NYC street named after Spider-Man

JNS reports a New York assemblyman arranged to have a street named after Stan Lee's famous wall-crawler in NYC's Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens, which was depicted as Peter Parker's place of residence as far back as the late 1980s:

Peter Parker, better known as Spider-Man, was born in Forest Hills, as the comic book backstory goes. The grandparents of New York state Assembly member Sam Berger also lived in the neighborhood.

“As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, who settled in Forest Hills and rebuilt their lives in Queens, I’m especially proud to see Spider-Man Way recognized in the very community they helped build,” Berger told JNS, of the newly named street in the Queens neighborhood in New York City.

“My grandparents may not have had superpowers, but they understood that with the opportunity to build a new life came a responsibility to give back and leave their community better than they found it,” he said.

Berger, who represents the area and advocated for the street naming, connected that legacy to the Jewish creators, who helped shape American comic books, including Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Joe Simon, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Lee penned the Spider-Man comics, while Steve Ditko illustrated them.

“Through their stories, they helped generations understand that our greatest strength isn’t measured by our powers or achievements, but by how we use them to stand up for others and make the world around us a little better,” Berger told JNS.

“That’s a legacy worth celebrating, and one that makes Spider-Man Way especially meaningful here in Queens,” he said.

But not meaningful to horrible figures like current mayor Zohran Mamdani, who've done plenty already to desecrate the memory of the aforementioned Jewish comics creators. Come to think of it, there's even a presumably Jewish city comptroller who's now doing the same, exactly what Mamdani wants. That has the regrettable effect of dampening the impact of Berger's work to have a street specially named after a comics character a Jewish writer created.

That said, Berger's work is admirable, but then, how about if there were to be a street named after Mary Jane Watson? After all the abuse Marvel under Joe Quesada seet in motion, it could be a great way to draw a special spotlight on one of Stan's most famous co-star creations. I'd strongly recommend Mr. Berger consider trying that out next.

Upcoming anthology spotlights musicians

DJ Mag announced the publishers of Heavy Metal magazine are putting out an anthology based on a music duo next year:

A new comic anthology exploring the world of Daft Punk is set for release in 2027.

Published by French science fiction magazine, Métal Hurlant, the 272-page edition features 26 comics and six articles inspired by the legendary electronic duo, with contributions from more than 30 comics creators. The collection brings together original stories, archival material and essays exploring science fiction, technology, and electronic music.

Available to pre-order via publishers Humanoids, the anthology features work the likes of Laura Pérez, Malachi Ward, Jonathan Djob Nkondo and Zep, as well as contributions from French artists Mœbius and Philippe Druillet.

Music does make a good wellspring for exploration in comicdom, so good luck to them in marketing this.

Daily Wire guest writer goes too easy on Tom King

Comics artist Matt Battaglia wrote on the Daily Wire about the Lanterns TV show the overrated leftist Tom King worked on, and while Battaglia may express disappointment with the TV program itself (and even that's very soft), he regrettably takes a lenient view of King as a writer himself, making it sound as though King literally has talent, which he doesn't:

HBO’s new television series “Lanterns” is revealing to a broader audience the limits of the superhero genre. The show tries to capture the spirit of the first season of “True Detective” (perfect television) while being shackled to Green Lantern’s expectations. Put those aesthetics on Batman or The Question, and it would work; slap them on a cosmic superhero whose power is fueled by imagination and a magic ring, and they begin to break under the weight of expectation.

The show is dour, but uplifted by a cast whose charisma tends to break what the script asks the viewer to believe and think. Kyle Chandler is obviously magnetic and shakes off any negative connotations some writers wanted to saddle the character with (old, racist, privileged, etc.; roll the clip). John Stewart is played well by Aaron Pierre and is given the reverse problem from Chandler: we are told he’s going to be great at the job, but his actions tend to say otherwise. It’s an odd framing for a story ostensibly about a superhero who comes with lots of baggage and expectations. Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner at least feels like he’s playing in the same sandbox his source material requires.

Umm, the politics they're forcing onto the material here wouldn't suit Batman and the Question either, and it's sad Battaglia wants to downplay the whole problem. No matter how good the performances seemingly are, the far-left leanings ruin everything.

This problem of missing expectations and weighing down heroes with such bleak, morally dubious problems and decisions is something of a hallmark of Tom King. Since his rise to prominence in the comics scene, he has been handed the reins to many a superhero property. King is a good writer; his stories are generally well received (except, of course, from his extremely vocal critics who think he single-handedly waged the war in Iraq); it’s just that his stories tend to be ill-suited to the expectations of the superhero genre.

