim years later in the early 2000s, when J. Michael Straczynski got his mitts on the writing assignment. I think back to that time and feel disgust at all the apologists who defended and justified JMS' writing, at least until the whole Sins Past debacle came around, and only then may they finally have conceded it wasn't worth the paper wasted to print it. Today, it's definitely aged poorly.

So it's great to have religious stories to tell from that specific perspective of what figures can be considered heroic. Even so, I don't think the columnist should be telling all this at the expense of the hard work figures like Stan Lee did in his time. That kind of bias never helps.

How Frank Miller failed Will Eisner's most notable comic strip

ComicBook wrote about a movie on which Samuel Jackson and Scarlett Johansson worked prior to the Avengers movies, that being Frank Miller's adaptation of the late Will Eisner's 1940-52 Spirit comic strip (which was revived in some form or other in later years):

What many casual viewers have forgotten, however, is that Jackson and Johansson shared a screen in a superhero film before either of them ever set foot in the MCU. In December 2008, the same month The Dark Knight was cementing a new benchmark for the genre, the two actors appeared together in The Spirit, a neo-noir adaptation of Will Eisner’s iconic newspaper comic strip. The film holds the distinction of being the only feature directed solely by Frank Miller, the writer and artist whose previous credits as a co-director on Sin City had led to enormous commercial and critical goodwill. That goodwill, combined with the star power of his assembled cast, gave The Spirit every possible advantage heading into release. Unfortunately, the film used it poorly.

Why No One Talks About The Spirit Nowadays

The Spirit arrived on Christmas Day 2008, a release date that placed it in direct competition with high-profile awards contenders and family films. Unsurprisingly, it opened to $6.4 million over its first four days, landing ninth at the box office. Plus, without a great word-of-mouth to reverse the catastrophic opening, the film’s final domestic gross reached only $19.8 million, with a worldwide cumulative of $38.4 million against a reported production budget of $60 million. Add market costs to that calculation, and The Spirit remains one of the biggest superhero flops ever. The critical consensus was equally severe. The Spirit holds a 14% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 114 reviews, with an average score of 3.6 out of 10, and a Metacritic score of 30 out of 100. Finally, audiences gave it a CinemaScore of C-, one of the more toxic grades a wide release can receive.

The creative failure at the center of The Spirit traces directly to Miller’s decision to apply the visual grammar he developed for Sin City to a property that was never designed to support it. Eisner’s original comic strip thrived on a fundamentally humanist tone, as its protagonist was a street-level everyman whose power derived from his vulnerability and moral clarity. Miller’s version replaced that framework with the stylized nihilism and noir excess of his own comic work, producing a film that felt like a lesser imitation of Sin City rather than an adaptation of a distinct property.

Well, it certainly proved, if nothing else, that Miller was no better a director than he was a screenwriter, recalling he was credited to the Robocop sequel in 1990. And he didn't just fail Eisner with the movie adaptation, he also failed him with his betraying remarks in the recent American Genius documentary. I just don't see what Miller's apologists see in him. If he's got any "style" in his work, the problem is that, in the end, there's no substance.

Incidentally, Miller's Spirit movie wasn't even the first time Eisner's strip was adapted to live action. In 1987, there was a failed TV movie intended as a pilot for a possible series, so Miller was doing little more than attempting it all again theatrically. But if Dennis Colt was now being depicted as a near immortal, courtesy of a chemical injection, all that did was push the creation into too much sci-fi territory. Creative liberties are okay, but when somebody as over-the-top as Miller can be applies it with such heavy-handedness, it's no surprise it fails in the end.

And while the first Sin City movie may have been a success, the sequel several years later tanked. So again, what's all the fuss about regarding Miller anyway? Eisner's family should never have approved of what Miller was doing, and certainly not if Miller was later going to put him down in the aforementioned documentary. As I've said before, there's little from Miller's resume I care about, with Daredevil and some of his work on the flagship Batman books being the few I ever found worthwhile. And if the Spirit movie says something, he's made an otherwise dreadful filmmaker.

