I'm at the DC Rebirth retailer road show

Anyone want me to assassinate Dan Deodato?

Er, Didio. Whatever.

Yeah, why not?

Good idea: getting all but one book in the line back down to $2.99
Bad idea: two issues/month for the biggest titles
Good idea: emphasizing Superman rather than just Bat this and Bat that
Bad idea: everything still pretty much looks the same
Good idea: 'adult' Hanna Barbera character books
Bad idea: "pop up imprint" by the guy who fronted My Chemical Romance

You definitely have the last two switched.

The Johnny Quest and Scooby Apocalypse books look like goofy fun. God knows if the final product will be that.

I'd figure comics of some of the Adult Swim properties could be a unique angle for DC like Dethklok or the Venture Brothers. Those are on a Time Warner station, so I would figure easy to license.

Dark Horse (I think) already did some Metalocalypse comics. There's currently a Rick & Morty comic from another publisher. There's probably more I can't remember/don't know about. But apparently the comics publishing rights for AS shows are up for grabs.

I think Boom seems to have a lock on a lot of Cartoon Network properties

Yeah totally missed this one.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/17-767/Metalocalypse-Dethklok-1-Eric-Powell-cover

http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/sexual-harassment-allegations-against-dc-editor-eddie-berganza-become-public

Oh my GOD, DC is just the worst these days. And this is almost immediately after Shelly Bond was just announced as the editor on the Young Animal line, which sounded like one of the more interesting directions they've taken in a while. What the fuck are they thinking?

I imagine he'll quietly leave/quit/get his notice in the next few months; meanwhile those who tolerated his abuses will probably get away with it.

This has been publicly known and "managed" internally for years, why would WB change their policy now?

Because it's really big news.

What looks like Big news on comics blogs probably doesn't mean shit to WB

Remember how Scott Allie got fired last year and the one web journalist making apologies for his behaviour and disparaging Asselin didn't promptly get hired as a publicist at Dark Horse? Good times.

It'll be interesting to see what happens! Although I agree Nothing Happening At All seems a likely bet.

God knows boycotting DC would not make any difference to my pull list - haven't bought a DC comic since Multiversity, and Batman Inc before that.

The last new DC thing I bought since the very titles you mention was Wonder Woman: Earth One. I'm sensing a pattern here...

I've actually been buying Azzarello's Wonder Woman (in trades) - otherwise my answer would be the same, I think.

what did scott allie do

http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/dark-horse-editor-scott-allie-apologizes-amid-accusations-of-misconduct

(the hair is amazingly not the worst of it)

While Wiesch declined to provide comment in the article, he did tweet at 2 a.m. in the night in question, "Hey! Maybe you just shouldn't lick someone's face at comic con. Just saying."

SERIOUSLY DC GET A SINGLE THING RIGHT

http://comicsalliance.com/dc-new-logo-rebirth/

it's honestly worse than the peel back "D revealing C" which is hard to imagine
/posts out of context

It's not though, which may be it's one redeeming characteristic.

i dunno man, the arbitrary sharp corners and weird angles really make it hard on the eyes. at least the peelback logo looks considered.

Peelback logo looks dumb as shit, this is a kind of charming, kind of clunky throwback to the '70s logo, but anyone talking about this logo instead of a culture of protecting sexual abusers, or about a cultural contempt for readers, or executive insulting of women to their face at conventions, or the last few years' enhanced stripping of rights from authors, or any of the bullshit that LEADS them to rebrand for the third time in nine years, is falling for the branding

'instead' there is, as it nearly always is, a straw man.

the company is handling their PR in an attempt to deflect from the real issues with their approach, culture, and output*. The laughable ineffectualness of last week's sexual harassment press release, quietly sneaked out from a raised cheek on late Friday afternoon Burbank time**, contrasted with the pride with which they publicise this wgas.jpg logo design

*deflecting internally as much as publicity-wise, obv - it's plain that there is no ability or mechanism to reconsider their corporate culture and hasn't been since before Nelson, despite what any individuals working there might wish

** imagine the joy that the move from NY brought faceless publicists - as faceless as the designer of this logo, or the artists of any newly-announced swathe of titles - tasked with handling these elements of corporate messaging!

