A collector whose piles became too big for comfort

The Lexington Herald-Leader interviewed a comics collector who came to realize his trove had become way too big, and eventually sold them off:

How did Bill Bissett know his comic book collection had gotten too big??

When he was moving, and he had to have a second truck just for his comic books.

That wake up call started Bissett on a downsizing process that whittled his collection down from 150 boxes of books to about 25 now.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, Bissett will share what he’s learned with other collectors in a presentation titled “How to Create a Collection That Doesn’t Make You Crazy” at the Lexington Comic and Toy Convention.

[...] Bissett, 60, has collected comics since he was 11 years old.

But several years ago, after decades of collecting, he said the size of his collection had become so unwieldy, it no longer brought him joy.

“I hated even looking at it,” he said. “There’s a very dangerous border between collector and hoarder.”

Indeed. Especially in an era where much of this stuff has been or will be reprinted in paperback/hardcover archives, and at the same time, why won't guys like him donate their collections to museums? Because:

Bissett said he began ditching comic books if he knew he would never want to read again, trading many of them off for store credit at The Inner Geek in his hometown of Huntington, W.Va.

See, here again is an example of somebody who takes the easy road and hands them over to a store where, if the back issues in question are decades old, chances are the proprietor will charge heavy sums for new buyers, who'll then sell them in turn on the speculator market. I do find it interesting that so far, the guy's jettisoning some of his back issues based on what he cares less about, more on which follows:

Now, he said he has a much more focused collection, and he’s back to enjoying his books.

“If you try to collect everything, you’ll go crazy,” he said.

But Bissett said keeping his collection to a reasonable size is an ongoing process, because he enjoys reading the new material being published, and he gets new comics mailed to his home monthly.

But just because a comic comes into his house doesn’t mean it is part of the collection.

Bissett keeps boxes at the ready for things he plans to dump.

“Comics are a lot like film,” he said. “Some films are very, very thoughtful, thought provoking, you know, emotive. Others aren’t. And comics are very similar, too. There are some that are very surface, simple entertainment, and some that are very, very thought provoking.”

I still don't see why he has to buy almost everything in pamphlet format, though they do provide a photograph where he's reading a DC Finest archive of the original Silver Age Doom Patrol stories. And that, seriously, is what he should really invest in, so why doesn't he clearly emphasize that?

Bissett said it’s also important for collectors to plan ahead for what will happen to their collections after their death.

Whether you collect comic books, action figures, coins or spoons, “you better get an exit strategy,” he said.

“Am I going to be buried in a giant sarcophagus?” Bissett joked about his own collection. “I mean, what is going to happen to all these? I doubt my 12- and 14-year-old girls are like, ‘Oh my gosh, Dad’s comics are all mine!’”

He said a New York Times article reinvigorated him to think about that topic, because it’s “almost unfair” to burden family members with a giant collection of something they really don’t want.

He cautioned that collectors planning to divest themselves of collectibles should prepare for disappointment, knowing they probably won’t get back the amount of money they invested.

Yet nowhere in the article does he or the interviewer talk about the possibility of donating to museums, this despite how much of what he's collected could since have been reprinted in paperback/hardcover formats. Which makes this all the more disappointing. So on the one hand, he may not have tried to encourage his children to try the same reading hobbies as he has, yet on the other, he won't transfer his pamphlets to museum archives either. What good is that? Yet another example of a collector who's disappointing the medium by not encouraging better formats and other approaches to how comicdom could operate going forward in this day and age.

A medical comic about health disorders

The Korea Times wrote about a free medical-themed comic focused on tic disorders:

Woongjin Foundation has published a medical comic book explaining tic disorders and will distribute it for free, the foundation said Thursday.

The 80-page illustrated guide, titled "Understanding Tic Disorders," is the latest in the foundation's ongoing series, "Rare and Incurable Diseases Explained in Comics," which it has produced in partnership with medical professionals since 2008. This edition marks the 30th installment of the series.

Tic disorders affect the neurological system responsible for movement and sensation, causing affected individuals to repeat specific muscle movements or sounds involuntarily. The condition is visible enough that those around a patient can typically notice it. More than 10 percent of elementary school students experience tics at some point, though most cases improve as children grow older.

