Tag Archives: Jim Lee

DC Comics’ War on Marriage

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savelois

Back in 1980, I was struck by what (at the time) was an outrageous idea.

Why can’t Superman marry Lois Lane?

The heart of the idea was that I was getting old enough to realize that the status quo in comics was stifling, and that not letting the characters advance in any way kept the stories from being anything more than kids’ stuff. Sure you were beginning to see books with better story telling come out, like the Chris Claremont run on X-Men, and the Wolfman/Perez relaunch of the Teen Titans.  But, overall, the really big name comic characters seemed stuck in a story stasis that seemed to be permanent.

Of course this wasn’t an absolute. DC had characters like The Flash, the Atom, and the Elongated Man who all eventually got married. This also did not count characters like Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who started out married.

Also if you look at Marvel you had Reed Richards and Sue Storm who got married early in the run of the Fantastic Four, as well as Ant Man and the Wasp.  But, like DC, it seemed that some characters( like Spider-Man) were destined for bachelorhood.

Then 1985 happened. With the release of The Dark Knight returns and Watchmen, comics suddenly became a venue for serious writing.  You also had Crisis on Infinite Earths, which tore down the old DC continuity and relaunched the entire line. It took characters (like Superman) and, even though it restarted them, allowed for stories that advanced and felt like they really could grow dynamically.

From the time of the relaunch, you saw Clark Kent and Lois Lane go through all the stages of their relationship – from dating, to his revealing his identity to her, engagement, and eventually they did get married. Over all, it felt organic and was some very good story telling. It also opened up some fantastic storytelling, with the marriage being treated like one you see in real life if one of the partners is a fireman, or solider. But not all was peaches and cream; from the beginning of the relationship, there were detractors. Some were fans who did not like the break from the status quo. They wanted the Superman who appeared in the cartoons, or the Donner movies, and could not accept a more humanized version of the characters. Others were writers who chafed at having to write about a Superman who was in a healthy relationship, as they felt it constrained them.

In spite of this, for over a decade, you had Clark Kent and Lois Lane as a happily married couple, and they were not the only ones. Wally West (Barry Allen’s successor as the Flash) married his girlfriend Linda Park. Over at Marvel you even had Spider-Man get married.

This was also paired with the growing idea of the legacy character. You had Wally West pick up the mantle of the Flash after the death of Barry Allen. You even had Dick Grayson become Batman after the apparent death of Bruce Wayne. So you had comic characters growing and their stories progressing. It was a great time to be a comic book reader.

We should have known it wouldn’t last.

The first signs of this problem were over at Marvel, when it was decided to retcon away Spider-Man’s marriage. I’ve written about the specifics of that in the past, so I won’t rehash here. The basics however were that Editor-In-Chief, Joe Quesada, wanted Spider-Man reset to how he was written during his own youth.

Sure it annoyed fans, but it was nothing compared to what was going to happen over at DC.

The first sign of trouble was Emerald Dawn, which saw the return of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. This was written by Geoff Johns, one of DC’s best writers. The problem wasn’t apparent at first, as Johns did not discard Kyle Rayner, Hal’s successor, but instead made all of the Green Lanterns a team.

The real signs of trouble came with Flash: Rebirth, which was the story that brought Barry Allen back to life, again written by Johns. While not stripping Wally West of his status as the Flash, he was quietly moved to the background.

DC was rolling back the status of its Universe to the Silver Age status quo.

There was another troubling factor going on at the time; there were writers complaining that writing for a married Superman, or even Flash was too hard.

This brings us to Flashpoint and the launch of the New 52.

I’ve written a lot about what a mess this entire relaunch was, but one of the biggest factors contributing to this was the loss of all the character progress that had occurred. I may not have minded so much if it had been a clean and total reboot, but the half assed way it was handled (with not really rebooting Batman and Green Lantern) made it more glaring that characters like Superman and the Flash lost all their development from all of those previous stories.

And, of course, a large part of this was that not only were Superman and The Flash not married any more, but that their wives (Lois and Iris) were not even their love interests. In fact, the writers went out of their way to make it clear that they were in no way romantically linked.

The part that really annoyed me was when DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee said that, once they got rid of Superman’s marriage, the stories just flowed. This implies that the marriage was the problem, and not his lack of skill as a writer.

But at least the DC Universe had some married couples, like Animal Man and Aquaman. Or so we thought.

This all came to a boil during what is now known here as the DC PR Meltdown; the week when DC could not keep their foot out of their mouth.

