Damon Lindelof's Watchmen

That's kind of what I mean, though? They do sell comics to adults (though IME the middle-aged stereotype is largely wrong). No $3.99 kids comics sell very well. If he had published his OGN as a series of individual comics they would have been just another one-paragraph filler solicit in Previews that most likely didn't make it past 3-4 issues.

The kids OGN market just really isn't the same category. They did publish a Kamandi miniseries after Rebirth that did pretty well, aimed at the same 13-65 age range as every other mainline DC/Marvel title.

I want them to do both but if you're fighting against people who want to eliminate it because they want to eliminate single issues completely, I kind of get his emphasis on them? It's better for DC (as the company everyone knows) - DC as it is now is heading toward an empty name under which to aggregate IP.

I want them to do both

yes, the point would be for them to want to sell single issues (and tpbs and massive omnibus hardcovers) to 58-year-old men (as those 45-year-olds now are), and also want to sell OGNs to kids, and all sorts of works in various formats to the same kids across the intervening 14 years to 2020, and for another 14 years into the future, maybe even long enough that there are some 45-year old men to buy the latest IP revamp in 2045

Right, but if, as he seems to indicate, Pope was pitching a kids' comic series not a one-off OGN, that's not necessarily proof of Didio being rabidly anti-all ages... that's reading correctly that the hottest kids single issue comic sells about 1/10th of Detective Comics. (Sidestepping the question of who buys all ages comics at all - the average age of the Lumberjanes reader AFAICT is about 30.)

I guess I just don't see the relevance of a small number of superstar kids graphic novels to the comics market, any more than the MCU box office tells us anything about expectations for a new Spike Lee movie.

if there weren't a pandemic on, young people who loved the Black Panther movie might have gone to the cinema to see Chadwick Boseman in the new Spike Lee movie

Kids want to read comics. At least, from my perspective in the library world, they love superheroes, they love teen and young adult stories, they love Marvel characters and manga. It's a massive failure from Marvel and DC not to capitalize on it.

Yeah, it’s bizarre. Nearly every boy in my sons preschool was dressed as Black Panther or Captain America for Halloween, but I can’t find age appropriate superhero comics

These early readers are what they offer for the preschool set:

https://d1w7fb2mkkr3kw.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/lrg/9780/3162/9780316271448.jpg

There are a bunch of Little Golden Books for Marvel (and maybe DC now)

DC does them, with this irritating art where the characters have super big feet, etc.

https://images3.penguinrandomhouse.com/cover/9780385384407

In terms of actual comics for kids (when they’re ready for them), Warner/DC does well on that front—with stuff like Scooby-Doo Team-Ups.

Marvel offers a Super Hero Adventures series which is good. A guy named Sholly Fisch seems to do a lot for writing for both (DC & Marvel)—his style is instantly recognizable, and he had a knack for dialogue.

*has

(Also, the light in-jokes are genuinely funny to the adult reader.)

Here’s an example of a few panels. It’s cute stuff: https://imgur.com/a/4YBBsRr

Since we were talking about Dog Man here (for some reason)—the new book has 3-6 big panels per page, and very little dialogue... it’s a 10-15 minute read for a second grader. C’mon, Pilkey!!

The kids cannot get enough of it... but man I wish they were actually good

I think they’re pretty good! They have some funny stuff—at least the early ones—mixed with some genuine poignancy.

completely fucking wild coincidence that there's a character called Rorschach in it, whose image appears on both the front cover that he approves of and the one that he doesn't. dude never even knew!

― Steppin' RZA (sic), Monday, July 27, 2020 3:35 PM (one month ago)

I called this comic Dr. Manhattan because everyone is talking about people getting sick in New York, duh

― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Tuesday, July 28, 2020 12:42 AM (one month ago)

turns out maybe Rorschach doesn't actually appear in King's Rorschach comic, also loooooololol forever

The interior art is pretty meh and they just made it returnable out of desperation.

This is going to be a big ol' bust.

also loooooololol forever

Since I've spent half my career ripping him off, it's not a shocker that I worship Alan Moore and Watchmen. I wrote Omega Men, which is like almost the direct one-to-one rip off of Watchmen — I mean, I used to joke that "Who Omegas the Omega Men" should have been our title for The Omega Men. I sort of come from the School of Alan Moore. I mean, he's my guy.

At least he’s honest about it

hah, true that

I like King's earlier work better than his recent stuff. But none of it's *anything* like Alan Moore.

To cycle back to the thread topic—a guy who works in “the biz” told me recently that at a preview screening of Zack Snyder’s 2009 Watchmen movie, Lindelof was sitting in the audience, weeping with joy after the opening “stage-setting” sequence.

I like King's earlier work better than his recent stuff. But none of it's *anything* like Alan Moore.

advertising your authenticity as a writer by claiming you did war crimes for the CIA is totally a School of Alan Moore move

tbf that was by far the best / most inventive part of the movie lol xp

yeah, i really like that intro actually

(ftr, I presented that anecdote without judgment... just thought it spoke to DL’s investment in the material.)

