One More Try

"...the 'nethate over FC is unlike anything I've seen in a long, long time, and it's only fueled by the fact that DC editorial staffers were making fun of Grant in public ON THE NYCC DC PANEL, which is really reprehensible and unprofessional behavior. Really, you'd think Grant had somehow Destroyed DC Comics. I'm cranky about it on Grant's behalf, because I generally believe that hate and vitriol should be reserved for people who deliberately try to do you harm, not people who try and sometimes fail to entertain you."

-- Mark Waid, Boom Studios message boards.

hat-tip: Lying In The Gutters

Seriously, for Mark, I'll give the whole Morrison/Crisis/Batman thing another chance.

I'm serious, I'll actually sit down and reevaluate the entire thing, soup to nuts. As an organic whole. And evaluate it against any barriers said or unsaid to the final product.

This might take me a long time, as there are copious chapters and issues of said Morrison thing, and I am a girl of modest means. And I'm not being sarcastic -- it will probably take me at least a year to find, read, and digest (including "52").

Occasional Links: Mad Ideas, Watchmen, Star Trek, more

Current Internet-meme-du-jour, Carl Winslow.

Was this Dilbert cartoon from 2005 yet another Nostradamus-type prediction for our current financial crisis?


Steven Grant on Grant Morrison & Final Crisis:

"Anyway, at this point the one remaining major comics writer who has consistently clung to and through his work championed the cause of mad ideas is Grant Morrison, who packed FINAL CRISIS with more mad ideas per square inch than virtually all other "mad ideas" comics combined. Many of them are brilliant, in their context. But as I mentioned last week, it hits such a density it becomes a virtual black hole of mad ideas, with such a gravitational pull that story can barely escape it, and then only the edges of the story are visible. Story in FINAL CRISIS isn't story, as traditionally understood in western literature, and certainly not in comics; it's the event horizon of mad ideas."

Joss Whedon says there will be no Dark Horse comic book tie-in for his new TV show Dollhouse:

"You know, the science fiction of this is much more fiction than science. Ultimately it’s actors acting differently, which is not that - Something you really need to see drawn. There is, however, CSI comic books. So I guess everything could be a comic book. But I don’t feel it lends itself in the same way that my other fictions have."

Take a look at Donald Duck's Family Tree.



Would Alan Moore be cool about this Watchmen video game?

"I'm not going to spoil it for those of you who haven't read the graphic novel, but I can at least say that while Watchmen was all about miserable people dealing with their own personal crises, the game wisely takes place before the events of the book."

Oy.


Eddie Izzard set to appear in Day Of The Triffids remake for the BBC...with Jason Priestley and Brian Cox! Awesomeness!


CBS is streaming classic Star Trek (that's SHATNER TREK to you, none of that Picardo stuff) in HD on their website. Episodes include Turnabout Intruder, The Trouble With Tribbles, and Mirror, Mirror.

Just to show that fan discontent transcends just comics, pro wrestling fan takes the WWE to task and tells them to Stop The Crap. An interesting point made in the post?

"Want some free promotion? Get with the times. Allow us to embed your videos!"

A look at JLA T-shirts through the ages, with a focus on Firestorm. Found on the Firestorm Fan site, of course.
Finally, this Los Angeles promotional video from the 90s gives me hemorrhoids...and not in a good way!

I love the stuttering video effects in this. Made me want to smack that drink right out of Jack Wagner's hand.

Batman Died For Final Crisis's Sins (Spoilers)

"Final Crisis is a clusterfuck, a mediocre failure. I don't know what went wrong, Editorial mismanagement*(which still keeps going on), rewrites, bad decisions, someone sleeping with someone's wife. Whatever it is, this has pretty much been a lackluster event, even when things seemed to 'kick off' at Issue #4 it still didn't have the oomph that other events had. The whole fact that it was billed as the most epic thing ever since Ninjas were invented, yet turned out to be a rush job just adds another nail to the coffin that is being built for DC."

"There's fundamental problems with Final Crisis #6. Mainly, it's sort of boring and the art isn't very good."

In desperation, they showed the corpse of their most popular character -- that would at least be some shiny tin-foil to wow a segment of the comic book reading public easily impressed by mediocrity and an enduring loyalty to characters who have been kneaded, reconfigured, and degraded almost past recognition.


"How do we beat Marvel in sales?" DC asked. They answered themselves: "We put more violence in our comics." And this is not even a rhetorical conversation. This dialogue, though paraphrased here, actually took place. And this, apparently, is the grand culmination of the Dream.