This is when everyone learned that DC editorial had pulled the carpet out from under the long planned wedding of Batwoman, and her girlfriend Maggie. When accused of shying away from a same-sex marriage, DC Co-Publisher Dan Didio said it was not the same-sex part that they were against, but the marriage part. He said that they did not want any of their characters married, because the level of sacrifice needed to be a hero did not allow for that kind of happy ending. He fundamentally said that no DC hero should be married. So, basically, a ban on marriage. He seems to believe all heroes need to be miserable. I am left to wonder how these clearly hack writers ended up in charge of the DC Universe. Of course, I am sure the answer is politics, but I digress.

Another DC editor was challenged, after these comments were made, to reconcile these comments with a character like Aquaman, who is successfully married to Mera. The editor said Aquaman and Mera were not married. It was pointed out that Aquaman, king of Atlantis, regularly refers to Mera as his queen. The editor countered that just because she is his queen, it does not mean they are married. This came as a surprise to series writer Geoff Johns, who had never been told they were not married.

The only hero allowed to be married was Animal Man, and that is because his marriage (and its slow collapse) was central to the story. Not that it was a happy marriage, which is why I guess it was ok.

So why has DC come out against marriage?

I reject Didio’s argument that heroes don’t get that kind of happy ending. First off, marriage is not an ending, it is a commitment to the most important person in your life. Also, it is not easy and comes with many challenges that can lead to dramatic moments. Superman and Flash writers were able to find those for all the years each characters was married.

I also reject the argument that marriage limits storylines. A good writer would not have that problem. The issue is that a lot of the current writers (and more importantly right now editors) are caught up in their childhood power fantasies, and their heroes being married doesn’t fit into them.

As for the overall all ban, I have a suspicion that it was an attempt to cover a bad decision. I think someone in the editorial chain did not want there to be a same-sex marriage. When the story broke big, I think Didio’s statement against marriage was an attempt to hold off the accusations of being homophobic, chiefly due to how ridiculous the claim that Aquaman and Mera are not married is.

In the end, I think the whole war on marriage that DC has declared is just another sign of how badly there needs to be a change in the editorial structure. Time will tell, I suppose.

 

DC Comics PR Meltdown

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batwoman-maggie-It’s been two years since the launch of the New 52, so it’s time to look at the state of DC comics again. Last year at this time, I took a look at the individual titles that make up the new 52 and how I thought they were doing. I cannot do that this year; two months ago I stopped collecting all DC titles.

If you have been following me for a while, then you know how much of a DC comics fan I am. If you are new, here I suggest clicking on the DC comics tag at the bottom of the column. But if you have been following me, you also know I have been very critical about the direction DC comics has been going. Over several months I started slowly dropping titles, as I had decided I should not be reading books I was not enjoying. Two months ago was where I hit the point of looking at what was going on at the company over all, and decided to vote with my wallet and drop them completely. I found that DC comics overall had just become a joyless place, where every book was being written like it was Batman, and the Batman titles were being written like they were a Lars Von Trier film.

And then this last week happened.

I find it interesting that everything hit critical mass at the 2 year point on the New 52. It all started on September 5th when J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman, the writers and artist for Batwoman, were leaving the series with issue #26. Their reason for leaving was given as last minute editorial meddling on an already approved storyline. In this case, it was the marriage between Batwoman and her girlfriend Maggie Sawyer. With same-sex marriage being a major social issue, this got a lot of attention.

To be clear Williams and Blackman gave their reason for leaving as constant editorial interference, not specifically that there were not being allowed to follow through on the marriage.

Keep in mind that this has been a common complaint over the last two years. Talented creators leaving DC, for this reason, has become so common that the site Gutters and Panels created a timeline about it.

On September 7th at Baltimore Comic Con during a DC Nations panel, DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan Didio clarified the company’s position: Didio said that they have no problem with gay marriage; they just don’t want any of their heroes to be married, gay or otherwise. Didio went on to say that to be a superhero is to sacrifice your own happiness. In other words none of the heroes in the DC Universe can have a happy personal life, and that includes being married.

It was also announced that Mark Andreyko would take over as the new writer on Batwoman with issue #24. This means that Williams and Blackman will not be doing the last two issues of their run as they planned.

This led to one unnamed DC executive being asked “what about Aquaman and his wife Mera?” The executive clarified that Aquaman and Mera are King and Queen of Atlantis, but that they are not actually married. This came as a surprise to Aquaman’s current writer Geoff Johns.

