Aldo reads DC's New 52 (So you don't have to)

Dial H is fucking great

if you'd told me a year ago that my favorite comic books would be a Dial H reboot and a Hawkeye solo series, I would have laughed myself silly

#hawkguy

any word on a Dial H trade?

Any word on Mieville sticking around after Berger's boned?

Is Berger leaving DC or just Vertigo? It seemed like her being the Dial H editor was a personal favor to Mieville, so maybe she'll continue at least through his planned run. She's around through the spring regardless. I'm assuming he wasn't going to do Dial H longterm, but maybe I'm wrong.

Oh, man, what? Berger's leaving now?? Well, DC, you had a good run. It's too bad you had to piss all over everything. It is a little shocking that it only took them < 2 yrs to hobble the whole operation.

Is Berger leaving DC or just Vertigo?

looooool

Feel like sharing that joke?

someone could look at Berger's entire career at DC, and what work she's edited in that time, and how many other people have been there as long, or half as long, or a quarter as long as her, and what DC have done in toto since Nelson came on, and what DC have done to Vertigo contracts over the last ten years, and how many ppl have series at Vertigo now that aren't also writing at least one ongoing GODCORP.jpg in the DCU, and how many DC-fully-owned properties are being published as discrete series at Vertigo; and type "ayo maybe 'stepping down from Vertigo' doesn't mean she's "~~resigning~~"* from AOL/DC/Time/Warner, maybe she's moving to The Nu-52 fulltime?" = looooool

*lol

Didn't you use to be not a dick?

No one posited she was moving to Nu-52 fulltime. I only wondered if she would stay on and edit Mieville. But, hey, any chance to be an asshole.

You really think DC would continue to pay her the salary of their longest-standing executive (and iirc a VP) to edit ONE low-selling wfh title? That a major, major part of forcing her out isn't to save on her pay packet?

(I was always a dick ;_; )

Did I say she was continuing in the same role and salary? Did I do anything but wonder if she was going to continue to work with Mieville, because that was a personal favor to him in the first place? Why, no I didn't, you dickweed.

So you... think that after being forced out of an executive role & pay & benefits, being forced out of a VP role & pay & benefits, being forced out of the imprint she founded and headed for 19 years -- 19 years! --, which has been one of DC's most stable profit centers in publishing for most of that time, which was one of the four most (perhaps sole) significant factors in DC establishing sustainable roots in bookstores (and therefore Amazon) *ever*... that in reaction to this insulting dismissal of everything she's brought to the company, she would turn down an executive/VP severance package in favour of switching to a junior editor's wage for, idk, 6-10 months and then getting re-fired?

I mean, maybe I'm coming off dickish, and maybe she absolutely would -- I don't know her! -- but it seems flabbergastingly unlikely to me, which is why I'm asking! Your scenario seems premised on these assumptions though, right?

(I got out of bed to try and find a recent Vertigo book to check her title, but I guess it's been well over a year since I bought one)

(oh no wait that Ghosts anthology! *gets out of bed again)

yeah, Senior VP & Executive Editor

My premise was I wonder what the deal is with her editing DIAL H, and since I had and have no information about what has happened between her and DC, I asked out loud if it meant the end of that too. I didn't give one thought about money or contracts as it didn't matter to my instant concern.

But hey, instead of saying, "I can't imagine her staying on or working with DC in any capacity because blah, blah,blah," you decided to lol at some train of thought only you were privy to, which made you look like an ass. I would have agreed with you if you had approached it from a different angle, but I should know that's too much to ask when you think you have a zinger.

The assumption that there is no way to keep her on Dial H without losing her severance package is a pretty big one (particularly considering that yeah this does actually happen in the real world), but it doesn't sound like it's EZ making it?

Also the deal where she's editing Dial H must be a little odd anyway - is she taking time out from VP work for it, is she effectively already massively overpaid for it, is she doing it evenings and weekends?

(I was always a dick ;_; )

lol

ANYway...I have to wonder if there are any worried rumblings among the top brass at DC. I don't know what the sales figures look like at this point, but the number of high-profile people who are jumping ship over exceedingly shitty editorial/managerial decisions sure looks like a disaster-in-waiting from the outside. Most puzzlingly: I don't really understand why ANY of this was allowed to happen! The whole New 52 initiative seems like the kind of last-minute Hail Mary you'd play if your company was severely in the tank and on the verge of failing completely...but I don't think that was the case? It just seems like massive and devastating restructuring simply for the fuck of it, with no room for reasoned judgment or reflection.

I dunno, having worked in several large-ish organisations, the "massive and devastating restructuring simply for the fuck of it" button gets pressed depressingly often. Short-termism seems to be the root of all managerial evil.

