“With craziness, you can’t predict it. There’s very little defense you can have on craziness.” — Bryan Cranston.
Here we go again! It’s time for you — yes, you, don’t look at the person next to you, I’m talking to you — to give me your comic book industry predictions for the allegedly-approaching year of 2022! I do this every year (click on the “predictions” tag for proof) and always enjoy everyone’s contributions.
Just drop your submissions in the comments section for this post, and please adhere to the following rules:
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!
I had a lot of entries from you folks last year, so I’ll be spending a good chunk of next month going over the 2021 predictions and seeing how you did. Well, how we did, since I submitted my own last time (and posted a screenshot on Twitter so no one would accuse me of editing them after the fact).
But get your awesome auguries for 2022 in now, and we’ll take a look at those in (gulp) January 2023! Thanks for participating, pals, and good luck! Maybe this will be the year Miracleman starts coming out again!
I only have the one prediction, and I truly hope it comes true.
With the news about George Perez, a special release of JLA/Avengers hardcover will be published this year, with the proceeds going to the cancer charity of George’s choice.
1. People will proclaim that the comic book is dying. There will, nonetheless, be comic books through the end of the year.
2. Jim Lee will start drawing a miniseries. It will be very well drawn.
3. The split distribution market will bring back black-and-white issues as a force.
1. Here, and at many other websites devoted to comics, there will be much discussion about what can be done to get people outside of the usual fanbase to read comics. At no point in any of these discussions will the name Raina Telgemeier be mentioned.
2. Nor will the name Charlie Mackesy be mentioned. Or Rachel Smythe. Or Dav Pilkey. Or Alison Bechdel.
3. Prior to the release of each new Marvel movie in the coming year, there will be several people confidently predicting that this will finally be the one that flops. (At sites devoted to films, or to pop culture generally, these people will be wishing for an end to comics-based movies. At sites devoted to comics, these people will be wishing only for the Marvel movies to go away, so that the public will finally recognize the great genius of Zack Snyder.)
1. DC will announce Tom King’s next 12-issue Black Label series: Scarecrow with Jae Lee.
2. Marvel Studios will announce John Krasinski and Emily Blunt as Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Woman in their new Fantastic Four movie.
3. Bendis’ Legion of Super-Heroes will return for one last brief run before disappearing once again.
It’s prediction time AGAIN? That went fast.
1. DC and Marvel will not re-issue JLA/Avengers in 2022.
2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will contain at least one big obvious DC Comics character as a parody/homage a la Squadron Supreme.
3. The X-Men will drop in sales and the characters will become less popular in 2022. There will be serious talk of a complete reboot.
Mike Sterling will continue to blog. His series on variant comics will ALMOST be finished by the end of the year.
1) Tom Kings next 12 issue books will be My Greatest Adventure & Carrie Kelly
2) Since IDW has lost the all-ages line of Marvel- Marvel will begin licensing them out to Archie, which will put them in digest form and Marvel will be on a news-stand for the first time in over a decade.
3) Next big craze in variant covers: Taking a panel George Perez did and blowing it up to make a variant cover.
2a. Oh, and Emil Ferris. Let us pretend that my failing to mention her was just a way of proving my point.
1. George Perez’s diagnosis will lead to movement to get comic book creators healthcare for their golden years. It might actually make some headway.
2. There will be hints in films dropped of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe crossing over at some point. These will be inside jokes but might lead to something.
3. A TV Series not adapted from the Big Two will become a “WALKING DEAD’ like cultural phenomenon.
And I know you said only three but…
4. Mike Sterling will have a year free of health problems and continue to entertain his fans with his wit and humor.
I’ve already forgotten the predictions I made last year (and can’t be bothered to check), so I hope I’m not repeating myself.
1. Archie Comics realizes the true gold is in the pre-1990 comics and the digest reprints will exclusively focus on those.
2. Matt Wagner announces he’s working on MAGE IV. No one believes him.
3. DC relaunches a classic beloved character into their own series, then cancels it by issue 8.
1. Friendly Frank’s will rise from the ashes to be the next competitor to Diamond’s comic book distribution.
2. Arnim Zola will finally be given his due and be made into a major villain, only to be ruined by the current crop of young writers that don’t understand Jack Kirby at all.
