What John Byrne has to say about his new X-Men: Elsewhen story

Before I begin, while I've made clear in the past that the Phoenix Saga is not one of my favorite storylines - not on its own anyway - I am aware that terrible SJW Heather Antos actually attacked Byrne over bizarre accusations that he's supposedly homophobic/transphobic, even though he was the creator of Alpha Flight's Northstar, and it was originally his intention to emphasize that Jean-Paul Beubier was homosexual. From what I can tell, Antos must've attacked Byrne more out of bizarre jealousy along with virtue-signaling, and she does seem to have embarrassed herself with her employers over that.

But with all that said, does that mean I have to like the Phoenix Saga, or even the premise of Byrne's new alternate continuity story? Of course not, and seriously, what he's written up today is, IMO, distasteful, based in part on my being a fan of Jean Grey, and would I be taking this position if I weren't a fan? Anyway, Byrne was interviewed by the NY Times (archive link), and here's what's brought up in discussion:

Now 76, Byrne has re-emerged with what he’s calling his swan song: “X-Men: Elsewhen,” an alternate reality hardcover which revisits the X-Men at the point where he left, without his former collaborators but with a big plot twist: Phoenix was not killed.

Viewed within the specific context, if Jean was rescued from the Shiar and brought back to Earth as though nothing happened, after she allegedly wiped out billions, is that in good taste? Hardly. That told, what comes up next in the main interview is eyebrow raising:

For readers who may not be well-versed in the long history of the X-Men, can you briefly talk about the controversy around the Phoenix character?

There had never been a case where a superhero created by Stan and Jack had been turned into a villain. And we did that. We had her go out and blow up a whole planet and destroy an entire alien race. [Then editor in chief] Jim Shooter knew this was coming, but for some reason he said, “She must be punished” — that Phoenix had to be taken to a “prison asteroid,” and horribly tortured for all eternity. I said, “I’d rather kill her.” So that’s what we ended up doing.

What?!? Shooter thought Jean should be tortured?!? As though it weren't bad enough he wouldn't lift a finger in defense of her dignity as a character based on how she was being forced into the role of a criminal/murderess, he thought it okay to put her in a position where she'd end up being tortured to the end of time? Well, I knew there were sadly some very serious downsides to Shooter's MO, and Secret Wars was surely just the icing on the cake. What I did know years ago was that one of the story proposals was to have Jean put in a position similar to an actual Phoenix, where she'd revive but then be destroyed again repeatedly. I'm not sure if that's what Byrne's alluding to, but let's be clear: I just didn't find the whole premise appealing, and when the lead up to where Jean would be obliterated told that she'd wiped out 2 billion residents of an alien solar system...that made me sick. What's more, this whole storyline itself kept getting dredged up again and again, with Chris Claremont writing something vaguely similar when he got a job writing Justice League in the 2000s. What's so special about a story where a decent woman's turned into a monstress, but not one where she spends time with a loving family or something like that? And then, look what bizarre, questionable comment Byrne makes next:

But later, after you stopped working on X-Men books, Jean was brought back. So is anything ever really at stake in mainstream comics?

When Mark Gruenwald, my friend and editor, died unexpectedly, I mentioned it on my website and the first response was, “Oh, that’s terrible. I hope he recovers.” I thought: Oh my God, we’ve trained fans to expect that no death is actually permanent, even in the real world!

But this wasn't the real world they were dealing with! This was science-fiction/fantasy! And the later 1988-98 Excalibur was one of the most surreal series of all in Marvel's output. Resurrection is part and parcel of science-fantasy whether Byrne likes it or not, and he acts like it's some kind of calamity if handled otherwise? I'm sorry, but no. Resurrection in science-fantasy is not the worst thing that could happen, and to restrict it even in the Marvel/DC universes, or single them out as though they alone aren't allowed to employ the concept is insulting to the intellect, and offensive. Why, if you know where to look, there's undoubtably stories about resurrection of fictional characters in science-fiction/fantasy that are very enjoyable, in otherwise good taste, and we're being lectured that it's somehow a crime? Good grief. And then, look who he says he enjoyed writing most:

Which of the characters is the most fun to write?

Cyclops was always my favorite X-Man, from when I first started reading the book. Wolverine, of course. I often say Wolverine is my fault because [when I came on] Chris told me that he intended to write him out of the book. I was Canadian at that time and said, “No way are you getting rid of the only Canadian!”

But Jean wasn't fun at all? Perhaps not even Storm, Kitty Pryde, Scarlet Witch, Lois Lane and Lana Lang when he later wrote and drew Superman, or even Wonder Girl and Big Barda? Byrne unfortunately had a questionable approach to women at the time, and that he had 3 or 4 of the leading ladies drawn with short hair in his stories was probably the beginning. I recall a Superman story where an alien from Apocalips named Sleez mind-controlled Barda and Superman, and put them in a bizarre fanfiction situation where a snuff filmmaker would record them in something like a porno flick. I once read that Jack Kirby disliked that story because he considered it an insult to his wife, whom Barda was meant as a tribute to (and IIRC, there was a scene where Superman implied she looked like glop?!?). Superman may not have fared much better in that tale, and it was decidedly a low point in Byrne's run. And again, it doesn't always seem like he had much affection for some of the women in his stories, not even Aurora in Alpha Flight. Honestly, in hindsight, some of that stuff comes across as quite ludicrous, and has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Is Byrne correct though, that Claremont wanted to jettison Wolvie? I don't know, but some history items tell that Claremont wanted to put Wolvie in the grave and revive him as a villain. You could reasonably ask there if Claremont really loved Logan as a character, and of course, whether he actually loved Jean too, considering where he took her in the late 70s as the X-Men writer.

When people talk about giants of the era you came up in, you and Frank Miller are often on similar footing. Thoughts about his treatment of Wolverine?

This will get me in trouble, but I didn’t care much for Frank’s Wolverine. In terms of creating a hugely popular character, he did the right thing. My gut reaction was: beautiful artwork, but I don’t know this guy.

Well, based on Miller's appalling leftism, that's why I don't think I know him either, and he sure didn't give much reason to have faith in his ability to stand by his stories.

There’s a page in Elsewhen where you depict Wolverine brutally attacking Magneto. The backgrounds are bright red, his eyes are bright red, he’s in a murderous rage. Is this a new kind of ferocity for this character?

