The Four Color Media Monitor

Quite by accident, I discovered this post on the Written World blog from 3 years ago, which cites how, if there was any GL Corps member left behind in dead-land when GL: Rebirth was published in 2004...it was Katma Tui.

Since I was becoming alienated from much of DC's output at the time thanks to Identity Crisis, I couldn't have paid clear attention, though I may have realized that some GL Corps members would remain dead. Even so, to read this and discover that Katma Tui, the first female member of the Corps was not resurrected, really startled me. So of all the opportunities Geoff Johns missed when he revived those GL Corp members who'd been wronged in Zero Hour, it was Katma? Clearly, I didn't miss anything.

What if he had revived Katma or had her death retconned away? It wouldn't have counteracted the bad taste Identity Crisis left behind, though it could have provided Johns some some credit for which people could have appreciated him better. That he would throw away such a golden opportunity to right a wrong was really missing the boat.

This got me to thinking: while I do think that Jenny-Lynn Haden, daughter of Alan Scott, should be revived, and it's good to know if her awful death in 2006 drew some backlash, I agree that Katma Tui should be brought back first, probably because of how overlooked her death was, and she should not be forgotten. And, she and John Stewart should be able to reunite and repair their relations together. Shortly after her resurrection in 1992 (which made it easier to exonerate Carol Ferris of slaying her), the editors threw her out again along with so many other GLs. That's a wrong that should be righted, and for Geoff Johns to say that he's righting a wrong by reversing Hal Jordan's death yet not doing the same with Katma is ludicrous and talking out of both sides of his mouth.

While reading this, I also found a little something in the comments section that raised my eyebrows:

Gerard Jones was good about bringing in female characters, only to see them die in Emerald Twilight. Alan Moore wrote some good spotlight issues for Arisia and Katma, only to see Katma killed and Arisia turned into a sex toy in later issues. The earliest team made one of Hal's most formiddable oponents a friendly villainess with similar powers, who was also his boss, only to have her go batshit crazy and have her power attributed to an externalized "masculine side" of her personality known as the Predator. Come to think of it, even the much-maligned Marz (who was not allowed by the editors to make Lanterns, only to destroy them. Hell, he wasn't even allowed to make a brand new girlfriend after he killed the first one, he had to use a pre-existing teambook female to draw readers) created females when he had the chance, I think I've seen Kyle fight more villainesses than any other Lantern. Fatality was a fairly strong villain until Winick got hold of her and made a point of showing that her willpower wasn't a match for Kyle's.

If that's so, that Marz wasn't allowed to introduce a new girlfriend for Kyle Rayner, it tells that Green Lantern was under an editorial mandate for much longer than it seems. (As of now, the only reason why it may not be is because Johns is none other than DiDio's idea of what writer is suited to the job.) And it also helps strengthen my theory that the reason why many comic series today lack a convincing supporting cast is because the writers are not allowed to come up with any new members, or storylines in which they could get mixed up with the mafia, like Betty Brant did in Spider-Man when it first began. And why Mary Jane Watson's relatives never turned up, if at all.

As said before, Katma Tui's death should be reversed entirely. However, I don't expect that to happen with Blackest Night, where I'm fully expecting her to rise as one of the many zombies in the wretched story.

While we're on the subject, how about bringing back Hank Hall from Hawk & Dove as well. Many of the problems today, IMO, stemmed from his poorly written death in Armageddon back in 1991 (correction: he was first turned into the villianous Monarch, and it was a decade later that he was killed, in JSA, also written by Johns), and by bringing him back, I think that could be another key to solving a lot of the other tasteless deaths as well. For now, sadly, he's become another zombie in Blackest Night (via Titans Tower Monitor).

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, golden calf of death, Green Lantern, misogyny and racism

An article in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune about the Long Beach Comic Con, probably the first major showing they've had in that neighborhood in a couple years.

