Posted by Jer at 5:39 AM on
Friday, May 18, 2007
There's a new installment of Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed over at Comics Should Be Good. I love this feature, even when the things that Cronin posts aren't really urban legends but more "industry trivia". This one has a real urban legend though -- despite what I've heard around the Internets, Orson Welles was never making a Batman movie.
Anyway, go read them for yourselves. I want to blather specifically about a quote from Beau Smith in the second article:
(Emphasis mine). First the caveats -- this is a quote from a second hand source (Smith) who heard it from "one of the editors" at DC. It's possible that either the editor or Smith didn't understand Didio's actual objection, or that Didio didn't actually have such an objection at all and the editor was misreading a situation.
With those caveats in mind, I'm going to make the assumption that this statement is basically true based on the evidence. Discounting All*Star Batman And Robin (which I contend is unintentionally funny and that Miller is trying to write it straight), there really isn't that much humor in the DC universe these days, at least in the core titles. Everything gets taken so seriously, or at least as seriously as you can take a bunch of people running around with their underwear on the outside of their bodies.
There's also the fact that the characters who have been abused the most by the current editorial regime are the ones from the 80's Justice League series by Keith Giffen and J.M. Demattias, whose primary characteristics were a lack of the "big guns" of the DC universe (due to editorial constraints) and TV comedy-style scripting that mixed intentional humor in with the typical superhero drama. In the minds of at least some fans, that era of Justice League is remembered as the "silly League", even though objectively it's much less silly than, say, Gardner Fox's Justice League of the 60's.
If Didio does have a dislike of superhero humor, one could see why he might want to use those characters as a way of drawing a line in the sand and saying "no more funny stuff". For the fans who have been around long enough (DC's target demographic these days), those actions were a very clear indicator of what was to come.
Apparently fun books suffer a sales hit. I'm actually not surprised by this in the least -- I've been around enough comic book stores to know where the general tastes of the comic buying public lie. Of course, looking at the sales of DC comics in the year after the end of Infinite Crisis shows they aren't doing all that well saleswise, even catering to the "I don't like fun in my comics" crowd.
This is not, by the way, an argument that catering to that crowd has hurt their sales. I think that is true for the long term, but the short-term horserace numbers between Marvel and DC don't support that at all, given that Marvel also seems to be attempting to get the "I don't like fun in my comics" readership. DC's problems seem to be more scheduling related -- while 52 consistently placed in the charts last year, other books that should be cornerstone books like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman slipped off the radar due to creative team juggling and the inability of the assigned creative teams to stick to a monthly schedule. Marvel doesn't do too much better with this scheduling stuff either -- look at the publishing schedule of Iron Man, for example, but they at least had a mega-crossover pushing things along through last year. DC had 52 which explicitly DID NOT crossover with any of the other books in their line, and so none of their "core" could get a boost from folks following their big event.
What does this mean for the long run? I suspect more of the same. If in the current market "fun" doesn't sell, and if there's no push to expand the market beyond the current fanbase, then the publishers will continue to "give the market what it wants". Those who like these types of things will keep buying them; those who don't like them will either stop buying them or (more likely) keep buying them and bitch about it. But there will be a stream of folks who just stop buying -- not in an ostentatious "I'm never buying a DC comic again" sort of way, but just drift away and find somewhere else to spend their time and money. Which is the best thing you can do, really, if you don't find what the "market" is giving you to be entertaining anymore.
Anyway, go read them for yourselves. I want to blather specifically about a quote from Beau Smith in the second article:
I got a letter from DC telling me that Dan [Didio] figured that without the show being on TV and such that there wasn’t in their best interest to do the book now. I was disappointed and disagreed. Marketing and business 101 in the comic book direct market will tell you that there IS an audience for Wonder Woman and Xena going toe to toe. TV show or not. I was also told by one of the editors that Dan [Didio] wasn’t a fan of humor with their icon heroes. Wonder Woman being one of em’.
(Emphasis mine). First the caveats -- this is a quote from a second hand source (Smith) who heard it from "one of the editors" at DC. It's possible that either the editor or Smith didn't understand Didio's actual objection, or that Didio didn't actually have such an objection at all and the editor was misreading a situation.
With those caveats in mind, I'm going to make the assumption that this statement is basically true based on the evidence. Discounting All*Star Batman And Robin (which I contend is unintentionally funny and that Miller is trying to write it straight), there really isn't that much humor in the DC universe these days, at least in the core titles. Everything gets taken so seriously, or at least as seriously as you can take a bunch of people running around with their underwear on the outside of their bodies.
There's also the fact that the characters who have been abused the most by the current editorial regime are the ones from the 80's Justice League series by Keith Giffen and J.M. Demattias, whose primary characteristics were a lack of the "big guns" of the DC universe (due to editorial constraints) and TV comedy-style scripting that mixed intentional humor in with the typical superhero drama. In the minds of at least some fans, that era of Justice League is remembered as the "silly League", even though objectively it's much less silly than, say, Gardner Fox's Justice League of the 60's.
If Didio does have a dislike of superhero humor, one could see why he might want to use those characters as a way of drawing a line in the sand and saying "no more funny stuff". For the fans who have been around long enough (DC's target demographic these days), those actions were a very clear indicator of what was to come.
Apparently fun books suffer a sales hit. I'm actually not surprised by this in the least -- I've been around enough comic book stores to know where the general tastes of the comic buying public lie. Of course, looking at the sales of DC comics in the year after the end of Infinite Crisis shows they aren't doing all that well saleswise, even catering to the "I don't like fun in my comics" crowd.
This is not, by the way, an argument that catering to that crowd has hurt their sales. I think that is true for the long term, but the short-term horserace numbers between Marvel and DC don't support that at all, given that Marvel also seems to be attempting to get the "I don't like fun in my comics" readership. DC's problems seem to be more scheduling related -- while 52 consistently placed in the charts last year, other books that should be cornerstone books like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman slipped off the radar due to creative team juggling and the inability of the assigned creative teams to stick to a monthly schedule. Marvel doesn't do too much better with this scheduling stuff either -- look at the publishing schedule of Iron Man, for example, but they at least had a mega-crossover pushing things along through last year. DC had 52 which explicitly DID NOT crossover with any of the other books in their line, and so none of their "core" could get a boost from folks following their big event.
What does this mean for the long run? I suspect more of the same. If in the current market "fun" doesn't sell, and if there's no push to expand the market beyond the current fanbase, then the publishers will continue to "give the market what it wants". Those who like these types of things will keep buying them; those who don't like them will either stop buying them or (more likely) keep buying them and bitch about it. But there will be a stream of folks who just stop buying -- not in an ostentatious "I'm never buying a DC comic again" sort of way, but just drift away and find somewhere else to spend their time and money. Which is the best thing you can do, really, if you don't find what the "market" is giving you to be entertaining anymore.
Labels: comics, dc comics, marvel, rambling thoughts
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