My second biggest problem with DC comics as comics is how often I would be going along in one of the select DC series that I read and suddenly without any real warning I would come into the middle of a story line that had started in three other series that I had no interest at all in reading. And then the story I had gotten attached to would veer so far off track and it wouldn’t make any sense unless I shelled out another $12-20 for five pages that actually related to my interests.
Marvel occasionally did it too, but, even during the big old Civil War story line, as long as you knew that the event was happening you could follow just your favorites and they would individually make sense.
I found myself wondering why I didn’t really have this problem with the CWDC shows and their five part crossovers that span between all of their shows. I’ve occasionally taken issue with their content or their habit to claim to start during Supergirl, but only really in the last five minutes, but I’ve never really had any trouble with the idea that if I don’t watch them all then stuff won’t make any sense.
After thinking it over, I came to two basic conclusions:
1) The more obvious one. While I don’t and never have read every title published by DC (or any comic company) at any given time, I do tend to watch all of the CWDC shows (I did briefly quit Supergirl when they erased Alex’s memories, but caught up when they fixed that. Also, may have skipped a good portion of the end of season 4 of Arrow.) So it doesn’t really change my viewing habits except I feel more of a pressure to watch them all live, which can be a bit of an issue.
2) I’m not paying anything for them. The average comic from the two big name companies when I was younger was $2.99 an issue and now it’s $3.99 an issue (and issues seem to be getting shorter at that) and honestly both of those prices seemed like too much to spend when it seemed like every other issue I was being asked to buy several more books just to keep up. One might have to spend more time and suffer through more ads to keep up with the big Crossover Event, but you’re not paying a dime more than what you would already be paying for TV or internet or whatever.