[...] The foundation's chairman, Shin Hyun-woong, said in the book's foreword that he hopes the publication will give tic disorder patients and their families "new hope and courage," while also helping correct misconceptions about the condition that have spread online and other forms of media.

This is what's great about the comics medium, when it can be employed for explaining serious scientific issues, including health-based.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alexandra DeWitt's 1994 death in Green Lantern may have been retconned away

Superhero Hype lets know that DC, surprisingly enough, appears to have done one thing decent of recent, and that's abandoning the original premise used for setting up Kyle Rayner as the forced replacement for Hal Jordan during Emerald Twilight. More specifically, what originally became of his first girlfriend, Alexandra deWitt, who was repellently murdered by Major Force in 1994, when he throttled her and stuffed her corpse into a refridgerator:

The possible retcon came in “City of Angels,” by Jeremy Adams and V. Ken Marion. The story centers around Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, as he returns to Earth and his hometown of Los Angeles. Joining him is Odyssey the Time Bandit, who is assisting him in tracking fugitive aliens as part of her parole.

While stuck in traffic, Kyle begins to relate his life story and how he became a Green Lantern. He speaks of being raised by a single mother and how art was his only outlet. However, one key event of Kyle’s history goes unmentioned in his recollection.

While discussing his youth, Kyle mentions his first love, Alexandra “Alex” DeWitt. Kyle tells Odyssey of how his sketches of Alex got him a job as a comic book artist. However, Alex grew tired of supporting them both, as Kyle’s dream job didn’t pay well. She also disliked Kyle’s becoming a shut-in, as he stayed home to meet his deadlines instead of going out with her. Both issues led her to dump him.

What Green Lantern death did DC retcon?

In the new story, Kyle tries to impress Alex by showing up at her favorite club. However, this doesn’t work. She doesn’t believe he’s really changed his ways. However, this trip wound up changing Kyle’s life in another way. After the awkward artist stepped outside to get away from the crowds, he was entrusted with the last Green Lantern ring.

[...] Green Lantern #33/#600 seems to change this history. When Odyssey asks what happened next, Kyle does not mention Alex’s violent death. Indeed, he does not mention her at all. Instead, he talks about how becoming a Green Lantern taught him that “sometimes your dreams aren’t just one thing.”

If they really have produced a story retconning a cheap, obnoxious setup - one that was entirely unnecessary for "defining" Kyle - that is admittedly amazing, because it was uncalled for to begin with, one of the worst things the then editor Kevin Dooley oversaw (and also writer Ron Marz, and artist Darryl Banks), and most tellingly, what occurred going forward was held hostage to economy writing, since the only girlfriends they'd give Kyle at the time were Donna Troy, and then Jade. Editorial mandates of that sort never work out well, and that kind of approach is what otherwise brought down superhero comics, since in terms of character growth, they were written into a corner by that kind of character casting, which was increasingly forced. As a result, while this new approach is laudable, Kyle Rayner still doesn't stand as his own character, because he was the product of a mindset that, despite what might seem to be the case, demands that the reader care more about the costume than the character wearing it. Also note that much of the "characterization" Kyle received was contrived and forced, and despite what the apologists might claim, he bore no more personality in the scriptwriting than Hal Jordan allegedly lacked.

Also interesting about this possible retcon is that, as seen in the panel, Alexandra's drawn pretty hot, and the artist wasn't held hostage to the kind of wokeness that Donna Troy was subjected to of recent, and come to think of it, Starfire too. That said, this still doesn't excuse how Hal was forced into the role of a deadly villain back in the day, depicted murdering at least a few other GL Corps members, and then sent into the grave for a time, and later being shoehorned into the role of the Spectre, replacing Jim Corrigan. And that's just another example of how even classic cast members had their personal agency revoked by blatant editors and writers.

Does this mean Alexandra DeWitt will turn up alive later, in whatever they're planning for publication? I don't advise buying DC's modern output so long as they continue to be held hostage to far-left ideologues, but it will be interesting to see if current writers are trying to mend some mistakes as an apology to GL fandom. The premise of Emerald Twilight, along with the maltreatment of Hal in 1994's Zero Hour, will have to be jettisoned as well. Why, it might be more beneficial to rework Kyle and Alexandra into non-superhero cast members, and also non-costumed protagonists. Mainly because even Alexandra had no agency in the handful of issues where she appeared back then, when she served as nothing more than a plot device to be slain by Major Force just to serve as "motivation" for Kyle. There's a lot of things that went wrong with DC around the time of Zero Hour that writers involved with it won't admit, but aren't impossible to mend. And the best way to do that is simply to jettison some of the bad ideas from canon. If writers who care would like to hear what could be done, I'm always open to offering them ideas how to work things out.

