Stephen Wacker supposedly has a plan to repair Marvel

Adventures in Poor Taste says Marvel's new EIC allegedly has plans for fixing Marvel's management, starting with the busloads of variant covers that became a ludicrous staple of the industry for well over a decade now. Near the beginning, the site predictably sugarcoats Wacker's pretensions:

It’s been no secret in the comic book industry that Marvel has been struggling for the last 2-3 years. They’ve been in a creative and sales malaise that has been discussed ad infinitum. People have been calling for big changes at the highest levels of Marvel Comics, and when they announced that Stephen Wacker would take over as Editor-in-Chief, many fans and insiders breathed a sigh of relief. Here was someone with a proven track record who could turn the ship around and send Marvel in the right direction.

There's no mention of Mary Jane Watson in this puff piece, and Wacker, as one of the Spidey editors, was obviously part and parcel of the continuing effort to keep her otherwise kicked to the curb. Based on that, it's reprehensible they're putting words into the mouths of fandom, if not insiders. But, interesting they talk about Marvel falling into a slump now, as if that never happened before, when Joe Quesada and Axel Alonso were chief editors.

Wacker also addressed variant covers:

He admitted he was biased and really loved variant covers. He conceded that many readers also enjoy variant covers. For these reasons, they aren’t going away.

Wacker does worry about the overuse of variant covers to the point that it creates confusion about what the actual main cover of a comic is. He pointed out iconic covers of the past and how you could picture them in your mind, but when comics have so many variants, that iconic nature can be muddled.

From now on, Marvel will be clearer about main covers, adopting the industry standard of “Cover A, B, C, etc.” to denote main covers versus variants. Gone are the days of mindlessly throwing endless covers at every book.

That still doesn't address editorial mandates like what MJ's a victim of. Sure, it can help to quit turning out so many variants that actually cost more money. But if the story merit inside the comic isn't up to snuff, you still can't expect readers to actually buy the products. And as this more or less confirms, even under Wacker, they're not willing to quit, specifically, producing and commissioning so many variants to put on the covers of pamphlets themselves, rather than publish them inside some comics, or even as wall paintings. I don't think the price of pamphlets has been clearly addressed here either, and despite how Wacker mentions manga, it's unclear they'll make a shift to paperbacks and hardcovers.

Wacker also brought up following what movie adaptations put to use:

Marvel comic fans have long complained that the comics seem to be taking their cues from the wildly successful and popular movies. In an endless push for synergy between the movies and comics, the comics are altered to fit the cinematic universe. Many have felt that the tail has been wagging the dog.

Wacker pointed out that after moving to California, the comic offices would physically be in the same building as the movie offices. According to Wacker, the MCU’s success has created the assumption that the comics should relate to and match the films.

Wacker emphatically stated, “That is backwards.”

In his first meeting with Kevin Feige, Wacker was told that it’s not their job to follow the movies. To reinforce that, Feige attended the Marvel Summit yesterday in New York and told them their job was to be 15 years ahead of the cinematic universe.

Marvel Comics should be the creative engine.

But if they follow distasteful mandates like keeping MJ and Spidey separated, they're not improving there, that's for sure. There's also the matter of continuity being in a shambles since the early 2000s. I got a bad feeling they're going to use any status Peter Parker and Mary Jane have in the movies as an excuse to keep them apart in the comics, and that's wrong, mainly because of how contrived and inorganic the jettisoning of the marriage was when One More Day came about, and lest we forget how badly MJ was insulted as a creation even after OMD. So if Wacker's adamant on his part about keeping Quesada and J. Michael Straczynski's loathsome separation of the Spider-couple in place, there's no need to keep putting money into their pockets. Besides, wasn't it more in the early 2000s, in comics like X-Men, where they forced a mandate into place that the cast had to wear suits similar to the 2000 movie? I get the feeling Wacker and company are looking for an all-too convenient excuse in modern times. And then he talks about creators:

To repair relationships with creators, Wacker brought up three main points: paying creators on time, backing them up when things get loud, and listening to their creative instincts and desires.

Wacker promised that next year we would see names on Marvel books that we have not seen in years, and in some cases ever. He does not believe in a house style and thinks the publisher will benefit from fresh, creative ideas.

Oh, here's a great query: will we see them take conservative-leaning creators like Mike Baron and Chuck Dixon off the blacklist? Quite possibly not, nor will we see them respecting the USA in patriotic terms, nor will they tackle serious issues like Islamic terrorism or prove they respect 911 Families, and if Wacker doesn't reinstate the Spider-marriage today, he won't tomorrow. What are we missing, exactly? This isn't fresh so much as stale.