While this was bad enough, DC had another problem come up at the same time. An artist talent search was announced. Basically, this contest involves drawing four panels of the character Harley Quinn, based on description’s from the writer of her new series, Jimmy Palmiotti. The problem arose from the description of the fourth panel:

Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of “oh well, guess that’s it for me” and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen.

People complained about the promotion of a “sexy suicide”.  It was later clarified that the sequence in all four panels involved Harley breaking the fourth wall and discussing the absurd situations her writers put her in. Palmiotti eventually took the blame for the uproar, for not providing context to the scene. However even with context there are a lot of people upset simply by the imagery.

Both situations were bad enough, but DC found a way to make them worse. In both cases, DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee took to twitter to defend their positions.

If you follow this link, you will find a listing of how Didio defended the prevention of Batwoman’s marriage and spun the departure of Williams and Blackman as a good thing.

And if you follow this link, you can see the very long twitter thread that Lee made explaining context in sequential art.

After reading both threads there was one conclusion I was able to come to: neither Didio nor Lee have much respect for their fans. Both took condescending tones on twitter, and dismissed fan concerns out of hand.

That last really doesn’t surprise me much. Both have displayed this behavior before, especially at conventions. It can also be seen in how they have been handling the overall promotion of the DC comics universe for a while now. Between the overall presentation of the new 52, or particular storylines such as the Superman/Wonder Woman romance, there has been the underlying message. Unfortunately that message is “this is what you are going to like, and we are going to keep hammering you with it until you accept this.”

It should go without saying that the fan reaction has not been positive, but again this is nothing new. There is now a website called Has DC done something stupid today. If you go to the link, you will see it has a counter for how many days it has been since they posted something fitting their criteria of something stupid. The record so far is eight days.

Due to his position at DC Comics, and his public visibility, Dan Didio has been the focal point in all the online discussions related to DC’s direction. For example, fans on twitter have created a hashtag #firedidio as a place to vent their frustration over all of the above issues as well as the handling of the company overall.

But not every bit of coverage has been against DC. Rich Johnson, of Bleeding Cool, wrote an editorial in response to #firedidio defending the DC co-publisher and citing the good things he has done for the industry.

So where does all of this leave us?

As I made clear at the beginning, I personally am not happy with the direction DC comics is going in. From the beginning, I feel that the New 52 was a hastily thrown together project. Rather than take the time to put together a cohesive reboot of the DC Universe, a rush job was done without any clear vision, and the result has been a muddled mess.

On top of that, you have had the editorial turf wars and the non-stop executive meddling in the process. If there has been a consistent narrative that has emerged, it is that DC comics no longer values its creators. Writers and artists, even well respected ones, are now considered disposable as the editors ride roughshod over them.

Does this mean that the ire directed at Dan Didio is deserved? I think the answer is yes and no.

From the outside, the problems appear to be on a corporate culture level at this stage. This means it comes from the top down. In this case, we have four people that need to be held accountable. DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson, DC Comics co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee, and DC Comics Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras.

There could be an argument made that Chief Creative Office Geoff Johns should be included here, as well, but his duties in that role involve DC properties outside of comics so, in this regard, he is a writer who happens to have a great deal of influence.

Lee is in a similar boat, in that although he is co-publisher he appears to spend a lot of his time on outside branding and lives on the west coast, so is not often in DC Comics New York office.

Bob Harras, on the other hand, is a flash point for a lot of fan ire. As Editor-in-Chief, he has certainly been involved in much of the interference that creators have complained about. Also, when he held the same position at Marvel, the company was on the edge of bankruptcy. He also gave the green light to the Spider-Man Clone Saga, considered one of the worst storylines in comic history. Many fans on the #firedidio hashtag want him gone just as badly.

And, of course, we have Dan Didio himself. Unlike his co-publisher, Lee, Didio is very much involved in the day to day running of DC Comics, and is basically the person setting the pace. He is also a very public figure at conventions and on social media. It should come as no surprise that he would be the focus of fan ire and, given his position and statements he has made, there is a lot to reinforce that.

On the other hand, from a strictly business perspective. he has gotten the job done. DC Comics owner, Warner Bros, is concerned with two things – profits, and being able to leverage the DC brands into other media, for additional profit. From this perspective, Didio has done a fair enough job that there is nothing directly warranting his removal. The PR faux pas are not enough to get their attention.

Of all the people in charge, Diane Nelson is arguably in the toughest position. As president of DC Entertainment, the buck stops with her. Also, if Didio, or any of the others were to be fired, she would be the one doing the firing. But, as I have written before, she is not a comic publisher; she was originally a movie brand manager. She looks to Didio and Lee to handle the publishing side of the business, and has always presented a united front with them. Unless something drastic happens, she is not going to do anything to them.