So their books became more violent, and they still couldn't beat Marvel in sales. But at least they gained a small core readership that is so accommodating, and so forgiving. Even if other readers fell away, and new readers were alienated, this strong core would buy *anything*.


Yes, Batman died for the sins of Final Crisis, because it would take nothing more than the graphic demise of their core superhero to distract the readers from the clusterfuck they created. And it worked, at least for the core. And at this point, it's only the core that matters, because they are, at least, guaranteed revenue. And in these troubled economic times, at least that's something.

"Batman dead! Batman dead! It so amazing! They killed him! They killed him! That was fantastic! Do again! Do again!"

Cynical? Maybe. Enough to put DC at the top of comic sales? No. But at least nobody is "laughing" at DC anymore, saying their comic books are hokey, saying that their comics are for kids. They successfully rebranded themselves. As what?


But really, I find such iconography, such branding, apropos for DC. They've advertised for a while now a "Final Crisis" and a death of one of their icons. For the last 5 years, they've focused on death, destruction, and corruption as the "spine" of their events, their publishing plan. Why this constant focus on negativity? I think it's a slow, steady exorcism, the tangible display of an ugliness that was just under the surface.

In the end, I'm relieved to hear that indeed this is the final Crisis. Because after your "Final" crisis, surely there will be no more?

One Of The Most Ugly F**king Things I've Ever Seen In My Life

A friend just emailed me the spoiler to the latest issue of Final Crisis, and it was one of the most ugly fucking things I've ever seen in my life.

No class, no respect, sensationalist crap.

They might as well have just taken a dump on the legacy of the character in question.

And for what? Sales? To barely get in the top ten? Was it worth it?

This book comes out the same day as the Spider-Man Obama cover. Such a contrast in energy, direction.

I choose hope.

Postscript
Want spoilers, pictures, and additional commentary? Read this review.

Batman RIP-off

Re-reading my recent hate mail regarding Batman RIP, I am about 90% sure it was a lame-ass attempt to start a "fake feud" in the mold of recent posts. But I feel bad about not giving Batman RIP more publicity, so I will reference a post from Topless Robot reacting to the news that the ending for Batman RIP will be in Final Crisis #6:

"How fucking stupid of me to assume that the final issue of "Batman R.I.P." would be the conclusion of the story. I'm so glad that, if I were a loyal Batman reader, to be able to find out suddenly that the story I've been reading for the last half year makes no sense unless I also purchase the end of the Final Crisis saga, which I'm sure I wouldn't need to buy all its previous issues to make sense. That's real fucking swell.

And so fucking nice of you to create a bullshit lame ending for the "Batman R.I.P." graphic novel, so that people can buy that and...have absolutely nothing, because the real fucking ending is still going to be in the Final Crisis collected edition. What a huge goddamn favor for the readers...

Maybe if we all knew this was coming, it wouldn't have been a big deal--people could have been reading Final Crisis from the start, or chosen to avoid "R.I.P." altogether. But to find out "R.I.P." is meaningless without Final Crisis--AFTER "R.I.P." IS FUCKING OVER? Jesus, how much contempt can you have for your customers?"

As for myself, I didn't even blink when I heard this. I'm not surprised at all. In a way, I think this unholy marriage of two separate clusterfucks is kind of sweet.

Fred Sanford Comix And Stories

"Where I now see the primary weakness of Final Crisis is that the DC universe itself isn’t vital enough or interesting enough or dependable enough as a starting point or filled with enough creative energy for me to give a crap as it all slips away. It’s hard to take seriously a crisis paired with an adjective, even an alarming one. A greater sense of peril was engendered by one of Fred Sanford’s heart attacks."

-- The Comics Reporter (via The Beat, can't find the direct link)

See, I actually would follow a Sanford & Son comic book event. As long as it didn't involve those last episodes where Lamont came back and was phoning it in.

James Robinson Quits Superman And Ending To FC Rewritten???

The skinny according to LITG (please don't just read what I summarize here, but visit the column, as there are a lot of cool stuff this week including "the fake Art Adams"):

1. (yellow rumor light)
DiDio doesn't like the ending to Final Crisis, has Grant Morrison do last-minute rewrites. Morrison not happy. Writers working on spinoff Final Crisis books have to stop work while rewrites take place, because their books will be impacted. Gee, will Grant be up for another event in the future, considering this all went so well?

2. (yellow rumor light)
James Robinson has a fight with DiDio, quits Superman & DCU books.

3. (green rumor light)
DiDio more aggressively courts Hollywood writers to work on DCU books. I would infer that part of the reason for this is that all the regular comic book writers have been alienated.

