#imprintedimage — Public Fediverse posts

Imprinted Image: Comics Link Roundup April 24

Why aren’t there more fan comics?

John Byrne, the artist behind some of the most classic X-Men stories like the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, has X-Men fan-fiction. Quite literally, he drew something like 30 issues of comics for his website under the premise “what if I never left the franchise?” Incredibly, Marvel is actually collecting and publishing this material! Beyond the Byrne of it all, however, this does make me wonder: why aren’t there more fan-fiction comics?

In Japan, for example, there is a thriving scene of doujinshi, self-published print works that often use copy-written characters. Many amateur mangaka get their start in this scene, and even professionals participate to avoid the strictures of formal publishing. The market for such works in the US is paltry, comparatively. Artists like Jeremy Hyler have done Batman fan-comics that they sell on their websites, but there aren’t major conventions like there are in Japan. Perhaps it is the difference in copyright culture in America.

I think there is something to the difference in scenes. In the US, the underground comix scene is, painting with a broad brush, positioned against the superhero comics industry. The people who go to zine fests and other self-published conventions in the US usually aren’t the same people who want to draw Spider-Man. Similarly, while you do see some “derivative” work in the webcomics space, it usually isn’t trying to do the same thing as “mainstream” comics. They’ll use superheroes, but for gag pages. Occasionally you’ll see a slice-of-life fan-fiction comic. I’m not as well-versed in this scene, but I could imagine that there is more of a priority placed on original characters and content in the US webcomic space.

Finally, drawing is incredibly time intensive. Compare it to the amount of time it takes to write fan-fiction and you could see why artists might not want to spend their limited free time on works that they don’t feel passionate about. Additionally, drawing arguably takes more time to get good at than writing. Certainly it is more readily apparent when it is “bad.” Ease of entry is one of the drivers for sharing fan-fiction, and even a small difference in difficulty could lead to a massive difference in amount shared online.

What are your thoughts? Am I even correct that there aren’t many fan-fiction comics akin to Japanese doujinshi, or have I not looked in the right spaces? Let me know in the comments!

Last week, I made a comic! It’s a two-page mini-zine, and you can read it for free here. But! If you would like a cool print version mailed you, there are two ways you can do that. Either support me on Patreon to get this and any future physical media I do, or buy it on Ko-fi for as low as $ 1.

I also have a behind the scenes video previewing the physical mini-comic, as well as some behind-the-scenes information on my inspiration.

https://youtu.be/C1938iMGzOc

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Recently I published videos on SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD, the latter of which was done in conversation with Matt Bernico of the Magnificast Podcast. Pre-order his book!

https://youtu.be/Rvi1bzgWPGU

https://youtu.be/prUm5nPHhdQ

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Disney Layoffs
Disney fired a massive number of their workers. This includes a number of people at Marvel comics, like former Head of Sales David Gabriel and 3 comics editors.

Awards
Several comics won the LA Times Book Prize, including LIFE DRAWING by Jaime Hernandez and ANGELICA by Trung Le Nguyen.

Jeopardy
Comics writer Tini Howard was on Jeopardy!

Comics, Adapted (Into New Comics)
SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN is coming to Webtoon. A number of Western, print-original comics are getting adapted into infinite-scroll digital comics. This is an interesting trend worth keeping an eye on.

Social Media Sucks
Syundei, the creator of a popular manga, GO FOR IT NAKAMURA!, was bullied off of Twitter.

Writing:

SKTCHD interviewed Rafael Albequerque on his design work for ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW and Ram V. on the new series he is writing, DECIDIUM.

Shelfdust published a David Brothers piece looking at GINGER, a pay-what-you-want comic by Victor Santos available on Panel Syndicate, Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente’s website to publish digital-first comics. They also published a piece on the history of Batman’s wealth, noting the times when it started to become a problem for the narrative.

Anime Herald published an article examining an interesting question: why aren’t there more anime and manga about marijuana?

Comic Book Herald updated his Best Superhero Comics of All Time list with his favorite superhero comics of 2026.

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: Complete Terry Moore. Kana-Manga Mini Bundle.
Similar site Digifile has a huge collection of pre-Absolute Image comics from Absolute creators.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 4/17.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 4/14. 4/17. 4/21.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 4/17. 4/24.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 4/17.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 4/11. 4/19.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 4/14. 4/21.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 4/13. 4/19.
Top March Comics from ICv2 / Circana Bookscan: Author, Manga, and Superhero Graphic Novels. Adults Graphic Novels.

BEN TEN # 1 sold 82,000 copies to comic shops. An enterprising data nerd could take that data, combine it will the charts that map sales as a percentage of the top seller, and calculate actual market size.

Image puts out their Top 10 selling comics for March.

Popverse gets in to just how many units are being sold of each issue of ABSOLUTE BATMAN. Spoiler alert – it’s more than each issue of the New 52 BATMAN was selling.

DC expands its market share over Marvel in 2026 Q1.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Julia Wertz to discuss BURY ME ALREADY and Pornsak Pichetshote about ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Charlie Adlard to talk OF THE EARTH.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 3 covering DEADPOOL, DR. STRANGE, and THE ILLUMINATI, and 2014 pt. 4, talking DAREDEVIL and the debut of MS. MARVEL. Their sister podcast EXTRA ISSUES posted to the public feed Osamu Tezuka pt 4: AYOKO and BUDDHA and to the early access Patreon feed a smattering of Don Rosa SCROOGE issues.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like a critique of the “Blind Bag” trend, a look at John Byrne’s ELSEWHEN X-Men fan comics, and his 14 favorite Graphic Novels of 2025.

COMICTROPES had a video on Spider-Man’s marriage.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Tony Fleecs (writer of STRAY DOGS and FERAL), and Curt Pires (writer of LOST FANTASY and FIREBORN)

SKTCHD published a video conversation with Chip Zdarsky.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

Imprinted Image: Why aren’t there more fan comics?

Comics Link Roundup April 24

John Byrne, the artist behind some of the most classic X-Men stories like the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, has X-Men fan-fiction. Quite literally, he drew something like 30 issues of comics for his website under the premise “what if I never left the franchise?” Incredibly, Marvel is actually collecting and publishing this material! Beyond the Byrne of it all, however, this does make me wonder: why aren’t there more fan-fiction comics?

