Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

yeah BTTM FDDRS is some wild stuff

Is there really, even theoretically, meant to be a thing called 'Dark Nights: Death Metal: Infinite Hour Exxxtreme!'. I would not expect sic to lie, but this seems unlikely, even for DC.

https://i.imgur.com/agTaBRa.jpg
Writers: Becky Cloonan and Frank Tieri!

After posting, I regretted not moving it to the end of the list so it would look like I had made it up

I am sorry for doubting you for even a half-second.

The director of the CBLDF was removed last month from his position, 14 years after police investigations into sexual assault complaints against him at conventions. TCJ subsequently reported on sexual harassment & bullying he enaged in at work.

An interim director was appointed today, an "attorney and ethics director" whose previous role involved "work on ethics issues ..advising government officials," and who is a member of the Ethics Committee at Kering Americas. In the press release announcing his hiring, he quotes 'my favorite comic book sequence of all time, the last issue of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol: "There is another world. A better world. Well... there must be."'

The ethics-focused lawyer for the artists' rights org does not cite that Morrison was quoting Asleep by The Smiths.

Ugh. An ugly story

Axed at DC in the last 8 weeks or so:

Metal Men (mini)
Batman's Grave (mini)
Hellblazer
Lucifer
Books of Magic
Amethyst
House Of Whispers
Batgirl
Aquaman
Batman & The Outsiders
Justice League Odyssey
Red Hood: Outlaw
Teen Titans
Young Justice
Harley Quinn
Hawkman
Suicide Squad
Supergirl
The Terrifics
Shazam!
Manhunters: The Secret History (bumped & unpublished)
Event Leviathan: Checkmate (wtf) (bumped & unpublished)

Bumped from May publication but not yet cancelled:
Flash Forward
Generation Zero: Gods Among Us
Generation One: Age of Mysteries
Generation Two: Age of the Metahuman
Generation Three: Age of Crisis
Generation Four: Age of Rebirth
Generation Five: Age of Tomorrow

plus 18x $1 Comics reprints, 4x Facsimile editions, and 5 ongoing Giant Comics for Walmart, including a Wonder Woman 1984 movie tie-in.

They've also confirmed that the TV content on the DC subscription service will be moving to HBO Max, fwiw.

This leaves approx 15 titles still being published as of November; they also had an online "Fandome" (wtf) convention scheduled, but many of the panels are being cancelled due to AT&T firing the talent shortly after pre-recording the panels the other week.

Jim Lee, in a hilariously content-free, management-jargon-filled interview with the Hollywood Reporter, suggests that their publishing strategy going forward will mostly be unpublished inventory and foreign licences, released digitally.

Small note that Batman's Grave being shitcanned is because it's written by Warren Ellis.

I was reading (on and off) almost all of these.

Batman's Grave was okay, basically a compendium of Ellis-isms so your enjoyment is going to be predicated on your patience with his writing tics (which came across to me this time as Neal Adams-noir) and his repugnant reputation.

The current run of Books of Magic was readable. Spurrier's current run on Hellblazer was actually very good and very much worth reading.

I either don't have much of anything to say and/or I did not like the rest.

DC is fucked, badly.

i'm amazed at how they've frittered away the good will of so many characters. Aquaman and Harley Quinn and Captain Mar- er, SHAZAM are megamovie stars! Teen Titans are beloved cartoon hits! How have you fucked this up so badly that an audience that wants to see these books isn't buying them?

I was liking Batman's Grave and the current Suicide Squad run, wasn't reading the rest.
Was looking forward to that Event Leviathan series just to see an actual conclusion to the first story.
As surprised as you are that they're killing those properties (Harley in particular which always seems popular?)
All the Generation 0-5 stuff was DiDios' baby, I think, so not surprising that's kicked away

Legion of Bendis Heroes is surviving? It looks so bad.

Bendis-verse, HillHouse and Black Label all summarily shrugged away or will be shortly i guess

on the other hand, i have no idea how books like hawkman or red hood have survived anywhere near this long.
red hood particularly! who the fuck is buying that book!?!

from early May, which i think is the last time DC had sales figures released through diamond

123 - RED HOOD: OUTLAW ($3.99)
03/2015: Red Hood & Outlaws #40 -- 17,110
03/2016: Red Hood/Arsenal #10 -- 17,707
03/2017: Red Hood & Outlaws #8 -- 27,894
03/2018: Red Hood & Outlaws #20 -- 20,214
-----------------------------------------
03/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #32 -- 18,389 (- 5.9%)
04/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #33 -- 24,706 (+ 34.4%)
05/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #34 -- 18,389 (- 23.2%)
06/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #35 -- 18,067 (- 4.8%)
07/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #36 -- 21,308 (+ 17.9%)
08/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #37 -- 18,585 (- 12.8%)
09/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #38 -- 18,425 (- 0.9%)
10/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #39 -- 17,614 (- 4.4%)
11/2019: Red Hood: Outlaw #40 -- 21,864 (+ 24.1%)
12/2019: --
01/2020: Red Hood: Outlaw #41 -- 15,835 (- 27.6%)
01/2020: Red Hood: Outlaw #42 -- 15,419 (- 2.6%)
02/2020: Red Hood: Outlaw #43 -- 15,733 (+ 2.0%)
03/2020: Red Hood: Outlaw #44 -- 14,158 (+ 2.0%)
-----------------
6 months: - 23.2%
1 year : - 23.0%
2 years : - 30.0%
5 years : - 17.3%

