Stephanie Williams – In My Not So Humble Opinion

New York Comic Con 2025 Artist Alley spotlight

I had a lot of fun this year at New York Comic Con 2025. It was an amazing four day event held at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan. Once again, my favorite place to hang out during the show was Artist Alley, where dozens of talented creators were set up. Here are just a few highlights from Artist Alley this year.

It was really great to see the incredible June Brigman, co-creator of Power Pack and Captain Ginger, at NYCC this year. June and her husband, inker Roy Richardson, used to live in White Plains NY back in the day, so I used to see them all the time. They moved back to Georgia about 20 years ago and I haven’t seen them since. So, it was nice to catch up with June at the show.

Acclaimed comic book artist Jamal Igle has worked on numerous titles throughout his career, including Firestorm, Supergirl, Molly Danger and The Wrong Earth. He’s a really good person, and I was glad to catch up with him again.

Whilce Portacio worked on Uncanny X-Men in the early 1990s, where he co-created the character Bishop. He then went over to help found Image Comics, where he was the co-creator of the Wetworks series. I like his highly detailed work a lot. I’ve never had the opportunity to meet Portacio before, so it was cool to get the first issue of Wetworks signed by him.

Terry Dodson has worked on numerous titles, among them Uncanny X-Men, Adventureman, Fire and Ice, Wonder Woman and Thunderbolts, often collaborating with his wife, inker Rachel Dodson. Most recently Terry & Rachel drew a gorgeous Wonder Woman & Captain America backup story in the Deadpool / Wolverine crossover book. At the show I picked up a copy of their beautiful variant cover for that special.

Deathlok penciler and co-founder of the Milestone Media line, Denys Cowan had a really gritty, atmospheric style. He’s another creator I had never had an opportunity to meet before. I got my copy of the Hardware: Season One hardcover collection signed by him.

Reilly Brown has worked on Deadpool, Amazing Spider-Man and the Batman/Fortnight Zero Point miniseries. I think he has a really nice style and is a very solid storyteller. He did a nice sketch of Mantis for me in my sketchbook.

I’ve been fortunate to be friends with Emmy and Ringo award winning comic book creator Dean Haspiel (Billy Dogma, The Fox, The Red Hook) for a number of years now. Dean was sharing a table with Dan Goldman, the creator of Red Light Properties, a series about a realtor who offers “previously-haunted” houses at below-market prices to folks who could never otherwise afford one. Goldman describes it as “Better Call Saul meets The Shining.” Definitely check it out.

Writer Stephanie Williams has been doing great work on the character of Nubia, often working with penciler Alitha Martinez. I enjoyed the Nubia & the Amazons miniseries and its follow-up Nubia: Queen of the Amazons that they did. Among her other projects, Williams is writing a revival of Street Sharks for IDW Publishing.

I’ve always found artist Todd Nauck to have a really fun, energetic style. He got started in the mid-1990s at Image Comics and immediately out the gate was doing good work. In the last 30 years he’s worked on a variety of titles, including Badrock, Young Justice, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and his creator-owned series WildGuard.

Last but certainly not least is another artist I’m fortunate to call a friend, the very talented Buzz, who has worked on Vampirella and JSA. He’s recently drawn a great, fun cover for the Harley Quinn x Elvira crossover. Buzz was sharing his table with Mars Howard, a talented artist who’s drawn some really beautiful Vampirella covers.

Those are just some of the many talented creators I was fortunate enough to meet at NYCC 2025. Thank you to all of the comic book pros who came to the show and made time for the fans.

Comic book reviews: Nubia Queen of the Amazons

In my blog post yesterday I mentioned the recent Nubia: Queen of the Amazons four issue miniseries from DC Comics. I really wanted to take a closer look at it.

Nubia: Queen of the Amazons is written by Stephanie Williams, penciled by Alitha Martinez, inked by Mark Morales, John Livesay & Martinez, colored by Alex Guimarães and lettered by Becca Carey, with cover artwork penciled & inked by Khary Randolph and colored by Emilio Lopez.

It’s been a while since I’ve followed the Wonder Woman series regularly. I decided to get Nubia: Queen of the Amazons because it was penciled by Alitha Martinez, an artist whose work I really enjoy. Martinez has been working in comic books for over 20 years, and I really think she’s tremendously talented.