In Japan, for example, there is a thriving scene of doujinshi, self-published print works that often use copy-written characters. Many amateur mangaka get their start in this scene, and even professionals participate to avoid the strictures of formal publishing. The market for such works in the US is paltry, comparatively. Artists like Jeremy Hyler have done Batman fan-comics that they sell on their websites, but there aren’t major conventions like there are in Japan. Perhaps it is the difference in copyright culture in America.

I think there is something to the difference in scenes. In the US, the underground comix scene is, painting with a broad brush, positioned against the superhero comics industry. The people who go to zine fests and other self-published conventions in the US usually aren’t the same people who want to draw Spider-Man. Similarly, while you do see some “derivative” work in the webcomics space, it usually isn’t trying to do the same thing as “mainstream” comics. They’ll use superheroes, but for gag pages. Occasionally you’ll see a slice-of-life fan-fiction comic. I’m not as well-versed in this scene, but I could imagine that there is more of a priority placed on original characters and content in the US webcomic space.

Finally, drawing is incredibly time intensive. Compare it to the amount of time it takes to write fan-fiction and you could see why artists might not want to spend their limited free time on works that they don’t feel passionate about. Additionally, drawing arguably takes more time to get good at than writing. Certainly it is more readily apparent when it is “bad.” Ease of entry is one of the drivers for sharing fan-fiction, and even a small difference in difficulty could lead to a massive difference in amount shared online.

What are your thoughts? Am I even correct that there aren’t many fan-fiction comics akin to Japanese doujinshi, or have I not looked in the right spaces? Let me know in the comments!

Last week, I made a comic! It’s a two-page mini-zine, and you can read it for free here. But! If you would like a cool print version mailed you, there are two ways you can do that. Either support me on Patreon to get this and any future physical media I do, or buy it on Ko-fi for as low as $ 1.

I also have a behind the scenes video previewing the physical mini-comic, as well as some behind-the-scenes information on my inspiration.

https://youtu.be/C1938iMGzOc

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Recently I published videos on SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD, the latter of which was done in conversation with Matt Bernico of the Magnificast Podcast. Pre-order his book!

https://youtu.be/Rvi1bzgWPGU

https://youtu.be/prUm5nPHhdQ

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Disney Layoffs
Disney fired a massive number of their workers. This includes a number of people at Marvel comics, like former Head of Sales David Gabriel and 3 comics editors.

Awards
Several comics won the LA Times Book Prize, including LIFE DRAWING by Jaime Hernandez and ANGELICA by Trung Le Nguyen.

Jeopardy
Comics writer Tini Howard was on Jeopardy!

Comics, Adapted (Into New Comics)
SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN is coming to Webtoon. A number of Western, print-original comics are getting adapted into infinite-scroll digital comics. This is an interesting trend worth keeping an eye on.

Social Media Sucks
Syundei, the creator of a popular manga, GO FOR IT NAKAMURA!, was bullied off of Twitter.

Writing:

SKTCHD interviewed Rafael Albequerque on his design work for ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW and Ram V. on the new series he is writing, DECIDIUM.

Shelfdust published a David Brothers piece looking at GINGER, a pay-what-you-want comic by Victor Santos available on Panel Syndicate, Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente’s website to publish digital-first comics. They also published a piece on the history of Batman’s wealth, noting the times when it started to become a problem for the narrative.

Anime Herald published an article examining an interesting question: why aren’t there more anime and manga about marijuana?

Comic Book Herald updated his Best Superhero Comics of All Time list with his favorite superhero comics of 2026.

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: Complete Terry Moore. Kana-Manga Mini Bundle.
Similar site Digifile has a huge collection of pre-Absolute Image comics from Absolute creators.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 4/17.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 4/14. 4/17. 4/21.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 4/17. 4/24.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 4/17.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 4/11. 4/19.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 4/14. 4/21.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 4/13. 4/19.
Top March Comics from ICv2 / Circana Bookscan: Author, Manga, and Superhero Graphic Novels. Adults Graphic Novels.

BEN TEN # 1 sold 82,000 copies to comic shops. An enterprising data nerd could take that data, combine it will the charts that map sales as a percentage of the top seller, and calculate actual market size.

Image puts out their Top 10 selling comics for March.

Popverse gets in to just how many units are being sold of each issue of ABSOLUTE BATMAN. Spoiler alert – it’s more than each issue of the New 52 BATMAN was selling.

DC expands its market share over Marvel in 2026 Q1.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Julia Wertz to discuss BURY ME ALREADY and Pornsak Pichetshote about ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Charlie Adlard to talk OF THE EARTH.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 3 covering DEADPOOL, DR. STRANGE, and THE ILLUMINATI, and 2014 pt. 4, talking DAREDEVIL and the debut of MS. MARVEL. Their sister podcast EXTRA ISSUES posted to the public feed Osamu Tezuka pt 4: AYOKO and BUDDHA and to the early access Patreon feed a smattering of Don Rosa SCROOGE issues.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like a critique of the “Blind Bag” trend, a look at John Byrne’s ELSEWHEN X-Men fan comics, and his 14 favorite Graphic Novels of 2025.

COMICTROPES had a video on Spider-Man’s marriage.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Tony Fleecs (writer of STRAY DOGS and FERAL), and Curt Pires (writer of LOST FANTASY and FIREBORN)

SKTCHD published a video conversation with Chip Zdarsky.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

Imprinted Image: Comics Link Roundup April 24

Why aren’t there more fan comics?

John Byrne, the artist behind some of the most classic X-Men stories like the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, has X-Men fan-fiction. Quite literally, he drew something like 30 issues of comics for his website under the premise “what if I never left the franchise?” Incredibly, Marvel is actually collecting and publishing this material! Beyond the Byrne of it all, however, this does make me wonder: why aren’t there more fan-fiction comics?

In Japan, for example, there is a thriving scene of doujinshi, self-published print works that often use copy-written characters. Many amateur mangaka get their start in this scene, and even professionals participate to avoid the strictures of formal publishing. The market for such works in the US is paltry, comparatively. Artists like Jeremy Hyler have done Batman fan-comics that they sell on their websites, but there aren’t major conventions like there are in Japan. Perhaps it is the difference in copyright culture in America.

