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.

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.