Marvel has announced a new Black Cat ongoing series. Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts wins Pulitzer. A job posting for an AI illustrator for comics has come under fire.
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Episode Transcript:
Black Cat gets new ongoing series.
Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts wins Pulitzer.
AI illustrator job posting comes under fire.
This is Comic Book Club News for May 7, 2025.
Black Cat Gets New Ongoing Series From Marvel:
Someone has pulled off the heist of the century, stealing Black Cat from writer Jed MacKay. Those intrepid thieves? Writer G. Willow Wilson and artist Gleb Melnikov, who will take on a new Black Cat ongoing series for Marvel.
Said Wilson via press release, “As soon as Spider-Man: Black Suit & Blood dropped and people saw the Black Cat story, readers began to ask me ‘When are you going to write more Felicia?’ Well, the answer is: right now. Black Cat is so much fun to work with. She’s a supporting character with main character energy. And she has such a rich history that there are tons of tantalizing story threads to pull on.”
Spinning directly out of the events of the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man #8 and #9, Felicia Hardy is trying to be a superhero. Her first mission? Take down The Lizard. But it seems like all the hero stuff might just a front for the biggest heist of her career.
This marks the first time Wilson has written an ongoing for the publisher since her lauded run on Ms. Marvel. Black Cat #1 hits stores on August 20.
Tessa Hulls’ Feeding Ghosts Wins Pulitzer:
Tessa Hulls’ graphic novel Feeding Ghosts has won the Pulitzer Prize in the Memoir and Autobiography category. Per The Beat, this marks not only the second time in history a graphic novel has won the Pulitzer, but the first time one has won in a regular category. Art Spiegelman’s Maus was awarded a special prize in 1992, not one of the normally awarded prizes.
Said the Pulitzer committee, “An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.”
Perhaps an even greater honor, this marks the first time a former guest of Comic Book Club’s live show has won the Pulitzer Prize. Which, by extension, means Comic Book Club won a Pulitzer Prize. Congrats to Hulls on the win, and also, congrats to us. But mostly Hulls, who actually did something important.
AI Illustrator Job Posting Comes Under Fire:
A job posting for a Comic Writer/AI Illustrator has come under fire.
Posted for WRKS Games, which calls itself “a transmedia game developer and publisher based in Singapore,” the posting calls for a writer/artist to work on their IPs, and noted that AI usage was a must.
Said the posting, “Using AI to do the illustrations instead of doing it manually is mandatory. The comic industry from a profit point of view is heavily dominated by the Japanese Manga industry even in the west, now accounting for 2 out of every 3 comics sold. To compete effectively, we need to be both fast and good at delivering products to market. There is no time or bandwidth to sit around waiting for 6 months for anyone to hand-illustrate a comic. That is not the reality of jobs in the comic industry anymore.”
As you might imagine, nobody on the internet was having it. Responses ranged from “there is no profit in AI comics” to “people who use AI for comics don’t understand composition, paneling, storytelling, just comic making in general.”
The job listing has subsequently removed the functionality to apply, presumably because real humans were spamming responses. And a reminder that what WRKS Games and others are selling is flat-out wrong. AI is not inevitable, and it’s not mandatory. It delivers poor results that is plagiarized from other people’s work, looks like garbage, and drives away customers. That’s not to mention the negative environmental impacts. AI is bad and unnecessary, from art programs to ChatGPT. Cut it out of your life, immediately. And certainly out of your comics.
For Comic Book Club News, I’m Alex Zalben. And this is like the time Comic Book Club won an Eisner because we were standing next to Newsarama when they won.
Got tips or stories you’d like us to cover? Email us at comicbookclublive@gmail.com.
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