The re-rise of the "superstar artist"?

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed artists Nick Dragotta and Daniel Warren Johnson, and they even claim DC's Absolute line is literally a huge success. Here's what they say:

Dragotta, who is the regular monthly artist for DC’s Absolute Batman title, and Johnson, the indie creator who last year wrote and drew the Absolute Batman annual, have emerged as two of the biggest artists that the comics world has seen in a long time. They are at the center of a seismic shift in the industry.

Call it the return of the superstar artist.

For most of the 21st century, comics, despite being a visual field, has been a writer-dominated medium. Even though some artists gained a degree of popularity, it has been authors such as Brian Michael Bendis, Robert Kirkman, Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and Brian K. Vaughan that have been the stars in the field, rising off a platform built by a previous generation of wordsmiths, names such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

And again, they just cite figures like Bendis, Tynion and Morrison, etc, as though they were all unquestionably admired and everybody's buying their stuff unquestioned, sans any objective viewpoint. What's so great about them that isn't so great about the writers who were blacklisted in the mainstream, like Chuck Dixon, Mike Baron and even Larry Hama? Tynion's a particularly galling example for citation as a writer, based on the horror comics the MSM is virtually gushing over now. And as for the issue of artists:

Dragotta, Johnson and a handful of others that include names such as Hayden Sherman, Jorge Jimenez and Peach Momoko, have become among the biggest artist names in the comics industry since the early 1990s, when a group of artists led by Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld quit Marvel Comics and created Image Comics. It was comics’ Beatlemania when those artists made store appearance in places such as L.A.’s Golden Apple. In response, Marvel and DC clamped down on the power of artists and raised the voice of the scribes.

This sounds like an exaggeration regarding the artists, if only because they still had talented artists working for them at the time. As for raising the voice of the scribes? Yes they did, and it wasn't always for the better, considering some like Scott Lobdell and Ron Marz were overrated or simply mediocre, and Gerard Jones had to have been the worst. It's more like in the past decade of the 2010s the power of artists was clamped down upon, and while that may have improved somewhat of recent, storytelling certainly hasn't. And when Liefeld's cited so casually, as though he was never a poor influence to start with, you know something's not serious about this puff piece.

“Certainly in the ‘90s, artists and Image artist ruled the land,” says Lee, who lived through the artist reign of the 1990s and has been the DC chief since 2010, first as co-publisher and then sole publisher. He has seen the vagaries of the comic industry ebb and flow, including the rise of the writer class. Lee described the current state as a “getting back to a balance where both artists and writers are driving sales, driving fans.”

The return of the artist as superstar “is good for the business, it is good for the artform,” he says.

That depends on if they know better at this point than to censor or water down the artwork, again recalling when this happened with Donna Troy, in example. I think even Jesse Quick fell victim to this censoring of female sexuality in the past decade, and so too did Rogue. Lee himself was dumbing down his artwork to some extent, and if he and the trade journal are obscuring all that, it only suggests all's still not well. The lecturing continues with the following:

Key to the rising artists phenomenon is the runaway success of DC’s Absolute line. Launched towards the end of 2024, the line led by Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman, reinterpreted characters and origins in a truly sweeping way. Unlike other so-called “relaunches” that DC or Marvel have done, this one has reinvigorated publishers and retailers alike, unexpectedly brought in new readers, and created name artists who can turn a simple three hour signing into a caffeinated, we’re-still-signing-at-midnight mania, as Dragotta and Johnson did late last year in an Oakland, Calif. comic shop. Or have hundreds upon hundreds line up in a shop in Spain, as Jimenez did in February. And they are now capitalizing on that newfound mainstream recognition. [...]

The line has been so seismic for DC that the company has overtaken market share over longtime rival Marvel for the first time this century. It has sold almost 12 million units since its launch. In the case of Absolute Batman, sales continue to rise, bucking normal publishing trends that see a drop or leveling off of sales.

