What lessons can be learned from the Neil Gaiman debacle?

A writer at Consequence of Sound discussed what she thought of the Neil Gaiman sexual abuse scandal, now that the Good Omens TV adaptation is over:

For decades, Neil Gaiman was one of the world’s most famous authors, in a world where famous authors are a rarity. His signature comic book series The Sandman is considered one of the most important and influential comics ever published, his novels have been massive best-sellers, and multiple movies and TV series have been made based on his work. His iconic leather jacket and black messy hair were instantly recognizable to anyone who’s been to a fan convention. He was a guest star on The Simpsons not once but twice. He was, at one point, a huge deal.

And now he isn't, for valid reasons. What I don't understand is how nobody ever questioned whether it was in good taste to turn Silver Scarab and Fury from Infinity Inc. into plot devices in Gaiman's machinations for his decidedly overrated Sandman series, which in the end were meaningless. And as noted earlier, how did he have veto power over what characters could have the Sandman name applied to them? All that did in the end was add to the harm doubtless caused to characters like the Golden Age Wesley Dodds. On the subject of his TV and film projects, it's told that:

The 2024 allegations had a cascading effect on all those projects. Dead Boy Detectives was canceled in August 2024 after one season. In the summer of 2025, The Sandman wrapped things up with Season 2 (despite there being plenty more material left in the original comics). And as for that one remaining unreleased project, Anansi Boys star Delroy Lindo told EW in 2025 that “I don’t think that’ll ever see the light of day. It’s too bad on many levels, but I was really excited to do it.”

Lindo did express optimism for the show one day being seen: “Maybe it’ll be released. This is another reason to knock on wood.” It’s natural for Lindo to want to see a project he worked hard on not linger in the void. It’s also worth noting that Anansi Boys featured a largely Black cast, and there’s something uncomfortable about it being shelved while the final installments of Good Omens and The Sandman, led by white actors, did manage to make it to our screens.

Well, that can suggest that, despite all efforts made by the woke crowd to make it seem to the contrary, there is still favoratism in Hollywood that puts such a huge value on productions with mainly white leads, while productions with Black leads have no such luxury. Seriously, the Sandman TV show should've ended after just half a season, and chances are it'll all be forgotten as the overrated slop the comics definitely were.

It’s all part of the same uncomfortable calculus we’ve been stuck doing since 2017, as the worst qualities of one-time favorites have been exposed, leaving those who believe the victims scrambling for the most correct answer to these ethically murky (at best) situations. For many, Gaiman was a pop culture god on the level of Joss Whedon or Woody Allen. His fall from grace happened later than theirs, but the impact has been similar for fans, left to grapple with how they feel about their beloved favorites in the wake of knowing very unpleasant things about them.

Beyond being a fan of his work, I’ve interviewed Gaiman four times over the course of my career, including two occasions in person. I wish I could tell you that when I was sitting opposite him, I had some sort of sneaky feeling that he was capable of great harm, but I can’t. He had a bit of an ego about him, but it was easy to accept that as a natural consequence of being literally one of the most famous writers of his generation. Otherwise, the mask never slipped.

Creators like Dan Harmon have come back from rough tales of their behavior with thorough apologies, but Gaiman has firmly denied that there’s any truth to the multiple accounts of abuse, leaving these reports to fester in the imagination rather than heal. It’s a lack of self-awareness that’s disappointing to witness, though it’s far from the only disappointment now associated with Gaiman’s legacy. The real disappointment comes from knowing that an author so many believed to be capable of deep empathy was allegedly capable of empathy’s exact opposite.

On this, I think it would be recommended to consider a research report related to the Timothy Busfield sexual abuse scandal, where a point is made that, "The reality is that having a good guy persona is not incongruous with being a predator, said Northeastern University experts on sexual and domestic violence." It can also be described as a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing persona, and there's sadly only so many slimy figures in entertainment and elsewhere who've used that tactic to their advantage. But why cite Woody Allen? Since no concrete case was ever made against him, and he seems to have recovered in reputation in the past few years, citing him as an example doesn't work well. Whedon, by contrast, was accused of abusing Charisma Carpenter just for getting pregnant, and that alone is enough to look upon him in disgrace, considering she'd been a victim of a serious crime in the early 90s.

The rise of nerd culture in the mainstream was made possible in part by deifying creators. But gods complicate things. Maybe it’s best to let them fade away. Neil Gaiman included.

On that, I think plenty can agree the time has come to stop putting "celebrities" on pedastals, because in the long run, it's not helping a bit. If there's an important lesson to learn in these debacles, it's that judgement of persona is seriously needed, if they're to be celebrated at all.

Some history of Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau

The UK Guardian wrote about the history of cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who created the Doonesbury comic strip in the late 60s/early 70s, and how he developed it as a liberal-leaning tale over the years, one where the characters age in contrast to Peanuts, where they don't. And here's an example of the politics it emphasized:

Coming from an all-male prep school, Trudeau arrived at Yale with his own archaic views about women, and his earliest comic strips displayed sexism. However, his worldview was rapidly upended when he began dating a woman hailing from three generations of feminists. “She gave him an education, a crash course,” Kendall notes. “He quickly developed and got it.”

This awakening birthed the character Joanie Caucus, a middle-aged woman who leaves her husband to go to law school, cementing Trudeau as a mainstream advocate for feminism in the 1970s.

This capacity for personal and artistic evolution is, for Kendall, Trudeau’s most defining and admirable trait. “I feel like in this culture right now, there are a lot of people, particularly men, who kind of get stuck in adolescent mode. The one thing about Garry that moves me is his development and growth.”

This extended to his depiction of war. In his early 20s, Trudeau drew strips featuring the character B.D. (named after the Yale quarterback Brian Dowling) going to Vietnam merely to avoid writing a college term paper. Decades later, during the Iraq war, an older, wiser Trudeau depicted B.D. losing a leg and suffering from PTSD – a storyline handled with depth and care.

Trudeau also demonstrated a sensitive understanding of race and religion, mainstreaming Jewish characters like the radical student leader Mark Slackmeyer, and capturing the nuanced generational divides between assimilationist parents and their radicalised children.

Be that as it may, his left-wing view of issues like the Vietnam war and even the Iraq war, which seemed to be that they should never have been carried out at all, is dismaying in hindsight. Why, surely "radical" isn't also a concerning description? The way Mark's characterized looks awfully absurd by today's standards, where you have school students radicalized against figures with backgrounds like his. Come to think of it, does Trudeau even still care about whether children are radicalized, if he ever did at all? And if you needed another clue what's wrong with Trudeau's approach, it's what he thinks of Donald Trump, and has for a long time:

Currently, Trudeau is only producing fresh Sunday strips – with the dailies existing as “Doonesbury Classic” reruns – and about a third of his new output focuses entirely on Donald Trump.

Trudeau has been tracking Trump since 1987, recognising him early on as an outrageous, narcissistic character, frequently placing him in adventures with the Doonesbury gang. Kendall says: “Trump is a very colourful character. Trump’s hair and various body parts are fun for the cartoonist. I guess he wants to talk about the effect of Trumpism on the Doonesbury gang and how it’s affecting the baby boomers, not just American politics, but American culture as well.” [...]

This is a tough moment for baby boomers who won struggles for feminism and civil rights in the 1960s only to see many of those gains stalled or reversed by Trump, the Republican party and a rightwing supreme court. Can Trudeau remain optimistic about America? His biographer thinks so.

Wow, so all Trump's capable of doing is taking apart supposed achievements made by feminists, which really wasn't much, or they let deteriorate themselves after they were fine with LGBT activists taking apart anything to do with women's safety and dignity. I once read Doonesbury many years ago, but today, can't say I'm so impressed with it in hindsight, realizing Trudeau followed a leftist anti-war narrative that was sadly cemented by the disastrous way the Vietnam war was handled, one that never sought to dismantle the commie leadership in the country's north. I do recall a few strips where Trump was drawn in, depicted acting chummy with figures like Duke, who was depicted as a drug addict, and was in some ways meant to be a de facto baddie, perhaps even a caricature of conservatives. Well, no surprise, really.

I really don't see the point of Doonesbury today, based on how pretentious Trudeau really was in the long run, and Trudeau lost his way morally over a decade ago. I'm sure there's politically emphasizing comic strips on the market worth reading, but at this point, I wouldn't consider Doonesbury one of them.

Polygon says The Boys TV show failed to live up to the comic's "strongest qualities"

A writer at Polygon's claiming The Boys series didn't live up to whatever potential the comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson supposedly had, but continues the claim its one of the "best" comics ever on the market:

When Amazon's adaptation of The Boys was announced, I was thrilled. Garth Ennis is my favorite comics writer, and The Boys occupies a stable spot on my Mount Rushmore of best comics of all time right alongside Preacher, Planetary, and The Invisibles. At the same time, AMC's then-recent disappointing adaptation of Preacher had already shown me that the Irish writer’s trademark blend of realistic characters and surreal situations doesn’t necessarily translate to TV.

