DC Comics: More reasons for concern.

Posted on August 25, 2012 by Caliban

Dear DC Comics,

Why is it that when I am planning a nice well thought out article that you must have a week with news I cannot just ignore?

Take for example this week. First there is news that Superman and Wonder Woman are going to be an official couple. That alone would require at least a mention.

But no, you have to follow it up with the news that Rob Liefeld has suddenly left your employ, and in a manner so close to the recent issue with George Perez that I cannot look away.

So here we go again.

First I want to take a look at the Liefeld situation. Rob Liefeld has become something of a joke amongst fans. His art style is off putting to most due to his odd ideas on how human anatomy works and his complete inability to draw feet. His writing style is also often under assault due to a lack of concern to character motivation or internal story continuity.

With that said Rob still gets a lot of work in the industry. From all reports this comes in part from being one of the honestly nicest people in the business. Although the back and forth happening on twitter this week may disprove that last one.

So I’m sure a lot of people were surprised when he announced his leaving DC comics despite being the writer on Hawkman, Grifter, and Deathstroke. His reasoning mirrors the reasons that George Perez gave back in June as to why he left Superman. Rob sites editorial incision, drastic last minute changes, and what he describes as “editor pissing contests” as his reasons for leaving.

This makes Rob the second high profile talent to leave the company for these reasons.

And while it may not seem like much of a segue this leads us to the pairing of Wonder Woman and Superman.

Let’s face it, this just reeks of being an executive “suggestion”

To be honest this is hardly the first time that the idea of a Superman/Wonder Woman pairing has been floated. I can name three different out of continuity stories DC Comics published that explored this idea. Kingdom Come, Justice League: Act of God, and Superman: Distant Fires. Of course only the first of those was any good.

In continuity the idea was toyed with a couple of times. When John Byrne was writing Superman and George Perez was writing Wonder Woman during the early days of the post Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot you had the Man of Steel attempting to get a date with the Amazon Princess. She was not very receptive to the idea. They ended up on one date and by the end it was clear to Clark that she just wasn’t that in to him.

A couple of decades passed and thanks to actual character development Clark Kent actually had a relationship with Lois Lane that progressed to marriage. However poor Diana discovered that maybe she was a bit more interested then she first let on. Clark being the very role model of good behavior didn’t even consider cheating on Lois, not that Diana was suggesting that, more bemoaning the lost opportunity. Somewhere in there was also the idea that she might be attracted to Bruce Wayne as well. It got a little odd at times.

The point is that at no time was there ever any serious consideration that Superman and Wonder Woman would get together in the main continuity.

Then we had the reboot last year. Due to that, now you have a Lois and Clark that not only are not married, but have never dated and Lois is living with some other guy. In fact in seems that the reboot was very anti-marriage as they did nearly the same thing to the Flash, even though his marriage was more or less the canon.

Oh and Steve Trevor is in love with Wonder Woman, but it is an unrequited love.

So this leaves the door open to a Clark/Diana hookup.

My problem is that it just doesn’t feel like a natural outgrowth of the storytelling that has been going on. In fact I would go so far as to say it is pure fan service designed to grab headlines.

In the Superman books Clark is clearly in love with Lois, but she is trying to set him up with her sister Lucy. This pairing seems to at least be a possibility, if for rom-com level antics if nothing else.

I’ve dropped the Wonder Woman main title, but when I was reading it there were no romantic plots of any kind being explored.

In the book they both appear in, Justice League, there is a romantic subplot, but it is the one I mentioned earlier involving Diana and Steve Trevor.

So I strongly suspect that this was a mandate from on high to capitalize on the publicity potential with no sight on the actual storytelling.

This is my biggest complaint about the current direction of DC comics. It feels like the bean counters are running the ship and making some really bad story telling decisions based on market analysis.

Time will tell.

Next week it will be one year since the reboot. I’ll be looking at how I feel about the individual titles. See you then.

