Public service comics are almost never actually good. Even if you get top-notch talent working on them, they tend feel forced and preachy under the best circumstances. But make up an anthropomorphic burlap sack as a mascot; give him a lot of dry, superficial exposition on different types of fertilizer; throw in some post-WWII jingoism and 1950s racist sterotypes; wrap the whole thing in a it's-never-not-a-storytelling-cheat dream sequence framework; and you've got... The Conquest of Hunger: Featuring Prosper Plenty and His Magical Chemicals from 1951.

Somebody at the National Fertilizer Association thought it was a good idea, but no one who worked on it signed their name to it. And in the three-quarters of a century since it was published, no one has owned up working on it either. It's easy to laugh at such an effort now in 2026, but I'm pretty sure no one was proud of the work back then either.

Anyway, courtesy of the Science History Institute, I offer up The Conquest of Hunger: Featuring Prosper Plenty and His Magical Chemicals.

The big news yesterday was that Mike Richardson, founder and publisher of Dark Horse Comics, was fired by the company he sold Dark Horse to 2022. Well, technically, they're not saying they're firing him. What they're saying is Jay Komas has been made interm CEO. The official statement reads, in its entirety...

As part of our long-term vision to better align Dark Horse within a more connected and forward-looking group structure, we are implementing changes to modernize the business and strengthen collaboration across publishing, games, film, merchandise, and other key areas. Our goal is simple: to ensure Dark Horse is positioned for sustained success while continuing to serve creators, partners, and fans at the highest level.

With this in mind, Jay Komas has stepped into the role of Interim CEO at Dark Horse. Jay brings extensive experience with global intellectual properties across games, film, and consumer products. Over the course of his career, he has held senior leadership roles at Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, and LucasArts, where he worked with some of the most recognized entertainment brands in the world. His background in managing and expanding IP across multiple categories will be instrumental as we build on Dark Horse’s legacy and strengthen its position in an increasingly connected entertainment landscape.

Please be assured that Dark Horse remains fully committed to working closely with you and to creating the very best products and experiences for fans worldwide. Our partnerships are central to everything we do, and this transition is designed to enhance collaboration, unlock new opportunities, and support long- term growth together.

In closing, it is important to recognize Mike Richardson’s extraordinary contribution to Dark Horse and the broader comics and entertainment industry. Without his dedication, vision and creative leadership, Dark Horse would not be the company it is today. His impact on creators, stories and fans over the decades has been profound, and we are deeply grateful for the foundation he built. We look forward to continuing our work together and to sharing more about our plans in the coming months.

Notice first that Richardson isn't mentioned at all until the last paragraph. They never actually say he's out, just that there's this new guy in the role that Richardson has held. Granted, general decorum dictates that no one is going to say, "Richardson was really a pain in our ass, so we fired him." But that they effectively say nothing about him -- and only then as almost an afterthought -- suggests this is an acrimonious split. If Richardson was walking away on good terms with the current owners, that would have been the lead in this statement.

Next, they do talk up Komas' experience and background, but they also explicitly mention that he's tapped as interim CEO. That is, he knows the business well enough to keep the day-to-day operations going, but they either feel he's not qualified to lead the company or they disagree with whatever direction he wants to take it. His role as CEO is only temporary until they get someone else in. And that further suggests Richardson's departure was acrimonious; if there weren't bad blood there, he would have stayed on while they conducted a search for a new CEO.

Finally, while not mentioned in the statement, Richardson is 75. And they made zero attempt to spin his depature as a retirement. They are fully owning that this wasn't exactly voluntary on Richardson's part, and they're not even trying to paper over things with a veneer of typical business-polite respectability. The average age of retirement in the US tends to float in the mid-60s, so with Richardson a solid decade past that, it would've been dead-easy to say he simply wanted to retire. Everyone would've immediately taken that at face value. But by expressly not mentioning that, that's a clear indicator that Richardson didn't leave voluntarily.

I say "voluntarily" but it's possible Richardson did indeed quit and was not fired. But because this was so sudden, I suspect it was one of those "You're fired!"/"You can't fire me because I quit!" situations. The outward tone of Dark Horse has definitely changed since 2022, and some of their larger recent business decisions -- notably axing the TFAW online store last year -- didn't feel like they came from Richardson. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear there were conflicts between Richardson and the Embracer Group board.

I don't offer any of this as gossip -- I honestly have zero insider information on any of this; I've never even met Richardson. I bring all this up as a lesson in reading corporate statements. No one I've seen reporting on this seems to have tried reading between the lines, and I think there's a lot that is not being said in that statement! Media literacy means reading not only what is written, but how it's written and -- equally important -- what isn't written!

