While I'm at con and holding myself back in asking Ethan Van Sciver point blank what absolute insane tea party rhetoric will be thrown into Firestorm with him writing it, I'll hold myself back from doing so because there's other fish to fry.. Bigger fish. Ones that just make you shake your head.
Like for example the people in charge of all this and why they're not calling it a reboot..
* Why not call it a reboot?
It's not a reboot. A reboot is typically a restart of the story or character that jettisons away everything that happened previously.
This is a new beginning which builds off the best of the past. For the stories launching as new #1s in September, we have carefully hand-selected the most powerful and pertinent moments in these characters' lives and stories to remain in the mythology and lore. And then we've asked the best creators in the industry to modernize, update and enhance the books with new and exciting tales. The result is that we retained the good stuff, and then make it better.
* Does The New 52 undo events or continuity that I've been reading?
Some yes, some no. But many of the great stories remain. For example - Batgirl. The Killing Joke still happened and she was Oracle. Now she will go through physical rehabilitation and become a more seasoned and nuanced character because she had these incredible and diverse experiences.
War of Worlds didn't happen, but World War 3 did. Yea Barbara got shot and became Oracle, Cassandra Cain actually never existed, but Stephanie was Robin for a time, Oh and Kon El doesn't have any love for the human race, but he lived in Kansas all those years with the Kents.
Even more frustrating is you can't believe any of the crap they spew out about long term effects. Hey DC, wasn't the All Star line supposed to be DC's "Ultimate Universe"? Oh boy, I guess we can just pretend that Superman: Earth One never came out, and just quietly sweep Batman: Earth One under the rug. It makes bringing Barry Allen back just be all for nothing.
Their notion that this isn't a reboot because they picked and chose what back story counts? Um, that IS a reboot. It's an in medias res reboot, but it's a reboot, because a reboot always synthesizes what worked about previous versions and creates a hybrid version of the back story to fit what it needs.
What stuns me about all this is that even though all these people have had critical failure for the company, they're getting bonuses for all of this.
- Dan Didio has presided over a decade of declining DC sales and has lost a ton of great writers and artists to Marvel, yet he was promoted for it (or at least given a lateral move).
- Jim Lee saw his imprint close down, his artistic output decline, and was promoted for it.
- Bob Wayne should have been focusing more on getting hardcovers and trades released in a timely matter, but that wasn't part of periodical sales which Didio has said is what his job focus is (meaning what his bonus is based on) so there has never been any pressure put on Wayne to create a release schedule that can compete with Marvel.
- Mark Chiarello is DC's art director and by all accounts is held in the highest regard by artists in the industry. The costume redesigns should have gone through him and some innovative 21st century artists, but instead Image Comics founder Jim Lee gave us his 90s-style interpretations.
- Geoff Johns is just a mediocre writer, so his fault in this is probably just that alone.
- Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras, who was in charge of DC's horrible collected editions department before HIS promotion. And was EiC during the most creatively-bankrupt era at Marvel before that.
You know what this reboot should have looked like? Wednesday Comics.
Seriously look at that. That's a DC universe I'd want to read. Content from creators like Mike Allred, Paul Pope, Walt Simonson, Kyle Baker, Ryan Sook, Kurt Busiek, Neil Gaiman and so on and so on. Where are these guys? Has DC really burned that many bridges to not be able to get any of these people back onto a brand new comic?
Wednesday Comics is pretty much the pinnacle of DC bringing heavy talent together to try something new, and it was a neat experiment. DC's line now seems to be that stories are too boring, grim, or burdened with history and their solution is to change the numbers and make arbitrary changes in continuity
What happened to the old days when DC would do amazing things like Batman: Black and White, Solo and then Wednesday Comics. It was stuff like that, that made it fun to read comics again.
You know what doesn't make reading comics fun? Seeing what they did to Superman...
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7 comments:
You're a dick. I'm not at Comic Con. I'm at home. So it would be hard to ask me "point blank", as if a liberal ever would. You're more apt to throw a pie and run.
As for "insane Tea Party" politics in Firestorm, what kind of bullshit projection is that? You inserted MY politics into YOUR ridiculous blog. I don't insert anyones politics into my DC superhero comics, and never have. Get over your phobias and mellow the fuck out.
