A Sense of Doubt blog post #3869 - DC Cancels Red Hood Comic Book After Social Media Post By Author

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3869 - DC Cancels Red Hood Comic Book After Social Media Post By Author

I feel behind on the blog due to work and homework commitments. Catching up.

This story riled me up.

I found out about it when I bought an issue of Red Hood #1 only to be told that it had been canceled.

Fear seems to be the emotion of the year: on all sides.

I would not have posted a message like the one Felker-Martin did (read below) following Charlie Kirk's murder, but I defend her right to not only post it but remain employed despite the post.

Seems to me that DC Comics might face as big or bigger of a backlash for the reason they canceled the comic and fired Felker-Martin than if they had not.

We're in new times in which for many people defending free speech only applies to speech that they like.

That's not how free speech works.

Shame on you, DC Comics. Cowards.

Thanks for tuning in.

DC Comics Cancels ‘Red Hood’ After One Issue Due To “Public Comments” “Promoting Hostility”

https://comicbookclublive.com/2025/09/11/dc-comics-cancels-red-hood-after-one-issue-due-to-public-comments-promoting-hostility/

by Alex Zalben

DC Comics has taken the rather shocking step of abruptly canceling its new Black Label Red Hood series after only one issue. The news came to retailers late on Wednesday night (September 10) that the publisher was cancelling all further orders for the series, including the previously solicited issues #2 and #3.

The mature readers series written by Gretchen Felker-Martin, with art by Jeff Spokes, was an in-continuity adventure taking place after the heavily delayed H2SH storyline running in Batman, by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, which found Jason Todd, aka the Red Hood, heading to New Orleans stand-in New Angelique, and getting embroiled in a supernatural murder mystery alongside The Huntress.

Per Popverse, retailers were told that, “DC Comics cancels existing orders for Red Hood #2 and Red Hood #3, and any orders for future issues of the series. DC Comics will credit retailers for all invoiced copies of Red Hood #1, inclusive of copies that may have already been sold.”

While one could speculate that the delay of H2SH led to the cancellation — the final two parts of that storyline are now planned for release on November 12, 2025, and January 28, 2026, respectively, after initially planning to finish by this past August — that doesn’t seem to be the case.

In a statement shared with Comic Book Club, DC Comics said, “At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct.”

Felker-Martin has been consistently outspoken online, with her views well known for years. Her social media posts were known entities well before the Red Hood series was announced. But given the timing — the news story dropped at 1 am ET — posters on BlueSky have specifically pointed to her posts about the death of Charlie Kirk yesterday at Utah University. Felker-Martin’s account has been suspended since the posts, but screenshots shared by others show her posting three skeets referring to Kirk, in particular: “Thoughts and prayers you Nazi bitch,” with a follow-up of “Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk.”

However, a third post may be the one that drew the attention of the right-wing posters who began to circulate and criticize Felker-Martin’s posts, mostly on X (formerly known as Twitter). In it, the writer states, “The job market is grim, but there’s a silver lining: Gavin Newsom needs a new co-host for his podcast.” This is in reference to the first episode of Newsom’s podcast, which found him sitting down with the Talking Points creator.

For what it’s worth, Felker-Martin is transgender. And Kirk frequently espoused anti-trans ideology, up until the moment he died. As reported in multiple outlets, at the time of his death, he was debating whether trans mass shooters are one of the biggest dangers to the United States. When asked by an attendee how many transgender mass shooters there have been in the past 10 years, Kirk answered “too many,” with the attendee clarifying there have been five. As for Newsom, the governor and Presidential candidate hopeful has also been public about his own negative trans views, and Felker-Martin (again, in posts from the banned BlueSky account) has been critical of him, as well.

However, it seems the issue stems from Felker-Martin’s long history of posting, which was a violation of DC’s social policy, not just this week’s posts about Kirk. Is it possible that the ones mentioned above were the breaking point? Perhaps, given the timing. As is, given Felker-Martin is banned from BlueSky, and DC isn’t sharing any further statements, for the moment, this is all we’ve got to go on.

https://comicbookclublive.com/2025/09/11/dc-comics-red-hood-cancellation-12-issues-two-collections/

Earlier today, news broke that DC Comics has canceled Red Hood, their mature-readers Black Label series, which just debuted yesterday (September 10) in stores. But while the announcement noted that they were cancelling the previously solicited second and third issues as well as “any orders for future issues of the series,” they didn’t specify how many issues that was. And the answer is: a lot.