Even this is hard to swallow, since it's more likely they're alluding to how much of this line's allegedly sold in the past 2 years since its launch. And the following makes clear something's awry here:

Absolute Batman is now consistently selling 300,000 issues a month, a monster number in the comic book publishing field.

“The Absolute comics have restored faith in the comic industry and retailers alike,” says Ryan Liebowitz, the owner of LA’s Golden Apple Comics, who said that first-time comic book readers are part of the movement. “We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.”

All they've done with the above is compound the comedy. A serious business agent wants to sell far more than that in millions, yet we're being lectured that a sum equivalent to what some weekly urban newspapers see printed up is a triumph? The Hollywood Reporter has again proven they're one of the biggest farces in how they cover entertainment, and since when weren't readers part of the movement? It's quite likely we're being told this is a staggering success because of the politics the Absolute line's built upon. And who knows, maybe these "first-timers" they speak of took to the books because of said politics? But when it's far less than a million for individual issues sold, it's as dishonest as it's laughable to say this is a stunning success. The following is also annoying:

And it’s not just the comics that are selling. Artists in today’s comic industry have new revenue streams that did not exist in prior generations. Signings, which were once gratis, can be a major money maker. Runs of limited editions variant covers another. And, the biggest is the sale of original art.

In other words, creators are demanding we pay for their signatures? Why should we want to pay potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for a mere signature? That can be quite the ripoff and makes the the medium look all the more absurd, as does the following news:

The original comic art for Dragotta, Johnson, Sherman, and others is selling out as soon as they drop on the online store run by Felix Lu, a former Hollywood assistant-turned-comic art dealer, and commanding prices that are more in line with classic artist from the 1970s and 1980s.

“It is a moment,” Lu says. “We will look back on this and see that this was a special time.”

Dragotta’s cover for Absolute Batman No. 1 sold for $70,000 in late 2024, when the title was less than a month old. It was a record sale for a modern age cover and would probably sell higher now in light of the title’s explosion in popularity.

Another change: initially, collectors bought individual art pages but now complete issues are being snapped up at a time, with aficionados paying well into six figures.

This is telling too. Mainly because pamphlets continue to be the coveted "holy grail" for speculators. What an insulting farce they're trying to sell us on here. I don't know if this is exactly what they mean by "original art", but it sure doesn't sound like wall paintings have become the name of the game. This is nothing more than a continuation of the very same unfunny jokes that have plague the industry for years, particularly since the turn of the century.

In further detailing of Dragotta's history, they tell that:

But little by little, he nabbed assignments here and there. He drew a silent issue of Fantastic Four which centered on the memorial for hero Johnny Storm (don’t worry, it’s comics, and Storm would eventually be resurrected). He was lucky to be paired with writer Joe Casey and the two created America Chavez, a young Avenger that was a key character in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Yet, even then, he and his family was getting by on credit cards.

So he was one of the developers of a diversity/social justice pandering creation, which unsurprisingly isn't elaborated upon here. Why must we find that impressive? If Marvel wanted to, they could've put a big emphasis on Firebird/Bonita Juarez, who was created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema in the pages of Incredible Hulk back in 1981. I suppose because she was characterized as a Christian adherent, she wasn't good enough for today's PC crowd at Marvel, right?

As for Johnson:

Raised in a strict Christian household and home schooled from third to 12th grade, Johnson’s interests butted up against the will of his parents. Certain music wasn’t allowed. Some comics were tolerated. Many were not. Once, his grandparents bought him a few Superboy issues in which the hero wore a leather jacket (hey, it was a ‘90s look).

“My parents took a flip through it and they were like, ‘No,’” he recalled. His father took those comics away and instead bought him a Spider-Man “that specifically had no punching on the cover.”

One defining moment was when a teenage Johnson and his father were in a comic shop and Johnson was intent on buying a copy of Battle Chasers, a comic known for shapely and busty heroines and plenty of violence.

His father was appalled at the mixing of sex and violence. “This is horrific,” the father said. “You shouldn’t buy that.”

Johnson stood his ground. He said, “Dad, I’m buying this” and put his money down.

