DC Implosion II: DC Comics in 2020 and Beyond

I only sold four of these apples but I managed to give away four hundred of these free oranges, I guess we know which is the runaway success.

i will let spotify know that their free orange delivery system stands no chance against sam goody's apple dispensary

OANN calling for mass executions, brought to you by @ATT pic.twitter.com/1EIzWHITnm

— jordan (@JordanUhl) October 8, 2021

Truth Justice and a Better Tomorrow

Sentiment - good
Actual phrasing - sounds like a microloan startup slogan

wonder how this will work out for DC
https://variety.com/2022/biz/news/att-spin-off-warnermedia-43-billion-deal-1235168480/

weird to me that DC hasn't hopped into the NFT field. Seems like you could sell each individual comic that way and create your own lame ass stock market.

they did NFTs "hand-selected by Jim Lee" four months ago

Ah, of course they cid.

so.. what does this mean

I think it’s just a stock thing

More on the business stuff: https://variety.com/2022/film/news/dc-warner-bros-discovery-zaslav-hbo-max-1235232185/

top leadership have been toying with the idea of turning DC into its own solidified content vertical

A turd by any other name

Honestly though - how can that get even more vertical? WB already owns the IP and produces all the material which goes to its subsidiary video channels after theatrical.

They mean having one person or team in charge of it all (films, tv, etc.), rather than folks from across different divisions of WB.

(lol Ward)

DC Universe app just went live in the UK and has a free 7-day trial. Lots of amazing stuff there (Sandman, Invisibles and, er, The Heckler, were the only things I missed) and the app seems slightly-more-functional than MU. No categorising by author or artist, though, which is annoying.

I'm off to bury myself in crap comics from 1990

Giffen nine-panels look great on iPhone panel-to-panel!

I took the plunge with a trial, just to get an idea of what you have access to with this service. I had a suspicion it would be full of nasty digital recolours and it lived up to my expectations on that score, but lack of consistency across the board is really disappointing.

Uploads just seem to be pulled from whatever random version of each issue is immediately at hand, with no-one bothering to check if a better source might be available. This is really evident in a quick scan through of Detective Comics - the earliest issues just have the Batman pages and have not been correctly rescaled for tablet viewing, so they look ugly as hell in portrait mode (this was also an issue with a Perez Wonder Woman issue I looked at). I'm pretty sure these pages have just been yanked from an existing compilation of Bat-material, hence lacking the additional stories, but what's doubly strange is they credit writers and artists whose work doesn't appear as those pages aren't even included!

The further down you go, you find some random issues do appear to've been sourced from original scans(and these *do* include the extra material), which immediately are an improvement on the digital versions, but these will be right alongside some truly grotesque mid-2000s recolour jobs (what they did to some of the Neal Adams issues really is a sin) - it's bafflingly inconsistent. There are also quite large numbers of issues missing, so anyone hoping to do a complete readthrough this way is going to be disappointed.

I will say there are *some* good things about it, the feature that allows you to view specific series like all the "Crisis" stories is a good start, but this is still far from being the best way to read these old comics unfortunately.

I'm enjoying it for the basics, i.e. reading comics from the golden era between COIE and Death of Superman, and the brief few years between Gotham Central and Final Crisis when DC seemed relatively interesting again. But, yeah, the app (although marginally less buggy than Marvel Unlimited) isn't great.

The curation of storylines (e.g. being able to read crossovers in one go) seems more carefully curated than in the Marvel app, but -- as with Marvel -- once you finish reading an issue, it sends you to the subsequent issue of that comic rather than the next part of the crossover, which is an annoying basic to fuck up.

I'm less concerned about reproductions, but, yes, the recolouring remains awful and the digitization seems to give everything a slightly more "ligne claire" inked look than I remember in the original comics. Still -- the access to the great 85-92 years is pretty thorough.

I've never been that interested in pre-Crisis DC -- with the exception of Batman, it always seems pretty square and dry. I find the Curt Swan house style deeply drab. What am I missing?

Like - does DC have analogues to the Gerber/Starlin weirdo Marvel comics of the 70s, or the Miller/Sienkewicz innovations of the early 80s -- or does all that stuff happen later in the 1980s? I know the Titans are a pretty lame substitute for the XMen.

Well there's the Kirby stuff but I'm guessing you've read that already?

would Shade The Changing Man qualify? i only know the vertigo reboot but the original is Ditko

I have some of the Kirby stuff in print collections. TBH I find them completely unreadable but they're terrific art books.

Unfortunately the Milligan & Ditko Shades are both missing

Kamandi and Demon are pretty readable imo.

Also, I find myself unmoved by LOSH or the Silver Age "Batman turns into a frog and fights aliens" type stories so beloved by GM, but I could try harder I guess

I went in hard on those Showcase volumes when they first started coming out and in retrospect a lot of it is unbearably tedious. The Captain Marvel stuff felt like actually well done kid's humor comics, and the Superman volume was best for the WTF moments, but important to just read an issue or two at a time or you just become numb to the insanity.

def not the same flavour as Starlin or Gerber tho!

