On this day five years ago, my Webcomics textbook was officially published. It was supposed to formally debut at that year's ALA conference, but that was cancelled due to COVID. As was pretty much every other conference in 2020. I think that kind of screwed up my publisher's promotional plans, and the book never got the level of coverage that I think they typically give their books. But it still garnered some attention, the majority of which was very positive.

I haven't seen many reviews of the book, but the ones I have seen were, by and large, positive like I said. I think the two biggest criticisms I saw were 1) it doesn't reference enough other academic material, but they immediately added that that was a broader problem with academia because there was so little about webcomics to reference in the first place, and 2) none of my "key texts" featured any Black/brown creators. That last one is a reasonable criticism; I did include one creator of Japanese descent but the other six webcomics I highlighted were all by white people. I did reference various creators of color throughout the book at large, but their absence in the Key Texts portion was very much an oversight on my part. Although not commented on, none of the Key Texts were by any LGBTQIA+ folks either. Again, they're brought up throughout the rest of the book but not as one of the more in-depth highlights.

Interestingly, the book has not gotten as out of date as rapidly as I feared it might. I believe a couple of the webcomics I briefly referenced in the book have since gone offline, but none of the primary examples. In fact, the most out of date portions are that multiple creators I talk about transitioned since I first submitted my manuscript, and are referenced in the book by their deadnames. I was able to get in a last minute footnote about one of them, but I believe there are three others that are incorrectly named and gendered in my book now. I have to admit that that is very much NOT how I anticipated my book would start to go out of date!

The book ended up offering me some unique opportunities that I never would've even considered in my lifetime. I know that a copy got purchased for and now sits in the Library of Congress. In 2021, the book was nominated for a frickin' Eisner Award! And while there was no in-person ceremony that year and the book ultimately didn't win, I can still call up the YouTube video of Phil LaMarr reading off my name next to the book's cover as one of the nominees. But almost just as amazing, I was asked to be a judge for the 2023 Eisners! It's kind of even more impressive than the Award itself -- after all, they give out around 30 trophies every year, but there are only six judges! I'm sure I would never have been asked to judge if my book hadn't come to the Eisner committee's attention previously. And now, as an academic textbook, Webcomics is starting to get cited in other books and papers and articles.

When I was a teenager, I got my first fan letter published in the pages of Fantastic Four #318. I thought that was incredible because my name could now be linked to comics in perpituity. Admittedly, in an absurdly insignificant way but I was still happy with that because I figured that was probably the most I could ever hope to achieve in the medium. But getting a 300-page book about Webcomics written and published? Well, that's up there with running a marathon -- something I never thought I had the tenacity to accomplish. But then to have it recognized by the industry at large as a work significant enough for one of its biggest awards? Never ever ever ever in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that!

Webcomics is an academic textbook, so sales aren't exactly eye-popping. But that's not why I wrote it. Writing for me is a means to an end, not the end itself. But in the five years since Webcomics was published, that end has given me some absolutely amazing opportunities and even if nothing more ever comes of it, it's already been an incredible journey!

Mafalda has finally arrived in the United States!

I suspect like many of you, I'd heard of Mafalda years ago as THE best comic to come out of Argentina, often being favorably compared to Peanuts. Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón -- better known by his pen name Quino -- began the strip in 1964 (having created the character the year before) and continued on it until 1973. The strip's humor was allegedly incredibly witty and satricial, but despite the strips being collected in book form and translated/published around the world, it's only been in the last two weeks that we finally get an English-language version here in the States.

Mafalda collects the firsst 240 strips and the comparisons to Peanuts are almost immediately obvious. The characters bear little resemblance to one another and Quino's drawing style is nothing like Charles Schulz's, but the biting commentary on adults and adulthood coming from children hits in much the same way that the very best Peanuts strips do. The strips tend to focus on a single theme for 4-5 days in a row, frequently with Mafalda trying to learn more about a subject by discussing it with her friends, asking her parents, or by simply observing things around her. She comes to the topics with a child-like naivete but manages to pose extremely pointed questions like, "Papa? Can you explain why humanity is a disaster?"

While I think Quino was often writing the strips in reaction to current events, most of the strips don't require much historical context. There were a few references to the Vietnam War and a couple of news-worthy folks that have since fallen into relative obscurity, but even those references don't need much context to understand. I think the cultural touchstones might be a little harder for Americans to connect with -- while strikes are not unheard of here, certainly, we haven't seen the spate of them that would've been taking place (and are therefore referenced) in Argentina back in the '60s. Also, Mafalda has an absolute aversion to soup, going so far as to use "soup" as a curse word; I think I must be missing something with that bit.