DC New 52: Troubling signs.

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Caliban

We are 10 months into the relaunch of the DC universe with the New 52. Originally I had not planned on touching on the event again until we reached the 12 month mark. But as a good friend of mine is fond of saying “When man makes plans, the gods laugh”.

Between some stories that broke in the last week I felt it was time a good time to go over how I feel about the direction DC is going with its titles.

The event that set this off was an interview with George Perez on why he stepped down as the writer on Superman. It came down to a frustration due to lack of consistency on what he was being told. Implied in the interview was a high degree of executive meddling over the head of DC publisher Dan DiDio. According to George he was given contradictory instructions on an almost constant basis.

He also did not like that his book was set 5 years after the story in Action Comics, being written by Grant Morrison. Grant was not telling anyone what he was planning meaning George had to limit what he wrote as he was not to contradict anything Grant wrote.

From this we can extract the following points.

DC did not go into the relaunch with a coherent plan.
The creative staff is not getting a consistent message.
Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee are not in complete charge of guiding the stories due to executive meddling.
DC is giving way too much leeway to Grant Morrison and I suspect Geoff Johns.

From the start there has been a feel that the whole relaunch was an executive plan to reinvigorate the line and make the properties friendlier to other media. The big concern was that it was a rushed half-baked plan and now that seems to be confirmed at least in part by Perez.

Looking at the books there are some points we can see.

Some books have done well. These include Swamp Thing, Demon Knights, Aquaman, Justice League Dark, and Dial H. The thing about these books is that because of how they are written they would have succeeded just as well without the reboot of the DCU. Other books that have done well are the Batman and Green Lantern books, which have largely ignored the reboot.

But then you have the books that have not done so well. Superman has had problems since September. Action is ok, but both Action and Superman feel disconnected from each other. And as you can tell from Perez’s comments Superman has been a disjointed mess. Another book that is troubling is Green Arrow. It started out ok, but like Superman there was a creative team change and now it is borderline confusing.

Another issue is that there is inconstancy in the continuity. In Justice League International you have Batman as a member of the team and very supportive of team leader Booster Gold. In the main Justice League book Batman is loudly calling for the UN to disband the JLI. Add to this the fact that the members of the Justice League are acting like stuck up pricks in contrast to how most of them act in their own books.

There is another thing that makes me worried about the level of executive meddling at DC, and this one I witnessed with my own eyes.

At Emerald City Comic Con I attended two different DCU panels moderated by Batman group editor Michael Marts. In both panels questions were raised about the status of three characters, former Flash Wally West, original Wonder Girl Donna Troy, and most importantly previous Batgirl Stephanie Brown. In both cases there was someone in the audience making a slashing motion across his throat signaling Marts not to answer. In one of the panels where the audience would not let the question go Marts stated that the person making the gesture was a PR guy telling him not to answer.

To recap there was a PR guy in the audience making sure the Batman group editor did not give answers to certain questions.

Now maybe this is not that weird, but for me I have never witnessed anything like that at a convention before.

So what do I hope to see? Personally I am hoping that in another year or so that DC will announce that the new 52 is over and they are fixing the timeline to return to the more familiar continuity with maybe a few hold over changes.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Emerald City Comicon Day Two

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Caliban

Second day of the convention.

The big news was the show hitting capacity. Someone told me it was 10,000 people. It seemed like more. It was bad enough that the fire marshal had registration shut down and was not letting people who stepped outside to come back in until the crowd thinned. This crowding was most evident in the area outside of the dealer floor. It has been where cosplayers have gone for photo ops. It was so crowded that you could barely move. I think some expansion of space may need to happen next year. An upside of this is that everyone I know that is running a booth had very good sales.

Panels I attended.

Will Wheaton’s 90 minute awesome hour. It’s pretty much what it says on the tin. I have never seen anyone able to work a crowd as well as Will Wheaton. He knows his audience and knows how to play to them to perfection.