Yeah, I get it, but I'm not having the wool pulled over my eyes if I simultaneously have opinions on the logo and the shitstorm.

hostile workplaces and indecent treatment of writers/artists/editors is a reason to react through writing, informing others, and boycotting, among other actions

a dumb logo is an opportunity to react to a dumb logo and can be thrown on the prior trashheap, but you can still just complain about a dumb logo

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2016/05/20/warning-dc-universe-rebirth-1-spoilers-leak-on-reddit-and-you-wont-believe-dc-comics-has-gone-there/

Wow. Except, yeah, I totally believe DC Comics has gone there ('there' being a creatively bankrupt 'fuck you' in response to a writer's wishes with respect to characters he created for them).

*toilet flush*

jesus christ waht

hey at least wally west is back I guess

hilarious

Abhay with The Case Against Dan Didio

is there a case for didio rly?

Inertia.

What's scary is that this appears to be less of a turd in a punch bowl than Civl War II.

I'm starting to think, though, that the Big 2 are doomed to a constant cycle of disappointing their fans. I'm closing in on my third anniversary officially in the business and I've been around it for much longer - I have difficulty remembering a time when fans approved of major changes/events from either one. Which isn't a criticism of fans so much as wondering if there's even a way for the big 2 to do better or if it's going to take an outside publisher creating a new universe to do things well.

I wouldn't say I'm exactly excited about Civil War II but I fail to understand how that's a bigger misstep than DC's endless slow-motion fumble.

I am guessing whoever he reports to up the the chain is less competent, or completely uninvested in comics and more interested in licensing. Having a less competent person report to you is a good way to not be overshadowed?

Half of Marvel's big events are dumb, but the paths of individual characters through them tend to show some development or at least have plot beats that don't involve rape or trashing the character

I mean, unless Loeb was involved

how many times have they rebooted in the last decade? three? four? I genuinely have no idea what is up in the dcu now - there's two supermen and three jokers and somehow dr manhattan might have caused the reboot before this one? I dread to think what hawkman's status quo is now if they can't even keep their tentpole characters like superman accessible for a dyed-in-the-wool comics dork like me

is there a case for didio rly?

he repeatedly refers to Davis' hilariously / tragically vmic piece

I am guessing whoever he reports to up the the chain is less competent, or completely uninvested in comics and more interested in licensing.

that's exactly why Nelson was appointed; she had been in charge of Harry Potter licensing at WB, and then an executive VP in Global Brand Management

the only creative decision of hers that's ever been reported afaik was on arrival, looking at Sandman revenues vs all other DC revenues, asking why they weren't doing more Sandman, being told that the NYT best-selling author had tried hard to do a 20th anniversary series but had been told to fuck off by DC, and schmoozing said author by taking him to a Nolan Batman movie premiere

so dr. manhattan is the beyonder now? that's a terrible idea.

Every single bit iof sic's last post is depressing

"Hmm, what makes money. Sandman? Do more of that."
Didio: "um hmm errr yeah.."
"Oh, the author doesn't like you, I will take him to this premiere of our licensed blockbuster film based on anothe property. I am sure he loves money and will be swayed."

Do you think they'll eventually catch the hint that Vertigo trades -> tv and movies can't continue when there are no more titles coming? Might take another decade or so until they mine out all the adaptable ones, maybe accelerated if the Preacher tv show is a hit

Also, DC telling Gaiman to fuck off is some seriously backward shit, especially when they're trying to make properties that succeed outside of comics. Doesn't he have two feature films and an upcoming tv series based on his independent work? Sheesh.

"We're making comics for 45 year old men. Please get some more refrigerators for these popular female characters."

i'm having a really hard time imagining Preacher is gonna be a hit but i suppose i should watch an episode or two first

it's gotten some decent reviews

Do you think they'll eventually catch the hint that Vertigo trades -> tv and movies can't continue when there are no more titles coming?

This already happened: pre-Nelson, Warner Bros Entertainment changed the Vertigo contracts so that they controlled or retained all media rights, and effectively stopped paying royalties on collections. People with options due to high or non-existent status promptly stopped taking work to Vertigo. When was the last time you saw, if not a Gaiman, an Ennis or Ellis or Azzarello or a Morrison or even a BKVaughan or Jason Aaron create something there? (Joe the Barbarian came out in late 2009, but was drawn slowly over several years prior.)

