The Unholy Dragon

Yeah, she was on the Standard Attrition message board which was one of the coolest experiments ever and unfortunately imploded for reasons that felt obvious in retrospect. It was a forum made by Jason Aaron for the then-Vertigo creators to interact more closely with fans (I stand by that lineup being an all timer for Vertigo quality wise despite selling like hot garbage) and Willow was one of a few who really took to it (David Lapham, Darick Robertson, Brian Wood, and Ivan Brandon were all real active too). It was a super close knit group of users and all very relaxed...which proved to be its downfall as dirt sheet writers started lurking for scoops and caused drama when Darick Robertson expressed frustration about needing John McCrea to fill in on part of the end run of the Boys (he was bummed he couldn't see it through the whole way) and that got reported as him having beef with McCrea. It made all the creators super conscious of anything they said being picked up and misinterpreted that way and killed the vibe of the place, leading to it being shut down. Anyway, yeah, very online at the time and she was an absolute delight the whole way.

I see this claim a lot but it's not exactly substantiated by anything. It went 18 issues plus another 6 under different branding and he's basically the top draw for the new Secret Six series as a character. None of that implies poor sales, Tom Taylor had said the sales were good (and he'd have direct figures), and we haven't had actual sales ranking charts based on anything since DC left Diamond. Like, it's an incredibly pervasive rumour but I have yet to see any confirmations beyond "Title gone now" which you could also say about both current Robins.

That sucks so much for a whole lot of reasons, not least is that it's a bland and bad name.

Tony Isabella came out as a trans woman, now named Jenny Blake Isabella. Jenny has clarified that she will still use Tony on work done under that name and may use it professionally at some point in the future, she doesn't think of it as a deadname the way some trans folks do. Apparently DC proactively offered to amend credits on all reprints of her work, but she declined. I feel like there's a few segments of the neckbeard brigade who will have *opinions* about this but I'm happy she's being true to herself. A lot of folks hit their 70s convinced it's too late.

In the event that you didn't see the upcoming wave, I have good news for you.

Yeah, I've stopped being particularly heated about stuff. What's good will be good, what's not won't be. The classics are all there and the good stuff will still rise. That said, I think in terms of modernizing the big challenge is the shift from soap opera style stories to more condensed runs which are meant to fit together like puzzle pieces that weren't cut right. It allows for bigger and better stories that you can cut out and show off as a higher quality example of form outside the specific sort of pop art niche that the existing stuff inhabited, but it also forces the stagnation of characters as creators try to figure out how to keep breaking new ground without ever really changing anything. The biggest impact is on supporting casts. Read 90s Superman or Spider-man and you know what's up with like half the newspaper staff, some friends outside work, cousins, love interests, whatever. You could do a story where Perry gets cancer or where Superman has to choose between saving Ron Troupe and Jimmy Olsen and it'd work because you cared about those characters. In a post-Authority efficiency model, everyone is their most archetypical self and anyone outside primary supporting characters are basically there for trivia purposes which makes the worlds feel less lived in and the consequences outside direct harm to the leads or their primary supports less important. It's a shift which I have real mixed feelings on because it's produced some of my favourite comics runs ever but the general month to month keeps my attention less than 60s-90s stuff did.

It's so weird because it was kind of a solved equation. The BND era and then the Slott era had them be primarily exes who remained close friends and were doing their own things. People were starting to let it go. Then the Spencer run teased putting them back together, Beyond had them back as a couple, and then the Wells run did the weird OTP cuckold writing that New 52 Superman did briefly as well and it just made everything sour again. Writing a story where the tension is baiting the fanbase with something they want but you have no intention of doing is always going to end in bad feelings. That said, I think this is going to be one where like DC did with Wally West or tbh a bunch of New 52 erasures, they're going to eventually get pressured back into it. Not because of current fans specifically, but because for anyone growing up my age or younger (and I'm closer to 40 than 30), we don't see Peter as the young hero that the older writers and editorial do. He's someone who was married when I was growing up with MJ portrayed as his one true love in an animated series and THREE film franchises. Not just that, but the biggest divide between Miles and Peter is turning into Miles being the young Spider-Man with Peter as the older mentor one. So much of the issues with Peter and Bruce Wayne and Superman for a while had to do with older editors insisting that audiences wanted the characters to feel younger and trying to keep them in their 20s, but more and more people are looking for 30s/40s depictions and I think as more of that generation gets into writing and editorial we'll see it shift back again.