Demon's not on there. Kamandi is a good shout

Not really a DC stan - and if you find the Fourth World 'unreadable' we're probs not on the same page anyway - but I would say all of the following are worth a download:

Wonder Woman by Denny O'Neil, Mike Sekowsky and Dick Giordano - WW becomes Emma Peel.
Swamp Thing by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson - foundational DC gothic - lots of great art in the horror anthology titles like Witching Hour, House of Secrets, House of Mystery too.
Stalker by Paul Levitz, Steve Ditko and Wally Wood - nice self-contained little fantasy four-parter with a great art combo. Ditko's 60s series The Creeper and Hawk and Dove are essential too. Don't know if Charlton's The Question will be available but it's the apex of Ditko's masked hero work.
The Shadow by O'Neil and Michael Kaluta. I like the Frank Robbins issue very much too, but he is the definition of an acquired taste.
Green Lantern/Green Arrow by O'Neil and Neal Adams. The 'relevance' stories have dated of course, and seem clumsy and corny now, but Adams really elevated the material with his intensity and attention to detail. Deadman, the O'Neil and Adams Batman issues and Superman v Ali also worth a read.
The Brave and the Bold and Batman comics drawn by Jim Aparo in the late 60s/early 70s are clearly influenced by Adams's work and have some of the same energy and excitement, a definite break from the Swan house style. Aparo also drew a very consistent run of Aquaman comics in the late 60s, written by Steve Skeates, and in the early 70s an amazing run of mind bogglingly violent Spectre comics written by Michael Fleisher. Talking of whom ...
Jonah Hex by Michael Fleischer. Very consistent western series with great art from Tony DeZuniga and others. The special issue where Jonah dies and is stuffed and mounted as a museum exhibit is one of the all-time great DC strips, beautifully drawn by Russ Heath (who together with Joe Kubert did great work on the DC war comics, often on some fairly tasty Robert Kanigher scripts (his 'White Devil, Yellow Devil', masterfully drawn by Alex Toth, is another all-timer.)
Plop!
Captain Action by Jim Shooter and Gil Kane, inked by Wally Wood. Again, a beautiful art combo and not bad stories for one of the earliest toy cash-ins. Just about to be reprinted in book form.
The Angel and Ape by E Nelson Bridwell and Bob Oksner. There are a number of these uncategorisablegroovy 60s titles that are quite unlike anything Marvel was producing at the time - Brother Power the Geek, Anthro by Howie Post (caveman), Secret Six, Metamorpho (drawn by Ramona Fradon), etc.
USS Stevens by Sam Glanzman. Autobiographical war strip that appeared as a back up in Sgt Rock etc throughout the 70s. Again, totally unlike anything else being published in mainstream comics at the time.
Manhunter by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson. Terrific self-contained story that appeared as a back up strip in the 70s issues of Detective Comics that Goodwin edited, all of them worth checking out. There's Alex Toth's only Batman story, written by Goodwin, and an excellent silent Batman strip by Steve Englehart and Sal Amendola.

Awesome thanks. I bet 90% of those aren't on the app but I'll definitely check out a bunch in... some way or other. "Jonah dies and is stuffed and mounted" sounds like a must-read

The Manhunter series by Simonson and Goodwin is a high water mark for DC.

weird to me that DC hasn't hopped into the NFT field. Seems like you could sell each individual comic that way and create your own lame ass stock market.

― i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 2 February 2022 05:24 (three months ago)

they did NFTs "hand-selected by Jim Lee" four months ago

― bad luck banging, or Lorna Doone (sic), Wednesday, 2 February 2022 09:19 (three months ago)

It’s about time we get some Batman NFTs already! DC Comics and Palm NFT Studio will drop a collection of 200,000 Bat Cowls at $300 each. There is no limit as to how many a user can purchase, but there is a $3,000 daily limit on the platform. The collection will be available on 26 April 2022, with more than 2 billion possible trait combinations. Similar to bats, this will be a blind drop, where purchases will only be revealed in May.

Bat Cowl holders will receive access to exclusive products and collectibles, such as the Bat Cowl apparel collection. They will also get exclusive access and benefits at IRL DC fan events. Furthermore, holders will get the first bite of future DC NFT collections.

In addition, the company revealed a two-year roadmap, releasing new utility every 52 days. Basically, Batman will upgrade the Bat Cowl, rewarding holders with greater access within the DC Universe. By the way, these Bat Cowls are already AR ready, in case you want to flex them on your socials. Last but not least, DC plans to use these Bat Cowls in future DC Comics stories.

If you claimed the free DC Fandome NFTs from 2021, there is some utility after all. Owners will get early access to this Bat Cowl collection. In addition, owners will soon be able to move their assets to non-custodial wallets such as MetaMask.

https://nft.dcuniverse.com/

I like the Frank Robbins issue very much too, but he is the definition of an acquired taste.

LOL, I couldn't remember him by name but based on your description I immediately wondered if he was the dude who drew the '70s Invaders series, and wouldn't you know it.

He had a good style for Sunday strips, not for comic books.

Spent the last month binging all four seasons of Young Justice on HBO Max. Wow - it's really good! Definitely one of the best iterations of the Titans in any medium. They actually took the ambition developed from Justice League Unlimited and ran with it, going much crazier with the sheer amount of characters and years of thoughtful plotting. Hopefully HBO isn't stupid and gives them another season or two to wrap up all the dangling threads.

Last week DC bosses scrapped a $19 million Batgirl movie for a tax write-down.

In May they paid $2 million for the DC.com url.

Closer to $90 million!

Source on the cost of the domain name acquisition?

19 90

ha xp

morrisp: Rich J

dunno who that is

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/when-dc-com-used-to-be-the-url-for-the-crappy-american-car-page/

Thx. "It is estimated," ok

"No you don't understand, this is as coherent as we can make it"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Crisis

“The heroes disapprove of this”

Did not know they officially changed the title to "Dark Crisis ON INFINITE EARTHS"

The original was a lighthearted romp, needed a gritty reboot.

This Wikipedia summary reads like it’s written by one of those AIs that you feed a few lines for inspiration.

Well it doesn't help that the contributor doesn't understand basic sentence structure. But maybe that's just what the attempt to summarize modern-day DC does to the language center of one's brain.