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than it’s taking DC to release The Invisibles as trades; the stock market is well below last year’s highs. Consumer confidence is in the crapper; early reports from the retail sector have holiday shopping totals much, much lower than expected. Which means everyone’s freaking out; consumers and businesses are hanging on to their well-earned dimes and quarters and entrenching against the impending down-turn.

This hearkens back to the economic upheaval of the Eighties and the first appearance of The Dazzler.

I can almost hear you all saying, “Wait; what? I was with him there, until that last bit.”

It’s kind of a running joke with me and my friends that if some new thing the kids are into in the real world finally shows up in comics, the fad’s been over for years, and the comics industry just didn’t get the hipster memo. I first noticed this with the introduction of The Dazzler, disco powers in full effect; but depending on when you started reading comics, it might have been when Robin and Kid Flash started saying “groovy” in the first Teen Titans run or when that break-dancing superhero Vibe showed up in the Justice League . When the “next big thing” finally permeates the awareness of the guys making decisions at the House of Corporate Comics, the chances are pret ty high that the apex of whatever-it-is’ popularity has been reached at least six months before. Which brings us to the guy running Marvel. Bill Jemas. Don’t know the guy. Heard he’s from Topps. somebody over there had enough sense to wave bags of money at Axel Alonso and Stuart Moore, so there’s that . There might be some interesting things coming from Marvel editorially, creatively. I’ve got my eye on it. But this guy Jemas. Yes, I understand there are business decisions reached that outsiders can’t fathom. Yes, I understand that there are stockholders to answer to; yes, I understand a monstrous debt that’s poised over every decision like 250 million Swords of Damocles. Yes, I understand how easy it is to be a Monday-morning quarterback. Still.

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