A dreadful choice for best of 2025

A writer at Superhero Hype chose what he claims is the best of 2025, and his selection of Dr. Doom material from the past year sounds pretty predetermined:

2025 was a red letter year for Doctor Doom. His profile was boosted publicly by the hype surrounding the upcoming MCU movie Avengers: Doomsday. HIs star also rose in the comics, where he dominated the Earth in the One World Under Doom miniseries. And yet, for all this, his finest turn in 2025 came as part of an unlikely team-up with Rocket Raccoon.

Written by J. Michael Straczynski, with art by Will Robson, Doctor Doom & Rocket Racoon #1 finds Rocket summoned to Latveria. Doom is in a contemplative mood, and has come to question the nature of existence. In short, he seeks the meaning of life.

However, for all his knowledge, Doom is a master of Earthly science. This is where Rocket and his own brilliance with alien technology come into play. Rocket, for his part, thinks Doom is nuts, but he’s willing to indulge just about anything if the money is good.

Doom and Rocket are an odd couple, to say the least. However, the pairing makes sense under Straczynski’s pen. Both characters are largely amoral, yet can be pressed into playing the hero. This leads to the development of an odd friendship that defies logic, yet fits both characters perfectly. Beyond that, the story delves into some truly deep philosophy.

Robson’s artwork further highlights the paradoxical nature of the story. The image of a talking raccoon standing alongside a Wagnerian figure in full plate is frankly ridiculous. It is the sort of thing that only works in comics. And yet, it does work.

Yeah right, and all because JMS is the writer, and based on that, the columnist wants it to. At least that's my perception of what's going on here. Surely it's not appalling we have a case here of a presumed goodie who's making a Faustian pact with a villain? Atop all that, it's sad how a Hollywood scribe who played a part in bringing down Marvel and DC in the 2000s has been welcomed back by C.B. Cebulski to writing the former's creations, all for the sake of endless line-wide crossovers that brought down Marvel in the long run.

The article even fawns over Gail Simone's writing in X-Men, and says:

I’ve honestly never been much of an X-Men fan. The franchise has often exemplified the worst excesses of superhero comics, with writing that presumes you already know the characters. Uncanny X-Men #17 does not do this. Indeed, it’s a simple one-shot story with an interesting new villain.

This is confusing, because IIRC, there were times when some characters in X-Men and other such comics would have an introduction written for them multiple times, explaining what their powers are and what they could do. That's not "presuming we know" the cast of characters, but rather, assuming we don't. Of course, today, if you know where to look, you'll notice some examples of mainstream comics where they couldn't care less if you didn't know any of the characters, because they intend to obliterate any characters they consider literally expendable through a crossover or some other shoddily written event, as was the case with Identity Crisis and Avengers: Disassembled 2 decades ago. And such a direction, when taken, is disgraceful as it's insulting to the intellect.

All that aside, this is another puff piece that seems to be deliberately written just for promoting an overrated writer who wasn't worth all the fuss when she began. And then, there's also the choice of the Titans Annual:

Donna Troy is notable among DC Comics’ characters for being one of the few heroes created by a continuity error. Her backstory has become even more muddled over time, thanks to various reboots changing the history of the Amazons. She’s been everything from a baby rescued by Wonder Woman to an evil clone meant to replace her. Titans 2025 Annual #1 sought to once again clarify this, creating a definitive history for Donna in the DC All-In era.

Writer/artist Phil Jimenez has often said that Donna Troy is his favorite superhero. That is made more than clear over the course of this issue. It is an obvious labor of love, made all the more miraculous for how it details some fairly complicated history and makes it accessible. The artwork is simply gorgeous as well. [...]

As I noted some time ago, the character design for Donna was watered down and mediocre, so it's decidedly not hard to guess the fawning commentary was deliberate, and the columnist expects virtually everyone to buy into his puff piece without question. This is why such news sites aren't serious sources for information, and only multiply the insults to veteran artists and writers. If that's how Jiminez is going to draw Donna, then his claims she's his favorite character are phony. And Donna's backstory is muddled? Well gee, maybe they should blame previous editorial boards and writers, Dan DiDio included, for all that.

On the other hand, Bam-Smack-Pow says Image was the best of the year:

This year, Image Comics may not have made as much money as the big two, but they were the best comic book company of the year. Superman, Batman, and the Absolute Universe are always among the top sellers of the month. For example, a title starring Batman was in four of the five best sellers in November 2025 (DC / Marvel - Batman / Deadpool #1 (One-Shot), Batman No. 3, Absolute Batman No. 14, and DC K.O. Knightfight No. 1). Nevertheless, you can’t discount the impact titles from the Energon Universe have made in 2025. It was so good that the universe is getting an adult animated series.

Some of these comics based on licensed merchandise like GI Joe/Transformers may be worth the effort, but that doesn't mean everything's recommendable there. For example:

Of course, comic book fans want stories with characters using unfathomable abilities to defeat overpowered villains. Image Comics doesn’t deprive readers of stories like that. Titles like Ludo Lullabi’s Ghost Pepper, along with Benito Cereno and E. J. Su's Blood and Thunder, are two comics that provide the sci-fi adventures you may crave. However, they also publish more “grounded” comics like Doug Wagner and Daniel Hillyard’s I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer. There are still fantasy tales, but without having a hero flying or breaking steel with their hands.

With titles like those, it's clear not all is rosy at Image, and when they promote horror thriller fare so blatantly, far more than anything optimistic, it's sad.

Another thing to love is how Image Comics uses its social media. Image doesn’t just promote the comics. They make sure to show real people who have read and reviewed the comics. The best part is that the reviews are genuine. You can tell they mean what they say instead of doing it to get a paycheck. It’s easy to see those videos and be drawn into what they’re highlighting because it’s coming from an actual comic book fan.

I think that's awfully naive and jumping to conclusions too. There's all sorts of "professional" critics who can be biased and predetermined in their positions, so it does little good for Image to make use of their reviews for social media promotion. And if they don't sell in millions of copies, then like the mainstream, they haven't exactly accomplished much.

So again, there may be more overrated slop being fawned over by specialty columnists this year, and what's really sad is how they won't champion the visions of veteran writers of the past who did better than what the mainstream's offering today. And while I'm sure Image has some palatable stuff, that doesn't mean we should take a naive view of their output either.

Book Riot complains about comics being censored over allegedly right-wing standings

Looks like left-wing feminist site Book Riot is trying to make a case for censorship based upon the insinuation that right-wingers are responsible for comics being subjected to it:

Comics are a target because it’s a medium that requires a unique literacy to understand. Comic books make for easy targets because a person who has been infected by right-wing rhetoric can print the pages sitting on RatedBooks, Take Back the Classroom, or their predecessor BookLooks, and claim the comics are inappropriate without any context about the where, why, or how of that image within the book itself. Unfortunately, these people are not interested in learning literacy. By spreading these images without context, they inflame other people who don’t have the time or capacity to develop that literacy and actually “do their own research” on the matter. Comics are a collaborative dance between the words and the art. Young people with access to and exposure to comics are honing crucial intellectual skills while also enjoying creative, clever, fun, and educational stories.

Since 2021, comics have been among the top books banned in America. Many of these comics are far from new; they, too, are averaging the age of the typical high schooler. It’s worth taking a peek at the most banned comics since 2000 and seeing where and how they’re simply copied and pasted in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, with the addition of primarily queer-focused comics and comics by creators of color.

On the one hand, from what I can tell, this is a matter of whether they're stocked in schools. On the other, when I took a look at their list of banned comics since 2000, it shows Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis on the list, and it's actually surprising they allegedly care, considering Iran's one of the worst Islamic regimes still in power now, one that does simultaneously suppress LGBT practice, and so that makes it a contradiction of their whine for the sake of allowing LGBT-themed comics to be kept in school libraries. On which, Book Riot's writer doesn't even explain why they believe LGBT practice should be taught to youngsters, or why they believe it's a better role model than heterosexuality. What's their point?

Making matters worse is how the writer sets out to paint all right-wingers as inherently stupid, literally don't examine the inner content of the GNs in question, and appears to be insinuating they're the sole ones who led all these campaigns to get the comics out of the schools. And the part about comicdom needing a unique literacy to comprehend is also stupid. Whatever they contain is no different from what a plain-text book could in terms of premise and plot.

A look at PEN’s report is a look at where and how comics have been rising in their profile as among the most banned books. While the top nine most banned books did not include comics, the list of most frequently banned authors includes not one, but two comics creators: Yūsei Matsui and Atsushi Ohkubo. Matsui, creator of Assassination Classroom, saw 54 instances of his manga banned. Ohkubo, creator of Soul Eater and Fire Force, saw his manga banned 45 times. Were these one-shot manga, rather than series with numerous entries, Matsui would be the most banned author in America, with Ohkubo coming in at number two. Both would have had their manga banned twice as much as the number one most banned book in American schools for the 2024-2025 school year.

It should also be noted that if these comics/manga books are available in stores, then they're not censored, they're just not allowed in school libraries, that's all. I guess old horror films like Friday The 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street should be pushed into classrooms at all costs too, huh? The title of Assassination Classroom alone can strongly hint it's a violent affair, and we could honestly do with far less of that. Certainly if it's not a comic dealing with a serious real life issue viewed objectively, something Book Riot's writers seem otherwise disinterested in recommending as a subject for comicdom.

There's really nothing educational in what they're serving as apologists for, and if they really care, maybe they should build their own schools and libraries and then see who's interested in sending their children there to read the comics/manga they're sugarcoating. Unfortunately, when their apologia is as unintelligable as it is, you can't expect them to consider trying out such ideas.

Chicago specialty store closes

The Chicago Daily Herald (archive link) reported that a local specialty store has closed down as the owners retired:

Whether it was mom-and-pop comic book store or a favorite place to eat, customers, as always, had to deal with the loss of some popular local businesses in the suburbs in 2025.