I think there is something to the difference in scenes. In the US, the underground comix scene is, painting with a broad brush, positioned against the superhero comics industry. The people who go to zine fests and other self-published conventions in the US usually aren’t the same people who want to draw Spider-Man. Similarly, while you do see some “derivative” work in the webcomics space, it usually isn’t trying to do the same thing as “mainstream” comics. They’ll use superheroes, but for gag pages. Occasionally you’ll see a slice-of-life fan-fiction comic. I’m not as well-versed in this scene, but I could imagine that there is more of a priority placed on original characters and content in the US webcomic space.

Finally, drawing is incredibly time intensive. Compare it to the amount of time it takes to write fan-fiction and you could see why artists might not want to spend their limited free time on works that they don’t feel passionate about. Additionally, drawing arguably takes more time to get good at than writing. Certainly it is more readily apparent when it is “bad.” Ease of entry is one of the drivers for sharing fan-fiction, and even a small difference in difficulty could lead to a massive difference in amount shared online.

What are your thoughts? Am I even correct that there aren’t many fan-fiction comics akin to Japanese doujinshi, or have I not looked in the right spaces? Let me know in the comments!

Last week, I made a comic! It’s a two-page mini-zine, and you can read it for free here. But! If you would like a cool print version mailed you, there are two ways you can do that. Either support me on Patreon to get this and any future physical media I do, or buy it on Ko-fi for as low as $ 1.

I also have a behind the scenes video previewing the physical mini-comic, as well as some behind-the-scenes information on my inspiration.

https://youtu.be/C1938iMGzOc

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Recently I published videos on SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD, the latter of which was done in conversation with Matt Bernico of the Magnificast Podcast. Pre-order his book!

https://youtu.be/Rvi1bzgWPGU

https://youtu.be/prUm5nPHhdQ

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Disney Layoffs
Disney fired a massive number of their workers. This includes a number of people at Marvel comics, like former Head of Sales David Gabriel and 3 comics editors.

Awards
Several comics won the LA Times Book Prize, including LIFE DRAWING by Jaime Hernandez and ANGELICA by Trung Le Nguyen.

Jeopardy
Comics writer Tini Howard was on Jeopardy!

Comics, Adapted (Into New Comics)
SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN is coming to Webtoon. A number of Western, print-original comics are getting adapted into infinite-scroll digital comics. This is an interesting trend worth keeping an eye on.

Social Media Sucks
Syundei, the creator of a popular manga, GO FOR IT NAKAMURA!, was bullied off of Twitter.

Writing:

SKTCHD interviewed Rafael Albequerque on his design work for ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW and Ram V. on the new series he is writing, DECIDIUM.

Shelfdust published a David Brothers piece looking at GINGER, a pay-what-you-want comic by Victor Santos available on Panel Syndicate, Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente’s website to publish digital-first comics. They also published a piece on the history of Batman’s wealth, noting the times when it started to become a problem for the narrative.

Anime Herald published an article examining an interesting question: why aren’t there more anime and manga about marijuana?

Comic Book Herald updated his Best Superhero Comics of All Time list with his favorite superhero comics of 2026.

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: Complete Terry Moore. Kana-Manga Mini Bundle.
Similar site Digifile has a huge collection of pre-Absolute Image comics from Absolute creators.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 4/17.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 4/14. 4/17. 4/21.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 4/17. 4/24.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 4/17.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 4/11. 4/19.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 4/14. 4/21.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 4/13. 4/19.
Top March Comics from ICv2 / Circana Bookscan: Author, Manga, and Superhero Graphic Novels. Adults Graphic Novels.

BEN TEN # 1 sold 82,000 copies to comic shops. An enterprising data nerd could take that data, combine it will the charts that map sales as a percentage of the top seller, and calculate actual market size.

Image puts out their Top 10 selling comics for March.

Popverse gets in to just how many units are being sold of each issue of ABSOLUTE BATMAN. Spoiler alert – it’s more than each issue of the New 52 BATMAN was selling.

DC expands its market share over Marvel in 2026 Q1.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Julia Wertz to discuss BURY ME ALREADY and Pornsak Pichetshote about ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Charlie Adlard to talk OF THE EARTH.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 3 covering DEADPOOL, DR. STRANGE, and THE ILLUMINATI, and 2014 pt. 4, talking DAREDEVIL and the debut of MS. MARVEL. Their sister podcast EXTRA ISSUES posted to the public feed Osamu Tezuka pt 4: AYOKO and BUDDHA and to the early access Patreon feed a smattering of Don Rosa SCROOGE issues.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like a critique of the “Blind Bag” trend, a look at John Byrne’s ELSEWHEN X-Men fan comics, and his 14 favorite Graphic Novels of 2025.

COMICTROPES had a video on Spider-Man’s marriage.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Tony Fleecs (writer of STRAY DOGS and FERAL), and Curt Pires (writer of LOST FANTASY and FIREBORN)

SKTCHD published a video conversation with Chip Zdarsky.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

Imprinted Image: Why aren’t there more fan comics?

Comics Link Roundup April 24

John Byrne, the artist behind some of the most classic X-Men stories like the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, has X-Men fan-fiction. Quite literally, he drew something like 30 issues of comics for his website under the premise “what if I never left the franchise?” Incredibly, Marvel is actually collecting and publishing this material! Beyond the Byrne of it all, however, this does make me wonder: why aren’t there more fan-fiction comics?

In Japan, for example, there is a thriving scene of doujinshi, self-published print works that often use copy-written characters. Many amateur mangaka get their start in this scene, and even professionals participate to avoid the strictures of formal publishing. The market for such works in the US is paltry, comparatively. Artists like Jeremy Hyler have done Batman fan-comics that they sell on their websites, but there aren’t major conventions like there are in Japan. Perhaps it is the difference in copyright culture in America.

I think there is something to the difference in scenes. In the US, the underground comix scene is, painting with a broad brush, positioned against the superhero comics industry. The people who go to zine fests and other self-published conventions in the US usually aren’t the same people who want to draw Spider-Man. Similarly, while you do see some “derivative” work in the webcomics space, it usually isn’t trying to do the same thing as “mainstream” comics. They’ll use superheroes, but for gag pages. Occasionally you’ll see a slice-of-life fan-fiction comic. I’m not as well-versed in this scene, but I could imagine that there is more of a priority placed on original characters and content in the US webcomic space.