Marvel: pint of O’ C.B., which is basically Marvels big news panel. It was a good show case for what Marvel is up to. There were two highlights for me. One was a very honest answer to the question of the lack of female creators. They are aware of it and looking for ways to address it, but right now it is a continuing issue that plagues the whole industry and will probably take years to turn around. The other highlight was when Matt Fraction was asked about his writing of Dr. Strange as very creepy. Fraction countered that Strange is creepy and used that fact that he entered into a romantic relationship with his student Clea. Fraction felt that crossing that line informed a lot about the character.

DC Comics: The New 52. This was a lot better than the DC panel from the previous day. Tough questions were not ignored. A big one was how DC addresses old readers leaving in wake of the New 52 does. Gail Simone led the way in answering that stating that change can be hard but the writers are dedicated to doing their best by the characters. This led the rest of the panel to give their opinions as well. Overall a much more satisfying experience than the day before.

Next were back to back panels featuring Christopher Judge of Stargate SG-1 and George Takei. I will save fuller write-ups on these for the post con report. But let’s just say both were great speakers.

Most awesome moment of the day came early on when I met up with an old friend of mine, Ryan K. Johnson. Ryan is a film maker and it the late eighties and early nineties I worked with him on several fannish films, including Star Trek the Pepsi generation. While talking he told me that he really likes the blog. As a creative person I really respect his praise meant a lot to me.

As for my little cosplay contest, here are the scores for Saturday. Please note that these are new people in the costumes. If it was someone from the day before wearing the same costume I did not count them.

· Doctor Who: 15 our winner the second day in a row.

· Joker: 10

· Batman:9

· Captain America: 8

· Batgirl: 7

· Wonder Woman: 6

· Robin: 6

· Harley Quinn: 6

· Poison Ivy: 5

· Superman: 4

· Thor: 4

· Catwoman: 4

· Zatanna: 4

· Green Lantern: 3

· Deadpool: 3

· Phoenix: 3

· Rogue: 3

· Batwoman: 2

· Hulk 2

· Doctor Octopus: 2

· Nightwing: 2

· Iron Man: 2

· Supergirl: 2

· Spider-man:2

· TARDIS: 2

· Riddler: 2

See everyone tomorrow for the last day of the Con.

Emerald City Comicon Day One

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Caliban

Quick overview of Day one of Emerald City Comicon.

First up, the panels.

I attended the Women of Webseries panel. It was definitely what the title suggested, local women working on producing, writing, directing, and staring in webseries. I got some good ideas for the projects I want to work on and a lot of inspiration.

DC All Access panel was next. You would think that a panel at a comic convention that is the news panel for one of the big two it would be kick ass. No such luck. The pros on the panel did some quick shilling of their upcoming projects. When it got to question and answer time that was a lot of deflection. One question asked about the status of Wally West and Donna Troy in the new 52 DCU, the answer was to make a joke and then ask the audience if they would like to win a prize for answering a trivia question.

The next panel was about the history of Wonder Woman for an academic and psychological perspective. The speaker was a tenured professor at Oregon State University for teaches minors program on comic book studies. He was awesome. And as much as I have researched at lot of the same history he covered I still learned some new stuff.

I wanted to get into a panel featuring noted voice actors but it was too full a room.

Next is the dealer floor.

This year has a good mix of comic shops, convention dealers, comic companies, artists and everything else you would expect. Due to the show still growing, this year the gaming based dealers were moved to a new area. It’s a bit of a walk to get there, but it is nice to see the growth.

My wife is a vendor this year and that fact lead to my most awesome moment of the day. She makes gaming dice shaped soap. I took a set to Randy Milholland, the creator of Something Positive. When I gave them to him his face lit up, and he had to show his booth mate Danielle Corsetto, creator of Girls with Slingshots. Mission accomplished and he gave me a sketch and print in return.