Fans of comic books and graphic novels lost a treasure in September, when Keith’s Komix owners Keith and Cathy Anderson closed their Schaumburg store and retired. The business had served customers for 30 years.

“This was a place of community,” said Joshua Winchester, a West Chicago resident who’s shopped at Keith’s since 2018. “For 30 years, Keith's Komix and Keith himself have been making the Chicago suburbs, our little corner of the world, a better, brighter and nerdier place to live.”

Well, that's sad alright. But while they may have just retired, it could still be a sign that specialty stores' influence is weakened, and any store that relies heavily upon products from Marvel/DC in their current state is certainly not improving the situation. Seriously, with all the bad directions the Big Two took since the turn of the century, I just don't understand why most specialty stores are still carrying their products. For now, I wish the proprietors well in their retirement.

Where Robert Crumb lives in retirement

Rolling Stone interviewed cartoonist Robert Crumb (archive link), who's been living in a French village (Le Grau du-Roi, I think) for possibly 3 decades now, even though he may not speak much French, and here's what they say:

Most lastingly, Crumb, 82, is still considered the godfather of personal-story (his own) underground comics that emerged from the counterculture era. Starting with his Zap Comix series, first published in 1968, Crumb moved out of the notion of the cartoonist-entertainer and instead created comics as open, uncensored self-expression. While inventing his many other characters, he also planted his own antihero persona in his work, usually in self-derogatory fashion. And this inspired a later wave of personalized comic writing, culminating in Art Spiegelman’s Maus, as well as many of the autobiographical graphic novels that flood the market today.

But is Crumb aware there's leftists who've turned against his bizarre visions? No doubt, there's leftists who don't appreciate Maus either, but Crumb's fellow leftist Spiegelman doesn't seem interested in that possibility. Interestingly enough:

Crumb’s rising fame was not without controversy. His personal drawings were often sexually explicit, if not brazenly pornographic, earning him public condemnation as a misogynist. Then, in the 1990s came the purposefully outrageous “When the Goddamn Jews Take Over America!” or “When the [N-—rs] Take Over America!” — savage tongue-in-cheek satires that appeared in his Weirdo comics and brought him powerful negative feedback. He also knowingly played with racist stereotypes in his character Angelfood McSpade, an oversexed African American woman one would have seen in chauvinistic cartoons out of the 1920s. Crumb defended the work as criticism of those stereotypes, presuming that people familiar with his art would get the point. Many didn’t.

Why do I get the feeling he wouldn't draw any cartoons, satirical or otherwise, about "when the Moslems take over America" (and he likely hasn't/isn't doing anything similar regarding Europe itself), nor anything to do with say, Zohran Mamdani, one prominent example of an Islamist (and communist) who's soon to lord over by far the biggest city in the USA? Whether or not Crumb's an informed person, his leftist loyalties unfortunately seem to color his drawings from a modern perspective.

For five hours, we walked the medieval pathways of the village, where the Vidourle River winds its ancient curve before plunging into the Mediterranean at the resort town Le Grau-du-Roi. Our conversation similarly wandered, covering his sexual appetites, his friendship with Janis Joplin, his mistakes of the past, his new preoccupation with conspiracy theories, his (surprisingly sympathetic) feelings about RFK Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Outdoors, for some reason, you become even more aware of Crumb’s high-pitched, nervous laugh, which clings onto nearly every utterance, whether humorous or bleak. When we asked how it feels to be in the winter of his life, his reply was as unvarnished and self-aware as his cartoons.

He's okay with MTG, despite her approval of antisemitism that played a part in her resignation from Congress earlier this year? I guess that's telling something more. And then, when it comes to his lifestyle, it says:

Crumb has not exactly adapted to these surroundings. Over 32 years in this village, he has not learned to speak French. And yet, he has no intention of leaving. [...]

Added to Crumb’s geographical isolation is his refusal to own a computer, to have access to the internet, or to use a cell phone. There is a television on the top floor of the house, but he doesn’t know how it works. He craves the simple station-changing dial of the old days, and is somewhat terrorized by the very idea of a remote control. In a concession to modernity, he does email people, in a manner of speaking: He writes out messages by hand, in pencil (the old-fashioned kind with detachable erasers, which he mail-orders from the U.S.), then gives them to his secretary, Maggie, to type and send. When he receives a response, she prints it out for him to read.

If he doesn't know what's going on even within France, that too is sad weakness. What good does it do to say he's a famous cartoonist when he doesn't even keep informed about anything, save for what he reads quite possibly in the most mainstream papers by print? That he doesn't speak French is undoubtably another weakness.

“For me, the bug was not particularly horrifying,” he says, “although people are repulsed by this giant insect. But he’s not a menacing insect. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody. So then, to me, he becomes almost a lovable bug. So I made him a kind of big, fat beetle. It’s a very Jewish self-hatred kind of humor. Which you find in Lenny Bruce and other types of Jewish humor, where they paint themselves as something really repulsive. That all comes out of alienation. The pain of alienation. You can turn it into humor, but it’s a dark humor.”

On the issue of self-hatred, does he think that's acceptable? It most definitely isn't when it comes to ethnicity. Some could wonder if veteran actor Mandy Patinkin's an example of what he speaks, and it's very disturbing. He's sold on leftist causes hurtful to Israel, and that's very troubling. And then, more about Crumb's take on Taylor Greene:

Which brings us to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Politically, Crumb has no doubts about who she is: “The most low-level, sleazy, opportunistic politics of playing on the ignorance of her constituency, which is some remote mountain county of Georgia.”

Nevertheless…

“I saw her on TV, where she was talking. I thought, ‘Oh, she’s kind of good-looking.’ And she’s athletic. She goes to the gym, and she’s just looking terrific. Wow. So a kind of tough-looking blonde, you know? A shiksa from the South. Wow. I started getting the hots for her. Wow. And I thought I could change Marjorie Taylor Greene. I could, you know, if I was involved, I could raise her consciousness and convert her to something more like an ethical state of mind and become a better person as well as, you know, having a good time with her.”

I thought for a moment, on hearing this astonishing news, that we might be lucky enough to expect a new Reactionary Girl comic starring MTG following in the sleazy footsteps of Lenore Goldberg: Girl Commando, Honeybunch Kaminski, Devil Girl, and the other Crumb Amazons.

“I thought about that, but I don’t want to get in trouble,” he says. “Who knows what kind of nasty shit she’d be capable of? Who knows? Nasty. She’s nasty. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Great-looking, though. Boy, what a body! Wow. Tough. Tough body.”

Oh, please. I don't find her particularly attractive myself, and her ideological beliefs ruin everything. That's why it's a good thing the GOP pushed her out. That said, I do think it's reprehensible that Crumb would use the word "shiksa", because of how it took on a demeaning use among ultra-Orthodox extremists who use it even against Jewish women over petty issues. What does he think he's accomplishing with that? Mainly because his leftist visions only make it all the more tasteless in ways even his cartooning couldn't redeem. And then, the magazine claims, oddly enough:

CRUMB IS SURPRISINGLY au fait with the tempestuous political events of the last few years, despite his resistance to electronic input. Still, from all indications in our recent discussions, I can see he’s moved close to the danger zone of right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theory. This is a personal dilemma for me, never having lost an ounce of my lifelong political combat against the reactionary steamroller. Crumb and I have often been at odds politically. I remember, many years back, his giving ear to a moronic Holocaust-denier who had turned up on his doorstep (although RC later renounced this). He can be annoyingly gullible sometimes. Yet, in his favor, he seems to harbor a healthy natural skepticism that has often manifested itself in his artwork and which gnaws at him in his seclusion. Having virtually no one to argue with, he finds himself in natural dialogue with his own private, darker side, one that questions almost everything. On Ukraine:

“Everybody’s always talking about what a terrible guy Putin is. He’s a terrible monster like Hitler. Na da da da da. But I’m not sure the Americans are much better. So what do we know about what’s really going on? We just hear the Western propaganda — United States, Western Europe. And it has its program, its agenda, its interests. What do we really know?”

Crumb is also not vaccinated. He says he would have voted for RFK Jr. if the latter hadn’t gone over to Trump. Moreover, he powerfully backs the health secretary’s “medical” views.

I guess it's no shock at all Crumb's anti-Trump, so what do they mean he's risking a right-wing standing? And if he's saying the USA is no better than Russia under Putin, undoubtably based on his view of Trump, that's telling. He is gullible, but not in the way the interviewer thinks.

DESPITE BEING A ‘TOTAL FOREIGNER,’ Crumb is content to spend his final days in his adopted homeland rather than return to America. “This medieval village suits my sensibilities just fine,” he says. “You know, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” And ironically, since the passing of Aline, he manages to live like a sultan here, despite his isolation. His daughter Sophie helps to look after him, alongside a cadre of local caretakers.

It could be he shares a bit in common with his fellow cartoonist Daniel Clowes, who's left the USA, at least partly because he despises Trump. I'd like to say it's okay if they want to live in European locales, but if they have no interest in opposing the creep of Islamic sharia on the continent, what good does it do to live there? Such isolationism is unhelpful, and in fact does a disservice to all innocent people in Europe who deserve better. If Crumb's got no interest in showing appreciation for the hospitality of the populace who've welcomed his residence there, then he merely defeats whatever positive points his cartoons supposedly had. Despite what the magazine's writer claims, Crumb's not well informed, and is merely demonstrating what's wrong with plenty of cartoonists of his sort nowadays. Goodness knows there must be a whole generation of veteran artists who've nullified their work's impact when they refuse to prove they have the courage to take up certain issues, and practically go the opposite direction as though their previous creations had never been. It's just hugely sad and disappointing, but hardly surprising in the end.

