At MoCCA this past weekend – that’s one of my favorite shows, by the way – a surprising number of people asked me about how I felt about DC Comics Entertainment Periodical Publications moving to the Left Coast.
It amuses me to note that only one of these people actually worked at DC, and he was being sarcastic.
In its 80 years DC Comics has moved more frequently than a family of vaudevillians. I worked at only three of their locations; I know many who worked at five or six. Every time DC moves, they relaunch Aquaman. They are now a fully integrated part of Warner Bros., so moving to LALALand is a no-brainer.
And I hope my friends at Marvel are paying attention.
Once Marvel joins Disney out in Hollywood, only one comic book leaflet publisher will be left in New York City proper, that being Valiant. (If I’m missing anybody, forgive me – you really can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and, besides, I haven’t seen Jim Shooter in about a year). If you consider the entire New York metropolitan area, that number grows to… what, two? Archie Comics is in Westchester County. If ComicMix returns to leaflet publishing, and, yeah, we’re considering it but then we collapse in a fit of giggles – then that’ll make three. The combined output of the New York comic book leaflet publishers wouldn’t amount to a fart.
For the record: I think it is absolutely great that we have comics publishers all over the nation. There’s no magic to publishing comic books in Manhattan, despite what lazy publishers told poor cartoonists between the middle of the Depression until the election of Ronald Reagan. Actually, I think it is great that we have so many comics publishers that they can be all over the nation.
I admit: the first time I dropped my butt into my chair at 75 Rockefeller Plaza – that’s four locations and 40 years ago – I was in fanboy heaven. It was a great feeling. Jenette Kahn offered me the job at a moment when, as they say in the business, I was “between radio stations.” In 1976, stations were changing their pretty much after every third song and I saw the handwriting on the wall. It said “Work for Superman.”
The fact is, most of my best and most enduring friendships have been formed while in the comics racket. I’ve lunched with Steve Ditko, I’ve worked with Will Eisner and Peter O’Donnell, I intervened in a, ah, friendly discussion between Stan Lee and Joe Orlando. Great stuff. ComicMixers Glenn Hauman, Martha Thomases, Denny O’Neil, Mindy Newell, Bob Ingersoll, and Robert Greenberger? These folks have been my friends forever, and I met them all through comics. Yes, they have amazing intestinal fortitude.
John Ostrander is different. (I can’t tell you how much I wanted to end this paragraph right here.) I’ve known John even longer, through our common interest in both theater and comics. I brought him into this business – at his own request, so he can’t complain.
I have absolutely no doubt that there are a ton of people just out of school out on the Left Coast who will put in their time at DC Comics and come out of it exhausted but with plenty of great friendships.
And for me, that is the magic of the comic book racket.
I recently passed the one-year mark at my day job – in-house graphic designer for a software company in the higher education sector – and in having my performance review I reached an odd catharsis. I realized that I’d been a graphic designer professionally for over a decade, and had finally crossed the bridge beyond what I deemed pixel pushing. With that in mind, my desire for more was evident. Without a professional filter, I let my boss know exactly what I’d had in mind. In a flash of a few minutes, I’d all but admitted that I was being wasted as an asset… and for the first time, it wasn’t just a load of bull-squat. Just so you know: The first ten years on the job is really you learning to become a productive member of society.
My coworker lamented to me (post review-rant) that I was “so talented” (I swear I didn’t pay her to say it), that it baffled her I wasn’t “actually doing what I love.” That stung, but not for the reasons you might think. She was specifically speaking to my desire to work in comics, professional wrestling, the movies, TV, or just about any medium where scantily clad men and women fight for reasons that make little to no sense. While some might sigh that they’ve not attained their dreamed station in life, my ire was raised more because those aforementioned media are all veritable pipe dreams to me because of the systems built around them.
From the outside looking in, becoming an entity worthy of a title page (or credit roll, etc.) is akin perhaps to getting a city job in Chicago. As my Uncle Howard once lamented on his position: “It’s more about who you know than what you know.” For every year as an indie creator attending comic cons, those ladies and gents working at Marvel and DC (and Boom!, IDW, Dark Horse, etc.) all seemed to carry a collected air amongst them. An unspoken bond, I assume, built through late-night editor notes, insane deadlines, and the knowledge that at the end of the day your name appeared next to Batman, Deadpool, or G.I. Joe. And when pressed for how these lucky ducks got into their positions? Well, it’s been said in my column enough for you to know the joke by now: Getting into comics is like getting out of prison. As soon as you find a way to do it, they seal it up on your way out.
