Devin’s Comics NEWS Digest - June 13, 2025

Catching up, nightmares, and monopolies

Hello, everyone! This is the Comics NEWS Digest, an aggregation of all the top comics and comics-related stories that caught my attention that I thought you might enjoy reading. I post these two weeks after every regular newsletter.

NEWS

Before we get too deep, there’s some things I meant to share last month that I didn’t include for various reasons. First, Ryan Estrada and Kim Hyun Sook, the writers of Banned Book Club, have cancelled a four-month book tour of the United States due to safety concerns.

Secondly, more than 400 professional comic creators have signed a petition urging the board of directors of the Angoulême International Comics Festival to terminate its contract with organizers 9eArt+ and promising a massive boycott of next year’s festival if they don’t. Signatories include Emil Ferris, Chris Ware, and art spiegelman. There’s some thorny contractual matters involved and the reasons for wanting the ouster of 9eArt+ are plentiful, and I recommend reading up on this if you’re curious about the international comics scene. The linked article is in French, and I’m afraid I couldn’t find any primary sources in English, but you can probably get the gist through Google Translate or something.

President Trump fired the Librarian of Congress for “promoting DEI” despite the fact that the contents of the Library of Congress are not chosen by the librarian. In a move that is coming to define this administration, she was replaced by someone completely unqualified. Anybody even remotely interested in the preservation of the arts should be outraged by this.

In more comics-adjacent news, former president of IDW and film producer David Ozer was sentenced to 18 months in prison for fraud and embezzlement.

In some good news in a sea of chaos, Jenny Blake Isabella will have her first comic credit in the DC Pride special; indie comics mainstay Quimby’s here in Chicago has new owners who promise to maintain the original vision of the store; and Disney, its subsidiaries, and other film studios are suing generative AI firm Midjourney as “a bottomless pit of plagiarism.” I couldn’t agree more.

More good news, as Abrams Books employees, including those at Abrams ComicArts, voted to unionize. They’ll be part of the UAW Local 2110. Congratulations to all of them!

One of the year’s biggest news stories about comics finally comes to a close (or so we thought) with the official purchase of Diamond Comics Distributors by Universal Distribution and Ad Populum. I saw a lot of people commenting that “the long nightmare is over” only to be met with the reality check that a new nightmare may be starting, and sure enough Diamond announced massive layoffs in the wake of their buyout.

Seven of those laid off employees appear to be finding new jobs at Alliance Entertainment, the one-time would-be purchasers of Diamond who are now the subject of a motion filed by Sparkle Pop, the parent company of Diamond’s new owners. Steve Leaf, the former Assistant Manager of Purchasing for Diamond, recently joined Hermes Press as Sales Director. Keep those flowcharts handy!

The supposed end of one monopoly doesn’t mean other companies are done gobbling up comics companies as so many assets on a spreadsheet. Aethon Books has acquired a majority stake in Vault Comics.

Meanwhile, Philbo Entertainment has stepped up to provide distribution for independent publishers and creators with two new subsidiaries, Philbo Publishing and Philbo Distribution.

In other bankruptcy-related news, AfterShock Comics plans to resume operations and pay all debts to creators after filing Chapter 11 back in 2022. While some restructuring has taken place, Jon and Lee Kramer will still run the business as CEO and President, respectively.

In Big Two news, whether or not you saw Thunderbolts*, you might be curious about the complicated story of betrayal and revisionism around the creation of one of its most powerful characters, Sentry.

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo filed a complaint in a Parisian court over fake, pro-Putin covers that were distributed on social media. The complaint is an attempt to identify the creators.

In manga news, a new manga reading platform has been made available in the United States, emaqi.

Interviews & Criticism

I don’t normally cover social media drama in these digests, because god help me there’s always something, but the latest “main character” and the problems with what they said touched on a lot of issues relevant to comics and the racism that many fans and creators display. Reimena Yee did a great job breaking it down in a blog post and linking to relevant articles covering the situation.

Yee points out that one way to avoid the distraction of a work of art’s popularity or acclaim being dismissed as “DEI” or “white guilt” is to engage with valid, good-faith criticism and to be able to state why a comic is good or bad. To that end, there have been a lot of great interviews and articles about comics criticism and scholarship. Firstly,

David Harper

of SKTCHD spoke with Tiffany Babb about her Comics Courier, which successfully funded its second issue on Kickstarter. At Broken Frontier, Andy Oliver wrote about the “worrying” state of comics journalism. Finally, Paul Buhle shared an essay that drew from multiple sources analyzing the history and art of comics.

