The Unholy Dragon

I read a clarification that makes sense which is that it'll be its own universe, but unlike the original Ultimate Universe, it's going to be factored into the current multiverse from the jump and there may be some play between them early on rather than that being an endgame thing. Seems likely Absolute Power will dovetail into the launch somehow.

You're not really missing much with TV since the way the ad breaks are cut makes it super difficult for match narratives to not be butchered. A lot of the time you do just as well with TikTok highlight clips, honestly. It's one thing I'm really hoping the Netflix era fixes, but there's absolutely ways to structure the TV product as is which they just aren't doing anymore.

I think the idea of an Ultimate DC is a good one but especially at a time where they're doing a ton of self contained Black Label stuff, I don't really see the appeal unless they're going wide with it. THAT SAID Bleeding Cool also says this is going to be in the main canon? And more about doing greater amounts of creative freedom within the mainline universe? Which uh. I'm not exactly sure how to square that, but I'm interested in seeing what it looks like. At this point it's a case of not putting the cart before the horse and waiting to see what the announcement looks like, I guess.

Please let him fuck up the Public Domain elements and become the litmus test case for it. Please it would be so funny.

Can't ask for much more than 85, but another real pioneer of the industry gone. RIP

Akebono passed away. Heart failure, following 7 years of dealing with it on a chronic level. Real bummer. He was only 54. Real great fixture of 2000s Puro especially.

Honestly this really showed that Thatcher is one of the best in the world. Dude worked an absolute belter at Bloodsport, drove from Philly to NJ, minimum 90 minutes, shows up with welts from the former match still visible, and absolutely knocks it out with another incredible match in which he looked as if he was totally fresh. Just unreal stuff.

Can't imagine there's gonna be a better wrestling show this year. Not just for the peaks, though there were plenty of extremely impressive ones, but also for the sheer variety and range. Nearly every match was totally different from the ones around it and there was a real variety of wrestling styles and genres represented. Last couple matches just absolutely tore it down as well. Fantastic stuff. A real fitting tribute. Loved it.

It's less that I think WBD will be more litigious than the Mouse and more that I think the DC characters that hit PD first have more of their recognizable elements locked at first which will make them more open to it. But someone is gonna do circle shield Cap too early and it'll be a whole thing, yeah.

Bloodsport ruled. They probably should have stopped after Shayna/Masha because that really felt like the main event in every way, but you know. Nic Nemeth doing a Greco Roman bit was so fun and a good contrast to Speedball. Baby Regal looked great. Thatcher and Axel had a heater while the Astronauts and MiSu had a lot of fun with a casual night. Just a real fun, breezy show.

Where it gets weird is that it's going to be the first case where characters have really been continually published with new works on a large scale by the copyright holder through the entire duration of their existence in the way they have. And unlike Mickey Mouse, who's fairly loose in terms of characterization, there are a LOT of very specific derivative traits that won't be clear until much, much later. Also there will be cases where stuff unlocks in different countries at different times but the US is usually, but not always, last so it tends to be the one seen as the all clear. But also, trademark law still applies. You might see something like we already get with Thor where "Superman" becomes "DC's Superman" legally but all the same tenets apply, where every use will need to have a ready argument for how a use is both excluding any protected elements to the character (not using anything added by DC from 1939-present, add a year each year) and also not infringing upon any of their trademarks (which is to say, using the character in a way designed to have him be mistaken for DC's version). It's going to be VERY sticky and I think there's going to be a lot of really ugly lawsuit smackdowns in the first few years as people realize the gap between how they think it works and how it actually works. What will probably be the first real preview is the Shadow's earliest stuff going PD next year. Especially given that the initial year of Shadow radio stuff has VERY few of the bigger elements that people would consider recognizable and Conde Nast are exceptionally aggressive with the IP.

Dang, I really thought he did. I must have conflated the bits about his nieces and nephews. Well then, I rescind some of the stuff around that bit. I stand by saying that trying to get revenge on the people you feel wronged you on the way out because you can't deal with the consequences of your own behaviours still deeply sucks. And of course, the reactionaries are already using it as fuel to do an anti-bullying crusade focused on bullying the people named in the note. It's just a mess.

