“The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.” ― Sarah Dessen
As I predicted on this very website only about two posts ago, today is Gimme Yer Predictions Day, as I ask you, The Folks What Still Read The Comics Blogs, for your comic book industry predictions for this coming year of 2019 (possibly to go down in future history books as “The Burning Times,” but we’ll see).
If you’ve got any predictions, share ’em in the comments for this post, but remember, the rules are, as always:
1. Don’t read the other predictions before entering your own.
2. Don’t criticize other people’s predictions.
3. Don’t predict any real person’s death.
4. Limit of three predictions per person, please! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY, ONLY THREE! My fingers are already tired just from looking at all the predictions I have to cover from last time. And don’t do, like, “here’s Part B of Question #3, which has two subsections” etc., or I’ll get you, and your little dog Toto, too.
After the first of the year, barring any lingering eyeball health issues, I’ll get crackin’ on that aforementioned last batch of predictions for 2018, so consider that your fair warning.
Thanks, pals…every year you folks come through for me on these posts and it’s greatly appreciated! Always remember that all of you are a big part of why this site is still around and still a lot of fun for me to do!
1. Less people than ever will read the comics blogs.
2. There will be more interesting cartoonists making comics in North America outside of the Diamond system than ever before, and it will be impossible for one person or blog or comics news-site to read or even mention half of them during the course of 2019.
3. Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham will prove the most popular non-Miles character from the new Spider movie and will get his own movie or tv show before Spider-Gwen.
1. A new Legion of Super-heroes book is announced. Written by Tom King. The 9-panel grid returns!
2. The next chapter of Injection is (finally) completed. Sales are abysmal due to the hiatus.
3. Miracleman: Silver Age is still not published. Some new excuse is given for its absence.
1. Marvel will finally get permission to do mash-ups with Disney animated characters like DC is doing with Hanna-Barbera characters…BUT, only the C- and D-list characters like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Roy Disney.
2. In the tradition of last year’s Walking Dead Wine, Marvel and DC will license their characters for Wine offerings. Batman Pinot Noir, Scarlet Spider Red, Rose and Thorn Blush, Champions Champagne (1970’s team, not the current youngsters), and of course Malcolm Merlyn Merlot.
3. I predict that prediction posts on comic blogs will become the new internet sensation making progressiveruin one of the hot sites of 2019!
Marvel will stop publishing monthly (paper) comics entirely, moving to a graphic novel-only publication model.
TKO Studios new distribution model will do marginally well enough that the Big Two will begin offering some of their books in the same format: a “season” (6-new-issues) in a single book or digitally every 6-8 months, rather than monthly installments.
I’m sure I’ve made some of these predictions before…
1. An otherwise forgotten 1960s-era hero will be brought back for the new millennium (do we still call it that?), make a big splash, and be cancelled by the end of the year.
2. An otherwise forgotten 1980s series (if there is such a thing) will be reprinted in an omnibus edition, to my amazement.
3. eBay will finally crack down on those idiots listing their CGC copies of Image Comics under the “Platinum Age (pre-1938)” section.
1. DC will have to tread water for three months across the entire line with flashbacks, fill-ins, and out-of-continuity nonsense waiting on the last set of Doomsday Clock delays. Some of the books will be quite good, though.
2. Mage: The Hero Denied #15 will end on a cliffhanger, with Matt Wagner and Image promising a much shorter timeframe between it and the launch of Mage: The Hero Delivered, the actual conclusion of the full saga.
3. Marvel will announce an Ironheart movie as the big summer 2020 next phase starting film.
1. A major comics company will remove all advertising from its monthly comics.
2. The next Marvel streaming series: Lockjaw and the Punisher.
3. Dreamworks announces Phase Two of the Undergarments Cinematic Universe.
1. One of the few DC movies that actually gets released amidst various delays and rewrites drops a mention of the Multiverse and the 52 Earths (as if to explain how the post-DCEU films tie together. Fans and reviewers simply note how 5he Arrowverse did it more clearly and elegantly.
2. The Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths — a storyline winding across parts of the fall storylines of each of the shows (including Black Lightning) and culminating in a two-week crossover, follows the pattern of “Earth-90” this year, using serial-numbers-filed-off versions of previous DC television adaptations (with the Smallville characters in particular appearing, roughly filling the niches of COIE’s Earth-2 Kal-L and Luthor). However, due to the expansion of DC Universe’s shows (e.g. Swamp Thing and Stargirl), a number of other side characters to populate multiversal crowd scenes won’t be available.
3. The new Ms. Marvel series will take the character out of Jersey City and away from her supporting cast to increasingly interact with the wider Marvel Universe and broader issues (beyond those related to the character) — and its subsequent failure will rather lead to heated internet arguments ranging from the male writer to politics.
