Daily Wire guest writer goes too easy on Tom King

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IDW hires Grant Morrison to write James Bond adaptations

The Hollywood Reporter (via Total Film/Yahoo) says IDW, already having established a bad name for themselves as pushers of woke garbage, have hired one of most leftist ideologues to write new James Bond adaptations:

IDW Publishing has acquired the license to thrill and has set Morrison, Grant Morrison, to shake, not stir, things up.

Partnering with Ian Fleming Publications, IDW has picked up the license to create all-new comic book adventures featuring the iconic British spy James Bond.

The two companies have tapped writer Grant Morrison, the influential and award-winning scribe known for All-Star Superman and his multi-year Batman run as well medium-pushing comics such as Animal Man and Doom Patrol.

“Pairing a renowned franchise like James Bond with the visionary writer Grant Morrison is a perfect example of IDW doing what it does best with licensed properties,” said IDW CEO Davidi Jonas in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Our goal isn’t to simply provide supplemental and optional stories. We strive to take radical swings which celebrate and stay true to the very qualities that make the franchise special while also reinventing it for the modern comic book landscape.”

[...] “Our opening 6-part adventure, Sunbreaker, attempts to create a definitive Bond story featuring everything fans love about the character and his world, while adding a whole lot more,” Morrison said. “Expect to see James Bond in a few unfamiliar situations, facing unfamiliar foes, in a world very like our own as reflected in a deadly funhouse mirror – a world of intrigue, violence, double cross and deception. A world through which James Bond glides like a killer shark among minnows. Charismatic, ruthless, unstoppable.”

Notice how Morrison's own statement says nothing about sex or romance, but does mention violence. That can be telling something, as can the description of 007 as a "killer shark", and "unstoppable", suggesting this'll come off more like a Mary Sue fanfiction.

This also reminds me that 5 years ago, artist Aaron Lopresti was ordered by Dynamite to censor an illustration of a woman in lingerie, all for the sake of a woke era. What if IDW and Morrison go even further? It also reminds me that, when Morrison was writing "New" X-Men, at the time, he and his artist, Frank Quitely, drew Emma Frost in the skimpy white outfit she was most known for years prior. It wouldn't be surprising if Morrison for one would do it very differently today if he buys into woke ideology full force now.

In any case, I'll stick with the first 16 Bond movies instead, since they were a lot more entertaining than what came later, and if violence is all the modern licensees think is worth marketing, that's exactly the problem. And what's IDW doing right as of now, if they too still follow wokeness?

Topics like Magneto, Kitty Pryde and Sabra at the NYCC

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

Magneto brings a specific Jewish history into that broader metaphor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sabra introduces a different dimension: Israeli identity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lanterns TV series villifies both police and policewomen, and even pulls an Identity Crisis

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart lets know what the finale for the James Gunn-produced Lanterns series is, and who was written killing Hal Jordan:

DC Studios’ HBO Max series Lanterns revealed who killed superhero Hal Jordan in the season finale this week and several many fans are shocked and disgusted over who the writers turned into a killer.

***SPOILERS***

The series, which holds an estimated $130 million production budge on eight episodes that took more than three months to shoot, has taken a lot of criticism since its debut for the massive amount of wokeism it has forced on viewers. The finale, however, revealed who shot the original human Green Lantern in the head and incensed many fans as it turned out that Hal’s purported love interest, Sheriff Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald), was the murderer.

Most of the detractors are confused over the reveal because it does not seem to make any logical sense. Not only was Sheriff Kelly portrayed as a love interest for the man she murdered in cold blood, but the scene depicting the murder does not contain any threat to Kelly (or her son) being posed by Hal Jordan, who she then ruthlessly shot to death.

Without getting too far into the comic book weeds of this storyline, the plot of the season maintains that Kelly’s son is actually part alien (a Martian Manhunter), a fact that Kelly has tried to keep hidden from the world. In the controversial murder scene, Jordan reveals that he knows that her son, Noah Macon (Shea Pritchard), is part alien and that he wants to help her keep the boy’s secret and to protect him from danger.

But, in a shocking split-second decision, Kelly whips out her sheriff’s service pistol and shoots Jordan in the forehead, killing him, despite the fact that he was not acting belligerently or threatening her or Noah in any way.

The producers pulled an Identity Crisis, in reference to the abominable 2004 DC miniseries that degraded women, made heroes look bad, and was a left-wing metaphor for September 11, 2001. And here, in Lanterns, you could say they villify not just simply law enforcement, but a policewoman/mother too. WB's spending only so much money on something this repugnant? I hesitate to think what they'd do if Carol Ferris were the co-star.

I think audiences who care would be strongly advised to turn off the TV set. If there's a 2nd season in the works, it's better to avoid it entirely. This is one of the most horrifically forced and contrived programs supposedly based on classic comics characters, and compounds the damage that GL first seriously experienced in Action Comics Weekly back in mid-1988, marking its downhill collapse that continued for many years, and has never recovered from to date.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More propaganda being published in favor of NYC's illegal-immigrant-pandering comic

The New York Times (archive link) published a puff piece favorable to NYC's propaganda comic that sides with illegal immigration, and against ICE. Worst, in case it wasn't mentioned before, its writer and artist are veterans of the regular industry:

As New York City middle school and high school students return to classrooms this term, they are receiving access to “Know Your Rights,” an educational comic book that prepares individuals for encounters with federal law enforcement officers.

It is the latest release by Civics for All, a program of the city schools’ department of social studies and civics. The program began in 2020 and now includes 45 comics. The print run of “Know Your Rights” is 140,000 — half in English, half in Spanish. It is also available digitally in 14 languages.

