Category — Comics

Dear DC Comics,

I’m a  longtime reader - I remember clutching an issue of Firestorm in my white-knuckled hands as I took my very first plane ride and wishing that Ronnie Raymond and Dr. Stein would show up to rescue me when the turbulence got unbearable.  I tell you this not to invoke pathos, just to point out that I’ve been in this for the long haul.

I’m writing because I wanted to tell you that I’m a big fan of your current direction.  One of my favorite books is Judd Winick’s Titans.  Please keep Mr. Winick in your clutches as long as you can and make sure that he writes even more books going forward.  More Winick, less Morrison.  I don’t like to think when I read.

Some other things I really like: unnecessary death and brutality, Gunfire, the dark and edgy take on the Marvel family, Alex Ross’s continued involvement with the plot of JSA, and the character of Atrocitus.  He should have his own series.  I like him so much that I’ve been practicing vomiting up my own blood! I’d suggest that this Red Lantern ongoing replace something stupid like Blue Beetle, but you’ve already come to your senses and axed that pitiful comic.  Maybe you can pull the plug on that awful “Catman and Deadshot Make Out for 20 Pages” book next.

Also, what about a book where Lobo kills people and makes out with Starfire a lot?  Maybe him and Robotman (or a dark, edgy Animal Man who wears a trenchcoat instead of a bomber jacket!) could have beers and then brutally kill C-list DC villains?  I think it’s a good idea and I’d be available to write it.

I was starting to get anxious a year or two ago when I read that your tone was going to be changing to a more family-friendly (lame) one, but I’m incredibly happy that that never actually happened.  Don’t listen to the haters; they obviously don’t understand what’s fun and awesome about comics.  Will we be seeing more Wonder Dog outside of Teen Titans?  Maybe he can kill Phantom Lady or Zatanna or Spoiler (hee hee).

Thanks for noticin’ me,

Jeff

Like most thinking people of taste, I love Kate Spencer.  More accurately, I love Marc Andreyko’s Manhunter - a comic that began with a wild reinterpretation of the Manhunter legacy and proceeded to lovingly tie it into not only Kate’s Manhunter-mantle-donning predecessors, but into the greater DCU as a whole by incorporating the JSA and the not-often-enough-lamented classic Infinity Inc. and Chase.

There’s no denying that Manhunter was one of the best books published by DC in terms of quality, but in terms of sales, it was always a disappointment.  It’s true that Bob Wayne saved the book from the chopping block, but in retrospect, it almost seems like the book was set up to fail from the moment of its salvation, between its inconsistent shipping schedule (all of that time that DC spent letting Andreyko and Gaydos “get a head start on the book” also helped to kill awareness - go figure) and - and this is an old gripe between me and the The House of DiDio - their total lack of promotion of a critical darling title outside of free press online.

Guess what, DC?  I don’t have a chart to look at, but I’m going to guarantee you that most of Manhunter’s readership consisted of fans who actively participate in online fandom.  Promoting the book to those people creates some good will, yeah, but it ignores the masses of people who aren’t reading the book already.

Where were the house ads?  Where were the guest appearances from the JLA?  Kate did join the Birds of Prey, but that’s a book that Venns almost completely with Manhunter, if I don’t miss my guess.  It’s not promotion to put a character from one book into a book that all of those readers are already reading!  There’s no ‘gateway factor’ there at all.  All that seems to exist at DC these days is a strategy of making the core following of a book happy and forgetting everything else.  I’m tempted to think that they want to turn every title’s fanbase in a viral marketing street team, but hoping that anything will go viral is a bit like asking for a unicorn for Christmas - at best, it won’t have the effect you dreamed of and at worst, you get a drunked crayon sketch signed “Love, Dadd.”

Of course, I’m not saying anything new about DC’s marketing strategy.  No matter how smart and precocious your toddler is, you shouldn’t throw her out the window and then be shocked that she can’t fly.

So, I’m bursting into the splendid nonactivity of User Generated Content Week (I swear, I will finish all the post requests this week) to share something I just read on Newsarama. I only do this because some of you are of the (correct) opinion that reading the site is the psychic equivalent of punching yourself in the solar plexus over and over and over again. This quote from Faith Erin Hicks, however, is what 5 out of 4 dentists refer to as “the shit”:

I look at a show like Gilmore Girls, and I think, “What an awesome show! I love the character interaction! But having the inhabitants of Star’s Hollow stalked by zombies would be even better!”

I not only bring this up because it’s a) pretty funny and b) an awesome idea besides, but because c) I’ve made the exact same observation before. Spooky!

If you’ve not read Hicks’s (or is it Hicks’ - English degree be damned, I always mess that up) stuff, you should peruse Zombies Calling, which puts some self-aware zombie cinema fans in the midst of a zombie invasion (and whether it’s The Monster Squad or Scream, that’s always a scenario I enjoy) or December’s The War At Ellesmere, which I’ve just now preordered.

If you dare to read the whole thing (I’d recommend it), click here. It’s a funny read and it’s nice to see an indie comics creator not talk down to/about the industry while still acknowledging that it is Or you can eschew the Rama and go right to her personal Web site and learn more about her awesome comics.

After a brief flurry of posting activity, I fell totally silent for a few weeks, no?

