The re-rise of the "superstar artist"?

The Hollywood Reporter interviewed artists Nick Dragotta and Daniel Warren Johnson, and they even claim DC's Absolute line is literally a huge success. Here's what they say:

Dragotta, who is the regular monthly artist for DC’s Absolute Batman title, and Johnson, the indie creator who last year wrote and drew the Absolute Batman annual, have emerged as two of the biggest artists that the comics world has seen in a long time. They are at the center of a seismic shift in the industry.

Call it the return of the superstar artist.

For most of the 21st century, comics, despite being a visual field, has been a writer-dominated medium. Even though some artists gained a degree of popularity, it has been authors such as Brian Michael Bendis, Robert Kirkman, Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and Brian K. Vaughan that have been the stars in the field, rising off a platform built by a previous generation of wordsmiths, names such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

And again, they just cite figures like Bendis, Tynion and Morrison, etc, as though they were all unquestionably admired and everybody's buying their stuff unquestioned, sans any objective viewpoint. What's so great about them that isn't so great about the writers who were blacklisted in the mainstream, like Chuck Dixon, Mike Baron and even Larry Hama? Tynion's a particularly galling example for citation as a writer, based on the horror comics the MSM is virtually gushing over now. And as for the issue of artists:

Dragotta, Johnson and a handful of others that include names such as Hayden Sherman, Jorge Jimenez and Peach Momoko, have become among the biggest artist names in the comics industry since the early 1990s, when a group of artists led by Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld quit Marvel Comics and created Image Comics. It was comics’ Beatlemania when those artists made store appearance in places such as L.A.’s Golden Apple. In response, Marvel and DC clamped down on the power of artists and raised the voice of the scribes.

This sounds like an exaggeration regarding the artists, if only because they still had talented artists working for them at the time. As for raising the voice of the scribes? Yes they did, and it wasn't always for the better, considering some like Scott Lobdell and Ron Marz were overrated or simply mediocre, and Gerard Jones had to have been the worst. It's more like in the past decade of the 2010s the power of artists was clamped down upon, and while that may have improved somewhat of recent, storytelling certainly hasn't. And when Liefeld's cited so casually, as though he was never a poor influence to start with, you know something's not serious about this puff piece.

“Certainly in the ‘90s, artists and Image artist ruled the land,” says Lee, who lived through the artist reign of the 1990s and has been the DC chief since 2010, first as co-publisher and then sole publisher. He has seen the vagaries of the comic industry ebb and flow, including the rise of the writer class. Lee described the current state as a “getting back to a balance where both artists and writers are driving sales, driving fans.”

The return of the artist as superstar “is good for the business, it is good for the artform,” he says.

That depends on if they know better at this point than to censor or water down the artwork, again recalling when this happened with Donna Troy, in example. I think even Jesse Quick fell victim to this censoring of female sexuality in the past decade, and so too did Rogue. Lee himself was dumbing down his artwork to some extent, and if he and the trade journal are obscuring all that, it only suggests all's still not well. The lecturing continues with the following:

Key to the rising artists phenomenon is the runaway success of DC’s Absolute line. Launched towards the end of 2024, the line led by Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Superman, reinterpreted characters and origins in a truly sweeping way. Unlike other so-called “relaunches” that DC or Marvel have done, this one has reinvigorated publishers and retailers alike, unexpectedly brought in new readers, and created name artists who can turn a simple three hour signing into a caffeinated, we’re-still-signing-at-midnight mania, as Dragotta and Johnson did late last year in an Oakland, Calif. comic shop. Or have hundreds upon hundreds line up in a shop in Spain, as Jimenez did in February. And they are now capitalizing on that newfound mainstream recognition. [...]

The line has been so seismic for DC that the company has overtaken market share over longtime rival Marvel for the first time this century. It has sold almost 12 million units since its launch. In the case of Absolute Batman, sales continue to rise, bucking normal publishing trends that see a drop or leveling off of sales.

Even this is hard to swallow, since it's more likely they're alluding to how much of this line's allegedly sold in the past 2 years since its launch. And the following makes clear something's awry here:

Absolute Batman is now consistently selling 300,000 issues a month, a monster number in the comic book publishing field.

“The Absolute comics have restored faith in the comic industry and retailers alike,” says Ryan Liebowitz, the owner of LA’s Golden Apple Comics, who said that first-time comic book readers are part of the movement. “We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time.”

All they've done with the above is compound the comedy. A serious business agent wants to sell far more than that in millions, yet we're being lectured that a sum equivalent to what some weekly urban newspapers see printed up is a triumph? The Hollywood Reporter has again proven they're one of the biggest farces in how they cover entertainment, and since when weren't readers part of the movement? It's quite likely we're being told this is a staggering success because of the politics the Absolute line's built upon. And who knows, maybe these "first-timers" they speak of took to the books because of said politics? But when it's far less than a million for individual issues sold, it's as dishonest as it's laughable to say this is a stunning success. The following is also annoying:

And it’s not just the comics that are selling. Artists in today’s comic industry have new revenue streams that did not exist in prior generations. Signings, which were once gratis, can be a major money maker. Runs of limited editions variant covers another. And, the biggest is the sale of original art.

