DC: Out With The New, In With The Old

DC's Bold New Direction, as pictured in the LA Times

"What happens is that if a character doesn’t work, we go, ‘We got a brand new direction to put him in! We’re moving him into something new! We’re going to try something brand new and different!"

--Dan DiDio, bemoaning thinking outside the box and doing new things.

Back in 2007, I predicted that Blue Beetle, Firestorm, and Atom would eventually get axed, and soonish. The only thing I would want to clarify here is the phrase I used, "This is the likely fate for most ethnic reboots." As I said in my previous post: I believe that for the most part the comic book reading public have gotten past the race or ethnicity of a character, as long as the book is good. I honestly believe this. If these were such big "deal breakers," the film "Blade" wouldn't haven been so successful and essentially launched the age of the Marvel Movie.

But --

My concern is internally, within DC.


I swear on a stack of Bibles or in any court of law that while I was at DC, certain segments of editorial believed that "Black books didn't sell." Then the finger would be pointed at books like Batman: Orpheus Rising, starring an African-American character. There was a feeling like if you had one "Black Book," you filled your quota for the entire line. A pitch for another "Black Book"would be unofficially rejected because we "already had one." In a larger sense, there was a tendency to blame these sorts of factors for a book's demise rather than poor marketing or other circumstances. Bad Girls was a "Girl Book" -- girl books don't sell. Batman: Orpheus Rising was a "Black Book" -- Black books didn't sell.

Well, did you make an effort to target the right audience, to reach outside the box with your marketing and PR, or did you let the book die on arrival because you never had faith in it from day one?

(you know, complain to me that I'm being "negative" here all you want -- I don't care, this really happened, and it is damn relevant)

On the other side of the coin, around 2003 (I believe) we received a memo from Time Warner corporate that noted the lack of diversity in our comic books. This document was real, it did exist. Shortly after that, the current reboot of Firestorm was developed. We made up our new roster for JLA very carefully, actually counting the number of males and females, and noting their ethnicity.

We had Faith that this character would impress Time Warner

This mentality never works. You can't get to the point where you go "yay!" when a character like Faith (remember her?) is put on the team, because she is both a woman and Latino and you've "killed" two birds with one stone.

So my concern with the demise of a book like Blue Beetle is that internally, it will be perceived as failing because it was a "Hispanic Book." You can have one idiot -- and I'll bet you $100 (no, make that $500) this has already been said within editorial -- that will comment on the cancellations of Atom, Firestorm, and Blue Beetle and say it was because the characters weren't white. When I do not see that as the case at all!

The Runaways: A diverse cast and a brand new concept
that successfully reached the teen market

It is far more a question of defining and reaching the demographic that would best embrace these books. And, in the case of Blue Beetle, this would be the teen market who embrace The Runaways. Blue Beetle was a perfect book in every way to penetrate this market. But the bigger issue is, I don't think DC is thinking outside the box anymore:

“There’s a reason the characters are still enduring now. You have to identify what made each character survive through the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s…the sensibilities have changed with every decade, but these characters remain pretty much the same. So what is it in the characters that people recognize and identify with? You keep that at the core and change the world around them to make it contemporary and compelling.”

-- Dan Didio, affirming the enduring qualities of the Status Quo

Wow! LOTSH in "Adventure Comics" Again? ZOMG!

When your most exciting new development is a relaunch of Adventure Comics with Legion Of The Superheroes, it's clear what direction the company is taking. Nostalgia sells, I guess -- and it's probably relatively easy to produce. Just have Geoff Johns write every issue, and Alex Ross paint every cover. Bam! You're done.

I thought it was ironic that the new Batman cartoon is made in the style of 1950s DC. And in the first episode, you have Batman team up with the current Blue Beetle. Batman still has his title, because he is "enduring." But Jaime Reyes apparently isn't "enduring." Was he given enough of a chance?