Cosmic Book News said Wacker also wants to do what sounds like cliches with machines, but before we get to that, look what writer he's bringing back:

UPDATE: Wacker made his first big announcement at NYCC: a new Captain Marvel series from Ms. Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson, exactly what we flagged when he got the job.

So he believes a left-wing propagandist who was hired to write pro-Islamic propaganda is the perfect choice for new assignments? That says all you need to know that whatever Wacker's talking about is empty mishmash, and should be avoided at all costs.

Wacker says an unpublished script exists that Frank Miller wrote for Walt Simonson to draw, and it never got made.

“That script exists. It’s part one of two,” said Wacker, who calls Simonson part of his personal Mount Rushmore of comic artists. “When I had Daredevil, I was trying to get it done, but schedules didn’t work out.”

“Boy, that’s a white whale,” he added. “If I can get a Frank Miller, Walt Simonson story done.”

Oh, I think that's something Miller mentioned 2 months ago, a Dr. Strange story, but it's already much too late, and I've concluded Miller's overrated anyway.

Wacker says the first comic he ever collected as a kid was Shogun Warriors, Marvel’s licensed giant robot series from the late ’70s, which broke his heart when it was canceled after 20 issues.

As an editor, he tried to get giant robots back into the Marvel Universe, and an entire story was written and drawn before being shelved.

“It turns out we didn’t have the legal rights that we thought,” said Wacker, joking the robots were legally not Shogun Warriors. “It’s still too close for our legal department.”

Now he’s running the place.

“It is my life’s work in this new gig, this Editor-in-Chief gig,” he said. “I have to find a way to bring giant robots into the Marvel Universe.”

What, the Sentinels aren't enough? Even this is silly, because if you know where to look, the MCU's had giant bots lumbering around in some form or other decades ago, and if Wacker's trying to draw in manga readers who like mecha tales, he won't succeed if he sticks with the kind of leftism he's already hinted he'll be following. It's clear that, despite any claims that may be made to the contrary, it'll be business as usual, with conservatives forbidden to seek jobs at Marvel, continuity destroyed, and the Spider-marriage kept out of the picture. So there's still no reason to resume reading their output.

Another felon arrested for trying to sell a stolen comic

Local12 reports another criminal was arrested for trying to sell off a stolen pamphlet - get this - from the Walking Dead series:

The sale of a rare, graded, first-edition “Walking Dead” comic book led to a man’s arrest.

According to WKMG, 63-year-old John Anthony Higgins was taken into custody after authorities said he tried to pawn the comic book the same day it was stolen from a business in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The report states that the suspect was allegedly caught pawning the comic at a shop in Port Orange, Florida, for $2,000 on the same day it was stolen from Defender Comics.

Once again, this is why the speculator market for comics has got to cease. It's only turned the art form into a farce, and simultaneously resulted in corruption as there's crooked people trying to make a quick buck off of stolen goods in the process. We don't need that kind of mindlessness dominating the medium. Interesting how here, the stolen product in question was a very recent creation, making clear even brand new comics series can end up the subject of thefts for the sake of profiteering. Again, this is why the speculator market can't continue to be pandered to if it's going to result in problems like these.

Portland, Oregon's role in comicdom

The Portland Mercury wrote some history of the city's role serving as a headquarters for various artists and writers, which is now the subject of a documentary:

It may surprise you to learn that Portland, Oregon, a mid-sized America city known for its rain and its many river spanning bridges, is a global hotbed for the production of comic books. A new documentary for OPB’s Oregon Art Beat, Indie Comics City: How Portland Built Its Own Comics Universe, which premiered at the annual Rose City Comic Con, tells how it happened, a story about the place of Portland itself, and the decentralizing modes of cultural production everywhere.

The documentary, helmed by OPB’s multimedia arts and culture producer Steven Tonthat, delves deep into the beginnings of local comics history. For the first 50 or so years of its existence, the comics industry was located along with the rest of the publishing industry: New York City. The artists who made the cultural load-bearing works that we associate with them—Superman, Batman, Shazam, Mad magazine, the EC Stable of bad boy books—worked liked sheepdogs, fulfilling a demanding monthly release cycle while supplementing their income with illustration work for magazines, book covers, advertising and any other clientele who needed a decent cartoonist for whatever it was they were trying to sell. Some of these comics artists worked in offices in the city, others plied their trade in home studios and delivered their pencil roughs to the main office where it would get inked, colored, and printed onto millions of forty page books that were distributed to drug stores and other retailers across the country.

