DC owes their TV success to Buffy

DC has had a pretty good success with their super hero TV shows in spite of underwhelming showings in the box office.   How do they hit that teen-twenty-something market so effectively?  Well they recreate Buffy in every show. 

Buffy had her Scooby team.   Every successful DC show has replicated this formula.  It might not be obvious unless you watch the shows back to back to back though.  After watching Smallville, Arrow, and The Flash, you can turn on Supergirl and wonder, "who is the character that is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing. 

"Oh, they just have a team dynamic and this is true of every show," you might say. Yes, to a degree.  All of these shoes have the same characters mapped out.  Hacker/science (admittedly, almost all of the Flash characters fall under this heading), comic relief, wise mentor, not quite good/evil character, and somewhere along the line another super friend to come to help when chips are down.  This is exactly the Buffy formula, I think it might be the first time this formula is used on TV.  It is a slight tweak to the actual Scooby gang (from Scooby-do). 

Other pieces of the formula include Monster of the week with big bad theme throughout season.  Special circumstance that creates all the evil they are to fight/most villains have a common background/origin. 

It really is a can't miss formula and only becomes obvious when you have three shows on one network using it at the same time under the banner of an expanded universe.

If you like the DC shows and have not seen Buffy, I suggest that you check it out.  While the DC shows are arguably good, Buffy was great (for the most part) and really pretty revolutionary in some episodes. 



Miss Martian-NCCW

After reading that issue of Teen Titans, Miss Martian has been on my mind a lot.  What is it with green girls that attract a guy.  Miss Martian has the added advantage of having red hair.  Sure Miss Martian is actually a white martian parading around in green face, but hopefully that gets retconned.

How We Read Comics

In the past few weeks I have gone over various technological developments that change the way we consume media.  With the tablet computing, it would look like comic books are not far from being revolutionized themselves.  Add to this the announcment last week that DC will be rebooting/renumbering its entire universe, in no small part to transition to a digital format, and it looks like a sure thing.  I don't think it is though.
Comics started out as cheap entertainment.  In the 40's, when the comic book market first took off, they were throw away entertainment.  People that worked on them were so ashamed of what they were doing that they didn't even put their names on their work.  They didn't want credit for what they were doing.  Comic book publishers would steal ideas and talent from each other and when something sold they would do it to death. 
Somewhere along the line, comic books became collector's items.  People would save and take care of the comics they had and would collect whole runs.  They slowly moved from drug stores and news stands into specialized shops.  In 1988 the stock market had a mini crash.  The value of collector's items like baseball cards and comic books did not take a hit.  This started the investment age of the 90's, when the price shot up dramatically, artists where superstars, and every comic had five chromium collector's covers.  Publishers were throwing money at artists and writers to pump out more material and most of it was total crap.  The market nosedived. 
In todays market, comics aren't so much for kids as kids can no longer afford the cover price.  Strong competition from manga books (produced cheaper and faster) have also hurt the industry.  While comic book movies have increased interest in the characters, publishers have failed to see any long term gains in readership.  Comic books stores generally are struggling.
Digital distribution sounds like the answer to comic book publishers.  People can read them on their tablet devises in full color with beautiful resolution.  Print costs go way down, even if they are still releasing a limited number of paper books.  Their may be an initial surge, but the publishers are forgetting that comic books have a collectability factor.  While very few fans are under the delusion that their collection is worth anything (at all!), they still remain collectable.  Downloading takes that away a lot, cloud collections will remove it completely. 
The comic book world will hemorage from this, few titles will be left standing as the quality control on most titles has been dismal and this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.  The publishers have been trying to shake up stagnant sales for years and quality never seems to be the answer they come up with.  The tablet while perfect for actual reading of comics is also perfect for animation and why have pictures sitting still on a page when  you can have them running around. 

