Who is DC making comics for? I don't think that they know

Lets get right to it and say, "No, you don't." Which is kind of like saying, "The answer is 42." and, of course, not knowing what the question is.

Well the answer is in response to this:

“Batman did pretty well, so I sat down with the head of DC Comics. I really wanted to do Kamandi [The Last Boy on Earth], this Jack Kirby character. I had this great pitch … and he said, ‘You think this is gonna be for kids? Stop, stop. We don’t publish comics for kids. We publish comics for 45-year-olds. If you want to do comics for kids, you can do Scooby-Doo. And I thought, ‘I guess we just broke up.’”– Paul Pope, relating his attempt to pitch an all-ages (or perhaps young-adult) title to DC Comics, during his Comic-Con International conversation with Gene Luen Yang.

Now, it would be one thing if DC had a focus and Paul, who has a distinct creative voice, was not going to be part of that, but, and we can put this right on the table, DC is NOT making comics for 45 year old men. 45 year olds were brought up on Frank McLaughlin and Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella and Cary Bates and the Flash, and the classic JLA and Superman coming from Kansas and this new 52 is not their DC at all. 

Perhaps DC thinks that the hypersexualized fanboy driven new versions of the characters, and the darker Green Lantern will appeal to the adults in the audience who haven't really grown up, but its clearly not happening. None of the these versions of the characters are recognizable to anyone in their 40's. Those of us in our 40's had to deal with the reordering of the DC universes when Crisis first threw a big blanket over continuity back in '85, but it was a fairly loving blanket, inclusive for the most part. But now they've rebooted so many times that all they have done is made a point of pushing away older fans to an extent that we've never seen before. Welcome to the NEW DC!

Now, combine that with Karen Berger's exit interview in the New York Times and you have the other interesting side to this:

Dan DiDio, the co-publisher of DC Comics, said there was “some truth” to these feelings of a shifting landscape, which he said were industrywide. For comics published by Vertigo and by DC, he said: “There’s not a challenge to be more profitable out of the gate. But there is a challenge to be more accepted out of the gate.”Mr. DiDio said it would be “myopic” to believe “that servicing a very small slice of our audience is the way to go ahead.”“That’s not what we’re in the business for,” he added. “We have to shoot for the stars with whatever we’re doing. Because what we’re trying to do is reach the biggest audience and be as successful as possible.”

So lets parse this: Vertigo, the line that primarily would bring in female readers, is being cancelled because "servicing a very small slice of our audience is [not] the way to go ahead.” How is it possible to go service a wider part of your audience when you've just cut out 50% of the population? 

So, really, who is DC producing comics for? Do they know?

I going to go with: catering to the needs of 25-year old fanboys who don't need a lot of old continuity to deal with, like the Reis/Lee art style, don't have wives bothering them over blatantly sexist comics coming into the house, and don't want any of that DC produced "alternative shit" messing up their comic lines. Now, is this any different than the individuals who were going to enjoy Dr. Light raping Sue Dibney? Not really, but i do think that its already a different generation of young men pushing what meager sales are out there, young men who don't have daughters that they don't want to sexualize, young men who believe that they have a slightly nihilistic attitude towards life because they've played too much "Tour of Duty". Not the sort readers that  might wander by the Top Shelf table at a con. 

Will DC succeed with this audience? Perhaps, but i'm thinking no, and it will be just a matter of time before they retrench. Again. And its not going to be pretty. Again.

Can Mort Weisinger Be Redeemed asks Arlen Schumer

I have an answer for Arlen.

No.

Weisinger and those early folks at DC Comics were evil and deserved to die long before they did. It still wouldn't have made a difference to the nearly blind and destitute Siegel, but it might have made him feel better.

"They kept sucking him in with stock options?" For all the horrible things that this man did to the poor creative individuals that had to work under him? Don't tell me, "Well, that's just how the business was back then." Bull. You can still make some money and you don't have to destroy the lives of the people under you just because you can. I don't care how unhappy this man was, He took it out on everyone around him and made their lives hell.

Forget about all the little contributions that he might ahve made to our favorite little nostalgic power fantasies. Simply look at how far from being any sort of good person Weisinger was. Viscious, belittling, emasculating, career destroying, eviscerating. Think, instead of this: without him ruining all the good stories and art that could have been done for Superman, think of how much better those comics could have been.