But by and large, the humor holds up exceptionally well and it really is as good as I'd been led to believe. More amazingly, too, it starts right out of the gate with some good gags and the really biting stuff starts coming within a few pages. I've rarely seen comics start that well-crafted and well-defined that early on. Quino really knew what he was doing.

As far as I can tell, this version is -- aside from being an English translation -- basically just a reprint of the original Argentinian edition from 1966. It's a high-quality reprint, certainly, on a very nice paper stock with better-than-I-expected reproduction quality. (I half-wonder if they were able to use the original printing materials; all the linework is incredibly clean!) So it's a very nice presentation. But that also means there's no context for American audiences -- no introduction, no foreword, not even a note about when these originally were published. Granted, we are in 2025 so that's all easily found online and the majority of people likely to buy this book are already familiar with Mafalda's reputation, so it's probably not really critical to include, but it does come as something of a departure from what I think we're used to seeing in comic strip collections these days.

Like I said, this is the first time Mafalda has made it to the US. That's why you're interested. My review, nor anyone else's, is really going to sway you one way or another. You heard Mafalda was getting published and that was all you needed to hear. It's out now, and the hardcover retails for $18 US. It really does live up to its reputation, so go get it if you've got any interest at all.

Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage -- originally published in 1895 -- has been adapted into comics form several times by a number of publishers. Probably the most well-known version, by virtue of the entire line, is the one from Gilberton's Classics Illustrated title. Fawcett did a comic adapting the 1951 movie adadptation. Marvel Comics even published one under their Marvel Classics title in the 1970s. As far as I can tell, the most recent version before this year that wasn't a reprint was from Puffin Graphics in 2005. So, if the book has been adapted into comics so many times already, why do we need another one?

The basic story, if you're unfamiliar, is that of Henry Fleming, a young soldier with the Union Army during the US Civil War. During his regiment's first battle, he flees but is soon overcome with shame. He makes his way back to his regiment, and a wound he received in an unrelated altercation is believed to be proof that he didn't just abandon his comrades. During the subsequent battles, he makes a concerted effort to rise above his previous fears and displays borderline reckless courage charging against rebel troops. The book ends with the boy earning the respect of his superiors, while he reflects on the futility of war in general and how all those he saw die over the past couple days were just so much cannon-fodder.

The reason why the book is considered a classic is that Crane was the first writer to pen a war story that wasn't actually focused on the war itself. It does have battles and troop movements and such, but the focus of the book is on Fleming's inner conflict -- how he thinks and feels about what's going on around him and, more signficantly, how he's reacting to it all. That Crane wrote in a unusually naturalistic style and from such a humanist perspective is probably why the book has remained in print continuously since its initial publication.

Despite the book's -- and its subsequent adapations into multiple media -- proliferation, I will admit that I was unfamiliar with it at all before reading Steve Cuzor's version that came out in May. So for good or ill, I'm unable to compare it against any other iteration. I choose to view this as a positive because, living here in 2025, I've seen/heard/read countless war stories that are told from all sorts of perspectives. From individual combatants to civilians simply caught in the line of fire to the generals directing the overall strategy to spouses and loved ones left at home far from the physical danger of combat. The book would not at all have seemed historic or original in that sense. Going in to Cuzor's version, then, means that I'm pretty much just looking at: can he tell a good story?

The short answer is "yes." It did take me a couple pages to get into the rhythm of his storytelling approach; he lets the story breath a surprising amount. Fleming is alone with his thoughts for a fair portion of the story, but even with that, we get many silent panels where his thoughts and feelings are to be inferred through facial expression and body language. Which is made all the more impressive by Cuzor's illustration style, which relies pretty heavily on spotted blacks with minimal feathering and no cross-hatching to speak of. You would think such an approach would make it difficult to convey much nuance, but Cuzor seems to do that with ease.

The same can be said for his color palette. It appears to have been drawn simply as black and white, and each section is then given a kind of color wash over the entire section, with just variations of a single color for the entire section. Mostly in a kind of grey-ish green range, but with nighttime scenes in dark blues. It's surprisingly effective and, again, offers a nuance that you wouldn't anticipate with that approach. Kudos to colorist Meephe Versaevel.

