• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

DC Comics: Rebirth

Mark Russell credits Marie Javins with discovering him and bringing him into the comics industry based on his Count Chocula fan fiction, so I'm kind of looking forward to her "reign".
 
kirk55555 said:
I was almost interested in this news, but apparently Jim Lee is somehow still above her in the pecking order, so she's irrelevant. Jim Lee still gets final say on destroying DC Comics, the EIC position at DC seems to only exist for the technical aspects of editing comics at this point.
Click to expand...
Jim Lee is the publisher, which appears to be one of people at the very top of the hierarchy.
 
JD said:
Jim Lee is the publisher, which appears to be one of people at the very top of the hierarchy.
Click to expand...

That's why I was saying. The guy destroying DC Comics only has to answer to Warner Brothers / AT&T executives who don't give a shit about the comic Branch anyway. so he's just the ruler of his own personal comic kingdom, kind of like Caligula but less subtle and probably less competent at the job.
 
Do you really enough about his job to judge him like that? Have the numbers dropped or risen since he took over? Have the reviews overall been better or worse?
These are the kind of things that determine a person's competence, not whether or you personally like what they've done.
Not to mention that there's probably a whole business side of things that we don't really hear about.
 
JD said:
Do you really enough about his job to judge him like that? Have the numbers dropped or risen since he took over? Have the reviews overall been better or worse?
These are the kind of things that determine a person's competence, not whether or you personally like what they've done.
Not to mention that there's probably a whole business side of things that we don't really hear about.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what Lee's job even entails. Dido seemed to be the hands on guy.
 
JD said:
Do you really enough about his job to judge him like that? Have the numbers dropped or risen since he took over? Have the reviews overall been better or worse?
These are the kind of things that determine a person's competence, not whether or you personally like what they've done.
Not to mention that there's probably a whole business side of things that we don't really hear about.
Click to expand...

Leaving aside the fact that making money doesn't mean something is good, Jim Lee was one of the architects of the new 52 and that did end up failing financially along with always being a complete failure creatively. He's also been a supporter of Frank Miller, which makes him a giant asshole on a personal level, and really he's never made a good creative decision. As for DC, I know it was looking up financially with rebirth, but then Didio and Lee didn't like rebirth so they started to sabotage it.

As the main guy in charge, he's also the person who allows people like Scott Snyder and Tom King to ruin other people's books, and allows all the edgelord shit like death metal to get published. reviews have definitely been bad since he came into more power in 2011, and things like rebirth succeeded even a little bit despite him and Didio. For a long time dan didio was the main problem, but even with him gone DC's just as bad if not worse and since Jim Lee is the Man In Charge, that's on him.

Jim Lee also has a history of being terrible actually creating Comics, see him being one of the founders of the shity 90s Image Comics and probably the most forgettable of all of them (seriously, people forget this because he eventually became a good artist, but the books he created were all awful, and the stuff he did for Marvel during the Heroes Reborn era in the 90s was absolutely atrocious).

Once Didio left, almost nothing changed about how DC Comics was run or what books were published, outside of the generation thing getting canned. Jim Lee has always been in step with Didio creatively, that's why DC Comics hasn't improved at all even with Didio gone.
 
How many months has it been since Didio was fired?
Probably the number of months that the majority of what we're reading now was already in the pipleline so that the ramifications of him being gone can't really be judged just yet.
 
M'rk son of Mogh said:
How many months has it been since Didio was fired?
Probably the number of months that the majority of what we're reading now was already in the pipleline so that the ramifications of him being gone can't really be judged just yet.
Click to expand...