It's a real bad situation. Owing just shy of $10 million to Penguin Random House for Marvel stuff (primarily) is a great sign that the subdistribution there wasn't gonna work. The problem is that Diamond no longer has enough exclusive licenses to sustain it but a few of the publishers it's either exclusive with or the biggest distributor to work with them will really struggle without it, because unless Lunar is looking for pickups, the bigger book distributors like PRH are unlikely to want anything smaller than Boom. And while there are and always have been a couple other ways for shops to get smaller indie books, short of shops that specialize in indie comics the juice isn't worth the squeeze. It's going to make a lot of smaller press stuff end up deep underground. This is also going to have real bad industry implications. Diamond is sinking in part due to very flexible payment terms which help newer stores get footing and help keep existing stores running through down periods. PRH, Lunar, and Universal are all needing payment either immediately or within a couple days. It's much more punishing for cash flow issues. There's also stuff like Free Comic Book Day which was a Diamond initiative and has remained one even as other licensors fled. It's hard to imagine another company being down to organize, market, and loss lead on something like that for brands outside their own distribution control. Also this has HUGE implications for Europe as Diamond UK is THE distributor there and Lunar was never able to figure out shipping. There's potential for them to sell to Universal who I work with as a Canadian retailer and do generally good work (better site interface than Diamond tbh) but who also notably don't do business with online shops or any business that isn't a brick and mortar store. I'd anticipate availability of US comics to drop and prices to go up both for Europeans, but we'll have to see how that all shakes out. In the short term, I'm not sure how keen creditors already eating losses will be to keep working with an arm of the company that's just lost them millions. In any event, Image has already discontinued product to Diamond as a result of this and I expect more to follow. If Diamond is able to restructure, it's likely to look very different and hold a vastly different presence in the industry, for good and ill.

The correct answer is Scholastic via their Graphix line. Raina Telgemeier, Dog Man, and Bone outsell the whole direct market by a LOT and typically outperform the top manga (though Viz is a solid second). In 2023, Dog Man #11 sold nearly 1.2 million copies through bookstores alone, not accounting for Scholastic book fairs which all accounts say move significantly *more* than the bookstore market. Scholastic Books had 9 of the top 10 slots on Bookscan's 2023 numbers and 16 of the top 20. Overall they accounted for 39% of the bookstore graphic novel market with under 600 books in 2023. (Marvel and DC combined were under 10%) They're the top dog and it's not even close. The top Marvel comics in a given year for the past few have been the ones licensed to Graphix. In 2023 the top direct Marvel book on Bookscan was Spider-Punk at #557, while Miles Morales: Shock Wave out of Scholastic was the top overall Marvel thing at #197 in its second year on the chart. Meanwhile DC's top adult GN was Watchmen at #305 vs. the Teen Titans series by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo which was the top seller for them overall the second year in a row at #194 for the Robin volume. While superhero stuff does get muddy because you'd have to combine with the DM and since Diamond lost the monopoly we don't have reliable DM aggregate numbers anymore, we do know that the top floppy comic of 2024 was either Absolute Batman #1, Ultimate Spider-man #1, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 all pulling around 300k. All three combined did less than a new Dog Man volume in 2023. It's just that it's kids comics, for kids, aimed at kids, and marketed to kids, so it doesn't really see much discussion in the adult comics discourse space. Which is why you still get people wondering how to get kids in comics when kids comics are absolutely bombing out adult comic numbers, just in formats and focuses that have little overlap with direct market fare. I've seen a lot of people ask "Who's even buying these?" about the DC kids and young adult volumes, but they're objectively outselling the primary stuff in bookstores and are closer in line to the stuff selling six figures. I definitely wonder what the actuals are looking like and if there's going to be a threshold where the challenges of navigating the direct market and floppy format will be seen as less valuable. Admittedly though, the multiple sales successes of 2024 in the DM have probably helped a lot. Just anecdotally my shop has been doing gangbusters with the Absolute/Ultimate books, Blood Hunt was the best selling crossover for Marvel in years, Absolute Power did well for DC too, and all of this has led to mainstay books like Batman and Amazing Spider-man plus the X-Books getting boosts too...easily our best sales year for comics since...whew, maybe the New 52? Or splitting it a bit, maybe 2018 (Doomsday Clock started HOT). We're a smaller shop but I've been hearing similar vibes around. So hopefully they can keep building on that momentum at the same time as diversifying.

