DC Movies- if at first you don't succeed...

[Spence]

20 hours ago, csyphrett said:

It's fake diversity. And it's annoying

CES

 

It is why the comic industry has cratered.  As in past tense. 

They were losing audience for years just because they weren't doing anything that exciting  anyone.  But then they decided to jump on the agenda bandwagon and ended it. 

Manga is all "thanks guys" and talent is moving on to greener pastures. 

I am sure I'll get a lot of gasps of horror and the heart stopping "down arrow" for mentioning the elephant in the room, but when you are a tiny niche industry that actively vilifies their core customer demographic to cater to a much smaller niche demographic that doesn't actually buy anything, well there you are.

[csyphrett]

I'm going to stick to what I can see. Jim Lee just had an interview where he said everything is fine, and his boss that took over for Dan Didio loves the company. Speculation is they are both about to get fired if they can't get a winner especially with Todd MacFarlane just getting 500k preorders on King Spawn which is more than DC and Marvel have done in a long time.

 

Batman is the company's best seller but it didn't even crack the top twenty in sales this month.

 

Tim Drake is outed. The only reason is try to stir up interest that DC is a relevant company since it's not really selling that well, and is being propped up by its movies and animation. WB pays the company for the use of the IP and then makes a movie. The studio and company split any money. It's the same deal that CN had with Hanna Barbera even thought CN technically owned HB.

 

The problem is that at one point comic fans were mostly straight men. I think at one point it was like 80-90 percent straight men. I'm willing to go that the demographic has changed enough that it is only 70-30. I'm willing to say that this section of the fandom don't care and are not going to spend money on Tim Drake unless it is hooked to something else. The remainder in minorities and women for the most part are not going to care either in my opinion.

 

So logically the targeted audience is not the people who love Tim Drake, but the LGBT community. I don't see whatever fraction of the fandom this is being able to boost a Tim Drake comic to a viable level without help from the rest of the fandom, which may see this as a money grab and go I don't think so. And every time DC does something to Drake, more of his fans stop reading his comic. So what was the point?

 

Tim Drake has been reduced to one of the guys who gets killed in the giant crossover to show how tough the villain is.

 

The company is going we're diverse, but the people who spend the money are we don't care about that. We want an Indiana Jones/Doc Savage adventure and you're not giving us that. We're going to read Ghostbusters, or King Spawn, or Saga, or Lobster Johnson because they are giving us what we want.

 

CES 

 

    

[Scott Ruggels]

On 8/12/2021 at 3:34 PM, Greywind said:

...and someone at DC decided Tim Drake is gay.

Yeah…. Another under qualified writer, using Tim Drake for her Yaoi fanfic, and getting paid (pittance) for it. All because writers like Chuck Dixon are “problematic “. I despise this trend. 

[Scott Ruggels]

Box office numbers to date (Aug14th)

https://ombreviews.com/box-office-tracking/
 

The Suicide Squad isn’t doing as badly.  Its second week drop was not as precipitous as other movies.

[slikmar]

Despite the hard hype, I think TSS was always going to rely a lot on word of mouth (given how bad SS was), and since most of us who have seen it have enjoyed it, i think it will continue on a bit.

[csyphrett]

3 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Yeah…. Another under qualified writer, using Tim Drake for her Yaoi fanfic, and getting paid (pittance) for it. All because writers like Chuck Dixon are “problematic “. I despise this trend. 

Who's the writer, Scott? 

CES

[mattingly]

22 hours ago, zslane said:

Do we know if Bruce Timm even wants the gig? I wouldn't if I were him...

 

I do not know. It may have even been offered to him.

 

[Greywind]

35 minutes ago, csyphrett said:

Who's the writer, Scott? 

CES

 

Meghan Fitzmartin

[Matt the Bruins]

Most of the Tim Drake fan comics readers I know are women, and have been noting subtext between him and Conner Kent for ages. This didn't strike me as an out-of-the-blue development and I don't even read Batman comics.