3. Dial H for Hero will inexplicably become the next worldwide phenomenon…for about a week. Sockamagee!
Marvel announces their own version of DC Fandome, which is effectively the beginning of the end of San Diego Comic-Con as the mega media convention it has become in the last 20 or 25 years (and will likely lead to it becoming the smaller version of itself that it was in the 1980s).
1. New Miracleman. I don’t think I even believe it this year. But I can’t stop predicting it. It’s a sickness.
2. Jonathan Hickman will write at least part of one X-book after Inferno #4. It might just be a one-shot or collaborating on a key story.
3. Al Ewing writes a DC book.
Comics with codes to redeem for credit towards NFTs and crypto. Satan laughing spreads his wings.
1 dc will get its film act together with the first being a swamp thing film directed by del torro 2 dc will also try again for a swamp thing tv series and it will last long enough to finaly have the constatine swamp thing team up in live action directed again by del torro. 3 disney will annouce they are doing a howard the duck tv series to be directed by kevin smith with jason mewes as dr. bong.
1. Realizing that have caught lightning in a bottle, MARVEL will make the Al Ewing/Javier Rodriguez DEFENDERS into an ongoing title. There will be much rejoicing and mindbending across comics fandom.
2. In memoriam for the loss of a beloved creative titan, MARVEL and DC will publish a deluxe hardcover reissue of the JLA/AVENGERS crossover by Busiek and Perez. Proceeds will go to the https://www.heroinitiative.org/
3. 2022 sees the long-promised, long-delayed return of JUPITER. There will be a modest Indigogo campaign that leads to a growing grassroots readership, which organically builds as the years roll on. Mike Sterling gets comped a retailer box of the new JUPITER #1 and becomes the go-to West Coast retailer for JUPITER.
The one universal truth is regression to the mean so:
1. 2022, the MCU backlash kicks in. Kids start complaining about having to understand 400 hours of previous shows and movies to see a new one and suddenly the MCU is not cool anymore.
2. GenZ video bloggers discover Jim Shooter. One YouTube video rightly declares him “The Amadeus Mozart of Comic Books” and they are right. Suddenly I am cool for always liking Jim Shooter.
Another major publisher leaves Diamond; by the end of the year, Diamond declares bankruptcy and is put into a restructuring agreement.
1.) Considering that Victor LaValle writing Sabretooth wasn’t some sort of fever dream but actually seems to be reality, I can only guess that Christopher Priest will write a Marvel Comic this year.
No, not the Christopher Priest who used to write as Jim Owsley.
Christopher Priest of the Prestige fame.
LaValle writing Sabretooth was even more surprising than simply LaValle writing a mainstream Marvel title.
So, I’m going to go with Christopher Priest writing a Sub-Mariner series…because, why not?
2.) After completely botching Hickman’s Krakoa post-“Inferno”, Marvel will announce that continuing Krakoa as the new status quo for the mutant titles was a huge mistake; leading to Marvel putting together a shoddy, rushed company wide crossover to try to fix the Krakoa mistake while still refusing to erase any prior Marvel continuity.
The results will end up similar to fan reaction to Secret Empire.
3.) Grant Morrison will not work at DC or Marvel for at least the entirety of 2022.
1, Marvel’s going to decide the traditional 616-continuity needs to look way more like the MCU. It’ll probably be an event no one really enjoys, but kind of lumps it and moves on.
2. DC brings back HOUSE OF MYSTERY, or one of their other horror books. (It was that or war comics.)
3. I’d be surprised if no one else guesses this: Marvel and DC will finally reprint JLA/AVENGERS. And…that’s it. It won’t restart intercompany crossovers; there will be a sense they had to be shamed into it.
I have never been right, in the slightest, maybe a decade running!
1) Dark Horse Comics will announce the sale of it’s IP to a major streaming service, most likely Netflix.
2) Communication Workers of America will continue to support Comic Book Workers United in their effort to unionize at Image comics. Much will be reported but ultimately the effort will not succeed in 2022.
3) Mike Sterling will continue to entertain us throughout 2022 and it will be fabulous!
1) My traditional LSH prediction: An ongoing Legion series will be announced to follow JLA vs the Legion of Super-Heroes. It will maintain the Bendis/Sook continuity, but will have a new creative team.
2) DC will publish a second ongoing anthology in the style of Batman: Urban Legend, this one centered on Metropolis.