Cosplay

So I have decided to keep score of the characters people cosplay as this year. Basically if I see at least two people as a character I start keeping track. I will declare a daily winner and an overall convention winner. Here are today’s scores.

· Doctor Who: 8 Today’s winner

· Captain America: 6

· Harley Quinn: 5

· Batman: 4

· Poison Ivy: 4

· The TARDIS: 4

· Robin: 3

· Black Canary: 3

· Superman: 3

· Batgirl: 3

· Green Lantern: 2

· Catwoman: 2

· Supergirl: 2

· Spider Man:2

· Doctor Horrible:2

· Captain Hammer: 2

· Death from Sandman: 2

· Dalek: 2

· Red Power Ranger: 2

· Riddler: 2

· Green Hornet: 2

See you tomorrow for the next update.

I can’t believe it’s not Superman

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Caliban

With the release of the movie Chronicle I am pleased that a cliché was avoided. Not that the movie is free from them, let’s face it, it is a found footage movie, but there is one I am glad it avoided. (At least I think they did, I haven’t had a chance to go see it yet. I know “Bad Fanboy”)

It’s a movie riffing on superpowers and superheroes where the characters powers are not based on Superman.

Think about it for a minute, name a superhero movie not based on a pre-existing superhero property where the hero’s powers were not basically Superman’s. Seriously the only one that I can name off the top of my head is the Toxic Avenger and I’m not sure he counts.

When I say Superman based I am talking about the following specific powers:

Super strength

Flight

Invulnerability

Other powers will often be present as well, but those three seem to be universal.

I’ll admit that there are a lot of superheroes in comics have these powers and are not considered rip offs of Superman. Rogue of the X-men, the Martian Manhunter, and Thor spring immediately to mind.

But most of the characters I am talking about are clearly taking their cues from Superman.

Now to be fair Superman is a cultural icon and the first image to enter people’s minds when the term superhero is used. But all that tells me is that a lot of screenwriters are lazy. (Let’s all pretend to be shocked). So I guess for most people not immersed in geek culture Superman is synonymous with superhero.

And in most cases these portrayals are exploring ideas that you couldn’t with Superman himself. Superman is the paragon of superheroes. He is confident, noble, and humble. Often these pastiches are exploring ideas that would not fit with those qualities.

Most often you find the story to be about an ordinary person leading an ordinary life suddenly finding themselves with superpowers.

In the sixties you had two competing TV comedies, Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice, which had heroes who gained temporary powers based on a secret formula. While similar ideas both had different execution. Mr. Terrific worked for the government who supplied the super pills that only seemed to work on him. Most episodes had his powers run out at the worst possible time. Captain Nice was a police scientist (no one said forensics back then) who invented a formula that gave him powers. Most episodes were about him needing to get to his formula in order to save the day. The other big difference in these shows was that Mr. Terrific was awkward with his powers, where Captain Nice could handle them, but was stuck with a ridiculous costume his mother made.

Moving on to the eighties and you had the Greatest American Hero, about a school teacher given a superhero costume by aliens that gave him superpowers. Like Mr. Terrific he had poor control over his abilities. The appeal of this show was the buddy cop aspect provided by his FBI friend/partner.

All these shows while having some fun with the everyman superhero idea suffered from the same problem, a problem that all TV shows featuring a super powered hero, be they from a previous license of not, suffered from. Almost none of the antagonists had superpowers. So really none of them ever really had a comic book feel to them, but more of a superhero in the real world vibe.

Movies didn’t always fare much better. You had parodies, like The Return of Captain Invincible. This was a movie where a hero from the 50’s is disgraced and becomes an alcoholic bum. He is found and has to clean up his act in order to save the world from his arch enemy. It was low budget fluff, even if it did have Christopher Lee as the bad guy.

There was a terrible Italian movie called Puma Man. Yes, Puma man. His powers were Puma based yet somehow they still made him a Superman Pastiche. His powers were even of extraterrestrial origin. If you heard of this one at all it was because Mystery Science Theater 3000 got their hands on it.

