Your 2025 Predictions, Part Five: Toledo Window Box.

Okay, let’s see if I can finish up my coverage of your 2025 comic industry predictions (and here are parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). And one last reminder: don’t forget to get in your 2026 industry predictions!

ExistentialMan defines himself with

“1. The proposed tariffs by the incoming administration (25-to-100%) will be reduced to the lower end of the range but will still impact smaller publishers negatively, resulting in increased pricing for their books. Larger publishers will hold the line on monthly comic book prices but increase collected trade prices slightly.”

Get ready for a rarity, as I’m linking directly to a Bleeding Cool story on this very topic, and how some small publishers were indeed impacted by the wildly fluctuating, largely unnecessary, and primarily vindictive tariffs. From my end, I haven’t seen a large increase in my store costs, beyond the occasional warning that comic supplies will see a price jump. By and large comic prices have seen about the normal level of increase (i.e. books creeping up to $4.99 and $5.99), and I don’t know how much of that is the exemption to tariffs on printed matter, or publishers absorbing some costs.

“2. Diamond Comic Distributor’s will survive 2025 intact (without closing or being purchased).”

Um…they didn’t close, anyway.

“3. Based on the strength of the Absolute line and the Superman movie, DC will outsell Marvel at Sterling Silver Comics by a 20% margin.”

I think Marvel and DC are about neck-and-neck, actually, which is actually quite a change for the mostly-perpetually second place DC. Right now nothing is selling like Absolute Batman, which is like printing money. There are days at the store where every customer who walks through the door is only looking for that comic.

While DC has higher highs, Marvel’s midlist titles tend to sell marginally better than DC’s for me, so overall they’re both doing about as well. Which, you know, things could nbe worse.

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Michael Grabowski clutches the following

“Wishful thinking more than a prediction, possibly, and a sort of re-rerun for me, but anyway:”

That can be a theme through the predictions every year, and that’s fine!

“1. After wrapping up Copra this year (that’s his plan. not a prediction), Michel Fiffe will get hired by DC to produce a Grand Design-style history of the Teen Titans.”

That would be amazing, but alas, not in the cards.

“2. With a 40+-year publication history and multi-publisher legacy numbering currently in the high 270s, Stan Sakai will announce that Usagi Yojimbo will build up to some kind of concluding sequence of arcs to be published over the next few years, finishing around #300.”

I wrote on this topic of longtime serialized creator-owned books being brought to conclusions by said creators. Usagi Yojimbo seems like one of those properties that would lean towards having an ultimate ending. Sakai himself reportedly has no intention to give a final conclusion, as per this 2024 post on a Reddit thread:

“I asked him on an Ebay live stream awhile back if there was going to be a cannon [sic] ending; he laughed and said no.”

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King of the Moon does declare

“My prediction for 2025 is a killer awesome year for comics and comics shops. It’s time for that pendulum to swing back!

“With all the craziness and where we are now, escapism into comic books should be prime time entertainment just as it was in those years that gave us Superman and launched this whole thing to begin with.”

Comics have been…keeping steady, more or less, all things considered. The Absolute line certainly pushed things along and got people excited, bringing new folks through my doors at least. That I consider to be a net positive!

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Dave…Dave…Dave’s right here, man

“1) Alfred is back!”

Not yet, which is really shocking to me. There’s gonna be some kind of event resulting in Alfred’s return, I’m sure, so it’s only a matter of time. But that they kept him dead for as long as they have…I never expected they would.

“2) Warren Ellis is back!”

No, not that I can tell. The last new comic I remember seeing him in was this Wildstorm anniversary book in 2017. No idea what he’s been doing otherwise.

I always wonder about stuff like this, famous people who get caught in some scandal and drop out of the business they were in…what do they do for money? I mean, assuming they weren’t rich to begin with. Like, imagine Warren Ellis applying for a job at Target since his comic book work dried up. Folks, even folks who did bad things, have to shelter and feed themselves, and that takes money. I imagine some just bite the bullet and find a new career, hoping nobody asks about their old one.

“3) Superman at the movies is back! ( in the sense it makes a billion dollars)”

Not quite a billion, but still well enough to get a sequel fast-tracked, and earn the goodwill of superhero movie fans. Whether Gunn’s longterm DC film plans will continue as intended, especially after the Netflix takeover of Warner Bros., remains to be seen. But it sounds like the DC movies are off to a good start.

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Misterjayem gives us

“1) Some good things will happen, and
2) some bad things will happen, and
3) some people will argue online about which is which.

Like I said in Part Three, I am probably going to call a halt on these general predictions in favor of more specific guesses. Again, I get these are supposed to allow me to go on about whatever events I want to talk about that happened during the previous year. However, it’s more of a help to me, especially since I’m usually discussing so many predictions in a relatively short period of time, if the predictions addressed potentially-actual events.

But, anyway, for one last time, let’s use this set of supplied parameters, and talk about the Superman movie, since i still have those on the brain after the previous response.

The Superman movie was, as I stated above, a good thing, doing well at the box office and getting people interested in the Man of Steel and his DC Comics super pals.

However, I did see people have negative reactions, taking some umbrage at some of the political allegories, some of which I discussed in my own overview. And there are the usual loons who bleat about “wokeness.” And there’s the perpetually online-contingent that DC didn’t continue in the direction of the prior films of the last decade.

And yes, people argued about this online. Everybody argues about everything online. It’s really headache-inducing. So don’t argue about these things in my comments, please…I’m just noting what happened, per Misterjayem’s request.

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And yes, at long last, it wouldn’t be my annual predictions coverage with googum googumming

“1. The Superman and FF movies are going to do so well, they restart superhero movies again! In the sense that lower-tier stuff tries again. That new Spawn movie gets going now or never! Maybe Valiant tries again too.”

As twice noted in this post now, Superman did pretty well. Fantastic Four did…not quite as well. I don’t think we’re back yet in the “Superhero movies are a sure thing!” mindset yet, but at the same time it’s not going to stop Marvel or DC from doing movies for the near future.

Even if Supergirl and the next Superman film plot, there will still be Batman movies. Even if Avengers: Doomsday flops, there will still be Spider-Man, and probably Deadpool, movies. And eventually they’ll back around to trying Superman and Avengers movies again. Too much money was made at one point, and can still occasionally be made, that we’ll have superhero movies for quite some time.

I don’t know if it’s given enough confidence to other companies to put out, like you mentioned, Spawn and Valiant films, but we’ll see where things go.

“2. Under ‘never,’ everyone involved with the Blade relaunch quietly walks away from the project. Not this time around.”

As of a couple weeks ago, I believe, Blade was indeed cancelled, though the tapped lead actor may yet portray the character in a Midnight Sons team-up film. Unable to “break the story” was one of the cited reasons, so “half-vampire vampire hunter hunts vampires” is apparently a real ice-skating uphill premise.

“3. Some smaller company–maybe Titan–puts a big push back into western comics.”

Not a great year for smaller companies, unfortunately. (Titan is still hanging in there, though.) Trying to make a big push when the distribution network has splintered, if not outright vanished from beneath you, is a tricky proposition, and any such high-profile moves may have to wait ’til things settle down.

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Okay, that’s it for the predictions this time around! Come back in 2027 when we look at your 2026 predictions! As always, thanks for your participation and for putting up with all this (occasionally sloppy) typing. See you folks back here on Friday with either brand new content, or follow-ups/corrections to this year’s prediction commentary, or both!