3) A new crowdfunding platform will emerge, taking a lot of projects that otherwise would have been set up on Kickstarter, thanks to KS’s recent foray into cryptocurrency & NFTs.
1) Marvel launches a webtoon on Tapas based on various X-Men characters as wacky Gen Z college dormmates with superpowers.
2) DC’s younger readers line does a crossover book bringing together some of the more divergent versions of DC characters from their earlier GNs (Kid Constantine, Breaking Glass Harley, Overdrive Batman etc.)
3) Following Dan Slott’s Doctor Who miniseries, Titan announces a Sarah Jane Adventures comic series written by Ryan North.
I predict I will sell thousands of copies of my comics. Fingers crossed! Here’s hoping!
1. The acquisition of Dark Horse leads to a major push for the Comics Greatest World setting and heroes.
2. There will be ballyhoo about the establishment of a new comics company designed to appeal to right-wing fans, with white male heroes and a generally conservative culture war slant. Nothing much will come of it.
3. A Wonder Woman storyline will involve a non-binary Amazon.
1. Movie projects announced by year’s end include Harley Quinn and the Secret Six, Dazzler, and Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
2. Peter David and Greg Pak return to the Hulk books and cowrite World War Maestro and Planet Maestro.
3. Nightwing 100 (solicited at least next year) is a wedding.
1. No Miracleman. But there will be a teaser for it, which will lead to nothing.
2. “The Batman” movie will repeat the failings of the early nineties movies – too many villains, none of whom get enough screen time to resonate so the whole thing will be unsatisfactory.
3. The last LSH reboot will be ignored, and there will be another attempt to breathe life into the sixties version, possibly in the Batman 66 style. It will not be good.
Boy, those are pretty depressing predictions. Hope they are all wrong!
[…] good we had it last year?” And speaking of next year, don’t forget to contribute to the 2022 comic industry predictions post! I’ll be starting to look back at the 2021 predictions in a week or so, so get ready for […]
I will continue to feel shame over the time I commented here that Miracleman will definitely come out in the next year as I met Mark Buckingham and he told me he was about to start drawing it.
I have no other predictions.
1) More publishers will leave Diamond exclusivity and go to with multiple distributors, adding in PRH and/or Lunar.
2) DC will do something else with Superman to anger conservatives and thus garner free publicity from frothing conservative media outlets.
3) Dav Pilkey will once again have the best-selling comic of the year.
[…] I start looking back at your comic industry predictions for 2021 (and a reminder: I’m still taking your predictions for 2022!). I received a lot of predictions last time, so it may take me a bit to get through them all, but […]
1. Marvel and DC will both publish bronze age Christmas comic omnibi (actually more of a wish than a prediction).
2. Funny comics will make a comeback due to the success of titles like the recent Jimmy Olsen mini-series and the new One-Star Squadron.
3. The price of paper will force Marvel and DC to switch to cheaper paperstock but it will be presented to the public as a nostalgic return; many long-time readers will be caught frequently smelling their purchases on new comics day.
[…] Well, here we go, pals, for a relatively long-ish ride through all the predictions you all planted on me at the end of 2020. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get crackin’. (Also, don’t forget to give me your 2022 comic industry predictions!) […]
Along the lines of the NFT trend, i predict that some comics company will successfully publish a limited-release digital comic with blockchain coding (or something like it) to test the waters for a collectible market for online comics. It won’t be Marvel or DC, but it will involve some well-known creator(s).
[…] back at your 2021 comic industry predictions (part one here). And as yet another reminder, get in your 2022 predictions before much more of 2022 passes us […]
1. Many, many deluxe, omnibus editions will be published of everything George Perez as tribute. Except Avengers/JLA, which gets a digest.
2. A particular actor is hinted at being in talks for an unspecified MCU production. Given that the actor in question (please note, I have no one specific in mind) is both short and Canadian, everyone immediately assumes he will be the new Wolverine. Then some unrelated-to-the-X-Men movie has the post-credit sequence introduce him as Puck.
3. The Zack Snyder-loyalists and those who prefer the lighter touch of pretty much everything else will be united in their belief that “The Batman” is a pretty fun film.
[…] may not spend some extra time on those. Yes, I’m playing favorites. In the meantime, get in your 2022 predictions, even though January is getting a little long in the tooth to still be accepting those and comments […]