Finally, drawing is incredibly time intensive. Compare it to the amount of time it takes to write fan-fiction and you could see why artists might not want to spend their limited free time on works that they don’t feel passionate about. Additionally, drawing arguably takes more time to get good at than writing. Certainly it is more readily apparent when it is “bad.” Ease of entry is one of the drivers for sharing fan-fiction, and even a small difference in difficulty could lead to a massive difference in amount shared online.

What are your thoughts? Am I even correct that there aren’t many fan-fiction comics akin to Japanese doujinshi, or have I not looked in the right spaces? Let me know in the comments!

Last week, I made a comic! It’s a two-page mini-zine, and you can read it for free here. But! If you would like a cool print version mailed you, there are two ways you can do that. Either support me on Patreon to get this and any future physical media I do, or buy it on Ko-fi for as low as $ 1.

I also have a behind the scenes video previewing the physical mini-comic, as well as some behind-the-scenes information on my inspiration.

https://youtu.be/C1938iMGzOc

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Recently I published videos on SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD, the latter of which was done in conversation with Matt Bernico of the Magnificast Podcast. Pre-order his book!

https://youtu.be/Rvi1bzgWPGU

https://youtu.be/prUm5nPHhdQ

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Disney Layoffs
Disney fired a massive number of their workers. This includes a number of people at Marvel comics, like former Head of Sales David Gabriel and 3 comics editors.

Awards
Several comics won the LA Times Book Prize, including LIFE DRAWING by Jaime Hernandez and ANGELICA by Trung Le Nguyen.

Jeopardy
Comics writer Tini Howard was on Jeopardy!

Comics, Adapted (Into New Comics)
SOMETHING IS KILLING THE CHILDREN is coming to Webtoon. A number of Western, print-original comics are getting adapted into infinite-scroll digital comics. This is an interesting trend worth keeping an eye on.

Social Media Sucks
Syundei, the creator of a popular manga, GO FOR IT NAKAMURA!, was bullied off of Twitter.

Writing:

SKTCHD interviewed Rafael Albequerque on his design work for ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW and Ram V. on the new series he is writing, DECIDIUM.

Shelfdust published a David Brothers piece looking at GINGER, a pay-what-you-want comic by Victor Santos available on Panel Syndicate, Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente’s website to publish digital-first comics. They also published a piece on the history of Batman’s wealth, noting the times when it started to become a problem for the narrative.

Anime Herald published an article examining an interesting question: why aren’t there more anime and manga about marijuana?

Comic Book Herald updated his Best Superhero Comics of All Time list with his favorite superhero comics of 2026.

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: Complete Terry Moore. Kana-Manga Mini Bundle.
Similar site Digifile has a huge collection of pre-Absolute Image comics from Absolute creators.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 4/17.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 4/14. 4/17. 4/21.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 4/17. 4/24.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 4/17.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 4/11. 4/19.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 4/14. 4/21.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 4/13. 4/19.
Top March Comics from ICv2 / Circana Bookscan: Author, Manga, and Superhero Graphic Novels. Adults Graphic Novels.

BEN TEN # 1 sold 82,000 copies to comic shops. An enterprising data nerd could take that data, combine it will the charts that map sales as a percentage of the top seller, and calculate actual market size.

Image puts out their Top 10 selling comics for March.

Popverse gets in to just how many units are being sold of each issue of ABSOLUTE BATMAN. Spoiler alert – it’s more than each issue of the New 52 BATMAN was selling.

DC expands its market share over Marvel in 2026 Q1.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Julia Wertz to discuss BURY ME ALREADY and Pornsak Pichetshote about ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Charlie Adlard to talk OF THE EARTH.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 3 covering DEADPOOL, DR. STRANGE, and THE ILLUMINATI, and 2014 pt. 4, talking DAREDEVIL and the debut of MS. MARVEL. Their sister podcast EXTRA ISSUES posted to the public feed Osamu Tezuka pt 4: AYOKO and BUDDHA and to the early access Patreon feed a smattering of Don Rosa SCROOGE issues.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like a critique of the “Blind Bag” trend, a look at John Byrne’s ELSEWHEN X-Men fan comics, and his 14 favorite Graphic Novels of 2025.

COMICTROPES had a video on Spider-Man’s marriage.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Tony Fleecs (writer of STRAY DOGS and FERAL), and Curt Pires (writer of LOST FANTASY and FIREBORN)

SKTCHD published a video conversation with Chip Zdarsky.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about SIN CITY and JACK KIRBY’S FOURTH WORLD.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

I made a comic!

Imprinted Image: Comics Link Roundup April 17

You read that right, folks. I made a comic! It’s a two-page mini-zine, and you can read it for free below this text. But! If you would like a cool print version mailed you, there are two ways you can do that. Either support me on Patreon to get this and any future physical media I do, or buy it on Ko-fi for as low as $ 1.

And I also have a behind the scenes video previewing the physical mini-comic, as well as some behind-the-scenes information on my inspiration.

https://youtu.be/C1938iMGzOc

All that aside, let’s get on with the usual fare. The links in this are only up to date from last Friday, April 10. The links for this week will be included in a newsletter next week.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Last week I published a video on WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP from Japan and Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s UMBRELLA ACADEMY.

https://youtu.be/wJf0fEMr754

https://youtu.be/wRdEw5r9bzw

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Comics, Making Real News
The Hollywood Reporter had a piece on the Rise of the Superstar Artists. They compare it directly to the ’90s, when a number of artists like Todd MacFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and more could seemingly do no wrong sales-wise, which lead to the creation of Image Comics. The Beat has some thoughts as to what this all could portend.

The Diamond Bankruptcy Saga Continues
The court has denied publishers the motion to recover the books that Diamond held on consignment.

Indie Comics Library
New archive just dropped. This one is a searchable archive of independent comic creators, with a focus on Black creators.

A Heist
Over 100 pieces of original art were stolen from the house of Mark Evanier. If you see any of these pieces showing up on the art market, report it to the proper authorities.