In other words, creators are demanding we pay for their signatures? Why should we want to pay potentially hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for a mere signature? That can be quite the ripoff and makes the the medium look all the more absurd, as does the following news:

The original comic art for Dragotta, Johnson, Sherman, and others is selling out as soon as they drop on the online store run by Felix Lu, a former Hollywood assistant-turned-comic art dealer, and commanding prices that are more in line with classic artist from the 1970s and 1980s.

“It is a moment,” Lu says. “We will look back on this and see that this was a special time.”

Dragotta’s cover for Absolute Batman No. 1 sold for $70,000 in late 2024, when the title was less than a month old. It was a record sale for a modern age cover and would probably sell higher now in light of the title’s explosion in popularity.

Another change: initially, collectors bought individual art pages but now complete issues are being snapped up at a time, with aficionados paying well into six figures.

This is telling too. Mainly because pamphlets continue to be the coveted "holy grail" for speculators. What an insulting farce they're trying to sell us on here. I don't know if this is exactly what they mean by "original art", but it sure doesn't sound like wall paintings have become the name of the game. This is nothing more than a continuation of the very same unfunny jokes that have plague the industry for years, particularly since the turn of the century.

In further detailing of Dragotta's history, they tell that:

But little by little, he nabbed assignments here and there. He drew a silent issue of Fantastic Four which centered on the memorial for hero Johnny Storm (don’t worry, it’s comics, and Storm would eventually be resurrected). He was lucky to be paired with writer Joe Casey and the two created America Chavez, a young Avenger that was a key character in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Yet, even then, he and his family was getting by on credit cards.

So he was one of the developers of a diversity/social justice pandering creation, which unsurprisingly isn't elaborated upon here. Why must we find that impressive? If Marvel wanted to, they could've put a big emphasis on Firebird/Bonita Juarez, who was created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema in the pages of Incredible Hulk back in 1981. I suppose because she was characterized as a Christian adherent, she wasn't good enough for today's PC crowd at Marvel, right?

As for Johnson:

Raised in a strict Christian household and home schooled from third to 12th grade, Johnson’s interests butted up against the will of his parents. Certain music wasn’t allowed. Some comics were tolerated. Many were not. Once, his grandparents bought him a few Superboy issues in which the hero wore a leather jacket (hey, it was a ‘90s look).

“My parents took a flip through it and they were like, ‘No,’” he recalled. His father took those comics away and instead bought him a Spider-Man “that specifically had no punching on the cover.”

One defining moment was when a teenage Johnson and his father were in a comic shop and Johnson was intent on buying a copy of Battle Chasers, a comic known for shapely and busty heroines and plenty of violence.

His father was appalled at the mixing of sex and violence. “This is horrific,” the father said. “You shouldn’t buy that.”

Johnson stood his ground. He said, “Dad, I’m buying this” and put his money down.

“He was a good dad. I think he was just trying to be really careful with the visual that I was taking in,” says Johnson. “And eventually I just had to go my own way with it. We would always have this back and forth.”

Depending how you view this, it's a shame if his parents took a sex-negative viewpoint on the one hand, and on the other, overreacted in regards to the 90s Superboy series, since from what stories I recall reading, it was far from gory in terms of violence. Of course, you could also wonder why his parents thought Spidey was any better, because if DC could have jarring moments in their comics, so could Marvel, and did, though it was post-2000 this was sadly more likely, because that's when they really began losing their moral compass. Also, strange if they believed Spidey had no punching of any kind, because there were plenty of times ever since Web-head debuted in 1962 where fisticuffs prevailed as much as web-slinging.

He studied art at Chicago’s North Park University, but even when he began discovering comics beyond the superhero genre such as Spawn, The Walking Dead and Hellboy, a future in the industry was still not on his mind.

Oh, this is telling too. When somebody cites graphically violent products like those as influences, you know something's wrong. If that's what Johnson considered masterpieces, then he's no better than the PC advocates who claimed the disgraced Neil Gaiman's Sandman series was better because it alluded to subjects that even mainstream superhero comics actually had dealt with in some form or other in past years. Jarring violence and gore alone like what the 3 Image/Dark Horse comics cited are noted for does not a good story make. Johnson's also hinted at his leftist politics in the following:

It was when he rekindled his childhood love of Transformers, launching the eponymous comic under Skybound/Image in 2023, that he powered his first major breakthrough. As both the writer and artist, he transformed a licensed comic, a type of endeavor that is not normally known for artistic achievements, not just into a massive sales hit — the first issue sold over 100,000 copies — but also, unbelievably, into an Eisner Award winner. Two, in fact. One for best continuing series, one for best writer/artist.

He was already skyrocketing in popularity when DC came calling, offering something in the Absolute world. At first, he declined their advances, but as he says, “the election and inauguration happened and then I had an idea.” That was the beginning of 2025. By the end of the year, Absolute Batman Annual No. 1 was in readers’ hands.

