Category Archives: Opinion

Dear Comics Internet…

I’d like to make a suggestion to comics fans everywhere. Or at least on the internet. Actually, probably most fans on the internet (comics or otherwise) could benefit from this suggestion.

But first, some background.

I’ve been trying for a few weeks to register to comment at DC’s official blog, The Source. Or rather, I’ve registered, but the original message never arrived, so I’ve been trying to get it to send me a password. No luck — only about 1 in 4 password resets actually show up in my mailbox, and I have yet to receive an actual password after confirming one.

But clearly someone is able to register, as you can see from the high quality of commentary on this Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance preview. (Be warned: there’s some swearing if that sort of thing bothers you.)

The Commentary

is it just me or is DC beating a dead horse with release after release of Final Crisis Aftermath mini series??? Enough all friggin ready.

For the love god, ANOTHER spin-off from a failed mini-series? DC, when you host your retailer summits, do you even listen to the retailers? Do the retailers stand and say, “Hey, Dan, can you please flood the market with a lot of junk and we’ll ’see-what-sticks’? And while you’re at it, how about dismantling your core characters to the point where they are no longer recognizable using rotating creative teams who constantly mess up continuity?”

I’m done.

There’s actually a point in this one (dismantling core characters), but it’s buried inside the “how dare they publish something I don’t want!”

gay. really gay. fuck final crisis and fuck all 4 of its “after the shitty job we did” mini-series.

Gee, not only swearing, but using “gay” as an insult. Obviously someone with discerning taste here. 🙄

From the DC Comics Corporate Offices:

“Our target demography is picking up Manga over comics, so if we create a team of young Japanese superheroes. It’s really going to change to comic industry!”
“And hey, let’s introduce them in Grant’s FANTASTIC summer event, he’s such a great writer! By the way, has he killed Batman the second time yet?”

FAIL.

Red Kitty Rage Alert!

Dextar

I do agree with mambazo, who says:

The ridiculous fan entitlement in this comment section only serves to show that the average comic fan has the maturity level of about an eight year old.

The Suggestion

So I’d like to make a suggestion to comics readers everywhere:

If you aren’t interested in a comic, and have no stake in the characters, JUST DON’T BUY IT. Don’t waste everyone’s time whining about how DC/Marvel/YoMamaComics is putting out some product that you personally have no interest in.

I can understand if you actually read the book and didn’t like it.

I can understand if you’re a fan of SuperUltraGuy, and you don’t like the latest take on the character. (Trust me, I understand!)

But if a publisher decides to print a comic book that you have no interest in whatsoever? A book that features characters you don’t care about in a story you don’t care about, that doesn’t interfere with books you are reading? Why get angry? Why take it personally?

I don’t read Superman, but I’m not going to get on message boards saying that DC is stupid for publishing it.

DC publishes dozens of comics that I have no interest in. So do Marvel, Dark Horse, Image, etc. So what? I couldn’t afford to buy every comic published. And if I did, I wouldn’t have time to read them all. I don’t have time to read all the comics I am buying — I’m about five months behind on Buffy and two on House of Mystery and Farscape, and I still haven’t read anything from this week or last except for Flash: Rebirth #2.

As long as there are comics I do want to read, why should I care that there are comics that I don’t want? As long as someone wants to read it, and as long as it’s not screwing up (IMO) characters and stories that I do care about, what’s the problem?

Wednesday Comics: Inevitable Collection?

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I’ve seen several people online talk about how they’re curious about Wednesday Comics, DC’s experiment to bring back the old full-page Sunday comics format…but that they’re going to wait for the “inevitable” collection.

The thing is, I’m not 100% certain there will be a collection. And if there is, it might not be what readers expect.

Sure, in a world where Amazons Attack gets reprinted as a hardcover book and Terror Titans gets reprinted as a trade paperback, and most comics are written in 4-6–issue story arcs, it certainly seems like everything will get collected eventually. (Except that last arc of Flash after Geoff Johns left, but then I’m not sure anyone misses it.) But two things make me wonder about this one:

It’s an experiment specifically designed to recapture a newspaper experience.
The pages are huge.

The first item means that, for once, the priority isn’t on the eventual collection: it’s back on the periodical.

As for the second, let’s look at the page size in more detail.