The comic presents vignettes, based on real events, about encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including guidance specific to New York City that emphasizes knowing your legal options at home, at work or walking to school. In easy-to-follow scenes with clear and brightly colored artwork, the story gives readers legal hotline numbers, and advice on planning ahead, organizing documents and memorizing emergency contact information.

“Know Your Rights,” written by Alex Segura and drawn by David Hahn, was suggested by members of Project Open Arms, a city school system effort to support immigrants, including asylum seekers. They saw value in helping students and families understand the rights that come with being an undocumented person.

I think Hahn drew stories for Bill Willingham's Fables series years ago, and wonder what the latter thinks of having worked with such leftists today, if they were going to go miles out of their way and throw their support behind tales that're hurtful to the USA? As for Segura, he's been quite the left-wing propagandist himself for some time, and he worked at Archie in the past 15 years, where I'm sure he had plenty of grimy stuff to foist on it.

Using comics and graphic novels in schools is not new. “Maus,” by Art Spiegelman, in the 1990s “broke a lot of barriers in terms of the acceptance of comics,” Hillary Chute, an English professor at Northeastern University, who specializes in comics and graphic narratives, said in an interview. She was a graphic novels columnist for The New York Times Book Review from 2018 to 2022.

I'm sure the citation of Maus was deliberate too, based on Spiegelman's leftism. After all, who in the MSM cares today about Will Eisner's GNs like A Contract With God? They don't think that broke any barriers by contrast, right? Surprisingly, the NYT's writer does give space for a conservative to comment on the propaganda comic:

Jennifer Weber, a fellow specializing in education policy at the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank, said in an interview that using comics is not a bad thing, but that “Know Your Rights” portrays immigrants as the protagonists and ICE as the antagonists, which is “one-sided.”

For civics lessons, “I would say that you would absolutely need to understand the other side,” she continued, adding that the comic misses an opportunity to teach readers about why ICE was formed and to showcase Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

But that's not what the propagandists bankrolling this comic at City Hall are doing, and under Zohran Mamdani, things have become much worse with the propaganda ramped up, all at the expense of decent Americans. And then they even have professional comics writers/artists come in and contribute to the damage they're inflicting, with Segura fluff-coating the procedures:

Segura said that writing this comic “felt really important,” adding that it provides valuable information “because we are experiencing a spike in activity from nonmunicipal law enforcement, namely ICE and organizations like that, where it’s imperative not only for kids, but their families and friends to know what their rights are and what the city can do to protect and help them.”

Politics aside, the aim of the comic is to inform. “People should know their rights, right?” Carlin asked. “That shouldn’t be controversial.”

Nor should it be controversial to prevent violent criminals from entering the USA, should it? And Europe? Also, doesn't anybody consider 911 Families, and how the memories of their beloved relatives are being let down and desecrated? Well Segura and Hahn certainly haven't, and this propaganda comic that supposedly "informs" only adds insult to injury. They're even hurting law enforcement whose goal is to ensure safety, and making NYC all the more an insufferable place to live. What "valuable" info does this comic give? And why is the angle of the comic that important in contrast to actual victims of crime, in NYC and elsewhere?

Spider-Man comics sadly can no longer define Marvel as they used to, because of PC and editorial mandates

A writer at ComicBook continues the site's unfortunate leanings towards tabloid superficiality, this time taking an almost hilariously superficial look at Spidey's history and whitewashing the mistakes made since the turn of the century. For example:

Villains are one of the most important parts of superhero comics; as they say, a hero is only as good as his enemies. Marvel has been the home to some amazing villains over the decades and if we’re being honest, the Wall-Crawler has some of the best antagonists out there. Spider-Man’s villains have been amazing from the start, animal-based gimmick villains who take the idea of “science gone wrong” that is so important to Peter Parker’s mythos and use it in novel ways. Villains have played a massive role in making Spider-Man as popular as he is. Spidey is constantly playing off his enemies and he needs to have villains that make for both exciting stories and great character interplay with the webslinging hero. Spider-Man books have proven Marvel’s most fertile ground for villains, with bad guys springing up that have changed comics forever. The Marvel Universe would be very different without his fantastic rosters of foes and not in a good way.

Umm, there's plenty of other Marvel series where formidable villains were created, and with talented writing to accompany them, an entertaining story could result. I love Spidey as much as the next person, but I'm not going to say no other Marvel comic produced villains as durable as those seen in Spidey's comics. Though I should remind that villains alone are not the reason to read such books, and shouldn't be placed on a higher level of appreciation than the heroes. And telling us heroes are only as good as their enemies is no substitute for merit-based writing.

Oh, and since we're on the subject, by the mid-80s, the Kingpin, who first appeared in Spidey around 1967, was starting to make more appearances in comics like Daredevil. Wilson Fisk may have begun as a Spidey adversary, but later on became more notable as a recurring villain in DD's stories. And Kraven the Hunter was later written committing suicide in 1987's "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline, so it's not like all villains lasted forever at a time when Marvel had meaning. That said, they do cite supporting casts:

Supporting casts have been important since the beginning, when characters like Lois Lane, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and many more added some much-needed spice to superhero stories. Over the years, readers have come to expect amazing supporting casts from their favorite books, especially at Marvel. The House of Ideas has always showcased more human heroes, with the trials of their superhero life coloring their civilian lives, and the best example of a stellar supporting cast in the Marvel Universe comes from Spidey’s comics. We’ve gotten numerous best of all-time supporting characters from his books – Aunt May, Mary Jane, J. Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, Harry Osborn, Ben Urich, Ned Leeds, Betty Brant, Liz Allen, and so many more – with the best of them showing why supporting casts are so important to superhero comics. Spidey’s supporting cast has added so much to his books, allowing creators to take the stories in directions they couldn’t have otherwise went. One of the main reasons you expect so much from Marvel supporting casts is that the Spider-Man comics have been spoiling readers with the best supporting cast in the business for decades.