This is actually the second Nubia series Martinez has worked on with writer Stephanie Williams. The six issue Nubia & the Amazons came out last year… and I managed to completely miss it. Hopefully I’ll be able to find the collected edition soon.

Nubia is a character who has been around for nearly half a century, having been created by writer & editor Robert Kanigher and artist Don Heck in Wonder Woman #204, which was released in late 1972. In pre-Crisis continuity Nubia was Princess Diana’s long-lost fraternal twin sister. Kanigher’s writing is not what anyone would ever consider to be subtle & nuanced, to say the least. I mean, issue #204 infamously opened with Kanigher killing off a very thinly-disguised stand-in for his editorial predecessor Dorothy Woolfolk. But his introduction of Nubia did set up the idea of there being Amazons of other ethnicities. I guess that helped lay the groundwork for George Perez to introduce characters such as Philippus during his groundbreaking post-Crisis revamp of the Wonder Woman series.

Nubia only appeared a handful of times during the Bronze Age. The character was reintroduced to the DC Universe only a short time ago. In the current continuity she is the reincarnation of a warrior princess from the African island of Madagascar. While no longer Diana’s twin, the two women are close friends, and following the death of Diana’s mother Hippolyta, Nubia assumed the throne of Themyscira.

Williams does a good job with her writing, balancing the fact that her script features a large cast of characters & alludes to numerous past events while still making it accessible to readers such as myself who have not picked up the past installments.

The newly-crowned head of Themyscira travels to Brazil with her entourage to show support for environmental activists who are fighting against the destruction of the rainforests. Unfortunately this places Nubia squarely into the sights of a mysterious figure who wants her dead. At first I thought this woman, clad in armor & wearing a full metal mask, was going to turn out to be a new incarnation of old Wonder Woman adversary Doctor Cyber. But, no, this woman is actually Neser, a new character who is revealed to have ties to Nubia.

One of the distinctive aspects of Nubia: Queen of the Amazons is not only are nearly all the characters women, but the majority of them are non-white. Even longtime Justice Society member Hawkgirl is now shown to be Latina. I really appreciated that the cast was so diverse, as well as incredibly well-written. Williams does a fine job developing their different personalities.

Definitely the stand-out aspect of this miniseries was the incredible penciling by Martinez. Her layouts & storytelling on the various action sequences are genuinely animated & dynamic. She also does a very good job rendering the quieter, character-driven moments and dialogue scenes. Martinez’s depiction of Nubia is stunningly beautiful & regal.

Martinez’s line art works very well with Alex Guimarães’ rich, vivid coloring. The final page of issue #3 seen below is especially striking.

I also enjoyed Khary Randolph’s work on the covers for this miniseries. Randolph is another artist whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past. Several years ago I purchased a copy of his hardcover The Black Book which featured some very beautiful, sexy, hyper-detailed pin-up illustrations by him. I really appreciated how he was able to render women with different shapes & sizes. It definitely spoke to his versatility that, unlike some other artists, he enjoyed rendering women outside of the standard “tall, thin & big-boobed” body type you typically see in mainstream superhero comic books.

As with quite a few other DC Comics miniseries, the events of Nubia: Queen of the Amazons lead into another storyline. Unlike some other recent instances where the “endings” of various miniseries were literal cliffhangers — I’m looking at you, Justice League Incarnate #5 — here Williams manages to make Nubia: Queen of the Amazons relatively self-contained. Yes, the final issue sets the stage for upcoming events, but it still feels like a complete enough whole, as well. That was another quality of her writing I really appreciated, and it actually makes me more likely to get upcoming issues of Wonder Woman to find out what happens next.

Hawkman is now black… and that’s okay

Last month I bought the Black Adam – The Justice Society Files: Cyclone special published by DC Comics. And, yeah, that IS an unwieldy title! This is one of several comic book tie-ins to the upcoming live action Black Adam movie. I actually got it because I’m a fan of artist Maria Laura Sanapo, who does incredible work.

So I’m reading the Cyclone special, I get about halfway through, and then I come to this…

Black Adam – The Justice Society Files: Cyclone written by Cavan Scott, drawn by Maria Laura Sanapo, colored by Arif Prianto and lettered by Becca Carey

Yes, it’s Hawkman… and he’s black.