Isn't that the 'brief-sales-boost-from-series-reboot' button? You do that often enough and the whole thing dissolves into incoherence (this being comics that's saying a lot) and eventually there's nobody left in the room listening to you any more.
Seems to me they've been rebooting in faster and faster intervals (like rebooted Superman and Spiderman films coming five or so years after the last ones), and they've either gotten to or are really close to a reboot singularity where every issue is an origin story (which actually I would read since it would read like The Caterer)

(I was always kind of impressed with Byrne's 1986 Supes reboot since so much of it has survived all the reboots since)

That's a solid starting point from which I started collecting a few years back. Years and years and years of a continued story without anyone getting the jitters and hitting restart.

In many respects, triangle era Superman is pretty much my platonic ideal for how in-continuity comics should be structured/handled.

I had to look that triangle thing up since I had no idea what you were talking about - that is pretty clever!

Right? And they brought the triangle numbering back for a year or two recently, sometime after Infinite Crisis and just before Straczynski came in and wrecked stuff pre-New 52. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most solid Superman run in recent memory.

tbf I understood exactly what sic was getting at, and Berger staying on in any way that is NOT Vertigo-related is ridiculous. She's virtually synonymous with Vertigo, in my book, and the fact they're screwing with it is pretty much a dead giveaway she'd be on the way out.

http://fflivewire.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/High_Five.gif

BTW http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42536

Ultimately, the conclusion that I've come to this week (and, yes, you may say that I'm a few decades late to that conclusion) is that my market is largely existing at the suffrage of corporate entities who really don't care about us whatsoever. While in the past, specific individuals within those corporations have done their best to shelter us, but now that comics have been "discovered" by Hollywood, et al (remember: always be careful what you wish for!) the pressure is on for comics to conform to their rigid values. Even if those values will ultimately sell fewer comics, and harm the very medium from making short term decisions.

I'm saddened by this realization, and I am horrified, and it's making me question every thing that I do, and, if it even, in fact, is wise to continue to stay in retail. Three weeks ago, I would have laughed at any suggestion that I wouldn't be doing this until well into my sixties.

truth sadface

The saddest thing about new 52 is that DC didn't pick writers with good ideas, they basically picked their fave writers (Johns), former Vertigo writers, and the hottest of the early 90s and thought it'd make for a great comic line

It was kinda loose and implied before, but after reading that, I'm straight-up boycotting DC until they get their shit together. Assuming they ever do.

xpost Yeah, I mean...Harras just packed the store with his old '90s Marvel cronies. I don't have any beef with Lobdell, but giving Liefeld the control he had was ridiculous. And Howard Mackie?! Seriously!? Dude's up there with Loeb and Austen in the Shitty Scripter Hall Of Fame.

Howard Mackie is the worst, but he's a decent editor IIRC

Lobdell and Nicieza are not too hateable but even I was able to see them as hacks by the late 90s. Occasional nice stuff, but way too rote on average.

I know DJP will disagree to an extent. I liked Lobdell + Bachalo but that was a bit above the average. Too much soap opera with no ideas beyond cookie-cutter melodrama and bad stereotypes

I wouldn't call Nicieza a hack per se; he's a little more inspired/coherent than that

Lobdell is the platonic ideal of a good hack, though; I loved reading him but he often was scraping by on bare minimum

personally it drives me crazy that no one besides me thinks Waid is terrible

xpost: lol

Waid is hit or miss for me. Amazing that he made his name with such a steaming pile as Kingdom Come.

I think the thing that briefly made me cheerlead for Lobdell more heavily than I actually felt was merited was that half the things people held up during his tenure as gross failures of characterization that never should have happened were things Waid did in his X-book, like having Cannonball sulk in a tree worrying about whether he'd ever make a good leader after years of him being team leader in New Mutants and X-Force.

(Lobdell can totally take all the blame for X-Men Unlimited #4 tho)

Nicieza's done some decent stuff, but (as I'm pretty sure I posted elsewhere) his Thunderbolts run (or at least the stretch I read, tbf) was incoherent and wretched. Which was the last thing of his I've read and which has colored my opinion of him somewhat.

Lobdell was good at pulling shit out of his ass and juggling it with enough chutzpah that his shit juggling almost seemed like a rational act informed by forethought.

I've come around on Waid a little bit from the day when I threw his first FF issue in the trash but remain largely unimpressed.

I'm actually a really big fan of Lobdell's early Uncanny run (maybe up until around the point when Madureira came onboard). I think a lot of that stuff tops the last couple years of Claremont's run, easily.

Nicieza gets an eternal pass from me for Psi Force and his backup stories in Classic X-Men

I may overrate some of Lobdell's Uncanny run because I loved JoeMad so much

You guys are doing the "this crap was slightly better than this other warmed-over dogshit" game.

eh, not really

unless your thesis statement is that Psi Force sucked, in which case we are in an eternal fight

I never read it, but I admit the latter half of the series, which he apparently penned, could have been awesome.

he wrote 3/4 of it; took over at #9 and the whole line was cancelled at... 36? 32? something in the 30s