"Oh, the author doesn't like you, I will take him to this premiere of our licensed blockbuster film based on anothe property. I am sure he loves money and will be swayed."

Well, it was money that he'd fucked off over - they refused to renegotiate the putative 20th Anniversary Sandman contract from the 1987 Sandman contract. NBy now earning 15% of cover on a novel that he'd write in a year, he didn't want to take a ...3.5? iirc % royalty on a new Sandman graphic novel that he'd write in a year. He proposed raising his Sandman overall deal to a whopping 6% to amortise the time/money lost in that one year across the next sixteen years of all series sales; they counter-offered "how about 6% on the serialisation, eat a dick on the collection and the rest of the TPBs and Absolutes and Annotateds?"

Also, DC telling Gaiman to fuck off is some seriously backward shit, especially when they're trying to make properties that succeed outside of comics. Doesn't he have two feature films and an upcoming tv series based on his independent work? Sheesh.

At the time he had (or was imminent) one English-language screenplay translation, two written-and-directed short films, one $150 million feature film from an original co-written screenplay based on an eighth-century poem, one commissioned original feature film, one successful feature film based on a novel, one $90 million feature based on an illustrated novel once published by Vertigo, and a lot of development hell and high-paying rewrite jobs.

Right now he has one feature based on a short story in post, one series based on four short stories set to air soon enough that the Jarvis Cocker soundtrack is out this week, one big American "prestige TV" series based on a novel in production, and more development hell, with Warners' own Sandman having its most publicised falling-apart-because-Warners ever. (Or possibly because-Goyer, as the writer of the Blade movies and TV show, the Nolan Batmans, the Neveldine/Taylor Ghost Rider, the TV Hellblazer and the Snyder Superman and Superman Vs Batman is still in charge.) (Also the David Hasselhoff Nick Fury, btw.)

It's not clear to me whether you're reading Goyer's works as a charge sheet - it seems pretty likely that it's the reason he's still in charge.

eye of the beholder

(and the theoretical beholder is JGL)

I was being sarcastic -- DC editorial obviously doesn't care that there's no new Vertigo work, and there's been zero pressure from above to more aggressively recruit writers/artists with better deals.

And yeah, showing Gaiman the Batman movie does nothing because he's being shown a fully DC-owned title and not offering him a reasonable deal, but somehow showing him a moneymaker with the promise of him getting jack shit for compensation, comparatively, makes me wonder what the hell they were thinking, unless they think he is a starry-eyed youth who would be happy to see his work on the big screen and doesn't understand contracts!

thank you for the numbers backing that up, sic!

I feel like David Goyer has been fairly creatively bankrupt for years and either the room of writers for projects he's staffed have snuck a few decent plots through. The Batman films were probably his most successful and they were worked into screenplays by the Nolan brothers. His sole comic movie directing credit is... Blade: Trinity. So that's what it looks like when he has full writer/director creative control.

DC editorial obviously doesn't care that there's no new Vertigo work, and there's been zero pressure from above to more aggressively recruit writers/artists with better deals.

The issue is that it was the pressure from above drove away the writers and artists - the deals changed to be terrible because Warners realised that Vertigo books were more readily optionable.

(Didio doesn't care that this killed Vertigo, obv, because he only believes in top-down corporate storytelling. But there have probably been dozens of others in editorial who've regretted the impact.)

There's nothing wrong with top-down corporate storytelling (a) when it's done well and (b) solely produced at the expense of any other type of content

It's like, I'd have no issue with Didio being a company man, if he wasn't so very very bad at it

("unless it's" before "solely")

feel like Didio's concept of "when it's done well" is diametrically opposed to my own

Didio not even enthusiastic or interesting enough to get his own Funky Flashman

there was that year-delayed re-written re-drawn final issue of the last Ambush Bug miniseries, but I can't remember anything about it apart from distaste and disappointment

I never noticed that Didio pushed himself into that Wednesday Comics thing. Probably because I skipped his segments and didn't bother to see who wrote them.

xpost I've always loved Ambush Bug but I pretty much hated that last Ambush Bug mini. Thanks, Didio.

weirdly a gis for 'thanks didio' brings up this image as the top result

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/55063696.jpg

and then a lot of beefcake pics of some muscular young man

Thanks, Dildo.

not gonna gis 'thanks dildo' that's for sure

FWIW I'm sure there are relatively few instances of anyone photoshopping Didio's face on the end of a sex toy.

http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/d3/d35190b9cafa4ced615e8085a225f4f6ca2079c0170fd824892cfee4e97dcf7f.jpg

insulting to actual dildos everywhere

An email from Evan Dorkin to his editor, in 2003.