Do You Like Discourse?
It was a slow news week, so discourse it is. The Beat has the writeup, because of course they do. Rob Liefeld seemingly dissed the Bendis and Bagley ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, calling it a new coat of paint over the Lee / Ditko era, and Alan Moore says that comics are no longer for the working class, but for the middle class, to their detriment. I disagree with MacDonalds’ assessment that Moore isn’t responding to the comics market as it exists. Sure, over the past 9 months, DC and other companies have started putting out cheap collections of their back issues, Marvel and DC have digital subscriptions, and libraries are free. But new comics are $5 a month for 20 pages of material. It has almost never been a worse economic proposition to buy a comic magazine than right now.

Writing:

SKTCHD wrote a breakdown of what happens when a comic becomes a speculator hit from the perspective of the creators and an analysis of which comic book characters would survive and thrive on THE PITT. They also published an interview with Eric Harburn of TinyOnion and one with Hunter Gorinson of ONI Press.

Shelfdust continued their Year of Evil looking at The Black Hand‘s first appearance. They also published an essay on the manga SMOKING IN THE SUPERMARKET WITH YOU.

Comic Book Herald published Dave’s Favorite Graphic Novels of March 2026, as well as reading orders for DC’s Absolute Universe and Marvel’s summer event ARMAGEDDON, both of which will be updated as the comics actually come out.

Several sites have roundups of crowdfunded comics projects you may be interested in backing! The Beat (Twice). Graphic Policy (Twice) (Thrice!)(Okay, are they doing this every day?)(Yeah, seems pretty often).

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: All of THE BOYS. Classic Valiant.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 3/27. 4/10.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 3/31. 4/3. 4/7. 4/10.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 4/3. 4/10.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 3/27. 4/3. 4/10.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 3/29. 4/4.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 3/31. 4/7.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 3/31. 4/5.
Top March Comics from ICv2 / ComicHub: Top 20 Graphic Novels. Top 50 Comics.

The Beat reports that Circana Bookscan data shows that Graphic Novel sales to bookstores were up 28.5% in Q1 of 2026.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Faith Erin Hicks to talk about her graphic novel INBETWEENS and Tiffany Babb to discuss her Kickstarter for a comics criticism zine.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Matthew Rosenberg to chat about taking over SPAWN and his original comic IF DESTRUCTION BE OUR LOT.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 2 covering Jason Aaron’s continuing Thor era and the ORIGINAL SIN comic and event, as well as 2014 Variant B talking the first few episodes of DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN season 2.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a video on MOOMIN. He also has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like

COMICTROPES had a video thinking through if it was a mistake to tell Wolverine’s origin story.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Christian Ward all the way in the UK.

SKTCHD published a video asking Matthew Rosenberg, Pornsak Pichetshote, and Gregg Katzman what their Four Favorite comics are.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP and UMBRELLA ACADEMY.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

I made a comic!

Imprinted Image: Comics Link Roundup April 17

You read that right, folks. I made a comic! It’s a two-page mini-zine, and you can read it for free below this text. But! If you would like a cool print version mailed you, there are two ways you can do that. Either support me on Patreon to get this and any future physical media I do, or buy it on Ko-fi for as low as $ 1.

And I also have a behind the scenes video previewing the physical mini-comic, as well as some behind-the-scenes information on my inspiration.

https://youtu.be/C1938iMGzOc

All that aside, let’s get on with the usual fare. The links in this are only up to date from last Friday, April 10. The links for this week will be included in a newsletter next week.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Last week I published a video on WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP from Japan and Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s UMBRELLA ACADEMY.

https://youtu.be/wJf0fEMr754

https://youtu.be/wRdEw5r9bzw

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Comics, Making Real News
The Hollywood Reporter had a piece on the Rise of the Superstar Artists. They compare it directly to the ’90s, when a number of artists like Todd MacFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and more could seemingly do no wrong sales-wise, which lead to the creation of Image Comics. The Beat has some thoughts as to what this all could portend.

The Diamond Bankruptcy Saga Continues
The court has denied publishers the motion to recover the books that Diamond held on consignment.

Indie Comics Library
New archive just dropped. This one is a searchable archive of independent comic creators, with a focus on Black creators.

A Heist
Over 100 pieces of original art were stolen from the house of Mark Evanier. If you see any of these pieces showing up on the art market, report it to the proper authorities.

Do You Like Discourse?
It was a slow news week, so discourse it is. The Beat has the writeup, because of course they do. Rob Liefeld seemingly dissed the Bendis and Bagley ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, calling it a new coat of paint over the Lee / Ditko era, and Alan Moore says that comics are no longer for the working class, but for the middle class, to their detriment. I disagree with MacDonalds’ assessment that Moore isn’t responding to the comics market as it exists. Sure, over the past 9 months, DC and other companies have started putting out cheap collections of their back issues, Marvel and DC have digital subscriptions, and libraries are free. But new comics are $5 a month for 20 pages of material. It has almost never been a worse economic proposition to buy a comic magazine than right now.

Writing:

SKTCHD wrote a breakdown of what happens when a comic becomes a speculator hit from the perspective of the creators and an analysis of which comic book characters would survive and thrive on THE PITT. They also published an interview with Eric Harburn of TinyOnion and one with Hunter Gorinson of ONI Press.

Shelfdust continued their Year of Evil looking at The Black Hand‘s first appearance. They also published an essay on the manga SMOKING IN THE SUPERMARKET WITH YOU.

Comic Book Herald published Dave’s Favorite Graphic Novels of March 2026, as well as reading orders for DC’s Absolute Universe and Marvel’s summer event ARMAGEDDON, both of which will be updated as the comics actually come out.

Several sites have roundups of crowdfunded comics projects you may be interested in backing! The Beat (Twice). Graphic Policy (Twice) (Thrice!)(Okay, are they doing this every day?)(Yeah, seems pretty often).

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: All of THE BOYS. Classic Valiant.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 3/27. 4/10.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 3/31. 4/3. 4/7. 4/10.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 4/3. 4/10.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 3/27. 4/3. 4/10.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 3/29. 4/4.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 3/31. 4/7.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 3/31. 4/5.
Top March Comics from ICv2 / ComicHub: Top 20 Graphic Novels. Top 50 Comics.