A columnist who admits Ultimate Spider-Man's not worth the hype

A writer at ComicBook admits the new incarnation of Ultimate Spider-Man isn't worth the paper it's printed on. At the start, interestingly, it says:

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 3) hit the comic industry like a ton of bricks. It came at the perfect time; fans were quite tired of The Amazing Spider-Man and Marvel’s insistence that Peter and Mary Jane should never be together. They were ready for something different, and all signs pointed to Ultimate Spider-Man being what everyone was looking for. Writer Jonathan Hickman had written Spider-Man before but mostly in teams and back-up stories, so fans were interested where he would take an older, married Peter Parker. Add in Marco Checchetto’s pencils, and it was looking to be a perfect storm of awesome.

And I guess they believed Marvel fans would excuse the reprehensible editorial mandate so long as an alternate universe Spidey was the one who's married, huh? Sorry, but this fan won't, and it's absurd to assume everybody's going to fall for their tiresome tricks. Besides, for all we know, this series was probably quite woke regardless, and as pretentious as Brian Bendis' run on the original Ultimate line's series from the 2000s, which, in the end, merely served as an excuse for producing a diversity-pandering character, Mile Morales.

Those early issues were still great, but there’s so much going on, so much plot, that a lot of things that should have been built weren’t. We were still entertained, and what we got was interesting, but it’s telling that we loved Ultimate Spider-Man in the doldrums of 2024 but in 2025, where DC started firing on all cylinders in both the Absolute and main line, the book has fallen in the estimation of fans. Ultimate Spider-Man was a mostly good book that fans thought was great because they were so happy that we were getting Hickman writing Spider-Man and Peter and Mary Jane back together. We ended up overlooking a lot of the weaknesses of the book, I think, because of the glow of Pete and MJ. The flaws were always there, but we were blinded by the light.

[...] The book was overhyped from the beginning, I think. It’s hard to downplay just how happy it had made readers when it first started. We were looking forward to this world to explore Peter and his family, but that’s all gone. We were more willing to forgive the book its slow build when we thought it was going to be an ongoing. However, with the Ultimate Universe’s ticking clock attached to the book, the pacing looks like a huge mistake. We were sold a bill of goods, and now we’re never going to get them. It gives the whole situation an aura of disappointment it didn’t have before. Ultimate Spider-Man was never the book we thought it was going to be.

Of course not. Does Peter and MJ's connection alone make it a comic worthy of our money? Nope, and I made the point before - even if the 616 universe couple were reunited, that alone doesn't guarantee merit accompanying it, and chances are very high that, with the kind of editors/writers/artists running the store today, it could be bottom of the barrel as a result of all the PC that flooded comicdom in the past decade. An alternate universe doesn't solve the problem, but then, even restoring the Spider-marriage to the 616 universe alone doesn't either. If J. Michael Straczynski came back and wrote it again, should we trust him to suddenly deliver where he failed epically last time? Alas, no. His 2001-07 run was so full of grating political allusions and forced inconsistencies with continuity, right down to how he handled Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane, there's little chance he'd be any different if he came back for another regular run.

So why does the columnist think an alternate world take on Spidey would make any difference? It doesn't solve problems with the regular universe at all, and if the editors are going to take a woke approach to that, it's entirely possible an alternate world variant will be little different. And doesn't replace or make a perfect substitute for the original characters at all.

Perhaps these columnists might want to take a more objective approach by saying it's time to boycott Marvel altogether until they're willing to dismiss all bad creators running them, and/or are sold off to a different business with more responsibility. Regrettably, these news writers never do.

Kentucky store manager publishes his own comic in the sword and sorcery genre

CBS13News has a report about a specialty store manager in Ashland, KY, who's published his own comic adventure through a Kickstarter campaign:

After more than 15 years of hard work pursuing a dream, a local writer’s work is hitting the shelves in comic book shops.

Lucas Harbolt is a comic book writer from Lawrence County, Ohio, and works in Ashland as the manager of the Inner Geek, a local comic book shop.

Now, his first comic book is sitting on one of the shelves. The story, titled “Sword for Hire,” was published thanks to a Kickstarter campaign.

Harbolt says this has been his dream for more than 15 years, and to help make it a reality, he had to sell his comic book collection.

“When it came down to wanting to fund my own work versus having someone else’s work, I wanted my own. So, the first run was about 140 copies, and we sold out of it. We’re currently selling out of the second run now. So, it’s a really, really weird feeling, but a really good one,” Harbolt says.

The comic also features multiple artists with unique styles, collaborating with Harbolt’s writing skills to make the story come to life.

Harbolt says that right now, the comic is only being sold at the Inner Geek, but he plans to print more copies and expand to other stores.

What I find admirable about his publication is that it doesn't appear to be yet more superhero fare, but rather, sword and sorcery fare. But depending how it's formatted, seriously, is 140 copies something to celebrate? It has to be more than that to really prove successful, so while I hope he does print more, and realize crowdfunding campaigns can only afford so much, I still think specialists in the medium have to be more realist than this. So I do highly appreciate Mr. Harbolt's taken the challenge of contributing to the medium as a storyteller, but this continued marveling at minor sums has long gotten absurd already.

Sony buys majority stake in Peanuts ownership

So a short time ago, I'd written about the 60th anniversary of Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip in animation. Now, the AP Wire says Sony's buying a majority share of what was owned by a Canadian company for the franchise, while Schultz's family will retain the rest of the ownership:

Happiness is taking control of a beloved comic strip.

Sony is buying a 41% stake in the Charles M. Schulz comic “Peanuts” and its characters including Snoopy and Charlie Brown from Canada’s WildBrain in a $457 million deal, the two companies said Friday.

The deal adds to Sony’s existing 39% stake, bringing its shareholding to 80%, according to a joint statement. The Schulz family will continue to own the remaining 20%.

[...] Sony acquired its first stake in Peanuts Holdings LLC in 2018 from Toronto-based WildBrain Ltd. In Friday’s transaction, Sony’s music and movie arms signed a “definitive agreement” with WildBrain to buy its remaining stake for $630 million Canadian dollars ($457 million).

Rights to the “Peanuts” brand and management of its business are handled by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Peanuts Holdings.

Gee, can a corporation truly be considered "happiness"? I seem to recall that if there's any point of contention with Sony, it's that they imposed censorship on video games featured on the Playstation console in the past decade, and while the Schultz family may retain creative control of the franchise, that doesn't mean Sony couldn't possibly impose some kind of political correctness on it one day, their being a Japanese corporation notwithstanding.

Quartz also noted:

Sony’s push for control fits a broader strategy to leverage beloved intellectual property across new formats and markets. In recent years the company has woven its entertainment assets — film, music, television, and now legacy comics — into a tighter web, betting that deploying familiar characters can attract audiences, in an increasingly crowded streaming market.

Seriously, this doesn't sound like they're building on merit, but rather, recognition. Even a veteran franchise can see its share of duds, and that's why it's absurd to build marketing campaigns that way. Unfortunately, this has doubtless been the norm for a long time, and it's unhealthy. And again, what if anything they turn out under this new ownership is watered down? I guess that's why I'm glad the Schultz family still retains an ownership in the franchise, and hope it's mainly the creative control they retain in the arrangements. Overall, all these corporate buyouts are getting way out of hand, and it's a shame there's so many out there who don't have the confidence to retain ownership of their own creations.

Marvel follows up recent swimsuit special with "Winter Break" special

It appears Marvel's decided to go ahead with a followup to their recent, otherwise uninspired revival of the Marvel Swimsuit Specials of the 1990s, this time with a special titled Winter Break, previews of which are provided by Flickering Myth, with a promotional blurb stating:

You asked for more Swimsuit Special, and you’ve got it — sort of! Hit the slopes with YOUR favorite Marvel heroes this winter, with the help of a team of superstar artists — and then warm up in the hot tub… hot springs… hot yoga… lots of places that start with “hot”! FRET NOT, True Believers, we’ve got equal parts action AND relaxation for your money in this one-shot!

Which seems to indicate the problem persists: they put in standard comic-style panels similar to the 2025 swimsuit special from a few months ago - something the original 90s specials didn't have - and didn't improve on how sexless some of the illustrations were there. From what's posted on Adventures In Poor Taste, writer Tim Seeley is apparently using this as an excuse to allude to his recent Rogue: The Savage Land miniseries, but even that doesn't compensate for how sexless even the "action panels" look. There are a few coverscans that may look better than what could be inside. But again, if it turns out this is a case of not judging the interior by its covers, then those covers don't compensate either, or justify purchasing this special. In this earlier item on AIPT featuring Stormbreakers variant covers that have a connection, those with the ladies look watered down, with only the one featuring the Enchantress being better. Which beggars the question: we're supposed to marvel at the art for a villainess?!? It may not be new, but it most certainly is insulting to the intellect.

That can certainly be a warning of how this followup to the swimsuit special from last summer could end up being a ripoff that doesn't deliver when it comes to the heroines, if any characters. There may be a few variant covers that'll be worth saving to computer hard disks, but if the Winter Break special continues to use an approach not unlike the previous special, that's why it won't be worth much of anything, and serious fans should avoid wasting their money on what could be more of a winter bummer.

The kind of writers Ed Brubaker is chummy with

The overrated comics/novel writer Brubaker was interviewed by Alex Segura for Crime Reads about a new story for his GN series Criminal, and if there's any writer who's working for him in developing a new story, it's somebody who played a part in destroying Marvel coherency:

This month marks the release of GIANT-SIZE CRIMINAL #1, a, well, giant-sized comic book set in the acclaimed and bestselling world of writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips’ CRIMINAL series. The first new story in five years is loaded with CRIMINAL goodies – including an extra-long Ricky Lawless story, a CRIMINAL TTRPG module written by superstar comic book writer and game designer Kieron Gillen with illustrations by Phillips, an illustrated guide to the world of CRIMINAL and its key players, plus insights into the upcoming CRIMINAL TV show by Brubaker – who is also the showrunner on the show. The comic is only available in print and in comic shops – making it not only collectible, but also a key part of the universe’s gritty, grounded lore. The release of the issue gave me an opportunity to poke Ed about something else I was curious about – the upcoming CRIMINAL streaming series, which he’s running himself, with input from co-creator Phillips and a team of crack writers. I sat down with Brubaker to not only talk about the show, but what fans can look forward to when reading GIANT-SIZE CRIMINAL #1! [...]