Read Men of Tomorrow, read what the artists and writers under him had to suffer through. And you'll never feel sorry again for him dying at a mere 63. All that evil, rolled into one insufferable man. and all because those poor people had the dream to work on a four color fantasy. And there was nowhere for them to go. Pay attention artistic folk, this is what happens: they die rich and you don't. And they hardly ever get their comeuppance.

JMS Leaves The Floppies: World Yawns

Tom wonders, in his usual way, over at the Comics Reporter, whether J. Michael Straczynski leaving the monthly Wonder Woman and Superman is a vote of no-confidence in the monthly books. Other, of course, have picked up on this and will make it a small meme for about 5 minutes.

I mention this because, really, most of us have given up on the monthlies in a big way. Marvel and DC regularly put out story arcs designed to be collected into the trades which have a longer shelf life anyway. So, of course, the format is dictating the content. Which is always has done. All of us older comics readers got addicted to the monthly format of 22 page stories from an early age, and that's how we "see" comics. It pushes our buttons for what we're used to. People who came to alterna-comics via Groening or Carol Lay are going to look for the weekly comics fix in their local paper. Unlike the writer of books, who are going to write chapters solely on how long the chapter needs to be, the comic writer chapter is going to have to give you 22 page chapters for their story arc.

And you know what? There is a reason that more sophisticated work is being done long form in the Graphic Novel format. While I'm annoyed that Straczynski can't finish his damn work, but that he keeps getting work, I loved his Thor. Best version of Thor in 20 years, so yes, I put up with it to get a comic that i enjoyed the hell out of. But the pacing for the story that he was writing would have been better outside of the 22 page format. Each month we ended at a strange place in the rhythm of the story and had to pick it up 30 or 60 days later. I would much rather have read a great Thor Graphic Novel.

Yes, the floppies are dead, they just don't know it yet. No, Straczynski's leaving has to do with his inability to make deadlines. Yes, his parting bon mot is just about right. Leave your comments below.

Siegel's Heirs Regain Action Comics #1 Copyright

This is, of course, huge. Truly, truly huge.

Time and time again the story of Siegel and Shuster has been the absolute cornerstone of all that is right at the beginning of the American Comic Book Myth to the casual American public, and all that is wrong, for those in the know, with American Comic Books. The Siegel and Shuster story makes them the ultimate"fuck you" martyrs to all artists.

And now that's changed. A little, but miles better than it ever was. It doesn't take away the lifetime of virtual poverty that existed until 1977 however.

After seventy years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago – the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics Vol. 1. What remains is an apportionment of profits, guided in some measure by the rulings contained in this Order, and a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s exploitation of the Superman copyright.

The NY Times has a write-up, as does Uncivil Society, where I took the above paragraph. Required reading for everyone.

Superman vs. Spiderman: Viva La '70's!

Oh Danny Boy down in Australia has a great article up about the story behind the Superman/Spider-Man team up from the 1970's. With interviews via phone and email with Neal Adams, Mike Esposito, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman and Terry Austin, he seems to have teased out all the behind the scenes stuff. Its been gone over once before in Comic Book Artist, I believe, but a nice condensation of the making of the book.

What is interesting to me is how amazed he is about the idea that diverse hands (Adams redrawing Andru's Superman figures for instance) seem to have touched the pages. I doubt that there is a professional out there that would be surprised by the "collaborative" process why which a book like this is made. There are a ton of books that have been made by "Diverse Hands" or "Crusty Bunkers" that would turn up all sorts of interesting names in a panel by panel breakdown.

I personally love the story of the tier in Master of Kung Fu #39 that was inked by Steranko on a book that Dan Adkins get the published credit on. Adkins had received the pencils and but had just started the job when Steranko was visiting. Jim, apparently loved the tier with some asian gangsters gambling and grabbed a brush and started inking it. Given Paul Gulacy's style, it was a perfect fit.

How about The Claws of the Cat #4, with Alan Weiss and Jim Starlin each drawing different characters throughout the entire book (Alan The Cat and Jim the Man-Bull)? That was one weird book. I never figured out the credits until Alan told me the story years later.

Got a favorite Jam story? There are a million of them. Lets not even bring up Secret Wars. Really.