I’m not going to talk about the slate of DC announcements the past week, primarily because so much of the other commentators who have been speculating come across as idiots because since so much detail has still to be released that their ruminations are usually proven wrong seconds after they post them when DC releases another creative announcement. (See the flailing about the Batman titles yesterday afternoon when Grant Morrison wasn’t announced as one of the writers on the first flight of Bat-titles--people were claiming that Morrison had quit DC, only to have Morrison put out a statement saying that his Bat book would launch after September, and that he had another big project coming.)But there’s another reason (well, another reason other the fact that than nobody reads this blog): so much of what transpires on the comics internet is an attempt to ruin the process of storytelling. And I’m as guilty of it as anybody. Because of the vagaries of the direct market system, comics are ordered on a non-returnable basis by retailers usually six-eight weeks before they are actually shipped. And partly because so many retailers are operating on the thinnest margin of error in terms of ordering, and because the internet has made consumers demand any available knowledge as soon as possible, all the major companies release their solicitation information ten weeks before the comics ship on the internet. I’ve certainly spent a fair number of rainy Monday afternoons on solicitation day hitting refresh on one of the major comic news sites in order to find out what comics will be coming out three months hence. It’s gotten to a point now that the two comics companies are releasing information about selected titles (the Batman titles, the Superman titles) a few days in advance of this. If you read the comments sections of these news sites on the release days, there are usually a fair amount of complaints about how few titles had their solicitations released early.
We demand to know. I do, too. Like I said, I’ve been scouring the different sites each day in the hope that I’ll catch a new creative announcement, my friends and I have been speculating about possible titles that will be released, or which writers and artists will appear on which books. But there is a price for that. About four years ago, DC solicited three issues of the then current Flash: The Fastest Man Alive (14-16) only to cancel them on the eve of the release of the 13th issue, in which the Flash was killed by his villains. (His cousin, the former Flash replaced him in a new series that followed, and eventually the Flash killed was resurrected, but that’s neither here nor there.) This wasn’t a last minute change, or a series being canceled prematurely because of dismal sales; DC never intended to produce issues 14-16 of the Flash. They only pretended to so that the death of the Flash would not be ruined by speculation, which an announcement of “FINAL ISSUE” on number 13 would have certainly created.
I’m not going to pretend that the death of the Bart Allen Flash was a memorable story--its shock was probably the only thing effective about it. But I do think it’s telling that fans have become so savvy, so more interested in what’s going to happen next, that they hardly seem to ever be excited about what is happening now.
When I was a kid, short of next issue boxes and maybe a few house advertisements, I had no idea what was going to happen in comics in the future. I also probably didn’t have much of a concept of the future--I knew there was going to be another issue of Batman after I finished it, but I don’t think I spent much time thinking about it existing as a product. I just went to the comic shop and bought what looked cool.
I was eight years old when I first discovered the New England Comics Newsletter. My father worked at a community college and we’d spend some afternoons there after school, hanging out in his office, eating Little Caesar’s pizza and running around the joint. One night we were in the Student Lounge and I found a black and white, Photostatted magazine with a picture of the Joker on the front, advertising that month's release of "The Killing Joke". I opened up and there it listed information about every comic coming out in the month of April, divided up by week. (There was also a section in the back called “Also shipping in April” which featured smaller publishers who must not have had a rigid shipping schedules as Marvel and DC. I remember circling a book called “Uncensored Mouse” featuring public domain Mickey Mouse comics where he was violent and racist--lawyers squashed it before I was ever able to get my little eight year old mitts on it.) I spent the entire evening poring over the whole newsletter. My dad told me I could take it when we were leaving, and I couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t the person who left it here be coming back for it? That’s how eight year olds thought: something with this much information was invaluable. But it was really just a free newsletter that told you what was coming out that month. But each time a new one was released, I would pour over it, circling which comics I was going to buy, making little checklists, the whole shebang. The difference I guess, was that it only went three weeks at most into the future. And that maybe I wasn’t as interested in the publishing decisions of the comics companies as I am now; I was maybe interested in storytelling decisions (“Iron Man’s going to fight the Mandarin again? Cool!”) or creative teams (“I can’t wait to see George Perez draw Superman!”) And maybe I’ll never be able to get that mindset back. Maybe I’ve been reading comics too long to completely divorce my cynicism about decisions on the publishing side (“Looks like Artist B is taking over Cyanideman because Artist A is too slow/switching to Marvel”) from my excitement about the execution of those decisions. And in a lot of cases (Morrison’s Batman Inc, Fraction’s Iron Man, almost all the Vertigo titles) the execution is so enjoyable that no amount of spoilers or speculation can really ruin the books for me.