But back to Cuzor's illustration, the other note-worthy bit is how he manages to make each character identifiable visually throughout the book. Keep in mind that almost the entire story takes places within the ranks of an army regiment -- everyone is wearing the exact same uniform! And yet he manages to make the characters still look unique even when they're all marching in formation. Really an impressive feat!

Obviously, a lot of the book's structure and theme owe a huge amount of debt to Crane's original. But Cuzor handles them here very smoothly and seemingly with ease. As I said, I haven't read any other adapations, but I am familiar with other adaptations from Classics Illustrated and similar lines, and I am nearly 100% they don't do as good a job relaying the story as Cuzor does here. If you're already a fan of the story, this is certainly a worthy addition to your library, and if you've never read the original but are curious about it, I'd also highly recommend this version.

The book, as I said, came out in May under the Abrams Comics Arts imprint so it should be readily available from your favorite book seller. The paperback retails for $19.99 US and the hardcover for $25.99 US.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: 616 Day?
https://ift.tt/PvxKYm2

Kleefeld on Comics: Other Russias Review
https://ift.tt/OiNdgGF

Kleefeld on Comics: Bad Diamond Decisions
https://ift.tt/ogGP7YO

Kleefeld on Comics: Learn about Juneteenth with Comics
https://ift.tt/jMk3enc

Kleefeld on Comics: DIY Galactus
https://ift.tt/wiqZI5P

Back in 2005, Toy Biz released a wave of Marvel Legends figures that each included a portion of a Galactus figure. If you bought all the smaller figures in that particular wave, you would have all the parts to build your own Galactus figure, which stood about 18" tall -- three times the size of the regular Marvel Legends figures. They did that type of thing for several waves to try to encourge fans to buy every figure in the line, rather than just the three or four that they wanted. They also did a Sentinel, Apocalypse, Annihilus, Giant-Man... but Galactus was the only one I had enough interest in to get the complete set. He was part of my action figure display for years.

In 2009, Hasbro made a 19" figure exclusively available at San Diego Comic Con. This one include light-up features as well but was otherwise not appreciably different than the one I had already gotten, so I certainly wasn't about to pay extra for the exclusive nature of it. In fact, when they released a mass-market version the following year, I was still disinclined to pick that up. (I feel compelled, for the sake of completeness to also mention the Galactus figure Toy Biz made in 1995. It only stood 14" tall and you could only move the arms and head. I did have that one at one point, but I never cared much for it.)

But in 2022, Hasbro did a new Galactus figure as one of their "HasLab" offerings. This one clocked in at a massive 32" and also had light-up features, but had the price tag to go with it. I believe the original price for $400 US but if you missed the sale window (which was only about a month, maybe two?) then you were out of luck. You can find them on eBay and other after-market venues now, but they generally float more in the $600-$700 range. I couldn't bring myself to justify the $400 expenditure, much less a $700 ome.

But I still thought it would be cool to have a Galactus figure that could so overwhelmingly tower over my Fantastic Four figures. I have a 3D printer, so I toyed with the notion of downloading a simple Galactus model and trying to tweak it to add a little articulation, but all the ones I could find were barely a couple inches tall and would lose all semblance of detail when scaled up to a reasonable size. Not to mention the sculpts generally looked pretty stiff and awkward to begin with.

But I recently discovered that ToyMakr3D released an articulated Galactus-type 3D model (technically, not actually Galactus to avoid copyright problems) that was able to be printed on your own printer. I had seen their work before, but as they focused almost entirely on Transformers and Transformers-style mechas, I paid little attention to them. But it would seem they branched out a bit more late last year and released "Battlegeus" which, when printed and assembled, comes in at about 30". I figured that, for a considerably cheaper price than the HasLab figure, I could finally have my own Galactus roughly in scale with my figures. And, after about two weeks of printing and assembly, I finished the figure last night...

I have to say that, as impressive as the asthetic design work on the figure is, I was infinitely more impressed with the engineering. There are, if I didn't miss any in counting, 71 points of articulation and every one of the 360-some parts fit together perfectly. Furthermore, all of the larger joints include a built-in tensioner so you can adjust how tight/loose each joint is. The instructions were a tad confusing in places, but the way the parts are designed, it's hard to not fit them in the right spots.