Yes, as he notes, Didio is highly reminiscent of Jemas (lest we ever forget Big Bill).

Although Jemas originally fostered an environment where creative led and thrived, for a couple of years. And was fired within months after he began controllingly meddling in editorial, not repeatedly promoted for over a decade.

Ah yes, the Marvel days of Arad and Jemas, the action figure man and the baseball card man

Thank god for Quesada and Alonso, seriously. I'm kinda dreading the day those guys are gone and Disney installs some junior exec from ABC as the new EIC.

There was a *brief* period when DC were pretty good during Didio's tenure -- maybe starting with Seaguy/Catwoman/Gotham Central up to the end of Seven Soldiers.

And then you get Countdown, which Didio apparently called "52 done right" (!) and everything except not by Grant Morrison goes off the rails, and the GM goes off the rails too.

I'd contest the last point, but since he's not writing anything for them any more, it's a moot point.

I never finished his Batman run, but IMO Final Crisis and his Superman run and Joe the Barbarian and Multiversity were all good examples of him coming up with interesting ideas and premises, but not bothering with decent plotting and pacing, which made them kinda irritating to read. Though TBH this has always been a problem with Morrison (see "Rock of Ages" or "Here Comes Tomorrow" for some earlier examples), but it's become more pronounced in recent times. None of his post-SS comics have reached the heights of the works that preceded them.

Eh, I think that cramming more ideas in than wise is always a feature of Morrison's work - as a complete stan, it's one of the things I really appreciate about it.

There's a great (but not short) review of Action Comics here - I was looking for evidence of editorial interference but it doesn't mention much (except with the artists):

https://them0vieblog.com/2016/03/07/grant-morrisons-run-on-action-comics-reviewretrospecti

Joe the Barbarian is fairly straightforward thought I thought - hallucinations + heroes journey contrasted with an urgent physical problem in the real world.

I agree that cramming tons of ideas into a single work has always been more a positive than negative thing with his comics, but IMO lately he just can't be arsed to pace them properly... Final Crisis, Superman, JtB, and Multiversity all reveal crucial bits of information towards the end of the comic, almost as an afterthought, which seriously diminishes the excitement because it's not even clear what's at stake in the story... And these last-minute reveals feel more like Morrison pulling stuff out of his arse that he forgot to add to earlier issues rather than any sort of well-timed plot twists.

IMO, Seven Soldiers/52/Final Crisis/Batman is Morrison's magnum opus and works amazingly well read as a single work and features some of his most clear-headed plotting. Easily among my all-time favorite mainstream comics.

I read a lot of stuff from early in Didio's tenure. Blackest Night seems to me the line of demarcation when things started to sour quickly.

There was a *brief* period when DC were pretty good during Didio's tenure -- maybe starting with Seaguy/Catwoman/Gotham Central up to the end of Seven Soldiers

If you mean the Brubaker / Cooke / etc Catwoman, that predates Didio joining the company. Gotham Central began in his first year, two years before he rose to full power, and may have been commissioned before he joined at all. (Plus, Rucka has expressed specific bitterness about Didio's attitude toward it later.) Seaguy is the only one of those to be published after Didio became boss, was almost certainly commissioned earlier, and was under Berger anyway. (I think the other two were far better Morrison, personally - I've never gotten what Seaguy stans were clicking with.)

It just now occurred to me that Seaguy was almost certainly initially pitched as Seaman.

IMO, Seven Soldiers/52/Final Crisis/Batman is Morrison's magnum opus and works amazingly well read as a single work

As a Morristan - he was my favourite writing-only comics writer from the age of eight or so, though I didn't realise 'til my teens - I both concur with this and think he went off the rails almost immediately afterwards.