And what of the great and powerful WWE? Well, according to their careers page, you must have 5-10 years experience writing for TV before you can even come knocking on the front gate. So how might one get into writing for TV? Well, step one would be not living in Chicago. The simple truth is tinsel town isn’t looking beyond its borders for the next big thing. Why? Because they don’t have to. The next big thing is serving them a latte, parking their car, or telling them jokes in a dive-bar on a Thursday night.
There’s often that illusion that one might be able to make it in their own town – grow a brand, and fan base, and then let the big boys find you – but that in and of itself is a house of cards. Take it from the indie guy whose been doing it long enough to know; there’s plenty of other great talents working shoulder to shoulder with you right where you are, sharing the exact same hopes and dreams. In short, it’s not always going to be the sweat on your brow, or the meticulously crafted prose you spout that will find you your meal ticket. “It’s more about who you know than what you know.”
You can see the rabbit hole now a bit better, can’t you? The fact is that life gets in the way of our dreams. And even those living the dream might be the first to tell you that it’s not all sunshine and roses. As far as I can tell, even those who are making those DC and Marvel comics aren’t exactly raking in fat salaries with benefits. Aside from what is likely the top 5-10% of the industry (my best guess that could easily be fixed by Mike Gold, or others here on this site), the freelance work-for-hire creators are working in a revolving door system that is built to chew them up and spit them out. Unless you’re topping the charts with that issue of Voodoo this month, you’re likely back in artist alley with that copy of Idiosyncratic Youth you’re hocking next to the Voodoo sketch cover variants. And over in the WWE… well, let’s just say that I actually knew a writer who worked for them, and he was pretty clear that it was a quaint stop for any aspiring writer who wanted to be told “no” from old guard at every corner.
Top that with the fact that I have a wife, an adorable three year-old, a mortgage, and a need for health insurance. Natch.
Now, let me make it clear: beyond any specific employer I may covet a position with, I’m doing what I love. I draw a salary for being creative. It’s something I do not take for granted given that my two studio mates have not shared in that luxury. The fact is that with Unshaven Comics, I’m not banking a living wage (or really enough money to do more than print more books and attend more cons), but I’m still tangentially living the dream. Even if pixel pushing keeps my lights on, I’ve accepted that my creative endeavors outside of 9-5 can remain my forever lotto ticket. Whether my number gets called is really up to chance. But if it does, at least I’ll be ready for it. And when that jackpot runs out, well, I’ll still be well employed elsewhere. And security to me is just as dreamy as those scantily clad heroes and babes.
I spend way too much time on social media. I’m often lurking in the background, checking out what weird Internet gems people have found or created. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen this fandom day meme pop up throughout my social media feeds.
Based on the date chosen, it is possibly meant as an early April Fools’ joke but it still brought something to light. In every posting I saw of this meme, I saw fans stating they apparently needed to wear a rainbow of fandoms. In some cases, it seemed like people were asking permission just to show support for multiple fandoms. (The other complaint being they left out a ton of groups.)
This just boggles my mind. Who needs to choose one fandom?! Most geeks can fit in more than one. I have attended Firefly meetups, where more often than not everyone is talking a variety of other fandoms rather than just the crew of Serenity. And the mashup genre has become a big hit. Facebook pages dedicated to a random grouping of interests rather than a singular one are running rampant.
Geekdom, in general, is its own fandom. Within the confines of our passions are our singular interests. Just like a historian or chef or doctor (yeah, I know I’m stretching boundaries) can specialize in a certain area, so can geeks. While I’m definitely weak in the Doctor Who and Supernatural areas, I can rock the Buffy and Harry Potter zones. I may choose Star Trek and DC Comics in the big fan debates, but that doesn’t stop me from rocking a Wookie hat and an Avengers t-shirt.
Maybe I am just making too much out of an Internet meme. It will eventually disappear and resurface, then disappear again. But just don’t ask me to choose between my Star Wars Wookie hat and my Star Trek Gorn t-shirt. Then we are going to have a problem.