4. (green rumor light)
In the new Kevin Smith Batman book: "The Joker offers his bottom to be sexually violated by his rescuer, jokes about the colour of his pubic hair, a scene depicting genital torture and no sign of a Mature Readers tag." (emphasis mine).

5. (yellow rumor light)
"Battle of the Cowl" will not be written by Grant Morrison or Judd Winnick as previously thought. Instead -- taking a page from late-80s Marvel/early-90s Image -- it will be both written and drawn by Tony Daniel. See my inference in point #3. Perhaps they can get more artists to just write their books as well. Comic book writers, as you know, are a generally troublesome lot.

As far as I understand, the LITG green rumor light means "sure thing," and the yellow one means "unconfirmed but sort of likely."

If the James Robinson & Final Crisis stuff is true...wow. Just...wow.

I think one commenter on Twitter said it best:
"i cannot put my reaction to the latest LITG into words."

you can also read the Twit after that for more insight.

Crisis Vs. Final Crisis

I really didn't feel inclined to make my promised review of Final Crisis #4...but as I have been asked by a few people for it, and I did pay for the bloody thing, I might as well.

I guess in order for me to speak of FC #4 I need to back up and talk about my reaction to the original Crisis On Infinite Earths. I read all the back-issues of that mini-series, out-of-order, in the early 1990s. Back then, my knowledge of obscure DC lore was not huge. I was (or had been) mostly a Batman fan. So obviously reading Crisis On Infinite Earths opened up a whole new world for me.

Though I did not know who more than half the characters in Crisis were, when they (or entire worlds) occasionally died it still had an impact for me. Ditto for the drama and the plot in general.

If you had to ask me what Crisis On Infinite Earths was about, I would have said (and still would say) "how people react to a disaster." I realize this is a rather reductionist point-of-view on the series, and does not take into account the Monitors, Anti-Monitors, and numerous parallel worlds. But Crisis appealed to me on a basic human level, in basic human terms I could understand. And I have no doubt this ability of Marv Wolfman & George Perez to get that point across is what was largely responsible for the huge success of the mini-series.

When Comic Book Deaths Still Mattered?

In contrast, if you were to ask me what Final Crisis is about, I would tell you "some neat stuff Grant Morrison thought up regarding continuity and postmodern remixes thereof." That's just for starters. I'm sure if you asked Morrison himself, or a FC fan, the same question you would get more specifics. And that, I think, is the problem.

While there is nothing wrong with creating a book with a very complex plot structure and background that appeals mostly to hardcore fans, I question why it should be the keystone of a year-long (or even three or four years-long) publishing plan. Would not an event with more of an appeal to both the pre-established fanbase and the new reader make more sense?

After I read Crisis On Infinite Earths, I went back and read other related books to "catch-up." I did not do this because I felt I had to in order to understand Crisis. I did it because I wanted to. I looked up old issues of All-Star Squadron because I wanted to (certainly not because they were what all the cool kids were reading). Had there been an extensive backlist from DC at that time, I probably would have bought a number of their titles.

This series was about as continuity-geeky as it got -- but I liked it.

Crisis On Infinite Earths worked for me because it took a casual reader at best and made her more interested in the DC Universe. It worked because it touched me on a very basic human level. It worked because of the great synergy between the talent, the two seamlessly forming one unit. It worked because it was consistent on many levels, not least of which was the fact that Wolfman/Perez were on every issue. And it worked because even though there was a lot I didn't understand (it took me several passes before I could wrap my brain around the concept of Earth 2), it didn't impede my enjoyment of the story -- even reading the book out-of-order.

Final Crisis, for me, fails on several of these levels. As a person who only read #1 and part of #2 (and couldn't even understand that), issue 4 is completely incomprehensible. But even without having much background knowledge, the book could not even engage me on a basic human level. The most it could do so was by two scenes: two Flashes hugging each other and Black Canary saying goodbye to Green Arrow. And yet in those scenes, I still had only the vaguest notion of why those actions were occurring; by contrast, the deaths in Crisis were very clear, "OMG the world is ending I'm dying it hurts!"

But as I have written concerning review copies I have received of comics based on particular video games, it might be pointless for me to give a review of Final Crisis #4 because in the end it might not be a comic written for me. I don't have the long investment in the events before it. The failure of Countdown and the disjointed relation of Death of the New Gods to FC has not provided me with an easy introduction to the series. While I have loved Grant Morrison's Vertigo stuff, I've never been a huge fan of his JLA work, or of his treatment of other DCU characters outside of Animal Man. And, as with most events, I am willing to pick up only a limited amount of crossovers and spin-offs ("willing" as in, not really willing; "limited amount" as in, I can't really afford).

