Sunday Comics | ‘Wayne Family Adventures’ returns for a third season

Check out new webcomics by Derek Laufman, Leigh Luna and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best and most interesting comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Wayne Family Adventures, the Webtoon comic that features Batman and all his kids, has returned for a third season. The comic first debuted back in 2021 and has also been collected in print.

Writer CRC Payne and lead artist StarBite are back with more of tales that fall into my favorite Tumblr sub-genre — “BatFam eats dinner together”:

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Quick Hits | Idaho graduate offers her superintendent a banned graphic novel while accepting her diploma

Plus: Tom Luth, Bram Stoker Awards, Broom Hilda and the Ernie Bushmiller Society.

One of this year’s high school graduates from the Idaho Fine Arts Academy tried to hand her superintendent a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, a book that was removed from her school’s library earlier in the year.

The ABC affiliate KVUE reports that Annabelle Jenkins, one of 44 seniors to walk at the graduation, brought the book with her and tried to give it to Superintendent Derek Bub as she went on stage to accept her diploma. Bub would not accept the copy of the book, so Jenkins then dropped it at his feet.

Jenkins, a volunteer at her local library and a lifelong reader, said an argument between a teacher and the school librarian brought the book to her attention. “It was over the graphic novel The Handmaid’s Tale and I was just so shocked because I had never seen school staff behave that way in a school setting,” she said.

The book ended up being contested and removed from West Ada school shelves.

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Can’t Wait for Comics | ‘Green Lantern,’ ‘Extreme Venomverse,’ ‘Something Epic’ and more

Check out new comics and graphic novels arriving this week from Jeremy Adams, Xermánico, Szymon Kudrański, Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Avon Oeming, Cullen Bunn, Leomacs, Nicole Goux, Olivia Jaimes and more.

Welcome to Can’t Wait for Comics, your guide to what comics are arriving in comic book stores, bookstores and on digital.

I’ve pulled out some of the highlights below, but for the complete list of everything you might find at your local comic shop and on digital this week, you’ll want to check out one or more of the following:

As a reminder, things can change and what you find on the above lists may differ from what’s actually arriving in your local shop. So always check with your comics retailer for the final word on availability.

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April Fools: ‘Nancy,’ ‘Heart of the City’ swap creators for the day

Olivia Jaimes and Steenz reveal why characters in both strips never seem to age.

April Fools’ Day, aka the day you can’t trust anything on the internet, has arrived, bringing fake news about changes to company names and resurrected projects.

While in recent years it has become a day to dread, there are also some fun aspects — like the fact that Olivia Jaimes and Christina “Steenz” Stewart traded comic strips for the day.

Jaimes, of course, is the regular creator of Nancy, the delightful comic strip she took over a few years back to great acclaim (at least by most people). Steenz, meanwhile, took over Heart of the City in 2020. Today, though, they wrote and drew the other’s strip.

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Ringo Awards winners announced

Annual awards ceremony recognizes ‘the creativity, skill and fun of comics.’

The winners for the 2020 Ringo Awards were announced today, marking the fourth year for the awards program named for artist Mike Wieringo, who passed away in 2007.

The awards were presented virtually as part of the Baltimore Comic Con‘s online programming, and started with an introduction and keynote from Kevin Smith and Geoff Johns. It was also live, which led to some logistical/technical issues as they tried to “cut over” to winners for their acceptance speeches.

Here are the winners, in the order they were presented during the ceremony. They include the “fan favorite” awards, which have a different process than the rest of the awards. You can find more details on the process here.

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Comics Lowdown: Comic books sales up in 2018, Marvel top publisher; stalker sets cosplayer’s car on fire

Plus: ‘Drama’ drama with the Ottawa Catholic School Board! Faith Erin Hicks! Jed MacKay! And more!

The 2018 direct market numbers from Diamond are in and comic sales are ever so slightly up from 2017. Comics saw an increase to sales by 3.3%, but graphic novels were down by 6.6%. The combined sales of the two formats mean a wee increase of 0.6% for the direct market.

Marvel Comics increased their market share slightly to gain an extra 2% over DC Comics, who seemed to have flat lined and lost 0.3% of their market share. This indicates that Marvel’s market share gains mostly come from the expense of small publishers or independent comic sales, with the exception of Image Comics, who also saw a slight increase.

The best-selling graphic novel of the year was Infinity Gauntlet. The 1991 story is enjoying a revival because of the Avengers: Infinity War movie. The best-selling comics was Action #1000, a landmark issue featuring unpublished artwork by legendary Superman artist Curt Swan and the introduction of writer Brain Michael Bendis to the DC universe.

