My friend A. David Lewis posed the following question the other day: "how political should comic books be?" He was asking in earnest, and I liked my reply so I thought I'd repost it here...

I set this aside this morning to give myself time to collect some thoughts about the subject, but it wasn't long after that a news item presented itself that spoke to the topic even better.

A cargo ship with pallets of (among other things) books from Fantagraphics was struck by a missile as it was just trying to deliver some comics from one side of the planet to the other. I haven't found any word about the status of the crew as of this writing; hopefully everyone survived.

These are people who had no political agenda. They were just trying to deliver some comics. The people who were ultimately going to read those comics had no political agenda; they just wanted to read weird monster stories from the 1950s. And yet, everyone involved was impacted by the politics playing out on the world stage. Because one leader wanted to bomb another leader, and didn't care what kind of real-world fallout might result.

All life is politics. We often think of it in terms of a small group of ultra-wealthy men making laws about abortion or health care insurance or who can marry whom or whatever. But it's taxes. It's being taught how to read at school. It's having the trash picked up every week. It's running water and smooth roads and bridges that don't collapse and every other piece of societal infrastructure. It's shipping ports that stay open and cargo containers that can safely make it from Point A to Point B.

All life is politics. And since art -- of which comics is a subset -- is just a reflection of life, how can anything that is considered art being anything but political? Even when they're not trying to be political, they are. As just proven by a boat carrying a shipment of Fantagraphics material. How political should comic books be? However political they are is exactly how political they should be.

I'm finally doing a bit of catch-up, and I binged a good chunk of Wednesday over the weekend. I generally enjoyed season 1. Season 2 looks promising but I'm a little leary that they've made as many fundamental changes as they've made; I understand having to shift around some of the cast because of (no doubt) other filming commitments, but even some of the returning cast seem to have been put in unnecessarily different roles.

But it got me thinking about Wednesday's character overall, and which traits got chosen or discarded with every iteration. One thing that's struck me over the years is how audiences first encounter the character these days. Not surprisingly, each generation comes across Wednesday (and the Addams family more broadly) through whatever the "current" incarnation is. If you were growing up in the 1960s, the original TV show was likely your first encounter. If you were a kid in the late '80s and early '90s, the two Barry Sonnenfeld movies were likely your first. And like any piece of art, it reflects the times in which it was made and so each version feels uniquely rooted to its era.

Wednesday first appeared in a 1944 issue of The New Yorker. The image at the left is the first comic she was ever in, albeit obviously unnamed at that time. That type of comic was creator Charles Addams' stock and trade. Seemingly everyday occurrences with a dark twist to them. A matronly woman at the the information booth in a department store asking where they keep "blunt instruments." A bathroom in which you can see a man brushing his teeth in the mirror... but there is no one in the room to be a reflection of in the first place. A well-dressed man and woman on a street corner just in front of an open manhole with a ladder leading down, and the woman says, "Well, here's where I say good-night." Addams' comics were never titled, and featuring just random characters at least as often, if not more often, than the ones who would later be known as the Addams Family. In fact, they were never named at all in the comics -- none of the characters were named until the 1964 sitcom. Indeed, Addams offerred little by way of character to Wednesday in the comics. She was generally macabre in the same way her whole family was, but beyond that, all that Addams really gave her was a basic visual.

The television show introduced the entire family's names, and well as present the iconic theme song. (Curiously, I've seen a number of reaction videos to the 1991 movie and many of the reactors note that they're familiar with the song but have never seen the show!) I did watch the show in syndication as a kid. I suspect that was my first introduction to the characters. While they had appeared in Hanna-Barbera cartoons in 1972 and 1973 and those would have theoretically been more "current," I think those were largely out of circulation by the time I was old enough to watch them. Their depictions there were visually much closer to Addams' comics than the live-action actors, and I recognized that upon first seeing them, so I must have read some of my dad's collections by then. Despite the visuals returning to something more like the comics, the tone was closer to the 1964 show -- sanitized almost beyond recognition. There was no dark humor at all, much less full-on gallows humor. Most of the jokes from the first episodes revolve around a visitor being scared/surprised to see a taxidermied, two-headed tortise or a whetstone with an axe lying next to it in the living room.