Interesting they should bring this up, because if memory serves, J. Michael Straczynski made very little use out of the most notable recurring cast members in Spidey in his overrated 2001-07 run, and Mary Jane Watson was kicked to the curb nearly 2 decades ago, while all these propagandists waffled around, and, while it obviously wouldn't be something to be happy about doing, they said nothing about whether a boycott would be the best direction to take if that could help get the Spider-marriage restored, and any or all undeserving staff members dismissed from Marvel.

And what's this about more human heroes? That too was massively destroyed in the past quarter century or more, as heroes and co-stars actually had humanity stripped from them by ways of contrived writing, and having cynicism and other shoddy character traits forced upon them. IIRC, Marvel may have been trying to convince the audience to dislike Mary Jane by forcing an irritating personality upon her in 1999, and in the end, One More/Brand New Day really buried whatever convincing personalities Marvel once had for their casts. If the editors and writers wanted to turn MJ into a villainess for real, it's entirely possible they'd do it, and certainly came close with the shoddy story where she was forced into the Venom glop.

With the rise of cinematic superhero universes and geek culture, you’d assume that it’s easier than ever to become a comic fan, but this isn’t the case. Not every town has a comic store and that’s merely the first of some rather large hurdles you have to get over. Another rather large one is just how daunting comics can be to the average fan. Marvel Comics has some amazing gateway books, but even after reading those, it can be hard to pick out who to start with. Spider-Man, though, has proven to be one of the best characters to kick off your comic journey with. To begin with, he was given one of the greatest origins in comics, one that’s simple to understand and can be the catalyst for the best stories you can imagine. He’s an extremely relatable character – a guy with low self esteem using his powers to fight crime as his life falls apart around him is basically how everyone is living in 2026. His supporting cast makes you feel at home immediately. The Amazing Spider-Man is one of those books that is always among the first books that any comic fan buys, the perfect primer on why superhero comics so much fun to read.

In that case, why not recommend the Epic Collection archives collecting Spidey's adventures from the past century, or even the Omnibuses? If they believe only the newest items in stores matter, they're not serious about recommendations. Also, what's "relatable" about a character who made a deal with Mephisto in One More Day? And then, they even fawn over the Ultimate line, and the DEI propaganda it wound up emphasizing:

I have a friend who mostly only buys comics when he think they’re going to be “key issues” and I remember him being one of the first people to talk to me about the death of the first Ultimate Spider-Man in the early ’10s. Ultimate Spider-Man had always been the most popular Ultimate characters and lots of fans were reticent about his death; the Ultimate books were already mostly dead and a lot of fans figured that this would be the end for them. However, instead, we got an all-new Spider-Man in Miles Morales. Miles was able to grow his fanbase on his own in a universe where he was the main Spider-Man and it worked better than anyone could have imagined. Fans loved him so much that he would end up surviving the end of the Ultimate Universe and joining the 616. There was the chance that this wouldn’t work out for him, but instead of losing his popularity, he became bigger than ever. The Spider-Man books were able to do something that few other comics have – introduce a second character that stays popular even when readers can just read the adventures of the original instead. It’s a huge achievement that we don’t really praise enough.

This is all we need to know just how biased they are, and all delivered without sales figures to prove their empty point. What next, will they sugarcoat and recommend Jason Aaron's own woke pandering? And then, lastly:

Being a Spider-Man fan isn’t always great. There’s something about Spider-Man’s comic in that when things get bad, they get really, really bad. A big part of this is the simplest – his books sell regardless; there’s no reason to listen to fan complaints as long as they’re still buying the book. Anyone out there who has been a part of the online comic community for any period of time has encountered the often hyperbolic hatred for the hero’s comics, especially since “One More Day” did away with his marriage to Mary Jane. In the last 19 years (yes, it’s been that long), fans hated Spider-Man comics more than anything, especially if you were just going by the stuff said in comment sections. However, when you went to the sales charts, The Amazing Spider-Man was always one of the bestselling comics out there. It’s only been in the last year or so that it’s not been consistently at the top of the sales charts; now, it’s merely in the top ten. Spidey comics are able to survive fan ire like no other. There’s no other character that could have fans as angry as The Amazing Spider-Man has and survive. It’s one of the most interesting things about Spider-Man – when his fans are complaining the loudest, his book is usually selling like hot cakes.

Well at least here, they hint at a leading problem explaining why things got so bad: because you have only so many fools out there, doubtlessly including tons of speculators, who won't judge by merit and keep buying Spidey no matter how much this makes it impossible to ever see the Spider-marriage restored. That said, even Spidey sales have long plummeted, and I remember that, when sales figures were visible at ICV2, the sales appeared to have dropped under 100,000 copies allegedly sold. Unfortunately, Marvel's modern management is so blatant, they're clearly willing to keep churning out Spidey and other now maligned comics no matter how poorly they sell in the end.

And what's this about "hatred" for Spidey's comics? That's only in the context of that the story in a current issue is bottom of the barrel, and they still force a mandate forbidding restoration of the Spider-marriage, and improving respect for Mary Jane as a character. It's obvious MJ's of no value to the columnist, or he would've championed the Spider-marriage, pro-MJ supporters long ago instead of writing such drivel. So why write such fawning garbage? All it does is compound how unserious ComicBook really is as a news site, and how creatively bankrupt they are themselves. They're an utter embarrassment. They're yet another reason why Spidey no longer defines pop culture itself.

