The return of Comics Disassembled brings a slight change to how it’s done. While it used to cover ten things each week, no matter what, going forward it will be a number dictated by available news and writing space, because this column is a beast. That means sometimes it will be ten things. Others will be six. Most of the time it will be eight, I imagine. But we will see. So, let’s get to this new era for the column, one that looks at the things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics, led by the a dark, disturbing turn for Marvel.

Midnight Marvel, Being…Something

I’ll be honest, I was on my heels as soon as the press release for Marvel’s new publishing line Midnight hit my inbox.

The subject line described it as the “All-New, All-Disturbing Midnight Universe,” saying it “plunges the Marvel mythos into darkness.” Which is all fine, but there’s just something about that remix of the familiar phrase of “All-New, All-Different” that just felt…not great. But hey, I figured I’d give it a shot, so like with the press release itself, let’s get to what Midnight, Marvel’s latest publishing venture entails.

It’s basically a horror line for Marvel’s characters, one that finds the publisher not quite going full Absolute but close to it as they reimagine a trio of characters/teams into nightmarish versions of themselves. It starts with Jonathan Hickman and Matteo Della Fonte’s Midnight X-Men in August, then Midnight Fantastic Four hits in September from Benjamin Percy and Kev Walker, and the first wave wraps in October with Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Scie Tronc’s Midnight Spider-Man. Those are largely good teams, even if Tronc is a complete unknown (albeit one who seems rather talented), so that’s a nice foundation to start with.

But for all the messaging in the press release about how these are bold new takes, each sounds rather familiar, with the X-Men once again getting into the business of vampires, the Fantastic Four being a version that is looking to “unleash terror” on the world, and Spider-Man becoming a monstrous spider hybrid — or, a Man-Spider, if you will. Those are all beats that have been hit a time or two before, and maybe a time or two before that. Heck, the current Fantastic Four series just told a story about a version of the Invisible Woman that accidentally killed the population of the Earth and unleashed terrors from there. Now, execution matters more than ideas, so maybe there’s something here. And it certainly helps that the writers involved repeatedly emphasize how this brings “creator-owned sensibilities” to Marvel projects, as Johnson put it in the press release (even if that feels like they’re using the Scott Snyder Absolute playbook).

But I’ll be honest, the whole thing feels undercooked. Even the name doesn’t have much juice to it, with Midnight evoking Midnight Suns for the publisher but not these characters. And it’s bizarre how such a big emphasis for the publisher, one loaded with A-list writers, doesn’t feature any well-known artistic talent outside Walker, someone who has already spent time in Marvel’s horror spaces (including a run on the Secret Wars (2015) iteration of Marvel Zombies). The pain of the art side is further exacerbated by Dike Ruan’s superb cover for Midnight X-Men #1 not coming with interiors from the artist, as we know Ruan excels both outside and inside the books. Maybe that’s why Midnight — at least initially — feels like a microcosm of the spray and pray methods Marvel have employed of late to its publishing line, where the key to success is high volume high profile releases, with the hope being that one of them please god oh god connects.

But if this is Marvel’s attempt at going the Absolute route, they seem to have fundamentally misunderstood why DC’s vaunted line connected. That effort was built on a pure spirit of the characters distilled through a modern lens, one with an art-centric focus designed to amplify these stories to the max. This feels like a What If…? line, which makes it seem less inherently sustainable. That’s especially true given how it’s launching amidst a sea of other events and big stories for the publisher, making it more difficult to make an impact from the jump. And trust me, it isn’t just me questioning this venture, as I quizzed others about it and they were no less dubious of Midnight.

That said, I believe in Jonathan Hickman, and I quite like Walker. I’ll give these books a shot. And to be honest, I was wrong about Absolute itself. Maybe there’s something here that I’m not seeing. It’s entirely possible. But the whole thing feels uninspiring and bewildering in equal measures, which is not a great starting point.

The Eisner Award Nominations, Being Revealed

The Eisner Award nominations were announced this week, and I won’t bury the lede for this very site: I was in fact among them. SKTCHD was nominated in the Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism category, which is very cool! I’ll be headed to San Diego to attend the ceremony, but it’s a thrill to be nominated alongside such a fantastic and eclectic group of folks.

Most of the rest of the nominees are, as per usual, fantastic and eclectic, just like they were for the Periodical/Journalism category. I imagine it’s an incredibly difficult job for the judges to determine the right answer for all of these categories, but they did tremendous work highlighting a broad mix of exceptional comics. Naturally, I am biased as they basically nominated a highlight reel of my favorite comics of the year, with two categories exemplifying that particularly well in Best U.S. Edition of International Material–Asia (Hirayasumi, Land, and Tokyo Alien Bros. all were nominated!) and Best Graphic Album-New (where faves like Cannon, Drome, The Fables of Erlking Wood, and A Garden of Spheres were picked). But it’s true throughout. The judges nailed it, even if it was assuredly a challenge to get there.

You may have noticed I said “most of the rest of the nominees are fantastic and eclectic.” There’s a reason for that. It turns out that one of the picks — Stardust: The Super Wizard Anthology, which was unsurprisingly nominated in the Best Anthology category — actually included a page created by artificial intelligence, as a guy named Michael Todasco (under an alias, Alex Irons) used AI to make his page, as he proudly admitted (on LinkedIn, which feels fitting). Now, this came out afterwards, it wasn’t disclosed in the book itself, and I think it’s safe to say that the judges had no clue that the book included a page generated by AI in it. How could they if the book itself said nothing of it, especially as they waded through literally thousands of submissions.

But it also underlined how the Eisner Awards do not seem to have a stated policy about whether AI works are eligible, which is part of the reason this topic quickly dominated the conversation around the Eisner Award nominations on social media. It’s not ideal. The big question now, of course, is how will they react? Will the nomination stick? Will it be retracted? It’s unknown, but I will say, this is a heck of an opportunity to make a statement about how they’ll handle AI creations going forward!

We’ll see what happens, but congrats to the nominees, and I’m looking forward to cheering you all on (besides that one guy) in July when I attend the awards.