Your 2024 Predictions, Part Two: Little Lost Lamb.
Back at it this week, checking to see just how you all did in regards to guessing how the past year in comics was going to go! Part one is here, and don’t forget to get in your predictions for 2025 while there’s still time!
So, awaaaaay we go:
Chris V visits us with
“1.)The X-Men revamp under Brevoort will be considered a major disappointment by most as Brevoort will choose very safe creative teams, no ‘critical darlings.’
Leading me to stop reading the X-Men comics for the first time since 1993, when I was in high school. I will not complain.”
I think, by and large, the Main Three X-titles (X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and Exceptional X-Men are fairly well regarded by fans, particularly Uncanny as written by Gail Simone. In my opinion, launching three ongoing X-Men titles (not to mention, like, X-Factor and X-Force) all at once doesn’t really help or encourage readership (Exceptional is already slipping in sales for me, and X-Factor and X-Force are selling minimal numbers.)
It’s hard to say what would make a “safe” choice for an X-book…I mean, the aforementioned Simone is a fairly beloved writer, so in that way it’s “safe,” but I don’t think anyone expected her to be on an ongoing X-Men series, so that’s kind if a surprise, maybe. Unless you meant “people who normal write superhero comics” as being the safe choice, and, I don’t know, “Alan Moore returns to comics to write Uncanny” would be the “critical darling” choice. Not making fun or anything, just trying to define terms so we can determine how right you are with your prediction.
I think I’m going to say you were right i that these were safe choices, in that these were all people regularly writing comics and have proven track records. Not Huge Giants of Comics, like, say…ooh, there are a couple names I want to say here, but given the trouble they’ve been in of late, I don’t want to. You know who I’m talking about, people on that level. Or had been on that level, anyway.
As to whether you stopped reading X-books, Chris, I don’t know. I’m going to say…maybe you did? You’ll have to tell us!
“2.)All comics will be rising in price. Is this really a prediction in December 2023 though? Regular, monthly comics will be $4.99 (American), while ‘special issues’ will be $50 (OK, I might be exaggerating slightly on that last price).”
Some books are still holding the line at $3.99, but boy folks are getting really comfortable with slapping $4.99 and $5.99 and $6.99 price tags on things. And of course there’s the occasional $9.99 Special Issue! Oof. Anyway, I made my predictions for 2025 and didn’t realize I essentially duplicated this one. Urgh. It’s gonna happen eventually.
“3.)Kieron Gillen, Al Ewing, and Jonathan Hickman will all leave Marvel during 2024. Hickman ends up at DC. Gillen and Ewing will not.
This will cause me to lose interest in Marvel even more, and will still not increase my interest in DC. I will not complain.”
I think Hickman is still solidly at Marvel, and so is Al Ewing, though Ewing did have his Metamorpho series come out at the end of the year for DC, and it was announced he’s writing Absolute Green Lantern this coming year. Gillen I believe is still primarily Marvel and Image (and other indies).
William Gatevackes swings open with
“1. One comic company will get into the Taylor Swift business, most likely Marvel. It could be anything from creating a series featuring tales from her life to perhaps redesigning one of their characters to look like her, most likely Dazzler.”
I don’t know if any comic companies can afford Taylor Swift. And while I’m sure redesigning Dazzler to look like Taylor is tempting, I don’t think even Disney would want to tangle with her legal team.
There was a Little Golden Book about her, though!
“2. To the disdain of many of the unsavory elements of the comic fandom, a ‘woke’ comic will become a multimedia sensation, bring new readers into comics and get mainstream attention.”
Would the Absolute books count? The Superman one, especially. I think the greatest trick of them all is that said “unsavory types” probably read the book and don’t even realize it’s “woke” [complimentary]. “Wow, this comic where a family bucks the traditional class system, leading their son to fight for the little guy against the powers that be, is great! It’s so much better than one of those ‘woke’ comics!”
“3. Hollywood will wise up and finally make a biopic out of Jack Kirby’s life. It might not be released in 2024, but it will at least go into pre-production.”
Look, this has to be done while we still have Ray Wise in the acting business. Wise played Kirby for a TV show a while back, and HE IS THE MAN. I don’t think any biopic has been announced, but Hollywood is foolish if such a thing does not happen.
Sciencegiant is trying to kill me with
“They’re evergreen AND they’re softballs. Which means really they’re just a chance for you to riff on whatever you want to bring up.”
Well, these are more “Question Time“-esque post prompts than predictions, I think, Obviously all these things happen (and will also happen in 2025, natch), but I can probably come up with an example for each.
“1) WOW! That highly anticipated adaptation of fantasy/science fiction IP certainly underperformed at the box office/streaming service. I predict this is the death knell of of that genre/franchise.”
I mean, the easy answers are Madame Web and Kraven, but I’m pretty sure literally everyone except whoever’s running Sony knew those were DOA. I think the big shock is that Joker sequel…the first film made a billion bucks and won all kinds of awards. I mean, I’m sure no one thought the second film would do as well, but they probably thought it would do, y’know, at least reasonably okay given the performance of the previous installment. Certainly not that it would crash and burn in such an epic manner.