Onetime DC employee who wrote a terrible Adam Strange tale turns up again

The Comics Journal interviewed Richard Bruning, one of DC's former managers (and husband of the onetime editor Karen Berger), who, while it goes curiously unmentioned, had a handful stories to his credits, including a repellent miniseries from 1990 starring Adam Strange, which saw humanoid co-star Alanna killed for the sake of it, though that story was reversed several years later. Though I couldn't seem to find any mention of Adam Strange here, the discussion does bring up the following, along with early efforts in digital artistry, and how Paul Levitz actually thought this guy was worth keeping for employment:

There had been a couple of novelty efforts at computer art in comics by that point. There was Shatter for First Comics, and then an Iron Man graphic novel [1988’s Crash] at Marvel…

Pepé Moreno approached us after Shatter came out, and we did Batman: Digital Justice. I got to work with him very closely on it, and I started learning a lot about how those tools could work. He and Mike Saenz [artist of Shatter and Crash] were pushing the boundaries of what these machines could handle. I don't even know how they pulled off what they did, and it was certainly crude in some ways, but it was a necessary step to get to a technological level that would give you art worth looking at. All those things convinced me that this was a real turning point in my industry publication and communication. I was getting very impatient with DC dragging its heels. I had become friends with another graphic designer, Dean Motter from Canada, and we had been talking about forming a business and opening up studios in Manhattan. He was moving down from Toronto and wanted to live in New York.

That was around 1990?

Yeah. I decided to go out on a limb and resign, and then set up a studio with Dean. Fortunately for me, Paul liked what I did, and he signed me up to an exclusive contract for the comic book business [at DC]. I couldn't work for any other publisher, but I got paid every month whether I worked or not, which was kind of cool, and it certainly helped financially in getting a business started.

You must have made a compelling pitch to him.

I didn't pitch it, he pitched it to me. I had a very successful run for those five years at DC, and I had become fairly high profile within the company, which was a very small company at that point. I think Paul saw something in me, and he didn't want Marvel to have it. Basically, he thought it was to his advantage as a businessman to keep me off the market for the competition. That was an incredible honor, and I left on good terms with him. He was happy just to have me still doing freelance work for DC, and not working for Marvel or anybody else.

What's curious about the mention of "freelance" work is that it sounds like Mr. Bruning's obscuring the time when he wrote the aforementioned Adam Strange miniseries, Man of Two Worlds, which was pretty shoddy, and while Alanna's fate was reversed later on, as noted, that doesn't change the fact that it was artistically an embarrassment. But that's exactly why it's a shame if Comics Journal's writer and Bruning himself deliberately obscured his writing portfolio and all but limited the discussion to the business side of things. That only suggests they don't have the courage to discuss what mistakes were made in writing, and possibly art, and how to improve upon said mistakes in the future.

As for computerized artwork, there may have been some achievements, including the aforementioned Iron Man special, but some of the more recent efforts from the past 20 years or so are utterly worthless, recalling an artist named Adi Granov who specialized in stuff like that for Marvel. Other artists like Greg Horn only seemed to do cover art, and while that alone might be okay, it hardly helps in the long run. Digital art may have some potential, but Marvel decidedly didn't make good use of it by the turn of the century. Now, here's where he first brings up how he had a role in getting rid of DC's symbol that was retained from 1977-2005, though recently was restored, certainly on the DC Finest archives. It was the Vertigo line where this first occurred:

Tell me about the process of developing the Vertigo design. Was the idea that you wanted to set this off as visually something distinct from the main DC branding?

Yes, that was one of the things we decided early on. We did not want the DC bullet on the Vertigo books.

You said that you always had problems with that bullet.

Paul thought that some identification to DC [was necessary]. I didn't integrate it into the Vertigo logo per se, on the covers and such, but there'd be a little “DC” in a different typeface just right above or right below the Vertigo logo on the covers. There was that presence or indicator that DC was part of it. We worked that out with Paul, and it worked out fine. It was just a matter of figuring out how to do a line of books that people know are from DC, that will appeal to people who don't read DC comics. How do we get them to want to try it out? Creating a specific identity was really important.

One of the ways was we did this was to use only painted covers. There were very few painted covers on regular comic books, partially because they are not economically feasible, and also because people wanted their line art to maintain [consistency] for the superhero titles. We were able to start commissioning painters to do covers, and that immediately gave the book a different feel and look. The editorial stuff was all Karen.

Oh, I remember some painted covers on books like Avengers and New Teen Titans, and I'll say that those examples were among the better of their kind, if only because they weren't forced, unlike the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, which featured stunningly dull cover illustrations, whether painted or not. Why Bruning and company seemed to think it was such a big deal for an imprint that was allegedly aimed at adults I have no idea, because if they did it almost routinely and by editorial mandate, that risks insulting intellects. And speaking of Sandman, that's mentioned here:

It seems like that was pretty intrinsic to the Vertigo line from the beginning. There was this system, especially for some of the bigger titles like Sandman, where you would get collections coming out almost as soon as the story arcs concluded in the monthlies.

There was a lot of back and forth on that, because it wasn't the normal way that DC did things. They usually let time pass. It wasn't very important when you collected a certain volume of The Flash, but we could tell that we were picking up new readers all the time. We didn't want them to feel out of touch with what was going on in the books as book sales rose. We pushed very hard to get the books collected early. We would go to all the different comic dealer meetings and expos and talk to the retailers about this. The retailers were very explicit about the fact that if we give them volume one, and then three months later we give them volume two, and then volume three, they can push those books out the door all day long. That was the general consensus from the retailers. So we had a really strong ally in that, and it helped us firm that up as a publishing platform.