Labels: conventions

The Los Angeles Times has a whole article on their Hero Complex blog, an expansion of one they'll be publishing tomorrow in the print edition, about legendary Jack Kirby, who, unlike Stan Lee, never got the full recognition he deserved, unlike Stan who did. There's also some mention here about how Kirby's 4 children have opened a legal battle to regain some rights to their father's works of yesteryear.

Labels: good artists, good writers, marvel comics

A short article in the DeKalb Scene of Illinois interviewing a comics store owner who says there's a comic for almost everyone, and special meanings to them.

But things have certainly changed since then. The Norridge Harwood Heights News writes an interview with a local comics store owner, where he tells towards the end:

Stangeland acknowledged comic book sales of a title made into a movie is hit and miss.

"When the first 'Batman' movie came out, it was an incredible engine for selling comics," he said. "Everybody wanted 'Batman.' I probably sold five or six times as many Batman comics after the movie came out as before. The same thing happened to a lesser extent with the 'Spider-Man' movies. For some reason 'X-Men' didn't really translate into higher sales of the comic."

Now that I recall, no, it didn't. Around the time the first X-Movie came out, Marvel made two mistakes: they brought back Chris Claremont and even had him inject contrived elements into the series in order to "reflect" some of the elements in the movies. His writing style had certainly deteriorated by then, and the stories he turned out were almost incomprehensible. Then, when Grant Morrison took over, sales began to drop below 100,000 and have never recovered.

And even with Spider-Man comics, things have really changed over the years.

The salesman veers into sugarcoatedness at the end:

In terms of the economy, Stangeland believes things are getting better.

"Those first eight or nine months were pretty tough. You could tell people were being a lot more conservative in what they bought. ... there were a lot of people who came in who just bought maybe one book a week that they couldn't live without.

"In the last three months it feels like it's going back up," he continued. "It's not super strong but I do think it's getting better and I think the industry as a whole I believe is optimistic right now. More books are being published, there's still a lot of media exposure from the movies and so on."

But if recent sales statistics indicate, very few of these books are doing well, if at all. Even sales of graphic novels, now that I think of it, are very uncertain.

And there's another article where a comics store manager seems to be going out of his way to sugarcoat the real picture, in what might be a desperate attempt to boost overall sales again, without even discussing clearly why comics have lost ground in the past several years.

Labels: msm propaganda, sales

While Marvel's throwing the Spider-Marriage out the window has been the leading focus of many alienated fans, we may have overlooked another problem on an almost similar scale: Tom Brevoort is telling us that they have no plans to return to classic Avengers lineup:

We’ll use any and all of the classic Avengers characters as the situation demands it, of course, but those folks who are hoping for a full-blown reversal of the last ten years and a complete return to the Avengers of a decade ago are sadly in for a disappointment. And the reason for this should be obvious: in the last decade, AVENGERS has become the leading franchise in comics, and that’s in large part due to the alterations we made in the basic formula. I love the classic Avengers as much as the next person-and I edited them for a good, long time-but there are clearly so many more readers who are interested in the team and the book since we turned over the apple cart that there really isn’t any good reason to go back, other than nostalgia.

Oh, but of course there are so many more readers interested in the Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Namely, the Bendis fans who'll lap up his work no matter what, though even that's luckily worn down since he made such a mess of the book 5 years ago, beginning with Avengers: Disassembled. If they really must take the Avengers and cast it with already obvious choices like Spider-Man, Wolverine, and even Luke Cage, that's one thing, but doing it at the complete expense of cast members like Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Ant-Man and the Wasp is another. And none of them have been very well treated within that time.

All they're really telling is how little faith they have in the original cast of co-stars to carry the book on their own and be popular with the audience, and that they don't know how to promote it to a wider audience, so instead they gather a bunch of characters already starring in their own franchises to star in it, even if it doesn't make sense continuity-wise. Or, as in the case of Luke Cage, characters who don't exactly fit the science-fantasy theme the Avengers are usually built upon, and make their urban-style setting the tone the book will go by much of the time, which is hardly what the Avengers was intended to be.

