Last Update: March 31, 2025
Superman roller-coaster at 6-flags is shutting down – Entertainment Weekly
The return of the "real" Legion of Super Heroes – Bleedingcool
...not just the Darkseid/Absolute Omega Legion..."
Chris Evans appears in Fantastic Four: First Steps? – Superherohype
How the Chat GPT AI presented the important historical event
Backstreet Boys fist fight over Alien vs. Predator number one – People.com
He was a big comic book collector, and I went through a really bad acne phase when I was a teenager. I was 14 or 15, and he kept calling me pizza face. And he had just picked up an Alien vs. Predator number one," he recalled.
I was like, 'Call me pizza face one more time,' And I held the comic book over the sink at Kevin's apartment with a lighter. I didn't realize that the flame was at its highest, so it burst into flames. I'm like, 'Oh, s---, s---!' To make it worse, then I turn the water on. So now it's it's burnt and it's soggy, and he came up and put me in a headlock and just started punching the back of my head...."
Ebay.com 9.8 CGC Alien vs. Predator number one at about $210.00
Big fat list of comic book links from recent news – The Comics Journal
Comic book publishers in the UK form a trade association – Comicsbeat
Judging by the article on this move, there are strong reasons for the association to exist. More about the UK Comic Book Trade Association and the issues of Generative AI
Galaxy Con March 29, 2025
See photos enlarged
Yep, starting to look like weekend box office will have Jason Statham at #1 and Disney's Snow White is ... not at #1 after one week of release – Forbes
Best Selling Batman #158
Bestselling title of the week: Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb's Batman #158 – Bleedingcool
The unmolested cover to Batman #158
The perennial question of the industry for the last years: why aren't there more new comic book readers?
Answer: Maybe because young people don't know how to read
The growing ranks of the functionally illiterate– Hilarius Book Binder
Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke. By "functionally illiterate" I mean "unable to read and comprehend adult novels by people like Barbara Kingsolver, Colson Whitehead, and Richard Powers." I picked those three authors because they are all recent Pulitzer Prize winners, an objective standard of "serious adult novel." Furthermore, I’ve read them all and can testify that they are brilliant, captivating writers; we’re not talking about Finnegans Wake here. But at the same time they aren’t YA, romantasy, or Harry Potter either. I’m not saying our students just prefer genre books or graphic novels or whatever. No, our average graduate literally could not read a serious adult novel cover-to-cover and understand what they read. They just couldn’t do it. They don’t have the desire to try, the vocabulary to grasp what they read, and most certainly not the attention span to finish...."
Movie theater decline means changing the rules: let people smoke pot and stay on their phones – NY Post
In the last couple of years, I'm seeing a lot of people surreptitiously watching their phones and playing games while sitting in a dark theatre. They bought a ticket and they're not really harming anyone except there's a field of little rectangles of light all around you as you try to concentrate on the cinematic event unfolding above your head.
The suggestion to make dope-smoking in the theatre allowed will turn showings into what "midnight shows" were like in ye days of olde, clouds of smoke and stink filling the space. If theaters have a hard time getting a family in through the doors now, just wait until they implement this brainstorm.
Could the new Jason Statham action movie A Working Man knock out Snow White this weekend? – The Numbers – if it does, that's a terrible sign for SW's future which already looks grim. Disney's Snow White still has an advantage with best theatre position, though, and the big push of promotion that washed across the world leading to the premier.
Meanwhile, Captain America New World Order is now at $403,037,129 for global take. Predictions are saying the film may end its theater run with $425 million, which is simply awful for a movie that probably cost $380 million to make with production and promotion costs. Reportedly Cap4 was made at least twice with reshootings galore, and if the $380 million estimate is right, it would mean it needs $760 million to break even (since theaters keep half of ticket money).
But, there is the official tally that it only cost $180 million to make with a break even at $420 million is being circulated, but I've seen no one who looks at these things actually believing that $180 million is a true production budget for Cap4. Why? Because even with the $180 million as a true production cost, there's still the estimated $100 million spent on promotion, putting the film at $280 million with a break even at $560 million.
This matter is an area called "Hollywood accounting" and it contains mysteries.