BATMAN ASSAULT ON ARKHAM is the newest direct-to-DVDDC feature with a lot of familiar parts including Kevin Conroy reprising his Batman role, and telling us how he manages to always keep it fresh. Plus, comedian John Lehr goes from Geico caveman to western funny man in the Hulu series QUICK DRAW, and talks about how improv is a huge part of the show.
Vampires have been and will always be a wonderful creature that runs through the pages of comic books, graphic novels and literary books, but these few stand out as some of the best of the lot. Of course choosing vampires in literature is always a daunting task, and as such, is entirely subjective.
1. Lestat from The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice Lestat de Lioncourt from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. “The Brat Prince” has helped form what many see as the template for how a vampire should be in modern day fiction. His boldness, enthusiasm, defiance and charm has made him the iconic vampire of the 20th and 21st century. You can begin to read his exploits in the first book of the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice in ‘Interview With A Vampire‘.
Appearing in 1871 as a serial narrative in the magazine ‘The Dark Blue’, Carmilla predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 27 years, and even though it is lesser known and far shorter, the impact it has had is very noticeable. Being the first lesbian female vampire in literature, she’s easily one of the most iconic, even with the obscure following. You can find her originally in ‘The Dark Blue’ or in the authors later short stories, ‘In A Glass Darkly’.
One of my personal favourite characters in a new series by G.D. Falksen, Dr. Babette Varanus is one of the main protagonists, and is one of the Shashavani. Erudite vampires who are all about the pursuit of knowledge, and when you live forever that is the best usage of time as far as I’m concerned. This series is intelligent and has a fresh twist on supernatural creatures (such as vampires) that isn’t typical in anything I have read in quite a long time. That goes doubly for the characters. Dr. Varanus is tiny, sassy, all about the sciences, and like myself she is not fond of duels at Christmas time. Absolutely check out this series.
The principal ”bad guy” in Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, Barlow is strangely a little known character among most readers despite being the main ‘antagonist’. It’s a rare case of the book having more fame than the characters in it, as opposed to Stoker’s Dracula being more well known than the book. Salem’s Lot is well worth the read if you have not done so before, and Kurt Barlow is a character you should know in your vampiric repertoire.
Not really needing an introduction at this point, Stoker’s Dracula is a character that is arguably the most well known vampire to date. If you don’t know who Dracula is…You best click that hyperlink and educate yourself! Remember to stay away from the sparkles, my friends.
As comics readers, we’re of course partial to the version drawn by Gene Colan and written by Marv Wolfman. [[[The Tomb Of Dracula]]] for Marvel lasted 70 issues, spawned two magazine spinoffs and an anime adaptation(!), and introduced the world to Blade, who would go on to be featured in three movies and a TV series.
I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan, and of course Bruce taught us all how to count to four (One… One – Two – Three – Four!) So I’m pretty good at math, until I get to whatever number is past four. But the number before four is three, and that’s the number of seasons in which I haven’t been able to cross the convention floor without being stopped by somebody to ask what’s up with the new First Comics.
Here’s the bird’s-eye lowdown: I don’t have a clue. I’m not part of the effort. I never was. I did write a tribute for the 31st anniversary edition of Warp, and I helped procure the services of Frank Brunner to draw the cover – go figure; he only drew the insides – and I fussed with my pal Rick Obadiah’s tribute piece because I enjoy fussing with Rick’s work.
But that’s it. I prefer working with publishers that actually distribute their work to the public, and that’s the question that’s most often asked of me. They sell their stuff at some conventions – Chicago’s C2E2 and, I believe, both the San Diego and New York shows and probably others. There I chat with art director Alex Wald, one of the truly gifted backroom people in the comics business and, by the way, a really nice guy, and Mary Levin and I wave and smile at each other, and that’s about it.
Yes, I co-founded First Comics along with Rick Obadiah way back when Godzilla was merely a flaming hatchling. I left the company at the end of 1985, which was prior to Godzilla’s entering adolescence. The lizard needed the room, and I gave him mine. Now he’s making stupid money off of a movie he’s barely in… but I digress. A lot.
I have no claim to the trademark and no equity in the company, which may or may not be the same company as it was when I was there. Overall, I spent more time at DC Comics and I have a similar lack of equity. This is not a problem at all.
I’m not pissed at people who assume I’m involved – actually, I’m kind of honored. But it does get annoying after the tenth or twentieth inquiry. This is why I’m employing this chunk of bandwidth to set the record straight. We’ve started the 2014 summer convention season, and I’ve committed to several more shows in addition to the three I’ve already done this season. See? I said I’m a Springsteen fan.