The Beat reports that Circana Bookscan data shows that Graphic Novel sales to bookstores were up 28.5% in Q1 of 2026.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Faith Erin Hicks to talk about her graphic novel INBETWEENS and Tiffany Babb to discuss her Kickstarter for a comics criticism zine.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Matthew Rosenberg to chat about taking over SPAWN and his original comic IF DESTRUCTION BE OUR LOT.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 2 covering Jason Aaron’s continuing Thor era and the ORIGINAL SIN comic and event, as well as 2014 Variant B talking the first few episodes of DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN season 2.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a video on MOOMIN. He also has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like

COMICTROPES had a video thinking through if it was a mistake to tell Wolverine’s origin story.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Christian Ward all the way in the UK.

SKTCHD published a video asking Matthew Rosenberg, Pornsak Pichetshote, and Gregg Katzman what their Four Favorite comics are.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP and UMBRELLA ACADEMY.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

I made a comic!

Imprinted Image: Comics Link Roundup April 17

You read that right, folks. I made a comic! It’s a two-page mini-zine, and you can read it for free below this text. But! If you would like a cool print version mailed you, there are two ways you can do that. Either support me on Patreon to get this and any future physical media I do, or buy it on Ko-fi for as low as $ 1.

And I also have a behind the scenes video previewing the physical mini-comic, as well as some behind-the-scenes information on my inspiration.

https://youtu.be/C1938iMGzOc

All that aside, let’s get on with the usual fare. The links in this are only up to date from last Friday, April 10. The links for this week will be included in a newsletter next week.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Last week I published a video on WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP from Japan and Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s UMBRELLA ACADEMY.

https://youtu.be/wJf0fEMr754

https://youtu.be/wRdEw5r9bzw

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Comics, Making Real News
The Hollywood Reporter had a piece on the Rise of the Superstar Artists. They compare it directly to the ’90s, when a number of artists like Todd MacFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and more could seemingly do no wrong sales-wise, which lead to the creation of Image Comics. The Beat has some thoughts as to what this all could portend.

The Diamond Bankruptcy Saga Continues
The court has denied publishers the motion to recover the books that Diamond held on consignment.

Indie Comics Library
New archive just dropped. This one is a searchable archive of independent comic creators, with a focus on Black creators.

A Heist
Over 100 pieces of original art were stolen from the house of Mark Evanier. If you see any of these pieces showing up on the art market, report it to the proper authorities.

Do You Like Discourse?
It was a slow news week, so discourse it is. The Beat has the writeup, because of course they do. Rob Liefeld seemingly dissed the Bendis and Bagley ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, calling it a new coat of paint over the Lee / Ditko era, and Alan Moore says that comics are no longer for the working class, but for the middle class, to their detriment. I disagree with MacDonalds’ assessment that Moore isn’t responding to the comics market as it exists. Sure, over the past 9 months, DC and other companies have started putting out cheap collections of their back issues, Marvel and DC have digital subscriptions, and libraries are free. But new comics are $5 a month for 20 pages of material. It has almost never been a worse economic proposition to buy a comic magazine than right now.

Writing:

SKTCHD wrote a breakdown of what happens when a comic becomes a speculator hit from the perspective of the creators and an analysis of which comic book characters would survive and thrive on THE PITT. They also published an interview with Eric Harburn of TinyOnion and one with Hunter Gorinson of ONI Press.

Shelfdust continued their Year of Evil looking at The Black Hand‘s first appearance. They also published an essay on the manga SMOKING IN THE SUPERMARKET WITH YOU.

Comic Book Herald published Dave’s Favorite Graphic Novels of March 2026, as well as reading orders for DC’s Absolute Universe and Marvel’s summer event ARMAGEDDON, both of which will be updated as the comics actually come out.

Several sites have roundups of crowdfunded comics projects you may be interested in backing! The Beat (Twice). Graphic Policy (Twice) (Thrice!)(Okay, are they doing this every day?)(Yeah, seems pretty often).

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: All of THE BOYS. Classic Valiant.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 3/27. 4/10.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 3/31. 4/3. 4/7. 4/10.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 4/3. 4/10.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 3/27. 4/3. 4/10.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 3/29. 4/4.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 3/31. 4/7.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 3/31. 4/5.
Top March Comics from ICv2 / ComicHub: Top 20 Graphic Novels. Top 50 Comics.

The Beat reports that Circana Bookscan data shows that Graphic Novel sales to bookstores were up 28.5% in Q1 of 2026.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Faith Erin Hicks to talk about her graphic novel INBETWEENS and Tiffany Babb to discuss her Kickstarter for a comics criticism zine.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Matthew Rosenberg to chat about taking over SPAWN and his original comic IF DESTRUCTION BE OUR LOT.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 2 covering Jason Aaron’s continuing Thor era and the ORIGINAL SIN comic and event, as well as 2014 Variant B talking the first few episodes of DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN season 2.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a video on MOOMIN. He also has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like

COMICTROPES had a video thinking through if it was a mistake to tell Wolverine’s origin story.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Christian Ward all the way in the UK.

SKTCHD published a video asking Matthew Rosenberg, Pornsak Pichetshote, and Gregg Katzman what their Four Favorite comics are.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP and UMBRELLA ACADEMY.

• WordPress
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• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

Imprinted Image: Comics Link Roundup March 27

Let’s do writers versus artists discourse again!

Spurred on by a controversy around the new Nebula Award for Best Comics, which only credits the writer of the comic, we’ve been getting another round of writer versus artist discourse. While I’m not interested in relitigating the particulars of the conflict (my general take is that artists are more important, given that this is an artistic medium, but writers are also important), I do think certain elements of the comic creation process could be clarified. Consider this an intervention and a plea for better discourse.

First and foremost, I want to argue that the roles of “writer” and “artist” are not as neatly binary as many like to present them. Even with a script that has Alan Moore’s level of detail and specificity, the artist is not merely illustrating the concept from the writer’s brain. Artists aren’t an AI image generator that you prompt. Rather, they are more akin to a translator. They process the script and then translate it into a visual image. And just as translation can never be one-to-one, the artistic process will never be a one-to-one adaptation of a script. I’ve heard this is even true when an artist is writing their own script! They’ll discover certain things do or don’t work only once pen is put to page. The artist is, in a very literal sense, “writing” the comic but with pictures instead of words. They can, through the composition, framing, detailing, colors, and every other choice they make, give importance to certain story elements, downplay others, and control the pacing.

