Too hip, gotta go.

§ February 11th, 2026 § Filed under retailing § 1 Comment

First, let me assure you, the ProgRuin readers, that the Big Sidewalk Sale I mentioned last week was a success! I cleared out lots of comics from the backroom, giving me the space I needed to start revising/expanding my back issue section. That…will be lots of work, but at least now I can do it!

Also, I didn’t realize my passing reference to the online comic selling portal Hipcomic last week would generate commentary, but let me try to address a point or two you folks brought up.

adrian asked

“Is hipcomic disappointing because of the pricing, or the traffic? or the completed sales? or is it just too obscure a site to make it useful?”

To be fair, it may have been one of those “it’s not you, baby, it’s me” situations, as I was primarily using Hipcomic to sell leftover stock from the new comics shelf that I didn’t put into the back issue bins. It wasn’t necessarily High Demand Items, it was just largely low demand recent back issues. (Though every once in a while some random back issue would suddenly sell out from my listings and I’d discover the property had just been optioned as a movie or something.)

I suspect sales on the platform seem to lean toward the CGC-graded items, which as regular readers of this site know I prefer to avoid. That said, I haven’t given up on Hipcomic entirely, but I think I’m going to be a little more judicious in what I list there.

I don’t know how much traffic they get, but I think they’re doing plenty of sales on there. As to how obscure they are, I will say that whenever I mention “Hipcomic,” the response is invariably “what’s that?” I should note that when I search out specific comics on Google, I do get Hipcomic listings as results most of the time, so its footprint may be expanding at least a little.

And just to wrap up this particular set of inquiries, I’ve never had any problem with completed sales. Everyone there who purchased items from me paid up quickly, and I can’t recall having any problems with any transactions. At least, no problems that weren’t my fault (some kind of listing error that I didn’t catch, for example).

• • •

John relates…well, his experiences on Hipcomic, which to sum up, were disappointing.

I was pulled into Hipcomic with the offer of a free iPad and a free table-with-an-easel-bit that you can use to quickly take photos of comics for sale. The caveat is that in exchange for these goodies, I had to list thousands of books on the platform in a short period of time. I forget exactly how many, but it was a lot, which required spending an hour or two a day just plowing through stacks of back issues and getting them uploaded. The end result is that I had to list a lot of, like I said before, recent back issues that would not be fast movers.

It sounds like it would be an oppressive process, but it was actually fairly easy, especially once you got into the groove. You’d use the iPad, logged into the Hipcomic site, to take a picture of the comic (conveniently placed on the easel for easy photographin’), the Hipcomic database would, usually, identify the comic and fill in several of the particulars for the listing, you add in your quantities and prices, and submit the info to start selling. Prices and quantities can carry over from entry to entry, so you can list a bunch in short order without having to change those options, as long as the database recognizes the book.

And that was the issue that would slow me up, unfortunately. When I started on Hipcomic, the only covers in the database would be the main “A” cover, and variants wouldn’t be identified. Which would be a problem, since most publishers are heavily leaning on variants nowadays. If I wanted to list a variant, I’d have to enter all the information myself, which would take me a little extra time slowly typing out the letters on the iPad screen keyboard.

As time wore on, more variants started being entered in the database, so the autofill function would kick in, but still, not every variant. And not every comic, even from the big publishers, at least not right away. My process was, after pulling old issues off the shelf, attempting to list my extras on the service, but the month sales window I guess wasn’t long enough for these newer comics to get into their system. I’d have to enter those details manually, which isn’t a huge inconvenience but doesn’t facilite a quick and smooth stream of listings.

Plus, there’s the occasional qlitch where Hipcomic’s comic identifying software would misidentify the photo you took and enter the wrong informtion into the listing. And if you’re going a little too quickly processing these comics, it can be easy to miss, resulting in the listing errors I mentioned above.

And there were plenty of comics just not in the database at all, mostly the smaller indie titles. I would try specifically to enter those manually in the hopes that I’d be one of the few retailers on there selling those comics, which…worked occasionally.

Like John, I didn’t have a lot of sales, but again, I was trying to blow out extra recent stock, not offering items of more note. I had a few sales a month, usually at low price points, sometimes enough to pay the monthly fee but not always. Occasionally I’d get a good-sized sale but this wasn’t a major source of income, sadly.

I’m not giving up on Hipcomic…I do think their fee structure is a little better than eBay’s, and their listing function does, for the most part, makes things pretty easy. I’ve got a project or two to finish at the store first, but I’m going to try listing slightly higher-end and older comics, and see if that improves my listings-to-sales ratio. We’ll see how it goes. I think it’s a good platform overall, but I have to see if I can exploit it properly.

