#marvel-comics — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Curt Johnson - Indie Genius @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 10:34 UTC

Movie TV Tech Geeks #BooksandComicsNews #MarvelComics #Marvel Marvel Just Raised a Huge Question About Spider-Man 2099 http://dlvr.it/TTrhrK

#marvel #marvelcomics #booksandcomicsnews

Curt Johnson - Indie Genius @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 10:34 UTC

Movie TV Tech Geeks #BooksandComicsNews #MarvelComics #Marvel Marvel Just Raised a Huge Question About Spider-Man 2099 http://dlvr.it/TTrhrK

#booksandcomicsnews #marvelcomics #marvel

Curt Johnson - Indie Genius @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 09:37 UTC

Movie TV Tech Geeks #BooksandComicsNews #MarvelComics #Superhero Marvel’s Wildest Crossover Arrives This Week http://dlvr.it/TTrfP4

#booksandcomicsnews #marvelcomics #superhero

Curt Johnson - Indie Genius @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 09:36 UTC

Movie TV Tech Geeks #BooksandComicsNews #MarvelComics #Marvel Marvel Has Officially Turned Deadpool’s Greatest Power Against Him in the Grossest Way Possible http://dlvr.it/TTrfNc

#marvel #marvelcomics #booksandcomicsnews

Curt Johnson - Indie Genius @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 09:36 UTC

Movie TV Tech Geeks #BooksandComicsNews #MarvelComics #Marvel Marvel Has Officially Turned Deadpool’s Greatest Power Against Him in the Grossest Way Possible http://dlvr.it/TTrfNc

#booksandcomicsnews #marvelcomics #marvel

comic book addicts @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 04:47 UTC

CGC Mail Call: Red Wolf #1 Returns With a 9.2 Universal Grade and White Pages https://comicbookaddicts.com/2026/08/red-wolf-1-cgc-9-2-marvel-comics/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #ComicBooks #RedWolf #CGC #MarvelComics #Collectibles

#cgc #marvelcomics #collectibles #comicbooks #redwolf

comic book addicts @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 04:47 UTC

Monday Throwback: The Transformers #41 “Totaled!” Put Grimlock and Blaster on a Collision Course https://comicbookaddicts.com/2026/08/transformers-41-totaled-marvel-comics-monday-throwback/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #Transformers #Comics #MarvelComics #Grimlock #Blaster

#blaster #grimlock #marvelcomics #comics #transformers

comic book addicts @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 04:47 UTC

Monday Throwback: The Transformers #41 “Totaled!” Put Grimlock and Blaster on a Collision Course https://comicbookaddicts.com/2026/08/transformers-41-totaled-marvel-comics-monday-throwback/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #Transformers #Comics #MarvelComics #Grimlock #Blaster

#transformers #comics #marvelcomics #grimlock #blaster

Curt Johnson - Indie Genius @[email protected] · 2026-08-04 · 02:02 UTC

Movie TV Tech Geeks #BooksandComicsNews #SpiderMan #MarvelComics 60 Years Later, Mary Jane Is Finally Stepping Out of Spider-Man’s Shadow http://dlvr.it/TTrP4F

#booksandcomicsnews #spiderman #marvelcomics

Master Galengeist @[email protected] · 2026-08-03 · 21:43 UTC

Here is my Review of Thor #13 2025 w/ Spoilers: https://youtu.be/v5-flBnVjl8 #Thor #Marvel #Comics #MarvelComics #Review

#thor #marvel #comics #marvelcomics #review

Master Galengeist @[email protected] · 2026-08-03 · 21:43 UTC

Here is my Review of Thor #13 2025 w/ Spoilers: https://youtu.be/v5-flBnVjl8 #Thor #Marvel #Comics #MarvelComics #Review

#review #marvelcomics #comics #marvel #thor

Italia @[email protected] · 2026-08-03 · 08:21 UTC

https://www.europesays.com/it/615255/ Da oggi con il 100% di polpa di fumetto: Spider-Man Brand New Day #Avengers:Doomsday #Avengers:Endgame #Avengers:SecretWars #BrandNewDay #cinefumetto #Entertainment #eternals #film #FrankCastle #Intrattenimento #IT #Italia #Italy #JeanGrey #LFerragni #MarvelCinematicUniverse #MarvelComics #MCU #Movies #PeterParker #Punisher #recensioni #SpiderMan #SpiderMan:BrandNewDay #Thunderbolts #TomHolland #UomoRagno #zendaya

#zendaya #uomoragno #tomholland #thunderbolts #spiderman #recensioni

Divining Comics @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 19:26 UTC

Imprinted Image: Marvel’s New Editor In Chief

Comics Link Roundup August 2

A few week’s ago, Marvel dropped bombshell news. Technically, it was two announcements. They were moving their offices from New York City to Burbank, California, and they hired Stephen Wacker as the new Editor-in-Chief. Now that the immediate shock has worn off, let’s dig in to the news a little bit, starting with the former.

