No, they hired someone with a poisoned history with at least one important business partner whom they expected him to work with.

And yes, this is absolutely nothing to do with coronavirus or its effect on the (US) comic industry.

 

It's time to stop using this thread as "News of things not going right for people in comics."

 

At this rate the topic will need a lock because it's devolving into "general unrelated gossips about the comic book industry".

 

Or Tekkaman Blade could just stop spamming the thread. He's really the only one consistently posting off-topic. There's still relevant comic/coronavirus news coming out. We shouldn't have to lock a thread and end discussion of it for everyone because of one member.

 

This is 100% Corona Virus related. And it’s going to damage DC for years to come.

 

As awful as this is for the people who were let go, this is DC making big moves towards becoming a player in the book market, and moving away from the dying direct market. I think Corona sped this up, but it's something that would have happened eventually.

We're going to live to see the end of the month-to-month continuities that Marvel and DC have been telling for decades. And I don't mean rebooting to yet another continuity. I mean an end to thinking about mainstream comic storytelling in that way. It'll all become book market graphic novels, and those GNs will look more like movies/TV in terms of continuity - some are connected, some aren't. They come out when they come out, not month-to-month. And you'll get a larger, whole story in a single sitting. And, like books, the best of them can stay in print in perpetuity, so they can continue to pull in sales beyond their month of release. No more "back issues," no more pull box subscriptions, etc.

DC's leading the charge, but it's an inevitability for Marvel, too.

Indie companies will keep the month-to-month serial format alive, but it will become an even more niche oddity instead of being the norm.

 

You're 100% spot on that corona only sped things up. The American superhero comics had major problems dating back to the 70's. The direct market was a band aid, albeit a good bandaid, to the economic problems. While Marvel and DC stagnated, other creator and publishers of sequential art have done a better job of knowing their audience, what it wants and presenting it to them in an appropriate format.

The graphic novels you're talking about will be more demographic focused. Stan Lee and company made Marvel so popular using an all ages storytelling. The little kids liked them, the older kids loved them and they were good enough that adults would sneak a read. As evidenced by manga and Scholastic, the audience wants things that cater to them. Having majority of your offerings be a one size fits all doesn't work in comics anymore. The American superhero comics did try some things to rectify this but they had limited success.

 

Yeah I think you’re right. Marvel has played with micro continuities for a while now. Hickman’s stuff and Remender’s stuff may be labeled as 616, but they may as well be their own sub continuity. And some other recent stuff is pretty much the same way:

 

The problems have less to do with genre than they do with everything being corporate-owned franchises rather than a constant influx of new creator owned content with new ideas.

Staleness is inevitable when you're trying to convince kids to be interested in the same characters their parents and grandparents had. Kids wouldn't be interested in watching season 57 of Leave It to Beaver. Kids wouldn't be interested in music if record labels were still trying to push Lawrence Welk on them. People wouldn't read novels if all that was offered was stuff like Grapes of Wrath part 87, written by an endless string of lesser authors with nothing new to say. But in American comics, that's exactly what the Big-2 ask of new kids discovering comics.

 

I never really implied there was a problem with the genre as much as those who drive the genre. By “American superhero comics” I’m talking about Marvel, DC and their imitators.

Corporate owned franchises is a problem but Image founders failed when they had their big chance to innovate with their creator owned superheroes. Image was a real shot to change the landscape. They had major hype and people were ready to try out whatever they did. This great chance got us edgier rip offs of Marvel, with a few exceptions. There was no innovation to the format or business model. They played it safe and got paid.

I agree on the staleness for most characters. Both Marvel and DC have several characters that will continue to resonate with generation after generation. They take these handful of truly great characters and abuse them with over exposure which leads to a plethora of mediocre content.

 

I'm not surprised at all. With the recession, few can continue to chase the mythical "new audience" at the expense of the old. You're going to see less single issues and more books, along with the writers and artists are going to be told to stop running their mouths on social media.

 

I don't think that's gonna happen at all.

 

Yeah, they’re gonna bitch about how life is unfair long after they’ve been fired.

 

Trying to start crap with their customer base and stab each other in the back isn't going to be tolerated any longer. It is either that or the industry collapses altogether. No company can survive while doing so.

 

If we look at idw, they copied garbage from dc and marvel and look how that turned out.

 

Nothing mythical about the new audience. The YA book sales prove that. The problem is publishers' ineptness at identifying the new audience and understanding what they're interested in. The real myth is the idea that publishers can somehow survive while only catering to an older audience that is either aging out or dying.

 

I wonder if in the end if both Marvel and DC were to start from scratch with their characters big time in the future they'll go for a Manga format and just have each major character have their own dedicated books that's actually just dedicated to them with their story line having both a planned beginning and end like manga typically has. If there should be crossover it should be played out as a major event and not have it as much to make sure no new reader gets lost. Maybe I'm not phrasing this right but still if both big companies want to gain back readers and fans they're going to have to think extremely different this time around and I'm not talking about how they usually do it. I mean in a BIG way.