1 dc streaming service will announce not only will their new swamp thing tv show make constatine a regular character buts also a back door pilot for a new constatine tv show. prediction two is that marvel will announce that miracle man the silver age has a release date at last and later finaly relase the complete saga in a massive trade. 3 dc streaming service will announce a tv series called trinity that will be about super man wonder woman and batman teaming up finaly giving fans a tv version of batman at last.
The New Warriors TV show that was originally going to air on Freeform (formerly ABC Family), will finally see the light of day on Disney’s streaming service, and the whole world will finally see how great a hero Speedball is!
1. The new Hellboy movie is going to be reasonably successful, so of course somebody’s going to learn the wrong lessons from it, and push another comic movie to a somewhat unneccessary R-rating. Turok, maybe. Or Vampirella.
2. Assuming the death of Border Town doesn’t outright sink Vertigo, going forward creators there are going to be vetted to within an inch of their lives. Too much so, so now anyone who maybe said something dumb five or more years ago is unemployable…
3. DC is going to give Doom Patrol yet another reboot, somewhat conservatively, to more resemble the TV show. Or maybe just to come out on time…
1. Lancelot Link gets a revival comic with people seriously (well semi-seriously) exploring the dramatic and comic possibilities of a chimp-dominated Cold War.
2. One or more indie publishers will announce a long-term development deal with one of the major studios that isn’t Disney or WB.
3. New Spider-Ham comic.
1. Comic books will continue to be a source of unlimited creativity, artistry, and fun for millions of readers (just as they always have been).
2. Trade paperback and hardcovers sales will increase (slightly) through the book store market while sales will decline (again slightly) for direct market stores.
3) Mike will retire Sluggo Saturdays for good in 2019. He will replace it with a weekly post in which he shares drawings of capybaras from his youth.
It’s a thin line between a prediction and wishful thinking, but here goes!
1) After the success of the superb “Into the Spider-Verse” movie Marvel gives the green light for the same treatment to Squirrel Girl!
2) Ongoing Spider-Verse series, with stories rotating among Spider-Man Noir, Sad Middle Aged Spider-Man, Spider-Ham, Spider-Punk, etc.
3) Cullen Bunn starts 52 new horror series in 2019, one every week!
1. The rise of electronic comics will really start to bite as Amazon/Comixology explicitly move to a policy of destroying paper single issues and retail comics shops. Many stores will close.
2. Sterling Silver Comics will not be among them.
3. Magdalene Visaggio will be hired to write a high-profile big two title.
At least one new superhero movie will flop big time, leading to panic at the Marvel/Warner Bros studios that the genre is over.
DC streaming service will collapse, and all its series will be picked up on Netflix.
Mike Sterling will develop ocular super powers.
Having teased him in Season 4, Swamp Thing will appear in an episode of Legends of Tomorrow entitled, “There’s Swamp Thing About Mary…” However, getting Mike Sterling and all his friends to watch does not save the show from cancellation and the fifth season is the last.
1. There will be no increase in Aquaman comic book sales.
2. There will be no increase in Shazam! comic book sales.
2. There will be an increase in Captain Marvel sales. Maybe only a small one, and probably more for the trade paperbacks rather than the regular comics, but still, an increase.
This is not meant as a “Marvel rules, DC drools” thing. It is simply based on the reactions I have seen to the movies. (The fact that just about everything written about the Aquaman movie starts with “You know that boring character from the comics? This does everything it can to make him interesting.” is not going to send people running to the comic shops.)
1. DC Black Label will be quietly abandoned/forgotten. If any of the other announced new books do come out, they’ll have a different label. Older books set to be reprinted with that label, won’t be.
2. Neil Gaiman & Mark Buckingham’s Miracleman comics start coming out again. (Rocky: But that prediction never works. Bullwinkle: This time for sure!)
3. Avengers: Endgame will have a post-credit scene hinting at Fantastic Four or X-Men characters as the Disney/Fox merger will have been finalized. Spider-Man: Far From Home will have a post-credit scene that ties it to Into the Spider-Verse at Sony’s instance.
1. HBO will acquire the rights to Jim Starlin’s dormant “DREADSTAR” film project. The resulting series will replace and eclipse “GAME of THRONES” as a critical and pop culture phenomenon.
2. DC will release a SUPERMAN by John Byrne omnibus.
3. Marvel Comics and Kulan Gath will bring us a late 2019 announcement of a future Deadpool vs Conan mini-series.
1. A trend that began with Star Wars and has continued with Conan, the Buffyverse, and Firefly/Serenity, Dark Horse will lose another of their big licenses to another publisher. My bet’s on Aliens, Predator, or both.
2. Disney+ launch brings a mixed bag of reviews. Their Star Wars and Marvel programming is praised, but the lack of such 70’s-80’s classics* as The Apple Dumpling Gang and Condorman is a point of criticism.
