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Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL player and current activist, is making waves in the comic book community, though not in the way comic creators and fans would hope.

Kaepernick, who was the subject of the Netflix film Colin in Black & White, is launching Lumi, a company that, according to his Twitter/X account, seeks to enable creators "to create, publish, and monetize your stories all in one platform." As reported by The Beat, Lumi PR promised to "focus energy on comic book and graphic-novel creators first." However, this news was undercut by a fact that drew ire from many corners of the comic book industry: Lumi would be using AI to create the stories and comics it promised its users.

Kaepernick has experience in comics - he gave the plot and input on a graphic novel memoir of his life, written by Eve L. Ewing and drawn by Orlando Caicedo. It seems based on that experience, he is looking to cut out writers like Ewing and artists like Calcedo from the process and utilize AI that mines the work of writers like Ewing and artists like Calcedo without their permission to create comics.

Under Kaepernick's previously mentioned post, a host of comic creatives shared their misgivings about the project. Gail Simone called the idea "so, so incredibly disappointing," Tom Taylor said the entrepeneur was "promoting the theft of art," and Dan Slott requested of Kaepernick: "Please don't do this."

AI comics take images drawn by creators, then melds them into a computer-generated image that neither credits the original artists or respects the copyright of the source images used. This has led to a widespread decrying of the practice from large swathes of comic artists, including Khary Randolph, who met with Kaepernick to garner input about the company months before its launch.

"I was one of a number of artists that had meetings with Colin a few months ago," Randolph posted to Facebook. He continued, "He mentioned that [Lumi] was about removing 'gatekeepers' and how he wanted to benefit people from underserved walks of life. I told him that while I was a fan of his, I couldn't support this because those 'gatekeepers' were people like me who had put our blood, sweat and tears into our craft. Hard work, a pencil, and paper is all you need to make comics. I let him that his product was going to hurt us longterm."

Randolph ends the post saying that "I know for a fact" he was not the only artist expressing these feelings to Kaepernick.

We'll be posting more on this story as it progresses.

Get ready for what's next with our guide to upcoming comics, how to buy comics at a comic shop, and our guide to Free Comic Book Day 2025.