According to solicitations, each page will be 14 inches by 20 inches. Basically, open up two comic books flat, then line them up one above the other, and you’ve got the page size. Or pick up a newspaper. (The Los Angeles Times is currently 23″ x 12″ per single page, so WC is a little shorter and a little wider than a newspaper.) If they want to keep the page size, that’s going to be a big book. Certainly hardcover, and more suited to a coffee table than a bookshelf. Like this massive 21″ x 16″ 7-pound Little Nemo in Slumberland tome. That’s larger than (and almost as heavy as) Comic Book Tattoo!

Now, consider that DC charges $50 for a ~200-page hardcover in its Archive series at normal comic book dimensions. A ~200-page hardcover with 4x the page area is likely to cost even more.

So the options I see are:

Keep the page size and make it a gigantic expensive coffee table book.
Shrink the page size, sacrificing one of the main points of the format.
Make it half that size, and print each page sideways across a double-page spread — which means running a gutter right down the middle of each page.

If there is a collection, it’s likely to be either very big and very expensive, or a poorer reading experience than the original.

Of course, none of this matters if the experiment fails and the series doesn’t sell well in the first place.

Update June 21: The Beat has a photo of a mock-up from Wizard World Philadelphia, demonstrating the size. CBR reports that at HeroesCon’s DC Nation, DC said they planned “both downsized and full-size trades” for the series.

Update October 12: The hardcover will be an 11×17″ coffee table book at $49.99.

Why Blackest Night #0 is a Free Comic Book

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I took a quick look at a site where people were discussing scans of a few pages of Blackest Night #0, one of DC’s offerings for Free Comic Book Day. While there I noticed a discussion as to why this continuity-heavy lead-in to the big 2009 event was not suitable for a new reader who has just wandered into a comic store for the first time (or the first time in several years) to check out the free stuff (that being the primary purpose of FCBD).

Here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s intended for that audience.

I think DC has realized that Free Comic Book Day brings in a lot of regular comics readers looking for something free, like a sale, and they’re going after that audience. This isn’t aimed at people who have never read a comic book. It’s aimed at people who are at least somewhat familiar with DC Comics but maybe haven’t been reading Green Lantern and need a primer for the multiple Corps and the Blackest Night prophecy so that they can jump into the event. It’s aimed at people who read some DC Comics, but weren’t planning on picking up the next big event, but hey, since this one’s free, why not take a look?

And given that it sounds like DC’s entire line is going to be involved in this event over the next 8 months or so, it still works as an introduction to their output.

Origins: Only as Complicated as You Want Them To Be

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Secret Origins Annual 2 Back in February, DC’s Executive Editor Dan Didio stated that one of the reasons they are bringing back Barry Allen as the primary Flash is because “you can’t tell the origin of Wally West without Barry Allen.” I have to agree with Comics Should Be Good that this isn’t a valid reason. It doesn’t take that much more time to explain Barry’s involvement in Wally West’s origin.

I had the same problem with complaints that Bart Allen’s origin was too complicated.

The origins are only complicated because we, as fans, want to include every little detail.*

Up to Speed

When it comes down to it, all you really need to explain the Flash — any Flash — is that he’s really, really fast, and he helps people (as Marc Guggenheim pointed out in his brief run on Flash: The Fastest Man Alive).

Flash v.1 #309 How about an origin? For Jay Garrick, Barry Allen and Wally West, the key element is: “A laboratory accident gave him super-speed.” You can get a little more specific if you like, say, “Gained super-speed after being struck by lightning and splashed with chemicals.” As for Bart Allen? “Inherited super-speed from his grandfather” — kind of like Zatanna, who inherited her magic from her parents, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone complain that her origin is too complicated.

Sure, you can go into all the time-travel and accelerated aging for Bart, but you don’t need that for the sales pitch. It might help explain his personality during his years as Impulse, but even then, all you have to add is, “He was raised in virtual reality and has no concept of danger.”

Of course, if you’re going to tell a 7-part, 150-page epic Secret Origin story, I think there’s plenty room to cover a mentorship with a classic hero.