Unfortunately, as could surely be expected, the report gushes over woke propaganda, which saw early examples in Oregon too:

Before the 1980s, Portland was a tertiary space for indie comics creators and cartoonists. The important early editorial cartoonist Homer Davenport, paraplegic gagman John Callahan, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, alt-comic sage Lynda Barry, and Rupert Kinnard—a queer comics pioneer who is profiled at length in OPB’s Indie City—all called Portland home at some time or another. These artists sourced work from local alt-weeklies, gay magazines, and esoteric, high-art focused labels like Fantagraphics—operations where wide distribution or even color printing weren’t front of mind. This is not to underplay their importance: their work still courses through the city’s comic scene, especially in the more zine-adjacent corners. But it was different from the highly rigorous, highly-edited milieu of DC and Marvel, with its colorful pages and ubiquitous distribution.

And no doubt, some of those early wokesters made inroads into mainstream, ruining it in their own way. Interesting they bring up the Simpsons creator, because he's quite a leftist himself, and as of today, I'm disillusioned with the Simpsons as a TV cartoon series, mainly because it's been running far too long, for possibly 37 years now with no end in sight. How many live action series see that kind of bizarre privilege?

In 1986, Mike Richardson, a longtime writer for comics and television, founded Dark Horse Comics in Portland. Dark Horse split the difference between the big distribution superhero publishers and the indie-comic scenes. In the late ‘80s and the early ’90s, Dark Horse published two kinds of monthly comic books. The major moneymakers were books based on big licensed properties, like the pre-Disney Star Wars literary universe, the adventures of terrible lizard Godzilla, and the Alien movies. The company’s other offerings were more obscure: creator-owned properties like Frank Miller’s Sin City, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, and Stan Sakai’s rabbit-man samurai epic Usagi Yojimbo. The company eventually became America’s third largest distributor of comic books.

I find it interesting that, at least back in the day, adaptations of movies and cartoons were relatively higher sellers than comics with original concepts and creations, while Miller, Mignola and Sakai's creations less known, at least according to this article. Does that suggest the would-be fame they saw since is exaggerated?

Many of the people I spoke with at Comic Con were worried about the future of comics in Portland, where the coast-wide affordability crisis has dug deep into the city’s reputation as a fun, cheap haven for artistic pros looking to pay rent.

That's certainly eyebrow raising if there's a financial problem on the west coast, though if the folks in question are far-left advocates, some might find it hard to feel sorry for them. Whether Portland continues to prove a profitable burg for comicdom remains to be seen in the future.

Topics like Magneto, Kitty Pryde and Sabra at the NYCC

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

Magneto brings a specific Jewish history into that broader metaphor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sabra introduces a different dimension: Israeli identity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***SPOILERS***

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

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

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

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

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

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

Veteran Star Trek actress will be writing IDW adaptation based on her character

Variety reports actress Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, will be writing an IDW comic spotlighting her character and role:

Gates McFadden is returning to the iconic character Dr. Beverly Crusher. Variety has learned exclusively that McFadden is penning the limited comic series “Star Trek: Crusher” with IDW Publishing.

The comic, which also hails from artist Megan Levens and colorist Charlie Kirchoff, is set to debut in summer 2027. It marks McFadden’s comic book writing debut. The series will bridge the gap in the character’s history between the end of the movie “Star Trek: Nemesis” and the Season 3 of the Paramount+ series “Star Trek: Picard.” [...]

The announcement of the comic book comes as the “Star Trek” franchise is celebrating its 60th anniversary, with the original series having premiered on Sept. 8, 1966. Paramount has already held a number of events in celebration of the milestone, including screenings of fan-favorite episodes, television specials, and more. [...]

McFadden famously portrayed Dr. Crusher across six of the seven seasons of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” appearing in over 150 episodes of the beloved sci-fi series. She went on to play Crusher in all four “TNG” movies — “Star Trek Generations,” “Star Trek: First Contact,” “Star Trek: Insurrection,” and “Star Trek: Nemesis.” She returned to the role in Season 3 of “Picard,” where it was revealed SPOILER ALERT that Crusher and Capt. Picard had a relationship years earlier that resulted in the birth of a son, Jack Crusher.

I seem to recall Picard was considered pretty bad, and having Michael Chabon as a producer clearly spelled trouble for it artistically. Connecting this story with that particular recent TV series is a big mistake, but you couldn't possibly expect these folks to admit it.

