This article has gone through a few changes. Originally it was a profile praising Marvel’s Black Cat ongoing series and highlighting it’s unlikely continued success both with sales and cultivating a loyal following. It explored how a low-profile creative team managed to weather the comics market’s highs and lows better than dozens of other series…
Next Saturday, Aug. 22, is DC FanDome, described in a press release as a “24-hour, immersive virtual fan experience which brings the universe of DC to life and features the stars, filmmakers and creators behind its biggest films, TV series, games and comics.” (Notice how comics are last.) It’s like many of the virtual cons…
When someone says “Robert Kirkman,” what title springs to mind? For most people outside comic fandom, and many in, it’s likely his cross-media hit, “The Walking Dead.” For many other comic fans, it might be his superhero title, “Invincible.” There might even be some people who jump to “Outcast,” his demonic possession drama that was…
Heroes die. We must be ready to let them go. The Splash Stanley Martin Lieber was born Dec. 28, 1922. He died Nov. 12, 2018. In the 95 years in between, Stan Lee was an entertainer, a creator, a publisher, an entrepreneur, a charmer, a bit of a grifter, a figurehead, a lovable scamp and…
The Dawn Of X era has revitalized a franchise in a way rarely seen in the media. It is truly the Fast Five of the comic book industry, taking a property that was long in the tooth in a new and exciting direction while setting it up for major commercial success. But the question remains,…
Remember 2013? When Lance Armstrong copped to being a drug cheat and “Star Trek Into Darkness” beat “The Final Frontier” and “Faith of the Heart” as the worst Star Trek thing ever made? And you could go outside? Those were the days. The Splash The hallmark of a Zack Snyder movie — outside of his…
I love ranking things. Everyone loves ranking things. We’ve built a social media empire around the idea of ranking things. So lets rank all the X-Men titles in the Dawn Of X era, shall we? This is not just one opinion, this is the definitive opinion. We polled out writing staff and got twenty members…
Click. Journey back with us for a moment, back through the decades, to February 2020. A young coronavirus had just notched its first recorded U.S. death. The Senate voted against impeaching President Donald Trump. Kansas City won its first Super Bowl since 1970. Sonic the Hedgehog whizzed into theaters, those places we used to go to watch…
Sister Act Captain Marvel #17 (2004): Peter David (writer), Paul Azaceta (pencils), Chris Sotomayor (colors) Captain Marvel #18 (2020): Kelly Thompson (writer), Cory Smith (pencils), Adriano Di Benedetto (inks), Tamra Bonvillain (colors) All Captain Marvel families are alike, but every Captain Marvel family is unhappy in its own way. Two years ago, Margaret Stohl and…
High noon in a desert town. Two men face off, hands on the butts of their holstered revolvers. [Grote’s note: Heh heh, butts.] A blur of motion, a crack of gunfire, and one (or both) falls. This scene is a hallmark of the American Western, a genre that was popular in comics throughout the 1950s…
Just when you think you have all the answers, it’s time to change the questions. The Splash In the fracas between writer Tom King, artist Jae Lee and comic book fans who want works created by people who aren’t intolerable assholes, there are no winners. Not King, who now looks like a bully for taking…
When comics fans now think about Marjorie Liu, we may think about her creator-owned book Monstress. When we think about who made the X-Men the X-Men, we may think first of Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson and collaborators in the 1970s and 1980s. And if we think of Liu’s work for Marvel, we might think of…
When A Series Relaunch Doesn’t Stick Its Landing Warning: The following contains spoilers for Champions (2018-2019), Doctor Strange (2018) The most important issue of a comic is its first. Not all comics get to see their intended last issue, but they all get to see their first. First impressions are key when introducing — or…
IDW went through a bit of a leadership shakeup last week, as President, Publisher and Chief Creative Officer Chris Ryall was announced to be stepping down to develop his own publishing venture. A day later, IDW said Jerry Bennington and Jud Meyers had been tapped for Ryall’s previous roles as president and publisher, respectively, while…
Rise and Fall of the Roamin’ Empyre Three years ago, I made a terrible decision. High on youthful exuberance, and unwilling to dip my toe back into the world of comics except in the most obsessively completist way imaginable, I decided to read every Marvel comic published since 1961. Not just the big ones: everything….