If the "Darkseidy" scene in FC #4 was a rip-off of Episode III,
and Darth Vader was a rip off of Darkseid,
does that mean we have come full circle?

But I think if you have the heavy investment, and you are enthusiastic about Grant, and feel keyed-in to this continuing story the way other people are keyed-in the Lord of the Rings, then I think -- current issues concerning the art notwithstanding -- there is no reason why you wouldn't like Final Crisis. I mean, it's certainly better than Countdown, and fill-in artists Pacheco & Mahnke are both very good. I understand the reader unhappiness about the fill-ins, but it's not like they put Joe Schmoe on the book (no offense to Joe).

If you are a new reader, however, I don't see this series making much sense for you. You might want, instead, to pick up a trade collection of Crisis On Infinite Earths and then work yourself backward & forward. Then, perhaps picking up some momentum, these latter-day DC events might make you more impassioned.

Poll: Do You Still Care About Final Crisis?

Wih Final Crisis #4 hitting the stands today, I thought I would ask the question:

Do you still care about Final Crisis?

Follow up questions:

Were you collecting it?

Are you still collecting it?

If you are collecting it, would you buy the hardcover?

and,

Do you want another DC event after this, or do you want them to wait for awhile to let things settle?

Breaking: JG Jones Comments On Final Crisis

JG Jones responded to a request from Comic Book Resources regarding his participation in the final issue of Final Crisis by writing:

"Any problems completing the series are my own. I love Doug Mahnke’s art, and he would have probably been a better choice to draw this series in the first place."

He also indicated that he would not be redrawing the final issue for the eventual FC collection, and that he is, according to CBR, "currently revising his plans for the future."

Doug Mahnke will indeed be providing the art for Final Crisis #7.

I realize fans might be angry at JG for not being able to draw the final issue, but I hope they cut him a break. As I have learned as a comic book editor, there are sometimes things beyond our control.

September Comics Sales: Commentary

Here is the official list, for reference.

Thoughts:

* Secret Invasion is still #1, with both Avengers books, which closely tie in with the event, at #3 and #5.

* Does Final Crisis skipping a month hurt this title and the event as a whole? Or is there enough FC product out to give the series a sense of continuity?

* I would really like to pin-point the appeal of All-Star Batman & Robin, which is one of the few DC books to make the Top 20 at #4. Is it the Frank Miller/Jim Lee combined name cachet? Or the fact that it is a Batman book that isn't continuity-heavy? Is this book, such as it is, a template for how other successful DC books should be?

* Marvel pseudo-reboots of Hulk, Iron Man, and Amazing Spider-Man still do quite well. Is this a viable strategy for a publisher -- to periodically just come up with a fresh new take on the characters and just push ahead?


* In line with the previous comment, should DC just start doing the same thing with a bunch of their titles? I mean -- for reals, not as a last-minute shuffle.

* I mean my God -- look at the numbers for a book like The Flash -- at #82. This book should be Iron Man/Thor level in sales for DC, if not Captain America level. Because that's how key and iconic this character is to the DCU. It should at least do as well as Green Lantern.

* And Green Arrow -- I mean, that character is classic & edgy & would totally appeal to today's reader -- he even is a semi-regular on TV's "Smallville." Yet the comic is at #85. That's horrible, horrible numbers for a property that is so viable & important.


The formula (and I know I have written this before, so please bear with me):

1. Take your second-tier & some of your third-tier books and apply the Top 50 Test on them.

2. Top 50 Test: are these books starring your best, most licensable intellectual property making it to the top 50? If not: overhaul them.

3. Get top writers & artists for each second tier/third tier book. Carefully talent search for these titles. Pick teams that are willing/likely to stay for at least two complete arcs (if not a full year). <---- this part most important.

4. If the title had been hopelessly mired in bad creative decisions/fill-ins, cancel it outright & start from scratch.

Marvel has applied this philosophy over and over and over again, to good results. Many years ago, when I was just a whelp collecting comics, books like Thor & Fantastic Four and Iron Man were considered "crap" -- all we wanted were "X-Titles" and Spider-Man. But now these second & third tier books are all doing great. This is a formula that works.

I mean, again -- Green Arrow! This should be DC's Iron Man -- there should be a movie out already.

And this is not a slam -- this is a kindness. Trying to figure out what would sell best is a kindness, far more so than a room full of "yes men." A room full of "yes men" can yes you right into bankruptcy. Ask the president.

Mahnke Mahnke Mahnke

Some reasons why I think Doug Mahnke is an artist suited for iconic DC events.

That said, he needs a good inker like Tom Nguyen to really bring out all the detail in his pencils.