Happy was an embarrassingly awkward Mark Millar cover band. His first two issues of Action were dynamic and involving, then a wasteland of tedium with the alarming exception of #10, which felt like a burst of self-analytical id. Supergods was a hideous autohagiography, and the presentation of DC business history a whitewashing that Action 10 felt like a belching reaction to.

Multiversity was a pointless shambles, attempting to polish rims on a speeding car that's on fire, to avoid sitting inside it. (Pax Americana issue was great, though.)

Annihilator was cringingly undergraduate My First Creative Writing Exercise About Writers Block bullshit, not even rescued by Frazer Irving, so great with Morrison in 7S and ROBW, largely because he decided to include approx two panels of background per issue. I couldn't connect to these people or believe they existed because a) they were hack cliches but b) they weren't even existing convincingly in an environment or setting. Why keep having action scenes and chases when there's no sense of place?

And Nameless squandered one of Morrison's three best collaborators ever on a six-issue shaggy dog horror story, that again didn't even build scares or tension bcz I couldn't tell who anyone was or what they were supposed to be doing, let alone follow or care what was really, secretly going on. I'm not bothering with his violent Santa Claus miniseries that's going on now, and figure I'm probably off the bus altogether.

Oh yeah, the first issues of those aborted WildCATs and Authority runs were whatever-whatever too.

And the Robbie Williams booklet was embarrassing dickwaggle, presumably commissioned through his corporate motivational speaking company thingo.

I both concur with this

Except I only read the odd bit of 52 in the shop and later on bought one or two that turned out to tie into his Batman mega-run.

I'm a huge Morristan, too, but I'll admit that I've read next to nothing he's done since that block of genius. Although much of it is still somehow piling up around my place, waiting to be read (e.g. his inaugural issue of Heavy Metal, which I was initially very excited about but which looked fairly uninspired when I thumbed through).

52 started off kinda shaky and was occasionally bogged down by the weaker writers (and, one assumes, editorial interference) but it eventually came together quite nicely against all odds. And it seemed like those weaker writers were forced to step up their game a bit to keep up with Morrison.

They're reprinting it as (I think) two super-fat trades soon so this is a good time to check it out.

Supergods was a hideous autohagiography, and the presentation of DC business history a whitewashing that Action 10 felt like a belching reaction to.

OTM. Lost quite a lot of respect for the dude after reading the terribly partial and inaccurate Supergods - for someone so keen to stress, in that bk and elsewhere, his working class socialist credentials, he sure sounded like a good corporate shill, and his comments about Chris Ware from around the same time were similarly obnoxious and ill-informed.

Seven Soldiers is my favourite Morrison work of the 00s, and Final Crisis is not bad either, but IMO both of them suffer from the thing I mentioned above: by the final issue there are so much subplots left open that said issues are absolutely crammed with stuff, which leads into things getting resolved in a quick and unsatisfactory way (the Guardian's part of the SS finale is compressed into a mere news article, the morticoccus subplot in FC is resolved in one offhand panel, etc), or they're not resolved at all (what exactly happens to Klarion? why and how did Barry Allen come back in FC? etc, etc?).

52 is fun to read, but the four-writer thing means that a lot of the plot elements and hints it introduces ultimately lead to nothing. Douglas' old blog posts go into detail about that, and I fully agree with his points.

I do agree thought that all of Morrison's work that came after FC is worse than what preceded it. Despite their flaws SS, 52, and FC are all good comics, and FC in particular is a flawed masterpiece... Without the awful pacing in the final issue, it'd be the best comic he ever wrote.

Sorry, a typo there, I meant to say that that *Seven Soldiers* is the flawed masterpiece, not Final Crisis.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and read his Bat-epic. It's amazing and an amazing feat of deep long-term plotting.

And a lot of the dangling plot stuff is because these are still mainstream DC projects rather than discrete and finite works unto themselves. The Klarion bit I can 'klarify', at least: I believe his final appearance in 7S was meant to lead directly into his first appearance in Kirby's Demon series. Can't remember how that works chronologically, exactly, but I believe that was the intention.

IMO, Seven Soldiers/52/Final Crisis/Batman is Morrison's magnum opus and works amazingly well read as a single work

I have no problem with that, though I still have a lot of love for The Invisibles (and like many here I skipped on 52 quite early).