Specifically, the series written by Gretchen Felker-Martin, with art by Jeff Spokes, and letters by Becca Carey, was planned for at least 12 issues and two collections. DC shared as much back on June 16 when they announced the news of the Red Hood series, stating, “Red Hood Vol. 1, collecting issues 1-6 of this new ongoing DC All In comic book series, will publish on June 16, 2026, and Red Hood Vol. 2, collecting issues 7-12, will publish on December 1, 2026. Future volumes will be announced soon!”

While — as we can plainly see from this example — nothing is certain in the world of comic books, it sure looks like DC Comics was in the Red Hood business for the long haul. Red Hood #2 was originally solicited for October 2, 2025, while Red Hood #3 would have come out in stores on November 12, 2025. Red Hood #6 then would likely have come out in February, followed by a four-month gap until the collection was released, and Red Hood #12 in August, followed by another four-month gap until the second collection in December.

A 12-issue run isn’t out of the ordinary for a Black Label series, but it isn’t par for the course, either. Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Riccardo Federici’s The Last God ran longer than that, and several series by Tom King have run for 12 issues (Rorschach, Danger Street, Strange Adventures, and Batman/Catwoman). James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s Nice House by the Lake and Nice House by the Sea are also 12 issues each, though the latter is only partially through its run, and is moving to the Vertigo label.

But that sort of commitment to anything in the main continuity other than, say, Batman or Superman is surprising, and points to how seismic the decision to cancel the title was. It also means that Felker-Martin, Spokes, Carey, and Taurin Clarke, who was planning on joining the title as the regular cover artist with issue #2, are now out about a year of work.

So why was the title canceled? A statement provided to Comic Book Club by DC Comics explained, “At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct.”

We detailed the circumstances at greater length elsewhere, but the short version is that Felker-Martin has been consistently posting about hot-button issues on social media for most of her career. While the timing, and fans and detractors on social media, pointed specifically to her BlueSky posts about the death of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk yesterday, it seems this cancellation was actually caused by ongoing violations of DC’s social policy.

Given the long run mentioned above, and Felker-Martin’s history of posting, one could wonder where the disconnect happened between DC Comics and the writer… Whatever you think about Felker-Martin’s posts yesterday or before that (her BlueSky account has currently been banned, reportedly for the aforementioned Kirk-related skeets), if DC knew they were in for the long run with her and Red Hood, the fact that she was posting potential violations of the social media policy shouldn’t have been a surprise.

As is, that’s tilting at windmills because Felker-Martin did violate the social media policy, and DC did cancel Red Hood. All 12+ issues and two collections of it.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2509.21 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3734 days ago & DAD = 388 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3355 - The Fight Over Tik-Tok is Unconstitutional and Lacks Due Process

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3355 - The Fight Over Tik-Tok is Unconstitutional and Lacks Due Process

I do not use Tik Tok and have no plans to download the app and start using it.

My reticence has nothing to do with the allegations against ByteDance as a tool of the Chinese Communist Party.

I post here about the Tik Tok ban not because I use Tik Tok, but I know many people who do and they might be interested.

Likewise, I am always against unlawful and unconstitutional actions of our government, and so this action of censorship and cancel culture cannot stand. I oppose it.

In terms of misinformation, Tik Tok is no more dangerous and insidious than any social media. Ownership and influence could exert more control and ability to collect user data and proliferation misinformation. But the benefits of owning a social media platform provide not much more opportunity for influence of users than user-to-user interactions. And actually may have less power. 

Like any social media platform, users have the ability to curate their own experiences. If users to choose to linger on misinformation because it appeals to them they will, and then they will add more of it, linger on more, and even seek it out. If users -- many of whom are smarter than they are given credit for being -- identify something as misinformation, and pass it by. Also, Tik Tok claims to be committed to fighting misinformation as they are to fighting the unconstitutional ban against the company.