This may be the 60th year since the Trek series officially began, but the Trek franchise has been so infected with wokeness in its own way, even going as far back as a movie produced around 2009, that it's clear at this point this IDW comic is unlikely to impress, and even then, unlikely to sell in millions. Lest we forget IDW went the woke route in the past decade, and it's hurt them in the long run, and lost them at least a few licensing deals for what to adapt, like GI Joe and Dungeons and Dragons. It's a wonder they're even still in business now, because whatever they're producing doesn't make me feel encouraged to try it out.

A modern take on a Bengali classic

Stir World interviewed artist Charbak Dipta, who's currently working on comics like Heshoram Hoshiyaar, based on a classic Bengali story, and developing a modern take on it in panel format:

Srishti Ojha: Can you tell me about your decision to adapt Sukumar Ray’s Heshoram Hoshiyaar into a comic book medium?

Charbak Dipta: Bengali kids like me have grown up reading this story. The story is 100 years old now, so I wanted to bring it back and present it in a new and colourful way for today’s kids. It’s only four or five pages long, but in that short text there are so many visual elements, including some illustrations and sketches from Ray. It was really fun to turn these few pages into a complete graphic novel.

Srishti: So much of your work—from Heshoram Hoshiyaar to Lublur Prithibi references visual art and literary works. What draws you to these references?

Charbak: I like to reference famous paintings and works in my comics, such as Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (1942) in The World of Lublu or the movie Nayak (1966) by Satyajit Ray. This comic has a lot of Easter egg references scattered throughout as well.

I like this practice because kids can enjoy seeing the colourful illustrations and stories, but underneath there is a lot of philosophical thought and social and political references. When they grow up, they can understand the undercurrents and the subtext. I try to do this so that adults can also be attracted to the work, and I can cater to both generations with a single book. The World of Lublu and Heshoram Hoshiyaar are cross-generational books.

I think it's very clever and admirable to draw from literature and paintings for inspiration, and building on philosophy can also be a great idea. On the subject of political allusions, that can work provided it's in good taste.

Srishti: Often, adaptations for TV or film in animation or live action are considered the ‘next step’ for comic books and graphic novels. Now that you are experimenting with motion comics and 360° comics, would you be open to such adaptations?

Charbak: I don’t consider it a next step because comics themselves are a powerful medium. They don’t need support from other industries like animation or film. There have been offers which came to me for filming Lublu, etc., but they did not progress much. If someone approaches me, I’ll discuss it, but I’m not very keen on trying to get into film or animation.

Many people have asked me why I don’t try animation, VFX, gaming or these historic, constructed industries. There is no comic industry as such in India—it’s very fragmented and like a cottage industry.

I have stuck to this medium for over 10 years out of pure love for it. It’s not a stepping stone for me; it’s not the higher level; it is all the same.

While animation can be a far better venture than live action, Charbak is doing the right thing to stick with comicdom and not stray far from it. After all, we do need all the talented creators we can get to keep the medium going, even in foreign countries.

Srishti: In India especially, comics don’t enjoy the same support, funding or popularity as art forms like film and animation. What are your hopes for the Indian comic industry as it establishes itself domestically and nationally over the next few years?

Charbak: I think Indian comics should be more original rather than imitating existing Western graphic novels and comics. For example, Shakti Man and the Bengali comic Batul the Great, two of the most prominent Indian comics, are imitations of Superman and Desperate Dan (a British comic book), respectively. I hope Indian creators can explore more original themes and characters that suit Indian themes and Indian settings in the way Japan and Korea do with manga and anime, allowing them to export their culture to the world. We need more original comics to show the world what we have.

I think the support of the government, through funding and investment or a new national award for comics, can revolutionise the Indian comics landscape by encouraging Indian creators. Support from the media is also very important to grow the industry.

Publishers also need to take more risks. I went to English publishers working in India with The World of Lublu, and all of them rejected it. Then it got nominated for the Eisner, and now the conversations with English publishers are finalised. They should publish different, out-of-the-box subjects instead of the same old stories like biographies and adaptations of old classics. That’s how the industry can grow.

He's right, if anything, that sticking with local inspirations is far better than trying to imitate the western world in its current incarnations, certainly in the USA, where political correctness resulted in disasters, both artistic and financially. So I hope Charbak and other artists like him will find success in building up the comics industry in India more than it already is now, and one day elevate it to the status of Japan's. That could help tremendously.

The history of the Super Why cartoons and comics

Animation Scoop interviewed Angela Santomero, an animator who created the Super Why cartoons 2 decades ago on PBS, and which has been adapted to comics as well:

Jackson Murphy: You created “Super Why!” back in 2007. What have you loved about the overall impact this brand has had over the last 20 years?

