"Where my concern comes from is more about the overreliance on nostalgia, speculator marketing, variant covers, and a lot of things that seem to be driving numbers in sales to give the appearance of a healthy industry, but it's not built on the ongoing success of the individual titles in order to keep those numbers successful and maintained," DiDio explained. " If we're creating these artificial highs on a continual basis, if something pulls that apart, does it break the infrastructure overall, and how do we change these buying patterns in that fashion to build something that is a more healthy business going forward?"
I made the switch from Marvel to DC because of the rich history and legacy of the characters. From what I've seen ever since Flashpoint is DC creating "artificial highs on a continual basis" with events and shock value. Year of the Villain and Heroes in Crisis being a good recent examples of this. The former has distrubed many ongoing titles to connect to the event whether we the reader want it or not. Which isn't out of the norm for events but it's purpose is to make more readers invested in titles they don't read because of the event. The latter murdered several characters including one with a long history (Roy Harper) and didn't write any of the characters well.
I find this overreliance on nostalgia line particularly ironic coming from Dido who wants to promote his Silver Age heroes at the expense of legacy characters. As a result we constantly have to focus on the same characters and keep them locked within a small box to prevent any development. Can they get married? Unclear but their certainly tease fans with the possibility. Every time we get the hopeful, inspirational DCU we want the rug gets snatched out from under us with the same grim storylines.
"Batman is moody again so let's have him act horribly to his family yet never hold him accountable."
These aren't new ideas, their repackaged to produce the same results and fail to give much needed growth. Some ideas that worked wonderfully are changed with little rhythm or reason. Everyone loved Jon Kent as Superboy but then he randomly gets aged up. He is no longer the same character, I've seen he referred to as "bland" ever since he became a teen. Wonder Woman does better than Batman and Superman in recent movies yet DC never shifts the focus in the comics to her in the comics. The industry isn't capitalizing on what's popular and constantly does things that anger it's readers. Didio himself has done this, what he wants is more important than the customer.
Readers want to be loyal to a brand that they feel is rewarding and given the direction Didio keeps leading I don't see that happening. It's not about what we want, or even nostalgia that's a problem.
I read Didio's comments as more worried at the way Marvel keeps rigging the system with their tactics. Overstocking issues, printing tons of exclusive variants semi-regularly. continues "status quo" changing events and so on. Compared to Marvel, DC is pretty measured on their approach. Then, when he mentions nostalgia he's talking more about the fact the industry relies on reprinting old stories to keep a steady flow of money. Kind of ironic/hypocritical on his part since in the very next paragraph they talk about Mad going into reprinting old material until is finally shut down.
ReplyDeletePersonally I think DC's problem right now is the lack of a strong editorial that is willing to keep its writers, regardless of their fame, in check. Right now it seems like "big name" writers like Snyder, Bendis or King are calling the shots, much to the detriment of DC's characters.
As for capitalizing on characters' popularity in other mediums. those rarely translate into comic book sales. Just look at Marvel, they launch series based on whatever character got the spotlight in the films and very few last. A clear example of this is Winter Soldier and Reed Hood. WS is massively popular thanks to the films and the guy has failed to keep a series alive no matter how many times they relaunch it. Jason on the other hand has very few appearances outside comics and yet has managed to headline a series for nearly ten years. And when those series have come to an end, is because editorial decided to shake up their entire line up.
For the most part I haven't been following what Marvel is doing but I was under the impression Didio prefers how Marvel runs their company.
ReplyDeleteI have heard how certain big named creators need to be kept in check because of "pettiness" and "egos."
The difference is that Wonder Woman is supposed to be one of the Trinity. One of the three most important heroes in the DCU. She's been around for awhile and has been the most well known female hero. Yet she rarely gets the same treatment as Superman and Batman. The movie gave her more attention yet DC had no idea how to use that to their advantage. That's baffling to me.