Well, it was always what we had in mind. There’s a scene, that I would never, in a million years, do. It’s Wolverine sitting at the breakfast table and Kitty Pryde [the youngest of the X-Men] comes in and says, “Hey,” in just the wrong tone of voice. And he guts her without a second thought and then goes on eating his Cheerios. Because he is quite literally a homicidal maniac.

Seriously, that's what he believes Logan should be?!? Strange. From what I'd read years ago, he wanted Wolvie to have a more likable persona, and this certainly is enough to wonder if Byrne's taking a contradictory position. He also makes it sound like he's taking the fictional-characters-are-real-life-people approach, which again, is utterly grating, illogical and brought down comicdom practically years ago.

And then, wouldn't you know it, an allusion to Byrne's leftism turns up:

It almost feels like we’re living in a comic book world today.

It feels like evil has won. I look at Washington and go, oh my God, this is the [guy] who I modeled my Lex Luthor in part on, back when he was just a big noise in business in New York.

Sigh. So he considers Trump a baddie and nothing else. A real shame. As though there weren't any better examples of bad billionaires out there at the time. On which note, as this Popverse article tells, if Byrne's take on Luthor was based on Trump, it was only partially, since there were other examples of billionaires at the time he'd drawn ideas from, including Ted Turner and Thomas Edison. But now, despite a suggestion to the contrary, Byrne sounds like he wants to claim Trump's literally the problem, and not the others. How odd. As a result, he's not all that different from Miller, so what's his point? At the end of the interview:

What do you consider your legacy?

When I look at my work, all I can see is the influences. There’s Neal Adams, there’s Joe Kubert, there’s Bernie Wrightson, there’s Jack Kirby, there’s Gil Kane. When people tell me they’re huge John Byrne fans, I go, “What are they seeing?”

I would like to think that when people see my work, it’s believable. If it’s two guys sitting at a bar, or if it’s two planets crashing into each other, I like to think that people will believe what they’re looking at. Just verisimilitude. There’s the word.

While there are several examples in his portfolio that're great, including his overall run on Fantastic Four, Byrne later stumbled by the turn of the century (his Spider-Man: Chapter One miniseries didn't get a good reception, IIRC), and I can't say he'll ever have as big a legacy as Kirby, Kane and Wrightson. Interesting that somebody who alluded to Kirby would've risked alienating him with a take on the aforementioned Barda from New Gods that was questionable at best, and ludicrous at worst. And Byrne's inability to avoid leftist political allusions will certainly for now make it difficult to decide how well his legacy can be admired overall.

Now again on the subject of Antos' recent attack on Byrne, what's really appalling is that she may have boosted sales for a story that I don't think should be considered a big deal, and alternate reality or not, it strikes me as tasteless. Interesting that she didn't attack Byrne because she cares about Jean, but rather, because she perceives his politics as incompatible with hers. That's got to be saying something. I don't like her MO, but even so, I'm not going to buy what Byrne's promoting as possibly his last writing and art project, because the whole premise was in questionable taste to start with, and became such an irritating cliche over the following decades. Even Colossus, if memory serves, was turned crooked in the early 90s, but he was never burdened with the kind of indignity Jean was when she was originally written obliterating citizens of an alien solar system, incurring the wrath of the Shiar. So why must Jean have suffered something that could make it difficult to use her as a character in later years? I know the setup was retconned with an alien lifeform disguising itself as Jean in 1985, but even so, that doesn't mean Claremont, Shooter, Byrne and company couldn't have created a new character in the mid-70s to take the role of the Phoenix instead of Jean being shoved into it. Now, we've since wound up with an embarrassing situation where the premise was repeatedly dredged up by bankrupt creators who can only think of emphasizing the darkness in the worst ways possible, and it's hurt comicdom very badly.

Marvel partners with USA Today for a Spider-Man project

Another of Marvel's pointless attempts to gain more publicity includes the following project at USA Today:

USA TODAY and Marvel Comics have partnered to provide USA TODAY’s PLAY digital entertainment hub with access to the most popular comic-book characters in the Marvel universe. PLAY will be the exclusive home for the new vertically formatted “Spider-Man TODAY” Infinity Comic series, which runs for 48 weeks beginning June 16 – with new issues dropping every Wednesday. Readers also will be able to dig into 1,000 curated archival Marvel comics ranging from old-school classics to modern favorites.

“USA TODAY is the largest news publisher in the country, and so that's always exciting,” says Marvel’s Spider-Man editor Nick Lowe. “And then you pair them with the greatest comic-book company in the world, Marvel Comics. I mean, that's chocolate and peanut butter, right? It's the best.”

Lowe sees “Spider-Man TODAY” as “the new incarnation of the Spider-Man funnies” by Spidey cocreator Stan Lee and artist John Romita Sr. that ran in newspapers starting back in the 1970s. “This is us trying to take up that baton and run the next part of the race.”

The new series features a “dream team” of artists Al Ewing (“Venom”) and Todd Nauck (“Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man”) bringing to life a story that “will span the entire Marvel universe and is good for fans of all ages,” Lowe says. [...]

Gee, when a left-wing ideologue like Ewing is involved, what's there to look forward to here? Even Lowe's not encouraging. That aside, why do they think a comic strip that wasn't as well written as the mainstay pamphlets is something to emulate? I seem to recall that, in the last few years before it ended, there was a very atrocious story where both Wolverine and Sabretooth turned up, with the latter incomprehensibly searching for the former, and was even willing to threaten Mary Jane Watson if that's what it took to get Spider-Man to reveal Logan's location (which he didn't know). Then Wolverine turned up and both he and Sabretooth knocked themselves out, and soon vanished again. That storyline, coming as it did near the official end of the original newspaper strip 7 years ago, was so insulting to the intellect, mainly because it didn't depict Spidey unleashing a gale of justified anguish at Sabretooth for threatening his wife. Why should this be just Wolvie's battle? That it was made to look almost absurdly comedic only worsened the tale. I couldn't bring myself to continue reading the newspaper strip after that, and besides, if the comics were already tainted by Joe Quesada, it only figures the newspaper strip was too.