Mentors

Flash v.2 #62 Now, if you’re going to do a Wally West story that really focuses on the fact that Barry Allen was his idol, his uncle, and his mentor, then yeah, you need to explain that relationship. But for the typical Flash vs. some Rogue story, the reader doesn’t need that level of detail. It’s enough to know that he trained under the previous Flash and later succeeded him. Kind of like how Hal Jordan trained under another Green Lantern (Sinestro), and succeeded a third Green Lantern (Abin Sur). Not only does the training under Sinestro seem to factor into most retellings of Hal’s origin, but the history between Hal and Sinestro seems to be extremely important to the current Green Lantern mythology.

Green Lantern #33 And yet I’ve never heard anyone claim that since you need to know Sinestro in order to know Hal Jordan’s origin, you might as well focus the Green Lantern series on Sinestro.

Or, for that matter, that since you need to know Obi-Wan Kenobi in order to understand how Luke Skywalker became a Jedi, then you really ought to focus on Obi-Wan instead of Luke. (Though given the current focus of the Star Wars franchise on the prequel era, perhaps that’s not the best example.)

Conclusion

So, is Barry Allen important to Wally West’s origin? Absolutely, no question about it. Does it make his origin more complicated? A little. Does it mean that DC can’t tell compelling, comprehensible stories about Wally West as the Flash? Of course not. Admittedly DC hasn’t been telling the best Flash stories possible lately, but having Barry in Wally’s background certainly didn’t stop them from telling good stories over the previous 20 years.

This is not to say that DC shouldn’t tell stories with Barry Allen instead of Wally West. Just that if they want to claim that it’s somehow necessary or better to focus on Barry, this particular rationale doesn’t hold up.

*Update: It’s not just comics fans, either. I once asked a family friend what Les Misérables was about, and she spent at least twenty minutes describing the plot of the three-hour stage version. And consider this tribute to “excruciatingly detailed” movie plot summaries on Wikipedia.) I don’t know if it’s our attention to detail, or our love of storytelling, but it’s just so easy to pile things on that a new reader doesn’t really need to worry about until a story warrants it.

(Thanks to comics.org for the cover scans.)

Best Price Point for Digital Comics?

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Newsarama is running a poll on the best price point for downloadable comics, following up on Filip Sablik’s recent column. Is it free? 99¢ per comic, like iTunes? Subscription bundling?

The problem is that I can’t pick an option on the poll, because for me, it really depends on the device.

If we’re talking comics chopped up for small-screen viewing (iPhone, for instance), then I would prefer free with ads. Unless a story is initially designed for that format, it seems more like a way to sample new series — something iVerse is clearly targeting with their current Android material, offering most first issues for free and then charging for the subsequent ones.

If we’re talking the hypothetical tablet-sized device that displays comics at a comparable size to present-day print comics, then I’d be a bit more willing to pay $0.99 off the bat, or possibly a $5.00/month subscription for more than 5 books.

If we’re talking downloadable comics to display on the desktop computer screen…now that I think about it, probably free. I read a lot of webcomics, but I’ve never once paid for a subscription even to gain access to archives. (I have, however, donated to a few cartoonists, and bought print collections of several series.)

So… how much would you pay for digital comics?

Co-Features, or How To Make All Flash Fans Happy

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Over the past month, DC has announced a (somewhat) new format for some of its books: the co-feature. It’s essentially the same as the classic lead+backup format, except that the lead story is a full 22 pages.* The upcoming Doom Patrol relaunch will co-feature the Metal Men, and now Booster Gold and Teen Titans will be getting Blue Beetle and Ravager backups. The books will jump to $3.99, but they’ll have more story pages than the standard $2.99 book.

Thinking about this, I realized: This is the perfect way to satisfy all Flash fans! Relaunch the series after Flash: Rebirth as a co-feature book. Make the lead 22-page story focus on Barry Allen. Make the backup story focus on Wally West, or rotate through Wally, Jay and Bart. I’ve been vocal in my displeasure at losing a regular series focusing on Wally, but I would buy this in a hot second with no complaints (unless the stories turned out bad, of course). It also seems more viable in this market than a second Flash book.

So how about you, readers? Does this sound like a good idea?

Edit: Went to post this on ComicBloc and realized that The Speedster posted the same idea a week ago. And I responded in the thread. Clearly I need either more sleep or more coffee.

*It’s not clear how long the backups are, but I’m guessing probably 12 or 16. 16 would make it roughly equivalent to a 40-page book, which is the format that Final Crisis and tie-ins like Rogues Revenge have used.

Speed Force

Tracking the Flash – the Fastest Man Alive