Wednesday, up until this point, had little by way of characterization. She was barely utilized in the comics, and the show had her set at only six years old. (Actress Lisa Loring was indeed six when she started appearing as Wednesday.) Consequently, she's largely treated AS a six-year-old, generally just playing and going to school. Her "weirdness" was largely just by way of being unfazed by anything her family did. Much of what would become Wednesday's character came from the 1991 movie.

Christina Ricci was ten when production for the movie began, old enough that she couldn't be dismissed as a more-or-less generic background character. The writers amplified the deadly nature of her and her brother's "games" and Ricci brought a lot of nuance to the role, particularly with her line deliveries. Audiences recognized and embraced the updates, seemingly appreciating the additional ascerbic wit that would never have made sense for a six-year-old, and Wednesday was given much greater prominence in the 1993 movie.

Subsequent iterations of the character followed the success of Ricci's version. A 10-13 year-old Wednesday became the norm across multiple outlets: a direct-to-video movie (1998), a live-action TV show (1998-99), and a Broadway musical (2009-12). Even the 1993-93 animated show, which again returned to character designs more closely resembling Addams' original cartoons, made Wednesday taller and slightly more mature as did the 2019 and 2021 animated movies.

It is perhaps Melissa Hunter's unlicensed Adult Wednesday Addams web series that next expanded the character's potential. In keeping the character a child, there had been some restrictions on what topics might be addressed. Not out of any real taboos, necessarily, but a 10-year-old Wednesday would simply not have experienced, for example, puberty. She would not have had much experience out from under her parents' protective wings. Even her formal education would be relatively rudimentary. Hunter, then, offerred the idea of how a character like Wednesday would act in more adult scenarios. Which, interestingly, gets back to Addams' original ideas for his comics. Just instead of a general weirdness or sense of the macabre, it's a specific one unique to Wednesday.

While Hunter ran into some trouble for using the character without the legal right to do so, she highlighted the no-tolerance-for-bullshit approach to the character that began with Ricci. Whereas the Addamses in general went against the status quo, their approach was largely one of, "We're just going to do our own thing regardless of your opinion of us." Wednesday was more active in her rejection of the status quo. She not only rejected it, but would point out to others why the status quo is bullshit. And if they didn't listen, she'd make them. While younger versions of Wednesday did that, Hunter brought in those additional topics that could not reasonably be addressed by a child.

(I'll add here, for the sake of completeness, that Lisa Loring did return to the role of Wednesday when she was 19. There was a largely-forgotten Halloween with the New Addams Family made-for-TV movie in 1977 that brought back the cast of the 1964 TV show. She's not afforded much to do beyond make an appearance unforuntately, and the movie not surprisingly follows the sanitized version of the TV show anyway. So it does almost nothing to add to her character.)

This is where the current version of Wednesday, as portrayed by Jenna Ortega comes in. They seem to have recognized the potential in aging up the character and applying the bullshit-intolerance applied to conventions and emotions that come with greater maturity. Again puberty, formal education, stepping out from your parents' direct influence, etc. Not quite adult themes, but ones that certainly resonnate with a more adult audience. Although the addition of more 'conventional' monsters like werewolves and gorgons is a bit removed from most interpretations of the Addams Family proper, it still harkens back to Addams' original comics which did include many such references.

