Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Time Warner Comics and the Mighty Disney Avengers

I was asked about the Warner/DC moves in conjunction with the Disney/Marvel purchase and how it might affect artists working for the companies. Here is my answer:

I believe that Warner has long treated DC as the bastard stepchild that they inherited, and did not appear too eager to actually plumb the creative resources that they had at their disposal. They followed the old adage, "Well, Batman is popular, but now we'll do it RIGHT!" conveniently ignoring all the great stories that had been done in the comics because, to them, comics were crap.

Marvel hired people who took a chance and used the properties to make movies that took directly from the best elements of the comics themselves and thus used their acquisitions to their best advantage. X-Men 2 is Chris Claremont's X-Men and no one elses... and its by far the best comic book movie ever made in my opinion.

Time Warner is just making adjustments that will allow them to use their properties as best as they can, something that they should have been doing 20 years ago. Neither corporate move would stop me from doing work from either company, they may actually become more professional in their dealings with artists as time goes on. We writers and artists can get screwed by a much better class of people.

As our little niche media is recognized by the rest of the general public for what we comic fans had always known- i.e. that we're a media with a lot of entertainment to give - we should expect that with greater dollars comes greater responsibility, and greater corporate overseeing.

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