Hello, everyone! This is the Comics NEWS Digest, an aggregation of all the top comics and comics-related stories that caught my attention that I thought you might enjoy reading. I post these two weeks after every regular newsletter.
I’ll start with one of the worst recurring themes of the last month, which started with mass layoffs at Marvel and continued with layoffs at Mad Cave Studios. In the case of the former, that was part of a wider initiative of parent company Disney to eliminate about a thousand jobs and included VP of Sales and Marketing David Gabriel, who had been with the company for more than twenty years. In the case of the latter, that included senior editors James Emmett and Chas! Pangburn and senior marketing manager Maya Vee Lopez, whom I congratulated on that position in this space only a little over a year ago.
There was also the news that comics journalism site Newsarama has shut down after the final staff writer had been laid off. This is devastating all around, and I want to express my sympathies to those affected. These are smart, talented, and passionate people, and I hope they find something better very soon.
In perhaps not-unrelated news, publisher Square Enix is partnering with an AI technology company for translation and typesetting work. This is a terrible idea for several reasons, as anyone who’s ever used Google Translate could tell you. I find it telling that they hyped it as “saving 3,000 hours of manual work a year.” If you do the math on that, it’s a little more than 60 hours a week. Hiring two more people would provide them with more labor and require less quality control.
In more manga news, Shihei Lin, a former editor at Shueisha responsible for such hits as Chainsaw Man and Dandadan, is creating a new manga platform through his company Mix Green and is accepting submissions (link is to a Google form in Japanese). Good luck to everyone!
Webcomic platform Webtoon has launched Studio White, partnering with manga publishers Kadokawa and Red Ice Studio to create webcomic spin-offs of some of their more popular titles. The debut will be based on Record of Lodoss War by Ryo Mizuno and published in Korean, with plans to expand into English, Japanese, French, Traditional Chinese, Thai, and Indonesian. Future source material is slated to include Sword Art Online by Reki Kawahara, Slayers by Hajime Kanzaka, and The Familiar of Zero by Noboru Yamaguchi.
Checking in on a couple of major stories, the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France is now being run by the Morgane group, which is promising a new festival starting in January 2027. The decision was “not unanimous,” though, and the controversial previous producers are apparently threatening litigation, so I don’t think the drama has completely died down.
Meanwhile, the trustee in charge of the Diamond Comic Distributors bankruptcy asked a judge to approve financing to hire a lawyer for their own litigation. I wish I could simplify that sentence. The lawsuits and countersuits for publishers to reclaim their consignment from Diamond continue.
Yesterday, PEN America posted statistics about book bans in public schools in the United States for the years 2024 and 2025. There were almost four thousand! While books by marginalized creators and those intended for younger audiences continue to be disproportionately represented, there was an increase in nonfiction titles and books with “themes of empowerment and self-esteem.”
DC Publisher and Chief Creative Officer Jim Lee shared some difficult news about his health, including a diagnosis of prediabetes, and how this resulted in production delays and a need for a healthier work-life balance. I’m glad he’s doing better and hope this can lead to more systemic change in the industry.
The shareholders for DC’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, approved an acquisition from Paramount Skydance for $111 billion. I’ve been refraining from covering this developing story about “DC’s new owners” until the dust settles, but this seemed like a good time and place to mention it. Those shareholders have quadrupled their stock value to create another entertainment monopoly in this country while the creatives who keep it running suffer.
Sean Edgar, formerly of comics publisher DSTLRY, is Kickstarter’s new Director of Comics and Collectibles.
Some good news out of the state of Colorado, as the state senate passed a bipartisan law to create the first A-Corp, or artist corporation, to guarantee creatives 51% ownership of their work. The bill now goes to the state house of representatives and will need to be signed by the governor to become law. The article includes the math involved, but this could be a big help for creators!
On the topic of workers and their rights, the Cartoonist Cooperative has issued its 2026 Comics Worker Survey. If you made any money at all from comics last year, please fill this out! The transparency that this affords benefits everyone.
Though it came too late for the Comics Book Club’s discussion, Valerio Stivé has this look at The Summer Hikaru Died for The Comics Journal. I’m always happy to see this manga win more people over.
I met Jesse Lonergan an at NYCC last year, but still haven’t finished Drome. In the meantime, Scott Cederlund at From Cover to Cover has this look at one of his shorter works, Faster. Lonergan is one of the most innovative artists working in comics right now, and his pages deserve thorough readings and examination.
