Archive Page 2244
July 2025
A selection of 4th of July comics strips from 2025 and 1925
Story at Daily Cartoonist
Fantastic Four and Superman shirts and outfits at Hot Topic, a Virginia Mall
Early leak of James Gunn Superman film review gets pulled offline fast, but what it said wasn't pretty – Beebom
Something along the lines of "the final nail in the coffin of superhero movies."
Apparently film critics given early viewing privileges to see the Gunn film also had to agree to hold off publishing their review until a certain time just before the film premieres July 11.... the Daily Beast article broke that "embargo" and was removed from public view quickly.
Obviously, its just one person's opinion about the film and, as anyone who pays the slightest attention to this field knows, opinions can vary wildly. Something at the theatre that gets shellacked by a major-league movie critic can turn out to be a happy, entertaining and pleasing film that the mass audience finds worthwhile. Of course the other possibility is that the film isn't good and the critic knows it and the audiences are about to find this opinion confirmed.
If Superman tanks and Fantastic Four (coming on July 22) succeeds, well, then July isn't Armageddon for superhero movies. But if both films fail, the whole genre, as far as a place where movie studios will pump in hundreds of million of dollars for producing one, is going to be (presumably) on the thinnest of lifelines since Marvel/Disney is already committed to their two-picture deal with the Russo Brothers to bring back The Avengers (Avengers: Doomsday Dec 18, 2026 and Avengers: Secret Wars Dec 17, 2027) and the casting (so far) for these films seems to indicate they want to push in a lot of cameo appearances from the more lucrative years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a way to trigger audiences to remember a different era when the films didn't disappoint.
DC is in the same terrible position, since the first The Joker film (2019) made a billion dollars, only one other DC film (out of ten!) has turned a profit, and that's the Pattinson The Batman movie with $770,345,583 worldwide earnings.
Both DC and Marvel have been racking up a long list of financial failures and that can't possibly last much longer, can it? Are there Hollywood investors willing to keep throwing this kind of big money into a genre that is consistently flopping with large audiences?
Are superheroes, as a cultural phenomenon, simply shrinking back to the smaller (and less lucrative) place of importance they had for so many decades before Hollywood turned them into IP goldmine cash cows?
Dynamite, caught in the teeth of Diamond Distributors implosion and bankruptcy, running a 49-title Disney sale to raise funds – Humble Bundle – This story at BleedingCool says that Dynamite has been trying to get the courts to push the new owners of Diamond to speed up payments on the $1 million+ owed them, but its not happening soon enough to help. Dynamite announcing at can't meet payroll costs for their company thus is getting into a very tight place.
R.I.P. Jim Shooter – The Comics Journal
This short TCJ page pledges a thorough obit coming, but in the meantime there's a lot of old TCJ article links on Shooter plus the [scroll down] comments section has links to Shooter stuff, too.
Microsoft announce a "massive wave of layoffs, including their Xbox and gaming division" – Bounding into Comics
Ironheart TV Show Reviews
"Ironheart is a Surprisingly Dark, Mostly-Enjoyable Show..." – MSN WDW
Ironheart is an "unwitting victim of Marvel fatigue" – MSN USA Today
Fans say it's "one of the best Marvel TV shows" and demand a season 2 – Geek Tyrant
"Clumsy pilot and a frustrating finale" – MSN Hollywood Reporter
"Disappointing disaster" – Movieweb
Even a casual look at reviews across the internet shows the now usual MCU chasm between reviews that look like they're bought and paid for ("Ironheart is great!") to knee-jerk reactions against MCU ("Ironheart is the worst ever!")
The new PSA grading schedules, costs and changes to schedule announced – Yahoo Sports
Related: Comic Book Money
One Piece Manga and Major League Baseball getting together – comicbook
The One Piece/Los Angeles Dodgers collaboration has yet to take place, set to hit the field later tonight, but this isn’t stopping the Straw Hat Pirates from making big gains for Major League Baseball. In a new press release, the collaboration between the two unexpected partners has already brought in some big ticket sales and you might be surprised to learn just how big said sales are..."
The comic book movies that don't have superheroes – KPBS
Talking about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Josie and the Pussycats, Ghost World, Edge of Tomorrow, and Adventures of Tintin.
Dynamite Entertainment in tight spot due to huge debt owed them from Diamond – Bleedingcool
Remembering Jim Shooter – Comicsbeat
The controversial Jim Shooter – Plain Dealer Cleveland
"He really polarized people, but it was because he had a passion for what he was doing," Bill Sienkiewicz, who drew Moon Knight and New Mutants during the 1980s, told Forbes. "He went to bat for freelancers in a way you don’t see many people in editorial roles do today."
Jim Shooter has died – Forbes
Shooter took over Marvel Comics in the late 1970s when the comics industry was transitioning from mass market newsstand distribution to direct market sales to comic shops. He quickly grasped the opportunity of selling to long-time fans rather than casual consumers, leaning into Marvel’s dense story universe and encouraging creators to move the medium in more challenging directions.
Thanks to the breakout success of the X-Men by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, the signature title of Shooter’s reign, Marvel began a rise that saw the company bring in exciting young creators like Frank Miller, Walter Simonson and Bill Sienkiewicz, experiment with new formats like original graphic novels and trade book collections, spike sales with annual “events” and mini-series, and attract a new generation to a medium that many thought would not survive beyond the 1970s. At one point during Shooter’s tenure, Marvel sales were estimated at over 80% of the entire US comic book market.
Angry reaction in Turkey against magazine that published a Mohammed cartoon
Story at Skai [in Greek - use Google translate to read in English]
The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies are coming back to theaters and Spiderman 2 will be an "extended" version – MSN Variety
New rewrite of the DC Comics Universe – CBR MSN
...you would have these interesting things where, if you go back and read a run of a comic book, you'd see the same story done, just with different flourishes by the different writers. That's what is so fascinating about The New History of the DC Universe, in that it is really just The History of the DC Universe by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, just, you know, done again, with FORTY MORE YEARS of DC history..."
Famous Jock Joker cover for Detective Comics #880 sells for $288K – Comicsbeat
The artist himself gets nothing from the sale.
October books from Marvel – Comicbookmovie
What in the world is going on with Marvel?
August 1962 Amazing Fantasy #15 sells at auction for $12,250 – Jacksonville Courier
"Beloved comic book store shutting down" Keiths Komix – Daily Herald
Distribution wars of the comic book companies
Universal Distribution bought Diamond at the Chapter 11 bankruptcy auction, got the Alliance Gaming infrastructure, and will now compete with Lunar Distributing to provides an equal discount on DC Comics – Bleedingcool
Publishers teamup for Indie comics creators distribution – Publishers Weekly
Power Pulp, a new comics distribution collective with members based across the U.S., is billing itself as an innovative, author-led organization aiming to lower the barrier to entry to the comics market for indie creators..."
Power Pulp Comics Distribution – "We may look like a publisher, but we’re something else entirely—a collective force built to uplift original voices and bring boundary-pushing work to a wider audience."
John Malkovitch is in out of the Fantastic Four Movie – comicbookmovie
Get into the Public Domain archives that are online at Graphic Chatter
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Original page July 21, 2025