Stephen Wacker seems to be a great choice for EiC. The previous head, C.B. Cebulski, was dogged by his controversial usage of an Asian pen name and persona in the early 2000s and by a line of comics that needed a shot in the arm. With the advent of DC’s Absolute line and their All-In initiative, Marvel has consistently fallen behind DC in sales for multiple months for the first time in decades, if ever. The good Marvel comics felt like islands in the morass of mere “content.” Something new has been needed for a few years now.

Enter Wacker. Aside from the reaction to his promotion being near-universal acclaim from the creators that have worked with him, there are several signs of positivity. First and foremost is his record as editor. In the 2010s, Marvel took a number of big risks on new characters, specific visions, and interesting creators that felt outside of the typical Marvel fare. If you ask someone today what some of the best Marvel comics since the year 2000 are, you’ll hear titles like HAWKEYE (Fraction/Aja), CAPTAIN MARVEL (Deconnick/Soy/Andrade/Lopez), MS. MARVEL (Wilson/Alphona), and DAREDEVIL (Waid/Samnee), all of which were edited by Stephen Wacker. He took chances approving unique stories and was rewarded with commercially and critically sucessful comics. Wacker also edited comics with insane turnarounds that required complicated managing, like 52 and the Brand New Day era of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

Another hopeful sign is his experience working with the TV and Film side of Marvel. As I’ll talk more about in a bit, there seems to be more integration between the MCU and Marvel comics coming down the pipeline. I’m generally not a fan of this. The best case scenario is changes in tone and small details to align comic characters to their newly-popular screen counterparts, like happened when Tony Stark became snarkier and grew Robert Downey Junior’s facial hair, or when Star-Lord became snarkier and his hair color changed to match Chris Pratt’s. A bigger problem is when more major changes are made to the character, like Kamala Khan being killed and resurrected as a mutant, getting light beam powers when G. Willow Wilson explicitly gave her a more body-based powerset to buck the trend of most women superheroes. At its worst, comic and broader media integration led to Marvel comics underserving the X-Men and even not publishing Fantastic Four comics because the film rights were owned by a different company.

As a publisher, the first job of Marvel comics should be to make good comics. Aligning characters with their televisual counterparts serves a short-term goal at the expense of long-term health. Wacker, as someone who has worked both sides and seems to have maintained his editorial skill, seems uniquely suited to navigate this challenge. Perhaps this is me being hopeful. But I can’t think of many other people in comics with the resume to balance the interests of both the MCU and comics sides of things

The reason I suspect there will be a push to integrate these two interests is the second piece of news I mentioned, the move to Burbank. Aside from any corporate synergy, there is a very obvious drawback to such a move. It is a way to cut staff without engaging in layoffs. Even if everyone currently working at Marvel in NYC was offered their same job in LA, a number of them would not want to uproot their families for a cross-country relocation. Some of these people, like editor Will Moss, have been delivering consistently good work for a decade or more at this point. This is sad enough, and my heart goes out to the workers needing to make tough decisions. In addition to brain drain, the move itself also could create a blip in quality. Even in our largely digital age, where hybrid or work from home arrangements have been possible for years now, this will disrupt Marvel’s output for a bit. The comics might suffer for a period, even with the best of intentions and planning.

All this to say, there is much to be excited about in the future of Marvel comics and also much still up in the air. Comics are a land of contrasts and Merriam-Webster defines “hack” as “Stephen ending his thoughts like this because he can’t think of anything better.”

Anyways.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my 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.

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

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.

Support Divining Comics on Patreon

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.

Comic Challenge Extra Issues Edition 2026 Download

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey!

The past few weeks, I read THE SMURFS, ASTERIX AND OBELIX, and BLAKE AND MORTIMER. I need to move on from older French comics soon or I’ll go mad.

https://youtu.be/IPGUeJCd3pc?si=6wdjVkjqim_3kog-

https://youtu.be/fPjAyWKugTg?si=G-773P4p4x6BoyWc

https://youtu.be/pFtuXFTVTqE?si=4FdYw4J3kZmpuqGe

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:

The Eisner Awards!
This year’s winners of the Eisner Awards, one of comics’ most prestigious awards, were announced at San Diego Comic Con. There are a lot of good books this year, and not as many controversial picks as there were some previous years. There was one issue, however. The award winners were posted a couple of days early. They didn’t leak. The Eisner website posted the official list early on accident.

Trouble Continue for Silver Sprocket
Financially, publisher Silver Sprocket has been in a rough state for a while now. They put out a number of unique and interesting comics, but they recently had to close down their San Francisco storefront. Now, creators are alleging (again, for the record) that they are having issues getting paid, among other mistreatments. Unfortunately, this seems to be a pervasive problem with smaller publishers. You tend to get a lot more editorial freedom, but they are often just as bad if not worse than some of the bigger publishers because their margins are tighter.