Angela C. Santomero: Oh my God. You’re gonna make me cry. It was my Master’s Thesis when I was at Teachers College at Columbia University — the idea that we did have a longitudinal study that proved that kids were learning to read from the show, but also, of course, that they were loving the show and loving to read. All of the stories that I’ve heard from parents over the past 20 years have been amazing.

Provided it's not something where wokeism was forced upon it, it'll make a great source for adaptation to comics, and a good source for children's reading.

JM: So there’s been such a rise, I feel like, in the last 20 years, since “Super Why!” started, of comic book movies. Superhero movies. And kids really being interested in this look and this style of storytelling. Have you seen that firsthand, especially now diving into the new show?

AS: Yeah. And what’s so fascinating is we wanted to bring that idea to preschoolers — you could start reading with a comic book and that it is just as legitimate as reading a… chapter book. We did an episode on the original show that was written by Alex Breen, who’s also a co-creator on this series. Kids LOVED the comic book aspect. We had so much fun with the villains — mischievous, really. That idea of how we can get kids to read and the skill to learn to read and all those tools through this format became something we really got excited about to do as its own series.

JM: Were there fascinating aspects for you and your team of specifically bringing this look to life? Did you look at a lot of comic books and study that?

AS: Yes. We’re so research-based, so we dive in from a content analysis, “What’s been done for preschoolers?” Or the fact that five year olds are watching Batman. How do we deliver on that level of action adventure to really make sure we’re delivering on that comic book sensibility, but also be true to the mission of the series, which is to teach kids to read?

I take issue with the part about having fun with the villains, however, because again, that's taking a serious risk of glorification of badness. And youngsters are watching Batman cartoons? Well of course I realize the animated series of the 1990s was a Saturday morning style product, but all the same, should the Masked Manhunter be considered totally children's material? In the comics, it's been far from that for a long time. There was an animated Superman series that came at least a few years after Batman's began, and I honestly wonder why that doesn't get the same regard as Batman's cartoons. Just because it may have less episodes, that makes it less important? Please.

JM: I’ve seen some activities online / social media for “Super Why’s Comic Book Adventures”. What goes into marketing these days with activities for kids?

AS: A lot of it is reaching out to the parents and making sure the parents understand the depth of what we do and how much fun / how much your kids will love it. Social media is about engaging. “Which character are you?” And while we’re doing that, we’re explaining who the characters are so parents have that tidbit of information to think, “Maybe I should be putting this on for our kids.”

It all depends on if they retain any suitability level that was kept before, and don't succumb to the whole notion of promoting LGBT ideology in the cartoons and comics proper. Then, they'll have a valid entertainment product for children alright. As for social media, I hope they realize it's not all fun and games. There's all sorts of predators and other horrific people lurking about there, and if any sane countries are drafting laws to prevent children from becoming vulnerable, that's important. Even if they're talking about marketing to adult parents on social media, it's still strongly advised to be careful in how you deal with the topic of social media.

Here's also an interview from Total Licensing:

There are worrying statistics around the level that children are reading at. How will the show help that?

Those statistics keep me up at night — too many of our children are reading below grade level. But here’s what thirty years has taught me: kids don’t dislike reading. They dislike feeling powerless.

When a child uses her letter sounds to defeat The Eraser, or unscrambles words to set things right, reading stops being homework and starts being a superpower. Every episode is built on the real foundational skills — letter and letter-sound knowledge, phonological awareness, phonics and decoding, spelling, vocabulary — but children experience them as play. If we make reading feel powerful at four by being Super You, they’ll love it at fourteen.

Have you worked with researchers, parents and educators on the show?

Always — that’s non-negotiable for me. Everything I’ve ever made starts with watching real children. We worked with PBS KIDS to do formative research with kids and parents in scripting: if a four-year-old doesn’t get it, we go straight back to the drawing board. And we worked with top-tier literacy advisors to make sure every skill in every episode is the real deal. Our children deserve nothing less than our very best.

I should certainly hope she's worked with parents, and sane parents too at that, because in this day and age, it's vital that an atmosphere that's safe for children in animation and comics be retained. If anybody thinks animation can be used for telling adult stories, it should be in what's written and marketed for adults, and not children. I'm sure it's possible to make different types of cartoons and promote them for different audiences without any confusion, and if marketers haven't done it yet, they'd do well to distinguish between age gaps now.

I wish Santomero well in promoting the comics adaptations, and hope she retains a family friendly angle that I assume the cartoons followed as well. Then, reading can become an important challenge for children even on paper.