I'd forgotten Happy, I had somehow never even heard of Annihilator (probably - the cover looks familiar), I was properly unnerved from the first issue of Nameless that I read, and I can confirm that Klaus is entertaining but uninspired.

Ah well, he's Grant Morrison, he was never one for stopping where he should.

Anyway, this is 19 issues over 4 years, none of them for DC.

Gotham Central began in his first year, two years before he rose to full power, and may have been commissioned before he joined at all.

In fairness to Didio, this does mean there was a period while he was at full power and GC was still great, which is all Chuck was saying. Now obviously ordinarily "Don't stick your dick in the well-regarded series" isn't something you'd get credit for as a EiC, but we're grading on a curve here.

Don't forget 18 Days, which continues to be bait-and-switch solicited as a Morrison title and which I continue to buy for some reason (he does at least occasionally co-write an issue).

I have great, great affection for The Invisibles and I will always hold it in high esteem as a cultural artifact and on the basis of how much of an impact it had me, but it's kind of a mess story-wise, especially compared to that later stretch of DC greatness.

xpost

But on his first Kirby appearance he's alone on Earth, while SS ends with him becoming (possibly?) the new king of Sheeda... So there's really no continuity from one to the other.

The same thing also happens with Frankenstein: in SS he's trapped in the Sheeda future, and IIRC Klarion is controlling him. But in FC he's back on 21s century Earth and working for some government agency, with no explanation.

(xxpost)

That was an answer to Old Lunch's comment on Klarion.

Also, I do get that Barry Allen's comeback in FC was used as a prelude to him getting a new ongoing series, but it really wouldn't have hurt if Morrison had at least inluced *some* explanation why he's back, now it just comes off as deus ex machina.

imo Morrison's Batman run kind of fell off in the coda w/the Leviathan plot, but by that point he was trying to work around or ignore the fact he wasn't working in anything connected to actual continuity anymore

Without the awful pacing in the final issue, it'd be the best comic he ever wrote.

I love that final issue of Final Crisis, I think it's the highlight of the series!

Agree that Action Comics/Annihilator/Nameless/Klaus/Multiversity/Happy were all not much cop, albeit with occasional standout issues like Sic mentioned.

Seven Soldiers/52/Final Crisis/Batman is Morrison's magnum opus

Totally, and I'd include JLA and JLA Classified in there too.

(And the second, nu-52 season of Batman Inc is a lot less inspired than what came before it, Batcows excepted.)

All-Star Superman is also technically tied in with that magnum opus (with the various permutations of Nebula Man being the thread tying that to 7S and JLA Classified).

I realize I still haven't read the new 52 Batman Inc yet. It appears that I may have dropped the Morrison ball at just the right time, eh?

It's pretty good! But it's a small, downbeat ending - it works better as a conclusion to the Batman story than as an ending to the magnum opus (which should probably end at Batman and Robin).

Oh yeah, the first issues of those aborted WildCATs and Authority runs were whatever-whatever too.

Was there ever an explanation as to what happened with these never getting to issue 2?

Same thing that happened to the 1963 Annual.

(The Authority did make it to #2, five months later, and then had #3-12 by a different creative team a few years after that.)

Don't even talk to be about that damn 1963 annual!

what is that exactly? morrison couldn't be arsed? artist problems?

#1 was so spectacular he decided to stop there

Jim Lee

Aside from the fact that it's a nonsensical, IP-stealing, passive-agressive, creatively bankrupt comic made by misogynist garbage people, I thought DC Rebirth was okay.

Well that's a pullquote.

Aside from the [...] aggressive [...] comic [...] people, [...] Rebirth was okay.

- Chuck Tatum

The reviews are in:

DC Rebirth [...]a[...]

Just reread Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, and, in its own way, it's just as violent and depressing dead end as The Killing Joke..

Yes, Moore has much to answer for wrt modern day DC's embrace of the grim and the grit. It's just that they tend to forget the attendant wit.

Torrented Rebirth, it was rubbish

Xpost

Yeah, Moore's worst stories feel like a prototype for Didio's DC - nostalgia mixed with ultraviolence - rather than the progressive grim and grit of the 80s-90s, which at least pushed some new narrative ideas, if too often humourlessly. In "whatever happened..." bizarro commits genocide, lana lang burns to death, superman cries alone in a room - it's quite a nasty, cynical comic, not the elegiac tone I remember.