The really nice thing about all this is that Rick and I have resumed an old First Comics tradition (that’s the first First Comics, not to be confused with First Second Books or, for that matter, the Fifth Third Bank). The first First Comics was founded under the principle that, if you’ve got to have a business meeting, it should be over a truly great meal, and, generally, an unhealthy one at that. Rick’s a New Yorker living in the greater Chicagoland area, I’m a Chicagoan living in the greater New York area, so we get together about three or four times a year. Probably not more, but being a Springsteen fan, I have no way of knowing.
The cool part is that I turn Rick onto great Chicago restaurants, and he turns me onto great New York restaurants. All of these places involve supplication to massive platters of beef. I fully expect a PeTA picket line when I get off the commuter train.
This is a tradition that I’ve tried to port over to ComicMix. My four-color comrade Martha Thomases has been trying to get me to improve my diet – not by edict, but by example. Please do not tell her it’s slowly working. I now actually eat fruit!
I remember during my first tenure at DC in the 1970s company president Sol Harrison took me to the (now closed) Ben Benson’s steakhouse in midtown Manhattan, and publisher Jenette Kahn and I ate regularly at the fabulous Warner Communications dining room in Rockefeller Center, among other such joints. The food was fantastic.
So, in case you ever wondered – and if you have, you really need to get a life – I’m in this business for creative fulfillment, for not always having to act like an adult, for enjoying numerous great and enduring friendships… but, mostly, for the food.
Jeff Foxworthy is back on the highly rated Game Show Network’s AMERICAN BIBLE CHALLENGE and talks about his transition from stand up comic to game show host, plus Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler tells us about their big screen reunion in BLENDED and DC Comics cleans house in a big way.
Last week in this space I touched on the subject of Amanda Waller and how she acted in the penultimate episode of this season’s Arrow. I mentioned how I found her acting a little out of character. I thought we’d probe that a little more as I explain what my thinking was when I created her in the first place
Before I start, I want to state that I know Amanda Waller is not my character. She belongs to DC Comics and, by extension, the Warners conglomerate. I’m glad to be receiving compensation when she gets used outside of comics and I look forward to the check I’ll eventually receive. What they do with Amanda is up to them and I generally refrain from discussing how others interpret her; I was given a free pass in interpreting existing characters so other creators should have that same freedom without my breathing down their necks.
That said, I think that if you’re using a character you should stay true to who that character is – what they are, who they are, what values they have. When Tom Mandrake and I took on The Spectre, we certainly put our own spin on him but, at the same time, we very much wanted to get down to the core of the character. There was a certain type of visual that we wanted to use. Otherwise, why do The Spectre? (Plug area: you can decide for yourself how effective we were when the TPB of the first 12 issues, The Spectre Vol. 1: Crimes and Judgments, goes on sale May 20. And we thank you for your support.)
I’ll dip now into my leaky cauldron of memory and try to recreate my thinking in the making of Amanda Waller. I was putting together the proposal for my version of Suicide Squad. The high concept of that was Dirty Dozen meets Mission: Impossible meets the Secret Society of Supervillains. The series needed someone in charge of the Squad and there was a list of possible candidates within the DCU such as King Faraday and Sarge Steel. However, I wanted someone original.
Then, as now, I was into diversity in comics. I wanted someone, a type, who hadn’t existed before. I wanted a female and I wanted a person of color. I also wanted her to have a certain size, a certain heft and be of a certain age. Why? She would seem more real and, despite having no superpowers, she needed to be imposing. Her power was her will and, with that, a seriously bad attitude. Her physique was not superhero or supermodel; she seemed more real that way, to my mind. I had met women like her. My father’s mother, although not black, was an imposing woman. Shaped like the Wall. She scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Not someone I wanted to provoke. Hell, I didn’t want her to glare at me. So a lot of Grammy O went into Amanda.
And, I guess, some of me. There are those who have told me that somewhere deep inside I have an angry, middle-aged black woman trying to get out. Yeah, that scares me, too.
Waller is ruthless but that comes from her background. For many years, she lived in Cabrini Green in Chicago, one of the projects. She lost her husband and a daughter to the violence there. She got the rest of her children out and then went to college herself. Lots of will. She knows first hand about violence and criminals. She knows a lot about getting the job done. She has no compunction of using criminals to achieve ends that would benefit, in her mind, the greater good (which she defines).