Anyway, that probably doesn’t kill the idea of Batman related films, but it definitely put the kibosh on musicual superhero movies, I think.
“2) SOB! The industry lost a great one whose like we will not soon see again. Any stories you care to share, Mike?”
I don’t want to single out any particular creator as being The Big One, because that’s not really fair to everyone. A lot of talents passed this past year, some after a very long life, some way too traggically young.
However, I do have a special fondness for Don Perlin, who passed in 2024 at the age of 94. I have an issue of Defenders a friend gave me, one guest-starring Man-Thing, that was signed by him.
“3) Fandom seems pleased/outraged about this latest reimagining. Your thoughts?”
Everything turning up Absolute Comics! And Ultimate Comics from Marvel, too, I guess!
“4) Good grief! Lucy pulled the football away on Charlie Brown AGAIN?!”
Hey, that’s four predictions! You have broken ape law! Anyway, Lucy and Charlie Brown are long dead, no one’s pulling footballs from anybody now.
Andrew Davison teaches us all with this
“Mike will try out my sartorial suggestions, a la Zatara, appearing in a short video blog to perform a variety of magic tricks.
“This video will become an Internet sensation, leading to a new career as a stage magician, headlining in Vegas by the end of the year.
“This will in turn trigger a multi-million dollar lawsuit from DC, and a movie offer from James Gunn.”
I…wait, what? Anyway, I don’t look good in a tophat. Besides, you all were lucky to get one video of my dumb face in a rumpled shirt here, I ain’t doin’ no magical tricks.
Dan Jack sez
“1. The mainstream publishers will continue to promote Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in their hiring and staffing”
Not sure that I’ve heard anything specific about this, but if they do, I hope then continue to do so. Especially now.
“2. More and more readers will abandon the above publishers.”
I presume you’re trying to draw a connection between Prediction #1 and this one. Sales do seem to be up, particularly with the advent of (here they are again) the Absolute and Ultimate lines. I know at my store comic sales are up across the board. I think things are okay with the Big Two right now…I’m more worried about the little guys and how the Diamond bankruptcy situation may affect them. Oh, and how tariffs may increase prices across the board. That’s more of a problem than supposed “diversity hires.”
“3. More crowdfunding/etc ventures will be successful, and remain un/under reported on by comics industry as a whole!”
In fairness I probably don’t mention these enough here, but I do occasionally go in for retailer bundles on some Kickstarters. I can’t do ’em all, but I try to pick the occasional one that sounds interesting. And it seems like I see them mentioned all the time, but maybe that’s mostly on social media. That’s where more people will see them anyway, I think, more than on my silly, ancient blog.
Cassandra Miller almost lives up to her name with
“1. Although there are continued allusions/cameos, the Legion of Superheroes gets neither a new book, nor an actual explanation of exactly which Legion is the ‘current’ one. Lots of contradictory cameos, is what I’m saying.”
Yeah, they’ve popped up once or twice, even an evil Anti-Legion in the DC All-In special. But not a whole lot really giving us what the Legion’s deal currently is, post Bendis-reboot. I really, really, really keep hoping we just get a World’s Finest-style Legion series by Mark Waid, since anything in the current DC Universe seems doomed to failure.
“2. Diamond files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and (hopefully) emerges a little stronger.”
Well, you were off by a couple of weeks, but Diamond did in fact do just that. Whether they come out of it stronger is something I expect we’ll find out in a few months.
“3. (This one is more a hope than a prediction.) DC realizes they should just put out a ‘Superman Family’ book, and refocuses the main Superman book as, well, mainly a Superman book.”
The Superman books seem to have cut back a little on the “here’s 15 different Super-characters” business, though they did play a part in that weekly Waid storyline, and we had a Supergirl back-up during that run. But what I wouldn’t give for a 1970s/1980s style Superman Family book. Gimme my solo Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen adventures! And we could have “Mr. and Mrs. Superman” without it being the Earth-2 characters! Make Jon Kent the lead feature, with various back ups, and we’d be set!
Okay, that’s it for now…your pal Mike has a medical thing in the morning, so he needs his beauty sleep. Yes, yes, I know, I’m already too beautiful, but sleeptime awaits. Thanks for reading, and we’ll get to more of your predictions next time!
Interesting as a Kirby movie would be it seems unlikely any major studio would make it because it just shows where they stole all their IP from. And the ending would have to be kind of a bummer. “We stole everything from this guy, and in the end we wouldn’t even employ him anymore.”
I would love a non continuity Legion series with the classic characters. Connecting with “our” period has never worked. Just let them do their thing.
THere wasn’t a Jack Kirby Biopic… but there was a Jack Kirby stage play! So now there’s something proven for the studios to adapt.
https://www.buzznews.net/theatre/theatre-reviews/item/5615-the-marvel-universe-house-of-ideas-explores-stan-lee-and-jack-kirby-creative-tension.html
“Proven” should have been in quotes above.