Watching The Boys on Prime Video felt like eating pineapple pizza: First, you bite in, driven by curiosity over a new spin on something you love; then, the flavor creeps in, and you realize what a mistake this was; finally, you finish it because wasting food is wrong, while contemplating all your terrible life choices. Not that I would ever eat pineapple pizza, to be clear, but I did sit through five seasons of The Boys, and the only positive outcome is that it reminded me just how excellent the comics are.

However, for some “diabolical” reason, at some point during the airing of the show, disparaging the comics became customary among YouTubers and content creators looking for a nice algorithm boost. Panels were posted out of context, highlighting the most graphic and ridiculous aspects of the story while ignoring its robust narrative and character development. Now that the show has ended, people are bringing up its many flaws as a counterpoint, but rather than fueling pointless factionalism, it’s more constructive to focus on explaining why The Boys is one of the best superhero comics you’ll ever read.

No it isn't. A comic emphasizing crudeness and jarring violence does not rate high on my wish list. Nor does a tale making it look like heroes' failure is something to enjoy more than victory. It sounds like the writer's trying the classic cliche of saying the violence was the whole point, as though that actually makes it good on its own, though it sure is funny how surrealism gets a pass here when comics coming from different writers who're less obsessed with graphic violence would likely never get the same acceptance based on their approach to scriptwriting. What's so "robust" about Ennis' comic?

It’s not a secret that Amazon’s The Boys is politically charged, which makes its message a lot less effective than the comics’. Besides on-the-nose references to a certain blonde President, some watchers argued that it’s never actually clear what specific policies the show is satirizing. Sure, there’s the mandatory MAGA-pandering, but Homelander doesn’t lock up immigrants (even if he does start throwing dissenting citizens into work camps in season 5). The show’s assumed anti-Fascist stance also clashes with the refusal to acknowledge the Tomer Capone controversy. More importantly, while people can have different opinions on politics, it’s hard to find someone who disagrees with “big, greedy corporations are bad.”

But if The Boys comics were simply about corporate greed, the series would have been remembered as just another satire of the superhero genre and nothing more. Instead, Ennis does what he does best, portraying painfully realistic characters who struggle through lives where trauma and violence are always entwined. William “Billy” Butcher is the main character of the story, but he’s not the protagonist. That role goes to Hugh "Wee Hughie" Campbell, who acts as the readers’ anchor and the writer’s point of view.

Sounds almost like some of Tom King's stories that allegedly build upon trauma. On the topic of Tomer Capone, it sounds like the leftist viewership of this series despised that he would serve with the IDF for defending the country (which AOL unshockingly distorts, long after October 7, 2023), though even if he did, or still upholds his army career, that doesn't make the show worth watching, based on its own leftism, and that of the comics it adapts. Nor does the alleged critique of corporate greed, which I assume was added to the story to appease conservatives and liberals who take issue with corporatism. But it's entirely possible to write up a story, satirical or otherwise, that focuses on corporate subjects without resorting to the kind of mayhem The Boys does, and Ennis sadly didn't do that.

The stark contrast between the two has a purpose: Butcher is big, strong, and handsome. He’s a tough guy who gets things done no matter the cost. As readers, it’s natural to gravitate towards him for the majority of the story since he represents the stereotype of the cool anti-hero that comics started relying upon from the 1980s. But Ennis, who wrote some of the best Punisher stories, knows what hides behind that costume: violence as a way to exorcize trauma that will never go away. The comics’ final arc almost mocks readers for liking Butcher when he turns out to be a genocidal maniac who is not any better than the wretched “‘supes” he wants to kill, including Homelander. It’s plain, meek Hughie who does the right thing in the end. [...]

TV Butcher still hates Homelander — he did rape his wife — and transfers that hatred to all the ‘supes, but the show really fails to deliver on the background to that hatred, which the comics explore in the six-issue limited series Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker. This tells the story of Butcher before The Boys: a man warped by domestic violence who gets one shot at redemption, a chance meeting with Becky. The woman becomes Butcher’s salvation, but he’s always doubting how long it will be before the beast comes out again. When Becky dies as a consequence of Homelander’s alleged rape, that’s not simply the trigger to a classic revenge story. The subtle suggestion is that this is what Billy was waiting for: an excuse to embrace his violent impulses again.

I still don't see what's so fantastic about any of this either. All I see is a tale built on repellent violence, physical and sexual, that offers no joy, and it's a shame there's whole generations who're buying into Ennis' vision, hook line and sinker. The leftist angle certainly doesn't help. What's really head-shaking is how nobody conservative seems to care enough today to create comics with visions to counter what Ennis pushes here, and that's one more reason why these kind of embarrassments like the Boys will continue to be produced for a long time, and receive all the TV and film adaptations they don't need. What "qualities" does a story like the Boys have to "live up to"? There really aren't any.

Another "doomscroller" seeks a cure in comic reading

In a case somewhat similar to this earlier one, a writer at the Rockland County Times talks about having found a cure for "doomscrolling" on social media by turning to comics:

All my life I’ve been reading comic books. Starting in elementary school, I used to frequent Funny Business which was formerly in Nyack but has since closed, for all my monthly issues. I read them incessantly, even counting them towards my reading logs, much to my teachers’ frustration. Even now, I still love the medium. The fantastic stories and incredible art alone make picking up a comic book worth it, but something else that sweetens the deal is the lack of distraction.

I am, unfortunately, addicted to doom scrolling, as I’m sure a lot of people are. For those who don’t know, “doom scrolling” is when you scroll on social media for minutes, maybe even hours on end, in an endless depressive stream of content designed to hook you. Scrolling is addicting, I often can’t bring myself to stop even when I want to. It’s like a drug in all honesty. Algorithms incentivize you to stay scrolling. Be it on Twitter, Instagram, or Tiktok, the whole point of those apps are to keep you hooked and engaging with them. The sad reality is that we’re all susceptible, and many of us are already hooked.

I’ve been bringing myself back to reality through comic books. I’ll admit, I most often read them on my iPad. Not exactly a screenless activity. I have apps that give me access to the entire Marvel and DC back catalogues for a small fee every month, and it’s worth it. A major problem with comics is the price, especially for a physical copy of a given comic. The apps I use circumvent that, allowing me to read most comics published by DC or Marvel without breaking my bank. I find my brain to be calmer, I’m more focused, and I’m less depressed. Yes it’s all still happening on a screen, but I believe that it’s not the screen that is dangerous, but what’s happening on it.

On this, one must wonder what kind of DC/Marvel comics he's reading, because if it's the mega-modern woke stuff, then what's the point of this puff piece?

We’re in a time where so much of the “art” we engage with has been auto-generated by a machine. Videos and photos, once considered mediums of truth, are now suspect due to the influx of AI generated material. The brain rot that ensues doesn’t just threaten art in high concept, but it threatens our way of engaging with the world and with other people. It’s important to disengage with scrolling, and reengage with human made art. Comics give you that. The stories are written by people, drawn by people, lettered by people, and made for people. The work is both visually stimulating and creatively engaging in a way that has become lost to so many people.

But what about much of Marvel/DC's output over the past quarter century? What's so great about that, assuming the writer's "engaging" with any of it? There's no description of anything he read, so how can we judge?

With the success of film franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or TV shows like The Boys or Invincible, media that has been adapted from comics are more popular than ever. The original medium those stories were told in give the audience a taste of something that is hard to come by now. Maybe your version of this isn’t comics. Maybe it’s traditional literature, or drawing, or just going on a walk. Whatever it is, make sure you do it. Be a person in the world who engages with human made art, who makes art yourself. No one needs to be a world renowned artist or culture critique. It’s not about that. It’s about getting back in touch with who you are as a person. Where your interests lie when you’re not being force fed “get ready with me” videos, is where your true self is. Bring yourself back to you, read a comic book.

I can't tell clearly if this is a college paper, but it sure comes off sounding like one, and perhaps the article drew from a local college paper through wire services. The movies are on the decline, enthusiasm for cinematic adaptations isn't what it used to be, yet we keep being lectured the films are soaring all over the place. And a citation for the Boys TV show is decidedly reason enough to give pause.

I will give the article this: AI does have a downside, and internet addiction is a problem too, much like being a TV couch potato in decades past. But what the article's ambiguous about is the entertainment value and lack of citations for whatever titles and fictional characters interest the writer. Without that, it all comes off rather unconvincing.