The tablet and same day digital will not fix the ailing comic book publishing industry.  It may bring upon its death.  Comic books are no longer cheap entertainment and the industry no longer wants them to be collectables, it is sad to say, but if they have to stand on their own as quality entertainment, most titles are going to fall short.  When you read them on what are essentially mini computer/TVs they have to compete with other forms of more interactive media.  It will be interesting to see what the future holds. 

Blackest Night

Image via Wikipedia

I have been getting the TPBs of the the Blackest Night stuff.  For anyone that doesn't know, Blackest Night is a storyline that has been several years in the making and has been headed by Geoff Johns.  The Green Lanterns were only one color of the emotional spectrum, the other colors have been repressed.  Blackest Night centers around the Black Lanterns.  Black represents death on the spectrum, and the Black Lanterns are reanimated coprses of dead DCU characters. 

This was a big crossover all encompasing event.  While they haven't killed anyone specifically so they could be a Black Lantern, there have been no shortage of characters dying in the DCU over the past few years.  The even bring out some heavy hitters like Earth 2 Superman.  A lot of these character were not even super heroes themselves, like Pa Kent, Sue Dibney, Robin's (Tim Drake) dad.  Of course they were not afraid to kill a few people off in this event creating more opportunities for Black Lanterns.  Oddly the series brought about the resurection of the Barry Allen Flash.  This isn't really surprising as he has made several post death appearances and most of them in "big events."

The series itself is fun to read though.  You get to catch up with some dead characters as they toy with the guilt that was left on the people that survived them.  The Blackest Night books are generally better than the Green  Lantern Corps books, this might be because I didn't like Patrick Gleason's artwork at all. 

Overall it is a pretty good series.  Not sure how accessible it is to new readers, I would suggest starting at Green Lantern Rebirth and working your way up.  Like I said, Johns has been dropping hints and building this up for years. 

Geoff Johns is the best thing to happen to the Green Lantern since Abin Sur. 

Wizard Magazine has Folded-An Era has Ended

Topless Robot is reporting the demise of Wizard Magazine.  If you have ever collected comics, then you are likely familiar with it.  If not, this magazine pretty much was comics in the 90's.  It was your go to resource for news and prices. 

I started getting wizards in about 1992.  Then around 94 I started getting them for free as I knew someone who worked for the printing and binding company.  He would give me a cast off copy.  I eventually subscribed and received the mag for about 4 years and got some cool limited edition 1/2 comics. 

I grew up reading Marvel, so a lot of my vast knowledge of DC characters and golden/silver age titles came from reading this magazine.  Like I said, it was a great resource.  I don't know if this will affect their web site or their convention circuit, but the magazine did mean something to me once.  I still have a couple of boxes full of them.  The magazine's quality did decline in recent years, but you hate to see something like this go.

Goodbye Wizard Magazine, thanks for the Memories. 

Marvel VS DC the Calendar Edition

I was in the book store browsing 2011 calendars when I noticed that both Marvel and DC have "Women of" calendars.  I quickly compared the two and I think you will agree that Marvel is the clear winner here. 

The marvel calendar has lots of interesting art and great poses.  The graphic actually goes below the fold to allow the graphic to be larger.

The DC calendar is basically just using a bust shot, the art while not bad, is kind of boring with patterned backgrounds that don't really add anything.  The image continues through a transparent  calendar. 

Neither is bad, but Marvel clearly wins this battle.  If I could only buy one of the too, I would make mine Marvel. 

Final Crisis

Every once in a while a story comes along that is so bogged down and full of itself that it is almost incomprehensible to the people reading it.  This, my friends, is one of those stories. 

Take the entire DC universe and unite them into one storyline.  No wait, create other universes and unite them as well.  Make the evil be spread out so that everyone is everywhere.  Then create some kind of temporal disturbance so that the world is overrun by baddies instantly.  Now put superman everywhere. 
Now have the flash randomly run around.  Put the Green Lanterns in space moving slowly towards the Earth for the entire series.