Dark Horse Workers Union alleging shenanigans
After a rough few years post-financial buyout, the workers at Dark Horse (ie, not the contracted creators but the editors and other hourly or salaried employees) decided to unionize. Now, they allege, Dark Horse is trying to weaken the union by making senior editors into managers. Because of the potential for a conflict of interest, managers aren’t allowed to join unions. The Dark Horse Workers Union claims that these senior editors weren’t managers before, but the new owners are trying to change their roles into managerial ones so that they can no long be a part of the union.

Other News Roundups:

Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 7/14. 7/17. 7/21. 7/23. 7/28. 7/31.
SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 7/17. 7/31.
The Comics Journal’s This Week’s Links: 7/17. 7/24. 7/31.

Writing:

Comic Book Herald posted his favorite graphic novels of July and a list of the 35 Most Popular Comics of the 2020s.

SKTCHD posted another piece on the incredible sucess comic book shops have had last year and this one and a recap of his time at San Diego Comic Con, including his look into the early posting of the Eisner results.

The Beat, with article writer Mark Tweedale and comic creators Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormstrom, published a reading order for the BLACK HAMMER universe.

Shelfust published the latest editions of their SPAWN retrospective (issue 15 and 16) a reflection on ALL-STAR SUPERMAN # 6 (by David Brothers!), WAYNE FAMILY ADVENTURES # 7, a “celebration of that random crystal Green Lantern that always shows up”

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Frank Miller to discuss his new autobiography PUSH THE WALL: MY LIFE, WRITING, DRAWING, AND THE ART OF STORYTELLING, journalist Heidi MacDonald on San Diego Comic Con (and live reacting to the Marvel EiC and relocation news), and Andy Kubert talking about TERMINAL, his new mega-series with Robert Kirkman, Joe Casey, David Finch, and Artur Adams.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 2 covering the Spider-Verse event and 2015 variant cover A covering Marvel news and the MCU.

Youtubes:

COMICTROPES posted videos on Alfred, Batman’s butler, the RENT-A-GIRLFRIEND manga, and a ranking of Marvel’s Editors-in-Chief.

SKTCHD published their seventh conversation this year with Chip Zdarsky.

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

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.

#art #books #ComicBooks #comics #criticism #dcComics #fiction #graphicNovels #ImprintedImage #links #marvel #marvelComics #reviews #Writing

#art #books #comicbooks #comics #criticism #dccomics

Divining Comics @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 19:26 UTC

Imprinted Image: Marvel’s New Editor In Chief

Comics Link Roundup August 2

A few week’s ago, Marvel dropped bombshell news. Technically, it was two announcements. They were moving their offices from New York City to Burbank, California, and they hired Stephen Wacker as the new Editor-in-Chief. Now that the immediate shock has worn off, let’s dig in to the news a little bit, starting with the former.

Stephen Wacker seems to be a great choice for EiC. The previous head, C.B. Cebulski, was dogged by his controversial usage of an Asian pen name and persona in the early 2000s and by a line of comics that needed a shot in the arm. With the advent of DC’s Absolute line and their All-In initiative, Marvel has consistently fallen behind DC in sales for multiple months for the first time in decades, if ever. The good Marvel comics felt like islands in the morass of mere “content.” Something new has been needed for a few years now.

Enter Wacker. Aside from the reaction to his promotion being near-universal acclaim from the creators that have worked with him, there are several signs of positivity. First and foremost is his record as editor. In the 2010s, Marvel took a number of big risks on new characters, specific visions, and interesting creators that felt outside of the typical Marvel fare. If you ask someone today what some of the best Marvel comics since the year 2000 are, you’ll hear titles like HAWKEYE (Fraction/Aja), CAPTAIN MARVEL (Deconnick/Soy/Andrade/Lopez), MS. MARVEL (Wilson/Alphona), and DAREDEVIL (Waid/Samnee), all of which were edited by Stephen Wacker. He took chances approving unique stories and was rewarded with commercially and critically sucessful comics. Wacker also edited comics with insane turnarounds that required complicated managing, like 52 and the Brand New Day era of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

Another hopeful sign is his experience working with the TV and Film side of Marvel. As I’ll talk more about in a bit, there seems to be more integration between the MCU and Marvel comics coming down the pipeline. I’m generally not a fan of this. The best case scenario is changes in tone and small details to align comic characters to their newly-popular screen counterparts, like happened when Tony Stark became snarkier and grew Robert Downey Junior’s facial hair, or when Star-Lord became snarkier and his hair color changed to match Chris Pratt’s. A bigger problem is when more major changes are made to the character, like Kamala Khan being killed and resurrected as a mutant, getting light beam powers when G. Willow Wilson explicitly gave her a more body-based powerset to buck the trend of most women superheroes. At its worst, comic and broader media integration led to Marvel comics underserving the X-Men and even not publishing Fantastic Four comics because the film rights were owned by a different company.