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§ February 9th, 2026 § Filed under low content mode § 1 Comment

Sorry gang, the weekend sale wiped me out and I couldn’t put together a proper post for Monday. I’ll be back Wednesday with Real Content™, with any luck! Thanks for reading, pals, and I’ll see you then.

So anyway…

§ February 6th, 2026 § Filed under retailing, sterling silver comics § 7 Comments

…getting ready for a Big Sidewalk Sale at the shop this weekend, with the admittedly odd timing of doing it at the same time the Super Bowl is running. Ah, that’s okay, who watches the Super Bowl any more, anyway?

But as time goes on, and collections get dumped on me that I don’t really have any immediately use for, the stock in the backroom builds up to uncomfortable levels and suddenly I find myself stuck with excess boxes of comics. Thus, my need for space necessitates the clearing out of these boxes of books.

On top of that, selling excess books on Hipcomic.com wasn’t going quite as well as I was hoping. I’m not giving up on that platform yet, but I’m going to rethink my strategy there. In the meantime, the many comics I had listed there have been removed, and all those will go out into the sale. I suspect I’ll make more money there with these books than I ever did on Hipcomic.

Not that money is the issue. I mean, sure, I’ll take it, but the primary goal is to lighten the load of excess material so I can repurpose part of the backroom into back issue overflow from the shelving and tables in the front sales area. Sigh. I really should knock down a wall and just make more front of the store, but I’m not quite ready to do that yet.

Either that or move to a larger location, and I’m not really up to doing that either. Sigh.

Anyway, the last time I did a Sidewalk Sale I did indeed shed several boxes out of the backroom, so here’s hoping it happens again. And if you find yourself in the location of my store this weekend…drop on by! Get a ton of comics! Help your pal Mike out!

You should see he size of that tape dispenser.

§ February 4th, 2026 § Filed under question time § 7 Comments

Yes, I’m going to answer another reader question, because it’s been a long day and I want to do something that’s a little less labor/thought intensive. “SLACKING OFF — that’s the ProgRuin promise!”

Anyhoo, Matthew Murray asks

“What are the worst ‘preserved’ comics you’ve ever seen in collections? Duct tape? Hot glue? Cereal boxes cut into backing boards?”

Hoo boy, the things I’ve seen. And smelled. But “smell” is more involved with damage, and you’re talking about comics where someone tried to “preserve” or repair or whatever. And I’ve seen some horrors.

One particularly awful thing I’ve seen is an original Amazing Spider-Man #1 — yes, the one from the ’60s — where at some point someone got some kind of wide piece of clear tape and applied it to the covers. And I mean it was wide enough that a single piece spanned the entire width of the book. Were we still able to sell it? Oh, sure, it sold (for how much, I can’t remember…this was long before the price on this book had skyrocketed post-some prominent auctions).

Another tricky situation was a 1940s Wonder Woman #1, where there was a curved black plastic strip taped to the spine as “protection.” Lots of dry browning tape just all over the left hand side of that otherwise okay-looking book. We did sell it, and the buyer later told us he was able to get that plastic strip pulled off, and the tape was just dry enough to be able to be peeled off without much trouble. Well, we sure as heck weren’t going to do that.

These are the two biggies that stick out in my mind. But I’ve seen the homemade “backing boards” cut from cardboard boxes (and yes, even cereral boxes) shoved into the Ziploc bags used to hold the comics. Or I’ve seen comics and boards in a bag, with the bag stapled shut through the small overhang of the board. Or I’ve seen comics in bags and with pinholes though the top center of the comic when these were displayed on a wall.

I’ve often railed against using tape to seal your comic bags…that flapping strip can easily catch on a cover, or eventually deteriorate, or sneak out at night and attack your pets, all kinds of problems. But I’ve seen bags with so much taple sealing the bags that it’s easier to cut the comic out of its overpackaging. Or the bags and tape have deteriorated and gone “gooey” that even handling them makes your hands a sticky mess, making it bit of a trick to rescue the comics and avoiding getting any of said “goo” on them.

When it comes to storing the books, putting them in a proper comic book box is probably the ideal. But so often I’ve had bulk comics stored in huge plastic tubs, which usually results in more than a few of them being warped or outright bend when the piles in the crate eventually fall over on each other. I’ve seen lots of regular cardboard boxes or shoeboxes or those cartons that held either loose paper or the dot-matrix type of printer paper with the punched holes at the sides, used for comic storage, but at least those mostly had square corners and flat surfaces. The plastic storage boxes had wide curved sides and uneven interior widths and whatnot, facilitating comic shifting.