So what's the use of turning out another comic strip that could be similar to ran during 1977-2019? Coupled with such awful writers and editors, that's why this is not something to care about, and could be worse than what the newspaper strip wound up being like. They also hint they've prepared comics, digital or otherwise, that're "modern", and that's another red flag they could be foisting some of the worst of the modern era on the readerships, stuff that could've come after Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's marriage was forcibly annulled. Also, I've never been very impressed with USA Today's overall news coverage, which is little different from J. Jonah Jameson's MO. One more reason it'd be better not to waste time and money on what they now have in store for Spidey. Marvel's done little more than make a business deal with a real life variation on the Daily Bugle.

A convention built on GI Joe in Augusta, Georgia

Fox54-WFXG gives a report about a comics convention in Augusta, Georgia built primarily on GI Joe fandom:

One of the biggest comic book conventions in the country came to Augusta this past weekend.

Joefest came back to Augusta for the ninth consecutive year. The convention is one of the biggest G.I. Joe conventions in the world and included a number of collector’s items, celebrity voice actors and comic book artists.

“This is my second year here, and we're having a blast with it,” vendor Jeff Mercado said. “I’m a big G.I. Joe fan anyway, so it made it easy to come. I have my own collection, so finding rare pieces that I want for my own collection, selling off some of my older stuff that I had from when I was a child, and then, I started getting into a lot of the other things. I try to just hit all the markets, you know, what everybody's into collecting, so I have a wide variety of stuff that we like to sell.”

Having a convention built on the Joes is great. But the trouble is, this is the kind of convention where collectibles are sold at huge prices:

The event included over 200 vendors serving over 15,000 people over three days. Vendor Jeff Mercado says that the collector’s items at the convention are worth thousands of dollars.

“I mean, we've got stuff here that's five bucks, 10 bucks, all the way up to a couple $1000 for a piece,” Mercado said. “I got some airplanes that go for 2,000 bucks. We got some tanks in here that range in the 100s, 200s. We cover a broad spectrum. There's all different kinds of collectors, so we try to have everything for every price point.”

Oh good grief. This sounds like another convention focused on selling to speculators, and that could even include those who buy toys for archiving in the vault. Indeed, what's the use of having old toys around if they're not going to be donated to museums anny more than old pamphlets are?

I think it's wonderful to establish a convention built around GI Joe as much as various other entertainment franchises. But that doesn't mean the speculator market should be mixed in with it, based on how high some of this stuff can sell, yet it's entirely possible it won't be played with or read, and end up locked in vaults till sold again at auctions. Indeed, toys can wind up being sold on auctions as much as Superman's most expensive back issues. And that makes the whole purpose of the toy industry look like a joke too.

An op-ed about the Andrew Farago scandal, and a bit more research

Lavender Hotels has an op-ed about the invasion-of-privacy scandal caused by ousted SF Cartoon Art Museum curator Andrew Farago, and makes some important points about what's happened, though unsurprisingly, they won't allude to any of his online antics, and there are some leftist biases here too:

The downfall of Andrew Farago happened inside a space meant to be entirely safe. For over two decades, Farago was the public face and institutional backbone of San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum, a beloved cultural fixture celebrating comic strip history, graphic novels, and animation. He was a respected historian, an author, and an award-winning pillar of the tight-knit independent comic community.

"Beloved" and "respected"? If these writers would pay more attention to what Farago was writing on his social media pages, which was pretty cavalier, such descriptions could be considered disputable. A vital query to be made is: does being rude and calling everybody you disagree with "nazis" make you a better person? No, it does not. Unfortunately, Farago seemed to think otherwise.

For decades, the alternative comic and animation industries have marketed themselves as progressive, inclusive safe havens for outsiders. This case exposes the structural vulnerability inherent in organizations built entirely around tight social bonds and informal networking.

When an institution relies on a single individual to act as its gatekeeper, historical curator, and community liaison, professional boundaries inevitably blur. Farago began his tenure at the museum as a volunteer in 2000, rising to a paid role in 2001, and taking the mantle of official curator by 2005. Over 21 years, he curated more than 100 exhibitions. He was embedded in the personal lives of the artists he championed.

This level of integration creates a dangerous shield. Power in small cultural non-profits rarely looks like a corporate hierarchy; instead, it manifests as social capital. When an influential figure hosts a party, the attendees are not just friends—they are peers, subordinates, creators, and families whose professional fortunes are intertwined with the host’s goodwill.

As the former curator of the museum, I assume he was in charge of selecting the projects for exhibition. Something tells me that, if a right-winger wanted to develop an exhibition there under his management, Farago would've vehemently refused and shunned the conservative figure on the spot. For all we know, he probably didn't even include Chuck Dixon among the interviewees for his Batman history, and recalling Ethan van Sciver was blacklisted from DC as a result of Farago's machinations, it wouldn't be shocking if the latter had no role in Farago's book writings either. Also, what's this about "social capital"? Is the columnist implying capitalism is to blame here? If so, that's distasteful and making it sound like "progressive" and "inclusive" are inherently positive notions also obscures more serious issues to consider here.

The defense strategy in digital voyeurism cases frequently relies on the destruction of immediate evidence. Farago’s defense will likely lean heavily on his prompt deletion of the recordings and his self-issued written apology, attempting to frame the event as an isolated, impulsive lapse in judgment rather than a systemic pattern.

Digital forensics tells a much harsher story. Deleting a file from a commercial smartphone filesystem rarely removes the underlying data blocks immediately. Modern law enforcement extraction tools can routinely recover deleted media caches, unallocated space fragments, and temporary database thumbnails. The seizure of twelve separate electronic devices indicates that investigators are looking far beyond a single afternoon's recording.

The true legal exposure for Farago rests on what those remaining eleven devices contain. If forensic analysts uncover evidence of historical recording, distribution, or the involvement of minors across older datasets, the current requested 20 misdemeanor or low-level felony counts of invasion of privacy could escalate into severe structural charges carrying mandatory prison sentences.

The Cartoon Art Museum faces its own reckoning. The institution must now audit decades of internal operations, off-site workshops, and youth education programs managed under Farago’s direct supervision. The immediate termination was a necessary public relations maneuver, but it does not absolve the broader cultural ecosystem from ignoring the risks of concentrated, unchecked social authority.

Trust inside small arts organizations cannot be managed by a handshake agreement or shared progressive ideals. It requires strict operational protocols, background evaluations, and independent oversight structures that treat cultural icons with the exact same skepticism as any corporate executive.

