I'm at the DC Rebirth retailer road show

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.

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