It's bad enough what they're doing to Spider-Man's own book, but we shouldn't overlook the damage that began even before One More Day to the Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I wonder if "classic" is just Brevoort's excuse to justify the current Bendis direction by implying that the regular cast is outdated and old-fashioned? If that's what he's doing, I fully disagree. Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, Ant-Man, Wasp and Hawkeye, among others, are still cool as ever, and claiming they're antiquated is just insulting their own properties. I do hope maybe Disney Corp's buyout might put a stop to this nonsense, but there's no telling if it'll happen.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, marvel comics

The Nashua Telegraph writes up a bunch of brief "recommendations" of several items old and new, and what's said about the new Secret Six has me feeling bothered:

“Secret Six: Unhinged” (DC Comics, $14.99): “Secret Six” 1-7. Supervillains on road trip are funny, violent, evil, sexy, human. Writer Simone has us rooting for sociopaths. Brilliant!

Oh really? Never mind that the Secret Six as presented now doesn't even resemble the old take on the concept by E. Nelson Bridwell and Martin Pasko, I think there's some serious questions to be raised on if the audience should be rooting for a bunch of lethal sociopathic villains, or if said supercrooks should be depicted sexily, or even humanely.

But in the current DCU and editorial, this is what passes for entertainment.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, violence

Another article in the Bangor Daily News about the current BangPop Comic Book and Pop Culture Convention that's currently taking place in Maine.

Labels: conventions

Here's an article from the AFP about the manga Kami no Shizuki, how its creators were led to write it up, and how they helped bring massive wine sales to the rest of Asia with it:

BORDEAUX, France (AFP) – In the cobblestone square of Bages, a tiny village in the Medoc wine country, a dozen influential Bordeaux vintners dressed in flowing red robes gathered for an unlikely event.

The vintners from southwest France were about to induct two Japanese comic book authors into their exclusive wine brotherhood, the Commanderie du Bontemps.

Yuko and Shin Kibayashi, a fashionable sister-brother duo publishing under the pseudonym Tadashi Agi, created "Kami no Shizuki" (The Drops of God), a phenomenally successful manga series that has brought wine to subway commuters across Asia, and sparked a wine boom.

The authors, with millions of manga sales already under their belt, fell in love with wine the easy way: over a bottle of 1985 Echezeaux, Domaine de la Romanee Conti, a Burgundy legend that retails for 600 euros (880 dollars).

The "magnificent floral aromas" astonished them. Inspiration struck. They would go where no other manga artist had gone before -- wine.

In the four years since it first appeared, the 21-volume saga, where wines can be compared for excellence to a star rock concert, has sold six million copies in Japan and three million in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea, according to French publisher Editions Glenat.

In France, nine volumes have appeared, selling 350,000 copies. Fans eagerly await the 10th volume in October. "This book is a real bridge between the two cultures: manga fans discover wine, wine amateurs discover manga," said editor Stephane Ferrand.

"It?s really well done," said Bordeaux?s legendary winemaker Jean-Michel Cazes, whose 1983 Chateau Lynch Bages and his luxury hotel Chateau Cordeillan-Bages, to his surprise, appeared in book five.

He expressed admiration for illustrator Shu Okimoto, and the accuracy of the information woven into the storylines. "It?s not my culture, but when I look at it, it explains wine very well. People learn about wine through the cartoons."

In fact, the hero of the saga knows little about wine, so readers learn along with him, opening the door to millions of future consumers.

"The Japanese love the ritual side of wine. In Korea, they have even discovered that wine can be a diplomatic tool," said Shin Kibayashi. "Wine is universal, it can very well bridge differences between races and countries."

The story itself is universal: a hero?s journey about a rebellious son forced to trace his father?s footsteps.

The hero is the estranged son of a famous wine critic who has complicated his life by adopting a talented sommelier as a second son. The father dies and leaves a will that includes descriptions of 12 wines he considers to be the equivalent to Jesus Christ?s Disciples.

The first son to find the "disciples" and the 13th wine, which the father calls the "Drops of God", will inherit the father?s extraordinary wine collection.