[Greywind]

Only subtext I've seen is in fanfiction.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, csyphrett said:

Who's the writer, Scott? 

CES

Meghan Fitzmartin, Who is actually a fan of the character, but does not have a lot of years writing comics.   

[Greywind]

She got her start working on s12 of Supernatural.

[Twilight]

50 minutes ago, Matt the Bruins said:

Most of the Tim Drake fan comics readers I know are women, and have been noting subtext between him and Conner Kent for ages. This didn't strike me as an out-of-the-blue development and I don't even read Batman comics.

Gotta say, it's not just ladies noticing the subtext between the two.  I mean it was strong enough that I noticed and I'm not always the most perceptive regarding such things.

[csyphrett]

Women do that. Women think Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were the perfect couple. That's the basis for most of the fanfictions that I have seen.

 

This is looking more like Scott is right which I hate to admit. This is a Geoff Johns/Superboy, and not anything natural

to the character.

 

The problem will be can Fitzmartin replace any readers who drop the title with two new readers. If she can, then her run will be considered a success. If she can't, her run will be considered a crash and burn. And DC needs her run to succeed.

CES   

[Hugh Neilson]

At this point, aren't many characters limited to fanfiction?  The original authors/creators are not writing Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman any more, and Stan Lee isn't overseeing the classic Marvel characters.

[Pattern Ghost]

Given all the Batman and Robin gay jokes over the years, picking a Robin to come out as bi seems a little tone deaf.

 

The big question for me is whether the change comes with good storytelling or is just tacked on for wokeness brownie points. If there's a good story to be told, then it's fine IMO. If it doesn't add anything to the story, then no point in introducing it IMO.

[Greywind]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

At this point, aren't many characters limited to fanfiction?  The original authors/creators are not writing Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman any more, and Stan Lee isn't overseeing the classic Marvel characters.

 

Where Marvel and DC are concerned fanfic is non-canon and unpaid. If it appears between the covers with the company logo on it and not flagged as Elseworlds or What If...?, it's canon.

[zslane]

21 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

If it doesn't add anything to the story, then no point in introducing it IMO.

 

I need romance in my superhero action/adventure stories like I need onions in my lemonade. I don't care that Iceman is gay, or that Tim Drake is bi-sexual, any more than I care that Batman is straight. It just isn't relevant to the kind of stories I want/expect from the genre. Green Arrow could have a foot fetish and Wonder Woman could be into light bondage, but I don't care. Some folks will say romance and sexuality adds verisimilitude to the characters, the stories, and the genre as a whole, but I disagree. Again, onions and lemonade.

[csyphrett]

fanfiction is also derivative and can be considered owned by the originating author and so can be copyright struck and ordered taken down. That's why fanfiction.net has a list of people you can't base off of like Archie Comics. So as soon as someone notices you're writing about the Shield, Steel Sterling, the Black Hood, or Archie, and reports it your story will be deleted off the servers.

 

What I was talking about was Geoff Johns wrote a letter to Superboy when Karl and Barbara Kesel were writing it about Lex Luthor being Superboy's dad. The Kesels were like we've already covered this and Lex Luthor is definitely not a clone donor. So when Johns started writing the character in one of the Teen Titans variations, this was one of the plots where Superboy found out Lex Luthor was his dad, turned evil and tried to kill the rest of the team. Copies of the letter went around the internet while this was going on.

 

This is also the reason Cyborg got boosted to be a founding member of the Justice League. Geoff Johns saw him on superfriends and when the 80s Titans were gutted, Johns prevailed to put him in a big seven slot. Unfortunately Cyborg's solo book crashed and burned because most of his support cast were Titans which they couldn't use because he was never a Titan.

 

This could be an example of the same thing where Fitzmartin had an idea when she was a kid that Robin should be bi and now can put in play despite the fact that Chuck Dixon, the guy who created and oversaw the character, never even thought this at all. On the other hand, this could have come down from Editorial and she has to live with it.