Can anybody confirm if DM is really drawing the last ish of Final Crisis or not?

Final Crisis: The Case For Consistency

There was some bitching online recently about Doug Mahnke allegedly filling in on the art for Final Crisis #7. I still don't know if this is true or not, but reading the comments regarding this, a good point was raised.

J.G. Jones is a great artist, but was it worth putting him on FC? For whatever reasons, he couldn't do a monthly on this book. I hear some things about deadline issues regarding him, but I have no first-person observations on that. But an editor would have known, Dan DiDio would have known. If you know your artist is going to have deadline issues, you can do one of two things: 1) not assign him for a book with a regular schedule, or 2) schedule out the book so far in advance that it will give the artist enough time.

The second option has been utilized with success on books like Batman: Hush. Jim Lee started that book waaaaaay in advance. Issues were dutifully collected in the flat file, and at some point everyone felt safe enough to commit to a monthly schedule and solicit the arc. Because it was all done in advance; far less stress for everyone involved, and they got a couple of nice hardcovers out of the deal with consistent art.

But what of the Final Crisis hardcover? There are going to be at least two artists on FC when it is all said and done. And were there not shipping issues as well with the original series?

And for what? I'd rather have had an artist like Carlos Pacheco or Mahnke from the very beginning anyhow. As I said, I think J.G. Jones is a great artist, but I just didn't find his work on this title (from the two issues I did read) very exciting. But even if I did, one of the most important things in a story arc or a mini-series is keeping the creative team consistent.

In retrospect, would you have preferred another artist on Final Crisis (like Mahnke) if it meant the same artist on all seven issues plus a regular shipping schedule?

Postscript: Again, I don't know the story regarding the schedule J.G. Jones kept for FC, so it is all speculation -- I don't want to say an artist is "slow" until I know 100%, plus all the circumstances behind it. I'm just commenting on the fact that there has been erratic shipping on Final Crisis and also fill-in art.

Postscript 2: Many people online are so dumbfounded at the possibility that there could be a fill-in artist on the last issue of FC that they swear up and down it must be a typo in the solicitations information. If it turns out that there was no typo, there are going to be a lot of pissed off people. To me, these online reactions again evidence the fact that the readers crave consistency -- perhaps even above "name" artists.

Would You Want This Superheroine In Your Corner In A Fight?

Detail of the cover to Final Crisis #3

The Beat's analysis points out that this cover might not be presenting Supergirl as the brightest crayon in the box.

My take? I was actually more surprised that Final Crisis was still going on. That series totally fell off my radar. So in that case, this cover was actually a success, because it brought to my attention that Final Crisis is still taking place.

But possible anti-feminist interpretations of the art aside, what are these covers really contributing to the series? They tell me absolutely nothing about the story. They only bank off the idea that "icons sell."

And you know who is one of the very few artists who can pull off a successful non-narrative "icons sell" cover? Alex Ross. He could paint Herbie The Fat Fury on a cover and make it sell well. Plus, he doesn't paint Supergirl as if she has a half-eaten snickers bar in her cranium where her brain should be.

Comics Schadenfreude, Day 5

"It's simple, under his editorship, DC Comics has consistently been outperformed by the competition. You can't blame him for less that stellar results in other mediums with DC properties. It's the fact that he isn't getting the results that Warner Brothers should be demanding from one of it's subsidiaries.

It's worse than that. He is damaging a lot DC intellectual properties (thats characters and continuity). He should be fired. "

--from the 19-page (and counting) "Fire Dan DiDio Immediately" thread on the DC Message Boards

"It was roughly two, two and half years ago that I opined to Marvel’s David Gabriel that I thought they’d be able to get a ten point lead on DC if they worked a little harder.

That’s now grown to a 20 point lead, or, to put it another way, Marvel is about 50% larger than DC these days.

That’s just ugly.

At the end of the day, that’s down to editorial content " Marvel’s comics are simply more compelling for the audience right now than DC’s."

--Brian Hibbs

"Ouch"

--Kevin Melrose, Blog@Newsarama

"I think it's worth considering that something as simple as an Invasion of the Body Snatchers rehash might seem somewhat appealing compared to what DC has been dishing out over the last year or so. In fact, it's probably time to consider the damage done by the Countdown miniseries and its related spinoffs."

--Dick Hyacinth

"Sometimes your boss is wrong. Yup, as amazing as it sounds, Dan DiDio, architect of today's DC Universe, the man who gets up in front of a million fans at conventions across the globe, my boss, was wrong."

--Mark Chiarello, from this week's unintentionally poorly-timed DC Nation

Warren Ellis On The Current State of DC & more...