But I guess the point, ultimately, is that we readers are often the biggest obstacle we face in being able to truly enjoy these books. And maybe we should just get the hell out of our own ways.
We demand to know. I do, too. Like I said, I’ve been scouring the different sites each day in the hope that I’ll catch a new creative announcement, my friends and I have been speculating about possible titles that will be released, or which writers and artists will appear on which books. But there is a price for that. About four years ago, DC solicited three issues of the then current Flash: The Fastest Man Alive (14-16) only to cancel them on the eve of the release of the 13th issue, in which the Flash was killed by his villains. (His cousin, the former Flash replaced him in a new series that followed, and eventually the Flash killed was resurrected, but that’s neither here nor there.) This wasn’t a last minute change, or a series being canceled prematurely because of dismal sales; DC never intended to produce issues 14-16 of the Flash. They only pretended to so that the death of the Flash would not be ruined by speculation, which an announcement of “FINAL ISSUE” on number 13 would have certainly created.
I’m not going to pretend that the death of the Bart Allen Flash was a memorable story--its shock was probably the only thing effective about it. But I do think it’s telling that fans have become so savvy, so more interested in what’s going to happen next, that they hardly seem to ever be excited about what is happening now.
When I was a kid, short of next issue boxes and maybe a few house advertisements, I had no idea what was going to happen in comics in the future. I also probably didn’t have much of a concept of the future--I knew there was going to be another issue of Batman after I finished it, but I don’t think I spent much time thinking about it existing as a product. I just went to the comic shop and bought what looked cool.
I was eight years old when I first discovered the New England Comics Newsletter. My father worked at a community college and we’d spend some afternoons there after school, hanging out in his office, eating Little Caesar’s pizza and running around the joint. One night we were in the Student Lounge and I found a black and white, Photostatted magazine with a picture of the Joker on the front, advertising that month's release of "The Killing Joke". I opened up and there it listed information about every comic coming out in the month of April, divided up by week. (There was also a section in the back called “Also shipping in April” which featured smaller publishers who must not have had a rigid shipping schedules as Marvel and DC. I remember circling a book called “Uncensored Mouse” featuring public domain Mickey Mouse comics where he was violent and racist--lawyers squashed it before I was ever able to get my little eight year old mitts on it.) I spent the entire evening poring over the whole newsletter. My dad told me I could take it when we were leaving, and I couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t the person who left it here be coming back for it? That’s how eight year olds thought: something with this much information was invaluable. But it was really just a free newsletter that told you what was coming out that month. But each time a new one was released, I would pour over it, circling which comics I was going to buy, making little checklists, the whole shebang. The difference I guess, was that it only went three weeks at most into the future. And that maybe I wasn’t as interested in the publishing decisions of the comics companies as I am now; I was maybe interested in storytelling decisions (“Iron Man’s going to fight the Mandarin again? Cool!”) or creative teams (“I can’t wait to see George Perez draw Superman!”) And maybe I’ll never be able to get that mindset back. Maybe I’ve been reading comics too long to completely divorce my cynicism about decisions on the publishing side (“Looks like Artist B is taking over Cyanideman because Artist A is too slow/switching to Marvel”) from my excitement about the execution of those decisions. And in a lot of cases (Morrison’s Batman Inc, Fraction’s Iron Man, almost all the Vertigo titles) the execution is so enjoyable that no amount of spoilers or speculation can really ruin the books for me.
But I guess the point, ultimately, is that we readers are often the biggest obstacle we face in being able to truly enjoy these books. And maybe we should just get the hell out of our own ways.
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