In 1993 there was Meteor Man, which sadly really wasn’t more than Greatest American Hero with an all-black cast.

More recently there was Hancock with Will Smith. To the writer’s credit instead of having a movie about an everyman with powers, it went with “What if Superman was a drunken asshole.” What was nice was they did dig a bit into the characters psychology to given him a reason for being that way and made it a redemption tale.

And there are certainly exceptions. The Incredibles for example was more of a riff on the Fantastic Four.

Sometimes Warner Brothers, who owns DC comics, thinks that these shows get a little too close to their copyright for comfort. For example WB sued over the Greatest American Hero. Ultimately lost as the court felt the character wasn’t close enough to Superman to warrant a violation, even with nearly the same powers.

Of course there are the non-powered heroes, but that could be a whole article on Batman pastiches. (And probably will be)

Will we see more Superman pastiches in the future? I don’t see why not. Until then I think I will get out there and see Chronicle.

The Smallville Smackdown

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Caliban

This week it was announced that DC entertainment will release a weekly digital comic called Smallville Season 11.

I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence.

Be thankful I haven’t launched the Fanboy News Network video series yet, I would have been yelling.

So why would I be yelling about a continuation of Smallville? Well let’s go over the reasons.

First, while I assume that if you read this blog you know what Smallville is, just in case you don’t here is the quick recap. The show is about the Life of Clark Kent between his freshman year in high school and his assuming the identity of Superman. It lasted 10 seasons. The mantra of the show was “No Flight, No Tights.”

Ok on to the ranting.

Frist thing that springs to mind: Smallville already lasted five seasons too long. Seriously the idea was to show the events that lead Clark on the road to becoming the greatest hero of all time. The first four seasons were ok. It was never stellar Television. It was Superman as seen through the lens of Dawson’s Creek. It had two things going for it, a sense of destiny as we know how the two main characters would turn out, and the performance of Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor.

Of course those early seasons had their issues too. Chief amongst them was the miscasting of Kristen Kreuk as Lana Lang. She had no chemistry with series lead Tom Welling. This would not have been so bad except that they cast Allison Mack as Chloe Sullivan, a character that had an unrequited crush on Clark. Mack had tons of chemistry with Welling, making Kreuk’s lack of it jarring.

The point here is that at the beginning you had an ok show that did surprisingly well in the ratings. And that may have been its curse. By season five the show had really run its course, but for CW it was doing great ratings so it was renewed. And they kept renewing it.

Maybe if the story had advanced it would not have been awful, but merely bad. But “No Flight, No Tights” meant they had to keep Clark as not quite Superman. What ended up happening was an amazing hack job of the Superman myth that made most fanboys rage. What was worst is that every now and then they actually had something good, like Geoff Johns love letter to the Golden Age with his JSA episode. But mostly it was crap that went on five years past its expiration date.

The final season was particularly bad in that it started out like most Smallville seasons, but part way through someone in the writers’ room must have woken up.

“Oh crap, this is the last season, we should take the Clark Kent character we have developed and shoehorn him into the personality from the comic books.”

I’m not kidding. It was the 9th episode of the 10^th season that Clark Kent started wearing glasses. And was the 13^th before he started with the mild mannered nerd persona. Like people who know him before would not figure out that the Clark Kent they knew for years was Superman. I think it would ended up like being the Saturday Night Live Sketch with the Rock as Clark Kent where everyone know he was Superman and just humored him.

A lot of this could have been forgiven, if they had nailed the series finale. If they gave us that rousing moment when Clark Kent became the Man of Steel and defeated the villain becoming the champion he was meant to be.

That would have been nice.

But Smallville had a history of unsatisfying season finales and I guess they saw no reason to make the series finale any different.

