Let's All Bash DC Decisions

This dreadful series popped into my head recently as an example of a concept that almost works but doesn't. It's a terrible idea to begin with, because if you say Batman wvs McCain or Batman wuvs Obama, not only are you losing 50% of your reading audience right off, but you're also risking everything in the two months (optimistically) or so it takes between your comic being written and being published. What if you're on the shelves with Superman supporting Obama and then Obama goes mad and machine-guns a nun? What if Batman is putting his arm around McCain at the exact moment that McCain says that actually he DID mean to call Osama a filthy arab and he hopes to win the noble KKK vote this election? It's too risky.

So what they've done instead, rather than have the actual two real candidates, is to have four fake candidates. Unfortunately when we have a huge double spread of all the heroes saying that they're supporting Red Gunford or Bluestate McDemlib, or Gayrites Moderateo or whoever, it falls flat, because their actual names are boring shit like Dirk Chest or Chest Dirkfield or Chet Sanchez and we have absolutely no idea who any of them are or what they stand for. We can be pretty sure that if Green Arrow's supporting someone they're a rabid commie, and if Guy Gardner's on the ticket for someone he's a fascist pig, but that's getting the personalities of the candidates from the superheroes, rather than the other way around. So when you end an issue with Bruce Wayne coming out for Dirk Sanchez - what does that mean? Is that an Obama stand-in? What are his politics? What's he running on? We know nothing! There isn't even a handy chart at the start of the book showing how left or right wing all of the candidates are, and even if there was, there's no reason for the reader to care about Rock Smallgovernment - he's not going to have any effect on our lives, so it all becomes meaningless. It's pretty much a lose-lose situation.

Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert is a shoo-in for the Marvel presidency because neither Obama or McCain have a coherent policy for alien invasion, which recently became a hot-button issue. Discuss.

Ooooh! Osama/Obama typo in paragraph one. Now I know how FOX News feels when they make the same mistake.

^^^^ voted for Luthor, got what he deserved

When I think of real life crossing into supercomix, I think of that issue of Avengers w/ David Letterman & the large doorknob. And his buck teeth.

Meanwhile over in Captain America, there's a possible election spoiler named "Wright" who's a tool of Red Skull. Eerie!

Haha when Geoff Johns was writing the Avengers, his Red Skull arc featured some high level political official named (wait for it) DELL RUSK.

I think Condi Rice (or a reasonable facsimile) made an appearance in the early issues of the Hudlin Black Panther series.

Only recent ("last 10 years" recent) use of a real-life politician in a spandex funnybook that wasn't rofl-worthy at first sight = Millar (of all people!) using W in Ultimates

I'm not 100% on this, but I think Brubaker's "3rd Wing" candidate Sen. Wright appeared before Obama's Rev. Wright started making the news back in the spring.

I thought this was "Let's All Bash DC decisions", which seemed eminently sensible. Not that "Let's All Bash DC Decisions" isn't also a worthwhile way to pass the time.

I read the first two so that I could join in on bashing this. But now I find I have nothing to add to the first post. This is pretty awful. :(

I have no problem with anyone wanting to bash DC's decisions with a small 'd', such as their decision to publish Decisions.

We're about to enter some crisis-on-infinite-decisions Mobius strip.

Only recent ("last 10 years" recent) use of a real-life politician in a spandex funnybook that wasn't rofl-worthy at first sight = Millar (of all people!) using W in Ultimates

― David R., Tuesday, October 14, 2008 5:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this made me nauseous

I suddenly remembered that issue of Supergirl where she saves Prez from assassination. What's the Presidential timeline of the various universes? Marvel's is fairly watertight apart from Nixon killing himself while in office and 'Ken Wind', but DC is all over the place.

OMG if DC Decisions had ended with bruce Wayne endorsing PREZ RICKARD it would have been the best comic ever.

I remember reading one of the various attempts to launch an Australian superhero series in the 1980s that had Bob Hawke (then our PM) in it--'Southern Squadron' or something like that. It had an invulnerable tough-guy hero in it called the Masked Melbournian, if I remember correctly.

So apparently Wonder Woman supports the fascistic jingoistic candidate. Wonderful.

Wonder Woman is a WARRIOR from an island of WARRIORS she understands what it means to be a WARRIOR and she will only support candidates who are WARRIORS and she only talks about WAR and WARRIORS because fuck feminism comics are about HITTING PEOPLE. WARRIOR WARRIOR WARRIOR HEENNNGGGHHH

That's the Flash, but I call him Shazam. But it isn't Shazam.

Aw. Superman uses his bully pulpit to refuse to make an endorsement and encourages everyone to vote. Corny but sweet.

the end of the issue reminded me of the FANTASTIC story in one of the Showcase Supes where the IRS comes after Superman, and the agent gets his attention BY THROWING HIMSELF FROM A BUILDING!!!

Apparently DC has decided to cancel the second TPB of Ostrander's Suicide Squad, even though they'd announced the publication date for December and you could preorder it an all. I guess this means SS will never be collected, all we got was a small taste of what could have been in the form of the first collection.

Also, the publication date for the Flex Mentallo hardcover book has been moved again, now it should come out in March. The collection was first announced in January 2011, I don't understand how it can take over a year for them to publish one book of material they already had in their hands to begin with.

And looks like there won't be any new Shade the Changing Man TPBs either, since the last came out in 2010. Let's just hope they at least manage to get the full run of Milligan's Human Target collected this time, they're one measly book away from doing that.

Meanwhile, while cancelling all this TPBs that would probably have the shelf life of years, they think it's a wise decision to reboot their supehero universe and publish 52 new titles for the dwindling single issue market. I just don't get it.

I'd assume illegal sharing on the net would be a smaller problem for comic publishers than music or movie companies, since reading comics on the computer is never gonna compare with reading them on paper. But with decisions like this it feels like DC is almost encouraging piratism, as it's pretty much the only way to get a hold of this stuff. (Unless you by chance manage to find someone willing to sell their collection on Ebay.)

i had never heard of dc universe decisions, here's the cliff notes:
http://thedcuniverse.blogspot.com/2008/09/dc-universe-decisions-1.html

Oh yeah, I didn't realize this thread was about an actual series called "Decisions". I'll copy and paste my comments to another that's better suited for this discussion.