There was that one collection of several long boxes, containing multiple copies of nearly every comic published by Marvel from the ’60s through the ’80s., All well and good, but none of the comics were in bags, and a small flood of water in the area where they were stored resulted in water damage across the bottom halves of every issue.

And of course, the collection of comics where someone used a holepunch on each spine so that the books could be kept in a three-ring binder. Oh, and these were Golden Age books, too.

Those are the ones that immediately come to mind. I’m sure I’ll be surprised by some new wildly-awful comic protection in short order.

The color out of comics.

§ February 2nd, 2026 § Filed under question time § 13 Comments

Following up on the second part of Thom H.’s question, this time regarding my favorite colorists and why. But here are a couple of notable ones

Like I said last time, I don’t know if I’ve got quite the skills to adequately describe the qualities of colorists’ performances.

I’ll start off with Tom Ziuko, whose work I started to notice when he was coloring Atar Force, as seen on this page I had to copy from some dubious source on the internet since my copies are currently not in a readily available place:

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I appreciated the boldness of the coloring on the foreground characters, while the background characters are painted with a single hue as to emphasize just what exactly we’re supposed to be looking at here. I know it’s not an uncommon strategy, but I really first noticed it with Ziuko and he’s stuck in my head ever since as a colorist to watch for.

Next up is the late Tom Luth, the brave soul who tackled Sergio Aragones’ Groo the Wanderer for decades:

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All of Sergio’s meticulous detail required a colorist just as meticulous, and that man was Mr. Luth. Other capable hands have taken the coloring reins on this series, but Luth remains the gold standard.

Now here’s where it gets tricky. As a Swamp Thing fan, I particularly appreciated the color on these series, most notably the original ’70s run. Coloring a horror comic definitely requires a different tone from coloring a Superman story, and the colorists on the first Swamp Thing run were up to the challenge.

So, I picked a solid, attention grabbing page from Swamp Thing #9 (1973), with some nice coloring (scanned here from my personal copy):

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…and I had to go look up the credits online since DC titles at this point didn’t credit colorists or letterers, usually. My assumption was that it was Tatjana Wood, as customer Sean notes, the person usually associated with coloring the early Swampies.

I look up this issue on the Grand Comics Database, and…the colorist is not known. Another site says the same thing. The later reprint in Roots of the Swamp Thing also gives no indication.

Interestingly, the GCD says earlier issues were colored by Bernie Wrightson himself, including a note on #1 citing a letter from a later issue as a source. Wood doesn’t start getting credited, at least on the CGD, ’til #11, after Wrightson leaves the title.

Anyway, I still don’t know who colored that above page, or the issue #9 it came from, so…Good Job, Anonymous Person! And I don’t know the full story on Wood vs. Wrightson on the other coloring jobs. Thus, let’s just say Whoever Colored 1970s Swamp Thing is one of my favorite colorists. If anyone can straighten this out for sure, that’d be great. I don’t have the time to investigate further as I write this, but I’ll look into it as I can.

Like in the previous post about letterers, I’m sure there’s plenty more colorists all of you can name in the comments. (Like, I forgot to mention Master Letterer Ken Bruzenak? Or Chris Ware?)

“Wuffa wuffa.”

§ January 30th, 2026 § Filed under question time § 20 Comments

So here we go, back to the ol’ Question Time post to answer more of your queries!

Thom H. scrawls into the margins

“You know who we don’t talk about enough? Colorists and letterers. Do you have favorites? If so, who and why?”

You’re right, we don’t, and there have been, and still are, great people at work in these positions in the comic book field. I’m going to start today just by showing some examples of some of my favorite letterers, mostly decided by those I appreciated the most when I was young. First one should be no surprise…

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…Gaspar Saladino, who lettered a whole lotta those early 1970s Swamp Thing comics. That just slightly angular, slightly-off style added to the creepy flavor of the book. Look at the “S,” or look at how the bottom lines on the “L” and “E” is angled. Big, bold lettering for a big, bold horror comic.

Next up is the all-time heavyweight champion of comics lettering, far as I’m concerned:

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…John Costanza, who seemed to be everywhere for a while. Just clean, simple lettering, that relates the information without drawing attention to itself. (And it should be noted that Mr. Costanza was a cartoonist of some note as well, having drawn for Disney and the Simpsons.