“He was a good dad. I think he was just trying to be really careful with the visual that I was taking in,” says Johnson. “And eventually I just had to go my own way with it. We would always have this back and forth.”

Depending how you view this, it's a shame if his parents took a sex-negative viewpoint on the one hand, and on the other, overreacted in regards to the 90s Superboy series, since from what stories I recall reading, it was far from gory in terms of violence. Of course, you could also wonder why his parents thought Spidey was any better, because if DC could have jarring moments in their comics, so could Marvel, and did, though it was post-2000 this was sadly more likely, because that's when they really began losing their moral compass. Also, strange if they believed Spidey had no punching of any kind, because there were plenty of times ever since Web-head debuted in 1962 where fisticuffs prevailed as much as web-slinging.

He studied art at Chicago’s North Park University, but even when he began discovering comics beyond the superhero genre such as Spawn, The Walking Dead and Hellboy, a future in the industry was still not on his mind.

Oh, this is telling too. When somebody cites graphically violent products like those as influences, you know something's wrong. If that's what Johnson considered masterpieces, then he's no better than the PC advocates who claimed the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series was better because it alluded to subjects that even mainstream superhero comics actually had dealt with in some form or other in past years. Jarring violence and gore alone like what the 3 Image/Dark Horse comics cited are noted for does not a good story make. Johnson's also hinted at his leftist politics in the following:

It was when he rekindled his childhood love of Transformers, launching the eponymous comic under Skybound/Image in 2023, that he powered his first major breakthrough. As both the writer and artist, he transformed a licensed comic, a type of endeavor that is not normally known for artistic achievements, not just into a massive sales hit — the first issue sold over 100,000 copies — but also, unbelievably, into an Eisner Award winner. Two, in fact. One for best continuing series, one for best writer/artist.

He was already skyrocketing in popularity when DC came calling, offering something in the Absolute world. At first, he declined their advances, but as he says, “the election and inauguration happened and then I had an idea.” That was the beginning of 2025. By the end of the year, Absolute Batman Annual No. 1 was in readers’ hands.

Again with powerbombs and chokeslams, not to mention one arm being snapped in mid-Hitler salute, Batman took on white supremacists. Like the main Absolute Batman, an energy pulsated through the pages, giving it an urgency and a nowness.

The comic sold a walloping 150,000 copies. It then breezed through a second printing and is now on its third.

Once again, they've lengthened the joke regarding sales figures, and taking on white supremacists of what's bound to be a western variety in an era where Islamic terrorism is more a serious concern is also a joke. What makes the above fall flat is that, according to this page recorded from leftist Bleeding Cool, Johnson, disturbingly enough, drew an anti-ICE illustration, exploiting Batman's image for something quite loathsome. What Bleeding Cool refuses to mention is that the woman tried to strike the ICE officer, and he fired in self-defense. Such omissions only compound how tasteless Johnson's illustration really is.

And after years of comics being the domain of middle-aged male nerds, the audience for the books is younger and more diverse than before, thanks to Gen Z growing up on non-superhero graphic novels such as Dav Pikey’s Dog Man and the works of Raina Telgemeier. Their fervor can be seen in YouTube videos and launch comics trend on TikTok.

“It’s one of the first times we’re seeing social media having an impact on store sales,” says Golden Apple’s Liebowitz. “In this instance, the people are talking about this thing called Absolute Batman or Wonder Woman or whatever, and rushing into local comic books stores to find it.”

Or as Lu put it: “One thing we haven’t seen is that the kids are back. I didn’t think we’d see that again.”

It won't be shocking if it turns out their claims are hugely exaggerated, and besides, note that the examples cited above aren't superhero comics, but rather, independent GNs. Has social media really never had an effect on sales before? I think chances are it has, yet when sales figures aren't cited unambiguously, how can you believe this at instant face value? They also don't mention that, if comics were really left to middle-aged, that's because they all but stopped being sold in supermarkets and regular bookstores, and gradually became more mature themed to the point where they were all but unsuited for children. Not to mention less interesting because successive writers were exploiting them for leftist propaganda, including J. Michael Straczynski's take on Spidey, and despite any claims to the contrary, the Big Two didn't even try appealing to children. They certainly didn't make them suitable, and what they did to Iceman was just the beginning.