Again with powerbombs and chokeslams, not to mention one arm being snapped in mid-Hitler salute, Batman took on white supremacists. Like the main Absolute Batman, an energy pulsated through the pages, giving it an urgency and a nowness.

The comic sold a walloping 150,000 copies. It then breezed through a second printing and is now on its third.

Once again, they've lengthened the joke regarding sales figures, and taking on white supremacists of what's bound to be a western variety in an era where Islamic terrorism is more a serious concern is also a joke. What makes the above fall flat is that, according to this page recorded from leftist Bleeding Cool, Johnson, disturbingly enough, drew an anti-ICE illustration, exploiting Batman's image for something quite loathsome. What Bleeding Cool refuses to mention is that the woman tried to strike the ICE officer, and he fired in self-defense. Such omissions only compound how tasteless Johnson's illustration really is.

And after years of comics being the domain of middle-aged male nerds, the audience for the books is younger and more diverse than before, thanks to Gen Z growing up on non-superhero graphic novels such as Dav Pikey’s Dog Man and the works of Raina Telgemeier. Their fervor can be seen in YouTube videos and launch comics trend on TikTok.

“It’s one of the first times we’re seeing social media having an impact on store sales,” says Golden Apple’s Liebowitz. “In this instance, the people are talking about this thing called Absolute Batman or Wonder Woman or whatever, and rushing into local comic books stores to find it.”

Or as Lu put it: “One thing we haven’t seen is that the kids are back. I didn’t think we’d see that again.”

It won't be shocking if it turns out their claims are hugely exaggerated, and besides, note that the examples cited above aren't superhero comics, but rather, independent GNs. Has social media really never had an effect on sales before? I think chances are it has, yet when sales figures aren't cited unambiguously, how can you believe this at instant face value? They also don't mention that, if comics were really left to middle-aged, that's because they all but stopped being sold in supermarkets and regular bookstores, and gradually became more mature themed to the point where they were all but unsuited for children. Not to mention less interesting because successive writers were exploiting them for leftist propaganda, including J. Michael Straczynski's take on Spidey, and despite any claims to the contrary, the Big Two didn't even try appealing to children. They certainly didn't make them suitable, and what they did to Iceman was just the beginning.

Like with most cases of popularity or art trends, it’s hard to know where this one will to or how long it will last. Dragotta is committed to Absolute Batman for the foreseeable future, which will give the title a cohesion rare in modern comics (not counting the occasional fill-in issue or two by other artists, which allows him to catch up on his schedule).

From what I can tell here, it's no different from other big headlines written for the sake of them. And the part about cohesion couldn't be more forced, based on how they don't make the same argument for flagship titles, nor do they suggest much of what came up in the past quarter century be jettisoned as part of an effort to restore some coherency and meaning to the flagship Marvel/DC titles. Despite what they claim, this alleged popularity of the Absolute line hasn't even lasted a year, but what is clear is that, because of the political metaphors, that's why they're promoting it drenched in sugar. I'm sure they know the sales figures given are a laugh riot, and their failure to make a valid argument why it could do a lot of good to find a way to boost sales to millions - possibly by shifting to paperback/hardcover formats - speaks volumes. They keep wasting so much paper on puff pieces but never write up any op-eds about what could be done to improve marketing and readership. Nor will they make an argument why at this point, it would be better if Marvel/DC closed down comics publication, seeing what an artistic travesty they've become.

If there's anything this whole fawning over the Absolute line reminds me of, it's the fuss made over Marvel's Ultimate line a quarter century ago. That line did have its share of tasteless shock value, and it won't be shocking if the Absolute line has anything similar. That's why we could really do without what DC is now foisting on the audience.

Greg Capullo retiring from interior illustration work

Popverse says the veteran artist Greg Capullo is retiring, mostly because his art team on Batman parted ways, and if he continues, he may limit himself to covers only:

Iconic superhero comics artist Greg Capullo is mulling retiring from drawing comics. Capullo is a rare breed — having been a top monthly comic book artist in two distinctly different eras, both in the '90s with Quasar, X-Force, and Spawn, and then going on a long hiatus only to return at the top of his form (and at the top of the charts) with DC's 'New 52' relaunch of Batman. In recent years, he's been the go-to artist for DC and Marvel major titles, drawing the DC events Dark Nights: Metal and its sequel Dark Nights: Death Metal, to the DC/Image crossover series Batman/Spawn, the Marvel standalone series Wolverine: Revenge, and the recent once-in-a-generation Batman/Deadpool event from DC and Marvel.

But now, at age 64 and recent upheavals in his art team, Greg Capullo sees 2026 as possibly his last year drawing actual comics.

“I’m kind of feeling like I’m going to be done doing interiors,” Greg Capullo said recently during a MegaCon spotlight panel shared with Scott Snyder and Frank Tieri. “I have reasons for that. I can give them to you."