And a comic as overrated as Sandman truly was is exactly what they just had to collect instantly. All they did was hint they considered the superhero fare less valuable, compared to a comic that was more like a political lecture a number of times. But of course, they won't admit that, will they?

Most annoying of all is how the same publishers wouldn't consider the time may have come for making a shift to paperback/hardcover only, or even Graphic Novel format, if that sums it up better. Why waste so much money on two formats, rather than consider what could become more viable sales and business-wise?

Would you say that Paul was more reluctant to push for collected editions, while Jenette was more gung-ho in favor of it?

Yes. Jenette was by nature, a very gung-ho person. You could get around Paul by going to Jeanette, and then Jenette would convince Paul that it was a good idea, and he'd throw his hands up and go, “All right, whatever you want.” She was a wonderful agent of change. Without Jenette coming into the company when she did, I doubt DC would still be around. I mean, it almost folded in the late ‘70s. It was her enthusiasm and ability to take a risk – and Paul's ability to take a risk, too. He was not risk-averse. What you were trying to do just had better be nailed down. Don’t just wing it.

But, really, it was a good time. And the people there - Dick Giordano and everybody - were very supportive. Superhero editors were never very happy with Vertigo. Somehow they saw it as competition, or I think they saw it as thumbing our noses at the superhero books. That wasn't true. We were just doing our thing.

Oh, were they ever, if we take the Sandman as an example. It's one thing to write an adult comic, but another entirely to act like horror and dark, jarring violence are the only ways to do it. Even the heavier use of profanity in the Vertigo line is enough to raise questions. Now, here's more on what Bruning said about DC's most significant symbol:

You finally got to live out your dream of abandoning the bullet after all that time. And of course, it immediately ran into criticism from just about everywhere.

Yep. There is no pleasing people. I stand by my position that if you are stripping away the nostalgia that all of us, including myself, grew up with, the Bullet, structurally, doesn't work very well. There is too much negative space to it. Everything gets tiny if you start to reduce it. The little hair lines start to break up. It just becomes a little clump of things. And that's why on the design, I wanted a big clear “DC.” Whereas on the Bullet, the “DC” seems unimportant compared to the band with four white stars on it. I've worked with it physically more than most people have. I saw that early on that there were a lot of internal structural problems with the design itself, and I stand by that.

Well that's still nothing compared to the artistic mess DC became by that time, which Bruning and interviewer conveniently left out. But if the "DC Bullet" symbol matters, they were making peanuts out of an otherwise okay symbol for putting on the top corner of the comics, and considering Mr. Bruning otherwise didn't offer much positive by the mid-2000s, it's awfully hypocritical of him to make petty fusses about symbols when the company under DiDio plunged into repellent disasters. Years ago, I didn't even know they called it a "bullet"; I just thought it was a "diagonal" coin-like symbol. Since then, it's made a quiet comeback, now put to use on archives like the DC Finest series. So what's Bruning celebrating anyway?

It's striking to me that here we are in 2026, and yet after all this time, it feels like publishers have thrown up their hands at the idea of finding a new format that specifically works with digital readers and phones, and everything else. At the end of the day, comics still look like comics did 30 years ago.

Right? It's a unique format, and it is hard to get it to accommodate other means of presentation. People who buy comics are aware of a certain amount of a collectible nature in them. I think people wanted to be able to buy and hold the comics, and digital comics never gave them that. They didn't feel like they had anything. Comic book people have a physical collector sort of mentality. And I do, too. I love seeing the books lined up on my shelf. So yeah, that one hasn't been cracked yet.

Interesting they brought this up, because it's an important clue how digital comics on the web haven't caught on successfully, and certainly not the Big Two's. At the same time, they also hint at the misfortune of the speculator market, which largely ruined comicdom beginning in the early to mid-90s. And lest we forget, if they think anybody's going to care about digital when their stories are otherwise bad, they have to think again. When artwork becomes bad, and company wide crossovers keep getting churned out entirely unquestioned, that's why digital sales won't work. Next, wouldn't you know it, Mr. Bruning even lauds a man who turned out to be a bad omen, who ruined the storytelling, and whom Mr. Bruning apparently had a hand in approving for employment:

Around the same time that Zuda launched, Dan DiDio became executive editor at DC. I'm wondering how that played out in terms of your role.

I was one of the few people who interviewed Dan before he was hired. Paul wanted my take on him. Dan is another super smart guy, knows comics inside and out; he had even been doing a little writing, as well. He was pals with Jimmy Palmiotti, so he'd been given a few assignments here and there. Dan had big ambitions. I was very enthusiastic when he came on board, partially because the whole Mike/Denny/Archie thing hadn't worked. And then Archie tragically died from cancer. Denny was just – God love him, but he was kind of checked out. The burden was falling on Mike, but Mike had been carrying the ball for years by himself, and it's a hard job. Marvel couldn't keep anybody in place for a long time as editor-in-chief. There was turnover every year or two.

When you say that Denny was checked out, what do you mean?

I'm not trying to insult Denny. He was very nice man, but he just didn't seem like he was engaged in his work, shall we say. When I had a Batman project that I was working on, he felt a little too hands-off for me. At least, that’s how I view what an editor does, and he had his assistant doing most things. Again, I'm not trying to slag him, but just I think he was tired. He was tired of doing superhero comics.