Tony Isabella villifies ICE in a letter to a newspaper

The leftist veteran comics writer who decided to take up LGBT identity politics at least a year ago, and has to date shown no signs of quitting that insanity, recently wrote a letter to the newspaper of an Ohio city, where he attacked ICE for trying to clear dangerous illegal immigrants out of the country and try to make the USA safe again. First, here's one of his sad forays into transsexuality he's recounting:

April 11: I had an amazing night out with LGBTQ+ friends. Though circumstances made it necessary for me to present in boy mode, I was correctly gendered everywhere we went. That means the world to someone like me.

Naturally, it's regrettable he's still sticking tight with these bizarre identity politics, over a year since he first declared this is how he wants to be known/remembered. Now, here's the letter he wrote to a local paper:

April 19: The (Medina) Gazette ran my letter on immigration and ICE. As I do with all my current work, I signed it “Jenny Blake Isabella.” Here’s that letter:

I’m 74 years old and have lived in Medina for over forty years. I love our charming city, especially because it has shown it can move forward without losing that charm. That is a rare precious quality.

There are two things Medina doesn’t need. It doesn’t need to be a sanctuary city and it most definitely doesn’t need to have an ICE presence, much less welcome that presence.

If Medina has any immigrant problem, it’s that we clearly don’t have enough immigrants to fill all those jobs we see advertised on street signs and elsewhere. Our country was built on willing immigrants to our nation and slaves kidnapped and brought here against their will. Both of these groups have made innumerable contributions to the United States and our lives would be poorer without their genius and hard work. Sadly, the historical truth of those who came here, willingly or unwilling, are downplayed by too many. Indeed, some seek to erase that history.

As for ICE, why would anyone who has witnessed its brutal, cruel and lawless conduct elsewhere want to bring that madness to our city? In its present form, ICE should not be welcome anywhere in the United States.

If our council needs to enact any legislation concerning ICE, it should be to require them to follow the same high standards as our terrific Medina police force. No masks. Wearing name tags. No seizures without real judicial authorization. No absurd shows of force to intimidate people. Being held accountable when they break the law. What is proper for our police force should be the standard for any law enforcement that comes to our city.

And what proof does he have that ICE is nothing but evil and sadistic, yet no illegal migrant could ever be the same? Does he even realize some of the illegal immigrants are ISIS agents? It's very sad but perhaps predictable he'd want to go as far as lionizing illegal immigration too, and one can only wonder if Isabella still believes in any lessons he'd written in past comics that crime doesn't pay. What next, will it turn out he believes Armenians who were persecuted by Azerbaijan should be turned away from the USA and ignored by contrast? There's only so much violent crime committed by illegal immigrants in the past few years alone, and Isabella turns a deaf ear and blind to all of that.

On the subject of masks, Isabella seems unaware there's police anti-terror squads in Europe whose operatives wear ski masks to protect their identities, not because they're some sort of totalitarian enforcement minions. And where does he get the notion ICE's whole purpose is to intimidate people? Certainly not innocents who uphold the law. He also turns his back to ICE officials who were attacked by illegal immigrants and other lawbreakers, and then has the gall to tell us ICE breaks the law? Utterly shameful.

It's head-shaking how somebody like Isabella would even want to work in comicdom's mainstream years before if this is what he believes now, which has the effect of making his past work look like a joke. And now, he even has the gall to do it under an identity politics.

South Park staff continue to explain why they're no longer relevant

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart says South Park co-creator Trey Parker is boomeranging back on still more cliches attacking Donald Trump:

South Park co-creator Trey Parker once mocked phony accolades for unimpressive people with the phrase “stunning and brave.” Now, he’s become the butt of that very joke, claiming his TV writers face a real threat from the U.S. military with Trump as Commander-in-Chief.

Posing as an oppressed artiste, Parker celebrated how brave he is to oppose Trump — like everyone else in Hollywood — with his long-running cartoon series during his comments as the TV Academy doled out awards to seven TV projects on Wednesday, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

[...] He went on to praise himself and co-creator Matt Stone for their bravery in attacking Trump, saying he and his staff are fearless, “especially this year when we started saying like, ‘OK, so this is the show we’re going to do,’ and they’re like, ‘Oh, OK — that’s gonna really piss some people off.”

He added that one of the reasons he’s so brave is because Trump has soldiers who supposedly would lay siege to their air-conditioned writers’ room.

And what's so brave about censoring the Muhammed cartoons episode they once filmed? Practically nothing, but it's been clear for years Parker and Stone were phonies to begin with, and in the past several months, having been turning out some of the most horrific "jokes" possible:

In recent episodes, the show called Secretary of War Pete Hegseth a “fucking douche,” repeatedly showed Donald Trump having sexual relations with Satan and his own vice president, and even portrayed Trump having an anti-Christ baby with Satan.

I just don't understand what's so funny about "humor" like that. Besides, if they never subjected leftist figures to such "parody", that's telling. Nothing brave about this.

Much like the Simpsons, South Park's been on the air far too long at nearly 3 decades, and it's time it went off the air for a change. Unfortunately, it's apparent they have no intention of stopping, no matter how pathetic South Park's become by this stage.

Mandalorian & Grogu's box office intake is very poor

World of Reel reports the box office gross for the new Mandalorian movie, the first Star Wars related theatrical film in several years and drawing from the TV show, has been very mediocre:

“The Mandalorian & Grogu” is off to a, what you might call, modest but closely watched start at the North American box office, earning about $11-$12M in Thursday night previews after screenings began early at 2 p.m.

That figure trails the $14.1M preview haul of “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which ultimately opened to $84M over three days and $103M over the four-day Memorial Day frame — numbers considered disappointing for the franchise at the time.

This aligns with $80M 3-day tracking I had mentioned a few weeks ago. It would not be a good performance for a Star Wars movie, an IP that used to tower in Hollywood.

Then, John Nolte at Breitbart followed up on the news with the following:

The Disney Grooming Syndicate’s return to Star Wars feature films has resulted in the lowest opening ever for a Disney Star Wars movie. If you figure inflation in, it’s the lowest opening since 1999.

The Mandalorian and Grogu thudded over the Friday-Saturday-Sunday with just $81 million. With the extra day due to the four-day Memorial Day weekend, it is expected to bellyflop at right around $97 million.

[...] What we can say for a fact is that Disney’s Woke Gestapo killed what had been the case for nearly 50 years, and that was Star Wars as an “event movie.”

Yes, but let's not forget how they took divisive steps 5 years ago by firing and blacklisting Gina Carano from the TV show over her politics. That didn't help the original series' reputation, and if much of the audience simply stopped caring about the Mandalorian based on that, it figures.

If we were to also take one of the official reviews of the film as an example, let's try this one from Sunshine State Cineplex:

Bringing Din Djarin to the big screen seems like a great idea on paper. As an open defender of the series, even as public opinion has seemingly turned against it, The Mandalorian was a breath of fresh air to open up the world around Star Wars. However, The Mandalorian and Grogu has two massive problems that it cannot shake: a lack of stakes and really terrible CGI.

The first is the biggest issue facing the Star Wars franchise as a whole. While scenes with Grogu remain adorable and brilliant, he’s also become something of an overpowered icon. There is zero percent chance that Disney and Lucasfilm will let anything happen to the character. Favreau cannot craft a scene that actually builds tension while Grogu is on screen.

Even with Mando, there are scenes where we could imagine Pascal and the actors who bring the character to life actually face consequences. Instead, as long as Grogu is around, we know that his powers are going to protect Din. There’s a moment that feels like it was ripped from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but because we know Grogu is here to rescue Din, we never actually fear losing the hero.

Sounds like Grogu's little more than a Mary Sue here. Or leads to similar situations for even the star character, played as he is by an actor who's obsessed with divisive leftism. With that kind of approach, no wonder we couldn't expect villains who provide authentic challenges to the hero in the story, combat-based or otherwise. That's what modern storytelling in comics and movies seems to have come down to at times.

If this Mandalorian movie is destined for freefall, I'm not going to care, and as the review hints, the firing of Carano had quite an impact on the series' reception. Unfortunately, there's no chance for now that Disney will ever show any remorse or reevaluate their MO.

Actress playing Supergirl continues to damage her reputation

According to John Nolte at Breitbart, the actress playing Supergirl in this summer's new live action adaptation (based on Tom King's writings, no less) is continuing to alienate the audience, going so far as to attack "Christian dads":

Anyway, after starting this fight back in March, Little Miss Entitled-Fake-Trailblazer is now responding to the criticism she desperately sought by ridiculing “Christian Dads.”

“I guess women know that this is just how it’s always been, unfortunately,” Alcock said of the criticism over her retarded comments back in March. “And it’s from a lot of people whose profiles have no photo, who are burner accounts. Or someone’s name and then ‘Dad of four, Christian,’ which is hilarious to me. But I mean, whose opinion do you really care about? If you’re pissing the right kind of people off, you’re doing OK.”

Man alive.

