Zoop e Zuppa

While I’m dealing with stuff that’s backing up posts in the pipeline, I figured I’d put
the soup can on display as I plug the Zoop campaign for Mark Waid & Barry Kitson’s Empire.

The effort has been funded, so you should be assured of receiving it if you pledge. Choose from a digital copy; the hardcover itself, collecting Empire’s original eight-issue story as begun under the Gorilla imprint and finished at DC, with lots of bonus material; and a slipcased edition.

Shortly after establishing himself as one of my favorite editors and writers, Mark became a friend who among more kindnesses over the years than I’m able to express provided the foreword to my first book. His work includes a legendary Flash run, fan-favorite stints on Captain America decades apart, Kingdom Come with Alex Ross, Archie, Ruse, Irredeemable, and collaborations with Kitson on a Flash & Green Lantern miniseries and Legion of Super-Heroes. He’s long mentioned the celebrated if relatively lesser-known Empire, about what happens once a supervillain conquers the world, being one of his own favorite projects.


Art from campaign promotional materials, apologetically
bastardized for the blog, © 2026 Barry Kitson.

Related: AC Does It • The Uncredeemibles • Let It Grow

Let It Grow

I was digging into my copy of Comics for Ukraine — and so already keenly aware
of the compartmentalization we practice daily to appreciate art in the midst of tragedy or, more generally, simply live our lives even as they or the lives of others are under imminent threat — when reports came in from Israel of the horrifying assaults there
on Saturday.



The book, just recently arrived, was crowdfunded in June of last year through Zoop
to benefit the work done by Operation USA. Its subtitle is Sunflower Seeds after the curse directed at Russian soldiers by a bold Ukranian woman who told them to put seeds in their pockets so that when they die sunflowers will grow in their place on the land they attempted to occupy.