Even though I built it myself, the cost wasn't nothing, I will admit. The STL files for printing were $22.40 US and I spent another $120 to get enough of the blue and metallic purple filments. But that's obviously considerably cheaper than even the $400 price tag of the original HasLab figure. And it occurs to me that even if you add in another $300 to get a brand new 3D printer on top of the costs of the filament and 3D files, that's still less than the current asking price for one of those HasLab figures on eBay!

Anyway, I wanted to give a shout-out to the fantastic design work on the figure for anyone else who couldn't pull the trigger on the HasLab Galactus. There's also a (legally, not actually a) Sentinel as well. Maybe they'll be encouraged to do other large-scale characters -- some Celestials, the Shaper of Worlds, Eternity..? Lots of possibilities seem open now!

One thing I've noted more than a few times on this blog is how I've spent much of my adult life unlearning the bullshit I was taught in school. Particularly when it comes to history, everything that was in my textbooks was heavily propagandized and incredibly white-washed. I've told the story before of when I was in middle school, my father brought home a small stack of Golden Legacy comics and within a week of reading about the importance of Frederick Douglass to freeing enslaved people, he happened to pop up in my history textbook at school... for exactly two sentences. So it's no surprise that when Junteenth was declared a federal holiday in 2021, a lot of folks -- particularly those not descended from enslaved people -- just scratched their heads and didn't have the foggiest idea what Junteenth was for.

It's this type of thing that I think comics are particularly well-suited for. To catch people up on the history they either weren't taught at all or were actively taught incorrectly. Using comics to close these gaps ("chasms" might be the more appropriate term here though) makes learning more engaging and memorable in a way that a Wikipedia entry does not. And when it comes to issues around racism and slavery, let's face it -- Americans won't even acknowledge them unless they're heavily sugar-coated to begin with so, by and large, they're not just going learn anything about Juneteenth by casually reading through Wikipedia for the sake of their own edification.

OK, so what comics are actually out there that talk about the origins of Juneteenth and what it means?

To begin with, I can't find any webcomics touching on this subject. I'm really disappointed that there aren't more history webcomics in general, but I suspect that has to do with the origins of webcomics in the first place. (The medium itself tends to be more forward-looking, so its biggest proponents also tend to direct their thoughts to the present and future with technology.) But what about print?

I've been able to find four comics specifically focused on Junteenth. I haven't had a chance to read any of these yet -- one was only just announced and won't even be published until next year -- but I have to believe they all have something worthwhile for you. Check them out!

	The Adventures of Juneteena Freeman "CROWN": Graveyard in the Attic by Dr. Phyllis Tucker-Wicks Learn how a regular African American teenager stumbles upon a mystical crown that bestows her with the incredible powers of her ancestors. Juneteena embarks on a thrilling journey of self discovery, empowerment, and justice as she learns to wield these newfound abilities. Dive into this captivating adventure and witness Juneteena's transformation from a regular teen into a formidable superhero.
	KEMET The Time Traveller - Juneteenth by Joe Young Imagine discovering ancient realms through vibrant illustrations and captivating narratives—this is the essence of KEMET. It's more than a comic; it's a portal to understanding and cherishing our cultural roots. As we unveil each chapter, children are not only entertained but educated about Black history in a way that sparks curiosity and pride.
	The First Freedom: The Story of Opal Lee and Juneteenth by Angélique Roché, Alvin Epps, Millicent Monroe and Ben Glendining The incredible journey of activist Opal Lee—known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth—is brought to life in this biographical graphic novel that not only explores Opal’s remarkable path, but the history of the holiday of Juneteenth itself. (This is not due to be published until February 2026.)
	The Tree That Splits: A Juneteenth Story by Davian Chester Set during the final days of slavery, The Tree That Splits follows Levi and Celia, two enslaved lovers who are separated the day freedom arrives.

Like, I suspect, many of you, I've been following the trials and tribulations of Diamond Comics throughout their bankruptcy. Some days more closely, some days with little more than a passing glance. I'm probably a little more comfortable than most comics fans in keeping track of what's going on -- I've been actively following comic companies as a business interest since Marvel went through its bankruptcy back in the '90s and many of the papers and studies I did for my MBA centered around the comics industry. But I've got to ask you...

What the hell are they doing?!?