Okay, it’s not all her fault. She’s pretty young and was even younger when fame arrived a few years ago with HBO’s House of Dragon. Fame warps you, especially at that age, and especially in a Hollywood that no longer stops its young stars from imploding like this. Sure, Mickey Rooney was an unholy terror in real life, but his public persona was so expertly managed that he became the biggest movie star in the world for a few years.

There’s only one commodity that makes you a movie star, and that’s goodwill. Denzel Washington and Sandra Bullock are still major draws in their dotage. Why? Because we like them.

If Supergirl flops, and its insufferable star sure seems determined to make that happen, Hollywood’s going to call us sexist, aren’t they?

Alas, yes. Alcock's taking everything from bad to worse by repeating a mistake potentially dozens of performers are making - spouting divisive political rhetoric before the official release of the film in question. And what's additionally angering is how Otto Binder and Al Plastino's Silver Age creation, the Maid of Might, is once again being done an injustice, perhaps worse than what the 1984 Supergirl movie did, all for the sake of a divisive screenplay coupled with equally divisive politics, and its star goes so far as to insult religious and fathers.

Let's be perfectly clear. I am as big a fan of Supergirl as of Superman, but I'm not going to watch a film whose star goes galaxies out of her way to alienate more than half the audience, which has become a sad staple of quite a few would-be rising "stars" in over a decade. Besides, with a screenplay relying entirely on what a modern awful writer like Tom King concocted back in the comics only confirms the filmmakers weren't seeking to build a merit-based story. If the new film fails, I'm not going to feel one bit sorry. All I'm sorry about is how the past work of late veterans like Binder and Plastino was desecrated for the sake of only so much modern propaganda, now culminating in shoddy movies that don't do any favors for the creations either.

Update: World of Reel says the financial estimations for the film aren't good:

The question now is whether “Supergirl” can continue that momentum. However, forecasts from Box Office Theory currently predict a domestic debut between $47M and $65M, putting it somewhere between “The Marvels” territory and “Black Adam,” which opened to $67 domestically.

“Supergirl,” which opens June 26, 2026, is squeezed between several major family blockbusters, including “Toy Story 5,” “Minions & Monsters,” and Disney’s live-action “Moana.” However, the main issue surrounding the film is that the marketing campaign simply hasn’t generated much excitement. That softer buzz has fueled concerns that the movie could either emerge as a modest performer or become one of the summer’s bigger disappointments.

Notice how Superman is heavily featured in recent promotional material for “Supergirl,” despite the character reportedly only having a cameo role in the film — that’s Warner Bros. trying to play it safe.

I wonder how Dwayne Johnson feels about his Black Adam "vanity project" after at least a few years? Even at a PG-13 level, the whole approach was one of the most repellent a film of that sort could employ, and such a shoddy film is best forgotten.

Update 2: Breitbart's John Nolte has followed up:

Supergirl is the second title to arrive from the rebooted DC Studios, which is run by writer-director James Gunn. The first title was 2025’s Superman, and despite the desperate spin and a sequel already in production, Superman did not do all that well at the box office. A $619 million global take when the production and promotion budget easily exceeded $300 million is barely breaking even.

Additionally, James Gunn’s Superman took no real hold in our cultural imagination. It’s just kind of … there.

The next test for Gunn’s vision of the DC Studios Universe is Supergirl, and if it bombs, as is projected here, Gunn’s position overseeing this reboot of some of America’s most popular superheroes could end pretty quickly, especially when Paramount takes over the studio in the upcoming merger.

From where I sit, besides making a mediocre Superman movie, Gunn’s choices have also been bizarre. Later this year, Gunn’s company will release Clayface, a movie no one asked for. He also gave us two seasons of The Peacemaker before it disappeared without a trace. Next up is Lanterns, because the Green Lantern is so widely popular.

And now he’s turned Supergirl into a drunken strumpet and cast a mouthy harridan as his lead, who is already out alienating the fanbase (guys) by pre-blaming this potential flop on us male sexists who can’t deal with female heroes, even though Pam Grier and Alien’s Ripley character are now iconic and still embraced by men everywhere.

By Clayface, do they mean another Batman rogues gallery member? I'm not wasting money on yet another movie spotlighting a villain. Even the Flash's adversaries wouldn't a good example for a film focus. Seriously, I hope this whole obsession with flooding the market with superhero films galore will come to an end soon, because it's long become boring, and the sources the screenwriters draw from are some of the worst around. There's no need for them anymore.

Star of live action Muslim Ms. Marvel adaptation turns to comics writing

Variety reports the actress Iman Vellani, star of the live action Muslim Ms. Marvel TV show, is now writing comics herself, and in partnership with a writer/publisher who prefers the dark:

Iman Vellani, known for playing Kamala Khan in “Ms. Marvel,” will make her solo comics writing debut with “Chachu,” a five-issue neo-noir miniseries illustrated by Marianna Ignazzi and colored by Jordie Bellaire, set for release from Image Comics and Tiny Onion on Aug. 5.

Set in 1979, the series follows Leila, a 19-year-old Pakistani-Canadian young woman with a love of film and pulp novels who travels to California to reconnect with her estranged uncle – a semi-retired private eye once celebrated for having married the starlet he was originally hired to find. When that same wife vanishes again, uncle and niece find themselves on an unplanned road-trip investigation, one that pushes Leila’s first taste of adulthood into a reckoning with family secrets and the myths both have built around their lives.

“I’ve always been deeply curious about comics as an art form because of their capacity to hold contradiction – arguably better than any other medium,” Vellani said. “That became especially meaningful to me while writing Chachu, which grew out of this tension between mourning my youth while I still have it, and an incessant urge to come of age already.”

[...] “Chachu” is being co-published with Tiny Onion, the independent production house founded by James Tynion IV, co-creator of “Something is Killing the Children” and “The Department of Truth,” which has been expanding beyond comics into film, animation, and video game development.

If it weren't for how she quite possibly upholds the Islamic propaganda the Muslim Ms. Marvel series was built on, this might be more interesting than it sounds, but coupled with how she's having her comic produced by Tynion, the leftist who dislikes capitalism and thinks the horror genre is greatest idea ever created, that's why this isn't something to be excited about. Also, what's this about comics holding "contradiction" better than other mediums? Even that's questionable and above all, trivial. Let's also not forget how attempts to translate the Muslim Ms. Marvel into live action have for the most part been a flop.

The speculator joke continues in the UK

The BBC announced more old pamphlets are being sold on auction over in Britain:

Two Marvel comic books have sold for a total of £11,440 at an auction house in Surrey.

A copy of the first edition of The Incredible Hulk, featuring the first appearance of the superhero, sold for £7,800 after going on auction at Ewbank's in Woking on Wednesday.

Another 1974 edition of the comic which features the first appearance of X-Men superhero Wolverine, also sold for £3,640.

The auction's big ticket item, a first edition of Amazing Spider-Man which featured the character's first appearance, failed to sell having been listed for between £10,000 and £15,000.

Well that's certainly amazing some buyers gave pause based on 5-digit sums, but this still isn't good there's consumers in Europe who're making a farce out of the medium by perpetuating the speculator nonsense that's been a sad staple in the USA for a long time. Why won't even they stop to consider this is only depriving many museums of history projects that would be better off stored under their auspices? And why won't the history community itself speak out about how the speculator market is doing more harm than good? It's totally depressing nobody cares.

Is Image's Chew comic going to be adapted to TV?

K945 reports an Image comic from the past decade, Chew, appears to be in development for a TV show:

I've never been shy about professing my love of Louisiana comic book creator Rob Guillory. I've said it once, and I'll say it again - he's a good guy, a really good human, and a GREAT artist. Whether he's drawing, writing, or doing both at the same time, he just has this knack of building believable & relatable worlds around truly outlandish and unbelievable ideas. The man is gifted.

[...] One property that I thought was ready made for television is Chew. Look, I get it, I'm clearly biased and a huge, huge fan. But, taking myself out of it, Chew is a pretty important piece of work. It won Eisner Awards, Harvey Awards, it is one of the most successful creator owned books of all-time...and it's so unique and inventive, there's nothing else like it on the market. Which is a rarity in today's world.

Way back in the day, Chew was going to be turned into an animated series starring Steven Yeun and Robin Williams. However, Robin Williams passed away during production and the project just never came together or saw the light of day. Well, now, it seems like Chew is getting a second chance at life.

[...] Rob and John Layman are throwing it back to the days of newspapers and magazines and releasing Chew as a serialized, one-page comic strip being released monthly and the new Comics! The Magazine.

This news might've been okay if it weren't for how far-left Layman happens to be, and if that's what he's like, Guillory can't be far behind. Besides, just because Chew won awards galore, does that alone make it worth adapting?