AS: The world of Criminal boasts an impressive backlist – so that can be a little daunting to a new reader. Is this book the kind of thing new readers can step into?

EB: Yeah, I think pretty much all the CRIMINAL stories are, actually. I always assume any book or comic might be someone’s first time discovering our work and make it new-reader-friendly. This is really just spending a crazy night with one of my favorite characters from the world of CRIMINAL. And it’s also got an introduction to the world of CRIMINAL and an RPG module by my friend Kieron Gillen, so readers can make up their own CRIMINAL game. It’s a fun issue, and jam packed.

So he associates with the same writer who deconstructed Tony Stark's background in Iron Man, changing his parents to adoptive instead of biological. And it's undoubtably not the only blatant direction Gillen ever took when he was working for Marvel. That Brubaker would do work with him is decidedly galling. At least if Gillen, on his part, is no longer working at the Big Two, that's good, but with only so many other bad apples working there since, nothing's changed. Brubaker also spoke about working in TV and animation:

AS: What was it like, as a first-time showrunner, taking point on CRIMINAL? Can you talk about any lessons you learned and what you might have done differently?

EB: I’ve been working in TV on and off for 20 years trying to get to be a showrunner, but of course, once I got the job, nothing was what I expected to be. I had written most of a season of TV for Refn, with TOO OLD TO DIE YOUNG and right before CRIMINAL I had been the head writer of Bruce Timm’s new Batman cartoon, so I knew there was always a lot of rewriting throughout the whole process, that’s just the nature of it, but I had never been in charge during post on anything before, and that was a really amazing experience.

I was having lunch with a screenwriter friend while I was editing and telling him how much I was learning about the process and he was like “yeah, writing the script and shooting it is just making the ingredients, post is where you have to be like a chef making it all come together into a meal.” And that was a real learning experience, seeing how some scenes that felt really alive on the page didn’t on the screen, and how you can edit and score a scene to bring that life back. Or even change it to something else that’s actually better.

As far as what I’d do differently, there’s way too much, but most of it is just technical things or being better at communicating with collaborators, the kinds of stuff we all learn on the job in this industry. Overall, I had a great time being a showrunner, even for all the struggles, and my only hope is I’ll be better at it the next time around.

I can only wonder how much of the Batman cartoon he worked on was influenced by his decidedly uninspired, shoddy work on the comics, recalling he was part of writing a crossover titled Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive, which sacrificed a recurring character, Vesper Fairchild, for the sake of a story where Bruce is framed for murder, along with a lady employee. And then Brubaker hilariously claims he was "learning". Well what he did with Batman was decidedly too much, and too late.

If Brubaker does make the switch from comics writing to TV writing and production, it'd almost be a blessing, and certainly no loss to comicdom. But, he wouldn't be any gift for Hollywood either. Though it wouldn't be a surprise if, based on how PC he actually is, plenty of modern wokesters in Hollywood would be more than eager to work with him.

Cover artists continue to be used as a way to obscure whether the interior art is any good

Hawaii News Now spoke with artist David Nakayama, the kind of artist who's doing work mainly on covers, while talk of the interiors is marginalized, as could surely be expected:

When it comes to comic books, it’s clear the cover sells the story.

If you want to know what makes for great cover art, ask an artist.

”Action always helps, and I think it’s important to have one big central, focused character for you to grab onto,” said Hawaii’s David Nakayama.

He is one of the trade’s most sought-after cover artists. Marvel just published a book featuring his work, and he is very busy.

”Well, at the moment I’m lucky to be working on Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn covers for DC,” he said. “Over at Marvel, I’ve got two X-Men books coming up.”

He’s also drawing the covers for Transformers comics, and Hasbro hired him to design the boxes for their superhero toys.

His art may be great, but to say the cover alone sells the story? That's awfully naive, and if the interior art pales horribly, doesn't that make it a ripoff? I also find the citation of Harley Quinn quite a turnoff, because he's perpetuating the marketing of an emphasis on baddies.

He has this advice for artists who’d love to see their work splashed across the front of a superhero’s story.

”The reality we face as artists now is that your work just has to be that good. You have to be in the upper 10 percent and just stand out. But once you do, people will find you,” he said.

Well doesn't that apply to interior artwork as much as exterior? In the past decade alone, Marvel/DC began hiring artists whose "talents" were mediocre or just plain dreadful, all for drawing the interiors. And there are, no doubt, more companies that did the same. Whether that's improved of recent is debatable, but the writing most certainly hasn't, and certainly isn't organic or plausible. All this lavishing spotlights upon artists has done nothing to improve fortunes or focus on the interior. It even reminds me of how, when the 1st Captain Marvel movie came out 6 years ago, some press sources were careful not to make use of the illustrations of Carol Danvers that made her look horrifically masculine. If a cover artist today were drawing something that poor, chances are they wouldn't have a word to say about such an artist.

And again, these sugary spotlights on cover artists have served as little more than an excuse not to comment on the overall quality in any part of the modern medium and industry. It's a shame, and only demonstrates the continued unreliability of the mainstream press.

Marvel abandons FCBD for a rival event

Popverse says Marvel, possibly trying to virtue-signal, will not be participating in this year's FCBD event, assuming it goes ahead, and instead, they're working with Penguin/Random House on a separate project:

Marvel Comics is saying "Free Comic Book Day no more!" Instead, the House of Ideas is teaming up with Penguin Random House to put on a new event, curiously scheduled for the first Saturday in May (May 2, 2026), called Comics Giveaway Day.

And what are the 4 items they boast about for the occasion like? Let's check one as an example:

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1000/QUEEN IN BLACK #1 CGD 2026 - written by Joe Kelly, Al Ewing, and Phillip Kennedy Johnson, with art by John Romita Jr., Iban Coello, and Nic Klein, with a cover by Dike Ruan - The road to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1000 takes a big turn here as fate bears down on Peter Parker! The Queen in Black has been coronated, and Mary Jane Watson as Venom is not ready for her! The Eldest has taken control of the Hulk, and what happens next will make every past Hulk battle look like a skirmish!

This is just what we need, isn't it? Prolonging the shoddy premise of Mary Jane shoved into the Venom role, in a comic with leftist Ewing as a co-writer, and while Romita Jr. may have once been a talented artist, he's really brought his skills down to sad levels in the past 2 decades, wasting them on projects completely unsuited for his talents, if he still has any. His work with J. Michael Straczynski on Spider-Man, it goes without saying, was easily the worst of what he's drawn since the turn of the century, based on how it all turned out to be for the sake of a storyline emphasizing the blabberings of a figure called Ezekiel, which in the end lead nowhere but One More/Brand New Day.

Now, Romita's taken an assignment drawing a special that perpetuates a terrible disfavor to even his legendary dad's hard work on Spidey from 1966, when Mary Jane was first introduced visually as much as in script reference. And this is what's being offered for the sake of a new variation on FCBD? It's very sad there's bound to be plenty of people who'll fall for this, and what if they decide to shell out 5-plus dollars for more stultifying storytelling in the regular Spidey series as a result? Let's hope that won't be the case. But for now, it's regrettable how Spidey, as much as any other Marvel hero and series, has been exploited for such useless tripe when the real deal ended long ago as a result of so much artistic mismanagement.

Bishop from X-Men is next victim of pointless deaths

Superhero Hype/Yahoo announced that, shortly after Rogue was turned into a sacrificial lamb in X-Men, now another comic does something similar with Bishop under the guise of "satire":

The secret of the death was revealed in Longshots #3 by Gerry Duggan, Jonathan Hickman, and Alan Robinson. The satiric series centers around Mojo; an interdimensional entertainment executive and frequent foe of the X-Men. Unsurprisingly Mojo wanted to capitalize on the Age of Revelation event. Unfortunately, with all the recognizable heroes from the MCU tied to other projects, Mojo was forced to build a show around has-beens and wash-outs like Rhino and Kraven the Hunter. Also, the only one of the X-Men he can recruit is Bishop.

Despite this, Mojo pressed on, despite most of his new cast of heroes dying early on. This included Bishop, who was blown up by an off-panel enemy he apparently recognized. However, the question of who killed the popular X-Men member was completely forgotten in the wake of Mojo’s failed effort to hire Galactus as the big bad of the series. It doesn’t get brought up again until Longshots #3, when Longshot questions the forgotten subplot while deciding if he should join the series sharing his name.

The death of Bishop is explained in a flashback, after Mojo admits he has no idea how to resolve the subplot. The flashback reveals that at some point in the past, Bishop was abducted by Mojo’s minion, Spiral. She also stole a variety of kitchen utensils and a ripped red curtain.

Using the purloined objects, Spiral fashions a crude costume that makes the captive Bishop look like the time-traveling villain Stryfe. She left him behind, tied up, with a grenade in his mouth. When the future Bishop saw what looked like one of his greatest enemies, he shot first without asking questions. This resulted in the grenade going off, killing the future Bishop, and vaporizing the past Bishop.

Well this is certainly disgusting, right down to the whole "revealed" cliche. And emphasizing this as "satire" is no excuse either. Even if this isn't being made canon, and even if it's only temporary, it's still atrocious. It's also laughable how some characters, villains or otherwise, in this story are emphasized as has-beens and wash-outs, because everything depends on how they're written, not whether anybody cares about them or not, and the point definitely applies to heroes.