As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Bruning is belittling O'Neil, though there's valid arguments to make that even O'Neil made serious mistakes. Also note how Bruning, by contrast, is more favorable to DiDio, and that's as telling as it's disgusting. If he's talking about Mike Carlin, it can be validly argued he was a failure, based on how he threw the late Len Strazewski under the bus, and I don't think Archie Goodwin, whom I assume he's alluding to, did a good job with them either, based on his being an editor of the pretentious James Robinson's Starman series. But to say DiDio was galaxies better than them, and knew comics inside-out, when he lacked a moral compass and relied heavily upon crossovers, that's insulting to the intellect.

The other big thing that was going on at that point was the merger of WildStorm into DC, which also brought Jim Lee into the company. How was that playing out?

That was funny. I hadn't been back long when Paul called me and said, “This is quiet. Don't tell anybody, but we're buying WildStorm, and I want you to help be the liaison to their offices to try to integrate them into ours.” We had never tried to do that before. Milestone was the closest thing where they had their own little editorial setup, but Jim had a very well-established shop that did everything. It was Jim that DC seemed to be buying. They were buying more Jim than they were buying WildStorm properties.

I went out to La Jolla every couple of months and just hung around there for three or four days, met with people, asked them if I could help them with anything, and if there was anything New York should be doing for them. We'd go over cover sketches, we'd go over marketing materials, just trying to point them in a direction, not tell them what they had to do.

A lot of good that did in the end. The Wildstorm universe didn't see much success when they bought it, or even tried to merge it into the DCU proper, and for something like 15 years now, it's largely vanished into the land of the forgotten. So what "success" is Mr. Bruning talking about even here?

If you look at the way DC looked when you came in ‘96 and the way it was when you left in 2010, do you think your time there was a success or a failure?

I'd like to think there were few failures. Something can be a success and be a commercial failure. If you achieve your creative goals, then it's a success. If people don't buy it, they're stupid. I was very fortunate there. I just felt like they gave me a lot of rope to hang myself, and I never hung myself, and they backed me. Even if I did something really stupid, they would say, don't do that again, and then let me move on. I'm eternally grateful to people like Jenette, and Paul, and Dick, but Paul probably the most of all. He was the one who brought me back for the 15-year tenure.

I think for me, the end really came when Warner Brothers decided these movies are really fucking big deals. The Batman trilogy was just setting the world on fire. That was the clarion call for corporate to come in from the West Coast and start telling us how the new place was going to be run.

He can say whatever he likes, but I think Mr. Bruning knows the failures were plenty when it comes to the comics themselves, and the company wide crossovers were also a standout example of that. And while the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy may have been a success, there were other adaptations that were failures, like the Jonah Hex and Green Lantern movies, to name early examples in modern times.

And it's very insulting how Mr. Bruning acts like they achieved artistic success in the past 3 decades, when early examples of destruction like the mishandling of Green Lantern can clarify otherwise. For the Flash, the plummeting down came when Geoff Johns became writer. And lest we forget the most repulsive example of the 2000s, Identity Crisis. Mr. Bruning's declaration the audience is "stupid" for not buying is also poor conduct, because you don't use insulting words to describe consumers who aren't interested in your output when it effectively becomes repellent. No doubt, he also has some responsibility for bringing in even more "woke" writers of the times, and artists. Based on that, he's another former employee of the majors who won't be missed, based on what pretentions he foisted upon the DCU, which includes his aforementioned Adam Strange miniseries, which he didn't even have the courage to discuss. That's very telling as to how much he merely whistles in the dark.

I think This Man, This Collection's take on Man of Two Worlds sums up pretty well why the story aged poorly:

In Bruning’s introduction to the collected edition of this story, he defends himself by stating his childhood love of the character, and that he was trying to apply the same approach to storytelling that that Alan Moore applied in Watchmen and Swamp Thing or that Frank Miller did with The Dark Knight Returns. But in his zeal to tell a more “mature” Adam Strange story, Bruning loses track of what made the character appealing in the first place. That opinion was clearly the one that prevailed, given what happened next. After this mini-series, Adam Strange dropped out of the DC Universe completely; his next appearance was a few years later in a supporting role in Green Lantern #75, when Kyle Rayner moved the floating city of Ranagar back to the planet. In 1998, in Mark Waid hit the reset button by bringing Alanna back to life in two-issue story in JLA. Aside from Adam’s daughter, everything of consequence from Adam Strange had been undone.

So he basically "cliched" the audience by applying more darkness than need be, and surely worse yet, making Adam far less heroic, if at all, and making Ranagar's council look repellent too. The part about the Zeta-beam being designed to teleport a guy to Rann for the purpose of serving as a breeding stud also conflicts with the original takes from the Silver Age. This posting misses, however, that there was a Hal Jordan-starring GL story written by the disgraced Gerard Jones printed in 1993, prior to the Rayner run, where Adam made an appearance, and that story stunk of fishy stuff too. And Bruning didn't even have the courage to discuss any of that in his Comics Journal interview. It's fortunate that dreadful story was jettisoned, but unfortunate the DCU had to collapse afterwards due to the machinations of an editor Bruning himself had a hand in appointing a quarter century ago. As a result, Adam Strange and company still suffered a terrible injustice, as did many other DCU cast members.

What the studio producing Brubaker's Criminal adaptation says in his legal defense

According to Deadline (via AV Club), here's what Amazon/MGM studios says in response to the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Ed Brubaker:

“His most sensational allegation — that Brubaker pointed a functional firearm at his face and pulled the trigger — is pure invention,” the demurrer adds. “Had that happened, every person in the room, Noohu included, had a duty to report it and in a post-Rust industry on high alert to firearms, someone would have. No one did. Defendants first learned of the supposed incident when Noohu reemerged peddling the story and demanding a payday.” [...]