Even so, Jim Lee has had a lot of influence since at least the new 52, and contributed to a lot of the terrible shit DC's done since then. He'd also be the one in charge of destroying the DC Universe if those rumors are correct.
 
kirk55555 said:
Leaving aside the fact that making money doesn't mean something is good, Jim Lee was one of the architects of the new 52 and that did end up failing financially along with always being a complete failure creatively.
Click to expand...
Do you have proof of this? I was under the impression that The New 52 brought a big boost to DC's numbers.
And I don't think I'd call it a complete failure creatively, since I remember quite a few of the books, like Snyder's Batman, Johns' Aquaman, Buccellato and Manapul's Flash and Azarello's Wonder Woman getting pretty good reviews. That was the whole reason I first started those series, because the good reviews I saw got me interested.
He's also been a supporter of Frank Miller, which makes him a giant asshole on a personal level, and really he's never made a good creative decision.
Click to expand...
Whether you like him as a person or not, Miller's comics tend to sell, and that's usually enough to keep the people in charge going back to him.
As for DC, I know it was looking up financially with rebirth, but then Didio and Lee didn't like rebirth so they started to sabotage it.
Click to expand...
Proof?
As the main guy in charge, he's also the person who allows people like Scott Snyder and Tom King to ruin other people's books, and allows all the edgelord shit like death metal to get published.
Click to expand...
Like Miller their stuff is popular, and it tends to get really good reviews, so it makes perfect sense they'd give them more power.
reviews have definitely been bad since he came into more power in 2011, and things like rebirth succeeded even a little bit despite him and Didio. For a long time dan didio was the main problem, but even with him gone DC's just as bad if not worse and since Jim Lee is the Man In Charge, that's on him.
Click to expand...
Do you have some links to these bad reviews?

Jim Lee also has a history of being terrible actually creating Comics, see him being one of the founders of the shity 90s Image Comics and probably the most forgettable of all of them (seriously, people forget this because he eventually became a good artist, but the books he created were all awful, and the stuff he did for Marvel during the Heroes Reborn era in the 90s was absolutely atrocious).
Click to expand...
OK, I'll give you this one.
Once Didio left, almost nothing changed about how DC Comics was run or what books were published, outside of the generation thing getting canned. Jim Lee has always been in step with Didio creatively, that's why DC Comics hasn't improved at all even with Didio gone.
Click to expand...
How long do those kind of changes take to make? Other than maybe canceling 5G, do we actually know what was just Lee and what was left over from when Didio was still there?
I have to confess, I'm actually finding myself getting kind of curious about Death Metal, the whole thing just sounds so bonkers, that it could be kind of fun.
 
JD said:
Do you have proof of this? I was under the impression that The New 52 brought a big boost to DC's numbers.
Click to expand...

the new 52 was a temporary boost, within a year or two their comic numbers were lower than they were before the new 52 reboot happened, from what I remember of several articles that the time. Remember, DC Rebirth was not popular with Didio or his ilk, it was done to try to bring back the people who stopped reading The New 52.

As for bad reviews, I'm not Google. it's easier to find bad reviews of New 52 books online than it is to find sand in the Sahara. Red Hood and the Outlaws was called out for being both shit and unbelievably sexist, no one on earth give a shit about stuff like Voodoo or grifter, etc. even the stuff they got slightly better reviewed was forgotten pretty quickly. No one gives a shit about the New 52 Superman books, for example.

Outside of Snyder's Batman, even the stuff that didn't get the worst reviews was not very popular in retrospect. No one's going back to Geoff Johns Justice League or even grant Morrison's Action Comics. Green Lantern books also started doing pretty badly when they made emotion and willpower a limited resource, and in general the new 52 stuff was going way down hill even from where it been which is why rebirth happened. But because the people in charge didn't want to do rebirth, they almost immediately started undermining it which lead DC to where it is today.

As for proof of Dan Didio and others sabotaging rebirth, just look at what happened with Dick Grayson and Wally West, two characters that Dan didio infamously hated and was always trying to get rid of. thinking of stuff like heroes in crisis, which was badly reviewed by most people and was one of the absolute worst things ever, and also acted as a way to basically get rid of Wally West.

When it comes to Frank Miller, you're defending them employing a guy who once wrote a several hundred page comic that's entire concept was Frank Miller ranting about how much he hates Muslim people, not to mention all the horrific misogyny (and just shit quality) of stuff like all star Batman. other people have gotten boycotted for shit like that, Marvel hasn't worked with Frank Miller in a long time, and DC working with him is always been an embarrassment of recent times.
 