It was a two hour finale, and when Clark finally confronted the bad guy there were 14 minutes left in the episode. In that time the following happened:

· He learned to fly

· He defeated Darkseid, one of the most powerful entities in the DC Universe, by flying through him

· He went to the Fortress of Solitude and got the Superman Costume.

· He saved the airplane Lois Lane was on.

· He flew in the sky and pushed a planet away from Earth.

· Then there was an epilog.

And in none of that was there ever a clear shot of Tom Welling actually wearing the Superman costume. The rumor I keep hearing is that Welling, who was also a producer on the show, refused to wear it. I guess he felt that he should never fully been seen as Superman. What it did was leave the audience feeling cheated.

10 year build up with no pay off.

So now, I assume due to the success of the Buffy Season 8 and 9 comics DC feels they can give us this pay off.

I have an idea. If you want to see Clark Kent at the beginning of his career as Superman read the current run of Action Comics. At least they are going about it honestly.

For me the big mystery is why I watch that damn show for all ten seasons.

The only answer I can come up with is that I am such a comic fanboy that since It was something related to Superman thus I was obligated.

Or maybe some part of me knew that one day I would write a geek culture blog and I would need to know the shows history to really tear into it.

I’m going with that last one. It makes me feel better.

The New “New 52”

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Caliban

From the moment the DC relaunch was announced a question loomed: “How long until the first cancelations?” Especially since the branding on the relaunch is “The New 52”.

We now have our answer and it shows how DC plans to move forward.

April will see the last issue of six of the relaunch titles: Blackhawks, Hawk and Dove, O.M.A.C, Mr. Terrific, Static Shock, and Men of War.

In May DC will launch 6 new titles: Batman Incorporated, Dial H, Earth 2, World’s Finest, The Ravagers, and G.I Combat.

So it is clear that with the “New 52” branding DC intends to keep the main universe titles at that number, only introducing new books as replacements for canceled books. Much like a TV network schedule really.

So how do I feel about it?

Honestly I like this strategy.

Aside from maintaining the branding, I like that they are keeping their product line lean. Not glutting the market keeps costs under control and makes choices easier for the consumer.

Just looking at sales figures can tell the story. Last month’s estimated sales showed Marvel just beating DC in overall sales, but DC had seven of the Top ten titles. While that looks good for marvel at first, keep in mind that they are publishing more than twice the number titles DC is, so they have a higher overhead. DC’s more targeted approach means a better net gain.

But what about the specific books involved?

Of the six titles going away, I read exactly zero. Of the six titles coming in May, I intend to add two to my pull list and give two others a try out.

Blackhawks, O.M.A.C., and Men of War were so low on my radar I actually forgot they were being published until this announcement. Mr. Terrific and Static Shock I was aware of, I just wasn’t into either character so I gave them a pass. I was an old fan of Hawk and Dove, but Rob Leifeld’s involvement in the book kept me away. So basically none of these really surprise me.

Of the new books Batman Incorporated is the big one for me. I was enjoying this title prior to its cancelation to make room for the relaunch. My hope is that they pick up the story were they left off or at least bridge to what went before.

Earth 2 is the other sure thing. I love the JSA and if you will forgive me, I think going back to the Earth 2 concept is the best of both worlds.

World’s Finest will get a shot as it ties into Earth 2. I’m happy to see Power Girl back as well as the Huntress. My hope for this title is that it will feature the original Huntress (the alternate earth daughter of Batman and Catwoman). If this is the case we will have a third keeper.

Dial H is an update of an old series about a mysterious dial that can temporarily turn normal people into superheroes. It is a concept that can work if the right writer is on it. I will give it a look at least to see what they do with it.

The Ravagers is a spinoff from Teen Titians and Superboy, two books I am not collecting so pass.

G.I. Combat is attempting to keep a military book on the schedule. This one is at least revisiting the weird war stories: Haunted Tank, the War time forgot, and the Unknown Soldier. I really have no more interested in the than I was for Men of War. Pass

What I am really interested in seeing is what else DC has up its sleeve. Are we going to get a new title every time there is a cancelation? If so what does DC have lined up?