No doubt, the museum will suffer from a drop in attendance as a result of this scandal, and of course, Farago's history books are bound to lose audience too. But hey, as mentioned before, they probably aren't the most dedicated, let alone accurate, since he may have forcibly omitted anybody he despised from his narratives. The article's right though, that educational programs the museum may have run will have to be investigated to figure out whether Farago abused any of its students over the years. For all we know, there could turn out to be more witnesses than previously thought. And what if Farago has more than one single online cloud storage where he kept disturbing materials? The market for online storages is very competitive, and it's always possible to register multiple accounts on different servers. The police will need to investigate that too, and it wouldn't be surprising if plenty had their own tools for data recovery to help police with investigations when needed.

In addition to the above op-ed, if there's more to say about the now disgraced Farago, well first, I discovered that, if there's any social media pages he didn't get rid of so far, it's his Threads page (although that could change soon enough), and if there's something I noticed here worth commenting on, it's the following:

Geez...was Farago giving a hint what he really thinks of invasions of privacy/sexual abuse, and even Identity Crisis from 2004? I get the strange feeling he simultaneously doesn't like Terry Long, and from what I know of him so far, it doesn't sound like he ever spoke out against DC's worst directions since the turn of the century. If not, that too speaks volumes about his MO. And then, there's this:

When I noticed this post about GI Joe, I couldn't help wonder if he was imitating video filmer Richard Meyer, since I recall the latter once did a video about a GI Joe annual (yearbook) nearly a decade ago, and what Farago says sounds oddly similar to what Meyer said. Was this Farago's way of expressing spite for somebody he doesn't agree with, and likely never met? All that aside, seriously, I doubt Mr. Farago is a GI Joe fan.

I also thought to try and do some research on past writings of his, and found that in 2008, the Los Angeles Times quoted him on the late artist Michael Turner:

“He was definitely one of the most popular and influential comic-book artists working right now,” said Andrew Farago, curator of San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum. “He was very, very much in demand as a cover artist on high-profile projects.”

If Farago's a woke male feminist these days with a sex-negative viewpoint, then depending how you view this, he had a pretty different position back at the time. What are the chances he'd come within even miles of saying anything positive about Turner today? Perhaps next to none. He's surely the kind of leftist who simply "goes with the flow" and accepts what they consider acceptable positions, and in Farago's case, it was quite possibly because he thought it would make a great shield from scrutiny.

Here's also an older interview he gave to the Comics Reporter and the late Tom Spurgeon in 2011, where he tells that:

I'm very fortunate in that I often find myself in situations where I can't believe that I'm getting paid for this. Joining the National Cartoonists Society and meeting about 90 percent of the strip cartoonists I grew up reading in a social context has been incredibly cool. It changes your perspective when you flip through the comics section and realize that you've got good drinking stories about half the artists on the page. I've had dinner with Gahan Wilson, walked around Rockefeller Center with Larry Hama (which would have made 12-year-old me's head explode), toured the offices of Mad Magazine, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, shingled a roof with Jeff Keane, given museum tours to Art Spiegelman and Mo Willems, had tea with Hayao Miyazaki, and went to a Simpsons script read-through in Los Angeles earlier this month thanks to Tom Gammill, whom I met through the NCS. I've honestly given up on ever making a wish list of comic/cartoon things I'd like to do, because I've gotten to do so many amazing things as a result of this job. If I'm hanging out in a pub with Alan Moore and Scooby-Doo next year, I don't think I'll be all that surprised.

On the downside, when you're working for a non-profit that you really believe in, it's easy to find yourself working 50 or more hours a week, tackling extra projects on weekends, and never quite being off-duty. And there's a lot of paperwork, fundraising and grant writing, which balances out the more exciting aspects of the job. My family are the only non-cartoonists in my address book, so I feel like I'm on the clock even when I'm hanging out with friends.

I wonder what any and all of these figures he speaks of think, now that the mask is off, and Farago turned out to be so repulsive? Some of the professionals he spent time with are leftists, of course, so what they think is quite possibly the most interesting part of all. Presumably, if they've heard the news about Farago's crimes, they're shutting the door on him now. But did they ever notice anything fishy about him years ago? And if so, why'd they want anything to do with him then? That aside, a terrible shame he was paid for anything. IIRC, Hama was blacklisted by Dan DiDio years ago, and Farago did nothing to help him. And why does a leftist like Spiegelman matter so much?

I then found a post on Peter Laird's blog from 2014, of the history book Farago wrote about Ninja Turtles (Ultimate Visual History), and Laird hints he's dissatisfied, if anything, with how it's put together, in a way that's very sloppy:

However, I was disappointed that it also contains a number of mistakes, inaccuracies, and some weirdly inconsistent editorial decisions with regard to art credits (sometimes there are, sometimes there aren't, with no discernible rhyme or reason). I used up about half a package of Post-It notes while carefully going through the book so I could put together this list of comments.

Here goes…

End pages in the front of the book: I was sort of baffled by the odd choice of art for this, out of all of the TMNT artwork available -- a drawing of a Turtle in boxer shorts? With this image begins a strangely inconsistent treatment of crediting and/or describing the illustrations -- in this case, no artist is cited as having drawn that image, either on these pages, or -- as would be more likely in a book like this -- on one of the pages to follow. It kind of looks like a Mike Dooney drawing, though I cannot say for certain.

First glossy page, right hand side: This reproduction of the very first group shot of the TMNT, penciled by Kevin Eastman and inked by me back in 1983, with a slab of mottled green superimposed for some reason, is not credited anywhere that I could find. It's also an odd place to put this uncredited drawing, in my opinion, when a far better location would be on page 20, where it is described in the section about the creation of the TMNT.

Following page, left hand side: This full-color piece by Kevin is also uncredited, as least as far as I could tell.

Second page following, left hand side: Another full-color piece, this one of a leaping Leonardo, again by Kevin, is uncredited.

Two page spread following the "Contents" page: This unusual full-color piece by me is also uncredited, and no information about it is given at all, which to my mind is extremely weird, given the curious nature of it, with the Turtles wearing costumes that are very different from the norm. [...]

Page 28: Four of my black and white TMNT pin-up sketches are printed on this page with no artist's credit or description.