Another favorite…

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…is Todd Klein, shown in this example lettering one of the rare Alan Moore Swamp Things not lettered by Costanza. Another multi-talented gent in the field, he wrote a number of comics as well (including an old fave of mine, Omega Men), and designed several logos. You can visit his info-packed site right here.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention…

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…Dave Sim, who’s known for, among other things, writing and drawing Cerebus the Aardvark, but was a master letterer as well, who exuded emotion and action with his stylings.

Here’s another example of his work, one that gets brought up quite often when discussing his lettering skills, and who am I not to bring it up too? (Click the pic to make it slightly more legible.)

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Boy, that’s the stuff.

There is of course no end to letterers out there whose work I love…John Workman, who was as much a part of Walt Simonson’s Thor as Simonson himself. Or Bob Lappan’s wild work on Atari Force, presenting alien languages in unique and appealing ways. Or Stan Sakai, whose lettering for Usagi Yojimbo is just one more bit of excellence in his overall artistic presentation (and don’t forget, he also letters Groo the Wanderer!).

I could probably go on all day just listing great letterers, and I’m sure some of you folks will drop some worthy names in the comments. Lettering really is a fascinating and expressive art form unto itself, and one we should all appreciate more.

Speaking of which…I’m probably going to have to address favorite colorists next week, as I need a little more to think about it. With rare exceptions, I can’t look at coloring work and immediately identify who colored what. I just don’t have that skill. But there are plenty of comics where I’ve very much appreciated the color work, so maybe I’ll just have to go through a couple of those. Come back next week and see how I pulled myself out of this one.

Sal Buscema (1936 – 2026).

§ January 28th, 2026 § Filed under hulk, obituary § 17 Comments

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Click to make Hulk-sized.

This double-page splash from Incredible Hulk #300 (1984) is a great example of what Sal Buscema brought to the title for many years, creating one of the definitive visual renditions of the charater. Sal was one of the classic Marvel Comics stalwarts, doing excellent work for many of their characters, most notably Spider-Man.

One thing I always like to point out regarding Incredible Hulk #300’s opening pages is the persistence of the story’s title “Days of Rage” on the billboard. You can see part of that title on the billboard chunk Hulk is throwing a couple of pages later:

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Don’t know who exactly was responsible for this visual gag, but it gave me an excuse to post another pic by Mr. Buscema.

Thanks, Sal, and so long.

Batman, absolutely.

§ January 26th, 2026 § Filed under batman, collecting, retailing § 16 Comments

Hi pals. First off, I’ve shut down the comments on Friday’s post, and I’m going to consider the matter closed here for the time being. So, please don’t revive the discussion/debate in today’s comments. If something changes, I’ll put up a new post and start a new thread, but I think the topic has been covered sufficiently for the time being. Thanks to everyone for participating, and to Matthew for being a trooper.

Second, I’ll be returning to responding to your queries from the last Question Time post, as well as continuing the Final ’90s Countdown, in short order. I promise to finish both series sometime in 2026. Well, at least I’ll try with the Final ’90s Countdown.

Third, I know it’s an unpleasant world out there right now, and people are rightfully upset and afraid and angry at what’s happening. It may seem a bit silly focusing on comics like I am, but it helps to relax and center myself and escape from the world at least momentarily, at least for my mental health and yours as well. I’m not ignoring current events, but doing something quiet that I can control and enjoy really recharges the ol’ brain batteries. I hope everyone can find some similar respite.

• • •

Okay, I’m letting Wayne skip the question line a bit to answer this inquiry of his from last Wednesday:

“What is the deal with ABSOLUTE BATMAN?

[…]

“What is the main selling point? Is it violent like I’m the goddamn Batman? Is it Batman with no [other] bad guys or girls yet? I’m not checking Wikipedia.

“I want YOU to tell me why YOU buy so many copies and WHY it sells for you.You are in the middle of a desert, yet you sell more than the comic shop in downtown Chicago.”

Ever since Marvel hit it big with its fresh-start, continuity-lite (’til it wasn’t) Ultimate line, DC’s been trying to find a way to do something similar with their own titles. Essentially, “rebooting” their big characters with new hopefully-new-audience-grabbing titles and stories while still keeping the regular versions around in order to not alienate their already-existing readers. Sort of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation.

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The initial two attempts were the All-Star line, started in 2005, which resulted in one genuine classic (All-Star Superman), and one still-as-yet-uncompleted run that received slightly more…mixed reviews (All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder). Both were not part of “official” DC continuity (however that usually stands), and were not connected to each other in any way. And while they both sold very well, the “All-Star” line faded out once the Superman story was done, and it became apparent that the Batman series had stalled out. Other series, like All-Star Batgirl and All-Star Wonder Woman, were planned but never released.