When the first anniversary of the New 52 comes in September what will the DCU look like?

Addressing the new Watchmen rumor.

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Caliban

Watchman, more than any other title ever produced is the cornerstone of the modern comic book industry. (Yes, even more than The Dark Knight Returns.) Coming out in 1986 it redefined what could be done with the medium.

So I have very mixed emotions about the rumors that DC is going to produce four prequel mini-series. Part of this is of course the knee jerk fanboy reaction.

But beyond the lizard brain reaction is some real concerns.

First off the original creators are not only not doing it; they really don’t want it to be done at all. It was a disagreement over the ownership of Watchmen that led Alan Moore to sever ties with DC comics. David Gibbons has gone on record as saying he would not like to see it happen as recently as this last summer. Now to be fair to DC Watchmen was created at a time when most work in the industry was work-for-hire and they own the characters. Add to that the fact that the characters are based directly on another set of characters DC owns and they are theirs to do with as they see fit.

That being said as Marvel’s One More Day proved, just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean it is a good idea.

Watchmen was a nearly perfectly told story. It was paced to make each issue engaging but also make the whole story satisfying. The art was very much a part of the story with important elements being shown not told and often being in the background. It had a clear arc for the story and the individual characters. Even as beloved as it is, there really isn’t anything more that needs to be said.

And this is what has me worried. Why are we revisiting Watchmen? It just smacks of a cash grab.

“Let’s do new stories with these really popular characters. That will bring them into the stores.”

I’m not saying a good story can’t come out of it. Last weekend my wife and I went to see “The Muppets.” Again this was a relaunch of an old franchise without the involvement of the original creators. However it is clear that the new creators understand the franchise and made it a labor of love. The result is a movie that is basically pure joy and made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe and later tear up just a bit.

We can only hope that if DC does go ahead with a new Watchmen project that the new creative team has the same understand of that Property that Jason Segel had of the Muppets.

Co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee are quoted as saying that DC “ would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago.”

So we can only hope.

Personally I think this is a bad idea and I would like them to just let the original stand. On the other hand it might end up eating those words if they do recapture the magic of the original.

Or this might just be a rumor and we are getting worked up over nothing.

Time will tell.

The Comic Book Speculation Boom: The dark age of comic collecting

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Caliban

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with a friend about helping out with a project related to this blog. During the conversation he asked me if I knew much about the worth of older comics. Specifically he has some Roy Thomas Conan comics from the 70s and he was wondering what they are worth. I told him I had no idea as I am not interested in the aftermarket, but that there are several price guide sites he could check out.

On top of that I got an email from a friend pointing me to an online auction for Action comics #1 (the original not the one from three months ago). The buzz is that this is the copy owned by Nic Cage. As of my writing this the bid is up to $1,306,000.00.

All this brings up memories of the speculator boom of the late 80s/early 90s. It’s the ghost of this boom that makes those unfamiliar think that any older comic book is worth something.

The consensus is that the boom started in 1985 with the release of four titles. Batman: the Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars. All four titles were huge hits and together redefined comic books. They also gained a lot of mainstream attention. A lot of news stories at the time would always mention the worth of older comics like Action #1 or Detective comics #27. This prompted people to start collecting the successful books in hopes that they would gain worth over time. This led to other books at the time being collected in hopes that they too would gain worth.

This was an interesting theory but had a huge flaw. The books from the 30s and 40s were valuable due to their rarity. A lot of comics were donated to paper drives during World War II. And let’s face it everyone has heard stories of parents tossing out the comics as trash.

So a speculator market for books in the 80s was interesting but little should have come of it, except that the publishers started pandering to it.

