The Four Color Media Monitor: When will DC close, and will Jim Lee leave his position?

Cosmic Book News cited the following commentary by artist Ethan Van Sciver on what fate awaits DC's publishing:

"In case you haven't figured it out yet. DC Comics is closing down their publishing division. Now don't worry everyone. That doesn't mean there isn't going to be Batman, Superman, maybe Wonder Woman and stuff," said Van Sciver in his latest video posted to his ComicArtistPro Secrets YouTube channel. "What I think is happening going forward is DC Comics is going to pair down in the immediate future to a handful of comic books, maybe 12 comic books per month, maybe 12, maybe fewer than that, and these comics are going to be Justice League, Superman, and Batman, and that's it. There might be back up stories in these books. Maybe there will be a Justice League super-sized book and you will be able to get a Green Lantern short story or a Flash or a Hawkman."

Van Sciver continues: "But they are not taking any more chances. Publishing is being paired down. Only the best creative teams are going to be allowed to work on them, but they are going to be working for subsistence-level pay."

Here's the problem: it's not that they've ever taken chances that's brought them down, but how they did. By the mid-2000s, they reached a point where every new pitch for a series was immediately approved as a full monthly ongoing, with no testing waters like how Birds of Prey originally came about through miniseries and specials. The Firestorm, Blue Beetle and Atom series starring social justice replacements for the white protagonists originally in the roles - all 3 of who were intentionally kicked to the curb at the time of Identity Crisis to serve Dan DiDio's agendas - were prime examples of foisting social justice propaganda onto the marketplace untested, and none of them lasted long as a result. Yet the diversity-pandering characters were kept around for a lot longer, even as their predecessors were eventually brought back, though if recent years are any suggestion, Ronnie Raymond, Ted Kord and Ray Palmer were sidelined again, and there's no telling if we'll ever see them again for as long as DC lasts. The era of DiDio may have ended, but the political correctness he started remains. If they can no longer take chances, it's because the way he went about things, right down to trashing their moral compass in Identity Crisis.

Van Sciver also brought up where Jim Lee stands in all this:

"Jim Lee was co-president with Dan DiDio, but it was completely an honorary title. Jim Lee didn't belong there. He didn't do very much there," explains Van Sciver. "It was just that he had become so powerful and was such a valuable piece of horseflesh. Obviously, a guy that can draw that well, you want to keep him on board. Jim Lee was uncomfortable in his position when Dan DiDio was fired. A lot of people were thinking that this meant he was going to be performing the role that Dan DiDio has performed all these years. Jim Lee doesn't want to do that. He's not capable of doing that. That's not what he wants to do. That's not his role."

There's a problem here too: in recent years, Lee scaled back the proportions on his illustrations to serve a PC agenda, so if he were ever a fine artist before, he isn't now; he's thrown away even that much for the sake of social justice mentality. And there's his chumminess with Brad Meltzer that's also a problem, to say nothing of a telling double-standard. It remains to be seen how much longer Lee will stay with DC. Certainly, he's not suited to management roles, and that's reason enough to get rid of him.

As for their current editor, Variety noted Marie Javins' prior record:

Prior to her promotion, Javins served as DC’s executive editor of global publishing and digital strategy, where she edited such acclaimed titles as “Justice League,” “DC Super Hero Girls,” “Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles,” “Superman Smashes the Klan,” “Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass” and “Dark Nights: Death Metal.” She joined DC in 2014 in a temporary position to help the company transfer its businesses from New York to Burbank, Calif., and then relocated to join the staff.

Some of the above are politically motivated products, crossovers, or celebrations of a supervillainess. And if Javins had no issues with company wide crossovers, why should we expect this to change with her ascension to EIC? I've got a sad feeling that, if there's any chance DC will be willing to take, it's with company wide crossovers, and if so, that'll only ensure their collapse much more easily. Though if that's what'll happen, it'll at least ensure the company won't be able to put out more propaganda anymore.

I suppose it's just a question now of when the publisher will fold. Sooner or later, it's bound to happen, unless they're sold to a more reliable owner.

Update: here's more information telling how lower-ranking female staffers who were appointed to editorial roles have no idea what they're supposed to do, and it's all chaos at DC now.