 

But no it's not a natural thing

CES              

23 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

Where Marvel and DC are concerned fanfic is non-canon and unpaid. If it appears between the covers with the company logo on it and not flagged as Elseworlds or What If...?, it's canon.

On top of this, DC has had ten rewrites to their history since Crisis which is why no one can keep anything straight while Marvel has only had one I think. What they need is Scrivener's and an official archivist

CES

[csyphrett]

4 minutes ago, zslane said:

 

I need romance in my superhero action/adventure stories like I need onions in my lemonade. I don't care that Iceman is gay, or that Tim Drake is bi-sexual, any more than I care that Batman is straight. It just isn't relevant to the kind of stories I want/expect from the genre. Green Arrow could have a foot fetish and Wonder Woman could be into light bondage, but I don't care. Some folks will say romance and sexuality adds verisimilitude to the characters, the stories, and the genre as a whole, but I disagree. Again, onions and lemonade.

This is exactly what I was saying above. People who read adventure stories are there for the adventure. If I am reading Dresden, I'm reading to see Dresden save the world and blow stuff up, not for Mab indulging in BDSM.

CES  

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

At this point, aren't many characters limited to fanfiction?  The original authors/creators are not writing Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman any more, and Stan Lee isn't overseeing the classic Marvel characters.

 The difference between a good comic and fan fiction is the presence of good, and strong editors and leadership.  It's not there any more. DC Fired almost all of it's veteran editors last year or the year before, leaving Artist, Jim Lee, in charge.  Heather Ontos was briefly an editor and was probably one of the worst in DC's history, doing little to correct story problems, and letting the people she invited in to the company near free reign.

 

Pay rated have shrank among editorial, and page rates for the comics them selves have been static since the 90's. Now a lot of the Top DC writers have been granted large advanced by Substack to assemble comics teams to put out comics for them, allowing them to create their own IP.  The prestige of writing Batman has faded away, under the onslaught of the Twitter activists, and the fear of cancel culture. I am interested in what Substack may offer, comics wise, as it seems to be a fairly strict meritocracy, based on sales.

 

 

[Pattern Ghost]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

It just isn't relevant to the kind of stories I want/expect from the genre.

 

That's fair. Hopefully, you can still find the types of graphical stories you want to read. But that's not a limit the genre as a whole should accept.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

Wonder Woman could be into light bondage

 

Oh, she definitely is. 

 

[zslane]

1 hour ago, Pattern Ghost said:

But that's not a limit the genre as a whole should accept.

 

From a business perspective, it might have to. "Go woke, go broke," isn't just a catchy, politically-incorrect slogan. It appears to reflect broader marketplace realities. If comic book companies want to stay in business, they may have to abandon the progressive notion that superhero storytelling doesn't have to be limited to what sells, which, it would appear is action/adventure, not clumsy diversity plays and diversions into the narrative margins (e.g., romance).

[Scott Ruggels]

Japanese publishers have been very successful in slicing their Manga market into thin slices by subject and genre. The US Market, especially DC used to do this as well, but the main difference between japan, and the US, is one of "maturity" in the US< comics are seen or have been seenn as a juvenile media. In Japan, everyone reads Manga. Similarly in France, everyone reads Bandes Dessine'es.  The Juvenile stigma is fading on the US, but not quickly.

For Superheroes, I preferred Marvel (Spiderman and Fantastic Four), But I also read a lot of DC War books and Humor books. G.I. Combat, and Plop were favorites of mine. But those books faded off, leaving just the superheroes. Jack Kirby used to draw reasonably successful Romance titles in the late 50's and early 60's.

 

Now, there are several online sites for reading comics.  and the thing about the ones not run for US comics have a lot of  Amateur, and/or Fan comics, in all sorts of genres for al sorts of audiences. It's going to be interesting to see what the new Substack refugees from DC will offer as $5 subscription comics.