Neil Gaiman Just Won’t Go Away, Not So Fast Alliance, and more… The Comic Bookmarks— April 27th, 2025
The more includes Superman Lawsuit, the loss of Bookscan numbers, a Megalopolis adaptation, and an interview with Rebecca Burke.
A lot of news but not too much commentary or reviews this week.
Previously on FC2C
Scott Cederlund
Headlines
So, something is happening here and it seems to be inline with what Diamond wanted a week or two ago. Alliance Entertainment pulls out from its agreement to purchase Diamond Comics Distributors, leaving things open for the back-up bidder to step in.
At the end of this article, Milton Griepp through in some interesting speculation that maybe a lot of this is due to the uncertainty around trade and tariffs, which appear to be having a big impact on games and merch, which are the basis of Alliance Entertainments’s current business model.
Dustin Rowles
Neil Gaiman sues one of the women who came forward claiming that Gaiman had assaulted them for $500,000, alleging that accuser Caroline Wallner violated her NDA. Lila Shapiro at Vulture initially reported this move by Gaiman but that article is behind a paywall. A piece of information from Shapiro’s piece that I’m not seeing reported elsewhere is that Wallner had filed a claim for arbitration last winter, claiming that Gaiman had breached his part of the NDA.
Gaiman has previously denied the abuse accusations.
It's Independent Bookstore Day, so remember that red states are pushing bills that would force booksellers to cover displays related to pride, hide books like "1984" and effectively ban "Banned Book" sections — all under the guise of protecting minors from "pornography" www.msn.com/en-us/news/u...
— Mike Stabile (@mikestabile.bsky.social) April 26, 2025 at 12:01 PM
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And speaking of book bans…
Jules Chin Greene
Gender Queer is a great book and really made an impact on me when I read it when it originally came out. It should be required reading.
Winston Cho
On Thursday, a U.S. District Judge ruled to dismiss a lawsuit From the Shuster estate but on Friday the lawsuit was refiled in New York state court.
I didn’t even know that there was another lawsuit around the rights to Superman, brought on by the family of Joe Shuster. It makes sense that they would try to do this before the movie this summer.
Don Simpson
It was quite a couple of weeks for Megaton Man creator Don Simpson. At the beginning of the week, an April 19th post from Simpson’s Substack newsletter started making the rounds. The post announced that Kickstarter cancelled his project because one of the contributors, Milo Trent, lived in Iran for “safety and trust” issues. But this week, Kickstarter reversed the decision, claiming that the project was “potentially prohibited under [U.S.] trade restrictions, and rejected on that basis. However, after further review, we’re able to approve your project.”
Simpson’s project is now live on Kickstarter and 2/3rd funded of its goal.
Aaron Couch
Okay… this is certainly publishing news for sure but a weird movie to suddenly adapt. I’m actually interested to see what Jacob Phillips could do with a story like this.
Sad news. Pioneering comic artist Jack Katz (b. 1927) passed away. I never got to meet Jack, but was lucky enough to get to know him through his work, now preserved in the archives at Rice University. Through Aug 10, you can see a modest show exhibition about him: moody.rice.edu/exhibitions/...
— PinkoJoe.com (@pinkojoe.bsky.social) April 24, 2025 at 3:37 PM
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Business
Heidi MacDonald
The Bookscan report that Brian Hibbs has published annually has always been the best indicator of the health of comics, looking at more than just to direct market to identify where and what comics are being sold. It’s one of the sources that I think gave us the earliest indications of the strength of both the manga and children’s markets for comics and it really established that comics were more than just Superman and Spider-Man. So it’s a shame that changes at Bookscan have made these numbers inaccessible to Hibbs and The Beat.
In case anyone missed our wave of manga announcements yesterday, you can check out the full recap on our news site! And don’t fret, we have more news to come soon! 👀 mangamavericks.com/2025/manga-m...
— Manga Mavericks (@mangamavericks.bsky.social) April 25, 2025 at 3:46 PM
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The Funny Pages
Never meet your heroes
— Kate Beaton (@katebeaton.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 9:10 AM
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new graphic novel comin Oct 7th!!!!
— Ben Passmore (@benpassmore.bsky.social) April 20, 2025 at 9:25 AM
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New Ben Passmore books are always a good thing.
Interviews
Zach Rabiroff
I had a visitor visa waiver, which — from talking to my hosts and other people, and looking online — seemed to be all I needed for this work. It's what I used previously in America. We've since talked to an ex-ICE lawyer, and he said that what I did did not count as employment under their own definition.2 So I get the impression that [US immigration authorities] didn't want to let someone in [to the United States again] that Canada had refused, because they're supposed to be tougher than Canada. They figured if Canada has determined that she was working, she must be working here. Or this is just part of them really going to town on the numbers for people that they're deporting and interning. It was just very bad timing on my part.
There’s a lot here to digest, particularly when you consider that this is just someone caught up in a bad but unfortunate circumstance. She wasn’t trying to illegally immigrate to any country; Burke was just in the U.S. and trying to enter Canada as part of her trip. She wasn’t planning to stay.
Reviews & Features
I made this ad nearly 40 years ago for Marvel. It was intended to make you think about a fictional world where such horror could exist, not make you realize you were actually living in that world.
— Fabian Nicieza (@fabiannicieza.bsky.social) April 24, 2025 at 7:17 PM
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The ethos of #SupermanDay is helping those who need it when you can. I made a list of 75 trans & nonbinary comics creators, with links for where to support them. I've also listed notable works, and a bookshop.org author link. Please consider support if you can! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
— Comic Book Herald (@comicbookherald.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 9:03 AM
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