Lowest sales ever for a Red Hood-fronted comic.

from the same source:

DC COMICS - TOTAL SALES
03/2005: 1,914,442
03/2010: 1,910,518
03/2015: 1,877,281
03/2016: 1,696,506
03/2017: 2,711,448
03/2018: 2,305,728
------------------
03/2019: 2,213,196 (+ 25.8%)
04/2019: 1,515,307 (- 31.5%)
05/2019: 2,177,609 (+ 43.7%)
06/2019: 1,787,229 (- 25.7%)
07/2019: 2,130,506 (+ 19.2%)
08/2019: 1,814,822 (- 14.8%)
09/2019: 2,145,167 (+ 18.2%)
10/2019: 2,764,956 (+ 28.9%)
11/2019: 2,089,383 (- 24.4%)
12/2019: 2,057,809 (- 1.5%)
01/2020: 1,855,544 (- 9.8%)
02/2020: 1,738,041 (- 6.3%)
02/2020: 1,560,269 (- 6.3%)
-----------------
6 months: - 27.3%
1 year : - 29.5%
2 years : - 32.3%
5 years : - 19.6%
10 years: - 18.3%
15 years: - 18.5%

If Instagram and Tumblr's tireless algorithms are anything to go by, Red Hood has a really dedicated cult fanbase, especially for a third-tier Batman spinoff (though, tbf, not bad at times). Lobdell's long run was set to end with 50 anyway as of the end of June

lobdell's popularity in the comic world is utterly confounding to me
i will admit to thinking Happy Death Day was a pretty good movie; kind of assume there's a lot of punch-up work doing the heavy lifting there.

ha, wow, did not realize he wrote that. that's gotta be the best thing he's associated with

the director apparently did a page-one rewrite on Happy Death Day, basically keeping Lobdell's premise

that sounds right. the premise is "groundhog day meets Friday the 13th" which any 14 year old could've come up with but the nuances and the lead actress are what make it worthwhile.

I kind of have to say that the way the last-year data on DC flaps around like a flag in a high wind renders the year-to-year comparisons kind of meaningless, like this May was worse than all the other Mays, but last October was better than all of them?

Guessing Rebirth was the cause of the massive sales jump from 2016-2017.
Also that list conspicuously leaves out 2011, the start of the New 52. Still interesting the sales reverted and decreasing within four years, though.

I agree that is bizarre the way sales will ebb and flow month to month in 2019. I would've expected stronger consistent sales during event periods.Heroes in Crisis wasn't good and Doomsday Clock was dribbling to the finish with the final four issues being a year late (started in Nov '17!). Year of the Villain was an incredibly loose thematic tie-in.

I would've thought Bendis-verse (Superman titles, Wonder Comics imprint, Event Leviathan) would've been a solid bump, and Black Label seemed to get a solid push from the my local stores. I'm guessing none of these did as well as they hoped.

Black Label has been pretty successful but the new leadership doesn't like the 'adult' direction, supposedly.

Watched the Cartoonist Kayfabe interview with Pat Mills. Space Warp is his attempt to do 2000AD again but with better creator rights and trying to get a teenage audience again (in addition to older comics fans). He made it fairly clear he likes to chase certain audiences and try to please them.
https://www.spacewarpcomic.com/

Space Warp looks interesting...

Batman's Grave #12 (the final issue) was in November's solicits published two days ago, so hopefully we'll still get the end of that without resorting to a future collection

I had never heard the story about a comic shop owner very loudly boycotting Mills' Marshall Law because a villain dropkicks a child so hard that it sends him for miles.

Bendis wrote some pretty good comics but I think whatever he had going he's kind of already mined out. It's not like the zombies were going to follow him to read Superman.

Bendis wrote some pretty good comics

citation needed

I really liked Age of Ultron, of all things. I don't think his "critically acclaimed" stuff like Daredevil and Alias holds up very well. But sometimes he hits the nail on the right amount of stupid, and he can be fun in small doses. Quite a few of his books have started well, but they always seem to go off the rails with unresolved subplots/bad writing within a year - his Iron Man and Superman runs are both pretty good/bad examples of that.

i like his extended run on the Avengers. Fanboys appear to have hated his run on Superman but I thought the elevation of Lois and Superman Jr was okay until the Leviathan thing got into full swing and that sucked.