“The timing of that election gives the game away,” the GT lawyers say of the Sri Lankan American filmmaker who was looking to be made an EP as his PA gig came to an end. “Noohu sat on these supposed claims for twenty months and filed suit on the eve of the press circuit for Criminal. That is the conduct of an opportunist timing his leverage, not a victim seeking redress.”

The part about the pistol is certainly the most questionable, and if the "plaintiff" did this out of spite, perhaps because he's trying to paint himself as a victim based on his Islamic background, that is wrong. And after the Alex Baldwin scandal, yes, it's definitely far more believable that film studios are being more careful not to allow live firearms on set. So, while I don't find Brubaker an appealing writer, and firmly believe he played a big part in bringing down comicdom in more than a quarter century, for now, I will withhold judgement. For all we know, this Noohu is probably a grifter and Islamic victimologist who's trying to get a bigger piece of the pie, and entirely indiscriminate about whether his target's also a leftist. That kind of person is not worth listening to, if it turns out he's filed false complaints.

Why the late artist Darwyn Cooke took the job drawing Catwoman's 3rd volume

Since the subject of pretentious writer Ed Brubaker recently came up, I found this fluff-coated Popverse article from last May, telling why the late artist Darwyn Cooke accepted the assignment of drawing the Catwoman volume Brubaker wrote in the early 2000s:

Catwoman has nine lives, and one of her most notable lives was her 2001 revamp by Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke. The character’s previous run had mostly portrayed her as a cunning thief in skimpy clothing, but Brubaker and Cooke gave her a new look, a new supporting cast, and a new mission as the protector of Gotham’s East End. According to Darwyn Cooke, who passed away in 2016, this was a dealbreaker for him.

“Going back to Catwoman, when I was asked if I wanted to get involved in that, I said, ‘On one condition. She has to be completely redesigned. And I have to know that the writer believes, as well as I know, that this is a book that should be aimed at women, not at teenage boys,’” Darwyn Cooke says during a panel at Toronto Fan Expo 2009.

“And I said if that’s the approach we’re going to take, then I’m happy to get involved, because this is a great character, and it gives us an opportunity to build her back up and redeem her as a person and get girls reading comics again and excited about a character that they can relate to. I’ve always felt that this is an important thing that any sort of creator should be trying to consider.”

It’s good to have nine lives, and it’s even better if one of them is penciled by Darwyn Cooke.

I think a challenging query to be raised here is - what's so wrong with writing a story appealing to teen boys? Or, who says the same approach won't appeal to teen girls as well? In hindsight, I'm really not impressed with Cooke as an artist, and IIRC, at the time this took place, DC made efforts to do away with the blue shadings from previous designs for Batman's costume, and make entirely black. Catwoman's costume underwent a similar change, of course. But was her previous outfit really skimpy? I think during the 80s, Selina Kyle had one with cleavage, but I don't recall if what she wore in the 90s drawn by Jim Balent had, so this is another unshockingly sloppy take on history.

That said, did women really flock en masse to Brubaker and Cooke's take on the Feline Fatale? Perhaps the following I found on CBR's forums from 2016 can give a clue:

I did some research on Catwoman's sales from 1994 to 2016 on comichron.com and diamondcomics.com. I've been wondering why Catwoman sales have been so low, especially why they plummeted a few issues ago since they've been the best issues I've read in many years. Now it is assumed the comic is cancelled because it was not mentioned as being included during the Rebirth event.

Catwoman vol 2 (1993-2001) maintained much, much better sales than vol 3 or vol 4. In fact, the final issue of vol 2 in 2001 (the worst selling of the series) sold almost as many copies as vol 3 issue 25 (by Brubaker) in 2003, about 26,000 copies. The 90's Catwoman never ranked below 100 in the monthly Top 100 Comics chart. It only dropped below a rank of 75 around the Fall of 2000. It almost always sold as many issues as Robin, Supergirl, Birds of Pray, often outselling them and usually outsold Wonder Woman consistently.

Volume 3, which ran from 2001-2008, did not sell near as well. Its sales dropped from 49,000 copies of issue #1 to 26,500 copies of issue #12 in only a year. It consistently ranked well under 75 on the Top 100 chart, oftentimes dropping below 100. Its final issue only sold 15,000 copies.

Volume 4, the New 52, sold a little better than vol 3. Issue #1 sold 53,670 copies, but issue #20 was down to 26,900 copies, ranking 85th on the chart and was then one of the 3 worst selling DC titles. Sales from that point on were consistent until issue 42 only sold 22,000 copies. Then issue 47, Frank Tieri's first issue, plummeted to only 15,000 copies, ranking 166 on The Top 200 chart for December 2015.

These sales figures make it pretty obvious that the stories told and the artwork used used in Vol 2 in the 90's was significantly* more desirable than that of Vol 3 & 4.

I believe there were a few problems with Vol 3 from the beginning of it. First, I believe the new costume was simply unattractive. Darwyn Cooke said he wanted to tone down Catwoman's sexiness and make her look more practical and utilitarian. And he gave her bug-eye goggles. Catwoman became the opposite of sexy and I think that was a bad idea.

Next I think focusing on Catwoman in the role of a vigilante sworn to protect Gotham's seedy East End, where she has a controversial history of working as dominatrix, probably wasn't ideal for most comic readers. I think it was too dark and controversial for general audiences to get into. This was not the Catwoman that the public was used to seeing, and not what they wanted for her comic. She has always been glamorous and sensuous. She was fun because she was naughty, but still helped people often. This new Catwoman was a complete opposite, so people didn't buy it.