How much longer is Marvel going to last if this is what they've brought themselves down to? It's just head-shaking.

Hollywood actor who starred in notable comic strip adaptation dies at 82

The Hollywood Reporter announced the actor Gil Gerard, who was once notable for playing Buck Rogers in the 1979-81 TV show, which was adapted from the 1929 comic strip by Phillip Francis Nowlan, has passed away at 82 years of age:

Gil Gerard, the actor from Arkansas best known for his turn as the wisecracking hero of the 1979-81 NBC series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, died Tuesday. He was 82.

Gerard lived in Georgia and died after a battle with “a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” his wife, Janet, announced in a Facebook post.

In 1977 films, Gerard had played Lee Grant‘s romantic interest in Airport ’77 and had starred as a moonshiner in the Appalachia-set comedy Hooch when he was approached to star in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, co-produced by Glen A. Larson at Universal Television.

Based on the popular comic strip character most famously featured in a 1939 movie serial that starred champion Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe, the light-hearted sci-fi series kicked off with a 1979 movie developed in the wake of the huge success of Star Wars.

At first, the dashing Gerard wasn’t interested in the part. “I saw what it did to Adam West‘s career with Batman, and this was another cartoon character. I didn’t want to do this campy stuff,” he said in a 2018 interview.

However, he finally was persuaded to sign on, and the Buck Rogers movie proved to be a hit, finishing among the top 25 domestic grossers that year. The film was then retooled to serve as the show’s two-hour opening episode.

Buck Rogers lasted two seasons and a total of 32 episodes through April 1981 before being canceled. [...]

As Capt. William Anthony “Buck” Rogers, a NASA/U.S. Air Force pilot who is accidentally frozen in his spacecraft in 1987 and then discovered in the year 2491 after a nuclear war, Gerard starred opposite Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering and Felix Silla as the robot Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc).

“I thought the character had a sense of reality about him,” he said in 2017. “The sense of humor I liked very much and his humanity, I liked. I thought it was kind of cool. He wasn’t a stiff kind of a guy. He was a guy who could solve problems on his feet, and he wasn’t a superhero.”

According to Anime News Network, Gerard also did voice acting for some Transformers cartoons. I saw the BR series myself when I was younger, and in its 1st season it did have some promise. Plus, IIRC, the late Gary Coleman of Diff'rent Strokes fame (1978-86) was a guest in one episode. I think the reason the Buck Rogers series failed in its 2nd season was because of changes made where Gerard and Gray were traveling through space far more often than spending time on Earth, and the way it was done unfortunately did not appeal to the audience. It likely also didn't help that filming was delayed by the Writers Guild strike of late 1980.

As for the part about West's Batman series, did it ever occur to Gerard that they were basically going by the example set by the comics during the Silver Age, when the Joker was toned down to more of a prankish nuisance than the lethal crimelord he'd begun as? A time when tongue-in-cheek comedy was the resort of comics writers as a result of the CCA and moral panic caused by Fredric Wertham? I don't know if Gerard ever took a look at that for consideration, but I do know that if he originally balked at the Rogers role because the show could be comedic, that was ill-advised. Mainly because of how wokeness badly damaged the comedy genre in the past decade, and no telling if it'll recover now. We could use some more comedy if it helps to encourage and inspire people for positive reasons, and certainly if it's in good taste.

It's sad Gerard's gone, but his role as Buck Rogers is ultimately appreciated, and someday, if there's writers and producers who have a sense of tastefulness, maybe they'll consider adapting Nowlan's comic strip again, though perhaps this time, animation could make a better venue for an adaptation to be developed. And should it ever be adapted again, any producers taking up the task would do well not to go a PC route, and not disappoint fans of the original source material by extension.

Update: Radio Times also notes that Janet Gerard's shared a final posthumous message Gil asked her to publish.

Singer Tori Amos removes references to Neil Gaiman from her album

Stereogum reports the singer Tori Amos, who already expressed disappointment at the reports of disgraced Neil Gaiman committing sexual assault, has excised credits for the would-be comics writer/novelist from her album Strange Little Girls:

Now for the Neil Gaiman stuff. Amos has had a long friendship and association with Gaiman, the once-celebrated author and comic book writer. He's her daughter's godfather. As recently as 2022, he contributed to Amos' Little Earthquakes graphic novel. The original CD edition of Strange Little Girls included images of Amos, made up as a different persona that she invented for each song on the album. Gaiman wrote short pieces to go along with all the photos, and they were all included on the album. [...]

Amos has posted the full credits and acknowledgments for the Strange Little Girls reissue on her website, and Neil Gaiman's name is not mentioned. This appears to be an intentional omission, especially since none of the other releases on her site include full credits. One can only assume Amos is signaling that Gaiman's contributions have been removed. We've got an email in to Amos' reps, and we'll update this story if we get confirmation. (UPDATE: A rep says, "Tori addressed the Neil Gaiman allegations last year. We are declining to comment further.")

Looks like another domino's fallen in Gaiman's career and reputation, as another entertainment specialist's distancing herself from him after the scandal. And it's for the best.

Did Bill Gaines damage the cause of the industry in 1954?

A writer at the Houston Press looked at the history of the moral panic over comics at the time of Fredric Wertham, now subject of a new book titled "Comic Book Apocalypse!: The Death of Pre-Code Comics and Why It Happened, 1940-1955" by David Hogan, and for now, if there's something here that's surely worth considering, it's that the guy who went on to publish MAD magazine may have some blame to shoulder for botching his defense:

Most in the crosshairs was EC Comics. Under publisher William Gaines, their output in titles like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Crime SuspensStories, Weird Fantasy, and Frontline Combat had some of the most “egregious” examples of story and art. And…yeah, there was some truth to that. But their stable of ultra-talented artists, writers, and editors made their books more far more than a cut above the competition. Not to mention in later decades one of the most beloved and venerated lines ever among fans.

Gaines himself testified before the 1954 Senate subcommittee led by Senator Estes Kefauver but did himself or the plight of comics books no favors with a rumpled appearance, halting answers, and justifications.

In one famous exchange, he noted that the infamous cover of Crime SuspensStories #22 of showing a man with an axe in one hand and severed head of his wife with eyes rolled back was actually in good taste. Bad taste, he suggested, would have included bones, flesh, and dripping blood underneath the head.

In a short time, even Gaines’ entire revamped EC line would crater (because what kid wouldn’t want to read a comic book called Psychoanalysis?). Save for the one humor title he turned into a larger, black and white magazine and did pretty well with: MAD magazine.

From what I noticed about the cover of the 22nd Crime SuspenStories, it looked like there was blood, or some kind of liquid, dripping from the mouth, so Gaines more or less screwed up. Based on mistakes like that, I don't think Gaines' defense was any good, and seriously, that he would go out of his way to develop horror stories as though said genre was such a big deal, when there were plenty of other wellsprings fit for adults that he could've taken the challenge of dipping into, only gave ammunition for detractors at the time. And also made it possible for sex-negative advocates, not the least being Wertham himself, a hole to exploit for putting sex in the same boat as gory violence. Such "comparisons" aren't healthy, even if there obviously are valid arguments for why there's a limit to how much or what kind of sex a child should be exposed to in early life. Gaines did do a good job developing MAD into a leading parody magazine, but it doesn't excuse that he took such a demeaning path with the violent crime stories he'd initially worked on in the late 40s-early 50s.

I'm sure Mr. Hogan's history book is worth reading, but again, let's consider that if these authors aren't willing to confront modern censorship and moral panics in sharp contrast to the past, their history research becomes moot and looks like a joke. Inconsistent commentaries don't guarantee long ranging repairs for what damage has occurred from past to present.

Captain America would only have children if writers wished, and created them plausibly

A writer at ComicBook asks whether Steve Rogers has children, as though he were real:

Captain America is one of the older superheroes in Marvel Comics, both in his time in comics and his actual age. Making his debut in the pre-Marvel comic Captain America Comics #1 in 1940, Cap was a World War II hero, fighting to take down Nazis and keep America free. After he stopped the Red Skull in WWII, he ended up crashing into icy waters, where he was frozen in a block of ice and left in suspended animation until he was found and revived in the age of heroes, where he joined the Avengers. Because he has been around for so long, and he has dated more than his fair share of women, it seems like he might have some kids in Marvel Comics.

Oh for heaven's sake. That depends whether and if writers so decide to establish something, and while there may not have been sons and daughters created for Steve up to the turn of the century, there was, as the article notes, an issue of What If? where such an idea was explored. But because these are not real people we're discussing here, that's why, if and however a fictional character has children established in-story, it's up to the assigned writers and editors to think up a story where this could take place.

And as of now, Marvel/DC have no writers or editors with the talent needed to make such a fictional setup work. Why, J. Michael Straczynski's Sins Past storyline in Spider-Man was but an example of how such ideas could turn into utter disaster. So there's really no point wondering whether a fictional character could have children, nor is it worth making suggestions for the publishers when they have no respect for the classic characters they're building a story around. One of the other stories cited in the puff piece about Cap is one referencing the repellent Hail Hydra event, and any story building on that is not making the introduction of a son for Steve Rogers plausible or tasteful at all.

A most insufferably biased essay about James Robinson's overrated Starman series

The Comics Journal wrote an atrociously biased take on the pretentious James Robinson's Starman series from 1994-2001, in two parts so far, and it contains some troubling lines suggesting this was written from quite a leftist perspective. For example:

Starman is a story about the United States. Not the one we learned about in civics class. Not the golly-gee willikers, apple-pie-and-baseball bullshit that Ivy League-educated, far-right populists talk about while deifying “the founders” and pretending that history is only what you learned it was in first grade and anyone who tries to teach anything more complicated than that is desecrating those buried in Arlington. No, this is “The Old, Weird America” as Greil Marcus titled one of his books.