As a publisher, the first job of Marvel comics should be to make good comics. Aligning characters with their televisual counterparts serves a short-term goal at the expense of long-term health. Wacker, as someone who has worked both sides and seems to have maintained his editorial skill, seems uniquely suited to navigate this challenge. Perhaps this is me being hopeful. But I can’t think of many other people in comics with the resume to balance the interests of both the MCU and comics sides of things

The reason I suspect there will be a push to integrate these two interests is the second piece of news I mentioned, the move to Burbank. Aside from any corporate synergy, there is a very obvious drawback to such a move. It is a way to cut staff without engaging in layoffs. Even if everyone currently working at Marvel in NYC was offered their same job in LA, a number of them would not want to uproot their families for a cross-country relocation. Some of these people, like editor Will Moss, have been delivering consistently good work for a decade or more at this point. This is sad enough, and my heart goes out to the workers needing to make tough decisions. In addition to brain drain, the move itself also could create a blip in quality. Even in our largely digital age, where hybrid or work from home arrangements have been possible for years now, this will disrupt Marvel’s output for a bit. The comics might suffer for a period, even with the best of intentions and planning.

All this to say, there is much to be excited about in the future of Marvel comics and also much still up in the air. Comics are a land of contrasts and Merriam-Webster defines “hack” as “Stephen ending his thoughts like this because he can’t think of anything better.”

Anyways.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my 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.

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

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.

Support Divining Comics on Patreon

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.

Comic Challenge Extra Issues Edition 2026 Download

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey!

The past few weeks, I read THE SMURFS, ASTERIX AND OBELIX, and BLAKE AND MORTIMER. I need to move on from older French comics soon or I’ll go mad.

https://youtu.be/IPGUeJCd3pc?si=6wdjVkjqim_3kog-

https://youtu.be/fPjAyWKugTg?si=G-773P4p4x6BoyWc

https://youtu.be/pFtuXFTVTqE?si=4FdYw4J3kZmpuqGe

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:

The Eisner Awards!
This year’s winners of the Eisner Awards, one of comics’ most prestigious awards, were announced at San Diego Comic Con. There are a lot of good books this year, and not as many controversial picks as there were some previous years. There was one issue, however. The award winners were posted a couple of days early. They didn’t leak. The Eisner website posted the official list early on accident.

Trouble Continue for Silver Sprocket
Financially, publisher Silver Sprocket has been in a rough state for a while now. They put out a number of unique and interesting comics, but they recently had to close down their San Francisco storefront. Now, creators are alleging (again, for the record) that they are having issues getting paid, among other mistreatments. Unfortunately, this seems to be a pervasive problem with smaller publishers. You tend to get a lot more editorial freedom, but they are often just as bad if not worse than some of the bigger publishers because their margins are tighter.

Dark Horse Workers Union alleging shenanigans
After a rough few years post-financial buyout, the workers at Dark Horse (ie, not the contracted creators but the editors and other hourly or salaried employees) decided to unionize. Now, they allege, Dark Horse is trying to weaken the union by making senior editors into managers. Because of the potential for a conflict of interest, managers aren’t allowed to join unions. The Dark Horse Workers Union claims that these senior editors weren’t managers before, but the new owners are trying to change their roles into managerial ones so that they can no long be a part of the union.

Other News Roundups:

Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 7/14. 7/17. 7/21. 7/23. 7/28. 7/31.
SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 7/17. 7/31.
The Comics Journal’s This Week’s Links: 7/17. 7/24. 7/31.

Writing:

Comic Book Herald posted his favorite graphic novels of July and a list of the 35 Most Popular Comics of the 2020s.

SKTCHD posted another piece on the incredible sucess comic book shops have had last year and this one and a recap of his time at San Diego Comic Con, including his look into the early posting of the Eisner results.

The Beat, with article writer Mark Tweedale and comic creators Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormstrom, published a reading order for the BLACK HAMMER universe.

Shelfust published the latest editions of their SPAWN retrospective (issue 15 and 16) a reflection on ALL-STAR SUPERMAN # 6 (by David Brothers!), WAYNE FAMILY ADVENTURES # 7, a “celebration of that random crystal Green Lantern that always shows up”

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Frank Miller to discuss his new autobiography PUSH THE WALL: MY LIFE, WRITING, DRAWING, AND THE ART OF STORYTELLING, journalist Heidi MacDonald on San Diego Comic Con (and live reacting to the Marvel EiC and relocation news), and Andy Kubert talking about TERMINAL, his new mega-series with Robert Kirkman, Joe Casey, David Finch, and Artur Adams.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 2 covering the Spider-Verse event and 2015 variant cover A covering Marvel news and the MCU.

