The Four Color Media Monitor

Fortress of Solitude wrote about how there's 2 different audiences for comics and the movies based on them, and suggests a direction that's just ill-advised:

It’s bizarre how there are almost two sets of fans for comic book movies and comics. While there is an overlap of sorts, the comic-reading audience is much smaller in comparison. But why is this? And shouldn’t the comic book industry be tapping into the other market and aligning more closely with the films? The answer is threefold here, so let’s explore further.

As bad as it is how DC/Marvel continuity became a shambles, this step wouldn't solve anything either. Because as some experts have noted, if you start making comics resemble movies almost to the letter, you're only going to blow it. And the way they're going about things now back in the comics is brought up too:

If you haven’t picked up a Marvel or DC comic book for a few years and grab one today, you’ll be lost. The young Jon Kent was teaming up with Damian Wayne in 2017’s Super Sons and now he’s suddenly the Superman looking after Earth while his dad is away on “supe” business. Elsewhere at Marvel, Peter Parker isn’t Spider-Man anymore and the mantle has been taken up by his clone Ben Reilly (for the millionth time), but that’s more to do with rights issues and no one will admit it. So, as you can see, it’s a little hard to keep up with all the reboots and changes taking place constantly.

Unfortunately, this has been the main problem with the Big Two in recent years. Instead of establishing a solid foundation of worldbuilding and fleshing out the characters with great storytelling, they hit the reset button too quickly. As a result, it’s difficult to keep track of what’s going on—and there’s absolutely no way that a studio even cares enough to try and piece together what’s happening. Most cinematic universes would rather build their own sandbox from scratch than attempt to make heads or tails over decades of convoluted storytelling.

Well at least they acknowledge good storytelling is vital for acceptance. But they fail to address how the increase of social justice pandering, including retconning Jon Kent to bisexual or entirely homosexual, is another way they're destroying all chances for good storytelling. As of now, there's 3rd tier heroes like the Silver Age Atom who've virtually disappeared in the past few years, and may never be seen again, thanks to all the political correctness that's come at the expense of whites. Say, has it ever occurred to them the company wide crossovers play a big part in collapsing the continuities of the Big Two? There's something unclear in this whole item.

Of course, this begs the question, why don’t comic book companies just take what’s happening in the movies and spin-off from there? Sounds simple, right? Well, it isn’t. The studio machine is complex and powered by more political disagreements and backstabbing than Twitter in 2020. As a classic example, the producers of the first X-Men movie wanted the animated series X-Men: Evolution to tie into the film in some way but refused to share details about the production with the animation team. Brilliant, right?

A studio is way more powerful (and makes more money) than a comics company and there would need to be a mindset shift of them working together versus operating in silos. It sounds easy on paper, but it would require a huge corporate culture change to occur and you know what they say about leopards and their spots? Simply put, the comics side of the business would need to be absorbed by the studios and become a department instead of allowing it to be its own independent arm—and that is a whole other discussion for another time.

And this is where the whole article really lost me. Because it reeks of favoring corporations and conglomerates, the very same ones who've allowed the properties to fall into decay, and changing to resemble the movies, again, wouldn't solve anything when it's this corporately influenced. Besides, if the recent dismal box office receipts for the Eternals movie says anything, Marvel's cinematic impact from the past decade is beginning to collapse under the weight of political correctness too.

Corporatism, as I'm sure I've noted before, is but a major cause for the collapse of famous superhero creations. And putting the comics further under their influence won't salvage them. It didn't work in the early 2000s, and it hasn't changed even now.

Labels: animation, crossoverloading, dc comics, marvel comics, politics, Spider-Man, Superman