The letter you see here is one that came to light back in 2009. It's dated March 1, 1939 and was sent from Grace Everett. That's Everett as in the mother of Bill Everett, creator of the Sub-Mariner. Although if you check your history dates, this would've been after Everett had created the first Sub-Mariner story, but before it actually saw print.

While the letter has a lot of personal updates which likely have no interest or context for anyone today, towards the end of the letter she talks about this new Superman character and how she's helping Bill to do research for ideas that might compete with it. When this letter surfaced, the discussion at the time generally agreed that that is ultimately what led to the creation of Amazing-Man for Lloyd Jaquet and debuted in the fall of 1939. (Interestingly, while the Sub-Mariner was created and technically published first, his debut in Motion Picture Funnies Weekly got almost no circulation. So when Amazing-Man saw print later that same year, it actually preceded the general public's first view of the Sub-Mariner in Marvel Comics #1 by an entire month!)

The scan is a bit small, so I've reproduced the full text below. This was originally posted by Daniel Best on his now-defunct 20th Century Danny Boy blog, so full credit to him for sharing this in the first place.

14 West 118th Street,

New York City.

Darling:

Carlton’s letter to Bette, which arrived yesterday told us your proposed trip to Clearwater. I wanted to write you yesterday but was so busy on some typing for Professor Barzun that I got no chance until today.

I am delighted that you are going away at last, and to so delightful a place. To have Flodde and Gail with you will mean a great deal -- that I know, and it is lovely for them that they can have some sunshine and warm weather now.

I am wondering how you will make the trip. If you go by train -- and I presume you will – shall you come through new York? If you do, and want to break the trip so that you can get a little rest, I’d love to have you come here. We have plenty of room for all three of you now, and of course we’d be overjoyed to have you here.

Let me know if there is anything at all that I can do for you or for Flodde.

We are all well again and all busy. Professor Barzun is revising part of his book and gives me a little typing now and then. Bill has a lot of work to do on his present three comic strips, and Centaur Publications wants him to do a new one. Lee is entirely recovered, back and work, and busy as a bee.

I had a visit from Lois ten days ago, just for an evening; and Dorothy Dalzell and Rachel Blanchard were in new York for a few days, so that I saw them twice. Bobby Fisk – you will remember him as the little boy who was with us so much when we lived on School Street – will be in town this week end, and we are looking forward to seeing him again.

Lois is in Miami, and writes me that she is very lonely and nervous. Her uncle, who is a surgeon, sent her down there to get some sunshine, warm weather and bathing; but she is all alone and I she is not happy there. She returns on the 17th.

I heard an interesting conversation on the bus the other day. It was about the book “Rebecca”, which I know you have read but which I have not. Did you realize that it was written in the first person, and that the person’s name was not mentioned in the book once? It seems that a reader in new York, which noticed the circumstance, telephoned London, to ask author what the name of her character was; but the author was then in Hollywood and the reader didn’t get the information. A New York newspaper carried an item about the telephone call. Interesting, isn’t it?

I’m feeling very well indeed, and keeping busy as usual. Last week I went out to luncheon once, and to the movies one evening. That’s wild excitement for me in one week.

I’m going to spend all day tomorrow at the Public Library, doing some research work for Bill. He has a new character, for a strip which Jaquet wants him to do in competition with the new one now being syndicated – called the “Superman’ I think. We’ve wracked our brains for a new kind of character; and all I can think of now is to back over some old folk tales, foreign ones if necessary, and try to find some unusual character around which we can build an unusual story for these modern times. Bill is rushing through another strip and two covers, so I am going to help him in this research. I course I love to do it.

By the way, the "Superman" thing I spoke of above was considered to good that it was bought and syndicated before it was ever published. The people I know who have seen it are not impressed, but I suppose children would love it. It’s a story of a man with superhuman strength in these modern times, who can pick up an elephant with one hand – lifts trolley cars off tracks, etc. If you have any brilliant ideas for a competitive strip, for heaven’s sake let us know. Jaquet is on Bill’s heels about this.

I finally got a permanent wave, and it certainly helped my morale. Now if I can pick a new suit and hat out of the All-Encircling-Good, I’ll be all set to knock ‘em Dead! Tho where I shall ever find a hat that I’ll dare to wear – or even consider wearing – I really don’t know. I’ve not seen a single hat yet that wasn’t simply horrible, for me at least.

Carleton wrote that he would let us know has soon as you had definite plans for your trip, and I shall be hoping that they will include a stop-over in new York. This little jaunt, I am absolutely certain, will be the one thing needed to start you on the up-grade. And even though it may take a super-human effort on your part to get there, any discomfort will be well worth while in the improvement that you will certainly make.