Youtubes:

COMICTROPES posted videos on Alfred, Batman’s butler, the RENT-A-GIRLFRIEND manga, and a ranking of Marvel’s Editors-in-Chief.

SKTCHD published their seventh conversation this year with Chip Zdarsky.

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

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.

#art #books #ComicBooks #comics #criticism #dcComics #fiction #graphicNovels #ImprintedImage #links #marvel #marvelComics #reviews #Writing

#art #books #comicbooks #comics #criticism #dccomics

Divining Comics @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 19:26 UTC

Imprinted Image: Marvel’s New Editor In Chief

Comics Link Roundup August 2

A few week’s ago, Marvel dropped bombshell news. Technically, it was two announcements. They were moving their offices from New York City to Burbank, California, and they hired Stephen Wacker as the new Editor-in-Chief. Now that the immediate shock has worn off, let’s dig in to the news a little bit, starting with the former.

Stephen Wacker seems to be a great choice for EiC. The previous head, C.B. Cebulski, was dogged by his controversial usage of an Asian pen name and persona in the early 2000s and by a line of comics that needed a shot in the arm. With the advent of DC’s Absolute line and their All-In initiative, Marvel has consistently fallen behind DC in sales for multiple months for the first time in decades, if ever. The good Marvel comics felt like islands in the morass of mere “content.” Something new has been needed for a few years now.

Enter Wacker. Aside from the reaction to his promotion being near-universal acclaim from the creators that have worked with him, there are several signs of positivity. First and foremost is his record as editor. In the 2010s, Marvel took a number of big risks on new characters, specific visions, and interesting creators that felt outside of the typical Marvel fare. If you ask someone today what some of the best Marvel comics since the year 2000 are, you’ll hear titles like HAWKEYE (Fraction/Aja), CAPTAIN MARVEL (Deconnick/Soy/Andrade/Lopez), MS. MARVEL (Wilson/Alphona), and DAREDEVIL (Waid/Samnee), all of which were edited by Stephen Wacker. He took chances approving unique stories and was rewarded with commercially and critically sucessful comics. Wacker also edited comics with insane turnarounds that required complicated managing, like 52 and the Brand New Day era of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

Another hopeful sign is his experience working with the TV and Film side of Marvel. As I’ll talk more about in a bit, there seems to be more integration between the MCU and Marvel comics coming down the pipeline. I’m generally not a fan of this. The best case scenario is changes in tone and small details to align comic characters to their newly-popular screen counterparts, like happened when Tony Stark became snarkier and grew Robert Downey Junior’s facial hair, or when Star-Lord became snarkier and his hair color changed to match Chris Pratt’s. A bigger problem is when more major changes are made to the character, like Kamala Khan being killed and resurrected as a mutant, getting light beam powers when G. Willow Wilson explicitly gave her a more body-based powerset to buck the trend of most women superheroes. At its worst, comic and broader media integration led to Marvel comics underserving the X-Men and even not publishing Fantastic Four comics because the film rights were owned by a different company.

As a publisher, the first job of Marvel comics should be to make good comics. Aligning characters with their televisual counterparts serves a short-term goal at the expense of long-term health. Wacker, as someone who has worked both sides and seems to have maintained his editorial skill, seems uniquely suited to navigate this challenge. Perhaps this is me being hopeful. But I can’t think of many other people in comics with the resume to balance the interests of both the MCU and comics sides of things

The reason I suspect there will be a push to integrate these two interests is the second piece of news I mentioned, the move to Burbank. Aside from any corporate synergy, there is a very obvious drawback to such a move. It is a way to cut staff without engaging in layoffs. Even if everyone currently working at Marvel in NYC was offered their same job in LA, a number of them would not want to uproot their families for a cross-country relocation. Some of these people, like editor Will Moss, have been delivering consistently good work for a decade or more at this point. This is sad enough, and my heart goes out to the workers needing to make tough decisions. In addition to brain drain, the move itself also could create a blip in quality. Even in our largely digital age, where hybrid or work from home arrangements have been possible for years now, this will disrupt Marvel’s output for a bit. The comics might suffer for a period, even with the best of intentions and planning.

All this to say, there is much to be excited about in the future of Marvel comics and also much still up in the air. Comics are a land of contrasts and Merriam-Webster defines “hack” as “Stephen ending his thoughts like this because he can’t think of anything better.”

Anyways.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my 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.

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

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.

Support Divining Comics on Patreon

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.

Comic Challenge Extra Issues Edition 2026 Download

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey!