Complete lists and more insight are available on comichron.com.

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Comics Lowdown: Tom King’s CIA service

Plus: ‘The Arrival’ selected for Hong Kong’s first ‘One City, One Book’ campaign, the obituary Marie Severin should have received, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phoebe Gloeckner, Diamond Gem awards and more best-of-2018 lists!

Happy New Year from the Smash Pages staff! Coming back from the holiday break, let’s ring out the old and ring in the new with today’s collection of comic book news links.

Let’s start with a weird one: Last week Abhay Khosla, comics critic and past Superman writer, posted about his attempts to confirm with the CIA that Batman and Heroes in Crisis writer Tom King used to work for them. The topic of King’s former employer frequently comes up in interviews related to his Batman work (not to mention King’s Vertigo series The Sheriff of Babylon), and Khosla questioned whether any reporters who interviewed King about it had ever confirmed it. So Khosla sent the CIA a letter back in 2016 asking for confirmation, and the response he received from the agency was inconclusive.

This exchange occurred in 2016, and why Khosla decided to go public with it now isn’t clear. The point of Khosla’s post doesn’t seem to be to call out King as a liar (he starts his post by saying, “I don’t think this is really a story about Tom King”) but is more of a statement about entertainment journalism and fact-checking. He points out similar situations where a past DC writer, Micah Wright, lied about being in the armed services, as well as current Marvel editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski pretending to be Japanese early in his career.

The problem isn’t in asking the question — it’s posting about it without an answer or actually asking King about it. Like verifying facts, that’s also journalism 101. After the post went live, King was quick to respond on Twitter, showing proof that he was, indeed, in the CIA. Bleeding Cool, The Comics Reporter and Nick Hanover have more commentary on this.

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Comics Lowdown: Abrams pulls ‘A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library’ from its schedule

Plus: “Olivia Jaimes” speaks, Bill Maher doubles down on his comic book comments, a comic convention apologizes for giving ‘Saga’ to kids, and much more!

Abrams has abandoned plans to publish A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library by Jack Gantos and Dave McKean following online criticism and controversy. The book is about a young boy who plans to blow up a library, but he changes his mind when he sees how captivated the people inside are with their reading.

An open letter to Abrams from the Asian Author Alliance, signed by more than 1,000 writers, teachers and readers, reads: “The simple fact is that today, the biggest terrorist threat in the United States is white supremacy. In publishing A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library, Abrams is willfully fear-mongering and spreading harmful stereotypes in a failed attempt to show the power of story.”

McKean responded to some of the controversy on Twitter: “The premise of the book is that a boy uses his mind and faith to decide for himself that violence is not the right course or action.” The book was due to be published next May.

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Comics Lowdown: Stan Lee speaks out on elder-abuse allegations

Patti LaBoucane-Benson appointed to Canada’s Senate! Finding Olivia James at CXC! Plus: Grant Morrison, Matthew Thurber and why we love Spider-Man so dang much!

People: In an interview subtitled “Those I Trusted Betrayed Me,” Stan Lee speaks to The Daily Beast about elder-abuse allegations against his daughter and the removal of several of his associates from his life.

“There really isn’t that much drama,” Lee said. “As far as I’m concerned, we have a wonderful life. I’m pretty damn lucky. I love my daughter, I’m hoping that she loves me, and I couldn’t ask for a better life. If only my wife was still with us. I don’t know what this is all about.”

People: The Outside Circle comic writer Patti LaBoucane-Benson has been appointed to Canada’s Senate by Prime Minister Trudeau.

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Comics Lowdown: Olivia Jaimes to appear at CXC

Plus: Kazu Kibuishi, Katie Green, Zunar and more!

Olivia Jaimes, the pseudonymous artist who has revitalized the comic strip Nancy, will be a guest at the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus comics festival in Columbus, Ohio, next weekend. There has been considerable speculation about Jaimes’s real identity, and CXC will be asking the 40 or so lucky attendees at her panel to check their phones at the door to protect her privacy.

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Comics Lowdown | Chinese authorities crack down on Rage Comics

Censorship: The Chinese government has banned rage comics (Baozou Manhua, or Baoman) channels from a number of online platforms, claiming violations of the recently enacted Law on the Protection of Heroes and Martyrs. In addition to the censorship, the article discusses how rage comics migrated from 4Chan to Chinese youth culture and why this is important: They are now a big-money business.

Besides the shutdown of the various social media channels, the closure of the baozoumanhua.com media empire is a huge blow to its fans and creators. The website’s founder Wang Nima’s net worth is estimated to be around 4 billion yuan (±US$628 million), according to Daily Economic News (每日经济新闻).

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