Lara Boyle had a couple of great pieces at SOLRAD recently. First was this personal essay about poetry comics. I’m a big fan of that genre, and it’s often underrated or overlooked. Second, she reviewed the debut graphic novel Ace of Hearts: Lessons in Love from an Asexual Girl by Cooklin.
ICv2 has an interesting comparison of different order management and point of sale (POS) systems used by comic book retailers. This is an aspect of the business side of comics I would not have ever considered, so I’m glad someone else did. It gave me flashbacks to navigating all the different POS systems I used back in my serving days, some of which were better than others.
Lots great interviews this month! First up, David Harper spoke with Oni-Lion Forge’s Publisher and President, Hunter Gorinson. They covered a lot of ground, including Oni’s upcoming 30th anniversary, the company’s move to Penguin Random House for distribution, and all the great comics planned for 2026.
David also spoke with writer Ram V about his new title Deicidium, which will have art by Evan Cagle and Anand RK and letters by Aditya Bidikar. The series will be released as black and white, 96-page graphic novels simultaneously in the United States and France by two different publishers.
One of the biggest stories in mainstream United States comics lately has been that a Rick Veitch Swamp Thing story from 1989, pulled from publication due to controversy back then, is finally seeing the light of day. Zach Rabiroff spoke with Veitch about it for Gizmodo. I look forward to reading Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Red Hood series in thirty years.
Over at Comic Book Yeti, Andrew Irvin spoke with Ben Wickey about More Weight: A Salem Story and Asia Miller about Lindsey Cheng Dates a White Boy!!! Both are books I hope we can read for the Comics Book Club someday.
I’ll end this section with a fun piece from Marcus Helminiak at comicbook.com from back in November that recently came to my attention about the need for civilians in the extended casts of mainstream superhero comics.
Nominations are open for the 2026 Ringo Awards! There’s a wide variety of categories, and if you’re not sure who to vote for, just search “ringo awards” on this platform and quickly become overwhelmed. Lol Winners will be announced at Baltimore Comic-Con in September.
San Diego Comic-Con recently changed the rules on who can vote in the Eisner Awards. If you’re unsure if you’re eligible to vote, you only have a few days left to apply! The deadline is Wednesday, May 13. I think I accidentally applied twice.
Jaime Hernandez won in the Graphic Novel/Comics category at the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes for Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection. Perfect timing for our discussion of The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. in a couple weeks.
The National Cartoonists Society revealed the finalists for the 80th Annual Reuben Awards. The winners will be announced on August 7. Congratulations to Finding Dee Fish for her nomination in the Online Comics—Short Form category!
The winners of the Center for Cartoon Studies’ 14th Annual Cartoonist Studio Prize were Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond (long-form winner) and Two Snakes by Suerynn Lee (short-form winner).
The inaugural Zelda Awards for women in comics were given out on April 11. You can watch the full ceremony here and check out their website here. Congratulations to M Sorcier for winning Best Series for Sacrimony!
The Blue Metropolis Literary Festival was held in Montreal last month, and comic creator Guy Delisle was awarded the Metropolis bleu Avenir et société prize for contributing to “building a better future” through his work.
Sadly, the comics community lost a few more legends this month. Creator Gerry Conway, perhaps best known as the creator of the Punisher, died at the age of 73. There’s a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to characters he added to mainstream superhero comics in the United States. Despite creating the Punisher, he was not happy with the character becoming a favorite among authoritarians and white supremacists. He became a top Marvel writer at the age of 19, worked for both Big Two companies, and created some of the most celebrated stories for Spider-Man that continue to resonate. He will be missed.
Writer, professor, and journalist Len Strazewski has died at the age of 71. Largely known for his work at DC for the Flash, the Justice Society of America, and Starman (Will Payton), he also co-created the characters Prime and Prototype for Malibu’s Ultraverse. He was a beloved professor who inspired generations of journalism students at Columbia College.
Manga artist Sadao Shoji died last month due to heart failure at the age of 88. His manga Tanma-kun ran for almost 58 years, while his Salaryman Senka manga ran for 55. He won the Japan Cartoonists Association Awards grand prize in 2001 and two Japanese national honors, the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2000 and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette in 2011.
Finally, revered cartoonist Frank Stack, considered the first underground cartoonist for comics published under the pen name Foolbert Sturgeon, passed away at the age of 88. A great believer in comics as an art form, he was also a prolific painter and an adored art professor at the University of Missouri.
That’s all for this month. Did I miss anything? Comment below if I have. Feel free to subscribe if you haven’t already. The Comics Book Club will be meeting again on May 20 to discuss The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. Thanks again for everything.
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