Distribution of the tale is pure marketing genius both for publishing and wine sales. Readers enthralled by the unfolding drama buy chapters printed in installments in a weekly magazine. Every 10 chapters are bound and released as a book two to three months later.

The impact of the weekly installments has sent wine sales skyrocketing.

According to Edition Glenat, wine sales in Japan jumped 130 percent the first year "The Drops of God" appeared, and in Korea, the main wine store increased its sales 150 percent.

"The people come with their book to the wine store, they show the page and say, ?I want that one'," said Ferrand. "Passionate readers even organise tastings."

While well-established wines like Lynch Bages experience less of a dramatic impact -- "We have been distributed in Japan for many years," said Cazes -- the effect on creating a wine culture and brand recognition for lesser known labels is "very powerful", Cazes added.

Once mentioned in the weekly supplement, little known wines have sold out within days, and Internet auction prices tripled.

For the authors, research trips are clearly in order. "The wines with complicated tastes give us ideas," said Shin Kibayashi. "Certain wines are not as good but give more images." Volume nine explored no less than 12 wines.

While the Kibayashis shun product placement attempts -- "this is no James Bond movie" -- the Bordelais did their best to provide inspiration, including tastings at Chateau Lafite Rothschild, the Holy Grail of wines in Asia.

So far, six "disciples" have been found. According to Yuko Kibayashi, fans can expect the saga to run at least three more years, culminating in 40 volumes.

One uniquely Bordeaux experience promises to appear in a future volume -- the zany Medoc Marathon, in which participants wear costumes and run a 42-kilometre (26-mile) circuit around 54 world-famous wine estates.

Shin Kibayashi, sporting a funny yellow cap in the spirit of the event, ran the marathon and his sister hinted that readers could look for the madcap race in future plot lines.

But the wine world and readers will have to wait to see which elixir of the vine appears next, and rush to stock the shelves.

Sometimes, I gotta admit, it's amazing what an influence manga writers can have.

Labels: Europe and Asia, manga and anime

It's sad to discover that one of the worst, most politicized crossover storylines in Marvel's output has now been used as the basis for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2:

The story is based on the comic book series Civil War. A deadly explosion caused by a superhuman forces the U.S. government to pass a Superhuman Registration Act, requiring beings with super powers to register with the government or face jail. The law drives a wedge between heroes, splitting them into groups led by the pro-government Iron Man and resistance leader Captain America.

As the story progresses, players must choose to team up with Iron Man or Captain America. The decision determines which heroes players unlock in the early stages of the game. An alleigance to Iron Man provides the services of Songbird and Mister Fantastic, while Captain America enlists the help of Luke Cage and Iron Fist. The premise of forcing players to pick a side sounds promising, until you realize this division only last for a couple missions. It would have been more interesting had developers Vicarious Visions provided a decision with greater impact.

Wow, so now, the already tiresome notion of superheroes fighting against each other, far more than the real supervillains of their shared universe, has been forced into the video game world, not to mention Civil War's thinly-veiled attack on the Patriot Act? Even the series of Street Fighter clones made by Capcom during the 1990s weren't this pretentious. And even if the division only lasts for a couple missions, which I assume means at least 6, that's still too much because of the political allegories. This is no improvement over the horrible crossover comic it's based on, and is an insult to its very subjects and to Marvel fans. Why encourage the players to fight each other and have one hero attack another over political disagreements? If there's any computer role-playing game that should be avoided, it's this one. What next, will there come a toy line based on Civil War? I hope that Disney Corp's buying Marvel Entertainment will prevent that, but there's no garuntee.

Until now, most video/computer games based on superheroics usually left politics at the door. Now, they're starting to seep in, which is no way to sell a game I thought was meant to convey simple escapism and entertainment.

Labels: crossoverloading, marvel comics, politics, technology

SF Scope reports that Danny Fingeroth, who was a leading editor of Marvel's Spider-Man line years ago, has been hired by the Museum of Comics & Cartoon Art to serve as the vice president of the educational division they're establishing (via Robot 6).

