Colin's Deep Thoughts
I was texting with a couple of people this morning. About the future of comics. It was good enough to share, so I will summarize some of it here. Marvel: What happened to the architects? The people plotting the course of the Marvel U? When was the last time you were genuinely excited about a book coming out that you wanted to get to the store early so that it wasn’t spoiled for you? How do we get back to that level of excitement for comics? I opened during Civil War and I definitely saw that excitement. The person I was talking to said Secret War. That was a while ago. Several marvel books that were critical to AXE (X-Men and Avengers) have had post AXE issues come out before the story ended, so the “threat” seems not that great. Yes, it will be nice to see how they get out of it, but, it would have been nice to feel there was a little danger. But at least Marvel has variety. DC is so Batman heavy, it is ridiculous. It was mentioned on a message board that DC only has 4 ongoing titles right now that are not Batman related: Action, Superman (rebooting), Flash and Wonder Woman. That is just nuts. Yes, lots of mini-series, but weird only having that many ongoing books. I am also concerned about the volume of Batman stuff. I see in the November book, DC is adding 2 more Batman titles. Come on guys. This concern led me to another problem. DC has 2 BIG books that they are promoting and want us to order big on: Batman/Spawn by Todd McFarlane and Batman & Joker by Marc Silvestri. a) Its really tricky to promote two books at once, especially from one company. Dark Crisis is doing much better that Flashpoint Beyond because people only have so much attention. Let alone other company stuff. b) they are both essentially vanity projects for the creators. The more I thought about it, I realized that these are both people whose height of popularity was 30 years ago. How do I pitch these to a 20 yr old? Has Silvestri done anything of note in their lifetime. Not trying to be critical, just realistic. You also have a creative director whose best years were 30 years ago. And their big event in November is the 30th Anniversary of the Death of Superman. And they are doing 90s variants. Why are they pushing books to 40 to 60 year olds? How are they garnering a new audience with this strategy? What I truly hope is that after Dark Crisis and Lazarus Planet they decide to revamp their entire line. Leave the Bat-verse alone. Its fine, but maybe no new books there for a while. Look elsewhere. Hopefully, along with the new JSA book, we get new JLA and Justice League Dark type books. A new Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps. Supergirl. Legion. Aquaman. Teen Titans/Young Justice. Hawkman (gosh, he’s in a big new movie), Dr Fate (ditto). There is so much more to the DCU. They are hyper focused on Batman. I get it. It sells well. They are now uber-corporate and need to hit numbers. But chances need to be taken with more than minis. I love Human Target and Dark knights of Steel and DC vs Vampires and the idea of Danger Street. But the idea of a big universe of characters is also really important. Minis are great, but they are really hard to find your numbers on for a store. You normally get it right around issue 3, so on a 5 issue series, you are just guessing. And we guess low. Customers are more liable to trade wait a 5/6 issue story. Ongoing books develop longer stories. You can branch new characters and books out of them. Its just crazy to me how little variety there is at DC right now. I really hope that there is a plan to use Dark Crisis as a Multiverse rest and they really let creators run with it. I hope. Because another Bat-family book is not going to get anyone excited. And we need more excitement right now.