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DC’s next attempt at an Ultimate-esque imprint as the “Earth One” line, a series of graphic novels aimed at the book market. And while a number of these were released, some with multiple volumes (like Superman: Earth One, have three volumes so far). I think, technically, this imprint may still be A Thing, even though the last graphic novel in the line, Green Lantern: Earth One volume 2, came out in 2020. (And Wonder Woman Earth One received a Compact Comics paperback edition within the last year.)

DC’s newest attempt at Ultimizing their comics, the “Absolute” imprint, certainly seems to have the most traction out, with current titles selling well, and new titles on the way. Unlike the previous imprints, “Absolute” has its origin in the regular DC Universe, via various Darkseid-related shenanigans that began in the DC All-In Special and are now coming to some kind of head in the DC K.O. event, currently running in a comic shop near you.

It’s possible, that at least for some readers, that connection means the comics “count” in their ongoing investment into the DC Comics Universe at large. And that pays off, in its way, with that current crossover I mentioned. I don’t know if that’s a significant factor in the Absolute line’s current popularity, but it’s not not one.

But when it comes specifically to the Absolute Batman series and why it’s popular, the biggest reason is that…

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…it’s Batman.

And I know that sounds like a facile answer, but it’s really the big one. Batman is arguably the most popular superhero character of all time — or at least in the top three, behind Swamp Thing and Krypto — and having him headline the brand new imprint of comics is usually going to lead to big sales. Absolute Batman was first out of the gate with a comic book series, it showed everyone how this new line was going to work, and remains the flagship title of the imprint. It is the face of this publishing endeavor.

It helps that it stands alone, with (so far) only some minor crossing over with Absolute Wonder Woman, even though all the “Absolute” titles exist in the same world and the characters certainly will all meet each other. (Not counting whatever’s going to happen in DC K.O., of course.)

The quality of the art and writing is top notch, drawn by Nick Dragotta and written by Scott Snyder, with Snyder being already generally well-regarded for previous Batman work. I know when Absolute Batman was first announced, and the art was released, many fan reacted with “uh, Batman looks weird” but now that everyone’s seen it in action, those same fans are now “we love our chonky boy.”

But the two of them together have produced a work that is dense with information, both textually and visually. And given issue of Absolute Batman feels like it contains the equivalent of two other comics, and in these days of high prices and concern over cost-versus-content, it makes for an appealing buy. It feels…modern, taking these nearly 90-year-old characters and reinventing them via current sensibilities and storytelling techniques.

Now, I’m trying not to step too much on what WizarDru and William have already said in their correct and valuable responses regarding the actual contents of the books. These are new takes on old characters, from Batman/Bruce Wayne himself, all the way to his rogue’s gallery (many of who are, at least at first, friends of Bruce and privy to his secret). As William notes, emotion plays more into the proceedings, supporting the previous be-all Batman tropes of problem solving and punch-outs. And making Bruce poor, or at least not rich, puts paid to all the criticisms of “why doesn’t he stop crime with money” and “rich guy punching down, literally, on the underprivileged.” Every battle Bruce has is an uphill one.

And in concession to our online meme-full world, there are more cool elements in each story. More examples of pure radness and badassery that makes for lively discussion and scanned images on TikTok or Instagram or wherever. “Look at Absolute Batman just wiping out these white supremacists” sells more people on how cool a comic this is, making more people look for it, meaning more sales, more sell-outs, more reprints, so on and so forth. Making comics cool again, or at least these “Absolute” comics, can’t be underestimated as a factor, especially wit younger people not in the habit of buying physical media.

Another reason Absolute Batman sells well is for a reason that may not immediately come to mind unless you’re a comic shop owner observing comic sales. Or if you’re participating in this yourself…but investment. Not the kind of “investment” I mentioned previously, but “buy multiple copies, get ’em CGCed and put on eBay” kind of investment. The comic sells well, therefore there’s demand, therefore there’s opportunities. First appearances of Absolute Catwoman, Absolute Harley Quinn (that one kinda slipped past people), and of course Absolute Joker, that gets the investors excited.

Plus, the multiple printings each issue receives (#1 just had its tenth) attracts not just readers trying to catch up, but investment collectors who think the lower print runs on some of these may lead to a financial boon. And the more readers part = more demand for issues = more chances of higher prices on the secondary market.

I’m sure that’s not all the reasons, and that the sales on this book will continue like this forever. I’ve said a number of times that some days at the shop, I feel like I’m an Absolute Batman store and nothing else, as I get customer after customer, new customer after new customer, passing through my doors and asking where the new issue is, or where any issues are. And anything that’s getting new readers in is a good thing.