I'm really, really curious how this all gets handled because as a Canadian, US books get printed here, shipped there, then shipped back here. But a particular Canadian distributor is *in the city* a lot of books are printed in, so do they establish alternate routes to reduce impacts on Canadian/International prices due to the tariffs or what? Because on one hand you want to do what you can to keep foreign markets strong and that's going to be easier without that inflation going global, but then you hit an issue of "Do US consumers start buying international to bypass it?" Just a lot of real interesting questions and potential nonsense. That's 100% it. Doing day and date digital while undercutting the DM would cause a publisher to take some retaliatory hits from the DM and honestly the DM isn't big enough to support that and there's no evidence they'd make enough back off digital to make it worthwhile. It's a strategic choice to keep their primary market more stable. Though I do wonder how long that lasts because at this point neither Marvel or DC are the top US comic company anymore and I gotta wonder if they start hitting a point of seeing the Direct Market as less valuable overall.

That one's ROUGH. 52 is no age to go. This follows Bernie Mireault passing last week. Just a week of tough losses of real tremendous artists.

Since the show came out and everyone is determined to be the loudest one to yell about how much better they think it is than the comics, I've been very tired with Boys discourse because I really truly feel like it's a book whose vulgarity leads people away from recognizing how smartly written it is. But a lot of that is also down to them taking it at face value as a satire of superhero books when it's really using that as a shell game to satirize the US military industrial complex and it's relationship with pop culture as propaganda. I'm not saying it does everything right or that there isn't a better balance to be had, but it has some shockingly nuanced bits in it which are unfortunately lost in the discourse to the big gross out stuff.

Public Domain is less of an issue for many of the characters than it seems, since every year of new stuff (design, story elements) only unlocks an equal amount of years after it came out as the first appearance, so while some version of the characters may pop up, the familiar ones will still be locked down for longer than we'll be alive. I do think that DC is probably looking at how to modernize the key characters a bit so that they're distinct from the Golden Age versions that will hit PD though.

I mean I'll say this for the Absolute lineup, the starters are all fantastic writers. Also the rumour of an Al Ewing GL book has so much of my interest reserved.

I thought Phoenix was fun. Felt like a reach for something in the vein of Ewing or Morrison with a touch of Aaron's Thor in the setup. I'll be curious how Phillips builds it out. It definitely feels like a book that could be a breakout hit for her.

Johns is gone. It's Snyder and Williamson.

From the Youtube announcement video (slightly paraphrased) "If the main universe is predicated on Superman energy and the Metaverse concept first introduced in Doomsday Clock, then this universe is founded on Darkseid energy." Oh so we're still doing "Grant Morrison but stupid" as the infrastructure of the DC Universe.

The complete abandoning of Doc Green is on my shortlist of most frustrating things cut for a reboot. I like Duggan for meat and potatoes action and character stuff, but him trying to do Morrison/Hickman stuff and being played off Ewing and Gillen both doing it MUCH better in the FoHoX/RotPoX era didn't do him any favours imo.