I tried to read Rebirth. How can anyone get through this many badly written captions? Geoff Johns has absolutely no sense of language, of rhythm.

This was such a hit I didn't even get to read it to find out if it was complete shit (as I assume) before selling out.

seriously?!

Yep. Every retailer I know has blown through these. IDGI, but whatevs.

Moore has much to answer for wrt modern day DC's embrace of the grim and the grit.

Yes, it's definitely his responsibility.

yr literalism is striking as always

although he has answered, raised incantations, and summonses protective beards many a time against such accusations

https://www.instagram.com/p/BF6Mx7lm_F4/?hl=en

Tom E on Rebirth: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/145207290801/danare-we-the-baddies

The ad for Wonder Woman Rebirth at the back has copy along the lines of “EVERYTHING she KNOWS and TRUSTS will be TAKEN FROM HER”. Marketing quiz! Do you think this copy is written to appeal more to a) a woman who wants to jump on board the adventures of DC’s most iconic female superhero or b) a guy who likes the idea of women being taken down a peg?

headline is a reference to this sketch btw America

Tt, we may be generally pig-ignorant over here but we aren't complete savages.

Mitchell and Webb are taught in most American public schools these days.

I definitely appreciated "The Case Against Dan Didio". I don't follow the comics scene anymore because it's too toxic and depressing, so it's nice to have a digest-form version that explains _why_ I stay as far away from anything having to do with DC Comics as possible.

I know the business side isn't something ILC particularly gives a damn about but sales on the other Rebirth titles are absolutely insane today. IDGI, I just can't get excited about what I've read from either this or Civil War II.

do you think people buy that stuff thinking it's an investment because "it'll be worth money someday" or is it a legit proof of a sucker born every minute? or both?

I really like getting that kind of updates. I don't understand it either. Perhaps people just think it will be a good jumping on point?

if i was DC i would just number every issue of every comic i put out "1".

I don't think DC has a lot of readers, outside of select titles. Buyers, yeah, but it's people who buy every fucking Batman/Superman comic and two copies if it's #1 on the cover

Or more depressingly, they read them and actually want this shit

I don't hear about many speculators these days. I have one guy who buys one of every Image #1 because a few of their titles like The Walking Dead and Saga have gone way up, but no one that I know of with Marvel or DC, people have figured out that they print tens/hundreds of thousands of copies and a significant chunk of those are bagged and boarded even by people who just read and collect so scarcity is unlikely.

Only being able to sell Batman has been DC's biggest issue, the weird thing here is that all the other characters are selling at the same pace or even a little better than today's Batman. Let's say I normally order 20 Green Arrow, I ordered 50+10 of the monthly variant (because they were returnable) and they're all gone now. I would guess people actually believe that DC is going to push the rest of the universe this time instead of just Batman. Whether that sticks, God only knows.

if i was DC i would just number every issue of every comic i put out "1".

This is Marvel's strategy - everything is a miniseries. Darth Vader is one of their top-10 titles and is getting wrapped at 25, presumably to see an All New Darth Vader three months later.

I get it but I don't like it.

i'm fine with that, at least it kinda guarantees a closed story arc / hopefully continuous creative team for that run

btw milo I am super interested in your business takes. i know very little about that side

Yeah, my comics speculation begins and ends with speculating about why people buy the stuff they buy. It's fascinating to get the inside scoop.

The Darth Vader writer has been pretty clear that he'll have told the story he wanted to tell, it could of course be a line.

It fits in with Gillen's style for short-medium-ish self contained runs.

Comics were always a huckster business to some degree. I guess hucksters are in their reboot phase.

I get wrapping up a creator's run before things get stagnant, but I don't like the series jump - even if you take a few months off, just have a new team for Darth #26 unless you really intend to retire the book (which I find highly doubtful). That's how we get stupid titles like All New All Different Avengers.

I am very possibly being naive, but I think they might retire it. It started up with three questions unclear - what were the repercussions of being the senior survivor of the largest military disaster in history, when did he find out he was Luke's father, how did he know those bounty hunters in Empire - and by the end of Gillen's run they'll have answered those and left him roughly where he is at the start of Empire.