Sonja the Red
Red Sonja film clearing USA release hurdles – Superherohype
The completed film, a Bulgarian location production, is R-rated for violence and features Matilda Lutz as the steel maiden and is directed by M. J. Bassett. The story is written by Tasha Huo and is supposedly linked more tightly to the comic book rendition of the character versus, say, the 1985 Red Sonja. On the other hand, the writer also has said some things about updating the character for 21st century audiences. The cast is pretty heavy with female cast members (Huo said the film script features "great female friendship") so whatever the story is about, it's not just Red Sonja surrounded by muscular men on a rampage.
Another try by Grok that looks better
Famed international movie director Ridley Scott publishing a 4-part graphic novel comic book titled "Modville" – MSN LA Times
"...debuts during a tough time for comics. Can it survive?"
The story is set more than 150 years into the future populated with people and artificial humans (known as mods). Created by Jesse Negron, co-written by Joe Matsumoto and with art by Hendry Prasetya and Eko Puteh, and there's covers from Bill Sienkiewicz .
The "daunting" part of this is a difficult comic book market landscape:
Of the 40 most popular graphic novels in 2024 (based on units sold), only four titles weren't published by the leading comics companies — which include Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics, IDW Publishing, Dark Horse Comics and BOOM! Studios. Those titles include "Dog Man: The Scarlet Shedder" by Graphix, "Uzumaki" and "Chainsaw Man, Vol. 1" — both by VIZ Media — and "Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze" by Titan Comics. This trend is seen with periodical comic books too, with only four franchises outside of Marvel and DC able to crack the top 50 comics of 2024. Those all happened to be well-known ’80s titles such as Image's G.I. Joe and Transformers, IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dynamite Entertainment's Thundercats...."
The article, which is pretty thorough, talks about Ridley Scott's influence on shaping the series and some art direction that he contributed. His company Scott Free in involved in the publishing.
Chris Ware profile – Financial Times
Chris Ware, artist of the unfulfilled, on how comics map the mind – as his strange, brilliant work goes on show in Barcelona, the graphic novelist explains why human life is never boring ...
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Maybe the Blade reboot is going to happen after all – Newsweek
Chad Stahelski, who directed the first John Wick film and was producer on the last one, appears to be named to direct the reboot of "Blade" starring Mahershala Ali. On the other hand, as the article points out, Stahelski is a busy guy and when will he have time to do Blade?
With Alliance the new owners, will publishers use their "opt out" clauses from their Diamond contracts? – Comicsbeat
A new Captain Planet comic book is coming after 33 years since the TV cartoon was cancelled. – Gamesradar
Disney’s Snow White now at $93,996,199 worldwide – The Numbers
More about Disney's SnowWhitopocalypse
Why Alliance bought Diamond and what that might mean to pricing – Bleedingcool
Bruce Ogilvie emphasizes profitability over being an "expensive hobby," targeting higher price points. They cited that it was pointless selling $5 CDs, they would rather distribute $20 CDs and look for a minimum profit on items as 95 cents....
"
Then the bottom fell out
"....Comics are so far in their (Disney's) rear view mirror. You notice they don't call it "Marvel Comics" anymore, it's Marvel Entertainment. And, the studio side is called Marvel Studios. We don't hear the term "Marvel Comics," they might still say it in the comics, but the fives-and-tens-of-people who actually read them, which is a smaller, and smaller... shrinking number everyday..."
This has come up a lot in the last years in my talking to other comic book aficionados: not reading the books we buy, just slabbing them away into boxes. I've also heard the complaint "I don't understand the story." So many tools of the medium, whether its a little bit of narration or some thought balloons, just doesn't get used. It's as if the medium is becoming more primitive, though more highly embellished, at the same time.
This was happening when I had a shop, I talked about this before, comic books are IP holders and baseball cards now. That's all they are. They get slabbed, and they don't get fucking read. That is the death of your industry, because comic books, for decades, for damn near a hundred years, were story-driven, story driven, character-driven, pieces of art. It was a serialized story you got to enjoy every week, you got to be with these characters every week every month, whatever you like, kind of like procedural television... now it's involved into making them into trades, but what they've forgot, and I was talking to a prominent actual comic creator, somebody who creates comic books, writes them, hires artists to draw them, and then they come out... this person said to me, it is interesting, this is what's happening in the movies is mirroring what's happening in the comics. I said, I know! But it's beyond bypassing decades of great storytelling to get into shit that's been cancelled, decades of great storytelling that sold, in some cases, in the millions, back in the day... now [they're] fast-forwarding to cancelled stories that sold in the single digit thousands in some case. And it's the same thing. They think the brand was stronger than the people creating it..."