Like with most cases of popularity or art trends, it’s hard to know where this one will to or how long it will last. Dragotta is committed to Absolute Batman for the foreseeable future, which will give the title a cohesion rare in modern comics (not counting the occasional fill-in issue or two by other artists, which allows him to catch up on his schedule).

From what I can tell here, it's no different from other big headlines written for the sake of them. And the part about cohesion couldn't be more forced, based on how they don't make the same argument for flagship titles, nor do they suggest much of what came up in the past quarter century be jettisoned as part of an effort to restore some coherency and meaning to the flagship Marvel/DC titles. Despite what they claim, this alleged popularity of the Absolute line hasn't even lasted a year, but what is clear is that, because of the political metaphors, that's why they're promoting it drenched in sugar. I'm sure they know the sales figures given are a laugh riot, and their failure to make a valid argument why it could do a lot of good to find a way to boost sales to millions - possibly by shifting to paperback/hardcover formats - speaks volumes. They keep wasting so much paper on puff pieces but never write up any op-eds about what could be done to improve marketing and readership. Nor will they make an argument why at this point, it would be better if Marvel/DC closed down comics publication, seeing what an artistic travesty they've become.

If there's anything this whole fawning over the Absolute line reminds me of, it's the fuss made over Marvel's Ultimate line a quarter century ago. That line did have its share of tasteless shock value, and it won't be shocking if the Absolute line has anything similar. That's why we could really do without what DC is now foisting on the audience.

Greg Capullo retiring from interior illustration work

Popverse says the veteran artist Greg Capullo is retiring, mostly because his art team on Batman parted ways, and if he continues, he may limit himself to covers only:

Iconic superhero comics artist Greg Capullo is mulling retiring from drawing comics. Capullo is a rare breed — having been a top monthly comic book artist in two distinctly different eras, both in the '90s with Quasar, X-Force, and Spawn, and then going on a long hiatus only to return at the top of his form (and at the top of the charts) with DC's 'New 52' relaunch of Batman. In recent years, he's been the go-to artist for DC and Marvel major titles, drawing the DC events Dark Nights: Metal and its sequel Dark Nights: Death Metal, to the DC/Image crossover series Batman/Spawn, the Marvel standalone series Wolverine: Revenge, and the recent once-in-a-generation Batman/Deadpool event from DC and Marvel.

But now, at age 64 and recent upheavals in his art team, Greg Capullo sees 2026 as possibly his last year drawing actual comics.

“I’m kind of feeling like I’m going to be done doing interiors,” Greg Capullo said recently during a MegaCon spotlight panel shared with Scott Snyder and Frank Tieri. “I have reasons for that. I can give them to you."

I vaguely recall Capullo was one of those creators who indicated he was a leftist with appalling positions in the past decade, though he did once make a valid argument about why talented scriptwriting is important, and blocked fellow leftists Kurt Busiek and Gail Simone after they disagreed. Even so, is he somebody to miss in the medium after he fully retires? Maybe not.

Another key part of Capullo's reason for stepping back from interior comics is that his primary art team for the 17 years, from his return with Image's Haunt on through to DC's Batman and everything after, has broken up.

"I recently lost my art team, my longtime art team," Capullo continues. "One guy I won’t even discuss, but Jonathan Glapion, my friend, has gone on to become his own artist. I’m very proud of him. He’s working under McFarlane. He’s got his own thing going."

While Capullo's days of drawing interiors comics are coming to a close, Capullo says he plans to continue drawing covers whenever possible.

