GRAPHIC-NOVEL COLUMN: A New Magazine for Comic Fans

By Dan Brown

COMICS! The Magazine is not a comic. It is a magazine that covers the comic industry and the people who make comics.

It is put together by folks who clearly love comics, and want to give avid readers more reasons to love comics. It’s even the size of a comic book.

I’ve read two issues so far (Issue No. 6 goes on sale August 5), and what I can tell you is, if you are a superhero fan, you will learn something from reading COMICS! The Magazine.

Arguably the hottest mainstream offering in 2026 is DC’s Absolute Batman. So it made perfect sense for the magazine’s creative team to put the pin-headed vigilante on the cover of Issue No. 1.

Inside, there was a Q-and-A with the folks who put Absolute Batman together. Now, Q-and-A’s are usually journalistically suspect, but this one was six pages long! In other words, it was the first and last word about the launch of Absolute Batman. 

I mean, they even interviewed the dude who letters the breakout hit from DC! That is what I would call exhaustive coverage.

There’s also news, reviews, profiles, top picks, and power rankings. I would love to see the monthly do more reported articles, I hope that’s in store.

COMICS! The Magazine’s editor-in-chief is writer/editor Joseph Keatinge. London’s own Brian Garside is the publication’s digital director.

And if you are a young fan who is new to the idea of a print publication covering the comics industry, that first issue also includes a timeline of previous efforts, such as The Comics Journal, which published 276 issues from 1997 to 2013. Writer Jim Rugg calls Comics Journal “probably the only magazine worthy of the word ‘journalism’ on this list,” which stretches back to the 1960s.

“The importance of fanzines in comic-book history cannot be overstated,” Rugg adds. In other words, news coverage gives comics as an art form legitimacy. That’s the void COMICS! is trying to fill.

A serious industry deserves serious commentary. And Rob Salkowitz (Forbes) and Heidi MacDonald (The Beat), as amazing as their online work is, can’t do it all on their own. 

There’s no point in a magazine or blog being critical for the sake of being critical, but someone has to tell the truth.

And then there are the serendipitous surprises. 

In the debut issue, the Mail Bag letters column contained a series of “ letters” from Canadian creator Chip Zdarsky. The exchange ends with Zdarsky writing his last message from jail. It was a mildly amusing joke.

Then, four issues later, the Mail Bag was given over to an actual convict who sent in an actual letter in response to Zdarksy. Jaymz 13754295 detailed how reading comics works on the inside, so to speak. It was an eye-opening correspondence.

Have you checked out COMICS! The Magazine? What is your go-to news source for information about your favourite publishers and characters? Let me know in the comments!

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.