Tik Tok Integrity

Tik Tok Misinformation guides

Tik Tok's statement on the ban


Read the content I have curated and shared here.

The U.S. government cannot ban or force ByteDance to sell NOT JUST because it violates First Amendment protections of the Constitution but because there has been no due process. There has been no trial, no evidence offered to prove the allegations of Chinese government control with an opportunity for the company, ByteDance, to defend itself. 

Don't worry. This ban is all for show. It's not going to happen.

Tik Tok is not going anywhere.

Thanks for tuning in.

FROM THE FUTURE PARTY NEWSLETTER

Bye bye, TikTok? // Illustration by Kate Walker

A TikTok ban would crater the creator economy

The Future. With President Biden signing the bill that forces ByteDance to either sell TikTok or face a ban in the US, the creator economy is reckoning with what life would look like without the platform. In short, it would be radically different. TikTok said that it would fight the legislation tooth and nail, but a ban would likely give Instagram a major surge in engagement. We imagine that Zuck is already popping champagne bottles.

Crisis countdown By this time next year, TikTok may be long gone. That has creators and businesses scared.

Many creators have followings only on TikTok, meaning that once the app is gone, their careers essentially start at zero — an “extinction-level event,” says James Nord, founder of the influencer marketing platform Fohr. That’s because many of them make money from TikTok-specific features, like recommending products on Shop or filming speculative ads for brands through Creativity Challenge. TikTok says that a ban would “threaten the income of at least tens of thousands of people in the US,” according to Wired.

Additionally, 33% of American adults now report having used TikTok, which shows that the user base is starting to age up and that more brands and businesses are using the platform to expand their reach.

If TikTok goes, so might their virality.

https://reason.com/2024/04/22/tiktok-measure-passed-by-house-is-unconstitutional-in-multiple-ways/

TikTok Measure Passed by House Is Unconstitutional in Multiple Ways

Tick Tock for TikTok

ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN | 4.22.2024 11:30 AM

Is TikTok's time finally up? On Saturday, the House of Representatives passed a measure that would require a change in the app's ownership or ban it if that doesn't happen.

Called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, it's essentially the same divestiture-or-ban bill I wrote about in this newsletter back in March, now tucked into a larger bill (H.R. 8038, the insanely named 21st Century Peace through Strength Act) that deals with everything from fentanyl trafficking to Russian sanctions, Iranian petroleum, Hamas, and boatloads of foreign aid.

The most talked-about part of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would ban TikTok unless it completely breaks ties with its Chinese parent-company, ByteDance, within 270 days.

But the bill goes far beyond TikTok, and could be used to justify a ban on all sorts of popular apps tied to China, Russia, Iran, or any other country that gets deemed a foreign adversary.

Specifically, the bill makes it illegal "to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application." And the bill's definition of "foreign adversary controlled application" is really broad.

It specifically defines TikTok, ByteDance, and subsidiaries or successors thereof as foreign adversary controlled applications.

The definition would also apply to an array of websites, apps, and "augmented or immersive technology" (with a focus on large social media entities), if they are headquartered in, principally based in, or organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country or if any person or entity with at least a 20 percent stake is based there.

And it would grant the president broad power to determine who meets this bill, opening the measure up for all sorts of potential abuse.

There are multiple ways in which this legislation likely violates the Constitution.

The most obvious constitutional problem is the First Amendment. The bill suppresses the free speech rights of Americans who post to TikTok and of those who consume TIkTok content.

It may also amount to a bill of attainder—a law punishing a specific person or entity, without a trial—and those are unconstitutional.

And it may also violate the 5th Amendment, as Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) noted in a Reason article last week.

Paul thinks the Supreme Court "will ultimately rule it unconstitutional because it would violate the First Amendment rights of over 100 million Americans who use TikTok to express themselves," and "rule that the forced sale violates the Fifth Amendment. Under the Constitution, the government cannot take your property without accusing and convicting you of a crime—in short, without due process. Since Americans are part of TikTok's ownership, they will eventually get their day in court."

