We talk about being obsessed with expanding our audience, but if publishing lesser versions of people’s favorite cartoons, toys, and TV shows is the best we can do, then we are doomed to failure.

Simply reframing work from other media as comic books is the absolute worst representation of comics.

We can invite readers to innovate with us, but repurposing someone else’s ideas as comic books isn’t innovation – at best, it’s imitation, and we are all so much better than that.

New creativity that is native to comics is what makes this industry stronger. It shows what comics do, what comics can BE.

[snip]

TRANSFORMERS comics will never be the real thing. GI JOE comics will never be the real thing. STAR WARS comics will never be the real thing. Those comics are for fans that love the real thing so much, they want more – but there’s the important thing to understand: They don’t want more comics – they just want more of the thing they love. Those comics are accessories to an existing interest, an add-on, an upsell, easy surplus for the parent products – icing on the cake.

Comics are so much more than that, and this industry has existed as long as it has because of the ingenuity of men and women all over the world who yearn to share the fruits of their imaginations, not simply find new ways to prolong the life of existing IPs.