I find it fascinating to see how the character has evolved so radically, even in my lifetime. And how little of those interpretations was directly contributed by Addams himself. The basic visual of a girl with pigtails in a black dress with white collar, sometimes carrying a beheaded doll is really all that came from the comic. He did contribute the name with the advent of the TV show (and the "Wednesday's child is full of woe" origin mentioned in the Netflix show is indeed where Addams got the name from at the suggestion of poet Joan Blake) but that's pretty much it. Most of the characterization developed after Addams' own death in 1988, although each new iteration seems to go back and draw inspiration from his original comics. So when you see "based on the characters by Charles Addams" in the credits, just know that they're referring to ALL his characters, not just the ones that happened to get named in 1964.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Gruenwald Biographix Review
https://ift.tt/oBuLC2F

Kleefeld on Comics: Webtoon Financials
https://ift.tt/m1sD6M4

Kleefeld on Comics: The Comic Book Trust of India
https://ift.tt/cAPSKuQ

Kleefeld on Comics: HBD Dennises the Menace
https://ift.tt/36VB49D

Kleefeld on Comics: Control Your Media
https://ift.tt/lbSk5RV

I've mentioned before that I put together my own personal funny pages that pulls in the latest installments of a number of comics online; the intent is that I can read them all in one place and not have to go from site to site to site. Several of the comics use very regular/predictable naming conventions (usually based on the date) but many do not and I can only pull in an update through their RSS feed.

"But, Sean," you might ask, "if they've got an RSS feed, why are messing around with coding your own page? Why not just use an RSS reader?"

The 'problem' I run into with those are that the feeds sometimes do not include the comic itself. It will just have a link to the latest comic on the creator's website. And since my intent is to not have to pull up a bunch of different websites, what I find myself doing is reading the RSS feed for the updated information and then running some transformations on what is in the feed to be able to pull in the actual comic itself. (Basically, if they have a link to the updated comic page, I can use that to figure out what the link is directly to the comic image, and then just pull that in. If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about, that's fine; just trust me in that it makes sense.)

Anyway, last week, I ran into an issue where suddenly a bunch of comics were no longer getting pulled into my page properly. I hadn't changed my code, so something clearly happened externally to change how many of the comics were being seen. I wasn't getting any useful information from the error messages, so I'm not exactly sure what happened. I was routing the RSS feeds through a third party proxy to avoid CORS header errors so I figure they changed something there. Weirdly, some feeds continue to run through that proxy with no problem, so it's not like it got shut down or something; but regardless, it means that I've had to rework much of my custom page.

My page has been built up over the past couple years so the code is unnecessarily bloated. Heck, there were parts of it that I copy/pasted from a similar effort I had done back in 2005, so it was very much a hodge podge of inefficient codes and hacks that I wouldn't put in any sort of production environment, but worked well enough for my single user situation. Some of the comics had problems on the first day of a new year (creators often put images into a directory labeled by the year they're uploaded, not necessarily the year they're going to be seen) and again on the first day of March (since February has a weird number of days) but I knew what the problems were and it wasn't worth it to correct them just for myself.

But knowing those various problems were in place and that I had to recode much of the page anyway, I figured it was a good time to essentially start over and take the opportunity to clean things up a bit. That's what I've been working on in my spare time over the past week or so. I've got the file size down from 120 KB to 90 KB. Probably not enough to make a noticeable impact, especially since I only ever view the file locally anyway.

Where I'm going with this is that I've had to put in some not insignificant effort here. It's not horrible, to be sure, but I'm certain I'd need to use this for probably decades to make up the time I'm 'saving' by not just going to each website individually. But what I'm able to do is handle this myself and I'm less reliant on how someone wants to code an RSS reader or some other aggregation platform; they're not going to suddenly close shop or decide to start charging for their service. I was talking back in December about owning your own media, and I see this as being similar to that. (If I really wanted to, I could add some functionality to my comics page that would save each day's installment as a discrete file that I could later call up from a local archive.) My point, though, is just that corporations are increasingly making everything a service that you need to pay ongoing fees for. But with a little effort, that's not necessary. I'm not saying everyone should build their own comics web page from scratch, but you do have much more control over your media than you might think.