Paul's point brings up an important—and often overlooked—factor in all of this: No one has produced evidence of any specific legal infractions committed by TikTok, let alone proven such offenses took place. There's a ton of speculation about what TikTok could be doing, but that's it. A lot of people seem sure that TikTok is a tool of the Chinese Communist Party and you're a fool if you think otherwise. And maybe it is! But that still doesn't mean we can simply sanction the company with no due process, as Paul points out.

Speculation about what the app's ties to China mean may be a good reason for certain people to approach TikTok with caution. But they cannot justify legal action against TikTok.

https://reason.com/2024/04/22/chinas-retribution/

China's Retribution

Plus: Homework liberation in Poland, Orthodox rabbi tells students to flee Columbia, toddler anarchy, and more...

LIZ WOLFE | 4.22.2024 9:30 AM

Banning TikTok for real this time: On Saturday, the House passed bills that will send large sums of aid to Israel ($26 billion), Ukraine ($60 billion), and Taiwan ($8 billion), as well as a long-gestating measure to force the divestiture of the video app TikTok.

Now the legislation will need to be approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

The TikTok ban will probably be challenged. "This is an unprecedented deal worked out between the Republican Speaker and President Biden," declared Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy, in a memo to the company's American staff. "At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge."

China's internet regulator/censor, the Cyberspace Administration, has taken note of the movement on the TikTok bill, which would either ban the Chinese-owned company from operating in the U.S. or force sale of the app to an American owner within a tight timeframe. Forcing divestiture presents a few problems, namely that the proprietary algorithm and source code would likely fail to convey with the purchase, making the app…practically useless.

Not to be outdone by American lawmakers, China's government on Friday ordered that the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads be pulled from Apple's app store over "national security concerns" (of course). "A person briefed on the situation said the Chinese government had found content on WhatsApp and Threads about China's president, Xi Jinping, that was inflammatory and violated the country's cybersecurity laws," reports The New York Times. WhatsApp is used minimally compared to WeChat (owned by Chinese company Tencent). But for Apple—which anticipated this to some degree, and already started shifting its supply chain overseas after having been quite conciliatory to the Chinese Communist Party for many years—to be caught in the crosshairs is a harbinger of more to come.

This type of justification can always be found if one looks hard enough—and China's censors certainly do. But beware the coming internet wars, and the use of the American TikTok ban as justification for all manner of crackdowns.

Free and open internet? "A Russian opposition blogger, Aleksandr Gorbunov, posted on social media last month that Russia could use the move to shut down services like YouTube," argues The New York Times' David McCabe. "I don't think the obvious thing needs to be stated out loud, which is that when Russia blocks YouTube, they'll justify it with precisely this decision of the United States," said Gorbunov.

Xi's regime in China and Vladimir Putin's regime in Russia, of course, feel quite comfortable taking whatever cheap shots they can at U.S. lawmakers; if they want to crack down on internet freedoms, they can and will, no excuse necessary. But the TikTok bill is certainly escalatory, and it undermines America's longstanding rhetorical commitment to a free and open internet—or the internet as a "global free-trade zone," in the words of former President Bill Clinton.

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Scenes from New York: Today is my birthday! And on Saturday, I went out with friends (including a grand total of three babies, who were shockingly well-behaved) to eat crab in Chinatown. After that we went to an event in a basement on East Broadway where the books attempted to teach my toddler that rules are for breaking! Marginally better than Ibram X. Kendi's children's books, but not by much.

April 24, 2024

	By David Leonhardt

Good morning. We’re covering TikTok’s pro-China tilt — as well as Trump’s trial, abortion and Mark Zuckerberg’s style.

TikToking.  Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

A turnabout

The debate over TikTok has shifted very quickly. Just a few months ago, it seemed unlikely that the U.S. government would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell it. The platform is popular, and Congress rarely passes legislation aimed at a single company.

Yet a bipartisan TikTok bill — packaged with aid for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel and Palestinians — is now on its way to becoming law. Late last night, the Senate passed the measure, 79 to 18, three days after the House passed it, 360 to 58. President Biden said he would sign it today. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok within 12 months, it will be banned in the United States.

What explains the turnabout?

I have asked that question of policymakers and their aides in recent weeks and heard a similar answer from many. Parts of the debate over TikTok — about the overall benefits and drawbacks of social media, for instance — are complicated, and they would not justify the forced sale of a single company, the policymakers say. But at least one problem with TikTok falls into a different category.

