This Day in Comic Book History — September 22, 2026
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This Day in Comic Book History
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 — Today in Comics: September 22
Spotlight
TV Premiere · 2014
Fox's "Gotham" Premieres, Rewriting Batman's Rogues as Origin Stories
Official "Gotham" series logo · Wikimedia Commons (PD-textlogo)
On September 22, 2014, Fox launched Gotham, a comic-book-adjacent gamble unlike anything else on network TV that fall: a Batman show with no Batman. Developed by Bruno Heller, the series followed a young Detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) navigating a corrupt Gotham City Police Department in the years after the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, while a pre-teen Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz) began his own slow transformation in the wings.
What made the pilot a talking point in comics circles wasn't Gordon at all — it was the show's decision to seed nearly every major Batman villain as a civilian years before their supervillain turn: Oswald Cobblepot, Edward Nygma, Selina Kyle, and Ivy Pepper all appeared in the very first episode, years ahead of their comic-accurate transformations into the Penguin, the Riddler, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy. That premise let Gotham run for five seasons and 100 episodes, becoming, alongside Arrow and The Flash, one of the flagship shows of the mid-2010s wave of DC Comics adaptations on television, and eventually spawning its own 2023 spinoff, Gotham Knights.
More From This Date
In Memoriam: Marvel Artist Joshua Cassara
MarvelIn Memoriam
Original illustration — swap for licensed art
The comics community lost a rising star on September 22, 2026, when Joshua Cassara died from heart complications. Cassara built his reputation during Marvel's Krakoa era, penciling Benjamin Percy's X-Force and contributing to Gerry Duggan's X-Men, and later drew X Lives of Wolverine / X Deaths of Wolverine and Deadpool/Wolverine. Marvel named him a "Stormbreaker" in 2020, a designation reserved for the publisher's most promising emerging artists, and the company's tribute called his work full of "energy, detail and emotion." He is survived by his wife, Martha.
Franco-Belgian Scriptwriter François Corteggiani Dies at 69
Franco-Belgian1953–2022
François Corteggiani, 2013 · Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
French comics writer François Corteggiani died on September 22, 2022, the day after his 69th birthday. One of the most prolific scenarists in Franco-Belgian bande dessinée, he broke in at Spirou magazine in 1974, later scripted Pif le Chien for Pif Gadget, wrote Disney comics for Le Journal de Mickey, and — perhaps most notably to American readers — succeeded the legendary Jean-Michel Charlier as writer of La Jeunesse de Blueberry ("Young Blueberry"), the prequel series to the classic Franco-Belgian Western Blueberry.
First Issues, Debuts & Premieres
"Legion of Super-Heroes" Animated Series Returns for Season 2
DC2007
Legion of Super-Heroes logo · Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Exactly seven years before Gotham's rookie cops took over Fox, another corner of the DC Universe premiered new episodes on The CW's Kids' WB block: Legion of Super-Heroes began its second season on September 22, 2007. Adapted from the nearly-50-year-old DC comic of the same name, the series brought a thousand-years-in-the-future team of teenage superheroes — built on decades of Legion lore stretching back to the Silver Age — to a new generation of Saturday-morning viewers.
Panel of the Day
September 22 has a habit of opening doors to new corners of the DC Universe on television: in 2007 it introduced a teenage super-team a thousand years in the future, and in 2014, on the very same calendar date seven years later, it introduced a Gotham City that hadn't met its Batman yet. Same date, opposite ends of the DC timeline.
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