DC Comics Relaunch: Fairwell to the old DCU

With last week’s release of Flashpoint we have seen the end of the old DC universe. I can’t really comment on the New DC Universe yet as the only book out is Justice League. So let’s look at how the DCU of old ended.
Remember that we only heard about this change back in June. At that time the DCU was chugging along and none of us knew the end was nigh. What I wonder about is how many creators had advanced knowledge.
Zantanna was a title that was still relatively new with issue #16 being the final issue. During its run there was the set-up of a new mystic villain Brother Night and a new love interest Dale Colton. At around issue 12 the series was I would say midway through the Brother Night arc. I assume the plan was to go on with this story for a while.
Then we get the relaunch. Rather than accelerate the arc, the writers ignored it, Brother Night and Dale. The last issues of Zatanna were all stand-alone stories. To be fair they were good stories, but they did nothing to resolve the hanging plot threads of the series.
Zatanna will still be in the new DCU. She is a member of Justice League Dark. Maybe these threads will be picked up there, but I personally doubt it.
Wonder Woman was different in that the story already was dealing with an altered timeline. In this case the final issue resolved the storyline restoring Wonder Woman to her proper self. In a nod to the coming change Wonder Woman herself said she felt another change was coming. At least in this case there were no major plot threads left hanging.
This leaves the final story of the old DCU, Flashpoint.
Here is a case where I wanted to like this story, but in the end it just left me a bit cold.
Had this been just a simple Flash story line I would have been fine with it. But it isn’t, it is the catalyst for the new DCU.
When DC did its first major reboot in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths it was a story on a grand scale. It incorporated the majority of the characters in the universe, was played on a cosmic scale and took place over the course of a year. Basically DC earned the reboot.
With Flashpoint it was in the end a Flash story dealing with time travel. While it could be argued that it dealt with major characters of the DCU, they were in unrecognizable forms, with half the heroes being turned into villains.  None of the mini-series that went along with Flashpoint have any apparent impact on what is to come and were really nothing more than a sales ploy. Some of them were good stories, but they do not add to the relaunch in any way that I can see.
The whole thing leaves me with the feeling that this is reboot feels soft and that at any moment the powers that be at DC (Dido, Lee and Johns) can say “Ok, done with that, fix the timeline and return the DC Universe to normal.”
So in the end the DCU went out not with a bang, but a whimper.

DC Comics Relaunch: Today is the Day.

Today is the Alpha and Omega for the DC Universe.
Today DC comics will release Flashpoint #5 which is basically while taking place in a altered timeline marks the end of the mainstream DCU that has been in existence since the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985.
Today also sees the release of Justice League #1 which users in what many are calling the DCnU.
I won’t be picking up my new books until later this week so I will not really have a solid opinion on anything until then. If I am truly honest I will give the new books until November to really pass judgment.
Here is what I do know. DC reports that they have orders for over 200,000 copies of Action Comics #1. That is easily doubling what they were previously.
My friend Aron, who runs The Dreaming Comic and Games here in Seattle, tells me his in-store numbers are up. People are really interested in what is happening and this is bringing people back who gave up or coming in for the first time. This was exactly what DC has said they were shooting for. For now Aron agrees.
His exact quote “This makes him both excited and nervous.”
He is excited because he is getting the increased sales and traffic in the store.  He is nervous because until we see how the books are received there is no way to know if these numbers can be sustained.
Well we will know soon enough. Once I actually get the books and have a chance to read them I will give you my thoughts.
And of course I wait with anticipation on how Marvel will try to make a veiled copy of all of this.