It has become a leading source of information in this country. About one-third of Americans under 30 regularly get their news from it. TikTok is also owned by a company based in the leading global rival of the United States. And that rival, especially under President Xi Jinping, treats private companies as extensions of the state. “This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government,” Christopher Wray, the director of the F.B.I., has told Congress.

When you think about the issue in these terms, you realize there may be no other situation in the world that resembles China’s control of TikTok. American law has long restricted foreign ownership of television or radio stations, even by companies based in friendly countries. “Limits on foreign ownership have been a part of federal communications policy for more than a century,” the legal scholar Zephyr Teachout explained in The Atlantic.

The same is true in other countries. India doesn’t allow Pakistan to own a leading Indian publication, and vice versa. China, for its part, bars access not only to American publications but also to Facebook, Instagram and other apps.

TikTok as propaganda

Already, there is evidence that China uses TikTok as a propaganda tool.

Posts related to subjects that the Chinese government wants to suppress — like Hong Kong protests and Tibet — are strangely missing from the platform, according to a recent report by two research groups. The same is true about sensitive subjects for Russia and Iran, countries that are increasingly allied with China.

Consider this data from the report:

Source: Network Contagion Research Institute | Actual hashtags do not include spaces. Black Lives Matter hashtag is #BLM. | By The New York Times

The report also found a wealth of hashtags promoting independence for Kashmir, a region of India where the Chinese and Indian militaries have had recent skirmishes. A separate Wall Street Journal analysis, focused on the war in Gaza, found evidence that TikTok was promoting extreme content, especially against Israel. (China has generally sided with Hamas.)

Adding to this circumstantial evidence is a lawsuit from a former ByteDance executive who claimed that its Beijing offices included a special unit of Chinese Communist Party members who monitored “how the company advanced core Communist values.”

Many members of Congress and national security experts find these details unnerving. “You’re placing the control of information — like what information America’s youth gets — in the hands of America’s foremost adversary,” Mike Gallagher, a House Republican from Wisconsin, told Jane Coaston of Times Opinion. Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat, has called Chinese ownership of TikTok “an unprecedented threat to American security and to our democracy.”

In response, TikTok denies that China’s government influences its algorithm and has called the outside analyses of its content misleading. “Comparing hashtags is an inaccurate reflection of on-platform activity,” Alex Haurek, a TikTok spokesman, told me.

I find the company’s defense too vague to be persuasive. It doesn’t offer a logical explanation for the huge gaps by subject matter and boils down to: Trust us. Doing so would be easier if the company were more transparent. Instead, shortly after the publication of the report comparing TikTok and Instagram, TikTok altered the search tool that the analysts had used, making future research harder, as my colleague Sapna Maheshwari reported.

The move resembled a classic strategy of authoritarian governments: burying inconvenient information.

The coming fight

The fight over TikTok won’t end even when Biden signs the bill. Chinese officials have signaled that they will not allow ByteDance to sell TikTok, and ByteDance plans to fight the law in court. It will have some American allies, too.

On the political left, groups like the A.C.L.U. say that the TikTok bill violates the First Amendment. (You can read the A.C.L.U.’s argument here.) On the right, Jeff Yass, who’s both a TikTok investor and a major Republican campaign donor, is leading the fight against the bill. He is also a former board member at the Cato Institute, which has become a prominent TikTok defender. Yass may be the person who convinced Donald Trump to reverse his position and oppose the bill.

These opponents hope to use TikTok’s popularity among younger Americans to create a backlash in coming weeks. And they may have some success. But they are in a much weaker position than they were a few months ago.

As Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, told me, “The fears that TikTok gives China too much of a way into the U.S. seem to be overriding any political concerns.” There is a long history of members of Congress overcoming partisan divisions to address what they see as a national security threat. Even in today’s polarized atmosphere, it can still happen.

For more

Under the proposed law, ByteDance will have to sell TikTok within 270 days. It will probably have a hard time finding a buyer with enough money. Read more about the U.S. push to force a sale of TikTok.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - date - time

- Days ago = ## days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.