Well isn't this an insult to the intellect. Who gives King's stories a good reception? Only the most loyalist of the critics and leftist audiences. This doesn't make a clear distinction between superhero fare and the indie comics King's written, and if his superhero stories are that bad, why should we think his independent comics are any better? Also, what makes Mr. Battaglia think we actually believe King fought singlehandedly in Iraq? Of course I don't think that's the case, and Battaglia sounds like he's trying to put down King's detractors despite how poor his writing is. Battaglia's downplay continues:

The issue with King’s writing and themes in the TV world is that his styling is finally running up against budget limitations. When paired with artists like Greg Smallwood on “Human Target,” Doc Shaner and Mitch Gerards on “Strange Adventures,” and Mitch Gerards again on “Mister Miracle” (these three being the closest analog tonally to “Lanterns”), the dour writing is buoyed by colorful, exciting visuals, even when the staging can become mundane (see the relatively low dynamics in “Mister Miracle” compared to the Jack Kirby high dynamism source material). Those visuals are entirely absent from “Lanterns”, the suits are drab, the power use is limited, this isn’t the big space opera stuff that is expected from the character.

King tends to mine the hero for guilt and regret, rather than heroics. His take on Adam Strange is a compromised man who ended up in over his head, making sacrifices that he couldn’t handle; His Mister Miracle is suffering from crippling depression and anxiety; Christopher Chance in “Human Target” is dealing with a terminal poisoning and trying to solve his own pending murder (spoilers: his murderer shares a good deal with Hal Jordan’s in “Lanterns”). His DC series “Heroes in Crisis” places all of the superheroes in therapy, and one of them is unable to handle all the pain that they are holding onto, thus creating a murder mystery.

He also leans on female leads who dominate their male counterparts. Mister Miracle and Big Barda at least veer into showing a supportive marriage, whereas Adam Strange’s marriage with Alanna is fraught with lies, similar to Chance’s relationship with Ice, which plays on the classic femme fatale trope.

Sorry, but from the art samples I've seen from King's books, it's uninspired, and telling us it's dour is actually putting it lightly. And if King's take on Human Target has anything similar to what occurs in Lanterns, that's just one more reason to stay far away from his comics. As for ladies dominating their male counterparts, let's be clear. It's not like Barda was ever written literally bossing around Scott Free. If memory serves, she was based partly on Jack Kirby's wife Rosalind, and a way for Kirby to express his love and respect for her.

None of these decisions are bad in and of themselves, and they’re all well done for the choices being made; they just tend to undermine the superhero genre to the point of crumbling. He dealt with many of these themes in his breakout book “Sheriff of Babylon,” which, I think, is a fantastic read dealing with the Iraq War. All the themes King keeps mining in superhero properties were present there, and they fit well. It’s a powerful book that remains relevant. The key difference is that “Sheriff of Babylon” deals with regular people; his other work deals with superhumans and the decision to reduce them to normal, flawed people, pushed to the breaking point and morally compromised to the point where they are indistinguishable from evil. Which may very well be his point – and it’s a point that Alan Moore makes in “Watchmen.” However, with “Watchmen,” Moore is using analogs of other heroes, while King is using the actual characters themselves and all their accumulated baggage. His stories would play so much better unchained from these legacy characters and all their weight.

Sugarcoating even creator-owned comics by folks with left-wing bents is no improvement. There's only so many creator-owned comics that unfortunately are built on divisive politics, and while it may be better if the themes King keeps relying upon were employed in indie fare instead, that still doesn't mean they're palatable even in independents. At least a vital point is made as to what's been common for years now - tinkering and tampering with established characters in ways that does not suit the personas they're usually known for, and certainly doesn't make them look admirable as they were created to be. But to say the heavy-handed trauma themes are "well done" still risks being too easy on the scriptwriters, and that's what's enabled them to all but get away with some of the worst things they've done all these years. We could do without that kind of lenience.

It's a shame the Daily Wire's taking an article from somebody who follows a predictable but still very sad playbook of "diplomacy". If Mr. Battaglia can't deliver a tour de force critique, he also obscures all the worst errors made over the past 20-30 years. That kind of soft approach can't continue.

