Destroyed. I am livind over this b/cuz what can I do ? NOTHING. GODDAMNIT The art on the left is a painting I did almost 20 years ago. The image on the right is a screengrab from a facebook ad that popped into my Feed tonight. I knew immediately it was mine. I have 0 recourse
I stopped by my local comic shop looking for an older book of mine I needed for an upcoming gig. They didn’t have it. Second shop didn’t either.
I needed it soon, so I jumped on eBay, found it right away for a great price, and bought it. A little later I get an email saying the seller canceled the transaction. I’m thinking, that’s odd, and I write him to ask what happened. Before I can even hit send, a message pops up from him:
‘The GOAT doesn’t need to pay for comics. Thank you for all your great work throughout the years, sir.’
I wrote back thanking him for the kind words and told him honestly ...it wasn’t a lot of money, I was happy to pay. But he insisted.
It really hit me. This industry… the people in it… some of the kindest anywhere.
Between us, when the book shows up, I’m sending him a package of my own. A proper thank‑you. It was such a sweet gesture, and it meant more than he probably knows.
@jpalmiotti It’s just a passive and sometimes not so passive way to silence you, judge you, or critique what THEY don’t want to see or know about you.
Do you.
If they can’t separate their love of your work from the other things they might not like, it’s a THEM problem.
Marvel spent $212 million on a Samuel L. Jackson spy show called Secret Invasion. Audiences mostly ignored it. Then they revived a 1992 Saturday-morning kids cartoon for maybe one-tenth of that. The reboot scored 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. X-Men '97 Season 2 drops July 1.
Marvel's live-action Disney+ shows have averaged $25 million per episode. WandaVision, Loki, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, the Hawkeye series, all sitting in that range. Secret Invasion went even higher at $35 million per episode and tanked. An animated Marvel show, based on a 2024 Disney financial filing, came in around $20 million total for the whole production. One-tenth the cost. Roughly the same hours of content.
And the cartoon worked. X-Men '97 Season 1 pulled 4 million views in its first five days. That made it the best animated launch on Disney+ since 2021. Behind those numbers is a stranger one. Views of the original 1992 X-Men cartoon spiked 522 percent the moment the new trailer dropped. Disney already owns that 30-year-old show. They paid for it decades ago. Millions of new subscribers are watching it now. The old catalog is making them money on content they already finished paying off.
The big live-action X-Men movie is not coming until 2028. Jake Schreier, who just directed Thunderbolts, is attached. The script is still being rewritten. Filming likely starts in late 2026 or early 2027, once Avengers: Secret Wars wraps. The cast probably gets revealed at Comic-Con this July, since that is the venue Marvel usually saves for its biggest announcements of the year. From now until 2028, Marvel has no new live-action X-Men to sell.
So the cartoon is the bridge, and Marvel is leaning in hard. Season 2 launches with nine episodes. Season 3 is already in production, and Season 4 is being talked about by insiders. Each season runs at maybe a tenth of what one live-action season costs.
Even the next Avengers movie, Avengers: Doomsday on December 18, 2026, is bringing back the old X-Men actors from the Fox movies. Patrick Stewart as Professor X. Ian McKellen as Magneto. Hugh Jackman already came back as Wolverine in Deadpool and Wolverine. One last lap for the older cast before the reboot.
The Fox X-Men movies made $6 billion at the box office across 13 films on a combined budget of $1.7 billion. The little animated revival of a show your older cousin watched on Saturday mornings might end up being the best dollar Disney ever spent on these characters.