Today is the 75th birthday of Dennis the Menace -- that kid in the striped shirt, armed with a slingshot, causing problems for pretty much everyone in the neighborhood, sometimes with his dog as an accomplice. Of course, depending on whether you're reading this in the US or in the UK, you've likely got very different characters in your head at the moment.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably already know that both Hank Ketcham and David Law independently thought up ideas for a character called "Dennis the Menace" -- the rhyming name scheme is relatively obvious -- and, by a wild coincidence, both happened to first see print on the exact same day: March 12, 1951. Despite my deliberate attempt above to frame the characters as virtually identical, they really only share the most superficial elements. Thematically, they come from very different places -- the US version celebrates the wonder and innocence of children who haven't yet learned social conventions and mores, while the UK version shows what happens when a child knows but actively rejects those now learned social conventions and mores. The US Dennis annoys people because his ignorance of ettiquite means he winds up innocently doing and saying things people don't like. He has a lack of empathy because he hasn't learned it yet. The UK Dennis annoys people because he's specifically trying to cause chaos, mostly to alleviate his own boredom in day-to-day routine. His lack of empathy isn't because he hasn't learned it, but because he actively chooses his own immediate interests over others' regardless of the consequences.

What I find particularly fascinating about the coincidence of two characters named Dennis the Menace appearing on the same day on opposite sides of the Atlantic is how they've both been about equally successful in their respective countries of origin. It would be an interesting coincidence if both characters debuted simultaneously, but either one or both was nothing more than a brief splash of interest, falling out of print after a year or two. For as many comics do last a short time like that, nobody would bat an eye and it probably wouldn't be until decades later that some comic archivist happened across the coincidence. But instead both characters have been not only successful to have remained continually in print for 75 years, but they've both been the subject of multiple TV shows and movies, video games, and the like. The UK Dennis was a theme park mascot for a little over a decade, while the US Dennis has had two playgrounds built around him. They've shown up on clothes and lunchboxes and coffee mugs. They've had dolls and figures made of them. Fans have cosplayed as them.

Their successes haven't been precisely parallel, and I'm sure you could quantify which was more "successful" (i.e. which has made more money over time) but that they're both close enough to be commonly understood in the same ballpark is almost as amazing as their debuting on the same day.

The characters will no doubt to continue to evolve over time. Both Ketcham and Law passed away decades ago now, and the characters have had a number of artists and writers working on them since, obviously bringing their own preferences and biases to the table in the process. But that both characters have survived at all with so few (relatively speaking) changes would be really nothing short of astounding even if they had a full year between them.

Happy birthday, Dennis! And happy birthday, Dennis!

The founder of the popular event Comic Con India, Jatin Varma, launched The Comic Book Trust of India a couple weeks ago. According to their site, the Trust is "a pioneering not-for-profit organization dedicated to fostering, promoting, and elevating the vibrant world of graphic arts and the comic book industry across India. Established with a profound commitment to nurturing creativity and supporting talent, our trust serves as a unifying platform for all key stakeholders – from the imaginative individual creators who bring stories to life, to the dynamic small publishers who champion diverse voices, and other integral members of the ecosystem."

In the short-term, they're trying to set up a digital hub for Indian comic creators, professionals, and fans. More significantly, they're hoping to also set up some financial support initiatives, like legal aid and a grant program. I can't seem to find anything noting where they're getting the seed money for this, but it seems as if this Trust was at least partially spurred by India's formal Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comics (AVGC) policy, it might be part of a larger grant from the Indian government. (To be clear, that's total speculation on my part.)

On a longer scale, they're hoping to develop a more formal infrastructure for comics and comics advocacy in India. Things like promoting pro-comics policies in the government, school outreach -- including partnering with universities to estamblish college level curriculum and degrees -- and establishing a national comic book archive.

