The End of Commitment

The End of Commitment

Observations from a 30 year reader...

It has been a bumpy ride for some time now and quite the love affair. I'm talking about comics of course, but more to the point at hand DC and the New 52 and what it has done to my reading choices. This has been a tough month for anyone that has been following the company for some time. This month has been a continued series of creative rumblings, titles I've dropped because of poor writing, worse art, and no clear plan for the books future, and what has become DC's continued commitment to mediocrity. Each of the books DC has been publishing have every chance to be great with the sweeping freedoms allowed within the reboot known as New 52, but instead what it has become is 90's Marvel or Wildstorm Lite. Well today is the day I've decided I'm done supporting what is clearly the worst of the Big Two comic companies (I have a hard time using Rucka as an example as to why Marvel is evil because he seems to have issues getting along with most people in the industry). 

First there was Karen Berger leaving Vertigo. I want to make this abundantly clear: I would NEVER have read a single issue of a DC Comic if it wasn't for Vertigo. NEVER. I always found Superman to be the worst character ever created in comics...the comic book equivalent of white bread. Batman was interesting but the few comics I ever did read weren't enough like the Batman Animated Series by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini (something DC missed the boat on capitalizing on in my opinion). And Wonder Woman...has there ever been a definitive Wonder Woman story in history? Maybe the current one but even the "classic" George Perez runs seemed boring and stilted for my tastes. The DC books I did read were all Vertigo titles like Sandman, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, and 100 Bullets. These books changed my mind as to what comics could be capable of if allowed to have wiggle room with their characters, and not coddling them like Faberge eggs. Everything I have read about Karen Berger shows that while she ran a tight ship she knew that what was at the heart of great comics was good story. Seeing her a few times on panels I had come to regard her as the consummate editing professional.

It was in the pages of the books she oversaw that I would see adds for series popping up from time to time that would get me curious as to what is on the other side of the DC fence. Having writers that were brought up by Berger in American comics...writers like Garth Ennis and Grant Morrison...got me to a place where I would be adventurous enough to give books like Hitman and JLA a chance. Upon reading these titles I was hooked on the large scale universe (something I had already experienced with Marvel but never to this degree, the heroes and their pedigree, and events (at least the first few I read like most of the Crisis series) that reminded me of what got me excited about Marvel in the first place (yes I started with Marvel but that is a while rabbit trail for another blog). Starting with these books got me into checking out the amazing work of Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka on Gotham Central (still one of the best Batman books ever written), Mark Waid and Geoff Johns equally incredible runs on The Flash, and Johns steady and methodical refacing of the universe in the many other titles he came to be known for. 

Well today I'm here to say I'm sick of it. Putting Bob Harras and Jim Lee in charge of anything I KNEW was a mistake. Harras has shown during much of the late 80's and early 90's that he cared nothing about the core principles of what made comics good, but loved to create a since of sensationalism within the industry when he headed up Marvel. Jim Lee has proved as well that despite a few shining examples he never had the chops to hold his own comic company let alone one of the Big Two to greatness. Wildstorm, much like Extreme Studios, was doomed to fail because it cashed in on the flavor of the month (Extreme has no exceptions but I'll give Wildstorm Stormwatch, The Planetary, and The Authority under Ellis and Millar) while ignoring that fact that is is a medium of art AND story. The readers were only willing to take so many X-Men knock offs, and despite sales on some of his early titles being high, they were doomed to not last because many fans saw through their facade. So how is it these two industry failures got put into such lofty positions? My only guess is DC as a subsidiary of Warner sees the potential of these shiny rebooted and redesigned characters as a chance to cash in on what Marvel has already been successful at for the last decade. What they've failed to notice is that despite Marvel not having many huge spikes in sales (although sales across the industry have been shown to be picking up) they were producing some of the best written, well drawn, chance taking titles that the company had created since the days of Stan, Jack, Steve, and Joe.

The official thing that has broke me is titles I have actually grown to enjoy and love from DC (some I was incredibly sceptical about) have either lost their creative teams (Gail Simone being the latest casualty), are losing their creative teams (I'm hearing both Lemire and Snyder will soon no longer be on Swamp Thing or Animal Man which honestly were the only good things about those titles), or are getting creative flashbacks with creators like Howard Mackie, Tom DeFalco, Scott Lobdell, and Fabian Nicieza taking over the lump sum of titles that may have been able to stay afloat in the 90's but not now. Especially not now when we have seen Image become a beacon for creator-owned AND the industry standard for good books that stretch what the industry can do (something I would say Vertigo once was), other indie companies producing fun and engaging books that push the medium,  and even Marvel (I'm a bit as a Marvel zombie but I'm not without my criticisms of them either) finally pulling everything together in what seems to be playing out as a strong cohesive universe with great talent leading them forward into the future. Somehow along the way DC missed the fact that we don't produce new readers through gimmicks (I'll attack DC on New 52 for this but Marvel needs to cut back on the variants as well) because as the industry has always shown they gimmicks only produce slight bumps in sales, mostly to already existing readers, and then they have to come up with another gimmick to suck in more of their readership. 

So as of today I'm reading Batman for now. I might check out Man of Steel but I doubt it. Andy Diggle on Action Comics does nothing for me as besides his Green Arrow Year One and Losers runs I've never felt he was that great of a writer. Who are great writers that DC seems to show no account or care for are people like Mark Waid, Gail Simone, Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and many others that have been cast aside it feels what clearly appears to be no rationale other than sensationalism. I can count the number of Marvel titles I feel are bad on one hand (I'll give Thunderbolts one more issue to prove me wrong), but DC...you have become a clusterfuck on nonsense and I for one am done wasting my time weekly hoping that it will get better and someone will right this train. Much love to Gail Simone, Grant Morrison, and Karen Berger in their next endeavors. Hoping Snyder and Lemire will realize soon that they need get away from corporate comics now even if I do love Batman, Swamp Thing, and Animal Man. You hold history in your hands DC and all I can say is sell your properties to Marvel before you ruin them any further.