I think some people misread her that way as well. They use the badassery at the surface and interpret her mostly as a villain. I don’t see her that way and never have. She does have a conscience and she keeps people around her who prick that conscience. She may not do as they recommend but she does hear them and, deep down, considers those recommendations.
Waller is also not stupid. She is both street smart and book smart. She has college degrees. In short, she’s not one note. There are depths and nuances in her – at least as I conceived and wrote her. I think that’s what made her a compelling figure.
I don’t understand why they felt, both on the TV show and now in the comics, that they had to make her look like a fashion model. To my mind, she loses lots of what made her unique. She looked like no one else in comics; now she looks like most females in comics.
I also don’t understand why, on Arrow, they had her prepared to do a nuclear strike on Oliver Queen’s home town of Starling. Yes, there were super-powered thugs trashing the town and she stated she couldn’t risk their getting out of the city. However, Arrow told her he had a way of neutralizing them and she cut him off. Okay, I understand from a plot point perspective that the writers felt they needed a ticking clock but it’s a stupid move. It’s morally indefensible and not very bright. Nuking an American city? The repercussions from it would expose her and her group. It’s too over the top; it makes her irredeemable when there were other possibilities. Hell, shoot the thugs with exploding bullets. You have to figure that being in pieces might at least slow these thugs down. But no – she went for the nuclear option. That’s not the Amanda I know.
Will I cash the participation checks when they come to me? Oh yeah. And, again, I’m not trying to tell anyone to do the Wall my way. Couldn’t make them do it if I wanted to. I just wanted to go on record as what I was thinking when I created her.
NBC announced Friday that Constantine is coming to TV this fall.
Based on the wildly popular comic book series “Hellblazer” from DC Comics, seasoned demon hunter and master of the occult John Constantine (Matt Ryan, “Criminal Minds”) specializes in giving hell… hell. Armed with a ferocious knowledge of the dark arts and his wickedly naughty wit, he fights the good fight – or at least he did. With his soul already damned to hell, he’s decided to leave his do-gooder life behind, but when demons target Liv (Lucy Griffiths, “True Blood”), the daughter of one of Constantine’s oldest friends, he’s reluctantly thrust back into the fray – and he’ll do whatever it takes to save her. Before long, it’s revealed that Liv’s “second sight” – an ability to see the worlds behind our world and predict supernatural occurrences – is a threat to a mysterious new evil that’s rising in the shadows. Now it’s not just Liv who needs protection; the angels are starting to get worried too. So, together, Constantine and Liv must use her power and his skills to travel the country, find the demons that threaten our world and send them back where they belong. After that, who knows… maybe there’s hope for him and his soul after all.
The cast also includes Harold Perrineau and Charles Halford.
FUTURES END #1 Written by Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen Art by Patrick Zircher
I won’t lie to you, this book’s got me confused.
It starts in the semi-distant future of the time of Batman Beyond, a world that has been taken over by the latest iteration of Brother Eye, a sentient satellite/robot/thingy, which has taken over the world in Terminator-esque fashion. In an attempt to Fix What has Gone Wrong, Batman Beyond/Terry McGinnis comes back in time to kill someone, a person not specifically named as of yet, but since in this story, they maintain that now it’s Mr. Terrific who built Brother Eye, one might be able to guess he is the target.
The thing is, Terry has not gone back in time far enough. He landed fives years in our future, a time where Michael Holt has already created Brother Eye and is in the process of introducing its technology into society. Terry says they’re seven years too late, but he landed five years in the current DCU’s future, which means he should have landed about two years in its past, relative to our present, which would be a little bit before the narrative of the New 52 even started…
Timeline worries notwithstanding, another big problem here is that we’ve already seen Brother Eye in the New 52, in the pages of Dan Didio and Keith Giffen’s OMAC, and he had no connection to Mr. Terrific at all. At the same time the Mister Terrific book was going (and I was enjoying it) and there was no mention of any Brother Eye technology at all. Indeed, when they ended the book, they tied it into the coming Earth 2 title instead. If one wanted to go there, one would have to assume that this book spoils to some degree the events in the aforementioned Earth 2, wherein Michael is currently in somewhat dire straits.