If you were into comics between 1985 and 1993 it was inescapable. Books were released with variant covers. There were covers with gimmicks like holograms, die-cut, embossing, and foil-stamps. Publishers would look for any excuse to launch a first issue. Back issues were selling like crazy. People were buying multiple copies of the same issue.

Back then people in the comic book shop looked at me like I was crazy. I would buy one copy of an issue and then read it. Seriously I swear one guy nearly had a stroke once because I was ruining the resale value of the book by not immediately sealing it in a polybag.

And yes there were speculators who were making money. And how were they doing that? They were selling to other speculators. Here you should see the first flaw in the paradigm.

Who were those speculators going to sell to?

And the other flaw?

Oversaturation.

Publishers were printing titles that were selling over a million copies an issue. Remember what I said about the rarity of the golden age books. That was not happening here.

And if four titles launched the boom, it was two storylines that took it down.

The Death of Superman and Knightfall.

These stories saw Superman die and Batman crippled. Both were replaced by edgier successors. I and my fellow longtime comic fans were starting betting pools about how long it would take Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne to be restored and reclaim their mantles. However a lot of speculators were not longtime fans.

They saw these books as real changing of the guards and bought them in unprecedented numbers. And this was the killing blow, not the inevitable return of the heroes, but the oversaturation from people ordering so much and the publisher meeting demand. Speculators would try to sell them off and couldn’t because their target audience already had plenty of copies of their own. And with that the speculator bubble went pop.

It’s interesting to note that even though it was two DC stories that started the end of the boom DC does not get much of the blame. Most people heap much more blame on Marvel and Image as they were seen as the publishers that pandered the most to the speculators.

As the comic speculation market was collapsing a new speculation market was being created. It was the trading card game market. Magic: The Gathering was designed to be collectible. But there was a major difference. Not once did Wizards of the Coast pander to the speculator market. When I was working at WotC customer service and a customer called in asking about card value we had a standard response. “Wizards of the Coast does not concern itself with the aftermarket and makes no decisions based on it”.

And almost twenty years later there is still a healthy after market for Magic cards, with prices based on a cards value in tournament play more than anything.

What about the comic book aftermarket today? It is still there, driven primarily by sites like EBay and Craigslist.

Sadly you see some companies still trying to pander to it too. Go back and read my blog about the Flashpoint/Fear Itself controversy. What was Marvel offering for the destruction of DC books that were actually selling? A variant cover of Fear Itself.

Wondering about Wonder Woman

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Caliban

It’s month three of the DC relaunch and sadly one of the books I have been getting is on the chopping block. That book is Wonder Woman.

The buzz right now is about the fact that in the new timeline it has been revealed that Zeus is her father. That has nothing to do with my problem with the title.

My issue is that they have made her uncaring.

Her attitude to the woman she is trying to save in the storyline is borderline abusive. She seems to be more bloodthirsty and does not appear to get along with the other Amazons. It’s like they gave her the personality of the Huntress

Batman is being portrayed as being more compassionate right now.

I think this is the latest expression of a problem Wonder Woman has had since the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot in the mid-eighties. Every writer who comes on to the character sits down to figure out who she is and what her place in the DCU is. That would be fine, except they then make that exploration the whole point of the series.

And is that really necessary?

In 1941 William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman. He saw a comic book market saturated with male characters and wanted to create the ideal female hero, one that would overcome her foes not only with her fighting prowess and powers, but also her heart. She was a heroine who could be a role model for young women.

Yes he did include Greek mythology in the origin, and yes do to his unconventional life style there was some unique philosophy and a lot of bondage. But in the end it was about a strong, caring female hero.

Is that so hard now?

Let’s stop trying to figure out her symbolic place in the DCU. Let’s stop exploring her mythological roots. Let’s tone down the examination of the Amazon culture.

Just get back to the strong, caring heroine who goes out and fights the bad guys. Get back to the role model.

I’ll give the book another issue or two, but I’m not hopeful. But maybe someday a writer will be inspired to go back to Wonder Woman’s true roots.

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