Labels: bad editors, crossoverloading, dc comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat artists, msm propaganda, politics

Jim Lee scaling back the proportions of his characters isn't necessarily a bad thing.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190501153356.htm

Posted by fred | 8:04 AM

fred, it destroys the sense of disbelief if superheroes look like the average joe these days. There's a very ideological motivation behind the those who want superheroes to look exactly like average sedentary people. These people are motivated by a desire to deconstruct superheroes and the idealism they represent. They almost always hold up obsese or mutilated bodies (trans, missing body parts, disabled) as something morally superior to idealized bodies. Fitness to them=idealism=ableism in their deranged minds.

a LOT of these people are
lgbt ppl
(lesbians, and feminine gay men)

with mental illnesses--

https://twitter.com/JessHealyWalton/status/814406101147885568
https://twitter.com/imYazzyJennyQ/status/915207146630811651
https://twitter.com/ChrissyCantHear/status/1027541734102900737

who even if they are not trans are constantly at war with their bodies--and they are projecting that war onto everyone else by encouraging everyone to be more genderfluid or non-binary or "feminist" . The rest are autistic transhumanists.

Posted by Saber Tooth Tiger Mike | 11:22 PM

Artists should completely smash the sense of disbelief! You don't want superheroes to look like freaks, or create a kind of cult, where superheroes look ugly and inhuman to anyone who isn't steeped in the tropes. The best superhero artists suspended disbelief by making their characters look like particularly healthy and strong specimens of humanity, like Shuster pioneered with Superman. People like Kirby, Buscema, Ditko, Infantino, Swan, Raboy, Everett, knew how to draw people, and could do all kinds of genres, not just superheroes. It is artists who followed them, who only knew to draw from comic books and did not know how to draw from life, who perverted the genre; the 1990s were particularly bad for that, and it helped bring about Marvel's bankruptcy.

Can't think of any artist who holds up disabled bodies as being superior, but overcoming disability has long been part of the genre; think Charles Xavier, or Daredevil.

Sober Tooth, you heap scorn on feminine gay men but don't mention masculine gay men; the kind of hyper-masculine art you like seems like a gay stereotype to outsiders to the genre, or to readers who have come to it in this century. Is that is why you chose a prehistoric animal as your totem?

If you want heros to look fit, don't draw them like nightmare gym posers whose muscles are so tight they would snap if they tried to stretch them; draw them like athletes.

Posted by Anonymous | 4:30 AM

"ke Kirby, Buscema, Ditko, Infantino, Swan, Raboy, Everett, knew how to draw people"
Thanks to scientific advancements in sports science athletes are larger and have more muscle tone than in the past. Comic art would be more out of touch with contemporary times if it reflected the physiques of 1920s athletes.

" is artists who followed them, who only knew to draw from comic books and did not know how to draw from life, who perverted the genre;"

Very few comic artists these days can draw well from life and very few have been able to do so since the late 1980s. That has nothing to do with ppl seeking to pervert the genre . The ruling class who define our culture do not value skill in Fine Art. Comics only followed illustration which followed modern art in the destruction of artistic standards. The same people who complain about unrealistic bodies in superhero comics are the same ppl who applaud flaccid superheroes and flaccid heroes.

The people who you are siding with think a realistic Conan would look like.

https://www.popmatters.com/154302-becky-cloonans-smile-dark-horses-reboot-of-conan-2495886719.html
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0e/0e/bc/0e0ebc95001bf5d7e88e6ece5efba68d.jpg

Posted by Saber Tooth Tiger Mike | 10:02 PM

The other side of it is the Americans have become a lot more obese in the last few decades, so comics would be out of touch with contemporary times if ordinary people were drawn as lean as the norm was in the 1940s. Foggy Nelson, meant to be drawn chubby back in the 1960s, looks healthy by modern standards. As for athletes - body builders are not athletes, and bulk does not mean fitness.

It is true that they don't teach anatomy and life drawing as much in art school these days, and that art schools have become schools of art and design. But some contemporary artists do good superheroes and exaggerate anatomy without insulting it - Russell Dauterman, Sara Pichelli, Alex Ross, Brett Blevins, Adrian Alphona, Amanda Conner, many others, and there is also a lot of excellent more cartoony work that is done by people who still do know the basics. It is not like the 1990s, when people who knew their stuff were deliberately drawing awful to imitate the latest fads.

Also, artistic standards are not all anatomy. Superheroes are about the body in motion, but art, and other kinds of comics, don't have to be.

Posted by Anonymous | 5:03 AM