By Zack Quaintance — I’ve said this on my Twitter a few times, but with everything so crazy and uncertain in the wider world, it really helps me to continue pushing on with this comics coverage nonsense. It’s a nice distraction, a nice escape, and a nice familiar way to ease my anxiety as everything else slowly melts. So, I’m going to keep doing it, and I hope you’ll find some relief of your own within my efforts.

Good! Now with that out of the way, let’s get on to the comics things I like and don’t like for this week…

Gene Luen Yang, comics winner

Writer/artist Gene Luen Yang is winning comics this year. Last month, he expertly stuck the landing on his Gurihiru collaboration, Superman Smashes the Klan, satisfyingly wrapping up the best stand-alone Superman story in years (read more about why I like that here). Then this month, his long-awaited new original graphic novel Dragon Hoops hit, establishing itself as an early front-runner for the best comics anything of 2020. Meanwhile, he’s quietly writing a very solid run of The Terrifics for DC Comics, with Terrifics #25 standing out as one of the best individual superhero issues this year. Looking forward, he’s going to be writing a Shang-Chi miniseries for Marvel just as attention ramps up in advance of that movie. 

Folks? Gene Luen Yang is winning comics this year, and I like it.

BOOM! Studios-issance

You know who else is doing well in comics this year? BOOM! Studios, which is just rolling out a stellar lineup of original monthly comics concepts, arguably passing bigger publishers like Image as the foremost purveyor of non-superhero stories on the direct market. Just look at this great list of original titles BOOM! has launched in 2020: Alienated, King of Nowhere, and Wicked Things. Going back to last year, that list adds Folklords, Once & Future, and Something is Killing the Children. Looking forward, the publisher also has original stories coming from Big 2 names like Al Ewing and Tom Taylor. That’s a massive lineup of big names and titles, and it might be time to start talking about BOOM! as the leader here. Even if not, the great quality of work being done there remains something I really like.

Those New Warriors characters…yikes

So, Marvel released names and designs for a set of new New Warriors characters, and basically nobody liked them. You can term search on Twitter and easily find several dozen arguments for why these characters are off, ranging from their names being kind of obvious to the very concepts for them reading like cis males botching an attempt to be inclusive with the work. Whatever you feel most strongly about, most of us seem to agree that we don’t like these characters, and it’s not hard to imagine them looking even more ridiculous a few months or years from now, with buzzy names like Snowflake, Safe Space, and Screen Time. I don’t like judging stories based on previews and teases, but I also really don’t like the first glimpses of this one. This rollout and preview looks like a total misfire, although it’s easy to foresee a scenario where this is all some kind of misdirect. The pessimistic view is that Marvel’s tendency to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks has given us a real clunker. Like… 

Coronavirus sows fear, unity

All of our lives changed this week as the government (finally!) was forced to get serious about the advent of the coronavirus. Folks who live in big cities like I do, are likely confined to their homes aside from going out for food and medicine. As such, the web of small business local comic shops nationwide that make this goofy hobby we all love so much possible is facing arguably the largest single threat of our lifetimes. Shops will close, and I don’t like that at all. Hardworking and passionate people will lose their livelihoods. It’s devastating, yet necessary for the health of society. It’s just...hard.

What I do like, however, is that the relatively small size of the majority of companies in the comics industry has made us as a whole agile. Smaller publishers this week — as well as Diamond Distributors, which I must admit I often criticize — came out with a wide range of ideas, letters, and actions aimed at supporting retailers in these trying times. I like that a whole lot. Marvel even moved (presumably through a bunch of corporate red tape) Friday to give retailers a break, and as such, one suspects DC Comics won’t be far behind. 

Stay safe out there, everyone — I’m rooting for you and I’m here if you need to vent, chat, or generally bullshit about the things you like and don’t like, too. If there’s a silver lining to this grave horror we’re facing it’s that it reminds us all to be human, and I really like that.

Read this week’s comic book reviews here!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.