DC’s New Executive Team

DC’s New Executive Team

DC today finally announced who would be taking over as publisher as Paul Levitz old job was split in half with Diane Nelson taking over as president and now not one but five people will handle the publishing half.  Officially Dan Didio and Jim Lee are the co publishers.  Geoff Johns is the creative chief.  John Rood and Patrick Caldon will handle the sales and finance part.

Some of this is not surprising as Didio will be moving up a position, which will mean a new executive editor will be named at a later date.  Geoff Johns is basically being given an official name to what he has already been doing.  Johns has been the creative overseer in all things Blackest Night as well his connections to Hollywood where he has written for TV shows like Smallville and is consulting with the people making the Green Lantern movie.  This is in line with all the plans for Brightest Day and the related books.  That is a good news since Johns is the creative backbone of the main DC Universe right now.  I just hope that he is not taking on too much work.  (more…)



More News From the Week

Here are a few more things to close out what was an interesting week.

Brightest Reign

DC is clearly betting heavily on the Blackest  Night aftermath as the Brightest Day plans look quite a bit like what Marvel did with Dark Reign.  Tony Bedard will take over writing Green Lantern Corps while Pete Tomasi is moving over to launch Green Lantern Emerald Warriors, which will center around Guy Gardner.  Sadly those two books will not stand a chance in sales as most people will be spending their money on the main Green Lantern book and the twice a month Brightest Day book.

Bookscan 2009

Brian Hibbs has a very long but interesting look at the Bookscan numbers for 2009.  These are the numbers from the mainstream book market separate from the Direct Market.  There are quite a few interesting things that can be found from this.  I will quickly go over a few of the things I found interesting. (more…)



Bits of News From a Busy Week

It has been one of those good weeks with a healthy dose of interesting new items.  Jim Doom already covered the strange case of Captain America and the Teabaggers, so here are few other things.

Brightest Day

DC has already made it official that Aquaman will be alive and well for Brightest Day.  Also the Brightest Day symbol will be the logo of a key hero to come out of the Blackest Night event.  I’m assuming this means whoever the White Lantern is will be using this symbol.

The 100 Minute War

Also from DC this week the announcement that the War of the Supermen will take place in something called the 100 Minute War.  The idea being that because it’s Kryptonians and the super beings of earth it would only last 100 minutes.  It sounds a bit silly but this is a good move by DC as it will be a 4 issue mini series along with the Free Comic For a Day zero issue all in the month of May.   (more…)



What I Read This Week

I’m not very good at doing proper reviews so I thought I would try just giving some brief comments on the various books I read from this past week’s releases.

Scalped #34

This is the best thing I read from last week. I have a tendency now to let the arcs build up before I read them which I did here.  Things are starting to really hit the fan for both Dash and Redcrow.  It’s hard to talk about this book since you really need to just read it from the start to appreciate it, which I certainly recommend.  It’s like fallowing a great TV show like the Wire.

The Question #37

This is one of the Blackest Night back from the dead books.  Denys Cowan is still one of my favorite artist and he did not disappoint here.  Like the other back of the dead books it is not a must read but you do get exactly what you would expect from it.

Ghost Riders: Heavens on Fire #6 (more…)



News Bits and Ultimate Sales Drop

Secret Avengers

Along with the already annouced Bendis written Avengers series the other new book in the Avengers line will be called Secret Avengers and be written by Ed Brubaker with art by Mike Deodato.

Return of Bruce Wayne

DC has some of the covers to the upcoming the Return of Bruce Wayne series showing more of Bruce in strange outfits from various time periods here and here.  I do like the wild west version.

iPad Irony

Rich Johnston over a Bleeding Cool is one of the biggest proponents of the “iPad is the comics game changer” belief.  I found it rather funny that he posted the preview pages of Batman and Robin #8 in a Flash based browser saying it was better then the basic image in the browser that DC’s blog uses.  Because of Apple’s lack of Flash support the iPad will not be able to use the way Johnston set it up, although the DC blog would work on a iPad.  It’s hard to change the game when you can’t even view all of the game.

Ultimate Comics Sales Drop (more…)



Watchmen Spinoffs and or Prequels

Rich Johnston over at Bleeding Cool mentioned mentioned that Dan Didio is allegedly going forward with putting together various Watchmen related comics in the form of prequels and spinoffs.  Paul Levitz,  despite his issues with Alan Moore, had always protected Watchmen from these sorts of things.  Now that Levitz has stepped down there is likely no one to stop it especially given the huge success of the trade from the movie hype.  Even though the movie is becoming a fleeting memory in people’s minds the original trade still continues to be a top seller with no signs of slowing any time soon.  So it is probably no surprise that Didio would want to take advantage of this and squeeze out everything he can from it.