I’ll be honest: initially I did a double take. But after a moment’s surprise, I just shrugged. Hey, why not make Hawkman black?

Yes, okay, the reason he’s dark-skinned in this story is because in the Black Adam movie the character is going to be portrayed by African American actor Aldis Hodge. But, honestly, think about it for half a minute. Hawkman is the reincarnation of the ancient Egyptian monarch Prince Khufu; it makes a lot more sense for him to be depicted of African descent than as a blonde-haired white guy like was in the past. (And let’s not even go into the Silver Age version of Hawkman, who was from an entirely different planet, meaning he wasn’t even human… but he still looked like a WASP.)

Besides, anyone arguing that this isn’t “faithful” to the character is flat-out ignoring how many times Hawkman’s history has been rebooted & retconned over the past eight decades.

Black Adam – The Justice Society Files: Cyclone cover drawn & colored by Kaare Andrews

As can be seen from the above cover drawn by Kaare Andrews, Cyclone, the protagonist of this story, is also dark-skinned. Again that’s undoubtedly down to casting, as in the Black Adam movie Cyclone will be played by the bi-racial Quintessa Swindell.

I hadn’t heard of Cyclone before this, but a quick look at Wikipedia reveals that originally the character was a white girl with red hair. I think Maxine Hunkel has a sufficiently low profile, and is all-but-unknown to the general public, that changing her ethnicity is not a big deal.

Nubia #1 written by Stephanie Williams, penciled by Alitha Martinez, inked by Mark Morales, John Livesay & Alitha Martinez, colored by Alex Guimaraes and lettered by Becca Carey

I also picked up the recent four issue Nubia: Queen of the Amazons miniseries. This is another one I got for the artwork, since it’s penciled by the amazing Alitha Martinez. Hawkman’s longtime ally (and on-again, off-again romantic interest) Hawkgirl guest-stars in that story, and I see she’s now being depicted as dark-skinned. I believe her alter ego Kendra Saunders has been revealed / retconned to be of Hispanic heritage.

Oh, yes, as you no doubt gleamed from the title, the queen of the Amazons is now the very dark-skinned Nubia who is originally from Africa… Madagascar, to be precise.

Why am I bringing up all of this? Well, it’s primarily because of the God-awful kerfuffle caused by racist white people who are full anger that Ariel in the live action version of The Little Mermaid is black.

As I commented on Facebook, you must be a ridiculously insecure loser if a dark-skinned mermaid causes you to fly into a blind rage. Alternately, as my friend Mitchell Brown astutely observed:

“Remember, this isn’t about their lack of imagination, or their fragility at the thought of living in a world that doesn’t look like them. They are doing this to deny everyone who doesn’t look like them what they have taken for granted their entire lives. The last thing they want is for POC folks to feel comfortable in their own skin, to not be reminded 24/7 that they’re the “Others” in a world designed around the wants and demands of one group.”

Several years ago I did a blog post that looked at how Ben Grimm, aka the Thing from the Fantastic Four, was revealed to be Jewish, and how much it meant to me as a Jewish comic book fan. I’m going to repeat what I wrote there:

It is crucial to have diversity in pop culture. Just as I really wanted, and needed, for there to be Jewish heroes in the stories I read and watched, so too do women, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, the LGBT community and other groups want and need the same thing.

In other words, representation is vitally important. It really does matter.

Black Adam – The Justice Society Files: Hawkman written by Cavan Scott, penciled by Scot Eaton, inked by Norm Rapmund, colored by Andrew Dalhouse and lettered by Rob Leigh

And that’s why I am perfectly fine with Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Cyclone now being depicted as dark-skinned, and with the Amazons’ monarch now being African, because I recognize that there are readers, especially younger ones, who will really appreciate it, to whom it will be genuinely important.

Besides, the overwhelming majority of characters in mainstream superhero comic books are still white heterosexual Christians. No one is being “erased” or anything ridiculous like that. Fictional worlds are merely taking steps to reflect the fact that reality is actually a much more diverse place than it has previously been depicted to be in Western pop culture.

I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to do full write-ups on either Black Adam – The Justice Society Files or Nubia: Queen of the Amazons, so I’ll just say I’ve enjoyed both and recommend them.