Secondly, because of this blurring of who actually “writes” a comic, giving credit to only the writer is inherently fraught. Unless you are reading the actual script for the comic, it is impossible to know exactly who came up with what idea (idea being a stand-in for story beats, character moments, dialog, anything really). There are many examples in which an artist adds something to the story to make it work better. Further, the collaborative nature of storytelling complicates that further. An artist might, in reading the script, be inspired to do something in a manner unexpected by the writer. This might then inspire the writer to add something that they never would have been able to come up with on their own. And so on and so on. This is why Kieron Gillen once wrote about the “faux-cartoonist”, when the writer and artist are collaborating so tightly that the comic might have been composed by a single person.

Enough of that.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Last week I published a video on TBO from Spain, and I’m late uploading it but soon I’ll have a video on WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP from Japan.

https://youtu.be/IuuAvkzpNQI

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Artist Sam Kieth passes
Sam Kieth passed away last week. He was met with widespread appreciation of his work, from bloggers, The Beat, other creators, and his former boss Jim Lee.

Boom Restructuring
Penguin Random House is restructuring Boom, the comics company they purchased. This includes a number of layoffs.

New Comic Awards
For the first time, the Nebula Awards are giving an award for Best Comic. Their rollout didn’t come without controversy, as they only credited the writers of the comic, even though the award is not for Best Comic Writer but rather Best Comic.

What’s Up with Digital Comics?
GlobalComix is making moves. They have secured a new round of venture capital, hired a new CEO, and acquired INKR, a manga platform that includes a suite of AI translations, though they have reversed their prior policy and now do not allow fully AI generated comics. Beanstack acquired Comics Plus, an app for reading comics with your library card, to form the Joyful Reading Co. Webtoon is trying to expand their independent creator services, including AI translation. The Beat has an overview of the digital comics landscape as it stands today.

Silver Sprocket, No Longer In Person
I was lucky enough to visit Silver Sprocket’s storefront in San Francisco a couple years ago. It was a really cool space that had tons of original and unique comics, from zines to titles they published. Now, while still publishing original works and selling online, they are closing their physical storefront.

Writing:

SKTCHD wrote How to Sell Comics from a retailer’s perspective and a Double Take column with critic Oliver Sava looking at Mike Mignola’s new From Lands Unknown universe.

Shelfdust had a number of interesting articles. One on Alan Moore / Jacen Burrows’ PROVIDENCE and Iron Man comics’ relationship to Vietnam.

Zack Quaintaince has a new series at The Beat where he looks at self-published comics. This edition, he’s writing about THE JUMP.

How To Love Comics has a great explainer of how comic book solicitations work and a Jim Starlin Thanos reading order.

The Comics Beat has a list of crowdfunding projects (and another!) you may be interested in backing.

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: Love and Rockets. Joe Hill comics. DC Vertigo. Indie Comics.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 3/20.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 3/17. 3/20. 3/24. 3/27.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 3/20. 3/27.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 3/20.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 3/22.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 3/17. 3/24.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 3/23.
Top 20 February Graphic Novels from ICv2 / Circana: Author, Manga, and Superhero. Adult.

ABSOLUTE BATMAN is selling over 300,000 copies of the first printing of each new issue, month in and month out. That may partially come from retailer-exclusive variant covers, a popular trend from the bast decade.

IDW is a publicly traded company and thus we get more of an insight into their finances than many others. They have returned to profitability, but at the expense of comic book creator’s salaries.

A number of Image comics titles have been getting a major sales boost, atypical for existing series.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Scottie Young to discuss LOBO # 1 and Aditya Bidikar to discuss IN YOUR SKIN # 1.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Lorenzo Di Felici to discuss his upcoming series RED ROOTS, as well as past work on VOID RIVALS and OBLIVION SONG.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted a special edition look at John Byrne’s ELSEWHEN X-Men fan comics and 2014 pt 1, covering the end of SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN and the continuing Hickman AVENGERS era.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like his love of Lynda Barry’s comics, a look at recent bookstore sales numbers, and a retrospective on Sam Keith’s career.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Tyler Boss and Nick Dragotta.

SKTCHD published Four Favorites with Patrick Horvath, Tiffany Babb, and Tony Fleecs and the third Chip Chat with Chip Zdarsky.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about TBO.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.

Imprinted Image: Comics Link Roundup March 27

Let’s do writers versus artists discourse again!

Spurred on by a controversy around the new Nebula Award for Best Comics, which only credits the writer of the comic, we’ve been getting another round of writer versus artist discourse. While I’m not interested in relitigating the particulars of the conflict (my general take is that artists are more important, given that this is an artistic medium, but writers are also important), I do think certain elements of the comic creation process could be clarified. Consider this an intervention and a plea for better discourse.

First and foremost, I want to argue that the roles of “writer” and “artist” are not as neatly binary as many like to present them. Even with a script that has Alan Moore’s level of detail and specificity, the artist is not merely illustrating the concept from the writer’s brain. Artists aren’t an AI image generator that you prompt. Rather, they are more akin to a translator. They process the script and then translate it into a visual image. And just as translation can never be one-to-one, the artistic process will never be a one-to-one adaptation of a script. I’ve heard this is even true when an artist is writing their own script! They’ll discover certain things do or don’t work only once pen is put to page. The artist is, in a very literal sense, “writing” the comic but with pictures instead of words. They can, through the composition, framing, detailing, colors, and every other choice they make, give importance to certain story elements, downplay others, and control the pacing.

Secondly, because of this blurring of who actually “writes” a comic, giving credit to only the writer is inherently fraught. Unless you are reading the actual script for the comic, it is impossible to know exactly who came up with what idea (idea being a stand-in for story beats, character moments, dialog, anything really). There are many examples in which an artist adds something to the story to make it work better. Further, the collaborative nature of storytelling complicates that further. An artist might, in reading the script, be inspired to do something in a manner unexpected by the writer. This might then inspire the writer to add something that they never would have been able to come up with on their own. And so on and so on. This is why Kieron Gillen once wrote about the “faux-cartoonist”, when the writer and artist are collaborating so tightly that the comic might have been composed by a single person.