Live action Daredevil TV show on Disney Plus attacks Trump and ICE in its 2nd season

Front Page Magazine reports that Marvel's live action productions continue to be an ocean of political propaganda, with the latest being their Daredevil series broadcast on Disney Plus, which is one of several Hollywood products to villify law enforcement in the most contrived and forced ways possible:

For example: Entertainment Weekly reports that season two of the Marvel superhero series Daredevil: Born Again is set to premiere on Disney+ on March 24, in case you’re a masochist and want to mark your calendar. Because Left-wing Hollywood can’t simply tell a good story but feels compelled to shoehorn propaganda into every show, the new season will mirror the brutal reality of life in America under Trump’s totalitarian boot-heel.

To give you some context, the plot line of season one has gone roughly like this: a powerful crime boss and businessman (because businessmen, especially white ones, are evil, don’t you know) named Wilson Fisk has become the mayor of New York City and begun exerting authoritarian control: declaring martial law and targeting vigilantes such as the blind Daredevil with an Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF). Entertainment Weekly says the new season chronicles “the rise of the resistance,” and describes the AVTF as operating “in a similar capacity to the Trump administration’s ICE, snatching dissidents off the streets and locking them away in an undisclosed warehouse filled with cages.”

Except that ICE isn’t “snatching dissidents” off the streets but rounding up felons who are in our country illegally and deporting them. But hey, don’t let facts get in the way of your forced progressive messaging.

One of the most irritating parts of this current mess is that they actually try to shield their propaganda with a legitimate issue from overseas:

As Entertainment Weekly puts it, one scene in season two depicts a task force official storming into a Cypriot restaurant in search of someone. The restaurateur calls him a fascist, a term the Left now uses to describe anyone who disagrees with them politically. According to the series showrunner Dario Scardapane, the intent of this scene was to echo the Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus. “What we’re seeing happening in the streets of New York in Daredevil: Born Again happened in Cyprus in 1974,” he says. “So if you go back to the historical rise of autocrats, whether it’s Nero, whether it’s Pinochet, whether it’s Franco, they follow a script.”

He doesn’t explain what that “script” is, but it’s telling that he specifies two autocrats, Pinochet and Franco, who happened to be Right-wing (the label would be anachronistic in the case of Nero). Of course he’s not going to name any of the Left-wing examples that abound, from Robespierre to Stalin to Mao.

There's no mention of Islam's role in Turkey's MO in the EW article either, though it sure is ironic the producer's willing to compare Trump's administration to that of Turkey's autocracy-style governments. Despite what Scarpadane says, it's unlikely he gives a damn if northern Cyprus continues under Turkey's occupation (but it won't be shocking if he's willing to attack Israel's government over unproven "occupation" of Gaza, nor if he doesn't give a damn about what the Hamas did on October 7,2023). And no chance he'll ever take issue with a real Islamist form of takeover in the guise of Zohran Mamdani as NYC mayor.

But what makes this even more ironic is that a former employee of Marvel's comics publishing is part of the TV crew here:

Scardapane, Entertainment Weekly says, acknowledged that he and Marvel executive producer Sana Amanat recognized what they see as the parallels with Trump and ICE as they edited the episodes in post-production. Scardapane says “things got into an art-imitates-life place.”

Well, this is additionally telling. One of the same people who forced Islamic propaganda into the MCU via the Muslim Ms. Marvel is now working on this production. Admittedly, this is why it's ironic the main producer would cite an incident from the 1970s involving the Religion of Peace in Cyprus as alleged inspiration for this TV show. But of course, he didn't actually mention Islam, and it otherwise figures. Nor do they care how many illegal immigrants have committed severe crimes during their undeserved stays in the USA, let alone Europe.