The past few weeks, I read THE SMURFS, ASTERIX AND OBELIX, and BLAKE AND MORTIMER. I need to move on from older French comics soon or I’ll go mad.

https://youtu.be/IPGUeJCd3pc?si=6wdjVkjqim_3kog-

https://youtu.be/fPjAyWKugTg?si=G-773P4p4x6BoyWc

https://youtu.be/pFtuXFTVTqE?si=4FdYw4J3kZmpuqGe

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:

The Eisner Awards!
This year’s winners of the Eisner Awards, one of comics’ most prestigious awards, were announced at San Diego Comic Con. There are a lot of good books this year, and not as many controversial picks as there were some previous years. There was one issue, however. The award winners were posted a couple of days early. They didn’t leak. The Eisner website posted the official list early on accident.

Trouble Continue for Silver Sprocket
Financially, publisher Silver Sprocket has been in a rough state for a while now. They put out a number of unique and interesting comics, but they recently had to close down their San Francisco storefront. Now, creators are alleging (again, for the record) that they are having issues getting paid, among other mistreatments. Unfortunately, this seems to be a pervasive problem with smaller publishers. You tend to get a lot more editorial freedom, but they are often just as bad if not worse than some of the bigger publishers because their margins are tighter.

Dark Horse Workers Union alleging shenanigans
After a rough few years post-financial buyout, the workers at Dark Horse (ie, not the contracted creators but the editors and other hourly or salaried employees) decided to unionize. Now, they allege, Dark Horse is trying to weaken the union by making senior editors into managers. Because of the potential for a conflict of interest, managers aren’t allowed to join unions. The Dark Horse Workers Union claims that these senior editors weren’t managers before, but the new owners are trying to change their roles into managerial ones so that they can no long be a part of the union.

Other News Roundups:

Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 7/14. 7/17. 7/21. 7/23. 7/28. 7/31.
SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 7/17. 7/31.
The Comics Journal’s This Week’s Links: 7/17. 7/24. 7/31.

Writing:

Comic Book Herald posted his favorite graphic novels of July and a list of the 35 Most Popular Comics of the 2020s.

SKTCHD posted another piece on the incredible sucess comic book shops have had last year and this one and a recap of his time at San Diego Comic Con, including his look into the early posting of the Eisner results.

The Beat, with article writer Mark Tweedale and comic creators Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormstrom, published a reading order for the BLACK HAMMER universe.

Shelfust published the latest editions of their SPAWN retrospective (issue 15 and 16) a reflection on ALL-STAR SUPERMAN # 6 (by David Brothers!), WAYNE FAMILY ADVENTURES # 7, a “celebration of that random crystal Green Lantern that always shows up”

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Frank Miller to discuss his new autobiography PUSH THE WALL: MY LIFE, WRITING, DRAWING, AND THE ART OF STORYTELLING, journalist Heidi MacDonald on San Diego Comic Con (and live reacting to the Marvel EiC and relocation news), and Andy Kubert talking about TERMINAL, his new mega-series with Robert Kirkman, Joe Casey, David Finch, and Artur Adams.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 2 covering the Spider-Verse event and 2015 variant cover A covering Marvel news and the MCU.

Youtubes:

COMICTROPES posted videos on Alfred, Batman’s butler, the RENT-A-GIRLFRIEND manga, and a ranking of Marvel’s Editors-in-Chief.

SKTCHD published their seventh conversation this year with Chip Zdarsky.

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

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.

#art #books #ComicBooks #comics #criticism #dcComics #fiction #graphicNovels #ImprintedImage #links #marvel #marvelComics #reviews #Writing

#writing #reviews #marvelcomics #marvel #links #imprintedimage

Divining Comics @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 19:26 UTC

Imprinted Image: Marvel’s New Editor In Chief

Comics Link Roundup August 2

A few week’s ago, Marvel dropped bombshell news. Technically, it was two announcements. They were moving their offices from New York City to Burbank, California, and they hired Stephen Wacker as the new Editor-in-Chief. Now that the immediate shock has worn off, let’s dig in to the news a little bit, starting with the former.

Stephen Wacker seems to be a great choice for EiC. The previous head, C.B. Cebulski, was dogged by his controversial usage of an Asian pen name and persona in the early 2000s and by a line of comics that needed a shot in the arm. With the advent of DC’s Absolute line and their All-In initiative, Marvel has consistently fallen behind DC in sales for multiple months for the first time in decades, if ever. The good Marvel comics felt like islands in the morass of mere “content.” Something new has been needed for a few years now.