EVS
I can't dig on the amount of hate that DC are getting over this. Even with the usual anonymous internet heroism, the vitriol and extremism is amazing. Its not like DC have never changed it all up before. All this talk of 'driving away the fanbase' is so much pap. The drive is for new readers, sure ... if the old readers cared so much then Superman would be selling 80k a month, not declining every year for the last 20 years.
But that doesn't mean old readers 'have to' abandon the imprint. If a story is well written, well presented and makes sense in and of itself, then why not enjoy it? Why does every book published have to be consistent with every panel of evey book ever published previously? This isn't history, this isn't science, it isn't religion or even mythology - its low end fiction. I've been reading and collecting comics for over 35 years, and what I've learned is this - until you've read the book, you don't know whether its good or bad. You might know that you're interested in the character beforehand, and you may know that you don't like a particular writer's or artist's style, but that's all. The rest is all bullshit guesstimation.
So Wednesday Comics is the model? And Didio has his head up his ass, right?
You do know that Didio was the person that helped put that together, right? Not just on the editorial side of things either, as he wrote Metal Men in there.
So you hate Didio and he's ruining DC except when he's making brilliant projects which you just love.
Got it.
You also have a laundry list of errors on what's happening in the DC relaunch.
You do know that the Batman titles, for example, are continuing with pretty much no change? That Cassandra Cain still existed?
>> Content from creators like Mike Allred, Paul Pope, Walt Simonson, Kyle Baker, Ryan Sook, Kurt Busiek, Neil Gaiman and so on and so on. Where are these guys? Has DC really burned that many bridges to not be able to get any of these people back onto a brand new comic? >>
Well, I'm busy doing brand new comics, mostly for DC, just not DCU titles. Walter's busy finishing up an original graphic novel he's doing for DC. Neil Gaiman gets paid really really well these days to do novels and screenplays and TV and such, so monthly comics really aren't part of the picture for him. Mike Allred's busy doing a monthly comic for DC's Vertigo imprint.
I'm not sure about the others you list, but odds are good they're busy too -- and in some cases not remotely fast enough to do a monthly series. That was one of the strengths of WEDNESDAY COMICS -- Mark could line up people who aren't ordinarily available, because he was only asking for 12 one-page chapters, not 20 pages a month. And in any case, would you really expect to see an ongoing DCU superhero title from Paul Pope? Cool though it would be, it's just not something he's going to jump aboard for, no burnt bridges necessary.
The idea that DC should just be able to pick and choose any creators they want, like shopping for oatmeal at the grocery store, or else they're somehow incompetent, doesn't make much sense. Everyone's got workloads, they've got stuff they want to do, they've got commitments. Not everyone's available to draw Catwoman just for the asking. And if they're not, it's not because they're mad, it's because they have other stuff to do or other interests or whatever.
Comics just don't work like that. Nor does TV, movies, book publishing and on and on.
Thanks for the insightful comments Kurt. And while I realize the great writers can't jump on monthly books, I don't see how creating 52 "new" books is a better course of action.
Unless that course of action is an attempt of throwing it all against the wall and seeing what sticks.
The rant comes from the frustration that they are doing this switch up/reboot-lite/etc. on the grounds that the current creative teams weren't getting it done.
So what logic is it to draw those names and set up new creative teams from a talent pool that Dan is stating isn't doing it right currently?
Darryn, there's many other factors to the decline of the sales of comic books. For one thing, they're now sold in less outlets than they were in the 90's. The Era where Dan wishes to take the sales of books to again. And even though I haven't personally ran through each of the scripts of the 52 issues, it's not a stretch to say that many of the changes are there for no other reason than to have change when none was needed.
Creator twister is not the way to fix a problem. Yeah, they're keeping the books that sell the same... well, mostly. But they're messing with the world around them so that the books that work are still effected.
Why change Babs back to Batgirl and not have any plans for Wally in the new 52? By that logic Nightwing should stay as Robin.
Ethan, I'm not a liberal but perhaps you should also get over your phobia that someone disagrees with your view point on the internet.
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