I vaguely recall Capullo was one of those creators who indicated he was a leftist with appalling positions in the past decade, though he did once make a valid argument about why talented scriptwriting is important, and blocked fellow leftists Kurt Busiek and Gail Simone after they disagreed. Even so, is he somebody to miss in the medium after he fully retires? Maybe not.

Another key part of Capullo's reason for stepping back from interior comics is that his primary art team for the 17 years, from his return with Image's Haunt on through to DC's Batman and everything after, has broken up.

"I recently lost my art team, my longtime art team," Capullo continues. "One guy I won’t even discuss, but Jonathan Glapion, my friend, has gone on to become his own artist. I’m very proud of him. He’s working under McFarlane. He’s got his own thing going."

While Capullo's days of drawing interiors comics are coming to a close, Capullo says he plans to continue drawing covers whenever possible.

So here we have another guy who's now limiting himself to covers only, and on pamphlets, no doubt. What good is that? There's other artists like J. Scott Campbell who long stopped drawing interiors, and IMO, unwisely. Others like Stanley Lau seem to have made covers their sole type of career. I'm sure there's other artists out there with talent, but they shouldn't be wasting them on Marvel/DC, certainly not so long as they're in an artistic shambles under a conglomerate ownership. Notice how Capullo contributed to at least 2 of DC's crossover events, one of the biggest problems that metastasized ever since Marvel's Secret Wars. If that's what he considers worth working on, that's just the problem. So if all he could think of doing was wasting his talents on meaningless crossovers, then he wasn't utilizing his skills well at all. Maybe if he stuck with Image, but even that's not an instant guarantee he'll turn out something with long lasting value.

Now, he's semi-retiring, and he'll probably never admit the Big Two did terrible things over the years and that it was a serious mistake to lend his talents to their businesses after all the harm they caused. The refusal of some veterans to publicly admit something went wrong is what makes this a very sad affair.

Why I hope Green Lantern's run in Action Comics Weekly isn't reprinted in the same DC Finest volume as the last few issues of the 1960-88 solo series

I recently thought of doing some more research on Jim Owsley (Christopher Priest)'s bottom of the barrel run on GL in Action Comics Weekly, and while I was at it, I found this superficial item on Biff Bam Pop:

Green Lantern, written by comic book hall-of-famer James Owsley and drawn by the legendary Gil Kane, picked up right where the character’s series had ended, only now, in the first chapter of the serial, the exploits of DC’s favourite science fiction space-cop was narrated by his ex-lover, now turned adversary, Carol Ferris, the Star Sapphire. The story traveled from deep space to planet Earth, the first chapter ending with the mutilation and murder of ex-Green Lantern Corps member, Katma, who also happened to be Green Lantern John Stewart’s wife, at the hands of the evil narrator. Quite the cliff-hanger.

Oh for crying out loud. Pathetic posts like these are exactly what enabled DC to get away with that in the long run. And unless DC made a serious effort of recent, then as noted before, they've never taken any steps to reverse the horrific damage left by where they put Katma Tui.

What's most devastating about the starting storyline is that it was illustrated by none other than Hal Jordan, Carol Ferris and Katma Tui's own original artist, Kane. And the atrocity was compounded when, in issue 603, GL smacks/punches Carol in the face/head. If you have a strong stomach, the horror can be seen here and here, in some panels from the issue, which are chilling even for their time in how they emphasize depicting a man hitting a woman. They're so horrific I decided not to post the images directly, so view at your own risk. It's angering because no doubt, the editors and publishers exploited Kane's willingness to participate as a shield for the loathsome storyline that resulted. Though Kane may have realized he was contributing to a terrible direction, and quit after issue 605, the damage was done. This was at least 15 years before Identity Crisis did something almost similar, when Brad Meltzer wrote Jean Loring inviting the Atom to hit her, and miraculously, we were spared the sight of a man hitting a woman in that abomination. But the whole notion a woman would be depicted inviting a man to assault her is still equally offensive, and one could argue that Owsley's story played a part in leading to the later situation. It certainly did not reflect well on whatever talents he had in writing.

I also noticed this troubling thread on Reddit about what Guy Gardner was written doing indirectly. That is, when Hal called him about the terrible news, Guy laughed. As though the writing couldn't have been worse. Even if Guy was written as a jerk at the time, that's still no excuse. It makes no difference whether it was editorially mandated; that Owsley would take the job to start with was abominable, as was Kane's willingness to illustrate it. One respondent said:

That run in Action comics was so bad it ranks as probably the worst I've ever read. Hal's old friends turn on him, Katma dies unnecessarily, everyone is out of character and the art is the only saving grace.

No, the art is wasted on something heinous, and one of the oddest things about the run is that it didn't seem verbatim to continuity in other flagship comics DC published at the time. Stunningly, this was edited by Denny O'Neil, around the same time he arranged for a phone poll to determine if Jason Todd, the 2nd Robin, should live or die in Batman. There were plenty of impressive moments in O'Neil's career as a writer, but as an editor, he certainly didn't get off on the right foot. And I don't think he ever expressed serious regret for either mistake. As far as I know, he certainly never commented on the topic of Katma Tui.