Which is not to say that I wouldn't read 25 no-effect issues of Ellis's Darth Vader Escapades, but I can see restarting the series.

The Darth Vader book is almost certainly immune to this phenomenon, but it seems more often that titles are being stealth cancelled to give the illusion that they were meant to be limited series all along. The frequent lack of a satisfying resolution (as if the creative team were scrambling to tie up all of their threads) and the weird lengths of some of these runs (several Marvel series have ended at issue 11, for example) seem to back this up. I guess I'd be more okay with everything being a miniseries if the approach seemed more intentional in its execution.

To clarify, I don't think the people buying up books are "collectors" in the aftermarket sense, but in the way that they will buy at least one Batman comic regardless of writer and artist and might not even know who the writer is.

I have heard some anecdotal evidence to support that. It seems like an eight-year-old's approach to buying comics but whattayagonnado (says the dude who buys pretty much every Earth-616 comic just because it says 'Marvel' on the cover).

i understand that completionist approach but can't imagine doing it with paper.

as of late i found the online "complete marvel" / "complete dc" torrents (about two terabytes total) and am slowly absorbing full years

Speaking of ill-gotten DC torrents, I just spotted this precocious letter writer at the back of a Neal Adams Batman issue:

http://i.imgur.com/28M5BzQ.jpg

dave sim, champion of grim and gritty

I came across a few George R.R. Martin letters in silver age Marvel titles.

is there a tumblr or something for scans of before-they-were-famous letters that appeared in comics and magazines?

(or just scans of letters pages from old comics in general, I love that stuff.)

these scans of letters that appeared in 50s and 60s Superman comics and Mort Weisinger's responses are quite something

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/category/dont-send-me-no-more-letters-no/

The crazy thing is that the Darth Vader boo being stopped it is selling well. Vader and Star Wars are like #2 and #3 of all the books at my small local shop on the pull list with Walking Dead being #1.

To me, I think if Marvel really wanted to get it together they should do what they did on those Star Wars titles, which are in someways the most old school Marvel books they have done in a while. They have an inner continuity, they are written for a wide audience and are both stylistically and content wise true to the original creations with room for the creators to tell a story.

What could be fun if they do Empire Strikes Back as like a 25 issue (4 trade series) both adapting the movie and filling in back story with Jabba, Boba Fett and other players in the background like the search for Hoth etc.

like the radio play adaptions

the star wars radio play, which i listened to obsessively as a child before we had a vhs machine, was 13 30-min episiodes, so there was a LOOOOT of extra material

I came across a few George R.R. Martin letters in silver age Marvel titles.

― What's Your Definition of a Dirty Baby? (Old Lunch)

true fact: he was the first paying attendee at a comics convention

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/images/4/4b/George_R_R_Martin.jpg
You'd never guess from his physical appearance

To me, I think if Marvel really wanted to get it together they should do what they did on those Star Wars titles, which are in someways the most old school Marvel books they have done in a while. They have an inner continuity, they are written for a wide audience and are both stylistically and content wise true to the original creations with room for the creators to tell a story.

I think they had the same rules with the previous (pre-Episode VII) canon? All comics, games, novels, etc. had to be approved by Lucasfilm's continuity guards, and they were all considered canon... And then what happened was that, once The Force Awakens was in the works, obviously a lot of the old canon would have to be abandoned (since it depicted post-Episode VI events in ways that would contradict with Episode VII), so they decided that all of the old canon except for the movies + the Clone Wars TV series was now set in an alternate universe. I think the old canon is now called "Star Wars Legends" or something.

AFAIK Star Wars has been pretty unique in this regard that they've tried to include all stories in different media into the canon, so that the timeline of their universe includes all that material, and different stories shouldn't contradict each other. With Star Trek, for example, only the TV series and the movies are considered to be official canon, everything else is non-canonical.

IIRC there were levels of canon, so the book level was canon unless it was contradicted by the films, the comics were canon unless it was contradicted by the books or the film, and so on.

I like earlnash's point about the Star Wars books being "old school Marvel" - i.e. mild continuity, one author just getting on with it for several years, each new story really *is* a potential starting point for new readers, etc

i.e. the days before continuity was a beartrap and american otaku and children were the key demographics