In any event, when they openly admit their approach to DD in live action builds upon anti-Trump metaphors, along with hostility to law enforcement, that destroys everything. This is what Stan Lee's creations were adapted to the silver screen for? This only makes clear why, in the long run, it wasn't worth it. I wonder what Frank Miller thinks of their using a title he employed for his notable DD story from 1986, where the Kingpin discovered Matt Murdock's secret ID as a result of Karen Page's sellout to drugs? Unfortuately, based on how he boomeranged back to leftism in the worst ways possible over the past decade, Miller probably doesn't have a care in the world about where this live action series is going, since he did otherwise disown his GN titled Holy Terror from 15 years ago. As for the TV show itself, it's time to change the channel.

Artist Sam Keith dies at 63

Decider's reporting the veteran artist Sam Keith is dead at 63 years old. But there's one item listed here that they probably should've left out, although there are other things he drew that were in questionable taste, more on which anon:

The comic book world is saying goodbye to one of its most distinctive voices. Sam Kieth — the boundary-pushing creator of The Maxx and an early artistic force behind The Sandman — has died at 63 following a battle with Lewy body dementia, a degenerative brain disorder that causes cognitive decline, hallucinations, and Parkinson-like symptoms.

Born January 11, 1963, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Kieth emerged in the 1980s with a style that felt immediately out of step with traditional superhero comics — in the best way. While his early work at Marvel put him on titles featuring Wolverine and the Hulk, Kieth gravitated toward stories that leaned more surreal, psychological, and emotionally jagged than your typical capes-and-punches fare.

That sensibility fully crystallized in 1993 with The Maxx, his Image Comics series that quickly became a cult favorite. Blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, the story follows a homeless man who believes he’s a powerful protector in another world. Its exploration of trauma, identity, and fractured perception struck a chord with readers — and eventually led to an animated adaptation that cemented its legacy.

Before The Maxx, Kieth had already made a major impact helping launch The Sandman alongside Neil Gaiman. As the artist on the first five issues, he established much of the book’s shadowy, gothic tone, laying visual groundwork for what would become one of the most acclaimed comic series ever published.

Sigh. It's already old news that the disgraced Gaiman was a bad choice for whom to work with, so what's the use of bringing this up? If anything, it's not a great landmark on Keith's resume. Although there's also a few other examples from his portfolio that're questionable by today's standards, and which I may as well write about here, if only because who knows if they'd be published so easily today. But how interesting they admit Keith dealt with the surreal, because there's only so many other instances where the press insists on being "realistic", at the expense of surrealism. Presumably, Keith gets a pass because what he dealt with was more violent, among other issues questionable in nature.

For example, according to Tubewad's description of The Maxx's adaptation on MTV:

MTV’s version of The Maxx follows the plot of the comics so faithfully that you could watch the entire series and not have missed anything in books 1-11 While it did not always move sequentially—for example, The Maxx .5 is featured in episode 6, and the Darker Image preview is in another—it hits every major plot point. MTV’s version is able to draw all of the anger, betrayal, pain and repression from the comics and portray that in a way that is faithful to Keith’s vision. While it never explains that Julie was raped by Mr. Gone, or that she hit Maxx with her car (as it shouldn’t, since these are post-book 11 events), it does give a good idea of the emotional intensity that exists between the characters. It shows how much Julie and Maxx care for each other, and how that love serves as a bond that has to be severed in order to allow growth for either of them.

So the Maxx comic is something involving sexual violence. And we're supposed to be impressed, just like that? If anything, the following GN he published in the early 2000s, Zero Girl, is certainly embarrassing, if we were to go by what's told on GoodReads:

This is an odd book, as everything Sam Kieth does typically is. This is the story of a 15 year old social outcast. She sees squares as trying to get her and circles save her. The shapes shift to and fro monsters. That's the interesting part. The skeevy part is the relationship she has with her guidance counselor. She constantly flirts with him and he's more than tempted. It's icky to put it mildly. It's ultimately why I can't recommend the book. Keith's art is it's usual great, highly stylized self.