Anyway, I recently looked for updates on what the next DC Finest reprint archives would be coming along later in the year, and noticed that one of the volumes is for Green Lantern from around 1987, and it looked like the issues reprinted go up to 219, leaving off just 5 issues before the series' cancellation in 1988. If the final issues are eventually reprinted, what do they intend to add afterwards in the volume to come? If it's the Action Comics Weekly stories and 2 specials also written by Owsley, I would rather not spend money on those like the terrible "quality" of the tales doesn't matter. What I might find acceptable is if they decide to reprint the New Guardians spinoff that lasted 12 issues under the "New Format" imprint, along with possibly the Millenium miniseries that served as a hub for the crossover (which had some connections with GL), even though the former was very weak, though nowhere as horrific as the ACW stories. If they want to reprint the ACW stories, so be it; I just hope they don't intend to reprint them in virtually the same volume as the last 5 issues of the 1960-88 GL series.

But I have a bad feeling that, unfortunately, DC has already made their decision on what'll be archived alongside what else when it comes to GL, and if so, that'll be another humiliation for GL fans who recognize that what came after the 2nd stand-alone GL volume ended was largely awful, and then will have to hope a separate, alternate compilation of the last issues will be printed they can buy instead. On which note, I recently had the fortune of buying something similar with Hawkeye from 2012, reprinting a 1994 miniseries written by Chuck Dixon along with some stories from Marvel Comics Presents, because the 4th Epic Collection starring Clint Barton also contains stories written up to 2008, including a series that I once was unlucky to read in the early 2000s that was awful. I so did not want to buy an archive for what I consider worthy stories starring Hawkeye with "strings attached", which is what the 4th Epic Collection unfortunately does, and thankfully I won't have to now. But what about GL? If DC avoids reprinting the remaining issues in Finest archives alongside the ACW abominations, that'll be a relief. But if they do reprint said issues alongside said abominations, they'll be adding another insult to the GL legacy alongside some of the worst that came afterwards, like the awful run of the early 90s. And that'll be a shame, mainly because, who knows if said remaining issues will ever see a separate, independent archive that can serve as an alternative for anyone who'd rather rightfully avoid the ACW atrocities?

University paper predictably recommends the weaker Daredevil stories post-2000

The Beacon of Wilkes University wrote about Daredevil stories they recommend, and while there's at least two worthy citations, the rest come from the post-2000 era where Hornhead's stories went down the drain. And, the writer runs the gauntlet of making it sound like fictional characters are real people:

Daredevil is such a complex and interesting character. This is because no matter if he’s defending the public during the day as the attorney Matt Murdock or thwarting evil on the dark streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil, his faith in his Catholic upbringing and his heroic morals are always put to the test. His rogues gallery is also really interesting from the iconic Kingpin and Bullseye to lesser-known villains such as the Owl and Mr. Fear, Daredevil’s stories consist of such great villains that perfectly juxtapose that of the seemingly unbreakable will of the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

No, DD alone is not complex and interesting, it's the assigned writers who make him that. A similar point can be made about the recurring villains. Regarding Matt's Catholic background, modern writers have certainly put that to the test through forced leftist politics. And when the writer gets around to citing Frank Miller and David Mazuchelli's Born Again story, she says:

There’s a reason why this is one of the most iconic Daredevil stories of all time and that’s because this story arc is a turning point for the character. Without giving too much away, Matt Murdock is put through the wringer by his arch-nemesis, Kingpin. This story also includes a character death that shook the comic book world.

The police lieutenant Nick Manolis? Born Again was certainly one of the best DD stories, but what she says about Manolis, a minor character who made barely a dozen appearances between 1980-86, could just as easily have been said about Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man, and was. And come to think of it, if an innocent character dies or worse, is that something to celebrate? Of course not.

Now, what else is cited here? As mentioned, far newer stuff post-2000:

These next few recommendations are going to be entire comic book runs of Daredevil rather than story arcs. The next I’ll recommend is Mark Waid’s Daredevil run. This run is much lighter in terms of storytelling since Matt Murdock has been through a lot of low points in previous stories. In this run, Daredevil teams up with some other favorite Marvel heroes like Spider-Man and Captain America. This is a really great run to read up on since not only does it feature great storylines, but it also features the viral, “I’m not Daredevil” Christmas sweater.

This next one is a bit divisive among fans, but I think it’s pretty good all things considered. The Charles Soule run of Daredevil picks up right after Mark Waid’s run and while I don’t think it’s as strong as the Mark Waid run, I think it’s a lot of fun and takes a lot of risks with the character. This run also introduces one of my favorite Daredevil villains, Muse. Muse is an Inhuman who is also a serial killer who turns his victims’ bodies into art projects.