Also at SKTCHD, here’s an article about Alaska Robotics Mini-Con, a comics convention that I’ll admit to being completely ignorant about but which draws varied and talented creators from all over the world.

Jessica Plummer at Book Riot had a brief history of the “Filipino Invasion” of comics in the 1970s, which led to the luminous careers of Tony DeZuñiga, Alfredo Alcala, Alex Niño, Nestor Redondo, Ernie Chan, and others.

In a couple of looks at DC characters, Margot Waldman at ComicsXF examined James Robinson and Tony Harris’s Starman, which is both influential and underrated, and Emma Houxbois at Shelfdust wrote about Zatanna.

I’ll end this section with a couple of great interviews. At The Comics Journal, Matthew Perpetua talked with Julia Gfrörer. At SOLRAD, Julian Bata spoke with Maxime Gérin.

Awards

The Eisner Award nominations have been announced. There’s a couple of pleasant surprises, but they also reinforce a lot of critiques about the same creators being nominated over and over again. They also prove how laughable it is to think that mediocre minority creators are hogging all the awards. The winners will be announced at San Diego Comic-Con in July.

At the other end of the mainstream-indie spectrum, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) organizers announced the winners of their Cupcake Award.

I covered last month how Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls won the Pulitzer Prize. Editorial cartoonist

Ann Telnaes

also won a Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for her work for the Washington Post.

The work of political cartoonist, media artist, and cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz was recognized with the Cartoon Award from the organization Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights along with Andrews McMeel Syndication, one of the biggest distributors of comic strips.

The 2025 Robert Russell Courage in Cartooning Award was given to Turkish cartoonist Zehra Ömeroğlu for her bravery in the face of criminal prosecution over a one-panel gag cartoon that authorities have tried to say is a violation of “obscenity” laws.

The National Cartoonists Society Foundation selected two winners for their Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship this year, since no winner was chosen last year. Samantha Huyck, an illustration major at the College for Creative Studies, and Abby McColgan, a sequential art major at the Savannah College of Art and Design, have been awarded $5,000.

Announced shortly after we read it here at the Comics Book Club, Beth Hetland’s Tender won the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize.

Mononymic creator Rintaro, best known as an anime director, won the Manga Grand Prix at the Tezuka Osamu Manga Awards. Other awards included the Originality Prize, which was given to creator Shiho Kido, the Short Story Prize, and the Asahi Special Prize.

The 49th annual Kodansha Manga Awards were announced for the categories of Best Shōnen Manga, Best Shōjo Manga, and Best General Manga.

Obituaries

Comics writer Peter David passed away at 68 after several health struggles. The headlines for this news often included the word legendary or a similar superlative; it’s impossible to overstate how influential he was to the generations that grew up reading his work. He is best known for definitive runs for the characters the Hulk and Aquaman and creating Spider-Man 2099 Miguel O’Hara, who was voiced by Oscar Isaac in the Spider-Verse films.

There has been justifiable outrage in a lot of circles, as David was forced to turn to gofundme to cover his healthcare in the last years of his life. Sony, Marvel, and Disney have made millions off his work while he had to crowdfund for medical expenses, which have not gone away in the event of his death.

Cartoonist and musician Barry Fantoni has died at the age of 85. He had retired in 2010 from his editorial position with the UK’s Private Eye magazine after more than four decades with the magazine, creating caricatures and satirical characters.

Graphic novel publisher and translator Richard Appignanesi has died at the age of 84. An unsung hero who published manga versions of Shakespeare and various philosophical texts in comic form, he won the Directors Club (New York) merit award for art direction in 1980.

Comics writer Gianfranco Manfredi passed away back in January. A novelist, musician, and actor, he became a fixture of Italian comics in the 1980s until his death with original characters and a brief run on Dylan Dog that began in 1994.

Illustrator and cartoonist Mark Zingarelli died back in April at the age of 72. With published comics and cartoons in several magazines and newspapers, he also was known in the indie comics scene as an incredibly talented artist and a genuinely nice person.

Finally, muralist, artist, and teacher Rob Stull passed away in April at the age of 58. A leading Black artist with international acclaim, he worked for Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and curated a museum exhibit featuring Black artists in the comic book industry that toured the country from the mid 90s to 2003. He also taught about the art of comics at the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts.

That’s all for this month. Did I miss anything? Comment below if I have. Feel free to subscribe if you haven’t already. The Comics Book Club will be meeting again on June 18 to discuss Flamer. Thanks again for everything.