Page 31: There are no artist's credits listed for the insert. This, as I recall, was penciled by Kevin and inked and toned by me.

Page 33: The image of April on the right hand side of the page is described as "April O' Neil as she appeared in Eastman and Laird's original comics." I don't understand why there is no mention of which issue and what page this panel is from.

Page 34: There is no information describing what the insert card in the lower left hand corner is.

Page 35: This image is described as "The Turtles preparing to engage in combat with the deadly Triceratons." Why not say which issue it was from? (I think it was TMNT Volume One, #6.) [...]

Page 40: In the second paragraph on this page, it is said that "… Eastman and Laird knew that the time was right to take the Turtles to the next level." The obvious implication here is that we were actively looking around for ways to grow the TMNT business in the direction of licensing and merchandising, and that's simply not true. It's not that we were averse to it -- we'd already proved that by striking deals with Dark Horse and Palladium Books and a few others -- but these are things that came to us, not deals that we went out looking for. We were focused on trying to get the TMNT comics out on time and with a decent level of quality.

Also, Kevin is quoted as saying that we'd been approached by other licensing agents wanting to rep the TMNT before Mark Freedman showed up. I have no memory of any agents other than Mark Freedman ever approaching us.

On the bottom right of the page is a reproduction of a large TMNT group shot that I penciled and inked; again, no artist credit.

One of the commentors also said:

One thing I was extremely disappointed with the book is the coverage on the 2003 cartoon, since it is my personal favorite incarnation of these characters. Or seemingly lack thereof...A very limited amount of text for 7 seasons of my personal favorite (if added, maybe a 1 1/2 pages at most)...and even the pictures/art used were disappointing. One pic of Mikey from the very last season for 1 whole page? And then one pic of Shredder from the very last season for 1 whole page? No pics of the 4 of them in action, or the 4 of them together, or even villains like Agent Bishop, or artwork/pictures to show people the darker tone/aspects of the cartoon & how it pushed the show as far as it could go for a cartoon, which I very much appreciated (whether it be samples from episodes like Same As It Never Was or Bad Day, or the hallucination/nightmare of Leonardo stabbing through Splinter, Baxter Stockman's body falling apart, etc.), no comments from any of the voice actors of the show...the 2003 cartoon portion of the book I was honestly very disheartened about. But hey, what can I say. I'm just a guy named Matt from Iowa who just loves the 4kids show to death, lol. It's very partial to me and it's what got me back into the characters.

Well, this is telling something. It sounds like this history book isn't the well-researched, accurate overview the establishment would have us believe it was. And now that Farago was arrested, it'll all be seen as moot and badly aged. If there's not enough history books about TMNT on the market to date, let's hope somebody with a better moral backbone will take the time to do the research, and not rely upon anything Farago may have written in his now worthless book in order to try and develop an improved history of how the Ninja Turtles came to be. If anyone's considering buying the Farago book, please, look for another one, or try to develop a research book of your own. Farago doesn't need our money, and besides, what if he uses any dough he gets to pay his legal bills? Let's not finance that.

And then, let's not forget the horrid political side of Farago, which Fandom Pulse reminds everyone about:

Alongside that professional record, Farago maintained an active social media presence that was consistently and combatively left-wing in its orientation toward comics industry controversies. He was a vocal opponent of the Comicsgate movement, describing its participants as bigots and comparing them to racist fictional villains. In February 2024, Bleeding Fool documented a series of his posts, including one stating: “Never forget that everyone in ComicsGate took personal offense when Superman took a stand against the Klan,” and another drawing a comparison between Comicsgate creators and the X-Men villain Graydon Creed, writing: “Watching the X-Men cartoon again. Graydon Creed, the shrill, screaming bigot seemed so over the top and ridiculous back then, but today he’d be running the Mutants of TikTok social media account and would be cranking out a dozen YouTube videos a day about the Woke menace.”

Farago took to The Daily Beast where he was quoted by the media at length in his attacks on ComicsGate: “[Comicsgate] is made up of people who were into the Gamergate thing and when that ran out of steam they noticed that they hadn’t made comics miserable for enough people yet.”

Look who was talking - somebody who doubtless turned a deaf ear and blind eye when DC and Marvel under Dan DiDio and Joe Quesada turned the comics miserable and worse, and because Mr. Farago didn't want to alienate them, he likely said nothing in history books, and didn't take any objective view of the issues involved. Utterly shameful indeed.

Also, the Comics Journal themselves posted some news about this, which is likely an indication he's no longer employed by them as a contributing writer. Again, whatever he wrote for them now stands as meaningless, and from what I've read from his resume, I don't think he could write his way out of the proverbial wet paper bag.

Anyway, these are the clues I could find from his resume so far that he's not the genius he'd surely want everyone else to think he is. Some could argue Farago's favoratism for Batman could hint at what's wrong with how folks like him approach the whole medium, and I'm sure some will continue to look for whether his leftist MO turns up in any of his writings. And whether Farago serves a prison sentence for his lawbreaking, it's possible he'll find himself a very lonely man, with reason, and his fortunes will hopefully be diminished by the legal bills he's surely paying now.

Biased interview with Supergirl screenwriter

Variety interviewed Ana Nogueira, the screenwriter of what now looks like a total botch job for a new take on Supergirl in movies. It may have been written prior to the official release of the film, but does have what to ponder, and shake heads at in disbelief and sadness. First:

Nogueira, an actor and playwright-turned-screenwriter, was originally tapped to pen a “Supergirl” script when Warner Bros. was developing the movie as a spinoff of “The Flash.” But when James Gunn and Peter Safran were named co-CEOs of DC Studios in 2022, they decided to take the DCU in a different direction — and brought Nogueira along for the ride. In fact, they were so enamored with her take on the Supergirl story — both in its original iteration and her revised pitch, based on Tom King’s “Woman of Tomorrow,” which follows Kara and a young alien girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) on a quest for vengeance — that Nogueira will also pen DC’s upcoming live-action “Teen Titans” movie, as well as a “Wonder Woman” film.