Oh, that's just what we need, like we need only so much more of this in Batman to boot. As for Waid's run, what devastates that is that, despite claims to the contrary, he shoehorned in leftist propaganda at the time, in what was quite likely a precursor to how Marvel approached writing the Muslim Ms. Marvel series - write it seemingly bright and optimistic, and use that as a potential shield and excuse for turning out Islamic propaganda. When the publishers are only willing to explore an optimistic/lighter view with strings attached, that's wrong and insulting to the intellect. If Waid's ever apologized for that, I have yet to find out. And one more citation given in this university puff piece is about Chip Zdarsky's run:

There are so many things to love about Zdarsky’s Daredevil series such as the incredible artwork by Marco Checcetto in various issues and several great moments and events such as the major street level hero crossover event, “Devil’s Reign”. Another thing I love about this run is how Zdarsky elevates the character of Elektra Natchios and how she even becomes Daredevil alongside Matt Murdock.

See, this too is another tired modern cliche, where a character is robbed of personal agency and identity for the sake of putting them in another character's costume, which I once described as a case of the company asking readers to care more about the costume than the character. IIRC, even Black Panther was put in the DD costume at one point. And no clear explanation from the university writer on how this amounts to merit-based storytelling.

Maybe most puzzling of all is why Ann Nocenti's run in the late 80s-early 90s receives no mention here. She turned out some pretty good stories, and even created the villainess Typhoid Mary. Some could reasonably wonder if Nocenti goes unmentioned because it would undermine the PC narrative of the past decade that women were supposedly excluded from the industry. It's also appalling how the original 1964-98 volume is otherwise largely obscured here, because undoubtably, there's plenty one could say about it as a whole, right down to how Bullseye was created in the mid-70s, yet the only story that matters here is Miller's. Seriously, while his run was satisfying, and far better than what he's known for in later years like Sin City, it's insulting to the intellect to obscure almost everything and anything else in the pre-2000 DD run. At least the writer doesn't go gushing over Kevin Smith's Marvel Knights run, where he obliterated Karen Page. On which note, DD was probably the only series to run as long as it did under the Knights imprint when it was first in use around 1998-2006. Most other characters/series that were put under the imprint by Joe Quesada didn't last as long, if at all, and Black Panther's series of the times was moved back to the flagship imprint after a year. As a result, one can reasonably question whether it was the gigantic success pseudo-historians claim it was at all. Besides, lest we forget that the Capt. America run under the imprint was some of the worst anti-American propaganda ever produced.

After looking at this college paper's take on DD, I'm honestly not sure the writer's a DD fan at all, since like countless other writers of her sort, all she can think of recommending is the easiest and most obvious moments in old/new publication, and won't even discuss the pre-2000 volume in its entirety, nor any of the other specials and miniseries connected with it. That's why these college papers are such a joke.

Pajiba gushes over Tom King's take on Supergirl

A writer at Pajiba gushed over the overrated King's comic starring Supergirl, "Women of Tomorrow", which is being adapted to the silver screen, sadly enough, by James Gunn and company:

My comic book reading has lapsed over the last several years, but I’ll still try to pick up things that I hear good things about and read them when I’m not exhausted and/or staring at the wall. One such comic book that I read somewhat recently was Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and y’all, it was absolutely incredible. The book, created by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, is a spectacular story about grief, revenge, and holding yourself to a pretty high standard because of the symbol on your chest.

We meet a Supergirl who is very similar to the one that appeared in James Gunn’s Superman, and, by that, I mean that she’s drunk. She’s getting drunk because, unlike her cousin, she was a teenager when Krypton exploded, so she had friends and loved ones and a place where she grew up that were all erased in an instant. She has memories of a homeworld that she will never see again. So, she travels to a part of the universe with a red sun and drinks to forget it all.

The story is filled with a lot of nuance, as Supergirl is then enlisted by a young girl to track down a man who killed her father. While Supergirl is hesitant at first, she eventually joins the young girl after her dog, Krypto, is hurt, and they learn a lot about each other and the cruelty of the universe. I was pretty excited to see that Gunn was touting the book as inspiration for the new movie, but after I read it, I was a little nervous because I don’t know if the movie will live up to the book.

What I don't get is why they think it's such a big deal to portray the Maid of Might as teenage drunkard. Also, if what Inverse tells says anything, a story that relies upon a bizarre hoax - that Krypto wasn't in serious danger to start with - isn't exactly doing much to create drama anyway. So how can the movie live up to the book when the book doesn't live up to real expectations, any more than modern storytelling for the flagship Supergirl? Also, Milly Alcock recently made things worse by stating in a Vanity Fair interview that:

Has the famously fickle Game of Thrones fandom prepared Alcock for the inevitable backlash she’ll face? “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies,” she says. “I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”

Somehow, it's unlikely what she says is based on what kind of horrific leftist propaganda came up in the past decade at the fairer sex's expense. What she's telling is little more than a cheap excuse to avoid challenging queries of what the Supergirl movie's merit will be like, and with a premise like alcoholism, seriously, I don't think it'll amount to much. Any potential political propaganda here will only perpetuate the misgivings. And she makes it sound like nobody ever wanted Supergirl created. Perhaps she should consider what kind of revolting mindsets were working at DC back in the mid-80s, who punished a fictional character instead of any bad writers and filmmakers who dampened Kara Zor-El's legacy as Superman's cousin.