Apparently someone on the Comic Forums posted a message Warren Ellis sent to his mailing list regarding Morrison, Dixon, DC, etc.. (I obviously have no direct link to the mailing list email, so if this is an inaccurate posting of the contents of the message, please let me know).

In the message, Ellis gives praise to the DC leadership while at the same time expressing disbelief at what he views as a series of current debacles. The only seeming blame he has is directed at "some lifers at DC editorial":

"People like talking shit about Dan Didio online. The truth is that he's actually a smart guy who, on entering the company, had to make some tough decisions fairly quickly. It's also true that some lifers at DC editorial are very resistant to any kind of change. Are some of them just plain nasty and dumb enough to say, "screw Morrison, we'll do our own story, and if it blows his big reveals, well, fuck ím''? I would hope not, but it does seem to have happened anyway."

Personally, after reading a number of posts in the last couple of days, including the fairly extensive io9 one by Graeme McMillan -- and just having time to think about it -- my intuition is telling me that all our speculation, pros, cons, guesses, defenses, offenses, parsing, analyzing, etc. is moot at this point.

The tipping point has been reached.

***************

I used to be fairly good at intuiting stuff. I still am, but choose not to focus on this faculty as much as I used to, as it just got in the way and made life appear as one big Happy Days rerun.

The night before Acclaim Comics shut the doors of its NYC location and laid off about 75% of the company, I had a dream that we were all sitting around the conference room table, looking at a cake. Suddenly, everybody cut a slice of the cake, pulled it up close to themselves, and ran away. Then, in the dream, I saw strange people walk through our offices pulling down posters, unplugging computers, and repainting. I even saw one of my coworkers -- one of the few who were kept -- crying and walking the halls aimlessly.

So then I wake up from that, go to work, and get laid off. And it was still a shock, but then I thought back to the night before, and I was like "huh."

The night before one of my bosses at DC got fired, I began work on a short story about a person who worked in the industry for a long time and was suddenly fired and felt disillusioned. I wrote this long, uncomfortable scene where he gets called into the boss's office and let go. I completely didn't know my boss was going to get fired, but maybe I intuited it; picked up on subtle cues in the office that other people missed. Maybe writing that story was my subconscious way to cope.

The morning before another boss got fired, there had been weird rumors going around the office that something to the effect was about to happen. Being a practical, rational soul, I did the only thing I could do -- consult my online tarot cards. When I asked if my boss was really going to get canned, the Death card immediately popped up -- one question, one card. And so I was like, "huh." And when he was let go later that day, I had to fake surprise. Because I had already experienced all the emotions already.

This is all to say, I think I care far too much what happens in the comics industry. I'm supposed to have intuitive flashes about global warming and world wars. Five years from now, the current line-ups at the companies will be largely different, anyway. In some fundamental ways, the medium will be different, too. So what is going to happen in the industry one week from now, one month from now, or one year from now are not really that key. But it might be good for some general online discussion, and a few good books might come out of it.

Even with a complete regime change, it would take nearly a year to get DCU's output back on track, or to have changes really show in the books themselves.

***************

I find Grant Morrison & Alan Moore's esoteric views regarding comic book narratives and how they can reflect reality very interesting. Grant has already admitted to putting "sigils" into some of his comic book narratives in order to create change in the world. In an issue of Promethea, Moore has Hermes/Mercury turn to the reader and wonder about where the boundaries lie between the narrative/reader and fantasy/reality. Crazy stuff, to be sure. But speculated about by two of the most high-profile writers in comic books. Thank God for the sober world of Frank Miller, no?

Over the last five years or so we've seen DC go through an Identity Crisis, an Infinite Crisis, and a year-long Countdown to their Final Crisis.

In the mid-80s, the original Crisis in DC Comics launched a period of, in my opinion, really great comic books by the company. Crisis was the bridge DC crossed to finally leave the camp and "old way" behind, and to embrace a far more adult and literate approach to producing comics. Sure, there were good and smart books that had come out before Crisis, but it was in the aftermath of the event where all the great stuff really burst forth.

I really see Final Crisis as being at the other end of the continuum of that great original series. Crisis launched a period of great expansion and growth for the company. The 1989 Batman movie was like its zenith, coupled with the output of the entity that would soon be Vertigo. Then things began to very slowly devolve. Change stopped in favor of a status quo where people thought they would and should stay in their jobs forever. And yet, there were still great books being put out. But still, there was this slow, steady decay.

