Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by retailer Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in
According to one report at the recent Heroes Con, Dan DiDio said: "We have the same characters... There's only so much you can do with them. You've seen it all, you've heard it all."
That's quite the admission. I don't want to put words into his mouth but he seems to be saying if readers aren't completely blown away by Final Crisis (or Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc.), DC isn't to blame. It's because readers have seen the same things so often it's almost impossible to get them excited about their comics anymore.
Last time I really should have mentioned Beau Smith's challenge to DC to do only stand-alone stories, but happily this week I have DC's response (as reported on Newsarama).
“DD: ‘I think it's a great idea - but people wouldn't buy them.’ DiDio noted that there's a good idea there, but the trick is to tell stories that flow from issue to issue, story to story. To illustrate his point, DiDio singled out Brave and the Bold as a high quality book that's telling good stories, that, as writer Mark Waid has said on many occasions, seems not to be what the market wants now.”
First I flatly refuse to believe "people wouldn't buy them." I know today's average reader prefers a lot more “mythology” (as far as I can tell “mythology” is continuity gone to college) in his entertainment than I did growing up, something they can obsess over and dissect endlessly online. But if the fiat came down from on high that for a year every DC comic book would be self contained their circulation wouldn't drop to zero. Oh the fans probably wouldn't like it much and would bitterly complain on the message boards but then I thought DC had a policy that to keep people reading they had to not give them what they wanted.
Of course the only way to prove which of us is right is to actually do it and that's not going to happen until someone at Time-Warner realizes the whole "tell stories from issue to issue, story to story" thing is just a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to keep circulation numbers from falling even further.
“Jimmy Palmiotti added that, when he was at Marvel, they would occasionally have to put fill-in issues into runs when delays made it necessary, prompting fans to feel that the standalone stories ‘didn't count.’”
Though I don't disagree with Jimmy Palmiotti; as someone who read entirely too many of them let me tell you I don't want to return to the good old days when Brave and the Bold and Marvel Team-Up were filled with frivolous, insignificant by design, plot-driven time wasters. But I think he's getting fill-in stories and stand-alone stories mixed up; just because most fill-in stories are stand-alones and most fill-ins suck doesn't mean stand-alones have to suck. If you want to see stand-alone stories that “count” see any issue of All-Star Superman.
DC has become so obsessed with selling next month’s comics, plotting ever more awkward and contrived events (I mean, DC superheroes getting involved in politics, really?), that I really don't think it even registers how the quality of this month's comics continue to slip. I'm old enough to believe that maybe the comics would sell better if the comics were better. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me there's one way to find out without risking Time-Warner's financial bottom line.
How about for one year DC designate a select number of titles (a Superman here, a Batman there) to be for stand-alone stories only? For this year the creative teams would be top-notch; no cheating by making them havens for newbies and screenwriters learning how to write comics on the job. These stories would simply and clearly establish who these characters are, what they do, and what they're for so they could be understood by everyone from a kid who picked up a copy at a Wal-Mart to the people who found about comics in Entertainment Weekly.
Because when "they've seen it, heard it all" maybe it's time to try something else.
Of course you can't buy DC comics at a Wal-Mart, but I'm happy to report that someone at a panel asked the very question I would have asked if I'd been there:
“Q: I see Shonen Jump, and Spider-Man and other Marvel magazines at Target, Wal-Mart and other outlets -- when will I see DC magazines there as well?
DD: We want it to. It's not really our area of work for those of us on the panel, but we're trying to crack that nut in the way those outlets do business and get our books in there.”
I just wish they could have gotten more of a definitive answer.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back column are soley those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