The great Marvel Flashpoint cover cut up controversy

Marvel and DC, the big two in the comics industry were always friendly rivals. Note the past tense.
When Joe Quesada rose to the position of Editor-in-chief at Marvel the friendly part faded away. Pot shots became common and the hope of joint crossovers like they did in the eights and nineties became a thing of the past.
The biggest shot in the rivalry was fired last year.  At the time both companies were in the middle of big cross over events. DC had Blackest Night and Marvel had Siege. Both were selling well, but Blackest Night was getting better press. Marvel had a unique response.
Marvel made an offer to comic shops. Rip of the covers off of 50 Blackest Night tie in books and send them in and Marvel would send you a special variant cover of Siege #3.
Yes you read that right.
Destroy $150.00 worth of our competitor’s product and we will send you a copy of one of ours with a special cover.
Yeah I don’t think Douchebag is too strong a word here.
The claim was that they were helping retailers get a return on unsold books, which is odd because you were not finding unsold Blackest Night books.
Marvel claims they received tens of thousands of covers. I never heard of any store taking up the offer. A search of EBay does not turn up any copies of the variant for sale. So it was a mean spirited ploy that got Marvel a lot of scorn and no real return.
DC took the high road and largely ignored the whole thing. The only response I ever heard were some jokes made by the DC staff at Emerald City Comic-con that year.
Really that should have been the end of it. But Marvel must have liked the press, because they are doing it again.
Right now Marvel has an event going on called Fear Itself. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of it. It’s not getting much buzz. It is basically Marvel getting around to ripping off the plot of Blackest Night. DC has Flashpoint.  This event is getting plenty of buzz as it is the lead in to the September relaunch.
So naturally Marvel felt that history needed to be repeated.
For every 50 covers of Flashpoint books retailers rip off and send in, Marvel will send a variant cover copy of Fear Itself #6. Once again they claim it is to help out retailers in these tough economic times.
It strikes me as a desperate grab for press. DC has been overshadowing Marvel in the press with the upcoming relaunch. Sure Marvel has their movies, but in the end they are a comic book company and losing the limelight to DC must be intolerable.
It would be nice if they could find a way to do it without acting like jackasses.

San Diego Comic-con; what as become of thee?

At the Game of Thrones panel at San Diego Comic-Con George RR Martian referred to the convention as the Geek Capital of the World.  I of course have already conceded that title to San Diego for that one week a year, but I am still pulling for Seattle to get it for the rest.
However despite this being true there is a sense of disappointment coming off of this year’s event. My original hope had been to make daily updates coming out of the convention, but that didn’t work because honestly there wasn’t a lot of news coming out.
And the reason goes to the heart of something bothering a lot of comic fans. San Diego Comic-con has become a media event where the comic books themselves are basically an afterthought.
So here is my post-mortem of the event.
What was the major hype this year? Twilight, True Blood, Game of Thrones, and Immortals.  Ok sure you had the Marvel Movies and Cowboys and Aliens as well, but do most people even know that Cowboys and Aliens is based on a comic?
And outside of the fanbase of the Stars, why are Castle and Burn Notice there? At least Twilight and True Blood are genre appropriate for the fanboy crowd.
As for the comic panels, Marvel seemed to be pushing their other media projects, which made sense considering the quality of the comics lately.   DC hyped the relaunch, but I don’t think I learned much that I hadn’t already learned.  In fact the DC news that interested me the most wasn’t even directly comic related, it was the upcoming Green Lantern DLC for DC Universe Online (Which I will cover in a future post.)
And the best stories coming out of the con as a whole are about bad behavior. Rhys Ifan who is playing the Lizard in the upcoming Spider-man movie showed up drunk and pushed a con security member, leading to him getting cited by the police.
Geoff Beckett of Shocker Toys was served court papers during his panel by an artist suing over an allegation of non-payment. I’m will to bet it was a boring panel up to that point.
So where does this leave San Diego Comic-con. I suppose we must resign ourselves to the fact that it is now predominately a part of the Hollywood Hype machine, and that we should feel lucky comic books are given any time at all.

The Decline of Marvel Comcs – Why Joe, Why?