One of the most irritating things about new stories like what King concocted is how a premise that was once considered better suited for a stand-alone indie comic is being forced onto corporate owned creations, and practically compounds why in the long run, conglomerate ownership did DC/Marvel far more harm than good. It's a real shame that here, when it was bad enough the Maid of Might got a poor screenplay foisted upon her in 1984, now Gunn and company are making things worse by adapting woke script for the sake of a newer movie, 42 years after the previous one. Conduct like this is exactly what discouraged me from looking forward to live action adaptations, and feel that, if famous comics creations need any kind of adapting, it should be in animation, but even there, they're obviously not immune to leftist propaganda tampering.

What Tom Brevoort says now about the affordability of crossovers

According to Popverse, one of Marvel's worst modern editors told a podcaster he seemingly recognizes why crossovers have made collectibility too costly:

If you've been collecting Marvel Comics for, say, two or three decades, you've maybe noticed a shift in how the House of Ideas runs its line-wide event tie-in issues. Namely, that they put out less of them. And while there are doubtless a lot of factors that go into that decision (more regular events, a global pandemic, etc.), a deciding factor from within Marvel HQ is simply that, these days, people can't afford to buy tie-in issues.

At least, that's how Tom Brevoort sees it.

Gee, why didn't he consider all that years before? And surely most importantly, why doesn't he consider the vitality of merit-based storytelling? What came as the result of Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths could've been avoided going forward, but the publishers regrettably came to rely increasingly upon crossovers instead of merit, and that's one of the biggest problems that brought down comicdom in the long run. If Marvel and DC really put out less now, well, they did so awfully late, and after only so much ruination of their cast of characters in the process. As far back as 2 decades ago, DC was the one who first began pandering to woke directions like DEI, and Marvel followed up on that several years later. None of that was merit-based, and coupled with all the line-wide crossovers, made for a very alienating approach going forward.

Marvel's longest-serving editor was recently a guest on the Word Balloon Comics Podcast with host John Siuntres, where the pair discussed Brevoort's storied history of working on line-wide Marvel events. "I've done more of these than anybody," the current X-Men editor said of Marvel's company-wide events, "Every time you try to take the lessons of what you did and apply it to the next one."

Wrong, he didn't, and their discussion of line-wide events proves it. And if we take Avengers: Disassembled and House of M as examples, he let Bendis turn Scarlet Witch into a dishrag. In hindsight, it's sickening, especially now after the WandaVision TV program and the 2nd live action Dr. Strange movie made use of the forced changing of Wanda into a one-dimensional madwoman.

One of those lessons, it appears, is that while comic sales are certainly not crashing, it's less likely that collectors are going to shell out money to collect tie-in issues for every company-wide event, such as last year's One World Under Doom. Although to be fair, you don't have to be an editor at Marvel to know that people's budgets are tighter than they were just a little while ago.

"The reality of the world is different now than it was 20 years ago," Brevoort told his interviewer. "Which is to say: when we were doing something like House of M or Secret Wars, you could do an awful lot of tie-in books and have the expectation that a certain amount of the audience was going to want to read all of those books, and was going to be financially able to read all of those books."

No kidding. The problem is that Brevoort and other staffers like Joe Quesada were counting on the entire fanbase to literally buy these things up completely unquestioned, no matter how poor the story, and no matter how horrific the treatment of the cast of characters was. It's the same with DC under Dan DiDio. This gives a telling clue they were also unofficially relying on speculators to buy these up in hopes they'd be worth a lot of money in the future. But all that did was cause the speculator market to collapse in the mid-90s, and it's only gotten worse since.

"As times have gotten tighter," he concluded, "And belts have gotten tighter, it's maybe not the best idea in the world to go quite that deep, quite that far. If we publish a crossover now and did as many tie-ins as we did in during Civil War, I don't know whether it would succeed or fail, but my guess would be those tie-ins would not perform as well because no one would be able to afford to read them all."

As if we already weren't going to defer to Brevoort's decades of experience in this, our own ailing bank accounts would have us agreeing.

Well why didn't anyone even back then make the point? Better still, why didn't anybody at the time argue that, if they alienated the audience, they can't be surprised if not only sales would decline, but prices would go up as the publishers became desperate to compensate for loss of revenue? This is just another clue what's gone wrong with serial fiction storytelling and publishing, and despite what's told, there's no chance even Brevoort will do anything to mend a horrid situation. After all, what did he do to reverse the severe damage done by erasing the Spider-marriage? Or the maltreatment of Mary Jane Watson and Scarlet Witch, to name but a few examples of Marvel cast members who were wronged? And then they have the gall to talk about company wide crossovers as though it was never a slight to artistic quality. I'm sorry, but despite suggestions to the contrary, this article isn't doing enough to repair the fiasco Marvel and DC became since the turn of the century, and Brevoort should've resigned his positions long ago. If he continues to bog them down with his very presence, it only confirms he hasn't learned any lessons, and if DC hires him despite how clear it is he hasn't or no longer has any talent, that too will make clear they're not learning lessons either. Nepotism is one of the biggest problems in comicdom today, and a leading reason why we still have dreadful figures like Brevoort to contend with, who don't have any genuine remorse over the disaster they turned mainstream comics into.