Enough of that.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my semi-weekly comics newsletter. If this is your first time, welcome! This is the best way to keep up with my comics blog. After links to my most recent writing, I’ll provide a roundup of comics industry links. This can be news, media, criticism, or anything that I personally found interesting.

Please don’t forget about the resources tab on this website. It’s a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.

Divining Comics is sponsored by readers like you

I have a Patreon! For as little as $3 a month, you can keep the lights on at this blog and get your name at the bottom of every article. At higher tiers, you can vote in monthly Patreon polls and more! Anything you can offer means the world to me, and I cherish all my supporters.

Comics Challenge YouTube

I designed and am participating in a comics challenge this year, alongside some friends in the My Marvelous Year community. I have picked 52 comics from 52 categories, shown below. I’d love for you to participate and comment along as you are reading! Note that on this list, categories that match with episodes from the Extra Issues podcast.

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey! MAGAZINE MARCH has almost concluded. Last week I published a video on TBO from Spain, and I’m late uploading it but soon I’ll have a video on WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP from Japan.

https://youtu.be/IuuAvkzpNQI

I’ve also been doing little shorts where I poorly read a scene I liked from these comics. I guess shortform video gets juiced in the algorithm because they have been blowing up. You can check out the playlist of them here.

It would mean the world to me if, in addition to watching this video, you subscribed to my channel and gave the video a like. No one knows exactly how the black box of social media algorithms work, but I do know that if you interact with the video in different ways, YouTube might show it to more people who would be interested. The other easy way you can help is by sharing this video with a comic fan in your life!

Link Roundup

News:

Artist Sam Kieth passes
Sam Kieth passed away last week. He was met with widespread appreciation of his work, from bloggers, The Beat, other creators, and his former boss Jim Lee.

Boom Restructuring
Penguin Random House is restructuring Boom, the comics company they purchased. This includes a number of layoffs.

New Comic Awards
For the first time, the Nebula Awards are giving an award for Best Comic. Their rollout didn’t come without controversy, as they only credited the writers of the comic, even though the award is not for Best Comic Writer but rather Best Comic.

What’s Up with Digital Comics?
GlobalComix is making moves. They have secured a new round of venture capital, hired a new CEO, and acquired INKR, a manga platform that includes a suite of AI translations, though they have reversed their prior policy and now do not allow fully AI generated comics. Beanstack acquired Comics Plus, an app for reading comics with your library card, to form the Joyful Reading Co. Webtoon is trying to expand their independent creator services, including AI translation. The Beat has an overview of the digital comics landscape as it stands today.

Silver Sprocket, No Longer In Person
I was lucky enough to visit Silver Sprocket’s storefront in San Francisco a couple years ago. It was a really cool space that had tons of original and unique comics, from zines to titles they published. Now, while still publishing original works and selling online, they are closing their physical storefront.

Writing:

SKTCHD wrote How to Sell Comics from a retailer’s perspective and a Double Take column with critic Oliver Sava looking at Mike Mignola’s new From Lands Unknown universe.

Shelfdust had a number of interesting articles. One on Alan Moore / Jacen Burrows’ PROVIDENCE and Iron Man comics’ relationship to Vietnam.

Zack Quaintaince has a new series at The Beat where he looks at self-published comics. This edition, he’s writing about THE JUMP.

How To Love Comics has a great explainer of how comic book solicitations work and a Jim Starlin Thanos reading order.

The Comics Beat has a list of crowdfunding projects (and another!) you may be interested in backing.

Humble Bundle has a few packs of digital comics you can buy for cheap: Love and Rockets. Joe Hill comics. DC Vertigo. Indie Comics.

Other News Roundups:

SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 3/20.
Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 3/17. 3/20. 3/24. 3/27.
The Comics Journal’s weekly links to New, Reviews, and Interviews: 3/20. 3/27.

Very Limited Data Bestseller Lists from the past few weeks:

Weekly Top 400 Bestseller List from Prana / Comic Shop Assistant: 3/20.
Weekly Bestseller List from Bleeding Cool / ComicHub: 3/22.

Weekly “Hottest Comics” from Bleeding Cool / Covrprice: 3/17. 3/24.
Most Anticipated Comics from Bleeding Cool / League of Comic Geeks: 3/23.
Top 20 February Graphic Novels from ICv2 / Circana: Author, Manga, and Superhero. Adult.

ABSOLUTE BATMAN is selling over 300,000 copies of the first printing of each new issue, month in and month out. That may partially come from retailer-exclusive variant covers, a popular trend from the bast decade.

IDW is a publicly traded company and thus we get more of an insight into their finances than many others. They have returned to profitability, but at the expense of comic book creator’s salaries.

A number of Image comics titles have been getting a major sales boost, atypical for existing series.

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Scottie Young to discuss LOBO # 1 and Aditya Bidikar to discuss IN YOUR SKIN # 1.

LET’S TALK COMICS had on Lorenzo Di Felici to discuss his upcoming series RED ROOTS, as well as past work on VOID RIVALS and OBLIVION SONG.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted a special edition look at John Byrne’s ELSEWHEN X-Men fan comics and 2014 pt 1, covering the end of SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN and the continuing Hickman AVENGERS era.

YouTube:

MATTTT (that’s Matt with 4 Ts) has a new channel, MATTTTTTTT (Matt with 8 Ts) where he posts more casual videos, like his love of Lynda Barry’s comics, a look at recent bookstore sales numbers, and a retrospective on Sam Keith’s career.

COMICBOOK COUPLE’S COUNSELING continued season 2 of their miniseries “The Stacks,” where they have industry people select comics to talk about from the shelves of Third Eye Comics, like the Criterion Closet, with Tyler Boss and Nick Dragotta.

SKTCHD published Four Favorites with Patrick Horvath, Tiffany Babb, and Tony Fleecs and the third Chip Chat with Chip Zdarsky.

What the hell, I’ll plug my YouTube again. Watch me talk about TBO.

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.

Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.

If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Follow me on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.