Notice how this sham of a trade journal's perpetuating the use of a masculine term, "actor", instead of "actress"? Well that's another problem with this day and age of Orwellian vocabulary, and it's very insulting to the intellect as much as it is to women. That aside, what was so awesome about a tale originally penned by a writer as awful as King, they just had to adapt that? And if the screenplay for Supergirl is that bad, I hesitate to think what a TT and WW movie will be like under her scripting. Now, here's what they say about the addition of Lobo to the story:

Lobo, the cigar-smoking alien bounty hunter played by Jason Momoa, was originally in the “Woman of Tomorrow” comic, but got cut from the story. Take me through the decision to add him back for the movie?

So that was brought to me. [Gunn and Safran] were like, “We want to do ‘Woman of Tomorrow,’ and we want you to find a way to put Lobo in. We think Lobo has a place in this.” I think their thinking was we know Jason Momoa is interested in this, and how can you turn that down? He’s so excellent in it, and you have to find a place when somebody is willing to go there. But at the same time, it also makes sense, because it’s intergalactic. It’s hard to bring Lobo to Earth — he’s always taken place in outer space — so they’re like, “This is an opportunity to bring in this character that would be hard to bring in.”

I knew Tom King had based the comic on “True Grit,” but originally, Lobo was the bounty hunter and Kara was the girl. Then he was like, “That doesn’t quite work.” He flipped it, and he brought in Ruthye. But when I was trying to bring in Lobo, I was like, “There is a third character in ‘True Grit’: Matt Damon’s character,” so if we follow that structure, there’s still room for this guy who is like a frenemy to the two of them. And Lobo is the ultimate frenemy.

From the panning reviews I've read so far, it looks like Lobo's only in the film to look "cool", and little else. Also, there were times in the comics of the past 4 decades where Lobo traveled to Earth, so I don't understand what's the point of this tommyrot. Besides, if they want to take creative liberties to depict Lobo journeying to Earth, they could've if they'd wanted to. That said, what's appalling in the comics is how Lobo was characterized post-Crisis, as some kind of leftover from the Soviet Union who led to the deaths of his fellow citizens on his home planet. This is why it would've been far better to leave him characterized as the Velorpian adversary he began as in the 3rd issue of Omega Men in 1983, pre-Crisis. Because how does his post-Crisis characterization truly count as a "hero"?

The film is about two young women learning to save themselves — and each other. But they also save all these other girls who’ve been kidnapped by the Brigands. How did that come to be?

So, that is not in the comic. I put it in for very boring writer reasons: in the comic, there’s this central planet where there’s been this horrific act in the past — essentially a genocide, an ethnic cleansing — and you find out that Krem was in some way involved. What’s really important about this is them coming and seeing loss that is not perfectly reflective of theirs, but just that deep pain that these girls have been through. And we also had to see that Krem is just like a total POS; that this guy is somebody that we are going to want to see meet a certain end. But I needed it to be something that was happening in the present and not the past, because in the comic, you can jump around to the past, but you can’t do that here. I needed something to feel really immediate, like there was saving to be done now.

I also wanted it to be something that specifically put our girls in jeopardy, so that they would be a target. Because otherwise, I don’t know why the Brigands would come after them. So, it’s those silly, boring writerly things that then end up leading to a larger plot. And it just tracked for me that the Brigands are an all-male race: What do they need?

Better scripting to portray them as convincing villains, and how interesting she admits, in a way, that the end result is boring. That aside, what are the chances the premise she wrote involving the "central planet" is another negative allusion to Israel and the USA, just like in the previous Superman film?

Also, if history items matter, prior to the official opening, Inverse wrote about how the Girl of Steel came to be in the Silver Age, and it also says:

It’s ironic that, despite the impetus of his origin story being his existence as the “Sole Survivor of Krypton,” Superman hasn’t been that in quite some time. Over the years DC Comics has slowly increased the number of Kryptonians who survived the destruction of their planet: General Zod was one of the first, debuting in Adventure Comics #283 in 1961, and since then they’ve added the entire city of Kandor (a population of thousands that accidentally avoided the destruction of Krypton when they were shrunken down and put in a glass enclosure by Braniac), H’el (a Kryptonian clone created by Superman’s father), and even Jor-El himself, transported through time by the machinations of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan (a creative decision that surely sent psychic shockwaves down Alan Moore’s spine).

Interesting there's no objective description given of what was also a recent take in the past decade on characters from the Watchmen, one that was quite pointless.

In her earliest stories, Supergirl resides at Midvale Orphanage under the secret identity of Linda Lee, only using her powers to aid Kal-El sparingly because he didn’t want her revealed to the world until she’d mastered them. Eventually she’s adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, makes her debut as Supergirl to the world in 1962’s Action Comics #285, and graduates from high school as Linda Lee Danvers; after her college years, Linda relocated to San Francisco and took up a variety of different jobs in her off-time from superheroics, including serving as a TV news camera operator, student counseling, and even acting. The 1970s was arguably the biggest period for defining Kara as a character – along with her relocation, she also received her first major villain: Nasthalthia “Nasty” Luthor, the stubbornly loyal niece of Lex Luthor who made it her mission to discover the secret identity of her hated enemy, Supergirl.

Kara’s popularity made her a mainstay in Superman lore, earning her two solo comics as well as appearances in other Superman books, but 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths brought her character to a shocking and tragic end. Years earlier, in an attempt to reconcile the canon inconsistencies that naturally arose from decades of different writers, Kara Zor-El and the Superman of the 50s through the 80s were retroactively labeled heroes of the reality Earth-One, while the original Golden Age Superman of the 1930s and his cousin (more on her later) hailed from Earth-Two – Crisis on Infinite Earths was an attempt made by DC editorial to totally erase the Multiverse, having felt the concept ultimately created more problems than it fixed. The reality-destroying villain of Crisis, a being known as the Anti-Monitor, posed so great a threat that heroes were recruited from multiple alternate Earths to stop him; in the battle, Kara Zor-El was fatally wounded while trying to save her Superman, and when the story concluded with the establishment of a new, singular DC Comics timeline, Kara’s existence and sacrifice were erased for decades.