Yes, I eventually link to where you can read the theory yourself, be patient.

§ January 23rd, 2026 § Filed under batman, watchmen § 60 Comments

So a long time ago on this site, when my blog was just barely four months old, I wrote a post outlining why the ending of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke could be interpreted as Batman killing the Joker. I laid out my reasons, got a few comments (on the now-defunct Haloscan service I used to have on my site), with some folks thinking it was interesting, some others fully onboard, and a few who thought I was way off base. And, fair enough — I said right there in the body of that post “I may be reading too much into this,” and that’s fine. We’re all just having fun.

About nine years later, in an interview, Grant Morrison comes out and says “Batman kills Joker at the end of The Killing Joke,” and because they’re a person who had slightly more fame and influence than a comic shop employee with a blog, everyone was all over this “sudden revelation” that I also had like a decade earlier.

In fairness, a few kind persons here and there piped up and said “hey, this Mike guy said the same thing a long time ago,” but again, comic shop dude, blog, no traction. But it was nice to be remembered.

I didn’t see at the time of the Morrison thing this solid refutation of the “Batman Kills Joker” idea, written by my now-pal-on-Bluesky John. Had I seen it back in 2013, would I have jumped into his comments and declared “NO, YOU’RE WRONG, BATMAN TOTALLY KILLED JOKER! READ MY POST!”

No, of course not. As I said above, we’re all just having fun, and as I note in my 2013 post, it’s just an interpretation, and not any sort of “proof” of authorial intent.

And besides, in a recent Bluesky discussion on a related topic, comics artist Chris Weston reveals

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Thus does the long “Killing Joke‘s ending” saga come to its…well, end. Brian Bolland, literal Co-Creator of the Story, sez “negatory.”

Does that mean we can no longer read the ending of Killing Joke as the Joker’s death? No, of course not. Once art is out there, its meaning can be unmoored (er, so to speak) from the creators’ intentions, and anyone can see whatever they want to see in it. Even if it’s entirely…well, I hate to use the word “wrong,” but…wrong. Not all ideas are equally supported or of equal merit, but you can’t stop people from seeing what they see, feeling what they feel.

And that’s kinda that. I had a wild idea about Killing Joke, threw it out into the universe, and it met either approval, disapproval, or indifference. I felt no need to run around defending the idea against every naysayer, because I knew full well it was just an interesting way to read the end of that story. Plus, it’s not like I was necessarily the first to come up with it in 2004, 14 years after the comic originally came out. (And it’s coming out again in a fancy new facsimile edition on the 28th of this month, so you can read it yourself and see if me ‘n’ Grant are right!)

Why do I bring all this up? I mean, other to show off how great and clever I am?

It’s because another of my Bluesky pals mentioned in passing that there was someone out there challenging people who dared not to take his Watchmen theory seriously. That caught my attention, because as longtime readers of this site know, I do love me some ancillary Watchmen stuff, the sillier the better.

Well, said pal explained the theory to me, to which I reacted “huh, interesting, not really supported by the text, but whatever.” My ultimate conclusion in my response was that this was proof of the comic’s complexity and depth, allowing for such differing interpretations. No, I didn’t agree with the theory’s conclusions, but I believed I was even-handed enough in my reply.

In what is now an unsurprising turn of events, the proponent of this theory appeared in our discussion after presumably term-searching, initially thanking me for calling the theory “interesting,” but telling me to spend for than five seconds thinking about it to see that he’s right. Then the challenges began, demanding that anyone who denies his theory “prove him wrong.” The interactions become increasingly offputting, with his continual assertions that only he sees the truth and everyone saying otherwise just hasn’t put the proper effort into reading the comic.

I’m paraphrasing and generalizing, but the arguments come down to “he’s right, everyone else is wrong, debate me.” I eventually told him straight out “your theory isn’t the reason no one wants to talk to you about this.”

And that’s kind of the point of all this. Not that the theory is “wild and out there.” I’m perfectly fine with this guy having this interpretation of Watchmen. Like I noted on Bluesky, the text does not support it, and in fact almost explicitly counters the idea, but whatever, man. We’re all just trying to have fun, and as I said above, art is there for personal interpretation, even if it can be way off base.

That’s all well and good. But being pushy and aggressive about it is not the way to sell it to anyone. Here’s the theory (NOTE: please don’t harass the fella there or in the comments here), with illustrations, as he outlines it on Bluesky. He kicked it off with “Am I delusional? You tell me!” and then people told him and he didn’t like it. You can see his response to skeptics in his main feed, accusing others of “running away” when they dismiss his idea, thinking it’s because they can’t challenge his logic, when actually those folks didn’t see any need to deal with him.