3. Bendis will still be writing at least one of the Superman titles.
1) Tom King andBarnaby Bagenda reunite for a Legion of Superheroes book. What’s more, it’s been delayed for so long thanks to Doomsday Clock’s reduced pace that the first four issues come out weekly, to make it event and make use of the backlog.
2) Autumnlands by Kurt Busiek and Ben Dewey finally returns from Image.
3) A popular board game will get its own comic book — possibly Pandemic Legacy or Betrayal at House on the Hill.
I predict that Mike will get at least three “Mike will get hit by a meteor” predictions following his last tweet.
In comics, something even more incredulous than all the joke predictions will happen, and we won’t even be surprised. Ant-Man and Blue Devil are the new norm.
1. A Fortnite comic book will be published.
2. Someone involved with Comicsgate will eat a bad egg salad sandwich, spend hours on the toilet contemplating life, and then return to being a total jerk.
3. Predator vs. The Planet of the Apes will be published by Dark Horse/Boom and outsells Batman.
Only three, and compact, eh?
1)The DC Universe will be dead before it can finish running the full slate of shows, due to bad numbers. It will be folded into the Warner Media streamer and DC will finally strike a deal with ComiXology to join Unlimited.
2) Marvel Comics will get a huge overhaul (again) and Marvel Studios will shock people by cutting back to one or two films a year and disappoint everybody by not announcing either and X-film or an FF film in 2019 (FF will go to TV.)
3) Losing their licenses pushes Dark Horse to revive their Heroes line as a film/tv shared universe. It will not get off to a good start.
1. A few prominent long-running comic strips attempts to emulate Nancy by bringing on creators who weren’t born during the Eisenhower Administration and modernizing the strip – I’m thinking Blondie or Mark Trail.
2. DC launches a revival of Scare Tactics, the mid-’90s monsters-who-are-in-a-band comic, written by a real-life musician.
3. With Marvel and 20th Century Fox under the same umbrella, 2019 brings us the return, in some form, of the amazing Apeslayer! http://comiczine-fa.com/features/among-us-walks-an-apeslayer
1. Absolute Ambush Bug.
2. A pair of current DC creators will make an attempt at rebooting the Fleming/Von Eeden Thriller concept as a 12-issue Vertigo series. It will be cohesive while still a bit of a challenging read, but will lack the unique approach of the original. Its success will lead to an eventual attempt to develop the series for the streaming entertainment complex.
3. (Wishful thinking here. But aren’t these all?) Marvel will publish True Believers editions of Lee- Ditko work, including their unfairly neglected Hulk stories for Tales To Astonish.
1. The X-Men will be relaunched with a new #1 (whether as Uncanny again or a different title).
2. Raina Telgemeier’s “Guts” will be the top-selling comic of the year (just not in comic stores, where it will barely make a blip).
3. The Shazam! movie will underperform (by which I mean it will stall make over $100M domestically, but that will be considered a failure
1. After audience who saw the movie Avengers: Infinity War got confused and bought the comic Infinity War of the same name rather than the Infinity Gauntlet, people decides that Avengers Endgame is based on the comics “Marvel: The End” from 2003 and purchase this old series en masse.
2. DC Comics success with the Swamp Thing TV leads to some interests in a new series. After seeing such a tremendous success to the first title, DC launches “The Swamp Universe”, closely modeled after The Sandman Universe.
3. A popular monthly Lego Comics will be launched, presumably by DC Comics, but maybe BOOM Studios or First Second.
1. This will be the year that DC relaunches Legion of Superheroes, as teenagers, to awful effect. I know I predicted this last year, but I have to be right eventually.
2. This year’s Avengers movie will be peak Marvel – it will make slightly more than the last one, but won’t be out grossed for a long time, because of superhero fatigue and the key actors finally moving on. And the average person recognising that comics’ fondness for killing characters for a cheap emotional buzz, then bringing them straight back again, is essentially cynical and dull.
3. Not only will there be no new issues of Miracleman, but Neil Gaiman will start to publicly hint that it is all too hard, and he has better things to do with his time.
Back Again
1. After this Realms crossover with Marvel the books that were actually doing well with readers that I am enjoying (Hulk / Venom), will drop in readership due to interruption.
2. DC releases an indie creators title kind of like Marvel Strange Tales from years back, and Michael DeForge contributes and his story is one that I actually remember past a few months after reading.
3. Marvel and DC both continue to release comics that are 20-22 pages long–of which half the pages in said comics have explosions on them for some kind of dramatic gravitas (only to be glazed over by myself)…at which point I will just dig out something tried and true, like Starman or Swamp Thing…or whatever Michael DeForge did in the last couple of years to scratch the sequential story-reading itch.