At first look this sounds like a horrible idea.  Anything they did could never live up to the original, but I actually think it might be a good idea depending on the creative talent involved.  Obviously Alan Moore would never be part of it but Dave Gibbons is on good terms with DC.  Ideally Gibbons would at least over see projects like this much like he did with the Watchmen related merchandise around the time of the movie.  Len Wein, the original editor of the Watchmen, has been working for DC of late and would be another name worth having involved in this.  Wein did write the script for the Watchmen video game, which was basically a prequel based around Rorschach and NightOwl.  Beyond them there would be the various talent that worked on Moore’s ABC line comics like Zander Cannon, Gene Ha, Rich Veitch, and others.  I personally would love to see Grant Morrison do something with Doctor Manhattan.  I liked what Morrison did in Superman Beyond 3D with his own of version of the Doctor Manhattan/Captain Atom character.

Didio is usually pretty good about getting the right people on the right projects, so if this does happen it would be a honest effort and not just a quick money grab.  I for one would like to see happen.



ActionMan Adam and Webcomics

My good friend Marc Streeter just launched his webcomic this week over at actionmanadam.com.  It centers around Adam a Canadian living in Christchurch New Zealand who is trying to find love.  Adam is based off a real life person both Marc and I knew.  The real life Adam was quite the character himself and unintentionally provided Marc with all the material he needed to make a entertaining comic.  Marc has coincided the launch with his birthday as a good way to remember it, so happy birthday to Marc and best of luck with the comic.

Webcomics

I must admit the world of webcomics is a bit foreign to me much like manga was before I made headway with that.  I’m not really sure what to think of them at this stage.  Some are done in a format like a comic strip and some are a comic book format.  I like that ActionMan is in the comic book format as that is my personal preference, much like Warren Ellis’ Freak Angels.  I’m familiar with the better known webcomics like pVp and Penny Arcade, but they never really caught my interest.  I have been regularly fallowing Karl Kerchl’s webcomic The Abominable Charles Christopher.  I enjoy it but it does leave me wishing that it was treated more like a comic book.  I have not had much luck finding other webcomics that catch my interest.  If anyone has any webcomic recommendations I certainly would appreciate them.  I would like to know what out there is worth reading.



Marvel’s Pricing and Backup Stories

Marvel has been playing a very strange game with the pricing of their comics.  They want to push the $3.99 price tag as much as they can to milk what they can out of the direct market.  The strange thing is some of the books like the recent Captain America books have been priced right at $3.99 because they each have 30 pages of new material.  Most of the $3.99 books, like the books in the Ultimate line, have only 22 pages of material which is over priced.  It seems somewhat fitting as Marvel creatively has been a mixed bag of late.  Some of the books are really great and some are just horrendously stupid.  So it’s probably no real surprise their pricing is just as haphazard.

DC on the other hand has their pricing set.  A DC book that is $3.99 will have 30 pages either as a full story or a co feature to make up the extra pages, while the 22 page books are set at $2.99.  It’s simple, it’s smart, and it doesn’t cheat the fans.  Marvel needs to fall in line with this because it is not just something that is good for the fans but it is something they will benefit more from as well.   The main reason Marvel would benefit from this also ties into one of the reasons why Disney purchased them, that being character development.  Disney wants properties they can develop in other media such as movies, TV, etc.  The better Marvel’s comics are the more Disney will have to work with. (more…)



The Ipad and what it means for comics

Apple officially announced their tablet device today, the Ipad.  Newsarama has a good write up on the technical specs of the device.  This has of course lead to all sorts of chatter about what this means for comics.  The common reaction has been that this will be the game changer and that comic shop owners should be quaking in their boots.  It is wishful thinking but the truth is the Ipad is a dud for comics.  The device is a bit of a mashup of the Ipod and Iphone,  just with a large screen.  It has the same limitations as Apple’s other devices.  Those limitations are why this will not have any real impact on the comic industry for the foreseeable future.
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DC Brings Back The Humor

DC today announced Justice League: Generation Lost as a 26 issues bi-weekly series.  It is the same format as the Brightest Day series announced yesterday.  Essnetially the two books with trade off each week.  The surprising thing about Generation Lost is that it will feature the classic Justice League International team, comedy and all.  It will be co written by Judd Winnick and Keith Giffen.  The two were interviewed at newsarama making it pretty clear they are going for comedy.  On top of that the original writing team of JLI, Giffen and JM DeMatteis, fresh off their entertaining Metal Men co feature in Doom Patrol will be taking over Booster Gold sometime this year.  Saddly there is no word on what artist Kevin Maguire will be doing but hopefully he will be involved in one or both of these books in some way.

I personally think all of this is great news but I honestly don’t know how well it will do.  It is banking on a nostalgia of sorts with the revival of the sitcom style superheroes.  Hopefully most are like me and are looking for something more fun and light hearted like this to help scrub away the overly serious grim and gritty elements of many superheros titles in recent years, of which most of the JLI characters took the worst of the grim and gritty abuse.  Thankfully it is structured to be separate from the Brightest Day events so people will not be force to feel like they  have to read it for continuity’s sake.  It can just be read for the sake of entertainment.