Technolandy

Day 161 (of 2025/26) #tEChursdAI and digital comics

I did some promos for our school comic con presenters this year. My kids were aghast that I tried working with my AI collaborator on them to give them a comic book look.

They got mad. I took the extra time to render a mockup through Pages. Looked good, but…

I also know that there is a lot of drama in the comic book world on AI. Some conferences putting a disclaimer to exclude AI ‘art’ – as my son pointed out, the ethical issue is that AI borrows (copies) from others rather than generating original creations… for now at least😜

I thought that was nicely put, though do our opinions change when AI produces true original content rather than collaborations or copies…?

I also heard on one of my radio shows the awe when a staff member had ai generate a comic book for them. Art and story were quality productions (and NOT for distribution/selling). It’s interesting times…

Here’s what my AI collaborator thought when it comes to the realm of AI, graphic arts, and comic cons as a ‘rebuttal’…

And maybe that’s the strange crossroads comic cons now stand at.

Comic books have always been technology stories.

From ink presses to digital colouring. From hand-lettering to Photoshop. From mailing fan zines to webcomics read by millions on phones while waiting for coffee. Every generation of creators has faced the “is this real art?” question from the generation before it.

AI just happens to be the newest radioactive meteorite to crash into the genre.

The concern is valid. Artists deserve protection, attribution, consent, and compensation. Creative work is not just “content” to be vacuumed into a machine like Galactus at an all-you-can-eat buffet. The emotional response from artists makes sense because comics are deeply human. They are fingerprints in panel form.

But maybe the bigger question is not “Should AI exist in creative spaces?” because that train has already left the station wearing a jetpack and carrying twelve startup pitches.

Maybe the better question is:

What does ethical creativity look like now?

Because there’s nuance here too.

A student using AI to prototype ideas before learning to draw.

A teacher generating visuals for an inaccessible budget.

A writer storyboarding scenes they could never otherwise visualize.

A fan making a parody comic for friends.

An artist collaborating with AI intentionally, the same way musicians use synthesizers or photographers use digital editing.

Those are different conversations than replacing artists commercially.

Comic cons themselves celebrate remix culture. Superheroes are rewritten endlessly. Mythologies reboot. Fan art thrives. Every Batman artist inherits the shadows of the artists before them. Creativity has always been part originality, part conversation across generations.

So maybe AI becomes less “replacement machine” and more “creative exoskeleton.” Helpful. Dangerous. Powerful. Dependent on the human wearing it.

Very comic book, honestly.

Which means the future probably isn’t AI OR artists.

It’s going to be humans deciding what kind of collaborators we want these tools to become.

And whether we can still recognize the humanity between the panels.