Right now I think that Marvel is really nailing it with their movie franchises, at least the ones they control directly. Sadly I do not feel the same about the actual comic books.
Over the last few years I have found myself dropping a lot of the Marvel comics I use to collect. I can think of a lot of factors that went into this but right now I want to look at the top. And by that I mean former Editor-in-chief and current Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada.
Under Quesada’s time as Editor-in-chief you had the mutant population largely wiped out, a civil war between the superheroes that was won by the side depicted as the bad guys, the Green Goblin becoming the head of S.H.E.I.L.D, Daredevil became a talking heads book, the Marvel U overall went from a superhero universe to a crapsack world that happened to have superheroes in it, and of course Spider-man made a deal with the Devil to save his aunt that reconned out his marriage.
What the hell?
Quesada has stated that the Spider-marriage had to go because he felt it aged Spider-man and limited the stories. I have heard that the mutant depopulation was due to him not liking the increase in mutants because that was not the old depiction. In other words he holds the late 70’s/early 80’s Marvel as his model and doesn’t want to stray too far from it.
And maybe that isn’t fair, but looking at what he has done, and reading stories he has written I think I have found the root of the problem. Joe Quesada is a terrible writer. If you read the last issue of One More Day that he wrote after J Michael Straczynski jumped ship at the end, or it’s follow up, One Moment in Time, you can see that he is writing to fulfill his plot but he doesn’t care much for character continuity and uses senseless plot contrivances to get where we wants to go. Really at his best he is a hack.
Basically he is an artist and really a good one. This isn’t to say artists can’t be good storytellers, both Eric Larsen and Jeff Smith have proven that they can. But Quesada has proven that he isn’t.
I also think as Editor-in-chief he did not do a good job of guiding the writers. Basically he would let them all do what they wanted with no concern towards continuity, which in a shared universe is poison. I think this more than anything else has led to me general dissatisfaction with Marvel.
I know that Quesada is no longer Editor-in-Chief, but as Chief Creative Officer he still basically dictates the direction of the Marvel universe so I don’t see anything improving anytime soon.
As I said at the top there were a lot of factors that led to this and while I think the buck stops with Quesada I think there are others responsible as well. Trust me we will be looking at them too.

Of man, and Superman, and lawsuits.

Previously I touched on the Siegel family lawsuit to regain rights to the Superman copyright. This got me thinking about how I feel about the whole subject.
In 1932 Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the character of Superman. In 1938 they sold the character to what would become DC comics for $130 and a contract to create material for the publisher. By 1947 they decided that they were tired of getting paid a fraction of the income their creation was bringing in and sued DC to regain ownership. The courts favored DC, and in response DC fired the creators.
Siegel and Shuster made another attempt to regain the rights in 1974. Again the courts sided with DC. However a year later DC’s parent company Warner Bros opted to give both men a yearly pension of $20,000 and health benefits. In addition it was decided that any comic book, novel, film, or TV series featuring Superman would include a credit to Siegel and Shuster as his creators.
In 1998 a new copyright law was passed that opened the door for the estates of both creators, who had by then passed away, to attempt to reclaim ownership. This has led to suits by both Estates. I have found little information on the Shuster suit other than one has been filed.
Of course the Siegel suit is the headline getter as they have had success, having recaptured their half of the original copyright. Their lawyer Marc Toberoff has vowed that they will have the entire copyright by 2013.
The whole situation leaves me feeling torn. On one hand I would like to see the family win as the creators were basically screwed by the original deal. But on the other hand as a fan I want to keep reading about the Superman I grew up with, and with as bitter as this suit has grown anything short of a complete victory by Warner Bros will not allow that.
The Superman intellectual property earns Warner Bros over a billion dollars in profit every year. Even a small percentage of that would equal millions of dollars. No corporation wants to give up any of that if they don’t have to, hence the fight on WB’s side. They have already shown a willingness to alter the story to reflect legal status.
On the heirs side there has been no indication of them caring about the copyright on any level other than financial. Superman’s status as cultural icon and his rich history have not come up in any statements I could find. This makes me question how they will treat the character if they gain complete control.
Here are some scenarios that I can foresee.
Scenario one: Warner Bros prevails.
Result: The status quo is maintained and the estates continue to battle for the rights
Scenario two: The estates gain 50% rights to the entire IP.
Results: WB has to suck it up and pay the estates their half of the profits. The heirs would have a say in how the character is handled.
Scenario three: The estates gain complete rights to part of the IP
Result: Several possibilities here. WB could come to an agreement with the estates to continue using their part of the IP for a huge chunk of change. I don’t see this as likely. More likely is that WB phases out the parts of the IP they don’t own and published an altered form of the character. We may be seeing shades of that now with the DC relaunch. This could also lead the heirs to shop around for a new home for their version of Superman which would be a watered down version of the one we all know and love.
Scenario four: The estates gain complete control of the IP
Result: Well it is possible that WB could come to an agreement to keep using Superman. However with how contentious this suit has been I could easily see the heirs shopping the character around, or even setting up their own publishing house. This would mean the end of Superman as the icon of the DC universe.
It seems crazy to consider a lot of these, but keep this in mind. The courts are not concerned with the artistic integrity of the character. All they care about is the legality of ownership, which means these scenarios or others I have thought of or bothered with could come to pass.