Deep cut with the titles. Deeeeeep.
I was off with each of my predictions.
While the current X-line is “playing it safe” in many ways, I wasn’t expecting a writer like Gail Simone to get put on Uncanny, so I’m going to say the first prediction was wrong.
As far as my still reading any X-titles, I am only buying X-Factor currently. That’s it though.
There are still some $3.99 books on the shelves, so even one I expected to be an easy guess turned out to be inaccurate at this point.
Kieron Gillen did leave Marvel and is only writing for non-Big Two publishers right now. Hickman is still at Marvel, as is Ewing (although, as mentioned, he did start writing for DC before the year ended). So, I’d only give myself a 1/3 of a point for that one.
I initially misread “Zatara” as “Zatana,” and that kinda made my morning.
Mike, that’s cool that you have a Defenders issue that Don Perlin signed. I think he did a great job on that run.
Joe Gualtieri, thanks for the link to the “House of Ideas” play. There was that Steve Ditko play the other year as well, so I think it is only a matter of time until we get that origin of Marvel Comics film. There could be so many great cameo roles for top tier actors…like Bill Hader as Wally Wood. Maybe Brad Pitt as Martin Goodman, Leo DiCaprio as Stan Lee, and Timothee Chalamet as Steve Ditko…let Tarantino direct it. For the scenes in the Bullpen where Stan Lee is acting out the action in the plot of an Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Avengers, X-Men, or Hulk comic, the film could actually feature classic Kirby, Ditko, etc. art with the actor playing Lee is reading the word balloons on the pages–the idea being to make the actual art pages a star in the film as well.
Ok, I had totally forgotten I made that Diamond prediction. Eerie.
Now I have to think up some good ones for this year!
“There could be so many great cameo roles for top tier actors”
They could cut them all like how Michael Parks as Kirby was cut from Argo!
As fun as that evil Legion looks, I’m not sure it makes the team any more new-reader friendly. But maybe I’m overthinking it. They seem to be perpetual guest stars at this point anyway. I look forward to seeing them in an actual story.
“three ongoing X-Men titles (not to mention, like, X-Factor and X-Forced”
So, about $20 a month to buy all five!
“Some books are still holding the line at $3.99, but boy folks are getting really comfortable with slapping $4.99 and $5.99 and $6.99 price tags on things”.
Yeesh! Just ONE of the reasons I only buy a few new titles .
“Madame Web”
A movie so bad even the ACTORS were publicly trashing it!
“Interesting as a Kirby movie would be it seems unlikely any major studio would make it because it just shows where they stole all their IP from”.
Seriously! SO MUCH MONEY made from all the movies, he’s not around to even SEE it, much less profit from it.
Snark Shark-That’s not even including a book like Wolverine.
It’d be over $20 a month just to buy those five (three of the titles are $4.99), plus some of those titles are shipping twice some months.
The current lineup of X-titles is at around eighteen comics, I think. Marvel threw all of the books out within a four month period. Marvel is just insane to think the market can sustain this. If a person seriously decided to buy every current X-title (as many were doing in the 1990s), it would cost nearly $100 per month.
@Snark Shark
You raise a good point. On the one hand, most the key players in the creation of early Silver Age Marvel comics should be considered “public figures”– for lack of a better phrase–and, with the exception of Larry Lieber (who, as Stan Lee’s younger brother, was there at Marvel’s inception), and people who came on board a few years later into the Silver Age by the mid to late ’60s, (including Roy Thomas, Steranko, and Sal Buscema), almost all of the original Marvel Bullpen members have passed on. Even so, would Disney try to block production of a movie about early Marvel? Maybe an independent movie studio could helm the project instead of, or even a foreign movie studio. Sometimes a cinema verite type of film produced on a tight budget can be better anyway.
Whoops, didn’t notice I’d mistyped it as X-Forced. There’s a joke there somewhere.
“Would Disney try to block production of a movie about early Marvel?”
Disney is producing hagiographies of Stan Lee and refused permission for Marvel art to be included in Abraham J. Riesman’s Lee-critical biography, so yes, they very much would.
@Oliver
Several possible solutions–change the name of the comics company and all of the people depicted in the film and make it a “Madmen”/Howard Chaykin’s “Hey Kids, Comics” project, or, get permission from the estates of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, Wally Wood, etc. to use some of their actual comics art pages and/or general drawings. There is always a work around…
“The current lineup of X-titles is at around eighteen comics, I think”
Geezus! They outa go back to X-Men, X-Factor (or whatever, one with the OLDER X-men characters) and Wolvie. maybe a mini-series or two every year.
“X-Forced”.
X-Farts!
“Disney is producing hagiographies of Stan Lee and refused permission for Marvel art to be included in Abraham J. Riesman’s Lee-critical biography”
Pricks! disney sucks for SO many reasons.