So what can we, the fans, do? Two things:

A lot of people have said that the #firedido hashtag is useless, as it will not actually get him fired. They are of course correct about it not getting him fired, but not that it is useless. It gives the fans a place to vent their frustrations, and is a public sign that a lot of people are not happy with the direction DC Comics is going. It also lets fans that are feeling that frustration know that they are not alone. Of course the same is true for the fans who are happy with DC Comics, and that want to defend them.

The other thing is what I and others like me have done: vote with your wallet. A twitter hashtag may not make WB pay attention, but dropping sales certainly will. If you are not happy with a title, but are still buying the book, then you are telling them to keep doing what they are doing since you are willing to pay for it. Remember that the bottom line is the almighty dollar.

And if both are happening at once, then we may see something happen. If sales start dropping and fans are complaining loudly about something, and citing it as the reason they have stopped buying, then you will see changes happen.

Do I expect that anytime soon? No, but if DC Comics does not do something to halt the drain of the talented creators it will eventually.

Until then, I will wait for the day when I can return to reading the stories about my childhood heroes.

DC Entertainment: Trouble at the top.

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DCI’m not happy with how much I have been writing about not being happy with DC Entertainment lately.  It seems every time I decide to cover them, I am complaining about something new. Just recently, we got the news that Warner Bros. has scrapped the latest Justice League movie script. The latest Wonder Woman series pilot in the same boat. On top of that, the new “52” strategy is beginning to come apart at the seams. And yet I still cover them more than Marvel, because I am still more invested in their characters, which probably makes me an outlier amongst comic book geeks.

So what is going on? Why are things such a mess over there? Didn’t Warner Bros. set up DC Entertainment in order to avoid things like this? Shouldn’t DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson be able to get a handle on this?

Given how things seem to be set up, the answers are in no way simple.

First off, we have Diane Nelson. Diane’s area of expertise is brand management. She was brought on to help build the various intellectual properties that make up DC Comics. That alone is a tall order. But the truth is that while she is a great brand guru, she is not a film maker or a comic publisher, so her influence in these areas is limited at best. To that you need to add the way Warner Bros. is organized, with the film division having the most power. This has allowed the film division to make executive mandates that have led to many of the issues I have written about in the past. Reports are that Nelson is extremely frustrated with the current state of affairs, but has no real way to deal with it.

If all of this is true, then we have to wonder who is calling the shots specifically. The answer to that is probably a lot more complicated than it seems.

Nelson is a brand manager; in fact, she was the person in charge of the Harry Potter franchise at Warner Bros. When that film series was winding down, she was put in charge of the newly formed DC entertainment. This is probably not a coincidence. With the end of the enormously successful Potter franchise looming, WB clearly wanted something to replace it. Since Marvel Studios was having unprecedented success with their films, it was natural for WB to move on the DC brands. These were established characters with a huge preexisting fan base. So Nelson moves over to DC to shepherd those brands, and has the aid of Geoff Johns, one of DC’s top writers, who moves in to the role of Chief Creative Officer. So far everything looks great. The first movie out of the gate was Green Lantern.

I’ve written before about the problems with that movie. In a nut shell, it was a paint-by-numbers summer blockbuster that took no chances and left the audience less than thrilled, because they had seen it before. To add insult to injury, less than a month separated it from Captain
America, a film that did take chances and was for more original. So the script was clearly the main culprit. Well, the thing about that is that two of the main writers of the script were Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim. Right now, they have a TV series they created on the air. That series is Arrow, based on DC comics’ hero Green Arrow, a show that I was convinced would never work. Right now Arrow is the best superhero show that has been on TV in well over a decade, based largely on the strength of the writing.

So how do these two writers so clearly screw up with horrible writing on a DC property that should have succeeded, and take another concept that should have tanked, and make it pure gold based on stellar writing? Did they take intense writing classes in the interim?  I doubt it. Were they writing lazier for Green Lantern since they knew it would have big action scenes and special effects vs. the small TV budget of Arrow? Maybe, but I think there is a simpler answer. Green Lantern was DC’s first real attempt to go up against the Marvel movies, so there was a lot riding on it at the studio. My best guess is that there was a lot of executive influence on the script. Arrow, on the other hand, was an adaptation of a lesser tier hero on the CW. If it tanked, it was no big loss, so I suspect Berlanti and Guggenheim were given a lot of free reign.  If so, I hope that lasts now that Arrow has been renewed for a second season.  The point is that from what we know, the Warner Bros. structure is set up so that producers and movie executives hold the real power, and can dictate what they want.