DC Comics Relaunch Part 4

Ok, so for the last 3 posts I have gone on about why I think the relaunch is happening. Today I want to wrap this up by going the other direction and discuss what I think about what will be happening.
My biggest issue right now is the derailing of characters that have seen a lot of growth over that last few years. The relaunch appears to be sweeping a lot of it aside.
First, the one everyone is talking about: Batgirl. Since the 60’s Barbara Gordon was Batgirl. She was the plucky girl who wanted to be a crime fighter like Batman and Robin. She was often the third wheel of the Batman characters.
Then the Joker shot her.
And he didn’t even shoot her as Batgirl. He went after Barbara Gordon as part of a plan to destroy her father. The result was she was left paralyzed from the waist down.
This resulted in her going from a third wheel bat character to a major force in the DC universe.
Rather than wallow in self-pity, Barbara used her intellect, drive and cunning to re-forge herself as Oracle, information broker for the superhero community. She trained to be a bad-ass fighter even from a wheel chair and formed a team of heroes to work directly for her called the Birds of Prey. In the process she became a role model for people dealing with disability that the public embraced.
And now that’s over.
Come September Barbara will somehow be healed and become Batgirl again. DC has said that they are not rewriting her history. The old stories I have mentioned are still be her back story. But instead of being a strong woman rising above the adversity of being confined to a wheel chair coordinating heroic efforts across the globe, she will be leaping the rooftops of Gotham City fighting one crime at a time.
I note that no one has said anything about Stephanie Brown, the daughter of minor Batman villain the Clue Master that Barbara took under her wing and trained to be the new Batgirl.  I guess she will either be ignored, killed, or go back to her previous identity of the Spoiler.
Another point is that several other characters are getting completely rewritten, so that unlike Barbara, the previous backstory is just gone.
So if you had been following any of the Teen Titans almost all of them are getting completely new backstories. Wonder Girl, the mortal daughter of Zeus, taken under Wonder Woman’s wing and trained to be a hero. She has gone from Heroic leader of the Teen Titan’s to a thief being recruited by the team to help on a mission so they can keep an eye on her. 
Why this complete change? We have no idea.
Finally we have Zatanna, one of the premier magic heroes. She has been headlining her own book, which has been very well written and is in the middle of a story that from where I sit doesn’t seem like it will be wrapped up in a satisfying manner in a couple of months. Well that book is over in August and Zatanna will now be part of Justice League Dark, the new magic based team. Maybe her storyline will continue there, but I doubt it and she has to share the stage with the other magic heroes.
I notice I have focused on female characters. They are not the only ones this is happening to. Superboy, Kid Flash and Red Robin are getting complete overhauls as well. And theirs all all just as annoying as Wonder girls.
However I could be wrong. This does not have to be gloom and doom. Batgirl is being written by Gail Simone, one of DC’s best writers. If anyone can take this and turn it into a compelling story it is Gail. Too bad they had to cancel her excellent Secret Six to do it.