Here’s a Reddit thread from some months earlier where presumably the same person got a better reaction to his ideas. You can see, though, the anger at the deniers creeping in there, and if this is the same person, I can imagine months of his theory not going over becoming more and more of a burden on him, resulting in his behavior on Bluesky.

And like me not being the first person with my Killing Joke idea, when I presented this theory to a friend who actually wrote a book on Watchmen, his reaction was 1) nah, and 2) he’d actually heard this years ago. Now was it from the same guy, or just parallel evolution in Watchmen theories? I don’t know.

Ultimately, I’m sympathetic to the guy, at least regarding this topic. I’m all for new ways to look at established works. I even particularly like his thought that maybe Moore was trying to prove that a “secret identity” in a comic could work on fooling readers in The Real World. Except, first, this level of theorized effort would seem to run contrary to Watchman’s ultimate metatextual purpose. Second, Moore already kinda does this with Rorschach in the early issues.

What was missing from all this is a little humility. Saying that only you know the truth and everyone else has missed it, and being kinda weird about it, doesn’t inspire debate. It inspires abandonment. Nobody wants to be browbeat about not reading comics the “right” way. To repeat a piece of advice I offered to this gentleman, one that I benefited from given my earlier more-uptight-about-my-hobby days: mellow out, dude.

Your 2025 Predictions, Part Five: Toledo Window Box.

§ January 21st, 2026 § Filed under predictions § 12 Comments

Okay, let’s see if I can finish up my coverage of your 2025 comic industry predictions (and here are parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). And one last reminder: don’t forget to get in your 2026 industry predictions!

ExistentialMan defines himself with

“1. The proposed tariffs by the incoming administration (25-to-100%) will be reduced to the lower end of the range but will still impact smaller publishers negatively, resulting in increased pricing for their books. Larger publishers will hold the line on monthly comic book prices but increase collected trade prices slightly.”

Get ready for a rarity, as I’m linking directly to a Bleeding Cool story on this very topic, and how some small publishers were indeed impacted by the wildly fluctuating, largely unnecessary, and primarily vindictive tariffs. From my end, I haven’t seen a large increase in my store costs, beyond the occasional warning that comic supplies will see a price jump. By and large comic prices have seen about the normal level of increase (i.e. books creeping up to $4.99 and $5.99), and I don’t know how much of that is the exemption to tariffs on printed matter, or publishers absorbing some costs.

“2. Diamond Comic Distributor’s will survive 2025 intact (without closing or being purchased).”

Um…they didn’t close, anyway.

“3. Based on the strength of the Absolute line and the Superman movie, DC will outsell Marvel at Sterling Silver Comics by a 20% margin.”

I think Marvel and DC are about neck-and-neck, actually, which is actually quite a change for the mostly-perpetually second place DC. Right now nothing is selling like Absolute Batman, which is like printing money. There are days at the store where every customer who walks through the door is only looking for that comic.

While DC has higher highs, Marvel’s midlist titles tend to sell marginally better than DC’s for me, so overall they’re both doing about as well. Which, you know, things could nbe worse.

• • •

Michael Grabowski clutches the following

“Wishful thinking more than a prediction, possibly, and a sort of re-rerun for me, but anyway:”

That can be a theme through the predictions every year, and that’s fine!

“1. After wrapping up Copra this year (that’s his plan. not a prediction), Michel Fiffe will get hired by DC to produce a Grand Design-style history of the Teen Titans.”

That would be amazing, but alas, not in the cards.

“2. With a 40+-year publication history and multi-publisher legacy numbering currently in the high 270s, Stan Sakai will announce that Usagi Yojimbo will build up to some kind of concluding sequence of arcs to be published over the next few years, finishing around #300.”

I wrote on this topic of longtime serialized creator-owned books being brought to conclusions by said creators. Usagi Yojimbo seems like one of those properties that would lean towards having an ultimate ending. Sakai himself reportedly has no intention to give a final conclusion, as per this 2024 post on a Reddit thread:

“I asked him on an Ebay live stream awhile back if there was going to be a cannon [sic] ending; he laughed and said no.”

• • •

King of the Moon does declare

“My prediction for 2025 is a killer awesome year for comics and comics shops. It’s time for that pendulum to swing back!

“With all the craziness and where we are now, escapism into comic books should be prime time entertainment just as it was in those years that gave us Superman and launched this whole thing to begin with.”