This is a phenomenon that hits just about any corporate type of operation that goes into true 'decadence"... the thinking is "the name itself will carry us and we don't need to keep delivering whatever it is that made the name famous and pursued... " that is, cheapness, too often combined with greed. Although, we can't rule out simple incompetence, not knowing how to do something anymore. Whole civilizations, from the Romans to the Mayans, the Ancient Greeks... got into a situation where the know-how to do things the people had done for centuries dried up and society marched backwards into illiteracy and primitivism. With comics, though, the challenge is a little simpler, to put it mildly: tell the story in an understandable, enjoyable way, with the story itself being understandable and enjoyable.
So early MCU... Joss Whedon, Kenneth Branagh, John Fefrou, pretty big names. Edgar Wright was involved ... until he bailed, but a lot of the first Ant-Man is his, conceptually. A lot of very good, creative people. And then then they decided, no, the brand can carry it, we don't need to pay these talented people, we can just tell people what to do, because [audience] will just eat anything. The problem was James Gunn was still around... and Kevin Fiege could extend that [original style] a bit, but then the bottom fell out..."
So many of the recent flopped-superhero movies look like they were recut from the board room of a corporation.
The future of comics? "...one type of print media is still in style for students: comic books..." at Arizona State University Polytechnic – State Press
So Diamond got bought, now what? – Publishers Weekly
The article describes the landscape that awaits Diamond's new owners (Alliance Entertainment) which is quite different than what faced Diamond before they filed for Chapter 11 protection, basically saying that since then Diamond has lost that many more companies using it as a distributor.
The article also mentions that Alliance is managing the purchase by expanding its "$120 million revolving credit facility" to $160 million, which seems to sound like that old debt that was crushing Diamond is moving to a new home as new debt.
The Billion Dollar Club of Superhero Movies
The Superhero Future
They're bringing the Avengers back together but no Tom Holland? – Newsweek
With Disney taking a serious gut-punch at the box office over Snow White, getting talk going on a new Avengers movie featuring the old, money-making cast, is an obvious (and prudent) PR move.
More The Superhero Future 2025 with Superman and Fantastic Four on the way
Ben Affleck on Batman role woes – Variety
Long-time veteran comics writer Bill Barr facing significant medical issues – Comicbookmovie
...Barr is most famous for his DC work including Batman and the Outsiders, Green Arrow, Camelot 3000, Doc Savage and more. He also wrote for Marvel including Marvel Team-Up, Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, Star Wars, Star Trek and more..."
The Diamond Distributors Auction
Alliance Entertainment Holding Company has acquired the major assets of Diamond Comics Distributors – Comicsbeat
Florida-based wholesaler specializing in music, movies, video games, electronics, arcades and collectibles has purchased Diamond – MSN Baltimore Sun
Lew Stringer retires – Downthetubes
"Behind the fiasco at Disney for Snow White" – Variety
Bane co-creator Graham Nolan against the design of Absolute Bane – Bleedingcool
Batfleck on filming with Snyder: misalignment of agendas – Gamesradar
About that leaked Batgrrrrl footage that was quickly pulled – Boundingintocomics
"Hollywood treated Dwayne Turner a lot better than comics" – The Comics Journal
Very long article on the artist's career, discussing titles like Acts of Vengeance, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Iron Man, Cage, Marvel Comics Presents, Thundercats, some DC Comics work, and story-boarding for the palmy city of movies.
I went to the Diamond Distributors auction and all I got was a look at a deluxe coffee machine
Heather MacDonald talks about trying to cover the Diamond assets auction in New York City and not being allowed to actually do so. Story at Comicsbeat
I’m now relieved that I wasn’t allowed to attend, because the auction took all day and is expected to go into a second day. As a reminder, there are 12 separate business units involved in the auction, and they could be sold separately...."
You might "overwhelmingly" want Mary Jane and Spider-Man together, but Marvel editors say "nope" – Boundingintocomics
Get into the Public Domain archives that are online at Graphic Chatter
Time to go to Disney World? Goofy 4 Mickey
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