Sorry, Single Reader. I’m still in the wake of a major life change, and that includes moving, living out of boxes and, inexplicably, planting trees. No, I didn’t go to prison. No, I haven’t retired from blogging. No, I didn’t get hit by a bus because I didn’t forward a chain email to my 20 closest friends. No, I wasn’t targeted by Teddy Crane, the Exterminape.

I survived Baltimore Comic Con without contracting the Con Plague that some of the attendees seem to have gotten. I got to hang out with Caroline and Jennifer from Fantastic Fangirls (who joined me in geeking out about Mark Waid and Jann Jones chilling in Einstein Bros. a few tables away from us), had a chat with C.B. Cebulski about our shared love of the 80s X-Books, and got a bitchin’ sketch of the Silver Surfer from Pittsburgh-based cartoonist Jeremiah Witkowski. I’ll scan it once I get a scanner again.

I think I’ll adopt a regular posting schedule again soon. Be cool everyone!

If you’re like me, and your ultra-lucrative portfolio has been dashed to pieces on the cruel, sharp rocks of the credit crunch. But I’m not getting too down about it; I’m putting my energy into formulating a real, workable solution.

See, the problem is the dollar. It’s devauled almost to the point of irrelevance. What we need is a new currency: something with very little inherent value of its own and a large, untapped supply.

Echoing conversations that I’ve had with Kevin and Rich within the past week, the too-young death of DC’s Minx imprint seems to be symptomatic of DC’s chronic allergy to self-promotion outside of its oh-so-clever house ads. Individual books in the line got some glowing press (The Plain Janes, Re-Gifters and New York Four - which are my favorite three of the ones I’ve read, incidentally) but I’m not aware of the books ever finding their target audience. Instead, the Minx line was relegated mostly to existing fans of the authors and artists involved, and I’ve noted the disparity between the target audience and the audience actually excited about the books in the past.

Why? I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve seen a Minx book in a Borders or Barnes and Noble, and I’ve certainly never seen promotional materials for them beyond the sampler I got at this year’s NYCC and the promo copy of Janes that Jim Rugg gave me at last year’s. In fact, I wouldn’t have been excited for Minx at all if it weren’t for Intertron pal Hugh Stewart, who’s been a bigger booster for the imprint than he’s had a right to be without being compensated by DC.

DC reminds me more and more of myself circa every middle school dance I ever attended. I stood against the wall, looking aloof, and wondered why the girls weren’t noticing. But hey, the people already in my clique thought I was awesome.

In the wake of his vicious, Twitter-based assault on former employer BOOM Studios, Kevin Church will be developing a new miniseries for Marvel. The project? Dazzler/MODOK: Strange Love.

Geoff Johns may be crafting the story of DC Universe Online, but fan favorite Roy Thomas has volunteered to write a 60-issue series explaining all of the inconsistencies between the game and established comics canon. When reached for comment, Thomas went on for two hours about the hidden connections between Tarantula and I, Spyder.

The much-hyped Bendis Vs. Kirkman panel taking place at Baltimore Comic Con this Saturday is not a debate. It’s a pudding wrestling match.

Pre-emptive Spotted on the Con Floor:

• Frank Cho seen sketching a girl with ridiculously large breasts.
• Me seen getting stared at when I try to get Art Baltazar to autograph every issue of Tiny Titans.
• Adam Hughes seen sketching a girl with ridiculously large breasts.
• Ultra-Rare print copies of Grok, the Alert Nerd Zine.
• Dan DiDio seen eating a child’s soul.

So, gas costs are still something like eighty dollars a gallon, and I drive a half hour to get to my comics retailer (insert another plug for Scranton, PA’s The Unknown). That creates a financial quandary, and the answer is cutting my pull list. And yes, one solution is to simply outsource my comics buying to Heavyink and cut the drive out altogether, but I like supporting local businesses, and local comic shops (so many of which have gone extinct) even moreso.

So, I’m taking a look at my pull list and seeing just what exactly I need to have.

DC
All-New Atom
Batman
Birds of Prey
Booster Gold
Blue Beetle
Final Crisis
Green Lantern
JLA
JSA
Legion of Super Heroes
Manhunter
Teen Titans
Wonder Woman

Marvel
Avengers: The Initiative
New Avengers
Mighty Avengers
Secret Invasion
Amazing Spider-Man
Captain America
Invincible Iron Man
Immortal Iron Fist
Punisher: War Journal
Uncanny X-Men
X-Force
X-Men Legacy
Young X-Men

Image
Dynamo 5
Invincible
Noble Causes

Dynamite
Zorro

It now looks a little something like this:

Some of those books (Atom, Noble Causes) are going away organically. Others, like Iron Fist, Booster Gold and Punisher, are rooted in creative team changes (and my dropping Punisher isn’t a knock on Rick Remender, who is an awesome guy - it’s just a convenient place to back away from Frank Castle - a character I’ve never really liked as much as I’ve liked what Matt Fraction was doing with him.

Looking at Marvel, I’ve still got most of those ’spine’ books - the ones that the flavor and plot of the larger universe are built on. As you might guess, I really like what Marvel is building right now and I enjoy their stable of creative talent. On the DC side, I’ve pared down to just the books I really enjoy. I’m on the fence about a few DC books, like Action and Batman, but not going to commit to them long-term, for various reasons.

On the Marvel side, I’m basically reading ASM on an arc-to-arc basis, and I flirt with going back to it full time, but never seriously enough to have it pulled for me.

Are any of the rest of you cutting your list? What are you keeping and what are you ditching?