I must assume it will be explained, but we’re once again in a position where DC seems to be reversing itself on the storylines of a new universe that’s not yet even three years old. This appears to be the third version of Brother Eye in only five years, and the fourth in total. In the previous iteration of the DCU, Brother Eye was created by Batman as a fail-safe system to take down his fellow heroes should the need ever arise. The system gets out of hand…
and they have to take it down, a goal at which they only partly succeeded, as various OMACs kept popping up in various places.
In the New 52, Brother Eye is back in control of a single OMAC, in the person of one Kevin Kho. After the brief (but enjoyable) run of his title, he popped up in various titles, most recently the Suicide Squad, mere weeks ago during the events of Forever Evil.
(And this is all over and above the original OMAC series created by jack Kirby during his brief but creative period that he was at DC, a period that also brought us The New Gods, another stable of heroes too good for DC to not keep using.)
So I’ve no idea how these stories from the current DCU will be tied to the new facts presented in this first issue of the weekly book (which got a tease last weekend as part of Free Comic Book Day.
The story as presented has some obvious parallels to The Terminator, but older DC fans will also recall the MaxiMegaCrossover Armageddon 2001, where a hero of our time chooses to take control of the world, forcing a person to come back to the past, discover which her is was, and stop them.
The book suffers from a weakness not of the story, but the premise itself. Taking place five years in the future of the DCU, it can be safely assumed that the events of the story will never come to pass, so we’re effectively reading a just short of a year-long(more on that in a moment) “imaginary story” that will have no impact or connection to the ongoing narrative of the regular titles. Such stories are lots of fun to read in graphic novel or other one-shot format, but 40-odd issues at three or four bucks each? Not so sure. I mean, Trinity was entertaining, and Countdown…a bit less so, but both ended up being very expensive stand-alone stories, and they got a lot of people quite annoyed as a result.
They’ve certainly started the death toll quickly, with one major DC down already, and one super-team which was getting positive press for apparently getting a major spot in the book…suddenly not. But again, since the book takes place in a nebulous future that will almost certainly never take place, there’s no sense of loss at all. I expect we’ll hear neither hue nor cry at these, or any deaths in the book, as even the most casual reader will suss the fact that they Won’t Really Count.
There’s another weekly starting in October that will connect with Futures End in some way. I think it takes place in the present in the DCU, which, if so, would still be later than when the string of events supposedly started. How they’ll connect, or if it will be a story you could enjoy on its own, we shall have to see.
But here’s the thing – Dan Didio has already let slip that all three weeklies (the third being Batman Eternal, which is quite good so far) will not all be a year long, as the past weeklies have been, but will all be ending in March of 2015. This certainly gives the impression that something will be coming in April of 2015, which only happens to be the 30th anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
So DC has effectively gotten people to already half-discount the current story, making it seem like it’s nothing more than a prologue to Whatever’s Coming Next. It’s the exact same mistake they made with Trinity War and Forever Evil. They sold Trinity War as a Big Event, but as soon as news (and the solicitations) for Forever Evil came out, interest in Trinity War all but ceased as people assumed that FE was the real Big Event. It’s a process they’ve been using since Infinite Crisis, but now that people are hip to the move, interest in the current book drops as soon as news (or even just rumors) of the next Event come to light. Forever Evil has ended, though the last issue of the book has been delayed over a month, resulting in several books coming out that take place after the ending. And largely, save for Dick Grayson, not a heap of a lot seems to have changed. Lots of rebuilding, some strained relations between folks who knew Grayson, but pretty much it seems to be back to first position.
Mixed into the coming months is also Grant Morrison’s next mini Multiversity, which also deals with other worlds of the DCU, and will (assuming it doesn’t get delayed, because how could that ever happen on a Grant Morrison book?) will also be ending next Spring.
So DC has certainly done a good job of getting people interested in next April. Problem is, there’s a whole Gorram year between now and then, a year full of books that DC needs to keep people interested in. If people start to get a whiff of a Clever Theory that DC plans to pull another massive change to their books, we may end up with a year-long lame-duck session, with people dropping books they presume (correctly or no) are going to go away, which will only serve to make that more likely a possibility.
In short, DC needs to make its books exciting and engrossing right now, and not dangle a carrot into the future and ask us to trust them. Sorry but fool me…lessee, carry the four…
Let’s just say I hope we’ll all be here come next April.