So here we have another guy who's now limiting himself to covers only, and on pamphlets, no doubt. What good is that? There's other artists like J. Scott Campbell who long stopped drawing interiors, and IMO, unwisely. Others like Stanley Lau seem to have made covers their sole type of career. I'm sure there's other artists out there with talent, but they shouldn't be wasting them on Marvel/DC, certainly not so long as they're in an artistic shambles under a conglomerate ownership. Notice how Capullo contributed to at least 2 of DC's crossover events, one of the biggest problems that metastasized ever since Marvel's Secret Wars. If that's what he considers worth working on, that's just the problem. So if all he could think of doing was wasting his talents on meaningless crossovers, then he wasn't utilizing his skills well at all. Maybe if he stuck with Image, but even that's not an instant guarantee he'll turn out something with long lasting value.

Now, he's semi-retiring, and he'll probably never admit the Big Two did terrible things over the years and that it was a serious mistake to lend his talents to their businesses after all the harm they caused. The refusal of some veterans to publicly admit something went wrong is what makes this a very sad affair.

University paper predictably recommends the weaker Daredevil stories post-2000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pajiba gushes over Tom King's take on Supergirl

A writer at Pajiba gushed over the overrated King's comic starring Supergirl, "Women of Tomorrow", which is being adapted to the silver screen, sadly enough, by James Gunn and company:

My comic book reading has lapsed over the last several years, but I’ll still try to pick up things that I hear good things about and read them when I’m not exhausted and/or staring at the wall. One such comic book that I read somewhat recently was Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and y’all, it was absolutely incredible. The book, created by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, is a spectacular story about grief, revenge, and holding yourself to a pretty high standard because of the symbol on your chest.

We meet a Supergirl who is very similar to the one that appeared in James Gunn’s Superman, and, by that, I mean that she’s drunk. She’s getting drunk because, unlike her cousin, she was a teenager when Krypton exploded, so she had friends and loved ones and a place where she grew up that were all erased in an instant. She has memories of a homeworld that she will never see again. So, she travels to a part of the universe with a red sun and drinks to forget it all.

The story is filled with a lot of nuance, as Supergirl is then enlisted by a young girl to track down a man who killed her father. While Supergirl is hesitant at first, she eventually joins the young girl after her dog, Krypto, is hurt, and they learn a lot about each other and the cruelty of the universe. I was pretty excited to see that Gunn was touting the book as inspiration for the new movie, but after I read it, I was a little nervous because I don’t know if the movie will live up to the book.

What I don't get is why they think it's such a big deal to portray the Maid of Might as teenage drunkard. Also, if what Inverse tells says anything, a story that relies upon a bizarre hoax - that Krypto wasn't in serious danger to start with - isn't exactly doing much to create drama anyway. So how can the movie live up to the book when the book doesn't live up to real expectations, any more than modern storytelling for the flagship Supergirl? Also, Milly Alcock recently made things worse by stating in a Vanity Fair interview that:

Has the famously fickle Game of Thrones fandom prepared Alcock for the inevitable backlash she’ll face? “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies,” she says. “I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”

Somehow, it's unlikely what she says is based on what kind of horrific leftist propaganda came up in the past decade at the fairer sex's expense. What she's telling is little more than a cheap excuse to avoid challenging queries of what the Supergirl movie's merit will be like, and with a premise like alcoholism, seriously, I don't think it'll amount to much. Any potential political propaganda here will only perpetuate the misgivings. And she makes it sound like nobody ever wanted Supergirl created. Perhaps she should consider what kind of revolting mindsets were working at DC back in the mid-80s, who punished a fictional character instead of any bad writers and filmmakers who dampened Kara Zor-El's legacy as Superman's cousin.

One of the most irritating things about new stories like what King concocted is how a premise that was once considered better suited for a stand-alone indie comic is being forced onto corporate owned creations, and practically compounds why in the long run, conglomerate ownership did DC/Marvel far more harm than good. It's a real shame that here, when it was bad enough the Maid of Might got a poor screenplay foisted upon her in 1984, now Gunn and company are making things worse by adapting woke script for the sake of a newer movie, 42 years after the previous one. Conduct like this is exactly what discouraged me from looking forward to live action adaptations, and feel that, if famous comics creations need any kind of adapting, it should be in animation, but even there, they're obviously not immune to leftist propaganda tampering.