Enter Wacker. Aside from the reaction to his promotion being near-universal acclaim from the creators that have worked with him, there are several signs of positivity. First and foremost is his record as editor. In the 2010s, Marvel took a number of big risks on new characters, specific visions, and interesting creators that felt outside of the typical Marvel fare. If you ask someone today what some of the best Marvel comics since the year 2000 are, you’ll hear titles like HAWKEYE (Fraction/Aja), CAPTAIN MARVEL (Deconnick/Soy/Andrade/Lopez), MS. MARVEL (Wilson/Alphona), and DAREDEVIL (Waid/Samnee), all of which were edited by Stephen Wacker. He took chances approving unique stories and was rewarded with commercially and critically sucessful comics. Wacker also edited comics with insane turnarounds that required complicated managing, like 52 and the Brand New Day era of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

Another hopeful sign is his experience working with the TV and Film side of Marvel. As I’ll talk more about in a bit, there seems to be more integration between the MCU and Marvel comics coming down the pipeline. I’m generally not a fan of this. The best case scenario is changes in tone and small details to align comic characters to their newly-popular screen counterparts, like happened when Tony Stark became snarkier and grew Robert Downey Junior’s facial hair, or when Star-Lord became snarkier and his hair color changed to match Chris Pratt’s. A bigger problem is when more major changes are made to the character, like Kamala Khan being killed and resurrected as a mutant, getting light beam powers when G. Willow Wilson explicitly gave her a more body-based powerset to buck the trend of most women superheroes. At its worst, comic and broader media integration led to Marvel comics underserving the X-Men and even not publishing Fantastic Four comics because the film rights were owned by a different company.

As a publisher, the first job of Marvel comics should be to make good comics. Aligning characters with their televisual counterparts serves a short-term goal at the expense of long-term health. Wacker, as someone who has worked both sides and seems to have maintained his editorial skill, seems uniquely suited to navigate this challenge. Perhaps this is me being hopeful. But I can’t think of many other people in comics with the resume to balance the interests of both the MCU and comics sides of things

The reason I suspect there will be a push to integrate these two interests is the second piece of news I mentioned, the move to Burbank. Aside from any corporate synergy, there is a very obvious drawback to such a move. It is a way to cut staff without engaging in layoffs. Even if everyone currently working at Marvel in NYC was offered their same job in LA, a number of them would not want to uproot their families for a cross-country relocation. Some of these people, like editor Will Moss, have been delivering consistently good work for a decade or more at this point. This is sad enough, and my heart goes out to the workers needing to make tough decisions. In addition to brain drain, the move itself also could create a blip in quality. Even in our largely digital age, where hybrid or work from home arrangements have been possible for years now, this will disrupt Marvel’s output for a bit. The comics might suffer for a period, even with the best of intentions and planning.

All this to say, there is much to be excited about in the future of Marvel comics and also much still up in the air. Comics are a land of contrasts and Merriam-Webster defines “hack” as “Stephen ending his thoughts like this because he can’t think of anything better.”

Anyways.

Welcome to Imprinted Image, my 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.

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

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.

Support Divining Comics on Patreon

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.

Comic Challenge Extra Issues Edition 2026 Download

I decided to create a YouTube documenting my reading journey!

The past few weeks, I read THE SMURFS, ASTERIX AND OBELIX, and BLAKE AND MORTIMER. I need to move on from older French comics soon or I’ll go mad.

https://youtu.be/IPGUeJCd3pc?si=6wdjVkjqim_3kog-

https://youtu.be/fPjAyWKugTg?si=G-773P4p4x6BoyWc

https://youtu.be/pFtuXFTVTqE?si=4FdYw4J3kZmpuqGe

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:

The Eisner Awards!
This year’s winners of the Eisner Awards, one of comics’ most prestigious awards, were announced at San Diego Comic Con. There are a lot of good books this year, and not as many controversial picks as there were some previous years. There was one issue, however. The award winners were posted a couple of days early. They didn’t leak. The Eisner website posted the official list early on accident.

Trouble Continue for Silver Sprocket
Financially, publisher Silver Sprocket has been in a rough state for a while now. They put out a number of unique and interesting comics, but they recently had to close down their San Francisco storefront. Now, creators are alleging (again, for the record) that they are having issues getting paid, among other mistreatments. Unfortunately, this seems to be a pervasive problem with smaller publishers. You tend to get a lot more editorial freedom, but they are often just as bad if not worse than some of the bigger publishers because their margins are tighter.

Dark Horse Workers Union alleging shenanigans
After a rough few years post-financial buyout, the workers at Dark Horse (ie, not the contracted creators but the editors and other hourly or salaried employees) decided to unionize. Now, they allege, Dark Horse is trying to weaken the union by making senior editors into managers. Because of the potential for a conflict of interest, managers aren’t allowed to join unions. The Dark Horse Workers Union claims that these senior editors weren’t managers before, but the new owners are trying to change their roles into managerial ones so that they can no long be a part of the union.

Other News Roundups:

Comics Beat’s biweekly Digest: 7/14. 7/17. 7/21. 7/23. 7/28. 7/31.
SKTCHD’s Comics Disassembled: 7/17. 7/31.
The Comics Journal’s This Week’s Links: 7/17. 7/24. 7/31.