It's gonna be real fascinating to see how those early public domain years go for the bigger superheroes with Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel, the JSA, and Captain America all coming up together in a three year window...but only the earliest versions. So they're going to have to be real specific in terms of which elements they use and how. Like DC would have to be REAL careful about bringing Cap to the present since the frozen in ice thing would be locked for another 20 years, for example. Going to be a real wild first few years while people play chicken over which derivative elements they can get away with and which they can't.

I'm real fortunate in that the Greater Toronto Area has a really robust comic shop selection, with double digits in Toronto proper and nearly every surrounding city/town having at least one local store. But I know a lot of of the local shop owners/managers and standard attrition remains the ongoing concern with things always driving slowly downwards until something spikes interest again.

I hate a lot about this situation. I hate that a lot of people are using Piskor's suicide to argue that the women he tried to groom should have just stayed silent and that the idea that calling people out on their bad behaviour will make you somehow responsible for their deaths will keep more victims of bad behaviour silent. It's also just so selfish. A ton of creators have misconduct allegations and are still doing just fine creating stuff and/or coasting on royalties. Warren Ellis abused over 100 women and femme nonbinary folks and people are still glazing his work and the impact it had on them. I'm not saying this as a good thing. It sucks that there's real limited consequences for being a piece of shit in the business. But as long as your stuff still sells, there's nothing stopping you from working in comics unless you catch Gerard Jones style charges. Dude didn't have charges coming his way. He could have kept making comics and likely his perennial stuff would have kept making him money. But he couldn't stand the idea that the image of him as a cool artist was tainted or that he might have to do work that isn't just the kind of comics stuff he liked, so he's leaving his kids worse off because he was more concerned with his public image as an artist than he was about the well being of his children. He left a note that's basically just a sad bit for revenge, trying to deny all responsibility or wrongdoing with real paper thin excuses while trying to get some kind of revenge on the people who actually held him accountable. It was a petty, vindictive, selfish piece of work on his way out. I have all the sympathy for his friends and family who are having to deal with all of this, but nothing but contempt for the dude himself.

People are making a big deal of it, but it's largely pretty moot given it's not just characters, but traits don't unlock until the equivalent anniversary year. So for the first few years of Superman in Public Domain, for example, no one can write him flying. And it'll be decades still before anyone else can use Braniac or whatever. While the general concept of the characters will be able to start turning up, it'll take a while before they start really feeling like the contemporary versions. That said, I'm genuinely jazzed by the idea of Captain America being retconned into the JSA in about ten years.

It's pretty good, but unfortunately part of a Crisis wave that's a McFarlane Store exclusive in some (most? all?) markets so the price to get one is $40 USD plus shipping which is...steep.

In general I feel like the soap opera aspect of superhero comics has been the biggest loss of the post-Authority era of storytelling. Every book used to have a wide cast of characters who you cared about and who had their own arcs and stuff going on in bigger and smaller ways. It meant they could do a lot of smaller standalones where the superhero stuff took a bit of a backseat to the character stuff but it didn't feel like filler. Now everything has to be the highest stakes stuff and most of those characters have become cardboard cutout versions of themselves. Like yeah, no wonder Jimmy Olsen is struggling to stay relevant when he's being reset every run into the "Aw Shucks" Silver Age sidekick "but now with a new Modern Twist!" Ironically, this is something the Arrowverse did way better than any comics in this era. Say what you will about the corniness or how some characters got completely thrown out to be something else, it's the only thing in the last ten years to really capture the vibe of 80s/90s superhero stuff.

Good timing. They just announced they're going to be doing an omnibus reprint series for it. Between that and the Byrne HCs, we just need "In Exile" reprinted and as long as they stick with it, solid odds we can get most of 90s Superman reprinted in some way, shape, or form. It's a real underrated era, one of my faves as a kid, and I'm glad to finally get a chance to add it to my trade shelves more thoroughly.

It's an issue with trying to do two things at once, having 'WWE' as a brand but also trying to maintain a brand split while also kinda not. It feels like all the unifications were a Vince thing and H wants to do a firmer brand split but he needs to get stuff back in place to do it that way. I'm not saying it's the right call, necessarily, but it sure seems like what's on the table. Especially with new broadcast deals for each show by January.

I agree, but I'm also positive they're going to have two teams grab a different set of titles each and use that to split the belts again. Not sure why *that's* the approach they're taking, but hey.