I'm not defending them employing him, I'm just saying that despite his issues, his stuff still sells, and still makes headlines when it's announced, so I can see why they keep going back to him.
 
The New 52 sales numbers only being a temporary boost, numbers from 2012+ being mediocre to bad, especially with lower tier books:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/how-much...-help-sales-these-charts-may-hold-the-answer/

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw...are-dc-comics-sales-after-their-relaunch.html

https://sktchd.com/longform/dc-troubles-longform/

Most of these are about sales when the New 52 was still in effect, and seem fairly reliable (although numbers websites are fairly complicated, so I tried to find a few that seemed legit enough and weren't too obtuse)

I'm not going to go grab reviews of dozens of New 52 books. You can find articles about the various controversies easily enough, you can see which books got cancelled quickly (the Wildstorm based books, Voodoo and Grifter, not even reaching the two year mark), etc. Talking about people not caring/remembering a lot of the books is more anecdotal, but pretty obvious if you pay attention to comic discussions.

That's not even talking about how bad the New 52 was for certain writers. Gail Simone was fired from Batgirl randomly even though it had solid numbers, but got the job back after fan backlash, and has talked on twitter about how the New 52 experience wasn't great for writers, although I'm not searching through thousands of tweets for the stories I've read from her twitter. The writer of the New 52 Static Shock book also got fucked over by editors, and George Perez's superman was fucked over by a combination of grant Morrison's Action Comics run and editors not telling him anything. There is an article I found with quotes from him about that:

https://comicsalliance.com/george-perez-superman-experience-new-52/

and the New 52 horror story from the Static Shock writer:

https://comicsalliance.com/static-shock-john-rozum-scott-mcdaniel-cancelation-quitting/

In the end, the New 52 gave DC a temporary sales boost, but killed a lot of goodwill among fans, pissed off a bunch of writers, and it definitely wasn't successful overall, even if some books did well. Rebirth was a direct attempt to fix DC after the New 52, and it did good sales but then stuff kept going downhill because all the people behind the New 52 were still calling the shots. DC's current plight is a combination of Didio's legacy being terrible and pissing off the fanbase, AT&T's financial problems effecting DC, and an overall lack of ability to learn from the past.
 
OK, now I believe you. Thank you for providing proof.:beer:
I didn't realize it was such a disaster behind the scenes.
And I did know about all of the bad books you were talking about, I was just trying to point out that there were quite a few books that did get a positive reception. Another one I remembered after my other post was the Swamp Thing series, which I haven't read myself yet, but I do remember hearing good thing about.
I have to confess, I was writing off a lot of what you are saying as your usual overreactions, but I guess in this case a lot of it wasn't.
 
Swamp Thing and Animal Man were both great in the New 52 line. Swamp Thing especially. There were definitely diamonds in the rough. But the rough was... vast.
 
So the rumor that DC will be discontinuing physical copies of its monthlies has started again. Over on an Legion group I am a member of there is speculation that serialized monthlies will only be published in digital form. It seems this piece of gossip keeps coming up again and again so I am not sure what to make of the latest.
 
^Well, Rich starts of by calling it a rumour, and that he's heard variations of it for fifteen years. So, maybe?!

To be quite frank, I wouldn't even be that opposed to it. While I do mostly get the monthly floppies, if they were to move to more self-contained books, I'd find it adjustable to move to collected editions (which I'd still get from my LCS, don't want to abandon them, certainly not for the likes of Amazon). Actually, I don't know how it is in other countries, but German editions are already mostly softcover collections.
And, let's face it, if they want to grow the younger audience, the printed floppies are pretty pointless in that regard.

What I would be opposed to is to limit the output to the big multimedia brands. At least in mini-series form, or an anthology title, they should still do something with the lesser known characters. And it's not like TV & Movies don't use those, they do that now more than ever before. So, while I know from the shrinking of the editorial staff alone that there will be less output, I'd hate to see two monthly Batman Tpb, but nothing for the broader DC characters.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top