Labels: museums

In their advertising for the Titans' Blackest Night tie-in, DC only succeeds in showing what's wrong - and continues to be - with their output now (via Titans Tower Monitor):

J.T. Krul and artist Ed Benes continue to turn up the BLACKEST NIGHT volume on the TITANS, and we’ve got a few pages for you to look over. We’ll have a more formal (i.e. lettered and colored!) preview, but why make you wait until then? Especially when we have some pretty intense Titan-on-Titan violence? Black Lantern Hawk! Red Star! Pantha! Wildabeest! Plus, a very creepy family reunion.

Pretty poor, sleazy, and undistinguished from their other recent Titan-vs-Titan-for-sake-of-internal-conflict clashes. And I don't think I'll want to see how the "family reunion" turns out either, since it'll likely just be more hostility between them all.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, Titans, violence

The Bangor Daily News in Maine writes about the second BangPop Comic Book & Pop Culture convention, which will take place this weekend.

Labels: conventions

An article on 1888 Press Release about an Indian company called Axiom Education publishing a new brand of comics for learning.

Labels: Europe and Asia

ICV2 is going out of their way to spin last month's sales as some kind of success, all because 4 titles sold above 100,000 last month, but I think the current charts tell that with each new crossover from Marvel/DC, the less well they sell. Blackest Night dropped below 150,000 copies, and plenty of other titles are slowly declining as well.

Eventually, they'll have to cease with the crossovers as it becomes clear that they're not cutting it anymore, and simultaneously, I think they'll find that if they want to continue business, they'll have to belatedly shift to a different format for comics.

Labels: crossoverloading, dc comics, marvel comics, sales

I found this short article in the Press of Atlantic City telling that overrated filmmaker and occasional comics writer Kevin Smith has begun writing another miniseries, Batman: The Widening Gyre.

His work on Daredevil and Green Arrow was mediocre enough, but his work on the Black Cat miniseries, which suffered a horrendous delay for 2 years and was then padded out to boot, was the real disaster: he retconned a rape into Felicia Hardy's background. I hope Smith's lost influence in the comics field since, because a writer of his undeserved standing who injects already gratuitous elements like those into the scripts he's writing is really not someone comicdom needs around.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, Spider-Man, women of marvel

Yahoo's Plugged In section features a list of several new computer games based on superheroes, including Champions Online.

Labels: technology

Paul Levitz's resignation as publisher of DC was only the beginning. Apparently, Warner Bros. is taking steps to restructure DC Comics as DC Entertainment, in response to Disney's buying Marvel last week.

I hope this does lead to some positive developments, because under Dan DiDio, DC has mostly thrown away a lot of the characters they own for the sake of publicity stunts, including several members of Infinity Inc, and reduced the company to constant crossovers. So it's to be hoped that under Diane Nelson, they'll start to consider that all these problems, and that includes even gratuitous violence, will be solved.

Another thing they may have to consider is the likely end of the Direct Market (via The Beat). If WB wants DC's output to be read, they're going to have to take into account that selling almost everything through comics stores just isn't paying anymore, and that the rising prices aren't helping matters either. That's why different formats are going to have to be conjured up for American comics, if they want to rebuilt a sizable audience again. The same goes for Marvel.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, golden calf of death, marvel comics, sales

An article in the Elmira Star-Gazette about the upcoming comics convention in Ithaca, sponsored by the non-profit Comic Book Club of the city.

Labels: conventions

Wow, here's a stunning announcement (via CBR). Paul Levitz, long a contributor to DC Comics since the early 1970s is resigning as the company president. He's still going to be writing comics for them, returning to a role he'd maintained when he first began (he was the original creator of the Bronze Age Huntress with Joe Staton).