I still have to watch New Mutants but having just watched Dark Phoenix and now looking at this list, it's wild that Fox barely kept it over a 50% hit rate with the X-Men universe. Assuming I'm not wildly outside the consensus and think NM is great (which *has* happened with other superhero movies, especially last year) it's straight up 5 movies I think are Actually Bad plus one or two I think has good bits but I'm not wild about on the whole. Real weird franchise, in the end.

The fact that Harley is calling Joker "Pudding-chan" is making me giggle. I don't know why but the specific nickname/honorific combo is just getting me.

So what people were hoping Krakoa would be when "Get preggers" was the national motto and Scott, Jean, and Logan had a throuple room layout with the implication Scott was also hooking up with Emma on the side. I think Wells run is...fine. I get what it's going for and a lot of the critiques it gets, I don't think are super valid. That said, I hate how so many runs are being built around teasing MJ and Peter getting married again only to yank the football away, Peanuts style at the 11th hour. I've accepted that they're never going to do MJ/Peter as *that* kind of thing again and that broadly, modern Peter stories don't do much for me because the attempts to give him trials similar to when he was 16 or 21 at like 30-35 make him look like a very different kind of loser. As maddening as the drive to status quo can be for characters like Batman or Superman, for Peter it just really makes him feel like a manchild after a point. I'd much prefer him getting to become something like what Superman is now with the wife and kid and let Miles be the Spidey for young people, but editorial is determined that it can't happen so here we are. What sucks is that with this specific run and New 52 Superman both, instead of having the former "True" love interest just...move on and be a character in a different way, they create tension by pairing them with a character who seemingly exists just to make the reader mad that they're dating the former romantic lead instead of the protagonist. The determination to write it in this weird kind of cuckold by proxy way just makes it annoying and harder to actually move on from things. People were less hung up on MJ during Brand New Day when the focus was on Peter doing new things and MJ being a supporting character. Slott kept that going, but Spencer seemingly tried to get Marvel to flag by setting stuff up (similar to what Tynion and Snyder successfully did with Cass Cain, Spoiler, Tim as Robin, and to an extent, Oracle) but they didn't. That said, they saw the news articles and sales going along with the speculation and now we can't escape this, with Beyond and now the Wells run both using it as a core element. I don't think Wells is the problem on this, but that element of his run and the *bizarre* choice to kill Ms. Marvel in it are overshadowing the good and interesting stuff in there. (like the Norman stuff, the gang war, the Black Cat stuff for a bit, etc) My concern is that they'll throw a new writer on it and a lot of the same problems will just still be happening. It is what it is though. I can always read older stuff I've missed, Ultimate Spidey, or Miles/Gwen/Silk/etc. books which still hit the Spider vibe without the baggage. Gail's Tomb Raider and Red Sonja both got a lot of love at the time. It just depended where you were plugged in. Red Sonja especially was the first run in YEARS to get attention beyond its usual audience and the Swords of Sorrow event that spun out of it was one of Dynamite's bigger licensed successes. She did a really fun Domino series too which had similar energy to her Secret Six run. She also did some indie stuff like Crosswind and Leaving Megalopolis which caught some immediate press but got lost in the 2010s Image explosion or Seven Days which didn't get a ton of promo because it was part of the Catalyst Prime launch that sort of fizzled. Otherwise she's been doing small bits and pieces here and there while getting more TV gigs and apparently doing a lot more video game stuff. She's still as good as ever, and I'm excited to see her working on a bigger scale project again after a few years of experimental stuff and playing in other mediums. EDIT: I forgot Clean Room, which was one of the best Vertigo books barely anybody read and tbh is a top 5 work from Gail imo.

The creative teams for the three announced "Core" books are all different flavours of good, even if I'm concerned about Jed McKay overreaching with how many big titles he's running right now. Also the titles for the teased second wave are all interesting, so that's something. Cyclops looks like teen Cyclops again which is...curious. Wondering if that's an artistic choice or if something's going to happen. Apparently part of the bit is that they're going to be recovering from the end of the Krakoan Era, with no centralized location or team, which is part of why there's three X-Men teams...they're all grouping independently of one another. I imagine it's tough to speak to all that much without spoiling the heck out of what they're currently doing, but they've definitely got my curiousity. If nothing else, getting Gail Simone back on a monthly book is a huge win.