The Superman Jr. stuff - I'm still waiting to see how it pans out; but I really liked Tomasi's work on the characters, especially with Super-Sons. The Action Comics / Invisible Mafia angle is also interesting but slow moving. Afraid you might be right that these plots will just go off the rails and forgotten, this happened a lot I feel towards the end of his otherwise-great Avengers run when he seemed to get bored of it.

I liked Leviathan in concept but was livid when Event: Leviathan ended with the villain reveal and then a note that there would be another Leviathan series next year to continue the story. Which of course, is now indefinitely delayed due to Covid.

the whole Leviathan thing had nothing at its core except a desire to be a big, universe spanning conspiracy because... well, because who watches the watchmen i guess? utterly pointless and i never gave a damn who the leader was. i think it's absolutely fated to be ignored by the next writer, so this was just so much filler.

I did like the idea that Leviathan was transformed from the Al Ghuls' crime cult to an opposing group of "good" revolutionaries who destroyed the world's spy networks to maintain a One World Order that would incorporate ideological superheroes, super-scientists, villains and intelligence agency survivors, and was interested in turning the population in their favor. But yeah... thrown away, it looks like.

They're basically QAnon but with lasers? Once I read it that way, it turned me off completely.

I thought QAnon was fighting the globalists? Eh, honestly i don't know

i read Q/leviathan as the evil SHIELD power-behind-the-throne but, again, I read his whole avengers/dark avengers run and this felt like that redux except not very good. a quick look around online supports my theory that this run doesn't benefit from close analysis.

I mean, I like a segment of the work he's done, but I think it's fair to say that applies across the board re: Bendis. It's not exactly deep.

i think he claremonts as well or (in his prime) better than almost anyone else and that's not nothing. Juggling character growth, group dynamics and long term impact for a team book can be fun to watch. obviously your ability to enjoy what he's offering hinges on your patience with his mamet for dummies dialogue.

I think that's a fair evaluation of his strengths.

In terms of his weaknesses (and an installment of 'things only Old Lunch cares about'): although the quality is variable and arguable, Marvel in the last decade or so has done an admirable job of sewing all of the components of their massive events into something resembling a cohesive whole, where all of the crossovers fit relatively well into the overall puzzle. EXCEPT that the weak link in every instance has been Bendis, who either just DGAF about being a team player or who worked under editors who were too dazzled by his star power to rein him in. But it drove me nuts every time. No, Brian, there's no way the thing you just wrote could've happened given the status of everything else going on atm, getcher head in the game.

(I do realize that his flippant attitude towards continuity is likely to earn him points among the contrarians up in this piece.)

i thought it was pretty good going through Secret Invasion/Dark Reign/Siege, but around The Heroic Age things petered out, but he kept doing Avengers/Guardians for several years after

Yeah, his ability to write team books at that point completely turfed out. His run on Guardians was pretty bad.

I don't think his "critically acclaimed" stuff like Daredevil and Alias holds up very well. But sometimes he hits the nail on the right amount of stupid, and he can be fun in small doses. Quite a few of his books have started well, but they always seem to go off the rails with unresolved subplots/bad writing within a year - his Iron Man and Superman runs are both pretty good/bad examples of that.

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, August 20, 2020 1:08 AM (one hour ago)

i like his extended run on the Avengers. Fanboys appear to have hated his run on Superman but I thought the elevation of Lois and Superman Jr was okay until the Leviathan thing got into full swing and that sucked.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Thursday, August 20, 2020 1:24 AM (one hour ago)

I enjoy that the general internet discussion tone of "oh yes his earlier stuff is rubbish but he's really become quite the craftsman now!" is a solid 24 years old at the point :)

eis

Have people ever agreed on Bendis? Feel like he's been hated and liked in equal measure as long as he's been around

I kept trying his stuff to no avail when readers and pros alike on Usenet were saying "ignore his full-screen all-caps shouting abuse / crying emotional injury at people on here, he's really good," and the left-hand-navigation message board era was wild over his superhero timestretch material

obv there have always been dissenters (hello), but the positive attention to his current work vs rolling acknowledgment of his earlier stuff's empty calories is totally a thing ime

In the 00s DC and Marvel, there was so much wannabe hip dialogue I just can't stand (it's probably still like that); I can't remember if Bendis did this particular thing, but a lot of writers did this with villains and gangsters, starting a sinister lecture about how the world really works "y'see it's like this..."
It made me so angry I wanted to bite my own nipples off.

i will take Bendis' convoluted Gilmore Girls wannabe dialogue over Ennis' high-school-kid-describing-Faces-of-Death-style anyday.

hah! I enjoy both but that is pretty otm