I vaguely recall this being spoken about in some comics circles at the time it first came out (and there was a sequel published at least 2 years later), and it did sound dismaying even then. If the girl, who bears the absurdly cartoonish last name "Smootster", had been 16, the age gap might've been less an issue. But Keith had to run the risk of making this into some statutorily inappropriate affair. Was that really necessary? Today, the chances this kind of story would be published without arguement by most publishers are much lower, and for all we know, Keith himself probably would've been more hesitant about crafting such a tale where a girl who's under the legal consenting age in most western countries would be portrayed this way. There's more about the premises of these GNs on Gizmodo that's even more stupefying, along with the premise of a GN titled Four Women:

And in his other stories, the traditional roles are reversed in unexpected ways. The villain Mr. Gone in The Maxx is a victim of his aunt’s sexual abuse, Zero Girl protagonist Amy Smootster is in such intense sexual pursuit of her guidance counselor that it kind of feels predatorial. Maybe this inversion is colored by Kieth’s own life -– he met his wife when he was 15 and she was 35. Or maybe they’re just his own “inner bimbo” (though his is more like “inner crazy lady in the public park who wears tinfoil on her head and screams about the Bay Of Pigs”). But whatever, because I’m into it!

Though there are conventional battles of good vs. evil, the final terrors in Kieth’s comics are emotional. In his most realistic piece, Four Women, we double back on a horrible sexual assault on four women during a car ride –- while the event itself was the catalyst, it’s the tensions and moral dilemmas the women now face with each other and themselves for throwing each other under the bus, basically, that drives the narrative. Rape also figures prominently into Julie’s alternate-universe reign as the Jungle Queen in her Outback in The Maxx, which I’m aware sounds totally insane if you haven’t read these comics. So read them, (and also this interview on Sequential Tart.)

What's irritating about the description is that it sounds like Keith wrote the Maxx that way to water down the seriousness of Mr. Gone's own actions. And he even made Amy in Zero Girl look like an aggressor if that's what it took to justify that too? I'm not impressed. Though at least we know French president Emmanuel Macron and his much older wife Brigitte Trogneux aren't the only ones of their sort. The Gizmodo item was written 14 years ago, and one can only wonder if their writers would back such a GN today as they did before. And if they don't condone an affair where the man's older while the girl's under legal statutory threshold, would they apply the same standards to an older woman-younger boy affair? If not, that just demonstrates how stunningly inconsistent PC advocates can be with their beliefs.

Now, Keith's gone, and he's left behind a portfolio that, while the MSM may not make anything clear, really is in questionable taste, topped off by how some of the women in his stories are made to look absurdly, questionably bad themselves. And is that the kind of stuff we ever needed? Not really.

Green Lantern in live action is now adapted by producer who despises the color

John Nolte at Breitbart addresses the subject of how a TV producer who apparently dislikes comics is in charge of a new show simply titled "Lanterns":

It has been revealed that HBO’s upcoming Green Lantern series is run by a guy who hates … green.

Executive producer Damon Lindelof (pictured) hates green so much that instead of calling the series by its legendary comic book name, Green Lanterns, he decided to call it … Lanterns. [...]

Lindelof has made no secret of his contempt for the color green. “It’s called Lanterns, because we all agreed that the ‘Green’ was stupid, so now it’s just Lanterns,” he said on a podcast.

Also, as you can see in the trailer, Lindelof’s Lanterns is a neo-Western, but in the comic books, the Green Lanterns are space cops.

Why?

Well, DC Studios co-chief James Gunn thinks that whole space concept is absurd. “It’s a very grounded, real show,” he said of Lanterns. “It’s taking this outlandish concept of space cops with magic rings and putting it in as close to reality as it can possibly be.”

Why does Hollywood continue to hand beloved franchises over to people who hate the franchise?

You could also ask why nobody cared about the abomination called Zero Hour that Hal Jordan was forced into over 3 decades ago, turned into a deadly villain for the sake of replacing him with a younger counterpart who was badly written and characterized at the time, that being Kyle Rayner. And things became worse even after Hal was resurrected, no thanks to Geoff Johns.

I wouldn't be shocked if the produers of this new Lanterns TV show didn't like Marvel's most surreal comics either, like Excalibur. "Grounded in reality" is exactly what's gone wrong, and become far too commonplace in how entertainment is crafted these days. Science fiction's been ruined by such hysteria. Nobody knows how to balance these things out at all.

I'll be staying far away from this new TV show, and this news is certainly telling as to what's wrong with filmmaker Gunn by extension. Which could explain why his takes on Guardians of the Galaxy won't age well, and why it's better to read the original comics instead.