An online specialty store offering rare and irreverent comics

The Denver Post (archive link) spoke with the owner of an online store called Wig Shop, that offers rare items, and is even working on an adaptation of a fantasy novel originally published in the early 20th century:

Through Wig Shop, Alford, 42, has created a hub for fans of irreverent comics, abstract art, rare books and other printed curiosities. Many Colorado customers — myself included — have met him in person tabling at zine fests and book fairs up and down the Front Range.

No two items among the 1,300 he has sold — he’s assigned a catalog number to each one — are the same. They are made by artists around the country and abroad, who Alford finds through visual platforms such as Instagram and often use online print-on-demand services to publish their work, he said.

“Stylistically, I lean a little more towards silly, fancy, fantasy kind of stuff than horror or violent or sex stuff,” he said. “Sometimes it’ll dip between the two.”

The artists Alford reaches out to are usually receptive when he asks to sell their books in limited quantities, he said. But he has also published his own pressings under the Wig Shop name.

He recently collaborated with a Denver-area artist for the first time for his illustrated pressing of “The Gods of Pegāna,” a fantasy novella by Lord Dunsany first published in 1905.

“[H.P.] Lovecraft’s monsters all kind of came out of this story, and nobody really knows this book,” he said. [...]

“I love this idea of pushing the comics fan toward more refined stuff, and pushing the refined fan more toward the lowbrow stuff,” Alford said of his desire to make the art book.

While encouraging fandom to read something "refined" may be a good idea, I think that's taking a risk if he's implying adventure fare is "lowbrow". But I'll give him credit, if anything, for favoring fancy fantasy more than violence-prone fare. And if he can produce comics, whether original or based on classic literature, that offers more positive themes, that's very good. We need much more optimist fare in an era where darkness and violence have sadly become an all-too familiar staple cliche.

IDW hires Grant Morrison to write James Bond adaptations

The Hollywood Reporter (via Total Film/Yahoo) says IDW, already having established a bad name for themselves as pushers of woke garbage, have hired one of most leftist ideologues to write new James Bond adaptations:

IDW Publishing has acquired the license to thrill and has set Morrison, Grant Morrison, to shake, not stir, things up.

Partnering with Ian Fleming Publications, IDW has picked up the license to create all-new comic book adventures featuring the iconic British spy James Bond.

The two companies have tapped writer Grant Morrison, the influential and award-winning scribe known for All-Star Superman and his multi-year Batman run as well medium-pushing comics such as Animal Man and Doom Patrol.

“Pairing a renowned franchise like James Bond with the visionary writer Grant Morrison is a perfect example of IDW doing what it does best with licensed properties,” said IDW CEO Davidi Jonas in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Our goal isn’t to simply provide supplemental and optional stories. We strive to take radical swings which celebrate and stay true to the very qualities that make the franchise special while also reinventing it for the modern comic book landscape.”

[...] “Our opening 6-part adventure, Sunbreaker, attempts to create a definitive Bond story featuring everything fans love about the character and his world, while adding a whole lot more,” Morrison said. “Expect to see James Bond in a few unfamiliar situations, facing unfamiliar foes, in a world very like our own as reflected in a deadly funhouse mirror – a world of intrigue, violence, double cross and deception. A world through which James Bond glides like a killer shark among minnows. Charismatic, ruthless, unstoppable.”

Notice how Morrison's own statement says nothing about sex or romance, but does mention violence. That can be telling something, as can the description of 007 as a "killer shark", and "unstoppable", suggesting this'll come off more like a Mary Sue fanfiction.

This also reminds me that 5 years ago, artist Aaron Lopresti was ordered by Dynamite to censor an illustration of a woman in lingerie, all for the sake of a woke era. What if IDW and Morrison go even further? It also reminds me that, when Morrison was writing "New" X-Men, at the time, he and his artist, Frank Quitely, drew Emma Frost in the skimpy white outfit she was most known for years prior. It wouldn't be surprising if Morrison for one would do it very differently today if he buys into woke ideology full force now.

In any case, I'll stick with the first 16 Bond movies instead, since they were a lot more entertaining than what came later, and if violence is all the modern licensees think is worth marketing, that's exactly the problem. And what's IDW doing right as of now, if they too still follow wokeness?

Stephen Wacker supposedly has a plan to repair Marvel

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

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

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

Wacker also addressed variant covers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wacker emphatically stated, “That is backwards.”

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

Marvel Comics should be the creative engine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now he’s running the place.

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

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

Another felon arrested for trying to sell a stolen comic

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

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

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

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

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

Portland, Oregon's role in comicdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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