For this year's FCBD, copies of Lego Batman are being given out

While Diamond Distribution is largely out of business now, FCBD is still going, and Restart reports this year's occasion will see comics based on the Lego Batman game:

For Free Comic Book Day in 2026, fans can collect a free comic book tie-in for the upcoming video game Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, which tells a standalone story inspired by the game. The comic is called The Lego Batman Returns, and it will follow Lego Batman after he returns to Gotham City after some time away.

While physical copies of The Lego Batman Returns comic will be available for free at participating comic stores for Free Comic Book Day, a digital version will also launch for free on the DC Universe Infinite app on the same day, May 2.

Unfortunately, this does nothing to repair the mess the flagship Batman titles have fallen into, though it's interesting that FCBD is still in business, even though it never proved profitable, and Marvel mostly abandoned it for the sake of a rival project.

I played with Lego toys in my youth, and I think they were one of the best things produced in Denmark decades before, but it's worth noting that, much like several other businesses in the past decade, they too decided to sour their image by going woke. Based on that, who knows if it's a good idea to give even their Lego Batman toys - and comics - a chance at this point if they haven't done enough to mend their image as a children's franchise?

C.B. Cebulski brought Brian Bendis back to Marvel

Publisher's Weekly wrote a fawning interview with the dreadful Bendis, in which we learn who brought him back to Marvel employment. First:

For comic book writer Brian Michael Bendis, the 21st century has been an ongoing education. The writer who first broke big at the turn of the millennium at both Marvel Comics (with his marquee series Daredevil, Alias, and New Avengers, not to mention co-creating the 21st century Spider-Man, Miles Morales) and Dark Horse (where his creator-owned series Powers blended capes with crime fiction) became virtually synonymous with superhero comics over the following decades.

That's a clue to how he's one of the early examples of "woke" writers who created characters like Morales not as their own agencies, but as DEI pandering. I also recall an interview he gave a decade ago where he brought up "whitesplaining and mansplaining", and this was just shortly before Jason Aaron became another noticeable example of a woke writer. I guess that's what Bendis considers an "education", huh? Powers, IIRC, was supposed to be a "noir" tale about investigations into superhero type figures being killed, and after once reading about the premise of the chapter "Who Killed Retro Girl?", I would rather stay away from such smut. It only gives the whole crime noir genre a bad name. It's a shame overrated writers like Bendis are the ones considered worthy of practically taking over a whole franchise and deconstructing it all according to how they see fit.

You’re coming back to Marvel Comics after a decade away. Does it feel gratifying to be a kind of emeritus figure there?

[Marvel editor-in-chief] C.B. [Cebulski] called with exactly the call you would hope for. "Hey, we were thinking of something and we thought, ‘I wish Brian was here.’“ Ever since then, it's been lovely.

I had the oversized [experience] of walking into Marvel [when the company was] in bankruptcy, and just standing there while they rebuilt themselves into what they are now, which is a crown jewel of pop culture. The opportunities were everywhere, and I'd have been a fool not to try everything. I'm glad I did, but it became all-consuming.

Well, it's no longer bizarre somebody as woke as Cebulski himself obviously is would be willing to rehire a figure like Bendis unquestioned. If Aaron's currently not working for them, don't be shocked if Cebulski decides to rehire him soon as well. And it's more like unintentional comedy to say Marvel rebuilt themselves as a publisher, because since the turn of the century, they sank into repetitive line-wide crossovers, never asking if it was a healthy example to begin with, and in the past decade, became alarmingly censorious/deleterious in their approach, with repellently poor artwork being just the beginning, as was the erasure of the Spider-Marriage. As a result, even the live action movies don't age well, because if the zygote's thrown under the bus under the impression moviegoers only care about the live action adaptations, then the movies and TV programs look hypocritical in hindsight.

You started teaching classes at Portland State, and then you created a revived Jinxworld through your own website. Community is clearly something that you're focusing on.

David Walker and I have this class at Portland State University [a writing course for comics and graphic novels] where we literally drag in every one of our friends, and everyone shares their knowledge. It does feel like part of the journey involves education. It brings me an enormous amount of joy.

Ah, the same Walker who exploited their comics for his far-left politics? Again, this says all you need to know that Bendis is as bad as the other wokesters who came after him like Aaron, and again, Bendis did give hints just how repellently leftist he is too. Whatever he's got in store this time, it's bound to be as awful as before, and just compounds why it's a terrible shame Marvel didn't close down in the early 2000s, which could've minimized the damage they'd undergone since. As for Cebulski, I have no idea how much longer he'll continue as EIC, but it's long been apparent he's no salvation for what Stan Lee and his ilk worked hard to develop in the time.