Well, what's this? A lecture in the vein of claiming patriotism is bad? Well that's what it sounds like. And why is the writer making it sound like Ivy League universities are inherently right-wing? If you took a look at the sorry state of modern colleges, that can refute what they're lecturing everyone with here. In any event, whatever form of "America" was being emphasized in Robinson's Starman series does not appeal to me, and definitely not today.

It’s easier to place all that weirdness “over there” in its own space so the rest of us can pretend that it doesn’t exist. Those weird stories with strange artwork and designs can exist ... somewhere else. That way the DCU can function in a vaguely “realistic” manner drawn in a vaguely realistic fashion. Comics are serious, after all. Far too serious for romance or humor or wackiness or surrealism.

I don't think the above was meant as a joke. It's just irritating in how it's implied "realism" is the only way, ditto "seriousness". Does this also mean Marvel's Excalibur from 1988-98, which I consider one of the most surreal adventures they ever published back in the day, was just a bad idea all over? This is insulting to the intellect, and belittles the work of past writers who emphasized merit and entertainment value first and foremost. Without that, how could even "realistic" work well? And then, as if it couldn't possibly get worse:

Art emerges from a cultural space. I believe that culture shapes behavior, or as Heraclitus argued more than two thousand years ago, geography is destiny. In the 21st century, something like Starman wasn’t of interest. A loving couple like Ralph and Sue Dibny solving crimes wasn’t of interest. Raping and murdering them, though? DC’s Identity Crisis and Marvel’s Civil War were made while the United States was a nation at war. Stories about superheroes behaving like horrible villains in the name of righteousness. Comics about “good” people doing monstrous things. That’s not a coincidence. Art is not created in a vacuum.

And here's another, and by far one of the most repellent moments in this essay, because the writer brings up those past crossovers/events and what occurred in their pages in such a casual manner, as though sexual violence were a trivial issue, along with the divisive politics both IC and CW contained. It does confirm though, that both miniseries were meant to be political metaphors. In one of the accompanying footnotes, the writer tops it off with, "The fact that the nation’s leaders were intent on acting as though we were not a nation at war meant that like repressed emotions, it comes out in other ways." So let's see if I can understand what's going on here. Because certain leftists disliked the policies that came up at the time from a Republican-led government, that literally justifies shoehorning established characters into terrible roles and situations? Also insulting to the intellect is how it's implied crime-solving couples is literally worthless as a storytelling concept.

Before we go further, since it's been a few years since the series ended, a recap for those who forgot what the comic was about (or haven't read it yet). Starman was about Jack Knight, but it also tied together the stories of every superhero ever named Starman. One of whom was Jack's father Ted, an inventor turned Golden Age superhero who is now retired. Another was Jack's brother David, who was killed in issue #1.

Assisting Jack in his super heroic efforts of truth, justice, and well, stuff: The Shade, a former Flash villain who Robinson writes as a complicated antihero whose life and mysterious past becomes central to the series. There's Sadie, with whom Jack falls in love, and in the final issue, retires to be with her and their child. The O'Dare family, who are all cops. Charity, a fortune teller. Plus the ghost of a pirate, a superpowered ex-con, and various other figures who appear over the course of the 80+ issues.

On the other side of the ledger was The Mist, a Golden Age supervillain now an aged man with a failing memory, who with the help of his two children, Kyle and Nash, stage a series of attacks in the opening story arc. A destruction-filled crime spree that included the murder of David Knight, aka Starman. Then Jack killed Kyle. Nash becomes the new Mist, swearing vengeance by planning to — well, we'll get to all that.

And I don't see what the big deal is here about turning the David Knight character into a sacrificial lamb. That only precipitated a very bad trend/obsession/habit that cost the original Supergirl, and the way writers continued over the years to do so, as though it were inherently wrong to have created these characters in the first place, was nothing short of repulsive. In hindsight, what stories I read from Robinson's Starman series were so empty and pointless.

Here's the 2nd part of this shoddy essay (and I won't be surprised if a 3rd is in preparation), and something decidedly eyebrow raising about artists is brought up:

Rereading the comic, it was a great showcase for artists. It was never defined by the artists, not even Harris, who co-created Jack and drew roughly half the run. The fill-in issues worked because they were very much written to the artists, and stood out from the regular run. I mentioned earlier that one of Robinson’s great skills was the way he took so many tones and styles and managed to make them part of this larger thing. This is one of the things I meant.

Today the writer is considered the author of the comic and treated like that by companies. Rarely are artists filling in and written to and allowed to go crazy in the way that Robinson let them. It may have been in service to the writer’s vision, to the series’ structure and plan, but it was a vision that allowed for many approaches and a significant level of collaboration.

Perhaps that's another problem with some overrated comics of their times, like the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, recalling there were several notable artists who drew stories for that too - it seemed to serve more as a showcase for artists to draw what amounted to nothing, all for the sake of promoting artists who could be as overrated as the writers.

Reading through the first few years of Starman, I am reminded how much comics have changed in the years since. There are story arcs, single issue stories, two or three issues stories, issues that are designed to transition between story arcs and catch up with multiple characters. A time before comics would “write for the trades”. That shift — and I say this as one who since the 1990s would wait for the trade — has not been a good thing.

Umm, even when comics aren't written for the trades, that doesn't mean they can't be awful. And the half-hearted way at least a few of the characters were handled in Starman was atrocious. And there were bad storylines 3 decades ago that weren't written for trades per se, like Emerald Twilight, something overrated writers like Robinson never seemed to complain about. Interestingly enough, the article actually admits there's something wrong with the Starman series in more ways than meets the eye:

One of the sources of superhero comics are old boys adventure tales. I keep thinking about this strange lineage of stories that stretch back to Daniel Defoe in the 18th century and Alexander Dumas in the 19th. That leads to Jack London to Joseph Conrad to John Buchan to Graham Greene to John Le Carre to Robert Stone to Viet Thanh Nguyễn.

One reason they were boys adventures was because there were no girls allowed. Which brings me to Starman’s great failure. There are plenty of things that, in reading the entirety of the series over a short time many years later, may not hold up as well as one would hope. That read differently in chunks than monthly. That didn’t age well. Some plotting that didn’t work as well as they thought. All of this is to be expected. The big failure and disappointment of the series is the female characters.

I wrote earlier that the book is the story of Jack and Ted Knight, of fathers and sons. It does get into Jack and David’s relationship and the complex nature of brothers over the course of its run. That complex relationship of loving someone even though you may not like them. The series’ main problems is that none of the female characters have the depth or complexity of the male characters.

Nash, who after the first story arc becomes the new Mist, is the biggest disappointment. When we meet her in the first story arc she is the stuttering daughter helping her father and her brother. Her brother Kyle is the light of her father’s eye. The one who will become The Mist, the second generation supervillain who will take on his father’s mantle. Later in the series we see The Mist’s misogyny when he speaks of his daughter in a way that makes clear why she might have grown up stuttering and seeking a certain invisibility, even as she was desperate to gain her father’s approval. While she might say that she is taking on her father's mantle, it’s the death of her brother that inspires her and drives her.

Nash goes about being a villain in a familiar way, as though following a script. She stages heists. She kills a few superheroes. I think most characters in superhero comics tend to be one note, flat characters. Is the flatness of her character deliberate? For years I’ve heard about this need to make villains complicated. Yes, people who disagree with me have as deep and rich inner lives as I do. I’ve lived through decades of pop culture that was entranced by Hannibal Lecter and has regurgitated a million serial killers who are interesting and complicated. The truth is that they’re not. Political and business leaders literally laugh like cartoon characters when presented with evidence that they’re hurting and killing people. They may be sentient, but it’s hard to think of them as well-rounded human beings with complicated feelings and inner lives.

Is Nash the product of her environment? Incapable of being a full, complete person and playacting out relationships, imitating her father and other villains? Was she an intentionally flat, boring shell of a human being who lacks an inner life?

The most notable thing about her is that she rapes an unconscious Jack. She does for the purpose of becoming pregnant. Something we would see in the pages of Tom Strong from Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse a few years later. It remains uncomfortable thirty years later. Some of that is simply because it is rape. She does it to a man, which makes it about power as much as sex, which, yes, is always the case. Her plan, to get knocked up by Jack and then to raise their son to be a villain who will kill his father, is one of those plots that I guess makes sense?

No it does not. If anything, what's described here is sick. It's the kind of "product of its time" that gives management of female cast members a bad name. It could also explain why a character like Doris Lee was never made use of, and was apparently established as having been retroactively murdered in the story. For now, what they say about the Nash character is certainly repellent. Note the part about her killing at least a few superheroes, and even raping the star of the show, and something is definitely wrong. I hesitate to think, what if she'd been written as a lesbian, and wound up invoking offensive stereotypes about lesbians while homosexual men were let off the hook by contrast? The part about her resorting to rape of a man, whether conscious or not, is another irritating problem with this pseudo-Starman series - while such things are obviously possible in real life, here it amounts to shock value and cheap sensationalism that can obscure the even more pressing problem of men violating women, based on how contrived and forced it was. And that Nash would be written obliterating any superhero characters who could be minor is another signal what's wrong with the tale: it's all an excuse to rid DC of any characters they consider "useless". All by people who don't have the courage to admit their "talent" in writing and art is completely lacking.

The Mist and Starman. Two elder figures, shaped by the First and Second World Wars, respectively, still alive at century’s end. Both heralded for their actions, but one emboldened by what he did during the war, the other weakened by it. The two men cast shadows over the decades, and over their children, each losing their firstborn son, who sought to take their father’s place. Each then replaced by their second-born.

In that framing, Nash’s plan to have a baby with Jack who will then kill Jack, makes a certain sense. The way that opera and myth have a logic to them.