DiDio's arrival at DC WAS their new "Crisis." Seen through the eyes of a Morrison or Moore mindset, the events that followed reflected the panic and upheaval in the offices as DiDio applied, to paraphrase a line from the Batman movie, an "enema" to Gotham City. So we had Identity Crisis: "who were we going to be as a company?" And, like in that mini-series, several people were sacrificed in the midst of that period of confusion. But, this happens in every company. Only in comics, we've got the colorful costumes.

I deeply believe that every great period of history and art is proceeded by a devolution to complete and utter chaos. And I firmly believe that the last several years were the DCU's birth pains into a new and better comic book line. Of course, that will not happen as the result of "business as usual." And it won't.

*******************************

But what do I know? I wanted to see "The Love Guru" in the theaters.



(Final Crisis image found via Comic By Comic)

Secret Invasion #2 Outsells Final Crisis #1...

...by around 40,000 copies.

(via Journalista)

Countdown To Change: Final Crisis

Look, personally, I have no problem with like 85% of DC Comics.

That said, I think their "DC Universe" output is, outside certain pockets of material, a massive train-wreck. Rather, the fabric of the DC Universe is a train-wreck, it has no spinal cord, and there are just some selected good things floating around aimlessly around it.

The case regarding this breakdown has been laid out here far better than anything I could have possibly written. So read that and then come back here (if you wish).

In good times, even if you f**k up a bit, you can coast in a place like DC. But, we are virtually in a recession. It will not stand.

Only one of three things can happen now -- and happen soonish.

1. DiDio leaves
2. Certain editors leave
3. DiDio and certain editors leave

This is not "maybe this will happen one day." This is now. Because you need to just slash and burn what is not working there and start planting seeds now.

Honestly? I would be very surprised if DiDio suddenly left or was forced out. I don't think it is going to happen right now.

Further -- While I thought that DiDio made decisions regarding Identity Crisis, etc, that were short-sighted and misguided -- he never made me feel personally uncomfortable as a woman. Shallow of me I know, to count that as a plus for the old man, but yeah, that's part of how I gauge things. Sorry. He never invited me to a strip club after work with freelancers and then publicly told me I was a "prude" for not coming along, he never suggested that I flirt with and date my superiors in order to get management "off all of our backs," and he never made references to my boobage. So bully for Mr. DiDio, he gets a gold star (or at least a silver one).

Now, do I think DC as a whole, after all these years of under one regime, could benefit from starting over again and getting a true comic book veteran -- maybe someone with some previous experience from another successful company -- in the EIC or at least managing editor seat? Sure. Absolutely. Maybe they wouldn't even have to look that far.

But at least -- DC, get in some new editors. Look at your house and go get some new editors. Look at the scorecard, book-by-book, and get a few new editors, and give some others the chance to do everything they wanted to do had they not clung so tenaciously to their jobs thinking it was the best thing they could ever achieve. And it's not an age thing -- God knows, when Andy Helfer was working there he was more in touch with what the youth culture was really reading than we were, and had he been listened to more DC could have gotten a bigger jump on the manga market. It's a jadedness thing. Jadedness is the kiss of death.

Yeah, it's going to be challenging working with DiDio, but go get some fresh new editors, give them some sort of incentive, and see what happens. I once got a bonus expressly for working with a "difficult editor." That's awesome. Do more of that. Lay the groundwork now. Even if you lay the groundwork now, it's going to take at least a year to heal things, but start now.

Now, DiDio has to trust those editors. He has to. He has to get more fresh go-getters like Marts -- and maybe not even from comics, maybe even from standard publishing or other places in DC -- and he has to trust them. Trust them, nurture them, let them shine -- then take some of the credit. It's the easiest goddamn way to run a division. Get great talent, stay out of their way. Get great talent, stay out of their way. Get great talent, stay out of their way.

Until DC addresses certain things I think they didn't handle effectively, I will always have some sort of a chip on my shoulder about them. I'll be honest with you. I would be lying if I said otherwise. There are certain things that...really, I'm disappointed in. Sometimes angry. Usually just disappointed and resigned about. I think those ineffectively handled things -- I think it plain ol' produced bad karma. And there was bad karma from before that, before I was even there. Seriously. And they have to clean the bad karma out of that department. I'm serious -- to the point where they light candles and hire that midget from Poltergeist. It's that bad.

"Step into the light...all are welcome."

No seriously, let me get this straight --

Countdown and Death Of The New Gods were sort of out-of-continuity and/or pointless?

???

"Again, bear in mind thatCountdown only finished last month so Final Crisis was already well underway long before Countdown and although I’ve tried to avoid contradicting much of the twists and turns of that book as I can with the current Final Crisis scripts, the truth is, we were too far down the road of our own book to reflect everything that went on in Countdown, hence the disconnects that online commentators, sadly, seem to find more fascinating than the stories themselves."

