 | Warren Ellis on DC Comics, the Reboot and the 90's |
Warren Ellis has made it his business to connect with his readers in a very direct way. From his weekly email blasts to appearing at comic cons and generally taking the pulse of the readers, he has long been one of the more informed personalities in comics today. He's also very approachable and eager to offer up advise on any number of subjects, he even wrote to me about what kind of handheld mobile device I should buy to write scripts remotely. Nice guy. His comics have been big hits on the stands from his early days of Lazarus Churchyard to Transmetropolitan and his big screen successes in having his work adapted into the film 'Red.'
I say all this because when Warren speaks, people listen and those people are usually the ones looking for advise on what to buy and what to avoid. In this case, Ellis has some intensely interesting things to say about the rapidly approaching reboot of 54 DC Comic Book titles in September.
DC And Digital Comics Strategies
June 29th, 2011 | comics talk
To understand DC Comics' move to day-and-date with digital editions of their print comics, you have to understand the intent behind their relaunch.One crucial thing hasn't changed. For as long as I've known him, Dan Didio has believed the key to a resurgent DC is reclaiming all the readers the commercial medium lost in the 90s. On the DC Retailer Roadshow, he's been hammering this home. Recent statements about how commercial comics have gotten boring and that there should be more visual punch in the mode of 90s comics movements like the early Image Comics work and (unspoken, but certainly associated) the Marvel style of that general period… have made their mark, but have also misled a bit. It's all about accessing that hypothetical lost fan base. The impression the recent statements have left is Dan saying "comics used to sell loads back then, let's do that again." And that can't happen in print.
Comics used to sell loads back then, yes. But a big part of that — and this is the part he isn't mentioning — is that there were ten thousand comics shops back then. And now there are, optimistically and rounding up, about two thousand. There simply aren't the number of outlets left to sell the kind of volume comics could shift in the 90s.
The new JLA
The gamble here is this: that hypothetical lost fan base is older, has credit cards and disposable income, and an internet connection that can bring the DC Comics section of a notional comics store right to their desks. That, in fact, digital comics services will do the work of those eight thousand stores that don't exist anymore.
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Now, there is a fascinating situation where DC will polybag special issues of JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 with a digital-comic download code, a book that will cost an extra dollar. Comics are done on firm sale. Which means, as far as I can see, that the retailer is being charged extra money on each copy of that edition too. Maybe I'm wrong, and comics retailers aren't being offered a reacharound while getting an mild yet unwelcome pegging. But it's an interesting kind of support. DC are offering support to retailers in other ways and are making sympathetic noises, but other quotes from this roadshow — one from Bob Wayne, DC's head of sales, boiled down to "if you're not selling enough of our comics you're not doing your job" — tend to suggest that someone at the company has realised that the comics retailers already have a girlfriend and never liked DC anyway.
Saying that DiDio is looking to get DC Comics back to the 1990's is terrifying to say the least. That was the decade of the speculator boom, the mass closure of comic shops and more gimmicks than you could shake a foil-covered comic at. The plots were largely nonsensical, the artwork overblown and exaggerated and much of the material produced during that time was later ignored by writers or outright retconned.
However, my gut reaction to the 'new look' of the DC Universe was one of derision and disgust as it reeked of the decade that gave us fashion disasters such as chain wallets, acid washed jeans, studded gloves, big hair and small waists. Even Superman got a fade haircut! The books are apparently DESIGNED to be style over substance in an effort to win back lost readers who loved Spawn, Lobo and Extreme Justice. Not that those comics in particular are the worst of the lot, but to use them as a blueprint for a line-wide relaunch smacks of an oncoming disaster for the industry.
Do we really want to see this again?
Look, all I want is a decent Batman and Superman book. Is that possible?
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