In the end, The Mist returns. While Ted Knight gave up his role and let Jack find his own way, we see The Mist driven by hatred towards not just his old foe, but his own daughter and grandson. And that hate literally consumes him, as he intends to destroy the city and everyone in it.

The city is saved by Ted, who sacrifices himself, after holding his grandson in his arms for the first and last time. Before encouraging his son to find his own path forward. In Ted’s final act of bravery, he uses a device to lift the Mist and the building with a bomb in it above the atmosphere where it can safely explode. In his last moments, Ted Knight becomes a star.

Considering that the final issue of the comic was released in 2001, at the turn of the millennium, that’s not a meaningless fable.

It is meaningless. And both Starman and Mist are "heralded"? What does that mean, that the villain is admired for his criminal activities? Sorry, that's just further compounding all that's wrong with it. Not to mention that what Nash had planned for Jack gives motherhood a bad name. And that Ted would be turned into a sacrificial lamb for the sake of a bizarre series like this is disrespectful to original creators Gardner Fox and Jack Burnley. So the hero can't die from natural causes and auto accidents; it can only be as some kind of pyhrric victory where a villain is made to look like he's in some kind of "fun" rivalry with a villain. It reeks of moral equivalence.

Perhaps the comic’s biggest failure is Sadie, or rather, the failure of Sadie as a character. She’s the character who Jack falls in love with. He goes into space for her in search of her brother who everyone else thinks is dead. He gives up being Starman and moves away for her. Not just for her, but she’s one reason he moves and realizes it’s time to give up being a hero. A character like that should jump off the page. Their relationship should burn.

I call her the comic’s big failure because she comes off fairly flat.

Gee, if the ladies in Starman are that poorly written, why doesn't the essayist think this comic is a failure? Even the father-son-brother relationships in this tale were dreary and went nowhere in what I read. The main problem is that otherwise insulted the whole superhero theme, right down to the cosmic rod originally used by Ted in the Golden Age tales; also note how Jack takes to using a large pole-style device as the series continues. Perhaps that's another problem: the series has a condescending view of superheroic themes, including the costume worn by Ted.

What would it have meant for Robinson to center Sadie and her romance with Jack in the comic? My gut says that the comic would have been cancelled. This is me being cynical, but I don't think that I’m wrong.

There are two stereotypes to acknowledge about romance stories. One is that the romance genre is largely written and read by women. The other is that it is a largely unserious genre that has led to women having unrealistic views of romance and men. Romance is a genre with tropes and expectations. Unlike other genres like mystery, crime, westerns, thrillers, etc., romance, which remains largely written by and about women, as a genre is not considered art and remains looked down upon.

I will admit to reading very few romance novels in my life. Like all genres, good writers are able to use tropes and expectations but can write thoughtfully about people. Great romantic comedies and dramas work because they understand their characters and while they contain tropes, they are telling the stories of people. Genre contains tropes and myths that are important to cultures. That's why they continue and continue to be passed on.

If romance books give girls and women unrealistic expectations, that implies that men have “realistic” expectations. Or takes as a given that whatever men think/believe is "the norm.” What are those expectations? How do we get those expectations? Supposedly women believe in a prince charming who will come along and save them. I won’t lie, some people think that, or want that.18 A romance is all about fighting over expectations versus reality, and the demands people place on each other, and how to live in the world. That’s not subtext, it is literally the text of everything from Nora Ephron to Jilly Cooper to Jane Austen. The bad books and movies may feature poorly drawn characters uttering bad dialogue, but it is the subject.

Romance in men’s stories, and boys stories, are often side stories. If they appear at all, the romance is secondary. The object of the romance is secondary as well. The relationship is secondary to the plot. Secondary to the character's passion. Secondary to the character’s destiny. What the main character does is the most important thing. The romance must fit into the man’s life and purpose that already exists. Men look for someone who believes in them, their passion, their purpose. Who will support them in their quest. The romance is not about negotiation and conversation, but about passion and choosing.

Is this an argument that romance and relationships should be a minor aspect of our lives for everyone? Or that men should see romance and relationships as a minor aspect of our lives? Because whatever one’s thoughts on monogamy and compulsive heterosexuality, those are very different things.

I don't know about the romance genre, but drama is something that's been marketed to men as much as women, and has succeeded more or less with adults in the west, including incorporation of romance. Of course, if drama is what Starman is supposed to be, it fails. I think it's quite a stretch to say romance has never appeared in men/boys stories, because what about Superman and Lois Lane, Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson? Romance has appeared in stories for men/boys, more or less, and has been appreciated by many of the same, though today, it's certainly been ruined beyond belief by wokeness. Which is decidedly what the Starman series from Robinson represented too. And if the columnist didn't read much romance, how can he be certain women have "unrealistic" expectations, or that even have "realistic" ones? Interesting he speaks of poorly drawn characters with bad dialogue, because that decidedly describes Robinson's shoddy Starman series too.

I wonder sometimes what it means to love superhero comics as an adult? Heroic stories that lack a third act, a resolution, where one faces the consequences of all that has come before. Is this love for comics, which often translates into — if not paralleled by — a love of serialized and procedural stories. Adventure and crime stories featuring the same characters. Who may or may not age, for whom time may or may not continue, but one episode to the next, they continue having new adventures and solving new problems.

Much has been written for decades about the embrace of superheroes in the United States in the post-WWII era and what it means and represents. The embrace of superheroes in popularity writ large in the culture in the 21st Century is often seen in relation to a decline of American power. It remains to be seen what happens next. As the United States declines in economic and cultural power, will they continue to be embraced or will the genre decline?

That's for the moviegoing public though, which is different from people who visit comic book shops. Does our embrace and interest in superheroes represent an arrested development? There is a term I learned years ago, Peter Pans, for adult men who aren’t playboys or fuckboys. They aren’t against marriage. They might want kids. Maybe? Maybe not? They’re in no rush. It’s a bemused term tinged with sadness used to describe some men. I wonder if a love of procedural stories and superheroes, full of ongoing stories and last minute saves, is either a sign of such arrested development, or a contribution to it. Swimming in stories without a third act, without resolution and consequences, do we see that, even unconsciously, as a model in our lives? Does it prevent us from what we should be and need to be doing?

If you're going to write up stories like Robinson's at the expense of what themes made them work in the first place, you don't love superhero comics as an adult. And unfortunately, there's a certain segment of society today, moviegoing or otherwise, who are anti-marriage, even anti-child-bearing. Another reason why this pretentious piece falls flat is because it then veers into a more noticeably political diatribe, and even brings up one such item from Warren Ellis, an Iron Man miniseries he wrote, along with the IM movie from 2008:

Ted was a fragile figure. I don’t mean that mockingly. He had a mental breakdown. One tied to the murder of Doris Lee, his first love, but also to his work on the Manhattan Project. Here’s where I think that Robinson’s Britishness come into play. I was reminded of the Warren Ellis and Adi Granov miniseries Iron Man: Extremis and the series’ take on the military-industrial complex. The idea that Tony Stark and his father were pushed into developing and building weapons from an early age. That this system doesn’t want the best and brightest to design new cities and energy sources, and bring about a Star Trek-like future. Instead it’s focused on weapons, and to a lesser degree, consumer goods. I would argue that this critique — even if just a few pages buried in six issues that consists largely of lengthy fights, an obvious reveal, ending with Stark having new fancy powers — makes this the fourth most subversive comic Marvel has published.

Compare that to the Iron Man film, where the elder Stark’s role in the Manhattan Project is a part of why he’s so great. Rather than question the systems around Stark and militarism, instead we have movies that were used to help promote the military and American militarism and privatized war.

I hated the first Iron Man movie. That put me in a distinct minority among people I knew. The Afghanistan in the film had nothing to do with the actual country, but was instead Dick Cheney’s wet dream. The same cartoonish fantasy used to sell the Afghan and Iraq wars. A lawless place where Muslims of many languages and cultures came together to be evil terrorists whose ultimate goal is …something. Something evil, obviously, even if makes no sense. In Iron Man it involved obtaining weapons, attacking Americans, and rounding up villagers. They’re terrorists. We don’t need to think about who they are or what they want. They don’t make any sense. We just need to kill them. And we need bigger and better weapons to do it.

The second Iron Man film included an Elon Musk cameo and featured Tony Stark declaring “I've successfully privatized world peace.” How did we go from a Republican President pushing through tax cuts for the rich and planning destabilizing wars to today when we have … a Republican President pushing through tax cuts for the rich and planning destabilizing wars? Where people who once supported those wars now think they were a horrible mistake, and that the country’s real enemies are the people who protested that war believing it would be a horrible mistake.

Well, this certainly is another clue what's wrong with this whole pointless commentary about the Starman series. I knew the Comics Journal was a leftist periodical that had to be taken with a grain of salt, and this isn't improving things one bit. In hindsight, while the movie may have established that the terrorists in the 2008 film were being employed by figures like Obadiah Stane, it is rather surprising they would allude to serious issues like Islamic jihadism, because today, it's become far less likely, if at all. Nor would they invite Musk for a cameo in their films, let alone Donald Trump. But no matter the standings of the Comics Journal, what they're writing here is a complete slap in the face to advocates of freedom, including victims of Islam, and that also includes victims of 911. The essayist completely blurs what's wrong with the Religion of Peace, disregards victims of the same, right down to victims of honor murders, and even shoehorns in anti-conservative propaganda to boot. He even refuses to consider that there were people at the time of 911 who thought Iran was a more pressing concern than Iraq, and that was dealt with earlier this year. So Starman, along with the Ellis-penned IM miniseries, is what he considers fabulous? Absolutely shameful.