"Orion’s appearance on the docks and the Guardians’ response in Final Crisis #1 was written and drawn first. Jim Starlin then created Orion’s death scene in Death Of The New Gods to lead into the War God’s appearance in Final Crisis #1, so we refer back to Jim’s scene in Final Crisis #3. When I wrote that scene, Orion’s terminal injuries were a result of the mysterious bolt of light which Jim hit him with in Death Of The New Gods #6. By the time Countdown #1 came out, I was working on Final Crisis #4 and #5 and JG was drawing #3, so we were already well into our own story and unable to change it to match Countdown."

"What mattered to me was what had already been written, drawn or plotted in Final Crisis. The Guardians didn’t call 1011 when Lightray and the other gods died in Countdown because, again, Final Crisis was already underway before Countdown came out.

"Why didn’t Superman recount his experiences from DOTNG ? Because those experiences hadn’t been thought up or written when I completed Final Crisis #1. If there was only me involved, Orion would have been the first dead New God we saw in a DC comic, starting off the chain of events that we see in Final Crisis. As it is, the best I can do is suggest that the somewhat contradictory depictions of Orion and Darkseid’s last-last-last battle that we witnessed in Countdown and DOTNG recently were apocryphal attempts to describe an indescribable cosmic event."

I'm getting lunch.

My final question --

How soon does Grant Morrison pull a Straczynski in the face of this criticism and blame DCU editorial directly? How soon? I mean, he's already sort of doing it in this Newsarama article, but in a really nice roundabout way...

Accessibility

From a Publisher's Weekly interview with Dan DiDio:

PWCW: The recent 50-cent special DC Universe 0 has taken some heat for being fairly inaccessible to people who weren’t hardcore DCU customers already. How did that issue end up being presented as a jumping-on point?

DD: My opinion is that DCU 0 was accessible to the people who understand and read comics and understand the stories and characters and world.

No, but seriously --

If the income generated from monthly floppies are not the bread-and-butter of a company like Time Warner -- if it's the intellectual property generated from the floppies that is the prize -- and DC fanboys and fangirls provide steady numbers and dollars for the floppies, how would it benefit the current regime to deviate from that?

I mean, seriously, if the comics themselves were selling millions of copies, and DC said -- "no, we don't want your millions, we want Kamandi!" -- then I could see how they were willfully screwing themselves.

But they are selling to people who in some instances buy $300 replica "museum quality" DC Direct items. They buy $100 absolute editions and $50 omnibuses and they go to Midtown Comics on a Wednesday and just pick these comics off the rack like they were grapes, a stack of new comics to devour the size of two phonebooks.

And they will buy anything. As long as it has the characters they love -- in the versions they loved as younger collectors -- in the comic.

That sort of readership feeds not only the DCU monthly floppy machine, it feeds the DC Direct machine and the DC Backlist machine.

Now, do I think lighting a fire under the DCU's ass on the level of what happened in 1999, 2000, 2001 at Marvel -- with Axel Alonso and Marvel Knights and making Captain America strong again and all that great new talent -- would benefit the company? It very well might.

But --

It's not necessary. I know it may seem, from where we sit, necessary that DC beat Marvel in sales. But, that is not what is really important to The Powers That Be. What is more important is that Marvel is kicking DC's ass in movies. That's what the Powers That Be care about.

Now, the movies are the macrocosm. Let's go back to the microcosm, the comics industry.

Is DC going to risk that nice, steady income from their monthly floppies by doing anything that might alienate the fans? Are they going to take that chance? Are they going to go with the "devil" they know, or the "devil" they don't?

It's like the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe. It's not for everybody. And the comic is very successful -- but I don't find it that new-reader friendly either. You really have to be familiar with that mythos to understand and appreciate and, frankly, stomach it (it can be sooo emo!). But, how to make Buffy more new-reader friendly? Explain every issue, either explicitly or implicitly, all the bits and pieces of that tortured story? You alienate the hardcore fans this way. The hardcore fans just want to dive into the story like a mosh pit and get their rocks off.

That's what books like Final Crisis appeals to. It is a sticky yummy mosh pit of continuity and story for hardcore DC fans. It will have its ups and its downs, but it will be purchased.

As for courting new readers, that's what the other imprints are for -- far easier to experiment with webcomics and manga than it is with that Justice League comic that brings in the steady numbers every month.

But don't get me started on how they offered a second printing of DC Universe 0 for $1.00. That's where, for me, the sidewalk ends and I get cranky.