Update: here's what John Nolte at Breitbart has to say about the case.

Jim Lee regrets drawing Aquaman with chainmail outfit, but not his role in damaging the DCU's coherency

Popverse says artist and DC executive Lee told at one of the recent conventions he didn't like drawing Aquaman with a chainmail costume, something Captain America was drawn with at times:

Every artist has their pet peeve, and for Jim Lee it’s chainmail. The superstar artist, who is also the publisher of DC Comics, isn’t a fan of chainmail on superhero costumes because they’re a pain to draw. When asked about the hardest characters to draw, Lee didn’t hold back.

“Anyone that has chainmail on their tunic,” Jim Lee says during a spotlight panel at MegaCon 2026. “Unfortunately, when I was drawing Justice League for the New 52, I decided to draw chainmail on Aquaman’s tunic. I regretted that.”

If he's never drawn Red Sonja, whose bikini-style outfit was often drawn as chainmail, that's decidedly a good thing. Besides, if memory serves, Lee watered down his character designs for the ladies in the past decade, and since the turn of the century, he's wasted whatever artwork he's done on the worst directions DC could go in.

On which note, he's never expressed any regret for the role he played in destroying the DCU's coherency, and that take on the Justice League from nearly 15 years ago was little more than a pathetic continuation of that. They mostly abandoned their "New 52" direction after something like 5 years, along with the status quo set by Identity Crisis, but much damage still remained, and till this day, we're still shaking off the negative effects it left. There's no telling if any of this will change under WB's new ownership through Paramount. It's precisely why it'd do a lot of good if the publishing arm of DC could be bought out, along with Marvel's from Disney.

Sometimes, I think Lee's one of the most overrated artists in history, and he certainly didn't put his art talents to good use in the past quarter century. So, why must we care if he doesn't like chainmail designs? What really matters is if he cares about the moral integrity and cohesion of DC/Marvel. Judging from his conduct over the past 25 years, he sadly doesn't. When will he resign and move on already? He's just not a good fit for them in the end.

Because Frank Miller's Daredevil work inspired Ninja Turtles, he now draws a cover for one of the latest stories from IDW

The Hollywood Reporter announced Frank Miller drew a cover for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coming from IDW:

Frank Miller was one of the major influences on Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird when the duo, then in their twenties, created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the early 1980s.

Miller’s popular work on Daredevil, which centered on a hero who received his powers from radioactive elements, finds a sensei, and fights a ninja clan named the Hand, were direct elements that the budding writer and artists borrowed in their creation of four turtles, who thanks to radioactive elements, become anthropomorphic, find a sensei, and fight a ninja clan named the Foot in New York City.

So it’s fitting, and a little overdue, that Miller would come to work a TMNT cover.

There might once have been a time when this could mean something. But Miller's artwork degenerated into mediocrity a long time ago, and looks almost as "blocky" as some of John Romita Jr's artwork from the time he worked with J. Michael Straczynski on his dreadful Spider-Man run a quarter century back. Oh, and there's also the following to ponder:

The issue will also have a cover by J. Scott Campbell and Juan Ferreyra, among other creators. IDW is also putting out a blind bag for the issue as well, all but guaranteeing No. 300 will be one of the top-selling indie issues of the year.

Indeed. This suggests that, much like Image/Skybound's approach to selling their M.A.S.K adaptation, they're going to use a tactic to potentially encourage speculators and hoarders to buy multiple copies in hopes they'll get all possible variants. Once again, this overabundance of variant covers is a disaster for comicdom, and no matter how much I find Campbell's work impressive, I can't overlook how he's been contributing to it.

All that aside, let's not forget IDW previously assigned woke writer Jason Aaron to work on their TMNT comics, and there's no telling if that's improved since. If IDW loses the license to develop/publish TMNT in the future, it'll be for the best, but if the franchise only makes its way to another publisher that's just as woke, nothing will change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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