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Moon Knight Vol. 8 #1-14 (2016)

Jeff Lemire | Greg Smallwood

#moon knight #marc spector #khonshu #jeff lemire #greg smallwood

JSA #14 by Jeff Lemire and Gavin Guidry. Variant cover (1) by David Talaski. Main cover (2) by Dave Johnson. Out in December.

"As the Atom investigates the Fifth Columnists, a new hero makes an appearance!

Meanwhile, Alan Scott gets some help on a case from Detective Jim Corrigan!"

#jsa #justice society of america #green lantern #alan scott #the flash #jay garrick #wildcat #doctor fate #hawkgirl #hawkman #the spectre #dc comics #jeff lemire #gavin guidry #dave johnson #david talaski #variant cover #comics

they are serving beautiful butch femme friends to lovers

#dc comics #absolute flash #wally west #linda park #the flash #wednesday spoilers #jeff lemire

The Fury of Firestorm #5 (DC, August 2026) variant cover by Denys Cowan, Jeff Lemire

#fury of firestorm #firestorm #denys cowan #jeff lemire #comic covers #variant covers #dc comics #dc #cover art #comic books #comics

I think, at this point, we can all agree that DC has some kind of editorial mandate that Jason Todd's Robin must be written as doomed from the start by his own flaws. For a good example of this, remember how pissed off we all were about Robin and Batman: Jason Todd? Jeff Lemire is a genuinely good writer when you put anyone but Jason in his hands, but with Jason, he suddenly turns into a victim-blaming asshole who can't seem to see the irony in condemning Jason for things that we literally see Bruce do in the same issue. (Or, if you're feeling more generous, he's trying to get around DC editorial by leaving his criticism of Bruce in the subtext - if Bruce does the same things we're supposed to condemn Jason for, we either have to stop condemning Jason, or start condemning Bruce as well. But of course, he's not saying that. Not in so many words.)

We're all aware of the victim-blaming rhetoric we've been fed about Jason, even from before his death (thank you, Starlin): he's reckless, violent, a bad seed that Batman tried and failed to save. He was always destined for a bad end. Most of us are also aware that, 1) This is bullshit, and Jason before Starlin was kind, clever, thoughtful, and fiercely compassionate, and, 2) Even if every word of the slander were true, he still wouldn't have deserved to be killed for it.

The question is why DC feels a need to push this narrative. I've seen it suggested that this is an attempt to deflect criticism of Bruce. After all, Starlin's run doesn't exactly paint Bruce in a flattering light - Jason's death can pretty easily be traced back to the Joker, who killed him, and to Bruce, whose poor parenting led Jason to be in that situation in the first place. But Batman is DC's most popular title, and they don't want people to grow critical of Bruce, because that means Batman doesn't sell as well. If it's Jason's fault, they don't have to deal with criticism of their most popular character. This is a pretty good theory, but I think it goes a bit deeper than that.

Jason's death didn't just damage Bruce's image - it dealt a critical blow to the genre conventions of superhero comics. Child sidekicks are vital to the superhero genre. It does not work without them. There's a reason Jason's death is regarded as one of the most significant in all of comics history: he proved that child sidekicks can die. And if sidekicks are mortal, you have to start contending with the question of whether children should be allowed to fight crime in the first place. Jason's death didn't just invite criticism of Bruce - it destabilized the entire superhero genre, inviting criticism of every hero who's ever had a child sidekick.

But if it was Jason's fault that he died, rather than being the logical result of throwing children onto the front lines of a war, DC could (they believed) continue to appeal to one of their biggest target demographics (that is, children and teens who wanted a character they could relate to) without fear of criticism.

This only got worse when Winick brought Jason back to life, because suddenly he couldn't be swept under the rug. Instead of quietly disappearing into the backstory of other characters, a regrettable but unavoidable tragedy, Jason was right there, demanding a story of his own, refusing to be forgotten. And more than that, he was popular. People liked this new Jason, which meant that he was profitable. Rather than being a one-arc villain who could disappear into the massive corpus of DC canon, Jason was once again an active player in the DC universe. Starlin had already damaged a load-bearing staple of the genre, and then Winick took another swing. The longer Jason Todd remains alive - the longer he keeps screaming for justice - the more criticism DC is going to face for letting children be sidekicks at all.

So they've doubled down on the victim-blaming. It's been more-or-less working so far, after all - even people who consider themselves fans of Jason often buy into the 'angry and reckless' narrative. And with Jason's return marked by his furious quest for vengeance, it's easy to convince new fans that he was always like that, rather than having been changed by the circumstances of his death and resurrection (and even after that change, still nowhere near as reckless or unreasonable as DC would like us to believe). But other fans only grow louder and angrier with every story that tries to paint Jason as being doomed by his own faults, his own nature, rather than the nature of superhero comics as a whole.

DC made two very critical mistakes with Jason Todd: they let Starlin kill him, and they let Winick bring him back. They let two writers irreversibly damage the foundations of the superhero genre - and Jason is still paying for it.