I can't feel too sorry to see him step down. After all, as head honcho, he is responsible on his part for handing Dan DiDio the keys to the kingdom, and leading to only so much damage to the universe of comics superherodom he'd been entrusted with all these years, which has precipitated declines in sales. If he cannot draw the line and rein in the editor, something I'd think he had the power to do, then he's not fit for the job of company president. I do think that when he was a writer years before, contributing to Earth-2 stories and the Legion of Super-Heroes, he did a pretty good job, but as head of a company, he fumbled badly.

The new president at DC is Diane Nelson. We can only hope that her ascension will signal some future improvements at DC Comics, but it won't come overnight. Only time will tell.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics

Here's a challenging subject the site of IO9 brought up a short time ago. They're asking if comics are institutionally racist. Tom Brevoort wrote an answer to a fan question about comics with non-white male leads not selling well that:

I don't know that it's any one thing, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it's all part of the same phenomenon that makes it more difficult to sell series with female leads, or African-American leads, or leads of any other particular cultural bent. Because we're an American company whose primary distribution is centered around America, the great majority of our existing audience seems to be white American males. So while within that demographic you'll find people who are interested in a wide assortment of characters of diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, whenever your leads are white American males, you've got a better chance of reaching more people overall.

I can't claim to be an expert here, but I'd wager a guess that the reasons why they don't sell well are either because they're not written well, certainly not today, and definitely because they weren't marketed and promoted well. And if they're being marketed just according to the protagonist's race instead of story quality (as in the case of DC's recent Firestorm, Atom and Blue Beetle), that's another strike against.

But this article also ignores some much deeper matters, such as Marvel's publishing a race-baiting miniseries in 2003 called The Truth: Red, White and Black, which featured stereotypical artwork alongside a Chomskyite-level story. If memory serves, Brevoort may have supported that miniseries too. In that case, who is he to address this issue when his own company did something utterly tasteless, and even today hasn't disavowed it from canon?

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, politics

The Nashua Telegraph writes a superficial column about Disney's buyout of Marvel, and there's at least one part here that can be commented on:

Q: Will Disney sanitize Marvel Comics, or otherwise interfere with editorial content?

A: Unlikely. Remember, Disney also owns ABC, and they've never tried to clean up "Desperate Housewives." And while they famously interfered with Miramax when they bought it in 1993 (driving founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein to quit), they've also let Pixar run fairly independently since buying it in 2006.

Also, Disney didn't become the largest entertainment conglomerate in the world by being stupid. Marvel is very good at selling comic books, so they'll probably leave that golden goose alone while they market the heck out of Marvel's library of more than 5,000 characters across various media and platforms.

Correction: Marvel used to be good at selling comics, until just a couple years ago. I'd say it was when Bill Jemas came along, and went overboard into sensationalism, that the problems began, and even after he left, they didn't improve. No, they got worse, turning their comics into a 24-hours-a-day stunt machine with the company-wide crossovers, character destruction and forced replacements, and, lest we forget, Spider-Man's One More/Brand New Day monstrosity. All these have led to diminishing sales. They may have initially been good at selling the Ultimate line too, but when it became apparent that, contrary to their original promotions, the line was not entry-level, that's probably when the Ultimate line began to fade as well. The rumors that Marvel might use it to replace their 616 Universe might have contributed to the decline in their sales to boot.

So to say that Marvel is good at selling comic books is just skimming the surface, ignoring the current staff in charge behind the scenes, and...not doing much to suggest that Disney might want to replace them after all, if they understand that there's an audience out there that would be more encouraged to read Marvel's books with a more respectable editorial board in charge, but with destructive people like Joe Quesada in charge, can only feel discouraged now. That's hardly at all helpful for the fanbase and Marvel's output.

Labels: crossoverloading, marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales

The fourth issue of Flash: Rebirth came out at least a week ago, and if there's anything else about it that strikes me as awkward, it's the idea that Barry Allen somehow created the Speed Force, and Eobard Thawne a negative form of the same.