I was eager to read Batman: Face the Face, the first comic of Robinson's in a while, and was just unimpressed. Anyone could have written that. This is part of what was behind Airboy. The comic got attention for the nasty transmisogyny, which I will not defend, and honestly sits uncomfortably in the story. I think it’s worth noting just how angry and nasty the book is in general. I won’t say it’s Robinson lashing out at the comics industry and himself, but it kind of is. It might open with a sad and almost over-the-top tone, but I think that obscures the sadness at the heart. This feeling that his career has come to an end, his marriage has come to an end, he hates himself, and feels like a failure.

As someone with career and money troubles, who lives alone and has been known to wallow, who has had depression and suicidal ideation for most of my life, I can relate.

Well I can't. Because it does nothing to encourage and inspire, or give somebody a reason for happiness. Interesting they bring up the alleged "transphobia" topic involving the Airboy comic Robinson wrote, because that was tasteless regardless. But while Robinson's an artistic failure, the problem is that in a way, he's the kind who's been failing upwards. Why else would he have gotten the jobs he did?

I’m guessing that Robinson didn’t invent that above dialogue out of thin air, but quoted it directly from someone. How sad is it that this was what so many editors took away from that? How pathetic that people who make comics had only the most surface level understanding of the book. After Starman wrapped up, Robinson stepped away from comics briefly and it’s hard to blame him if this was how the industry responded. I don’t think he meant for comics to be a stepping stone to something else, something “better,” but he wrote a great comic series and got to conclude it on his own terms. Why should he turn around and try to do that again? He tried to do something else. If editors didn’t understand what he had accomplished, why work with people who don’t appreciate you?

When he returned to comicdom later on, he was given the keys to retconning Alan Scott into a gay man in Earth 2, a series that didn't last long. With that kind of obsessive PC direction he took, exploiting other people's creations for his petty politics instead of at least creating new ones, how could anybody consider him an "auteur"? Robinson's not the only one, of course, who's done stuff like this, taking advantage of other people's creations to convey questionable beliefs and directions. But he only made bad situations worse, and simultaneously, the editors/publishers have to shoulder blame for enabling these situations and doing nothing to reverse them.

Anyway, this is one of the grimiest, stupidest essays I've ever read from the Comics Journal, and only makes me glad I don't own stories like Robinson's today. He was like a precursor to Geoff Johns, and did work with the latter on JSA and Hawkman in the early 2000s, which were also overrated, and made clear why I'd rather stick with the older stories than read their modern slop. So I guess it's ironic if Robinson's career sputtered in the end, seeing how he hasn't written much in the past decade. Unfortunately, seeing as he's a SJW in his own way, he's probably not disappointed, because such people are more interested in bringing down the quality of past creations than in building up better storytelling. As for the Comics Journal writer, he certainly knew how to exploit the subjects for conveying his own awful politics, and makes clear why the magazine is such an embarrassment.

Does A Charlie Brown Christmas still retain popularity after 60 years?

The Edwardsville Intelligencer wrote about the history of the first official Peanuts cartoon special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, 60 years after it was produced, and how it's reportedly still admired as a product of the times, one that boldly quoted from the Gospel's Luke 8:14:

On Dec. 9, 1965, a half-hour animated Christmas special, based on the beloved Peanuts cartoon characters created by Charles Schulz, aired for the first time on CBS. Executives anxiously awaited the viewing results since this presentation was a grand departure from previous holiday specials. Unknown to them at the time, it would become a popular staple of holiday television fare for the next 57 years and often rank in the top three of viewers' favorite Christmas presentations.

Although this was Schulz's first animated special, many more would follow, undoubtedly due to the success of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Many were holiday specific — “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” “It’s the Easter Beagle,” etc. Many more — some holiday themed, some not — would follow. Fifty-one Peanuts specials would air over the years, including some created after Schulz’s death in 2000. But the most popular by far was his first TV offering — “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” [...]

Until the Charlie Brown Christmas special, adult voice actors (and sometimes well-known actors and singers) did most of the dialogue in holiday cartoons, with bit parts done by children. Since no adults were ever seen or featured in the actual Peanuts cartoon strips, Schulz, Mendelson and Melendez decided to use only children’s voices in the production. Most of the children came from Mendelson’s neighborhood in California and read for the parts just as adult actors would for an assignment. [...]

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the beloved holiday special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” It will be celebrated with commemorative items sold through Hallmark stores and online. Apple purchased the rights to Peanuts-related shows in 2020 and allowed them to air for two more years on free TV before moving them exclusively to its own platform and Amazon. This ended 57 years of free TV broadcasting. The DVD is still available for purchase on Amazon and eBay; you can stream or record it on Apple TV or rent or buy it on Amazon Prime Video. Ironically, in the Christmas movie “Fred Claus,” there is a scene near the beginning where Vince Vaughn’s character is sitting in his apartment watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

Here's more on History:

The special broke several cartoon conventions of the era. It hired actual kids as voice actors, featured a spare jazz soundtrack and did not include a laugh track. Most controversial of all, it was a children's Christmas special featuring a lengthy quote from the Bible.

A week before its airdate, CBS held a test screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for executives.

“The general reaction was one of disappointment,” said former CBS executive Fred Silverman in the documentary The Making of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (2015). “There were specific negative comments about the music, the piano music, some of the voicing, which sounded kind of amateurish.”

Even the special’s lead producer and co-creator, Lee Mendelson, feared that it would not only bomb, but possibly take down "Peanuts" with it. Instead, more than 15 million American households tuned in for its premiere—half of all TV viewers at the time. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” went on to win awards and become a beloved holiday classic. [...]

True to his comic strip, Schulz also wrote complicated dialogue for the characters. At one point, Lucy calls Christmas “a big commercial racket...run by a big Eastern syndicate.” Although "Peanuts" characters in the comic strip had always wrestled with adult ideas, executives worried viewers would be lost.

The biggest concern for both CBS executives and Mendelson himself was Schulz’s insistence on having the character of Linus recite a passage from the New Testament about the birth of Jesus. At the time, fewer than 10 percent of Christmas-themed TV shows contained a direct reference to religion, explains scholar Stephen J. Lind.

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Well, there goes our careers right down the drain,’” Mendelson recalled. When CBS executives saw the scene, they said, “The Bible thing scares us.”

But Schulz, a religious man who taught Sunday school, believed it was important to address the real meaning of Christmas. “If we don’t do it, who will?” Schulz asked.

As it turned out, everything that made "A Charlie Brown Christmas" so unconventional—its slow pacing, its plain animation, its unsophisticated voice acting and its sentimental message—was what resonated most with both viewers and critics.

That was then, and Schultz's efforts to realize his visions in animation were courageous for their time. And Mendelson would also later produce a few more cartoons based on comic strips, such as the early Garfield cartoons, and what impressed me about his productions is that unlike many Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Mendelson's didn't talk down to the audience, and had more sophistication than what most producers for Saturday morning matinees were willing to offer.

But depending how you view this, the downside is that, based on the very real war on Christmas in Europe and even in the USA, one can reasonably wonder if even A Charlie Brown Christmas still retains the respect and admiration it received decades ago. Would today's network executives be willing to approve such a project today, without acting as though it'd solely represent an "offense" to whomever they'd likely refuse to name, as though third parties literally have the right to "wag the dog"? Who knows? It all depends on whether the USA's situation improves from this point. I hope it does continue to retain popularity and admiration, but realists must be aware that fate can play a very bad role in what becomes of any great pop culture classic, and that includes comic strips like Peanuts.

In another related article, The News-Enterprise wrote about the comic strip's lasting impact:

While American pop culture has undergone dramatic shifts throughout its history, one staple remains relatively unchanged: Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip. The property celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, and the joy it has created for millions across many media.

Robert Pope, a cartoonist with an impressive pedigree who currently works on the “Peanuts” franchise, discussed the enduring and universal appeal of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang.

Putting pencil to paper daily for its licensed characters, Pope closely understands “Peanuts” in his role with Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates out of Santa Rosa, California. He strives to preserve the “magical” quality of Schulz’s creations, who was also known by the nickname “Sparky.”

“Typically, what I do is children’s books, graphic novels, illustrations for development deals, things that go in theme parks like Cedar Fair, which just recently merged with Six Flags,” Pope said. “Instead of trying to build something from the ground up, we’re extrapolating a lot of things that either were created and written while Sparky was alive, or things that were in process later in his life.”

Pope said at the heart of the “Peanuts” franchise are the singular sensibilities of Schulz. Schulz Creative Associates, Sparky’s family and many of his living collaborators ensure the original vision is unaltered.

Conversely, Pope said other longstanding properties he’s worked on, such as Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo and Batman, have had “many fathers over many years of development.”

“You’ve had lots of hands on those characters. Those teams allow people to feel very comfortable trying to put their own stamp on those,” Pope said. “It would just be a very foolhardy thing to try to take it upon yourself to elaborate on ‘Peanuts.’”

Pope said the responsibility of maintaining Schulz’s legacy can be “petrifying,” especially considering how renowned Schulz is among other artists.

“Most of the cartooning community has a great deal of reverence and respect for the body of work that this man did for half a century, actually more,” Pope said. “It’s the sort of thing that is approached extremely carefully and thoughtfully.”

Considering there's bound to be cartoonists out there who're much more woke than others, it's definitely amazing there's a segment that does respect Schultz's visions, and makes sure to give Peanuts, however it's published today, the care it needs, although let's not forget that time when the animation studios now overseeing newer cartoon specials went out of their way to correct an alleged mistake made in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving all too obviously, in the Welcome Home Franklin special, and if there was any problem with that, it's that those complaining were likely not Peanuts fans, nor did they have any intention of watching the recent spotlight for Franklin either, no matter how it was put together.

It's good Schultz's family and other experts in his comic strip care about its legacy, but that's why they should be careful about acting as though what turns up on social media is something to panic about, and they shouldn't pander to people who're only interested in lodging empty complaints, and contrary to what they might claim, aren't fans of Charlie Brown. It's food for thought.