Real curious what the Absolute line ends up looking like. The creative teams for the launch books are stellar, but I'm more interested in how they expand past the trinity (though tbh I can see Absolute WW outselling the main title in my shop). Weirdly, I'm almost more interested in what the standard DCU slate looks like under the All In branding. A LOT of new creative teams and rumoured to have more B-D list stuff again. SDCC announcements could still go wild.

Bleeding Cool says James Robinson and Tony Harris are bringing back Starman for a Black Label series, presumably a mini. Announcement to come at SDCC if DC doesn't blink due to it coming out sooner. Very interested in how this might go. The Shade maxi some years back was great, but it's always a question of whether or not the magic is still there.

Bleeding Cool says James Robinson and Tony Harris are bringing back Starman for a Black Label series, presumably a mini. Announcement to come at SDCC if DC doesn't blink due to it coming out sooner. Very interested in how this might go. The Shade maxi some years back was great, but it's always a question of whether or not the magic is still there.

I'm in the home stretch on The Raven Cycle and the Dreamers Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater and it's been a real strong case in point for why I try to distance myself from popular opinion. Raven Cycle is often meandering in a way that made my interest waver, but the great characters, interesting magical stuff, and overall style got me to the finish line. Finding out that it was the better liked series by the fandom made me a little unsure if I wanted to jump into the second one, but eventually I gave it a try and I'm glad I did because it absolutely rocks and is, for my money, significantly better than the first series. It still has the sort of wandering dream logic plot work driving it, but it keeps a tighter focus on its leads and has a forward momentum at all times that's kept me hooked end to end. On the final book right now and genuinely hyped to see how it all wraps. It's a shame she's decided not to write anything else in this universe because I'd love to see more of it.

Yeah, the early books are great. It gets real bad as it goes long, mostly because it becomes much more obvious that Sim is a misanthropic misogynist and the book just reflects that more and more. Ending is genuinely Very Funny though. Probably worth the $18. Curve that slider to give Sim less and charity more and you're golden.

I suspect this is a wider issue. If Tom Brevoort is to be believed, basically every Marvel editor and a few creators were trying to figure out how to get rid of the marriage more or less as soon as it happened. A lot of younger creators seem to love the marriage and want to restore it, but you'd need an overall editorial overhaul to get there and tbh for Marvel as a whole to want something closer to Spider-Verse Peter rather than MCU Peter. Honestly, writing a run whose late game twist depends on editorial changing their minds about a hard line edict is always a fast lane drive to failure. The sort of successes in that regard all involve either pitching an upside that editors buy into (Jason Todd/Bucky revivals) making a case that you have a good finger on the pulse of the audience and the benefits outweigh the risks (Snyder/Tomasi one-two punch of bringing back Steph/Cass in the New 52 and getting them back to Batgirl status, Tim back to Robin) or just straight up sneaking stuff past the editorial team (Meghan Fitzmartin canonizing Tim being bi and putting him in a relationship with Bernard) rather than just starting stuff and expecting they'll back down because the endgame wants it. That said, the current editorial push to seemingly do the most annoying kind of bait and switch with Peter and MJ is especially infuriating. X-Terminators rules. Blood Hunt has been a hoot, but I'm once again disappointed that Marvel pulled a Shadowland on me with regard to the villain.

Most of that was just Frank Miller. He introduced James Jr. and Jim cheating on his first wife with Essen in Year One and DKR had Essen as Jim's wife/ex-wife (can't remember which offhand). It was also because of the absence of Babs in his run that they retconned her into being his adopted daughter rather than his biological one. Because Barbara is the interesting one with the Batgirl stuff, most subsequent writers ignored James Jr.'s existence, leading to Scott Snyder thinking of an angle to explain why he just kind of disappeared and tying it to the themes of Dick as Batman. It's all a bit of a ride but it's really just two creators making specific story choices that ended up with wider repercussions, with all of it coming back to Year One in one way or another.