You can reasonably wonder why they didn't draw ideas from the Silver/Bronze Age history for Kara instead of a shoddy miniseries by an overrated writer who spends too much time writing up contrived takes on trauma. Interesting they admit it was tragic that editorial had to mandate Kara's demise in COIE, and took such a casual approach to the whole notion any character who's supposedly a burden should go nowhere but into the grave. But seriously, it's disputable the Multiverse literally made things confusing when it's 2 or more dimensions involved, and even Marvel's had their share of parallel worlds. The article also brings up Earth-2 counterpart Power Girl's history:

After CoIE, Power Girl was folded into DC’s new Prime Earth, with a fresh backstory that presented her as the long-lived descendant of an Atlantean sorcerer. Naturally, this was a disappointment to fans, so when 2005’s Infinite Crisis (a direct sequel to the original) resurrected the concept of the Multiverse, Power Girl’s origin was again retconned to reveal that she had actually always been the Supergirl of Earth-Two, and had somehow survived the destruction of her original reality; this has remained her consistent backstory to this day, a tragic recontextualization that makes her a refugee of both Krypton and Earth-Two. Adopting the name Power Girl to differentiate herself from Superman (and stand on her own with the appearance of yet another Supergirl), Kara Zor-L’s presence in pop culture has largely been relegated to countless jokes about the overtly sensual nature of her costume, but on the page she’s an incredibly intelligent and authoritative character in her own right, with years of experience as a superhero that make her a stark, mature contrast to the frequent depiction of other Supergirls as impulsive teenagers.

And here, I'm not sure fandom was ever "disappointed" with the retcon for PG, so much as with how Infinite Crisis was such a repellent tale begun with a prelude story that forcibly killed Blue Beetle Ted Kord. IIRC, Arion, Lord of Atlantis, the character created by Paul Kupperberg and Jan Duursema in 1982, was the father figure in the retcon, and funny the writer didn't take the time to make that clear. The post-Crisis retcon to PG was tame compared to what came about when Identity Crisis did in 2004. As for PG being intelligent, isn't that thanks to the best writers? Another example of how they don't have what it takes to credit whomever they thought did the best jobs in characterization when given a writing assignment. Who knows, the Inverse writers probably wouldn't even credit themselves if they got the job!

It wasn’t until 2004 that the grandmother of Supergirls finally returned, receiving a rebooted origin in the pages of Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman series. Her initial post-Crisis origin involved Kara (chronologically older than Kal) being sent away from Krypton at the same time as her cousin, with space shenanigans delaying her arrival for decades and causing her to meet her younger cousin in adulthood while she has the appearance of a 16 year-old girl; later comics revised this by once again having her home of Argo City survive Krypton’s original destruction, only for her parents to send her to Earth before Argo City is forcibly integrated into the Bottle City of Kandor by Braniac. Her first appearance on Earth sees Kara train with Wonder Woman and the Amazons before she’s kidnapped by Darkseid who plans on making her one of his Female Furies — after being saved by the combined might of the Trinity, the new Supergirl goes on an odyssey of self-discovery around the world, encountering Power Girl, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League before she’s transported to the 31st Century where she temporarily joins the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Since her post-Crisis debut in the early 2000s, Supergirl has gone through a few more reboots and reimaginings, but most of them use her 2004 origin as a launchpad to integrate her into whatever new confusing company-wide reboot DC Comics is going through at the time. Across 70 years and multiple different characters holding the mantle, Kara Zor-El has remained one of the most popular characters in the Superman mythos, growing far beyond her initial conception as a “female Superman” to become a character with a vast library of stories in her own right, including her brief time as a Red Lantern as well as the recent Woman of Tomorrow arc the movie is based on.

Gee, doesn't this prove how unsuccessful DiDio's supposed caring about the character was in the long run? The company wide crossovers, which they didn't bother to clearly mention, were another problem that sunk the return of Kara Zor-El, not to mention the disgraced Eddie Berganza. Some could reasonably say the heavy-handed allusions to sexuality in the 2005-11 series could reflect how corrupt Berganza was, and he definitely helped bring comicdom down the horrid levels it's at now. And here we also have an example of no objective view taken on what stories were written up in the past 2 decades, not even the Red Lantern tale that spun out of the awful Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern. At least they admit what came since was confusing, though they don't mention it was just plain uninspired as a result of DiDio's forced darkening of the DCU.

Now onto a few more reviews of this sad catastrophe. Here's what a Forbes writer says about the film, and this one is absurd in its own bias regarding the source material:

I have not read the Tom King source material that inspired this story, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but I know it’s considered quite good and brilliantly drawn and inked. Supergirl is neither of those things. A dull blend of Guardians and an attempt to be Mad Max, but shot with increasingly ugly special effects that have been plaguing many blockbusters and layered on top of a script doing the original source material, and its actors, no favors.

Oh god, is this such a groaner. I've seen some of the art from the original GN, and it's some of the most dreadful, uninspired to come down the pike in the past decade, making Kara look very unappealing and sexless. Let's also not forget how King makes too much of a habit in his writing of relying on trauma themes, and coupled with that, it's exactly why the story makes for a most awful wellspring. Something tells me that, even if the reviewer did read the GN, he'd still be "diplomatic", which is pretty odd for somebody working as a professional reviewer to begin with. And yet, something also tells me that, if the screenplay were based on the writings of 20th century scribes like Otto Binder and his successors at the time, the reviewer would've been far less kind, as though relying upon a more optimistic vision in itself was a crime. And if so, that's very appalling, because it would compound the perception modern reviewers have a grudge against optimism.

There's also another review worth pondering, on 411 Mania, reminding everybody of one of the most decidedly rotten details about the previous Superman movie that's followed up on in Supergirl:

Unfortunately, Supergirl continues an ill-advised plot thread, first introduced in Superman, involving Superman’s parents. The last movie shockingly revealed that Superman’s parents sent him to Earth to conquer it and subjugate the human race.

The revelation is certainly a unique narrative choice, differing from past, more traditional interpretations of Jor-El. However, Superman failed to meaningfully flesh out that detail. Supergirl continues that plot thread to some extent, but it still doesn’t work. Basically, the new DC Universe opened a huge can of worms and has no idea how to deal with it.

It reminds me that 2 decades ago, when Dan DiDio, Eddie Berganza and Jeph Loeb launched the post-2004 take on Kara Zor-El in a new solo book, there was a storyline in issue 16 co-written by Mark Sable where it looked like Kara's father was doing terrible wrongs, which, if the following synopsis at Grand Comics Database is correct, was disgusting, because it claims Kara was forced to kill her mother and her father sent her to kill Superman?!? Well that was abominable, and so too was the premise for Jor-El in Gunn's Superman film. As a result, that's why, if Kara kills Krem in the new Supergirl followup, it not only reeks of moral hypocrisy, it perpetuates some of the most embarrassingly bad storylines to emerge when DiDio was still holding DC hostage to his whims. Also, note the continued use of "revealed", instead of "established", and that illogic is very grating.

