In lieu of my regular edition of Comics Disassembled, this week’s Friday column is going to shift its focus to the recent San Diego Comic Con, as I wrote about ten things that stood out from the event, and it all starts with the winner of the convention, who seems to be winning everything these days.

DC is still dominating…

If there was clear trend on the comic side at San Diego Comic Con, it was the same one that’s been obvious since I first attended the event back in 2024: This is DC’s moment, and there’s little evidence that we’re going to see a change on that front any time soon.

Explaining how or why this is true feels unnecessary, because this event was less about attendees finally getting proof of DC’s dominance and more a coronation of the current king of comics, but I’m going to explain what I mean anyways. To make it quick, though, let’s bullet point some of the publisher’s big wins from the weekend.

• They won 10 categories at the Eisner Awards, 12 and they were so dominant that when I went to appear in the winners’ photo after the ceremony, it felt like I was infiltrating a DC staff meeting as much as I was participating in a photo shoot.
• As we’ll get to, Absolute Batman was unsurprisingly the hottest game in town, with Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta’s signing lines being preposterously, unfathomably robust.
• Its comic announcements were the strongest of any publisher, with The Batman of Two Worlds, the five (!!) new Next Level titles, and Absolute newcomers like the Absolute Black Canary one-shot standing out from a very busy slate of announcements.
• Near as I could tell, there were zero points during the con that the DC booth did not have roughly 18 million people at it. At one point, a seagull somehow even got inside the convention and elected to land on the booth’s Daily Planet statue, presumably because it recognized that the exclusives the publisher had to offer were the clear targets from the event.

I could go on and on, but it just was a dominant showing from the publisher, who kept everything comic-centric and thrived because of it. That was a clear contrast from the Marvel booth, which basically was a museum for movie costumes and little more. And it wasn’t just me saying this. Conversations with other observers echoed my sentiment. The perception seemed to be that DC owned Comic Con this year. It’s very difficult to see that run ending any time soon.

One last note, though. I wasn’t just impressed by the fact that the sales for the publisher seemed to be stellar, that they took nearly a third of the wins at the Eisner Awards, or that its announcements had everyone talking. Their energy could have won the con alone. The vibes of everyone involved with DC were straight up immaculate.

Whether you’re talking DC creators, editors, or whomever, there was a convivial, almost familial feeling to everything they brought to the show. It isn’t just that they’re succeeding; everyone at DC seems to be aligned in a rare way, and that’s pushing the perception of the publisher and its reality to a whole other level at events like this. You could feel it in conversations, and sometimes, the people who make up the company even said it themselves. It was maybe the most impressive aspect of an incredibly impressive convention for them.

…But hope is growing for Marvel

If you were hoping for announcements from Marvel that would thrill and excite, ones that would assuredly send the company back to its stratospheric heights of the past, you probably came up emptier than you wanted to. Maximum X-Men didn’t generate buzz, it’s fun that The Punisher is doing something in Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto’s Avengers run but it’s so far out that reveal felt muted, and Jason Aaron and Aaron Kuder doing an Indiana Jones book could be a good time but it isn’t a Marvel universe book — and those were arguably the highlights. Nothing announced in San Diego moved the needle to a meaningful degree for the publisher.

And yet, there was something unusual surrounding Marvel at the con. It was a sensation that’s become so unfamiliar to the House of Ideas that you’d be forgiven for having forgotten what it feels like. That feeling was hope, as the previous week’s news that Stephen Wacker was taking over as Marvel’s editor in chief had people in comics talking…positively about the future of the publisher??? It wasn’t just idle chatter, either. It became abundantly clear that Wacker’s already hard at work doing what he can to change the way the publisher is viewed by creators and pundits alike, putting himself out there before and at the event while getting quality face time with movers and shakers from the publisher and industry.

That’s all a good thing, and it’s leading to some level of faith that Marvel will pull out of its malaise, even if it will take some time to get there. While there were plenty of hypotheses about what the move to Burbank could mean for them and their staff — including ones about who will make the move and who won’t — the read both internally and externally is one of optimism. That’s a welcome change of pace after multiple years of the exact opposite.

There was even buzz on the Studios side, too, as Ryan Gosling being cast as Ghost Rider, the immensely talented David Jonsson taking over as Black Panther, and Marvel rolling out enough star power during its Hall H panel to light the entire Gaslamp District of San Diego had the entire convention talking. If these disparate sides of Marvel could simultaneously return to their former positions of glory, those connected to each — comic shop owners, movie theater chains, creators, etc. — may weep out of joy.

We’ll see where it goes from here, but despite a comic slate at the event that lacked sizzle, it seems like Marvel is approaching the light at the end of the tunnel, and that’s a very good thing for everyone.