So why did this not affect Marvel over at Disney? Simply put, Marvel was already rolling when Disney bought them. But even then, it could have been a mess, except that someone had the good sense to put Kevin Feige in charge of Marvel Studios. Feige has a clear vision of how the Marvel movies should work, and makes sure that the producers and directors he hires understand this vision and adhere to it. This has allowed the cohesive development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  When Disney bought Marvel, they took the view of “It’s working so let’s not mess with it.” This led them to having the highest grossing movie of last year and the third highest of all time.

DC has to contend with what I like to call “too many mad scientists and not enough hunchbacks.” And worst is that WB has seen the success that Marvel has, and wants to compete with it. Unfortunately, they have not found a good counterpart to Feige, so there is no cohesive vision. This should be Nelson, but again, this is not where her strengths appear to lay; and from all appearances she is not being given that kind of authority.

And then we have the comic books themselves. This should be a no-brainer. The books are the source of the intellectual properties, and are something that should be working well. But right now is a hard time for the industry as a whole, and DC Comics does not appear to be doing well.

Right now sales look fairly good, but there is a bit of smoke and mirrors with that. When the “New 52” launched in 2011 it was a great sales boost. However, for many books, those sales did not last. When a book hit a low selling point, usually dropping below 18,000 orders a month, it would be canceled, and a new series would take its place. Since you had new series, they would have good initial sales. This would boost the line and keep numbers up. The problem is that the new series are not doing well and have quicker reader drop off, so you have a higher number of books struggling.

Add to this a problem we have discussed before – DC editorial is not on top of its game. You have frequent creative team shifts and last-minute mandated changes, leading to poor issues. You also have mandated story elements designed to garner wide spread attention, like the Superman/Wonder Woman romance, which is not well-written since there was no organic growth to it.

If that weren’t enough there is increasing perception that Dan DiDio, Co-Publisher with Jim Lee, is a poor leader and hostile towards fans, and you have a recipe for a bad work environment.

So how does Warner Bros. solve this? As I see it either Diane Nelson has to take the bull by the horns and make the needed changes, or WB has to find their own version of Kevin Feige and give them the authority to do what needs to be done to right the ship. This means someone has to be able to tell the movie division “no.”

I’ll be honest, I don’t see that happening any time soon. But one can hope.

Addressing the new Watchmen rumor.

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Watchman, more than any other title ever produced is the cornerstone of the modern comic book industry. (Yes, even more than The Dark Knight Returns.) Coming out in 1986 it redefined what could be done with the medium.
So I have very mixed emotions about the rumors that DC is going to produce four prequel mini-series. Part of this is of course the knee jerk fanboy reaction.
But beyond the lizard brain reaction is some real concerns.
First off the original creators are not only not doing it; they really don’t want it to be done at all. It was a disagreement over the ownership of Watchmen that led Alan Moore to sever ties with DC comics. David Gibbons has gone on record as saying he would not like to see it happen as recently as this last summer. Now to be fair to DC Watchmen was created at a time when most work in the industry was work-for-hire and they own the characters. Add to that the fact that the characters are based directly on another set of characters DC owns and they are theirs to do with as they see fit.
That being said as Marvel’s One More Day proved, just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
Watchmen was a nearly perfectly told story. It was paced to make each issue engaging but also make the whole story satisfying. The art was very much a part of the story with important elements being shown not told and often being in the background. It had a clear arc for the story and the individual characters. Even as beloved as it is, there really isn’t anything more that needs to be said.
And this is what has me worried. Why are we revisiting Watchmen? It just smacks of a cash grab.
“Let’s do new stories with these really popular characters. That will bring them into the stores.”
  I’m not saying a good story can’t come out of it. Last weekend my wife and I went to see “The Muppets.” Again this was a relaunch of an old franchise without the involvement of the original creators. However it is clear that the new creators understand the franchise and made it a labor of love. The result is a movie that is basically pure joy and made me laugh so hard I couldn’t breathe and later tear up just a bit.
We can only hope that if DC does go ahead with a new Watchmen project that the new creative team has the same understand of that Property that Jason Segel had of the Muppets.
Co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee are quoted as saying that DC “ would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago.”
So we can only hope.
Personally I think this is a bad idea and I would like them to just let the original stand. On the other hand it might end up eating those words if they do recapture the magic of the original.
Or this might just be a rumor and we are getting worked up over nothing.
Time will tell.