Vol 4, the New 52, had prettier artwork but the same bug-eye goggles, Emma Peele outfit, and bulky boots. She was a theif again but she was younger and dumber. And she was having sex with Batman while the two of them kept their masks on in the first issue. Yeah because when you wear a mask over the top half of your face, the person you are frequently screwing will never find out your true identity. This is just bad writing, which simply got worse over the next few years and the sales kept dropping.*

It's tragic that the past few issues have such low sales, and that Catwoman won't be included in DC's Rebirth. Frank Tieri's issues have been recieving great reviews, especially issue #50.

But I hope that DC has big plans for Catwoman to make her more attractive, more exciting, and more successful.

Thoughts??

Unfortunately, as the wokeness of the past decade made clear, there was no reason for optimism, and besides, Identity Crisis also led to ruination. IIRC, there was a story with Catwoman shortly afterwards where a retcon took place claiming she'd been influenced by Zatanna, quite possibly at Batman's request, to reform Selina. In other words, according to that tale, Selina did not reform of her own accord and thinking, which makes a mockery and insult to the older works of better writers.

Cooke's claims also ring hollow when you consider that at least a few women actually worked on the Feline Fatale years earlier. For example, Mindy Newell, and then Jo Duffy, who wrote the first 14 issues of the 90s series. So Cooke and Brubaker were insulting a woman who had no issue with depicting Selina Kyle as sexy. A most disgraceful distortion Cooke pulled there, and if memory serves, Brubaker not only implausibly revived Holly Robinson, a character originally seen in Frank Miller's Year One tale from 1987, Brubaker even turned her into a lesbian for the sake of it.

Now I'll give Cooke this: he did the right thing to say he didn't want to see the kind of one-sided sexual violence seen in Identity Crisis become normalized as offensive, sensationalistic plot devices. But if he once said he didn't want to see once heterosexual characters be turned LGBT overnight, he contradicted that, in a manner of speaking, by working with a writer as overrated and exploitive as Brubaker, who did something like that, certainly in Gotham Central with Greg Rucka, where they changed the Renee Montoya character to lesbian. Cooke also continued to work with DC even after Identity Crisis came out, and it can be validly argued that in doing so, Cooke wasn't following through on his arguments convincingly. Besides, he also once led a chummy connection with the disgraced Gerard Jones, and that too doesn't reflect well on Cooke in hindsight.

Cooke may have made a few valid statements, but he was apparently an early example of a wokester, and one can only wonder what he thought of his take on Catwoman selling considerably lower than the volume drawn by Balent, and first written by Duffy. Cooke not only insulted the aforementioned two, he also insulted plenty of other, more talented artists who came before Balent, like those who drew Catwoman in the 1970s. Having artists like Cooke on the job is sadly not better at all.

And as for the mention of Frank Tieri, wasn't he the writer who derailed Wolverine in the last 2 years of the 1988-2003 series? One more reason why I'd rather not buy his take on Catwoman either.

A lawsuit was filed against Ed Brubaker, but because of the politics involved, judgement should be withheld for now

Brubaker, a comics writer who's been in the business for 35 years, may be one of the most left-wing around, and overrated. But the following news on Deadline about a sexual/racial harassment lawsuit that's been filed against him contains clues why it may not be a good idea to take it at immediate face value:

What may or may not have gone down on Prime Video‘s upcoming Criminal now looks set to end up in a California courtroom.

“This action arises from the sustained sexual, racial, national origin, and religious harassment that Plaintiff ljaaz Noobu, a Sri Lankan American filmmaker with fourteen years of experience in the film industry, endured while working on the production of the forthcoming television series Criminal,” states a 12-claim complaint filed earlier this week in L.A. Superior Court. [...]

“Hired in February 2023 as a production assistant to showrunner and Executive Producer Ed Brubaker, Plaintiff came to the production eager to contribute his talent and technical knowledge to a marquee project, the pretty plainspoken jury trial-seeking document from Burbank attorney Fahim Rahman says. “Instead, he was subjected to a workplace made toxic and abusive by the very individuals entrusted with authority over it.”

With claims that Noobu was subjected to cracks about rape and “demeaning stereotypes” for being the only Muslim on set and asked by Brubaker if the PA was a supporter of Hamas, the suit seeks a variety of unspecified damages. Also named in the complaint as defendants alongside Brubaker are Amazon Services, MGM, Criminal EP Phillip Barnett and others as defendants.

Now, Brubaker is but one of many pretentious scribes in today's landscape, and in hindsight, I don't like his Batman work from the early 2000s. But when I noticed the plaintiff's an Islamic adherent, I had to give pause to taking the claims at face value, realizing it's possible this could be trumped up accusations. That doesn't mean it's impossible for a non-Muslim leftist to abuse a Muslim though, recalling there was an incident in NYC over 15 years ago where a leftist attacked a Muslim cab driver, and a few years ago, a Pakistani Muslim in Seattle, Washington, nearly had his son taken from him for the sake of "transing". But it's clear in the long run that negativity from leftists towards Islamists is rare, especially based on where they're going now with choosing political candidates.

I do wonder however, what Brubaker thinks of Hamas? Or the plaintiff himself? That's what isn't clear from this article. Somehow, it's scarier to think what Brubaker could think, based on any leftist credentials he retains. But if it turns out the plaintiff comes within even miles of supporting such a repulsive bunch, then I'm not sympathetic to him.

For now, we'll have to withhold judgement and let any ensuing trial determine whether the accusations are factual or false. However this turns out though, I'm not interested in Brubaker's resume.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sloppy article about Frank Miller's work on Daredevil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brand new Green Lantern stories are considered the "best"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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