So Diamond declared bankruptcy in January, right? That basically means that they have more debt than they'll be able to pay off. So they put the company up for sale. Someone could buy everything that Diamond owns, but they'd also be liable for that debt. Diamond was put up for auction and it was bought by Ad Populum. (I am waaaaay over-simplifying this for the sake of getting to my actual point more quickly.)

Typically, there are two reasons that one company would buy another. The first is to gain their assets for extended use. That might be because they have material (which could take the form of raw materials, finished products, intellectual property, or just data) the larger company wants for their own business; that might be because they are a competitive threat and buying them allows the larger company to literally own the competition; that might be because the CEO of the larger company always just thought it might be fun to run a newspaper. (That's a Citizen Kane reference, not a Jeff Bezos one.)

The second reason one company might buy another is to sell it. They typically will fire a bunch of employees, switch to inferior materials (maybe more 'filler' for real world items, maybe trying to wrangle AI to do the bulk of the creative work), sell off some of the key assets under the guise of "returning to core competencies," and try to run the business as bare bones as possible for a couple years before turning around and selling it to someone else. The idea is that they try to get rid of some of the major ongoing expenditures to bring costs down, but sell the company quickly before customers turn sour on the inferior goods/service. It makes the company look good on paper for a very brief time, and the goal is to sell during that small window. It's kind of the business equivalent of house flipping; putting in just the smallest amount of work to make everything look good superficially but without addressing any of the serious structural issues.

At first, I thought Ad Populum was taking this second approach; they fired a bunch of employees on Day One. Normally, this is done a couple months after the purchase to give time to the larger company to identify who they can get rid of and hurt the business the least. If you're firing a bunch of employees as quickly as Ad Populum did, that means they put very little consideration into who does what and just got rid of whole departments and/or anyone drawing a salary of more than an arbitrary dollar figure.

What next sturck me as odd is that they just shut down Diamond Select Toys. They haven't sold off that part of the company, which has existing inventory as well as deals for future products already in the pipeline. There was most definitely some value in all that, and Ad Populum effectively just chucked it in the garbage.

They then cancelled all orders set for after next week. Not rescheduled to a later date. Not delayed until further notice. Not even just canceling for a couple weeks while we sort out the warehousing situation. Everything canceled, full stop. That included material from Marvel, Dark Horse, Tokyopop, IDW, Kodansha... every company that had an agreement with Penguin Random House basically. They didn't even offer short-term suggestions for getting products through alternate means. Just "June 25 or later? Nope." They just effectively killed their entire business. If they're cancelling orders on major publishers' work like that, why would any retailer trust to order from them again? All the retailers that continued to order, for example, Marvel comics from them -- probably out habit/inertia -- now have to scramble to another distributor. They have to do some hard work they were hoping to avoid. Now that Diamond is forcing them to do it, what's their incentive to return?

They've also axed their no-cost reorder service, they've cut retailers off from any data of any sort that they might've used to operate their businesses better, and in fact they seem to have cut off communications altogether -- publishers are hearing nothing, not to mention they're not being paid for anything sold since Ad Populum bought Diamond, and reporters (like industry stalwarts Heidi Macdonald and Rich Johnston, mind you, not just any yahoo with a blog) aren't getting any responses either.

In short, they seem to be doing everything they can to run the business into the ground. I honestly don't know what they might do differently if that was indeed their deliberate intention. I mean, if they had strip-mined the company's assets -- sold off Diamond Select, subcontracted distribution work to a cheap third-party, canceled the lowest profit contracts, etc. -- they would still have some measure of value in the Diamond brand and logo. Diamond was literally THE comics distributor for the entire country for three decades; that name and identity carries some value to it even with the bankruptcy. Well, "carried (past tense) some value." As I said, their business decisions are royally screwing over their client base to the point where retailers literally have no choice but to run to a competitor.

I can't see what the business angle is here. This is not just incompetency; one or two of these decisions, maybe, but all of them? In so short a time period? Diamond's value is estimated to have dropped by $10 million since January. Ad Populum is making the company worth less and less by the day. I don't think there's a Producers-level scheme possible in this scenario. Maybe it's a limitation of my own imagination, but the only rationale I can come up with for this extended series of phenomonally bad decisions is that someone at Ad Populum is seeking out the most two-dimensional, petty, Snidely-Whiplash-type revenge scheme against someone at Diamond, and they want that person to watch Diamond turn to absolute ash. Which I wouldn't be upset with except that it's hurting thousands of comics retailers and publishers and fans in the process.