He was good at that. The pre titles sequence of his dawn if the dead was the only good part of the movie.

just thought it spoke to DL’s investment in the material.)

in that he could be insanely moved by separating "the material" from it being ideas and words and lines made on paper by specific authors? sure does :)



turns out maybe Rorschach doesn't actually appear in King's Rorschach comic

also turns out that King will lie to disparage the work & personality of the other character's creator too. another CIA psy-op!

As part of his research for the series, King did a deep dive on Ditko. “You can see Ditko slowly going, there’s no other way, but slowly going mad as he goes forward and forward. But he’s going mad in the most artistically beautiful... It’s like watching Van Gogh. You’re watching a madness poured out on a page where it gets more and more intricate. [...] He eventually trapped himself in his apartment for 30 years, basically left just to get groceries and ignored the outside world except to grumble now and then.”

this is some deep level concern trolling

if you mean King's quote, otm

i mean... everything i know about ditko suggests he was absolutely meshuganah, no?

accounts suggest he went to work at his office every day. his nephews and nieces have written of how genial he was, and how much they enjoyed his company. colleagues and admirers who corresponded with and visited him have reported him being mentally sharp, engaged and polite. (I'd choose to disregard the NYMag editor and book-deal-haver who serially harassed an 88-year-old man as a worthwhile source here.) Ditko's polemic period is marked by artistic refinement - partly as a deliberate communicative strategy, partly due to his facility decreasing with age - not by his drawings becoming "more and more intricate" like Van Gogh.

you know who else goes to work at their office every day, where their family writes about how genial he is and where colleagues and admirers in print an in person report him being mentally sharp, engaged and polite is doonlad turmp

citation needed

do you get Fox?

King's 'deep dive' into Ditko is really pretty shallow and as sic points out, this business about him trapping himself in his apartment for 30 years is anecdotally inaccurate - I know people who met Ditko up at the Marvel offices, even, where he was more than happy to chat (just not 'on the record'). Ditko's very late work is pretty eccentric by the standards of a DC Comics hack, but far from 'insane' when set against the real extremes of right-wing/libertarian thought (apparently Ditko actually enjoyed arguing politics with Gary Groth years after they'd had a falling out working on an anthology project together, and his political comics are largely free of conspiracy theories and paranoid persecution complexes - even with the last comics, you get the sense of a thinking mind, working through ideas on the page, although of course he was (like all of us!) convinced he was right about things). Easy to dismiss Ditko's iron-willed integrity and refusal to play the corporate comics game as a form of madness; easy to dismiss someone who didn't want to be interviewed and lived on his own as a loon or a fool.

it's also easy to dismiss that guy if you've read any of those later comics tbrr

Big Emmy night

This is actually pretty cute

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CFe0sabAyMm/

alan will be loving that

"The first time I read Watchmen I was very young, maybe 13 years old. ...obviously Rorschach was the most charismatic character and everyone's favourite. I grew up in the '80s between Rambo and Bronson movies every week, so for me Rorschach was another hero fighting against crime."

Tom King says that Steve Ditko would hate his Rorschach and probably hate everything about Tom King's life, working as a field agent in the CIA and now writing comic books.

"Instead of it being from an Ayn Rand background, I transitioned it just to sort of respond, and I made him obsessed with Hannah Arendt, who is a different philosopher, Ayn Rand's contemporary, another Jewish immigrant from Germany, but on the left, not on the right, who was obsessed with the concept of citizenship," King explained. "She had been in a concentration camp, and how we as a free society stop another Nazi rising was sort of her obsession of her whole life. Instead of constructing Rorschach from a Randian point of view, if we construct him from an Arendt point of view, how does that change our conception of superheroes, and our conception of vigilantism? If we go from the idea of 'it's obviously bad to kill people without trials' to 'Is it bad to kill Nazis without trials?' it makes a different moral universe and (asks) different moral questions, or at least the same questions but, you know, turning the ball on its side so you can see it from a different angle."

Ayn Rand was Russian btw

I'm really no expert, but it seems like every single detail of that is wrong

This was a huge flop AFAICT.

it seems like every single detail of that is wrong

Tom King does write comic books tbf

The comic Itself is a total snooze

I just watched this and man, a lot of early posts in this thread have aged incredibly poorly

instead of dr. manhattan obliterating Rorschach he just conks him on the head with an oar which causes him to pass out. he does this every time rorschach wakes up.

instead of the monster destroying new york it just rolls over the city like a giant penny and good people can avoid it by ducking into holes in its side

instead of one scene on mars the characters constantly shuttle between the two planets and when asked why they say do you have a better idea?

― Einstein, Kazanga, Sitar (abanana), Wednesday, June 21, 2017 11:24 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

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