Surprising New Data Shows Comic Readers Are Leaving Superheroes Behind

 

I don't know what's surprising about that. How many people here have the same favorite music as their grandparents? Same favorite movies? But with comics, they expect kids to like not only the same genre, but even the same characters whose heyday was decades before those kids were born. Because the publishers own the characters, they hold onto them with a death grip, and try to keep pushing them onto new audiences, wringing every last dime of profit they can out of them. And that's fine with very little kids. Catch them with a cartoon or something. But once kids get a little older, it's amazing publishers keep any of them.

 

Anyone else think that 5G is DC Now (with Bendis spearheading it with DiDio’s blessing, basically replacing established heroes with new heroes, some not the assumed successors) and would end as spectacularly as Marvel Now (which Marvel is still recovering from)

 

Frank Miller on Superman: Year One, Batman & Who He Wants to Write Next

(I spoiler-tagged one part which I found necessary)

"The writing in 300 is extraordinarily idealistic; people who were up against impossible odds essentially charting the course of Western civilization is pretty darn idealistic. But nothing beats Moses; this lone child that survived! The big question that always hangs over Superman is what if he wasn't such a nice guy? What he hadn't had those angelic parents raising him? What if all these things hadn't come together to create the perfect hero?"

Spoiler

"I had Superman meet Lori Lemaris the mermaid, because Atlantis gave us two big things: One, it's part of his discovery of Earth as a place with as many wonders as Krypton ever had and as a planet he's falling in love with. Because he's much more in love with Earth than he ever was with Krypton."

"I see Superman as a profoundly romantic character. I don't think he ever was until that marvelous Richard Donner movie where we saw Superman fly Lois Lane over the city. And that transformed the character forever in my eyes -- I think, in everybody's eyes. I think that Superman, unlike Batman, is very much a lover. He's in love with the planet and he's probably broken many a heart."

"Superman is the nobler character and Batman is in eternal torment of the childhood trauma of having his parents murdered. Superman lost an entire species, he lived through Armageddon...and he got better! He's not a bitter man, he's not an angry man, because his foster parents were such good, sweet people and because his essential nature was so positive. He can fly and lift railroad cars. He's a sun god like Apollo."

"Bob Dylan once referred to himself as a musical expeditionary and I like to think of myself as a comic book expeditionary. You've got keep yourself alive, keep yourself interested."

"I think everyone wants their crack at Wonder Woman because she's one of those great characters who has been done right so rarely. She's been drawn right but rarely been written right."
(Miller, you mocking yourself here?)

"When it comes to DC Comics, they cover such a broad range of time. In particular, their sunburst was in the 1940s, which is a period of history I'm obsessed with. Everything that happened during World War II changed the course of the world in every way just as important as the Persian Wars were whereas the 60s, by comparison, was like an adolescent tantrum. But that was my youth! A lot of good things came from that time. My two favorite singers in the whole world are Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan and they're both total 60s cats."

 

Many people ask -- exasperated by how incomprehensible Frank Miller's writing has been over the past couple of decades -- "how does that man keep getting work?"

That interview, from NYCC, is how.

He sounds like an actual, sentient human being in that interview.

He answers questions about superhero comics like somebody eager to write sweeping, idealistic adventures hardening back to the comic books of his youth.

He sounds like, in his head, he writes like the late Darwyn Cooke.

My question isn't "how does he keep getting work," that's clear -- he speaks like somebody whose writing you'd want to savour.

My question is "what keeps going wrong between inspiration and submitted script?"

~L~

 

The DC Comics Timeline From New York Comic Con Was Not Ready to Be Published

Those timeline images we saw earlier this week or last week? Turns out they’re outdated. So everything is subjected to change.

 

"I hold in my hand the envelope.
As a child of four can plainly see, this envelope has been hermetically sealed. It's been kept in a jar at the bottom of the Sharkticon pit on Quintessa.
No one knows the contents of this envelope – but I, in my mystical and borderline divine way, will ascertain the answers having never before heard the question."

"What did Dan DiDio have to say at NYCC 2025 regarding the latest revision of the 'DC Comics Timeline?"

Opens envelope.

Hey-oh!



~L~
The kids these days love Johnny Carson, right?

 

I don't really ask that about Frank Miller. I ask it about Neal Adams.

 

Finally, someone else thinks that Neal Adams is a has been. Has he actually done anything decent since Muhammad Ali VS Superman?

 

He must have. But not within the last decade and a half. Batman Odyssey, Deadman, and now Batman vs. Ra's all all incoherent ramblings, only interesting as trainwreck-like spectacles. Last week's issue had possibly the most meta line ever committed to a comic book. Panel 2, balloon 2:



Enough of this inane banter, indeed.

 

This revelation isn't all the surprising.

The shift in demographics is having an impact, but it's obvious that the changing demo is only a fraction of why American comic sales are in the gutter.

 

It shows that publishers are right to try to cater to different demographics. Where they are wrong is trying to do it with super-heroes.

 

The thing that scares me about the 5G initiative is that odds are that the writers that would respect the characters and History (Johns, Marz, Carlin, DeMattias, Abnett, Lanning, Krull, Tomasi, Jurgens, Levitz, Simone) probably won’t be involved and it would probably be spearheaded by Bendis and other newer writers hired from Marvel........and the fan backlash would be as bad the New 52’s worse or Marvel Now/ Marvel Now 2.0, and knowing DiDio he would instruct writers to keep those on his Hit List out of sight or out of commission.......(so there won’t be a “Welp, no one cares let’s go back to the heroes people know”)

 

Worked so well for Marvel, what could possibly go wrong?

 

Right. They're no longer focusing on the group of people that were buying floppies for a different demographic that's buying YA books and Manga. That makes sense. It's also the reason why traditional comics are dying. The audience feels alienated because the focus is on a different demo.

 

Maybe if the big 2 just farm the IP’s out to Manga writers (Marvel is already starting to do this as well as Star Wars), the characters could be salvaged........

 

You are missing the whole goddamn point.

 

I know this is the DC thread, but that reminds me of when Marvel brought Squirrel Girl over to Japan. They hired someone to do new cover art, more in a manga style, but the inside remained the same.

So Japanese audiences bought this:



But got this instead:


Needless to say, fans were pissed.  

 

As they should have been.......Japan doesn’t want anything to do with what’s going wrong with our comic industry.......they have some sanity still (as much sanity as a medium that has tentacles, zombies, demons, body horror, lesbians/ gay men/ cross dressing, robots, Mecha, Special Attacks on a semi regular basis can have........and Japan is still the bastion of hope in these dark times)

 

The point is that DC is starting to show the signs of gong off the rails again, worse than the New 52, and Johns doesn’t have the power to stop where things could be heading........and they and their competitors could very well sink themselves by not listening to their fan bases......