As for the late actor Williams, if that's whom they're talking about, he died by suicide, sadly enough, though I had no idea if he was ever working on projects like adapting Chew. That aside, from what I can tell, Chew is just another comic you could expect Image, in its current form, to have produced, and I really don't see what the fuss is about here.

Batman: The Killing Joke gets an expensive prestige edition designed like a camera

Digital Camera World wrote about a special edition of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's Batman: The Killing Joke, that's designed like a camera and comes with a possibly unshocking price tag:

The most iconic Batman serial of all time, The Killing Joke, is getting an oversized prestige edition themed like a film camera (with removable lens and leather case) for an eye-watering €15,000 – approximately $17,500 / £13,000 / AU$24,400.

While other caped crusader comics are arguably better (check out The Dark Knight Returns and Year One), what makes The Killing Joke the most iconic Batman graphic novel ever is its cover – featuring a rictus-grinning Joker pointing a camera at the viewer.

Drawn by Brian Bolland, it's one of the greatest comic book covers the medium has ever seen – and it reflects the Joker's twisted use of photography to psychologically torture Commissioner Gordon, in what serves as the villain's most widely accepted origin story.

The 1988 comic, written by similarly iconic Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), has inspired everything from action figures to an animated movie – and now the essential Batman story is being presented in the most prestigious of prestige editions, styled after the Joker's fictitious Witz film camera.

Described by publisher Argent Comics as "the world’s first giclée-printed comic book," only 52 volumes will ever exist – 47 for sale to the public, with 5 archive copies for Argent and DC.

If memory serves, it's also the story where Barbara Gordon was turned parapalegic when the Joker shot her, and what Moore may not have intended as canon per se was soon turned into just that by the editors, with the earliest appearance Babs made in a wheelchair I can recall possibly being an issue of John Ostrander's Suicide Squad, at least 2 years after the Killing Joke was published. While there were decent stories that followed where Babs was in the spotlight like Birds of Prey's first several years, some could reasonably argue whether it was a good idea to just take a potentially questionable story and shoehorn in into continuity proper.

For now, this is yet another speculator market farce in the making, and nobody should be buying this photographing joke just because of the silly design they used on the cover material. And seriously, is Moore really that "iconic" a writer? Not really, and he hasn't been in a long, long time.

The whole "blind bag" craze could backfire

A writer at Popverse says Todd McFarlane's warned that the current insanity of "blind bag" variants which Image seems particularly interested in employing as a "cash grab" tactic could backfire:

The blind bag craze has been a huge win for retailers, publishers, and readers, but one comic legend is warning everyone that things could backfire. If you aren’t familiar, a blind bag is when a publisher sells a comic in a opaque polybag and the customer doesn’t know which variant cover they’re getting. In some cases, customers might get a rare cover. Some comic shops have taken things a step further, creating blind bags where the customer doesn’t even know what series they’re purchasing, encouraging readers to try something new.

Seriously, is that fair and respectable to the customer, to keep it all secret? No, it's not. And what if the blind bags the store creates - concealing something entirely without a title - leads to the customer being ripped off with something awfully woke? In this day and age, it's particularly contemptible of the customers to pull blatant stunts like that if they don't know at all what's inside a bag 100 percent shrouded in darkness the buyer can't see through.

The craze has been a success, with Image Comics & Skybound Entertainment's Invincible Universe: Battle Beast #1 selling nearly 400,000 copies, with the numbers credited to the blind bag initiative. Things have been going well, but Image Comics' president (and Spawn creator) Todd McFarlane warns everyone that the bubble could burst

“If you have something that works that’s valuable, then you can use it for value,” Todd McFarlane says during an interview with ComicPop Returns. “What we historically find out in business, not just comic books, in business, is once something works good, there’s a tendency to milk the cow dry. And everybody just goes, ‘Oh, there’s money to be had. Let’s go.’ And then all of a sudden, you turn the consumer off, and once the consumer leaves, I would argue that’s the hardest thing to ever recover is getting the consumer back. Especially if they feel like they’ve been betrayed somewhat.”

McFarlane himself has taken part in the blind bag trend, as both Image Comics president and creator, with an Image Comics Holiday Blind Bag in 2025. Will blind bags go the way of holographic covers, or are they an important part of the industry’s future?

They should stop in use simply because it's just another gimmick to compensate for dismal sales of pamphlets, when here, paperbacks/hardcovers can offer an alternative with more potential profitability, and easier to sell in ordinary bookstores. And if pamphlets are proving more expensive today to print up, surely that's another reason why it'd be better to make the shift? And 400,000 pamphlet copies, once again, is a huge joke. I'm sure they realize it.

To encourage people to potentially waste tons of dollars over something that may be worth neither monetary nor entertainment value is insulting to the intellect, and I can't see why we even have to encourage people to stick with the pamphlet concept when paperbacks and hardcovers have long become a common concept. I would think even Image, with all their creator-owned products, might've understood that years ago, but as this proves, nope, they never did.

New adaptation of Fist of the North Star said to be unnecessary

Recently, a writer for Tokyo Weekender said the new adaptation of Fist of the North Star, rendered very heavily in CGI, was uncalled for:

CGI in anime is not inherently a problem. The sequel to the Trigun reboot, Stargaze (2026), was 3DCG, which, yes, did make the characters look a bit like puppeteered action figures when they were standing around and talking. But when the action hit, it was a thing of beauty. The camera danced around while keeping the proportions of the characters intact (something occasionally lost with 2D animation), allowing for a whole new world of high-octane anime action. This approach would have been welcomed with open arms by long-time fans of FOTNS and newcomers to the series. Characters looking like they are wearing plastic hair molds on their heads is a small price to pay for transcendental action.

But the fight scenes simply aren’t anything to write home about. The camera work is static, there are no heart-pumping long-take shots where the CGI could really shine, and the whole thing rarely goes beyond Kenshiro delivering a kick or a punch with a bit more fluidity than in the ‘80s anime. But not by much. And, honestly, if we’re comparing the two shows, then the original Fist of the North Star, with its limited animation from well over 40 years ago, does hold up much better than everything that we’ve seen from TMS so far.

Not Taking Full Advantage of the Visual Medium That Is Anime

In the interest of fairness, it’s worth mentioning that the computer-animated Fist of the North Star does follow the manga much more closely than previous anime. So close that some shots from the new show are straight-up computer copies of the manga panels. Here’s the thing about that, though. What works in manga doesn’t always translate well to an animated medium. It’s fine to tweak and add things to adaptations that would have broken the flow of a comic as long as it utilizes the visual medium of animation.

The ‘80s anime understood that assignment well by throwing in occasional flashbacks to some characters’ past, which are only talked about in the manga and the 2026 series. Another way that the old Fist of the North Star improved the story was by bringing in the occasional comic relief a little bit sooner, like with the orphan thief Bat. Eventually, the creators of the manga figured out that a story that’s all darkness, all sadness and all violence all the time would ultimately start to feel repetitive, so they started using the odd gag or absurd situations to offset this. But those weren’t there in the very beginning.

The CGI FOTNS had the benefit of decades of hindsight to consider fixing this but they didn’t, deciding instead to stick religiously to the manga, and the anime suffers for it. It’s an animated series that’s paced like a comic book, and the two do not work well together. Never in a tale of a lone martial arts genius fighting post-apocalyptic murderers — who make Lord Humungus from Mad Max 2 look tiny — should a viewer ever feel, well, bored. And yet here we are.

I've thought for a while that there's way too much use of special effects in live action science-fantasy movies, but this sure gives it a whole new meaning. And then, let's consider the violence is much more graphic here than in the original mid-80s adaptation:

2026’s Fist of the North Star does not have those kinds of constraints. It will show you the inside of a bad guy’s brain within the first few minutes of Episode 1. When the CGI villains explode from within, you get to see in full detail how their heads just open up and spill on the ground. For veteran fans of gory action, the new anime delivers the goods… But, again, it’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. The 2003 – 2004 original video animation (OVA) New Fist of the North Star was partially made to give fans all the gore they’ve been missing all these years. In most places, it’s much more violent than the new anime.

Seriously, while they may make a proper distinction between good and evil, do we really need this kind of vehicle? Hardly. If there's no comic relief here and it perpetuates the modern playbook eschewing brightness for all darkness, that's another huge letdown, and suggests they're pandering more to people who can't appreciate the light. And that's decidedly why it's best to refrain from this new take on Buronson's combination of Bruce Lee with Mad Max.

Why the Mandalorian no longer matters as a Star Wars spinoff

Several years ago, there was a time when some might've thought the Mandalorian TV show was anything but the same kind of woke mishmash that Disney and producer Kathleen Kennedy turned the Star Wars franchise into. But in the years since, after they fired Gina Carano for nothing more than expression of opinion, it's become rather clear any such previous perceptions and receptions of the Mandalorian have changed, and as John Nolte at Breitbart's announced, Disney's not giving a new film extension, Mandalorian and Grogu, any press screenings, if at all:

Fearing lousy reviews, the Disney Grooming Syndicate is reportedly limiting critic screenings for The Mandalorian & Grogu.