My dear love to Carleton, Mardie and Flodde; and a million kisses to Gail.

Ever devotedly,

Grace

Let me drop this perhaps unconventional idea on you: Mad Magazine was/is a fantastic educational tool when it comes to media literacy.

Well, what is media literacy? Media literacy is the ability to critically look at and analyze media. It's being able to sit down to watch TV or a movie, and understand why it's written the way it is, or why the actors are portraying their parts in a certain way, or what the broader socio-political context of the piece is. It's the ability to understand the media you're consuming, not just consume it.

So how does Mad teach media literacy? Primarily through their parodies and satires. The films and shows they lampooned frequently contained heavily meta-textual references. The one I immediately recall is in the parody of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I had enjoyed the movie as a child when it came out, but the Mad version contained a scene in which Steven Spielberg and George Lucas appear about 2/3 of the way through. The two talk about the progress of the film as its creators and dream up the mine car chase as a way to keep the action moving along so fast that nobody will realize that they don't have much of a plot. It wasn't until reading that that I realized just how flimsy a premise the movie had, and how a film's creators can add in big, flashy sequences that aren't anything more than big, flashy, hollow sequences.

The other thing Mad did for my media literacy, particularly when I was even younger, was to provide a cultural touchstone with pop culture. I didn't actually see all the movies they made fun of, but I was aware of them, their basic plots, and probably a particularly scathing analysis of the them through the pages of Mad. Other cultural references seeped in as well. I recall a Mort Drucker piece in which he created the "perfect" politician by taking bits and pieces of particularly famous ones. Lincoln's beard, Ted Kennedy's shock of white hair, Carter's lips... I got a civics lesson in notable politicians YEARS before I paid attention to politics. (The punchline, by the way, was that all the parts, when assembled properly, looked like Mr. T.)

The fact that Mad kept poking fun at American culture in a critical and intelligent way (admittedly, amid some sophomoric gags and general sillyness) it required its audience to look at what it was parodying with the same critical eye. "It's funny because it's true" is a kind of verbal shorthand that speaks to how a good comedian can cast light on the absurdities of a culture through exaggeration, but that phrase could also well be applied to Mad. They regularly skewered media of all sorts through comic exaggeration, and the only way to really understand what they were doing was to understand what they were really criticizing.

You know, I read Mad as a kid only sporadically. But I have to admit that I did not realize until well into adulthood just how significant even those few issues I read really were!

I recently came across a piece that I wrote in 2016, a few days after the Presidential election...

I think we'll see a Trump administration with the Republican Congress pepper the next several years with laws that, in the name of security or fiscal policy or some other smokescreen, strip women and minorities of what they have. They'll be "voting rights" acts that make it harder for Blacks and Latinos to vote. Passed under the guise of voter fraud protection. The Affordable Care Act might not get axed straight out, but I can easily see it getting de-funded in the name of fiscal responsibility. Immigration quotas will be tightened under the pretense of saving jobs. Almost certainly a hundred other laws that, to all but the deliberately obtuse, will chip away at equality.

So how does this impact comics?

With stricter voting regulations, fewer Blacks and Latinos will be able to vote, thereby making them even less represented than they already are. Added security will lead to even more profiling, both of which leading to more minorities in prison. Of course, if you're in prison, the chances of you having the ability to create and publish comics drop pretty radically. How many voices won't we hear because of this?

With the ACA gutted, how many people are going to have to try to track down full-time jobs just in order for them to get healthy insurance? When will they have time to work on comics? Or what about those who aren't able to get a job (since they're competing with so many others like them) and die as a result of the inability to get treatment? More voices we won't hear.

Women who try to make comics, but then quickly drop out of the industry altogether when they're harassed and threatened.

What about the LGBTQ community, whose have trolls drive them back into the closet already? Even in the couple of days since the election, there's been an uptick in violence against them, attributed to being given a pass by Trump's own behavior. How many people will find it preferable to simply hide and avoid getting beaten than speak up and find themselves in the hospital or worse...

Undoubtedly, and certainly in the near term, many creators will speak up and speak loudly. But as day to day living becomes slowly more difficult, with fewer safety nets, and a very real danger to the physical safety, I suspect we'll start hearing less and less from them as they try to take care of themselves. Which they absolutely will have to do. But that will also mean time they can't work on making their voices heard through comics.

