I’ve got good news for you... and bad news. Literally. We’ve combed through the io9 archives to discover all the news stories in 2022 that either delighted us or really bummed us out—and compiled them so you can remember the good times and what you should still be angry about in 2023.
Ever since 2013’s Man of Steel, Warner Bros. had one plan: have DC’s superhero movies emulate the success of the burgeoning Marvel Cinematic Universe. Unfortunately, that’s where the plan stopped, and Warner Bros. released several films with dubious continuity or no continuity at all. That may finally change, since WB hired Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad director James Gunn, alongside producer Peter Safran, to take charge of DC Studios. There have been some casualties of the old regime’s movie—Wonder Woman 3 among them—but Gunn is a man who knows how superhero movies work, and he’s claimed he already has a 10-year plan for DC mapped out.
If you’re treated badly or taken advantage of by your job, form a union. Unions are great. And you might suspect that Image Comics, which was founded by artists who wanted to own their own creations out of the shadows of Marvel and DC, might be receptive to its employees who also wanted protection from corporate overlords. Instead, Image has refused to recognize Comic Book Workers United—that is, until they voted to certify themselves back in January, becoming the first union in the comics industry. Now the members of the CBWU can negotiate for better pay, more protection, and more.
Wizards of the Coast, owners of the venerable tabletop role-playing game, have been making a concerted effort to address the racism that was baked into the game when it was first made in the 1970s. Occasionally, that effort has stumbled, but the company took a major step forward this year when it announced the word “race” would be dropped from its upcoming OneD&D system entirely. Now, instead of calling elves, dwarves, and other humanoids a word that invites prejudice, they’ll all be called species, a term decided upon by “multiple outside cultural consultants.” Not only is this a progressive change, but it’s also nice to know Wizards is truly listening to its fans.
When Discovery bought Warner Bros. early this year, everyone knew changes were coming. But the only one that seemed notable was how the new company would merge their HBO Max and Discovery+ TV streaming services. What no one guessed is that new president and CEO David Zaslav would go through HBO Max with a knife, not only removing shows and movies from the service to save a few bucks but canceling the nearly finished Batgirl movie outright for tax credits. Now titles like Westworld, Infinity Train, and even certain episodes of Sesame Street are being removed as well. Some of these series might be offered to other ad-supported streaming services in order to squeeze more money out of them, but HBO Max is looking less attractive all the time.
Even after Black Adam brought Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel back into the DC movie-verse, no one expected Cavill to suddenly step down from his beloved role of Geralt of Rivia on Netflix’s The Witcher. But that’s exactly what he did on October 29, announcing that Liam Hemsworth would be taking his place. Of course, then we assumed he made the decision to step down because his upcoming duties as Superman would keep him too busy to make the series… only for James Gunn to announce he was writing a movie about a younger Superman and Cavill was out. You may or may not be bummed about the true end of Zack Snyder’s DC universe, but anyone who’s a fan of The Witcher knows the departure of the actor is a major loss.
The Walt Disney Company has never had an especially good track record when it comes to LGBTQ representation in its content (although it is slowly getting better). But the company’s many, many employees expected it to denounce Florida’s hateful “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would prevent teachers and students from talking about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Instead, Disney remained utterly quiet. Many Disney workers staged protests and angry walkouts at Disney’s silence until then-CEO Bob Chapek apologized to them, and Disney put out a statement condemning the bill… two and a half weeks after Chapek’s apology. It’s undoubtedly one of the reasons former Disney CEO Bob Iger was put back in charge.
Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s beloved sci-fi comedy series Futurama is so beloved it’s been resurrected several times, including this past year at Hulu. So you might think that such a popular series would earn its popular voice actors a reasonable salary. But not so. When Hulu announced the new season, all the show’s original actors were listed as returning with one notable exception: John DiMaggio, who plays the fan-favorite Bender. As we learned, DiMaggio wanted a pay raise—not out of belief he was special among the cast, but because he felt all of the cast’s talents were worth more than they were being offered. In the end, he didn’t get the raise but joined the show anyway, knowing his absence would ultimately hurt it. It stinks.
When Amazon bought the Comixology digital comic reading service way back and 2014, it was perfectly functional on its own. That came crashing to a halt back in February, when Amazon released an overhauled service which sucked. It was much less functional, harder to navigate, more difficult to access your comics library, and impossible to zoom in on, preventing people from fully appreciating the art. Amazon has promised multiple times over the year that updates are coming, but at the moment Comixology is still worse than it was in 2021.