“Disney appears to be cutting back on showing the film to critics,” reports World of Reel. “Some journalists are complaining online that they’ve been told by publicists that The Mandalorian and Grogu won’t be screened for critics in their area, which is odd considering no other Star Wars movie has been treated this way before.”

“In fact, quite a few markets will reportedly not have critic screenings, which suggests a lack of confidence on Lucasfilm’s part toward the film,” adds the report.

Tee hee.

There’s even better news… First, some background…

While I don’t blame any studio for doing this — they do have a hundred-million-dollar product to sell, after all — one of the tricks the studios employ to rig the early reviews is to cherry-pick those invited to the first critic screenings. In this case, Disney has two pools to choose from: brainless Star Wars fanboys and the whores who trade their integrity for access.

In most cases, this is a foolproof approach, unless…

The movie is truly awful.

And, well…

#TheMandalorianAndGrogu is one of the weakest Star Wars movies.

An emotionless, predictable experience that doesn't push Din Djarin anywhere interesting. Dull, unexciting fight scenes; just CGI monsters. Action figures mashed together.

A long, colorless made-for-TV movie. pic.twitter.com/DoOpve0fPC

— Jonathan Sim (@TheJonathanSim) May 15, 2026

I guess there's a reason why I concluded somewhere along the way that there's just too much CGI in modern science-fantasy cinema, making it nigh unbearable, and felt animation could avail the genres far better, but Hollywood would rather stick with live action.

It's also worth noting that the guy playing the armored figure, Pedro Pascal, has since also made things considerably worse with his increasingly vicious leftist positions, which have lately culminated in the following:

Actor Pedro Pascal kissed left-wing CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert on the lips and called himself “an actress” while promoting Disney’s The Mandalorian and Grogu on Tuesday.

“What a pleasure to have you back,” Colbert told Pascal after the The Last of Us star sat down in a chair beside the TV host’s desk during Tuesday’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, to which the actor replied by pressing one finger to his lips, implying he wanted a kiss.

Colbert then leaned in, and the two men kissed each other directly on the lips, eliciting applause among members of the live studio audience.

[...] Pascal then referred to himself as “an actress,” exclaiming, “But I’m an actress! You know what I’m saying?”

This is such a groaner, and it wasn't the first time he emphasized such divisive beliefs. No doubt, his obsessive emphasis also played a part in the failure of the recent Fantastic Four movie, the 3rd or 4th attempt to launch Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Silver Age masterpiece as a live action franchise in films. And IIRC, that was the kind of movie where they forcibly sex-swapped a notable character, that being the Silver Surfer, for all the good it did at the box office in the end.

As for the Mandalorian, it might've had promise when initially launched, but PC tactics ultimately devoured it, as it pretty apparent by now. Carano's dismissal over her right-wing politics undoubtably drove any enthusiastic viewers away too, and now, we seem to be facing a Star Wars spinoff movie where production values are even less than before. I can't feel sorry if this film wilts quickly at the box office by the end of the year, and the Mandalorian itself ends up forgotten by the end of the decade, in no small part due to the PC advocates who ran the production, who had a chance to avoid controversy and sadly didn't.

Another occurance in Venom's series that was uncalled for

Here's a sugary Popverse interview with Spider-Man editor Nick Lowe and writer Joe Kelly about one more thing they've done in Venom #256 (who knew any ongoing they prepared for that character could've gone so long by now?), which was to terminate the Paul Rabin character they shoehorned into the Spidey franchise just to serve as a paramour for Mary Jane Watson at the expense of Peter Parker:

After you have a bad break-up, whoever your ex ends up with next might get a little side-eye from you — for one reason or another. Three years ago in comics, Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker broke up, and the model-turned-Venom MJ has since found someone new in her life in the recently introduced Paul Rabin. This dovetailed into Mary Jane getting stories of her own, leveling up when she became the latest host of Venom.

But all the while, a certain segment of fans has had an unreserved scorn for Paul Rabin — at best, he is not a good fit to be the romantic partner of Mary Jane, and, at worst, he is an ill-fitting 'plot device' to keep MJ out of the magnetism that is her on-again, off-again romance with one-time husband, Peter Parker. But in April 1's Venom #256, the Paul Rabin haters got their wish as he was written out of Mary Jane's Venom series with a surprise (and surprisingly clear) death at the hands of the serial killer supervillain Torment as part of the recent 'Death Spiral' crossover event with the Amazing Spider-Man title.

Ahem. I may not like that C.B. Cebulski and company chose to do this for the sake of keeping Spidey and MJ apart, but that doesn't mean I support "projection" to the point of seeing the character put to death at the hands of the villain I assume was meant to be MJ's father. But don't be surprised if these propagandists have no qualms about making fandom look that bad they'd view a murder as a great thing just because it supposedly paves the way for reuniting MJ and Peter.

After a few weeks for fans to unpack it and to avoid spoilers, we spoke with Paul Rabin co-creator Joe Kelly (writer of Amazing Spider-Man), and Spider-Man group editor Nick Lowe to talk about it. Apparently, the idea to kill Paul Rabin originally came up as a way to add to the death total of 'Death Spiral,' but in it, they found a deeper story — and finale — for the Paul Rabin era.

"There were some pillars of the story that were there from the beginning," Kelly tells Popverse. "Once we were like, 'body count, body count,' we wondered who we were taking off the board. I don't remember if it was Al [Ewing] specifically who said it, and we were all like, 'Yeah, it's kind of a good moment.'"

"I think it may have been [Venom editor] Jordan White who suggested it, and then Al thought of the timing, or something like that," Lowe adds. "And we all were talking about how it's got to happen just to hurt the most, and to have the most complex emotional toll for all of it."

"Especially if he goes out trying to do something good," adds Kelly.

So that's what this whole story was about - mass death trails. Just another reminder what's gone wrong with the modern era, where horror supplants comedy and romance. As for "doing something good" before being sent to the great reward, unfortunately, it's too late to impress upon anybody now with that kind of angle, especially when the stories they've concocted are so jaw-droppingly contrived and forced. Besides, the chances they'll actually reunite Peter and MJ as a married couple at this point are very low.

Since Paul Rabin's debut in 2022's Amazing Spider-Man #1, and a four-plus-year romance with Mary Jane, all the while in the orbit of her ex, Peter Parker, it seems almost every Spider-Man and Venom comics reader had an opinion on the character. While some characters find it hard to gain traction with fans, Paul Rabin was what pro wrestling fans would call a heat magnet; readers either loved him or hated him.

For Nick Lowe, who has spent 25+ years inside Marvel Comics editorial and seen (and in many cases been a part of) several superhero stories that provoked this kind of reaction, he knew it was there - and that there would be a triumphant release of emotion for the 'Paul haters' at this moment.

"We were not shocked in any way by the reaction," Lowe says. "If anything, the Paul haters out there... being vocal is not their problem. The Paul supporters have also been vocal. They're not as large as one might expect the population, and much of it was tongue in cheek, but we knew it would be a big moment and get a big reaction from a good portion of the fandom."

"I don't really look at these things, but I expected it," Kelly adds. "The little birds out there tell me it was quite a day for a certain corner of the internet."

That's exactly the problem. They don't make any distinction between good or bad responses, what matters to them is if the audience pays any attention at all. Which beggars the query: doesn't merit matter? Alas, not to such PC advocates. Interesting they bring up how long Lowe's worked for Marvel, because one could say he came about at the beginning of the end for whatever was left of Marvel's merit, and it wouldn't be a shock if he were a prime choice of Joe Quesada to serve as one of the editors for writers like J. Michael Straczynski, who of course turned out some of the shoddiest Spidey stories, right down to the whole Sins Past debacle.

Before you ask if Mary Jane and Peter Parker will end up back together, let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's a Spider-Man family mystery happening, and, oh yeah, a landmark Amazing Spider-Man #1000 to come.

What a shock. As noted before, of course nobody expects a serious reunion under such disgraceful frauds, one more reason why there's no longer any ability to celebrate a landmark 1000th issue. A similar point could be made about Superman and Batman's 1000th landmarks. And all the while, the publishers are still nailed on the whole notion that serial fiction like this can only be published as pamphlets, and never solely as paperbacks/hardcovers.