Now this may not be as big a problem as the grisly retcon Geoff Johns forced upon Barry's parents and background, but it's still absurd and makes it hard to accept Barry properly as a human. First, time travel is a very tricky tightrope to walk on, but some time travel ideas do make more sense than others, and are even easier to accept than what Johns is turning out. If Barry Allen created the Speed Force, by that logic he surely would have made everything possible for Jay Garrick to become the Flash before him (and Johnny Chambers to become Johnny Quick), even granting him a speed aura, the precursor to the Speed Force effects that Julius Schwartz and company thought of back in the day, which protected them from heat friction. The same goes for just about all other speedsters featured throughout time in the DCU. That really doesn't jibe well with how the original premise went back in the Golden Age, well before such things were ever thought of, and runs the gamut of reducing their own significance by suggesting that they only got where they did thanks to Barry!

Second, it takes a serious risk of making Barry sound like a omnipotent pagan deity, even more so than DC's own deity-like entities inspired by Greek mythology, who, while not really human, are still vulnerable to injuries and such. Maybe it was a mistake to suggest that Barry brought down the lightning bolt on Wally West through a subconscious connection to the Speed Force when Mark Waid brought this up as he was writing the Flash in the 90s, though he certainly didn't try to suggest that Barry was anything close to a deity. It may not even be the first time DC's done something like this - some time ago, they ended the All-New Atom by giving their forced replacement for Ray Palmer something like internalized shrinking power, which makes it too easy for the protagonist of that series, whose cancellation was decidedly for the best.

Again, this isn't as bad as darkening Barry's background, but it doesn't do much to make him believable to the audience either, nor does it do much for the Flash's legacies.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash

Labels: Carnival entries

Very surprising news has come up, and I've finally been able to get around to commenting on it: the Disney company has just bought Marvel for $4 billion:

LOS ANGELES – The Walt Disney Co. is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.

Under the deal, which was announced Monday and is expected to close by the end of the year, Disney will acquire the rights to 5,000 Marvel characters. Many of them, including the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, were co-created by the comic book legend Stan Lee.

Now this whole deal appears to have partly what to do with Marvel's movie deals. The challenging question here is, what does this mean for Marvel as a comics publisher? Will Disney actually do whatever's possible to make them workable - and profitable - as a comics publisher? That's why any optimism here has to be the cautious type. Almost all the articles I've seen about this deal so far have only dealt with the movie project prospects and merchandise, and there's nary a word about their comic book output.

I certainly don't think Disney, upon taking ownership, would "sanitize" Marvel's output (even though they actually do need it, to clean up some of the more gratuitous elements that have plagued their books for several years now, including Chomskyism) - it's not like they ever did when they bought ownership of ABC, and they've always dealt with more than enough adult material ever since they came up with the Touchstone label in the early 80s. Most likely that they'll take a "hands off" approach like they did with Pixar (and even the DiC animation company, which they'd owned for 7 years before it went solo again). Even so, if something is broken at Marvel, will they still try to fix it? I don't know. Time Warner has owned DC ever since the early 70s, and not only did they just regard as little more than a moneymaking source to go to for movie material, they certainly never did anything to curb artistic disasters like Identity Crisis. So there's no telling if Disney Corp. would do any better and curb disasters like Avegners: Disassembled and One More/Brand New Day.

Now that Marvel is becoming part of a conglomerate though, their publishing staff may have to change its stance considerably, and that's the good part: they won't be able to attack DC by calling them "AOL/DC" as Marvel was doing when Bill Jemas was in charge, and they may not be able to make insulting statements like "we don't need to explain anything, it's magic" anymore either, or they could bring the frowns down from upper management. But whether or not Disney does anything about Quesada - and Dan Buckley - I do know that if many of the editors, writers and artists working for them want to keep their jobs, that's why Marvel's own book sales need to do well, because a company that's not making any money will not last long, even under a conglomerate ownership. So even if Marvel's been bought by a bigger company, they're still going to need to make money, which they won't as long as people like Quesada are destroying their core output. As a result, I hope they will finally decide to oust him.

The buyout could be a great thing, but it might just as well be a flash-in-the-pan news item that might not mean much at all, and in time, I suppose we're going to find out.

Labels: marvel comics