One thing I've actively tried to do over the past decade or so has been seek out those smaller voices, and either amplify them or provide some measure of support. And I've tried to use whatever privileged forum I have to promote tolerance and diversity, often using comics as the medium to send that message. But it obviously hasn't been enough. I'm not speaking loudly enough, or eloquently enough, or passionately enough, or persuasively enough. I've never really thought of myself as a writer, but I've never felt less of one than now. I will continue to do what I can to support and promote women and minority voices, but I apologize for not doing more. Or better. I don't want to see voices that are different from mine silenced. But I expect that many of them will be as the real-world effects of President Trump will quiet them little by little as they succumb to having to put all their energies into mere survival, sadly casting aside the relative luxury of creating comics.

I can't say that there are quantitatively fewer women and minorities making comics today compared to the start of Trump's time in the White House. It sure seems like it, but I recognize there might be some measure of confirmation bias at play. Nonetheless, I've continued trying to amplify those voices in whatever ways I can. I know some people who've expressed gratitude in my attempts, but I've also experienced frustration in seeing/hearing from long-time readers who simply do not get it. I don't know if that's from my not being more persuasive or more eloquent or something, or if they just have racist or bigoted ideologies so ingrained into their personalities that they cannot be reached. Maybe some combination of both.

My point here is just that, like I said a decade ago, Trump is trying to silence them. If you didn't think his intentions were as obvious as I saw them to be back then, they sure as hell ought to be obivous now. It's not enough to be content with, "Well, I'm not saying or doing anything racist." Trump is actively out there trying to silence women and minorities, so you have to actively counter that or else he will wipe them out.

I wasn't being hyperbolic ten years ago, and I'm not being hyperbolic now.

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

Kleefeld on Comics: Happy 5th Anniversary, Megascope
https://ift.tt/qAZ4yGr

Kleefeld on Comics: Black Leopard
https://ift.tt/xioGVzR

Kleefeld on Comics: JumpStart, The Series?
https://ift.tt/YH0fBy8

Kleefeld on Comics: Was This Creator Approved?
https://ift.tt/0SRsrh2

Kleefeld on Comics: Where are my POC Reprints?
https://ift.tt/lvq58fM

Look, we all know that throughout the 20th century, the comics industry was dominated by white men. And largely because of that, the comics that were produced featured primarily white men. So it stands to reason that, now that we're in an era where old comic strips are getting handsome, bound collections that reprint an entire series, a lot of the collections we see also feature white men (or animal stand-ins) in the lead roles. Little Nemo in Slumberland, Peanuts, Archie, Beetle Bailey, Calvin & Hobbes...

But let me ask this: where are the comic strip collections from people of color? There aren't even trade paperbacks of Wee Pals or Curtis currently in print, nevermind and old school classic like Torchy in Heartbeats. When was the last time you saw Gordo or Luther on a bookstore bookshelf? Has Speed Jaxon ever seen print outside of the original strips? Even Boondocks, argueably the most commercially successful American comic strip by a person of color, has never seen a good hardback collected edition.

Now, granted, publishers are going to focus on material that is likely to sell the best. That's where the Peanuts and Calvin & Hobbes collections come from. They're almost universally hailed as great strips, and they are fondly remembered. Totally makes sense to lead with those.

But now we've got 1980s Hagar the Horrible. You're seriously trying to tell me that those strips are more worthy of hardcover reprints than Speed Jaxon? That they're more fondly remembered than Wee Pals? That they have more historical significance than Torchy in Heartbeats? That they were more creatively inspired than Gordo?

My answer to all those questions: that's bullshit.

If I want to really be cynical about this, I could guess that we aren't seeing nice collections of POC-driven comic strips because publishers are assuming that it would only be people of color who might be interested in those in the first place, and everybody "knows" they don't have as much disposable income as white folks. If I really to think cynically about this. The most positive spin I can put on why we haven't seen these collections is that it simply hasn't even occurred to the white people in charge that there are comic strips created by people of color.

I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between. That one or two people have brought up the idea of a Gordo or Boondocks collection, but the bean-counters can't justify the costs because they don't figure the books would sell as well as half-century old Beetle Baileys as they dance around the racist undercurrents that kind of statement has.

And you know, even setting aside the high road arguements here about racial equity, I can get pissed over this just from the standpoint that there are comics out there that I can't read because they've never been reprinted. The only way I'm going to read Speed Jaxon is if I track down individual copies of the papers it ran in, and read five years of three-quarters-of-a-century old newspapers. I think I've got enough contacts that I could pull that off if I really wanted, but A) that's still a hell of a lot of work and B) how many people would be willing to go through even a quarter of that effort? No one but a very, very small handful of people will see these strips unless a publisher steps up and gets them reprinted.

And, sure, I know that there are rights issues involved and they would have to track down the copyright holders to get licensing agreements and such. And some of those rights issues might be complicated several decades removed from the strips' original publication. But that's still got to be more worthwhile than Hagar the frickin' Horrible!