And if there's something else about the late Gerry Conway worth noting, it's that it's a terrible shame that, among the things he did a 360 degree on in the past decade or more, he also threw MJ under the bus, and all that after he'd gone to all the trouble of killing Gwen Stacy in 1973 just to prepare the groundswork for pairing up Peter and MJ as a couple. Conway, to my knowledge, never panned Quesada and company for where they took everything with Sins Past and One More/Brand New Day, and one could reasonably ask, why would the guy want to take all the paths he did back in the Bronze Age if he didn't have any respect for the characters, as his refusal to speak against the modern management suggests? I realize Conway wasn't the only one who let down entire fandoms with his PC positions; there's plenty more. But that's why we're at such an abyss today, and it's not bound to improve anytime soon.

An anime localization that was adapted to live action winds up on TV streaming instead of theaters

If anybody's familiar with the Voltron cartoon of the early 80s, they surely know that it's actually a localization and combination of 2 anime maxi-series from 1981-82, Beast King GoLion and Armored Fleet Dairugger XV, which, much like several other anime localizations up to the turn of the century, underwent heavy censorship just because the localizers didn't have the courage to market for adults, even as I admit there's at least one violent scene in the former that was disturbingly jarring for its time.

Now, as I've been aware for a few years, a live action film adaptation of the western Voltron localization was developed, and looks like its completed, but as Decider now announces, it won't be released theatrically, and is only going to streaming, or perhaps video, as may have been the custom up to the turn of the last century:

Fans of Voltron anxiously awaiting the release of the upcoming live-action remake will not be heading to theaters to watch it.

Amazon MGM Studios’ live-action remake of the ’80s animated series will head straight to streaming on Prime Video upon its release, Collider reports. According to the outlet, the move was announced by the studio on Monday (May 11). The exact release date has yet to be announced. [...]

Voltron: Defender of the Universe, which aired from 1984 until 1985, followed “five lion robots and their pilots as they fight the evil forces of King Zarkon and Prince Lotor,” per IMDb. Among those in the voice cast were Peter Cullen, Michael Bell, Jack Angel, Neil Ross, Lennie Weinrib, and B.J. Ward.

Notice though, that they don't seem to mention the Japanese origins? What's up with that? Just because the twosome may not have been the most popular series in Japan at the time, as this website notes (and this one), they have to leave that all out? Make what you will of what they're adapting, but that's no excuse to conceal the origins of the 2 cartoons combined into one, which I think was meant to provide a sufficient amount of episodes so that networks would buy it according to expected quotas for marketing at the time, which was something like 80 parts.

But as this news suggests, the new live action movie may not be the exciting adventure they're making it out to be, otherwise it probably would've gone to theaters more easily. Or, they may have estimated the finished product will not do well enough theatrically to justify its release there. And if this news from 5 years ago said anything, the Japanese audience would possibly have passed on it, and surely wouldn't be pleased if they knew a lot of USA press sources were failing to acknowledge the country of origin both anime series came from. That's the reason this may not be the big event some were hoping it'd be.

And lest we forget, the Saint Seiya adaptation from 3 years ago was certainly a dud.

2 old interviews regarding the JSA

I found 2 interviews, one with the overrated David Goyer and the other with the late Len Strazewski, from an old Geocities JSA fansite that's now archived. First, here's the interview with Goyer:

Q2. How did you choose what storyline to start the new series with? Was it always intended to deal with the death of Sandman, and the rebirth of Dr Fate, or were there other ideas?

We always intended to begin the new book with the death of Wesley Dodds, but originally, this was going to be tied into a story involving the old Paul Kirk Manhunter clones. We shelved that (we'll be bringing it back later on) and decided to go for something much more epic -- the birth of a new Dr. Fate.

And that new Dr. Fate was Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl's son Hector Hall, aka the Silver Scarab, who about 5 years later, was put back in the grave along with Lyta Hall/Fury, by none other than Geoff Johns himself when he took up the writing chores almost entirely solo. So what was the whole point of bringing them back into the fold? And what's so wrong with Kent Nelson and Inza Nelson that they wouldn't reverse their atrocious fate in Zero Hour?

That aside, while it may be one thing to write up a demise for Dodds, the way he was depicted committing suicide to prevent a hefty villain from possibly assaulting him to get more information out of him was disgraceful and forced, as were the other deaths depicted early in the series' run. The problem with how they did it is that they seem to think these other characters were some sort of a burden with no storytelling value to build around, and in the end, instead of just quietly letting them be dropped into limbo, they can only think of putting them to death through murder. Even suicide's very appalling. Yet they resort almost exclusively to such fates instead of death by natural causes and auto accidents, just to show how uncreative they actually are.

Q5. How has the reaction to the new JSA comic been in the DC offices? Positive?

Generally, DC has been very happy with the book. Sales are quite good and they like the way the fans have been responding. They've given us fairly free rein to do what we want.

Q6. What did you think of the 1992 JSA series by Len Strazewski and the late Mike Parobeck?

I enjoyed the short-lived '92 JSA series, but I thought it lingered a bit too much in the past, recycling the same (quite small) JSA rogues gallery, etc.

That was one of the reasons we introduced Mordru and (in issue #6) Black Adam. Later on, we will see a new Injustice Society. We wanted to expand the JSA's rogues gallery.

Oh, so here he's stealthily putting down Strazewski's work, which was cut short by editor Mike Carlin, yet when somebody like Goyer comes along, suddenly there's no complaints. Funny Goyer says Strazewski's work lingered in the past too much, when Goyer/Johns/Robinson's JSA wasn't all that different, despite what they say. And a big problem was how it didn't built legitimately or organically, based on how it stuck with the status quo set by Zero Hout, and there were at least 3-4 series at the time introducing new characters to replace the older ones, including how Oliver Queen was replaced as Green Arrow by a newly created son. In retrospect, none of the replacements aged well.

Q8. Why did you decide to explore the return of a new Dr Fate, and not the return of another JSAer, for e.g, a new Hawkman, new Spectre or new Sandman?

We decided to bring Dr. Fate back because the Spectre issue was already being dealt with in Day of Judgement.

Hawkman was a larger issue which is being worked out as we speak -- but at the time we were pitching the series, DC still wasn't ready to give us the green light on a Hawkman resurrection.

As for Sandman -- well, Sandy needed to be in the book from the beginning for obvious reasons. And we were prohibited from actually naming a new character Sandman by Gaiman and the Vertigo folks. In the DCU, that name is exclusively Morpheus' now.

Well at least this tells something. To think that a so-called called auteur who was since accused of serious sexual abuse would have that kind of "creative control" at the expense of the flagship DCU would even have veto power over what characters could retain the Sandman codename. Of course, one can reasonably wonder how Goyer and company feel now that a guy they possibly looked up to as a genius was discovered to be quite the opposite? Do they still consider what he did with Lyta Hall throughly acceptable? I don't know, but the next part of the interview certainly makes clear what kind of woke advocate Goyer really is:

Q15. Some fans have claimed that Dr Midnite (Charles McNider) was possibly gay. What is your opinion on this situation?

It is my personal belief that McNider may very well have been gay. If we have the opportunity, we may address it one day in a story.

It's definitely eyebrow raising when somebody blurs the differences between fiction and reality that blatantly. The Golden Age Dr. Mid-Nite is a non-existant person, and like various other characters of the times, was written as a cypher, so how and why do phonies like Goyer jump to these conclusions? And who are these fans they speak of? Not me. Talk about putting words in the fanbase's mouth! Some could say the way McNider was written might make him look gay, but since he's a fictional character, there's nothing to prove, period, except for that some overrated modern writers are some of the most shameless people around. And Goyer did go pretty woke in later years to boot. And what he said about She-Hulk and did with Superman was inexcusable.

Now, here's the 2nd with Len Strazewski, and some of what he tells is far more impressive what Goyer had to say, and tells quite a bit about what went wrong at the time when the editors decided they didn't want to sell according to merit in the early 90s. This is about both the 1991 miniseries and the regular series the followed the next year:

Q4. Was this series received well by fans, and DC alike?

Fans liked the 1991 series and most DC editors ignored it.

Q5. And what about the 1992 series? What's the story behind that?

(After the 1991 series,) Brian and I proposed the 1992 continuing series set in the present. Mike Parobeck worked with me on THE FLY and also on the mini-series, and the 1992 series was created with him in mind. He designed the look of all the characters for the series.

Q6. And was the 1992 series well-received?

Fans universally loved the 1992 series and DC editors hated it because they (as a group) had convinced themselves that no one was interested in older heroic characters. History has proved them wrong, of course.

What's additonally ironic is that at least a few of the older characters who weren't slaughtered during Zero Hour were put to use in JSA, and when that occurred, no complaints were made, and the editors didn't balk at Goyer/Robinson/Johns making use of them. One could validly wonder if Strazewski wasn't PC enough for their tastes that Carlin for one had to be so petty. There is one part here that's unfortunate, however:

Q9. Regarding the lineup of the 1992 series, why were characters such as Dr Fate, Power Girl or the Star-Spangled Kid not included? Were there plans to have them appear in the future?