Anyway, John Nolte at Breitbart's announced that this new take on the Maid of Might has become a global fiasco:

Supergirl didn’t just flop at the box office this weekend; it is a flop of epic proportions, an abysmal failure that will be remembered only as a failure.

With a disastrous $38 million domestic opening and an even more humiliating overseas take of $30 million, Supergirl is a bigger domestic flop than The Marvels ($46 million), The Flash ($55 million), Black Adam ($67 million), and Morbius ($39 million).

Supergirl’s global opening gross is just $68 million, which means it’s worse than notorious flops such as The Marvels (110 million), Morbius ($84 million), Birds of Prey ($81 million), and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ($80 million).

Get this: Supergirl’s global is not much better than Madam Web ($50 million) and Blue Beetle ($43 million).

The production and promotion budget for Supergirl is right around $250 million. That makes the break-even number at $450 to $500 million. Supergirl will be lucky to hit $200 million worldwide. Warner Bros. is looking at massive losses. [...]

Well, it certainly didn’t help as the hype machine kicked in that Supergirl star Milly Alcock — who has all the charisma of a sidewalk and the body of a 14-year-old boy — started opening her mouth about how she’s a victim of sexism and Supergirl is queer.

From what I've read of the movie to date, it doesn't sound like there's any love interest or romance in it, quite a contrast to how Kara hoped to find love with a boyfriend in the Silver Age stories. And that's another of the biggest problems with modern movies - PC mandates shun any chance of romance.

In the end, of course it's very sad the result is a movie that adds insult to injury 42 years after the failed Supergirl film of 1984 starring Helen Slater. Now, for all we know, it could take decades until they try again, and for all we know, even then it'll probably wind up being a case of "3 strikes and you're out". Sometimes, ever since the failed adaptation of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski in 1991, I've wondered if filmmakers and studios are deliberately making these lady-starring action epics bad in order to taint the source material. The new Supergirl movie could sadly be another hint at that.

Classic cars painted to resemble comic book sketches

Top Gear wrote about an exhibit of cars made to look like comics illustrations:

An artist called Joshua Vides is presenting his latest art highlighting automotive culture at LA’s Petersen Automotive Museum in a new exhibition entitled ‘Flat Out: The Art of Joshua Vides”. Tin, what it says, pretty much, on, etc.

Only this isn’t what it says on the tin, because Vides’ art isn't really going flat out. Instead, it's been made to look like a giant, real-life comic book sketch, and you’ll spend a considerable portion of your day just gawping trying to figure out how he’s done it.

According to the Petersen, Vides “painstakingly hand-paints crisp black lines onto all-white surfaces to create monochromatic graphic artwork that resembles flat comic book sketches”. So, that’ll do it.

Wow, that's pretty fancy alright. Congratulations to the guy for his marvelous nod to comicdom with this vehicular form of artwork.

The style of Barry Windsor-Smith

Cartoonist Jim Rugg wrote a review on Literary Hub of artist Barry Windsor-Smith's work on Wolverine's Weapon X story from the 1988-95 Marvel Comics Presents anthology:

Barry Windsor-Smith was one of the most popular creators at Marvel Comics. Part of his popularity was due to his style. His comics did not look like or read like other comic books. It is important to clarify that Windsor-Smith’s style was not defined exclusively by his artwork. Windsor-Smith approached storytelling very differently than the standard Marvel house style approach.

The average age of comic book readers in the 1960s was seven. The storytelling style of Marvel as well as many other comic book publishers was “show and tell.” Captions often described the drawing in the panel. This redundancy made sense for young, inexperienced readers. But by 1991, readers were older and hopefully better readers.

The 1980s saw the rise of creators who felt that comics were an art form and were not inherently limited to young readers. These creators challenged misconceptions about comics being for kids with complex, sophisticated works like Maus, Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Love and Rockets. The growth of storytelling in the art form meant that creators like Barry Windsor-Smith could use different techniques to engage and challenge their readers.

One of the more obvious storytelling choices in Weapon X is the lack of narrative captions. Without literal explanations, readers must pay close attention to Smith’s artwork in each panel to follow Weapon X’s story. This one choice dramatically changes the reading experience. It places much more value on the artwork. One cannot understand the story only by reading the words. The art in each panel provides critical information. In order to understand what is happening, the reader must interpret the images and the character’s dialogue. This was a radical departure from most Marvel comics of 1991. This kind of reading requires time, attention, and thought in order to process what we see and how it fits with other panels. It also creates an experience where the reader’s knowledge is similar to Logan’s—limited. We do not always know what is happening. We often piece together the story from a subjective, fragmented vantage point. At times, this effect makes Logan’s character more relatable.

Well that was then, and this is now, and while sophisticated writing/art may have been common at the time, it most unfortunately has turned into a lost art as of today, if we take Brian Bendis' writing as an example. And while Rugg may be right about how Windsor-Smith approached the writing/art in Weapon X, I'm going to have to disagree with Dark Knight Returns, if only because Frank Miller sowed the seeds that brought down the Masked Manhunter in the mainstream DCU proper over time though DKR.

And if Rugg believes what came about in the early 90s makes good art, what does he think of modern "art"? Seriously, I think anybody who can't apply an objective view to modern storytelling as much as older stuff is not providing enough to challenge the readers either. Rugg's review of Windsor-Smith's Wolverine tale from MCP is impressive, but it still doesn't substitute for explaining why modern mainstream comics aren't delivering. In fact, there's a valid argument to make that if narrative captions were thrown away by later writers, that's honestly not good, because they do still have use even in modern times, though what's really bad is when thought balloons suffer the same fate. Without those, how can you know what's on the superhero's mind? If Superman and Spider-Man were written without thought balloons, they'd be getting nowhere in past decades as a storytelling vehicle. That's why, while I don't doubt Windsor-Smith's talent in the past, narrative captions and thought balloons still shouldn't be thrown away as storytelling tools.