I'm not very familiar with the Advisory Council or the Management Team, and I don't have the slighest clue on how one might go about navigating whatever legal hurdles in India might be in the way of any of that. But I wanted to call attention to the endeavor and make the suggestion that anyone even remotely interested head over to their site to check out what they're about. I'm obviously all in favor of making comics more popular and more accessibile to wider audiences, so I'd like to wish their team the very best and hope to report on how successful they've become in some surprisingly short time!

Webtoon recently released their fourth quarter 2025 results. The short version is that recorded an operating loss of $13.2 million US in the quarter. And while they tried to spin that as an improvement over the fourth quarter of 2024, it's an increase from the $11.6 million US they lost in the third quarter 2025. They also had a decrease in revenue from Q3 -- $378 million US in Q3 versus $330.7 million US in Q4.

Not surprisingly, their statement tries to spin everything in a very positive light, heavily leveraging the recent agreement with Disney and talking up a number of upcoming projects. Aside from the agreement, though -- which was announced back in August -- they don't really have anything to actually show. Just the repackaging of seven Disney/Star Wars/Marvel titles from the past several years, all of which, I believe, had already been converted to a digital format for Amazon. Most of what they're promoting in their reporting is about all the grand plans they have in place for later.

Despite all the positive vibes they try to give off, it doesn't seem like the market is buying into it. Their stock price dropped ~10% almost immediately, and has lost another 10-ish% in the days since. As of this writing, it currently sits at the lowest it's been since just before the announcement with Disney, meaning that they've completely wiped out all the gains they got from the agreement in the first place and they're once again sitting at about 40% of the IPO price from June 2024.

Now a company doesn't live and die by its stock price, and plenty of companies operate at a loss for several years while they try to set themselves up for longer term success. Indeed, their 2024 annual report expressly states, "We have a history of net losses, and we anticipate increasing expenses in the future, and we may not achieve or maintain profitability. If we fail to control our content-related costs, the expenses we incur may exceed the increase in revenues."

Back in September, I wrote...

I don't wish ill against Webtoons, and don't want to rain on their parade exactly, but I think it's worth keeping some perspective here too... I think what we're looking at here is a company trying very hard to make things work, and they've thrown a crudload of time and money at it. But given their current operations, I don't think there's anything to be particularly excited about. This Disney deal doesn't strike me as likely to bring in a ton of opertaing capital -- if the licensing costs themselves don't increase their quarterly losses -- and I would just urge any creators posting through Webtoon to make sure that that isn't their ONLY venue for posting/earning money from their webcomic. You should never rely on a single source to begin with, and this setup with Disney doesn't strike me as being able to change Webtoon's direction.

In that 2024 annual report, they cite several potential risk factors. (Detailing risks in an annual report is pretty standard; don't read too much into the fact those are there.) They list three things that they'll need to nail down in order to grow their business and become profitable: attract high quality creators and their comics, attract more users, and "innovate and expand our advertising business." (The wording is a bit ambiguous there; I'm not sure if they talking about innovation broadly or specifically within the context of advertising.) That report is from March 2025 and I'm not sure I can say they've really done anything they mentioned about growing their business. I mean, you coudl argue they have high qualities creators by virtue of the already-created comics from Disney/Star Wars/Marvel, but that's a bit of a stretch, I think. Their "Monthly Paying Users" has remained pretty flat year-over-year, as has revenue. And I'm not aware of any innovations -- either within the context of advertising or without; indeed, my understanding is they've actually stripped away functionality.

I found a quote on GlassDoor from a former employee who was laid off in early 2024: "I thought the strategy, as it was communicated to me, was muddy and often changed radically with little or no notice... it's still unclear what direction the company is headed." I think that sums up my opinion as well. They really don't seem to have a sense of what to do with their platform to make money. Argueably, everyone who's tried making a "single source" platform for webcomics has failed, and the only reason Webtoon is still around is because they had several years being propped up financially by Naver. With them no longer in the picture, I have to wonder if they'll remain around long enough to discover that elusive formula for success.