No special reason not to include them. Dr Fate would have shown up eventually. Power Girl and Star-Spangled Kid never interested me much.

With all due respect, it's ludicrous to say they "never interested" you much when it all depends what talent you can bring to the table and what stories you can build around them. Although, the reason why Power Girl wasn't in those 10 issues was because the disgraced Gerard Jones was holding her hostage to his repellent stories in JLA. As for Star-Spangled Kid, a creation of Jerry Siegel, the only problem there was that Roy Thomas had already put Sylvester Pemberton to death towards the end of Infinity Inc, though if anybody talented enough wanted to, there were zillions of decent ways to resurrect the guy from the grave (and Thomas himself may have once said he'd regretted what he did with Pemberton). Instead, DC editors allowed Johns to exploit the role for his female counterpart creation, Courtney Whitmore, and for some reason, if there was any character in the past decade whom editors didn't demand be given a PC costume design unlike what Starfire sadly got, it was Johns' creation, who wore a tank top outfit, begging the question, why does he get a pass while other writers/artists don't on such issues? Now, here's what Strazewski addressed in regards to the late Mike Parobeck's art:

Q12. Some fans have stated that Mike's JSA work was "too cartoony". Personally, I thought it fit perfectly, but do you have an opinion?

As noted above. He was brilliant and his style is now the most copied style in comics. Among others, DC Executive Editor Mike Carlin said Mike's work was not appropriate for super-heroes and that was one reason why the JSA series was cancelled. Carlin also said he didn't like my writing. He was mistaken.

Again, Carlin was clearly a bad omen for comicdom as an editor, if anything, and some of the later projects he worked on certainly played quite a part in draining all that made DC/Marvel work in the first place. And as I may have noted before, if older characters like Dr. Strange and Mr. Fantastic could be loved by so many readers back in the day, then it's false to say nobody liked reading about older heroes.

Q13. Have you read the current JSA series, by David Goyer and Geoff Johns? If so, what is your opinion?

I haven't read it and probably will not. It would be unfair, I think, to do so. If it is really good, I'd be jealous. If it is really bad, I'd be angry. If it was mediocre, I'd be sad. I've met the creators and they seem like bright, creative, young guys. I am sure they are doing as well as their editors allow them.

Hopefully, he didn't read it and years afterwards, I myself reevaluated whatever I did read from Goyer/Johns/Robinson and realized it was grossly overrated to begin with, and otherwise insulting to the intellect. And Johns later willingly took part in the time-altering crossover Flashpoint, which led to the New52, and in the process, erased his stories from continuity for the sake of a new one that led nowhere fast, and was eventually reversed along with at least a few other horrible mistakes like Identity Crisis. But by then, it was long too late, and the damage Johns in particular engineered on his part was truly reprehensible.

As far as I know, Carlin's never apologized for being such a hypocrite, and of course, neither have Goyer/Robinson/Johns. If Strazewski got alienated from comicdom because of all that, it's understandable. Some PC advocates for decades have really brought things down to insufferable levels, and repairing all that will take an epoch. For now, I hope Strazewski's JSA stories will be reprinted in the DC Finest archives, and as for the later JSA, that's best avoided and forgotten.

Jack Kirby gets a street named after him

Much like Stan Lee received a street named in his memory a few years ago, JNS reports the late Jack Kirby has now received a street named after him, part of a project the law firm agent Roy Schwartz and the American Jewish Historical Society worked on getting approval for:

It is no small thing to get a street in Manhattan named after you, but the creator of such timeless superheroes as Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Ant-Man, the Hulk and Iron Man received that honor on Monday, when the Lower East Side block where he was born was named “Jack Kirby Way.” [...]

“Widely recognized as the most prolific and arguably most important creator in the history of the comic book medium, Jack Kirby is also one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century,” according to a new exhibit on his life and work at Manhattan’s American Jewish Historical Society.

The exhibition, “The Jack Kirby Way: How a boy from the Lower East Side became the King of Comics,” is co-produced by the American Jewish Historical Society and the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. It will be on view through Nov. 30.

One of the artifacts on display in the show is the original “Captain America” comic books, issues 1 through 10. Joe Simon, who co-created the character and many more with Kirby, owned the issues on display.

The iconic first issue of “Captain America,” published in March 1941, shows the superhero punching Hitler in the face, before the United States entered the war. Many Americans had not yet come to support the idea that the Nazis needed to be vanquished.

Based on this report from Breitbart from last year, some could reasonably argue the same sadly holds true for today when it comes to the Islamic Iranian regime, in example. If Kirby and Joe Simon were alive today and created Cap in modern times, the sad but possible reality is that the Star Spangled Avenger wouldn't get the same kind of positive regard seen in the Golden Age any more than any other Marvel/DC heroes created since.

Its publication led to death threats to both men by the German-American Bund, Roy Schwartz, a board member of AJHS and the person who drove the effort to get the street co-named in Kirby’s honor, told JNS.

The police, when contacted by Kirby and Simon, refused to do anything to help, according to Schwartz.

Then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia contacted the comic book artists and promised them personally that they would be kept safe. LaGuardia’s mother, Irene Luzzatto-Coen, was a Sephardic Jew.

And on this, it's vital to note that even today, that's not always the case in NYC, where this stuff has become a particularly sad staple ever since Zohran Mamdani was elected the 1st Muslim mayor in the Big Apple, and what he's been doing now would be hurtful to Kirby. Do the organizers of the campaign to have Jack Kirby's birthplace named after him realize that, if they don't have any concerns over what came about even before October 7, 2023 and Mamdani's election, then this whole campaign's otherwise meaningless?

As a little boy growing up in Tel Aviv, Schwartz was obsessed with comics, including Kirby’s, he told JNS.

American relatives would mail him new releases, and he learned English by reading them.

Now employed by day as “a mild-mannered chief marketing agency for a large law firm,” as he told JNS, he is the author of “Was Superman Circumcised?” and other books and essays exploring Jewish aspects of comic book history.

Schwartz was the driving force behind the labyrinthine bureaucratic process by which city agencies approved a co-named New York City street.

“There was enough red tape to circle Galactus several times,” Schwartz told JNS.

Captain America was and remains his favorite superhero, Schwartz told JNS, a few feet away from the newly-renamed street sign.

But predictably, they won't get into how, less than a decade after Kirby's passing, Marvel under Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas spared no expense taking apart much of what made Cap work in the first place, lacing the series published under the Knights imprint with anti-American propaganda, something that's continued until even recently. Equally bad is how they repeatedly tried to "replace" Steve Rogers with PC tokens. So what good does it do for Schwartz to just make the statement without bringing up how sad it is that Cap, along with tons of other Marvel/DC properties, major and minor, were effectively destroyed for the sake of woke leftist propaganda? Why, what if Mamdani had anything to do with the red tape encountered? In that case, Schwartz would be wallowing in the exact cowardice that all but victimized Kirby in his time by not showing the courage to discuss anything.

Golin, executive director of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, is a long-time, major Kirby fan.

“I love all of his work. It continues to blow me away, and he was so prolific,” he told JNS. “He is so Jewish, so if you take pride in the accomplishment of fellow Jews, then he’s someone you should know about.”

But does this guy appreciate where Marvel/DC went with Kirby's creations post-2000, including the New Gods? I seem to recall Jim Starlin wrote a miniseries called The Death of the New Gods 2 decades ago, and that wasn't exactly what Kirby got into the business to do. Such a story was a slap in the face to his legacy, just as much as what became of Cap, because if memory serves, Big Barda was meant as a tribute to Kirby's wife. I recently bought an archive of Kirby's work on the New Gods from the early 70s, and that's the kind of work that counts. I will not waste time and money on the post-2000 stories that did a terrible disservice to Kirby's efforts. Also, look who turned up as guests at the event:

Less elaborately dressed but honored with seats on the dais were Schwartz, Tom Brevoort, executive editor and senior vice president of publishing at Marvel Comics; Marvel artist and writer Jim Steranko; and former DC Comics president and publisher Paul Levitz.

While Steranko's a decent visitor, that a leftist like Brevoort, who actively defended Marvel's deconstruction of Kirby and Lee's work, would attend is disgraceful and embarrassing. Even Levitz, who fulfilled quite a bit of the same when he was a leading executive at DC (and was an apologist for Planned Parenthood), isn't exactly somebody I'd consider welcome there. Yes, I do recall he was willing to sign a petition in defense of victims of October 7, 2023, but there's still no telling if he's fully reevaluated his past mistakes, and so far, he's never publicly said so. Worse, both Marvel and DC continue to employ people throughly unsuited for the jobs, and that certainly doesn't reflect well on Brevoort, considering he still works for Marvel.

Kirby certainly is worthy of a street named after him. But not all the people involved are worthy of backing his legacy.