RIP Butch Guice, Jenny Blake's First Comic Book Credit, the Diamond Soap Opera and More... The Comic Bookmarks-- May 11th, 2025

We're playing a bit of catch up here from the past couple of weeks. We took a week off but that doesn't mean that everyone else did.

Previously on FC2C

Superheroes, Aliens, and Cartoons, Oh My!!! - a review of Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, and Chris Weston’s Paranoid Gardens

Gerard Way and Shawn Simon doing their obscure Vertigo book, just for Dark Horse. So who better to get to draw than Chris Weston?

From Cover to CoverScott Cederlund

Headlines

Jackson “Butch” Guice, Comic Book Artist, Dead At 63 | Comic Book Club

Jackson “Butch” Guice, an artist best known for his work on everything from New Mutants, to Micronauts and The Flash, has died at age 63.

Comic Book ClubAlex Zalben

I think I've loved Butch Guice's art since I first saw it in a b/w comic called Southern Knights. There's just something about his work that I've never really been able to articulate that just gives me so much pleasure. Our condolences to his wife and daughter.

The co-creator of Black Lightning returns to DC (and comics) with their true story in June’s DC Pride 2025 special issue

Jenny Blake’s ‘Master Planner’ follows in the footsteps of autobio stories from Batman Kevin Conroy, and DC writer/artist Phil Jimenez.

PopverseGraeme McMillan

I'm so happy for Jenny Blake (formerly Tony Isabella,) that she's getting to live the life that she wants and that DC asked her to contribute to their annual queer anthology.

Sentry co-creator Rick Veitch calls Marvel “the House of Stolen Ideas” after his stake in the character overlooked for past 25 years - including in Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* movie

“Cut out” and “thrown under the bus”: Marvel Comics’ Sentry co-creator Rick Veitch opens up about his omission for the past 25 years and in the Thunderbolts* movie.

PopverseJoshua Lapin-Bertone

The Sentry has always felt like a Rick Veitch character to me. It's amazing how many stories there are like this one out there.

Ann Telnaes, Who Resigned From The Washington Post After Trump Cartoon Was Rejected, Wins Pulitzer Prize

Ann Telneas quit the Washington Post after it rejected a cartoon depicting tech and media executives trying to curry favor with Donald Trump.

DeadlineTed Johnson

So, how did that work out for The Washington Post?

TV Producer Gets 18 Months for Fraud, Embezzlement on Multiple Shows

David Ozer, president of Strong Studios, stole funds meant for ‘Safehaven’ and duped investors out of over $200,000 by saying he was developing a show called ‘Endangered.’

The Hollywood ReporterWinston Cho

Former IDW exec David Ozer sentenced in embezzlement case

Former IDW Entertainment exec David Ozer has been sentenced to jail after embezzling money on a TV show that was based on a nonexistent comic book

The BeatHeidi MacDonald

Heidi MacDonald makes the connection (with a hat tip to Graphic Policy) between a TV producer being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement to his past as being an executive at IDW.

Comic Sites on Comic Sites

Polygon Sold To Valnet And Hit With Mass Layoffs [Update]

One of the biggest gaming sites around was just blown up

KotakuHome

Polygon’s new owner says it will ‘do what’s right for Polygon’

Valnet wants to ensure that Polygon has the “deepest” coverage of the gaming space.

The VergeJay Peters

This article focuses on Polygon as a gaming site but they had also developed a pop culture side and a comic side (thanks to the great work by Susana Polo.) The news of Valnet who purchased Polygon was understandably met with concern as we've seen Valnet-bought sites become just content mills. CBR (the site formerly called by its full name Comic Book Resources) was once one of the biggest and best sites for comics coverage until they were taken over by Valnet. And now you can easily see their strategy of just churning out content.

I can believe that Polygon's new owner thinks it will "do what's right for Polygon" but how long is that going to last until the site becomes unreadable?

Here's a great listing of Polygon's laid off writers and how to support them.

“They Deserve to Get More Support”: The Comics Courier’s Tiffany Babb on Building a New Space for Comics Criticism - SKTCHD

Tiffany Babb is the most passionate advocate for comics criticism I know. Part of that is because it’s her job, to some degree, as she previously was one of the editors at the Eisner Award-winning digital comics criticism magazine PanelxPanel and the deputy editor of comics and pop culture site Popverse. But she truly loves … Continued

SKTCHDDavid Harper

Tiffany Babb's The Comics Courier is one of the most exciting comics criticism outlets right now.

Business

Alliance Entertainment Sues Diamond, Again

Along with the Investment Bank, Restructuring Consultants, and Alliance Game Distributors Executives

ICv2

Universal Gets Alliance, Ad Populum Gets Diamond Comic et. al.

Bankruptcy Court Rules

ICv2

Diamond Bankruptcy Fees Mount

Over $1.9 Million in Fees for March

ICv2

Someday someone will be able to write a tell-all book about Diamond's bankruptcy and it will be a doozy.

Quimby’s New Owners Pledge To Keep Wicker Park Bookstore Going For Years To Come

Peter Miles Bergman and Cody Kasselman have bought the beloved bookstore, which has sold self-published zines, comics and graphic novels for three decades.

Block Club ChicagoQuinn Myers

As a Chicago- area suburbanite, I don't get to Quimby's as much as I would like to but the news of Eric Kirsammer selling the shop and longtime manager Liz Mason also leaving did cause a bit of concern. So this Block Club Chicago profile on the new owners was a welcome relief.

Eve L. Ewing And Friends Unite To Buy South Side Cafe Build Coffee

Author and scholar Eve L. Ewing, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist trina reynolds-tyler and media-based organizer Andrea Faye Hart will take over the shop in June. It is being rebranded to Build Coffee and Books.

Block Club ChicagoMaxwell Evans

And in more local Chicago news, it's great to see Eve L. Ewing and her partners buying into a local business in a great neighborhood.

The Prana Bullet for May 9th

After years of not having sales reports, I'm surprised just how under-the-readar Prana DMS's reports really are. This latest newsletter from them contains links to their April comic rankings, which are actually forward looking as it's based on subscriptions and pre-orders instead of any kind of sales and doesn't include any numbers, just rankings.

But honestly, there's nothing here that's a big surprise other than Ultimate Spider-Man is the 3rd biggest comic? Is there something going on in that issue? That seems like an oddity because you just don't see that much chatter about that book.

The Funny Pages

Interviews

Long London, Magic & the future of Humanity

Detail from a portrait by Francesca Ciregia . Omar, Francesco & I are really, really excited & honoured to present an exclusive interview w…

Posted by smoky man

This might be the most Alan Moore thing and maybe the best way to read his work:

In From Hell we suggested the late Victorian period, 1888, and specifically the Whitechapel murders as, metaphorically, the birth-cries of the 20th century. Meanwhile, in Lost Girls, Melinda and I posited the late Edwardian era, 1913/1914 and the outbreak of the First World War, I think just as legitimately, as the beginning of the modern world. I suppose the ultimate truth is that every decade, every year, potentially every sunrise is the end of one world and the start of a new one, although over the course of the Long London quintet I want to see what happens when that truism comes up against the currently popular adage that the old world refuses to die and so the new world cannot be born.