Writing:

Comic Book Herald posted his favorite graphic novels of July and a list of the 35 Most Popular Comics of the 2020s.

SKTCHD posted another piece on the incredible sucess comic book shops have had last year and this one and a recap of his time at San Diego Comic Con, including his look into the early posting of the Eisner results.

The Beat, with article writer Mark Tweedale and comic creators Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormstrom, published a reading order for the BLACK HAMMER universe.

Shelfust published the latest editions of their SPAWN retrospective (issue 15 and 16) a reflection on ALL-STAR SUPERMAN # 6 (by David Brothers!), WAYNE FAMILY ADVENTURES # 7, a “celebration of that random crystal Green Lantern that always shows up”

My favorite video and podcasts:

Podcasts:

OFF PANEL had on Frank Miller to discuss his new autobiography PUSH THE WALL: MY LIFE, WRITING, DRAWING, AND THE ART OF STORYTELLING, journalist Heidi MacDonald on San Diego Comic Con (and live reacting to the Marvel EiC and relocation news), and Andy Kubert talking about TERMINAL, his new mega-series with Robert Kirkman, Joe Casey, David Finch, and Artur Adams.

MY MARVELOUS YEAR posted 2014 pt. 2 covering the Spider-Verse event and 2015 variant cover A covering Marvel news and the MCU.

Youtubes:

COMICTROPES posted videos on Alfred, Batman’s butler, the RENT-A-GIRLFRIEND manga, and a ranking of Marvel’s Editors-in-Chief.

SKTCHD published their seventh conversation this year with Chip Zdarsky.

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

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.

#art #books #ComicBooks #comics #criticism #dcComics #fiction #graphicNovels #ImprintedImage #links #marvel #marvelComics #reviews #Writing

#art #books #comicbooks #comics #criticism #dccomics

1UpGaming @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 18:06 UTC

Follow Peter Parker as he stops a shocking new threat to the city and saves those he loves in Spider-Man: Brand New Day 4K Steelbook!

Pre-order now: amzn.to/4vZIrSz

#SpiderMan #BrandNewDay #MarvelComics #MCU #Marvel #Movies #Theatre #TV #Art #4K #BluRay #FilmSky #ComicSky #BookSky #PromoSky

#spiderman #brandnewday #marvelcomics #mcu #marvel #movies

1UpGaming @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 18:06 UTC

Follow Peter Parker as he stops a shocking new threat to the city and saves those he loves in Spider-Man: Brand New Day 4K Steelbook!

Pre-order now: amzn.to/4vZIrSz

#SpiderMan #BrandNewDay #MarvelComics #MCU #Marvel #Movies #Theatre #TV #Art #4K #BluRay #FilmSky #ComicSky #BookSky #PromoSky

#spiderman #brandnewday #marvelcomics #mcu #marvel #movies

1UpGaming @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 18:06 UTC

Follow Peter Parker as he stops a shocking new threat to the city and saves those he loves in Spider-Man: Brand New Day 4K Steelbook!

Pre-order now: amzn.to/4vZIrSz

#SpiderMan #BrandNewDay #MarvelComics #MCU #Marvel #Movies #Theatre #TV #Art #4K #BluRay #FilmSky #ComicSky #BookSky #PromoSky

#spiderman #brandnewday #marvelcomics #mcu #marvel #movies

1UpGaming @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 18:06 UTC

Follow Peter Parker as he stops a shocking new threat to the city and saves those he loves in Spider-Man: Brand New Day 4K Steelbook!

Pre-order now: amzn.to/4vZIrSz

#SpiderMan #BrandNewDay #MarvelComics #MCU #Marvel #Movies #Theatre #TV #Art #4K #BluRay #FilmSky #ComicSky #BookSky #PromoSky

#promosky #booksky #comicsky #filmsky #bluray #4k

1UpGaming @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 18:06 UTC

Follow Peter Parker as he stops a shocking new threat to the city and saves those he loves in Spider-Man: Brand New Day 4K Steelbook!

Pre-order now: amzn.to/4vZIrSz

#SpiderMan #BrandNewDay #MarvelComics #MCU #Marvel #Movies #Theatre #TV #Art #4K #BluRay #FilmSky #ComicSky #BookSky #PromoSky

#spiderman #brandnewday #marvelcomics #mcu #marvel #movies

1UpGaming @[email protected] · 2026-08-02 · 03:57 UTC

Follow Miles Morales' journey as he redefines what it means to be a hero in Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.

On sale now: amzn.to/3U8sBYz

#SpiderMan #SpiderVerse #MarvelComics #MCU #Marvel #Movies #Theatre #TV #Art #4K #UltraHD #BluRay #FilmSky #ComicSky #BookSky #PromoSky