Comics have been…keeping steady, more or less, all things considered. The Absolute line certainly pushed things along and got people excited, bringing new folks through my doors at least. That I consider to be a net positive!

• • •

Dave…Dave…Dave’s right here, man

“1) Alfred is back!”

Not yet, which is really shocking to me. There’s gonna be some kind of event resulting in Alfred’s return, I’m sure, so it’s only a matter of time. But that they kept him dead for as long as they have…I never expected they would.

“2) Warren Ellis is back!”

No, not that I can tell. The last new comic I remember seeing him in was this Wildstorm anniversary book in 2017. No idea what he’s been doing otherwise.

I always wonder about stuff like this, famous people who get caught in some scandal and drop out of the business they were in…what do they do for money? I mean, assuming they weren’t rich to begin with. Like, imagine Warren Ellis applying for a job at Target since his comic book work dried up. Folks, even folks who did bad things, have to shelter and feed themselves, and that takes money. I imagine some just bite the bullet and find a new career, hoping nobody asks about their old one.

“3) Superman at the movies is back! ( in the sense it makes a billion dollars)”

Not quite a billion, but still well enough to get a sequel fast-tracked, and earn the goodwill of superhero movie fans. Whether Gunn’s longterm DC film plans will continue as intended, especially after the Netflix takeover of Warner Bros., remains to be seen. But it sounds like the DC movies are off to a good start.

• • •

Misterjayem gives us

“1) Some good things will happen, and
2) some bad things will happen, and
3) some people will argue online about which is which.

Like I said in Part Three, I am probably going to call a halt on these general predictions in favor of more specific guesses. Again, I get these are supposed to allow me to go on about whatever events I want to talk about that happened during the previous year. However, it’s more of a help to me, especially since I’m usually discussing so many predictions in a relatively short period of time, if the predictions addressed potentially-actual events.

But, anyway, for one last time, let’s use this set of supplied parameters, and talk about the Superman movie, since i still have those on the brain after the previous response.

The Superman movie was, as I stated above, a good thing, doing well at the box office and getting people interested in the Man of Steel and his DC Comics super pals.

However, I did see people have negative reactions, taking some umbrage at some of the political allegories, some of which I discussed in my own overview. And there are the usual loons who bleat about “wokeness.” And there’s the perpetually online-contingent that DC didn’t continue in the direction of the prior films of the last decade.

And yes, people argued about this online. Everybody argues about everything online. It’s really headache-inducing. So don’t argue about these things in my comments, please…I’m just noting what happened, per Misterjayem’s request.

• • •

And yes, at long last, it wouldn’t be my annual predictions coverage with googum googumming

“1. The Superman and FF movies are going to do so well, they restart superhero movies again! In the sense that lower-tier stuff tries again. That new Spawn movie gets going now or never! Maybe Valiant tries again too.”

As twice noted in this post now, Superman did pretty well. Fantastic Four did…not quite as well. I don’t think we’re back yet in the “Superhero movies are a sure thing!” mindset yet, but at the same time it’s not going to stop Marvel or DC from doing movies for the near future.

Even if Supergirl and the next Superman film plot, there will still be Batman movies. Even if Avengers: Doomsday flops, there will still be Spider-Man, and probably Deadpool, movies. And eventually they’ll back around to trying Superman and Avengers movies again. Too much money was made at one point, and can still occasionally be made, that we’ll have superhero movies for quite some time.

I don’t know if it’s given enough confidence to other companies to put out, like you mentioned, Spawn and Valiant films, but we’ll see where things go.

“2. Under ‘never,’ everyone involved with the Blade relaunch quietly walks away from the project. Not this time around.”

As of a couple weeks ago, I believe, Blade was indeed cancelled, though the tapped lead actor may yet portray the character in a Midnight Sons team-up film. Unable to “break the story” was one of the cited reasons, so “half-vampire vampire hunter hunts vampires” is apparently a real ice-skating uphill premise.

“3. Some smaller company–maybe Titan–puts a big push back into western comics.”

Not a great year for smaller companies, unfortunately. (Titan is still hanging in there, though.) Trying to make a big push when the distribution network has splintered, if not outright vanished from beneath you, is a tricky proposition, and any such high-profile moves may have to wait ’til things settle down.

• • •

Okay, that’s it for the predictions this time around! Come back in 2027 when we look at your 2026 predictions! As always, thanks for your participation and for putting up with all this (occasionally sloppy) typing. See you folks back here on Friday with either brand new content, or follow-ups/corrections to this year’s prediction commentary, or both!

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