Showing posts with label Crossovers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crossovers. Show all posts
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Issue Review: Batgirl 24
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Issue Review: Justice League of America 7
As these events unfold, elsewhere, members of the three Leagues (JL, JLA, and JL Dark) burst into Dr. Psycho's base, and battle him. They think he used his mind powers to trick Superman into killing Dr. Light, but they find out that he was not involved. He does, however, implicate a "secret society." Atom finally admits that the JLA was formed to fight the JL, and everyone feels betrayed. At the same time, Steve Trevor leads another group against a mysterious house. Inside, they find a mirror that shows the Phantom Stranger, who had traveled with a fourth team to seek out the dead soul of Dr. Light. Unable to find it, the Stranger returns the team to the house through the broken mirror, and then disappears.
Superman's group returns to Amanda Waller, ready to accuse her of wrongdoing, but the secret society blows up Dr. Light's body, causing the entire building to explode. Meanwhile, back in Luthor's prison, Wonder Woman stops Pandora from giving Luthor the box and takes it herself. The issue ends with Diana drawing her sword, and the clear implication is that now she has turned evil and everyone will have to fight her ("The box has me!").
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Why I'm making September a DC-Free month
Some time ago, +DC Comics announced that this September, their annual "event" for their entire line would be something called "Villain Month." In September, all 52 comics published by DC will be about the villains rather than about heroes. So, for example, instead of Justice League being about Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, it will be about their arch-nemesis, Darkseid. Meanwhile, instead of Superman's comic being about him, it will be about Bizarro. DC is producing these comics with special "3D" covers. Additionally, they will be using "decimal" numbering, so that instead of being issue #24 or what have you, we will get issue #23.1, 23.2, and so on. Thus, issue 23 comes out for most of the original New 52 titles in August, and 24 in October, with the ones in between numbered as fractions. And finally, not all titles will be published. Lower-tier characters like Batgirl won't be published at all, to make space for multiple versions of the top tier ones like Batman.
All of this adds up to one thing: this is a pure, 100% marketing campaign. It's a giant gimmick. And as readers of this blog know, I hate gimmicks. I had already told my comic shop not to put aside any DC titles in September that are normally on my pull list (fortunately, my awesome comic shop was really on the ball about it and has worked with their customers to make sure we are kept happy in the face of this marketing firestorm), figuring that I would "play it by ear." But the more I hear about this obscene marketing ploy, the uglier it gets. Now The Outhouse is reporting that DC is basically screwing the retailers over the 3D covers and the retailers are claiming that they're not even sure at this point how many copies of each title they are going to be saddled with. And so at this point, I've decided that I just can't support DC whatsoever regarding this marketing ruse.
Therefore, in September, I will not be buying any DC comic-books. Period. Not one.
All of this adds up to one thing: this is a pure, 100% marketing campaign. It's a giant gimmick. And as readers of this blog know, I hate gimmicks. I had already told my comic shop not to put aside any DC titles in September that are normally on my pull list (fortunately, my awesome comic shop was really on the ball about it and has worked with their customers to make sure we are kept happy in the face of this marketing firestorm), figuring that I would "play it by ear." But the more I hear about this obscene marketing ploy, the uglier it gets. Now The Outhouse is reporting that DC is basically screwing the retailers over the 3D covers and the retailers are claiming that they're not even sure at this point how many copies of each title they are going to be saddled with. And so at this point, I've decided that I just can't support DC whatsoever regarding this marketing ruse.
Therefore, in September, I will not be buying any DC comic-books. Period. Not one.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
New Comic-books... a little late
For those who read this blog, you know by now that I have missed the last two "New Comic-book Night" posts. The reason for this is simple: I was out of town. My comic shop held my comics, of course, so I picked them up on Thursday, along with some back-issues.
The bottom row of comics are my new issues for the month. From left to right: Justice League of America 6, Supergirl 22, Thor 10, and Red Sonja 1. The top row are the last four issues in the fourth Supergirl series (aka. Supergirl, vol. 5, since vol. 3 was a mini-series). I now have, in either individual issue or (mostly) trade paperback form, every single issue of that series, plus every single issue of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-heroes, which completes my collection of this Supergirl version (who I have taken to calling "midriff Supergirl"), since she's the only one who, for her entire existence, wore a costume leaving her midriff unnecessarily bare.
The bottom row of comics are my new issues for the month. From left to right: Justice League of America 6, Supergirl 22, Thor 10, and Red Sonja 1. The top row are the last four issues in the fourth Supergirl series (aka. Supergirl, vol. 5, since vol. 3 was a mini-series). I now have, in either individual issue or (mostly) trade paperback form, every single issue of that series, plus every single issue of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-heroes, which completes my collection of this Supergirl version (who I have taken to calling "midriff Supergirl"), since she's the only one who, for her entire existence, wore a costume leaving her midriff unnecessarily bare.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
New Comic-book Night - 6/19/13
Two items came out on my pull-list today, but only one that I collect in print - Supergirl 21. The other (Wonder Woman 21), I get via ComiXology and I won't be putting an order in there until the weekend. My camera and photography equipment are still buried in the pile of stuff that's heaped in my guest bedroom awaiting sorting and organization after my move, and it's only one comic, so once again I didn't take a picture. I will briefly review Supergirl 21 below.
In the mean time, I got an e-mail from my comic-book shop regarding +DC Comics' "Villain Month" - a month-long interregnum in DC's entire line that will see the villains starring in the various super-books. The general idea is that each arch-enemy or major villain who fights a given hero will be the star of that hero's book for one month So, for example, instead of Superman starring in Action Comics, we get Bizzarro or Cyborg Superman or Lex Luthor.
However, this won't be a one-to-one correspondence. DC is still going to put out 52 titles in September during "Villain Month," but not every title will be published. To my knowledge, DC has not publicly admitted the reason for this, which is quite simple -- most of their "B-list" characters don't have an established arch-enemy or rogues' gallery in the New 52 (examples include Batgirl and Supergirl). The A-listers, however, have many, many arch-foes (examples include Superman and Batman). Therefore, DC is giving the A-listers' series more issues in September in exchange for halting publication of many B-list titles for the month. As a simple example, there will be four issues of Justice League in September, but none of Supergirl or Batgirl. Because these are not stories about the starring characters (at least, not directly), DC is copying Marvel's asinine "decimal point" numbering system -- JL 23 comes out in August, and 24 in October. So in September? We get JL 23.1, 23.2, 23.3, and 23.4.
Now that we understand what is going on during "Villain Month," I can return to the e-mail my comic shop sent me. Basically, their e-mail says that for the month of September, all DC comics on the pull list are suspended. They are not, by default, pulling anything for anyone. Presumably the reasons for this are two-fold. First, if you "subscribe" (as they call the pull list) to get Justice League, you are technically subscribing to an issue per month. They can't force you to take four issues in September just because DC decided to change the publication schedule. And second, there's no guarantee that people who signed up to read a monthly comic about Superman, by the Superman creative team, are going to want to buy an issue about Bizzarro, but a totally different creative team.
I was glad to receive this e-mail, because I had already been planning to go down there and ask them to not pull any of the "Villain Month" stuff for me. But those guys know what they are doing, and they must realize a lot of people won't want to just buy their regular titles as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. So I have no pull list in September for DC. I will still, of course, be getting Thor, God of Thunder and Red Sonja, which are not DC titles and therefore are not affected by the pull list changes.
I'll have a lot more to say about "Villain Month" and DC's other events in an upcoming post later this month, but now, on to my mini-review of this month's Supergirl.
Supergirl 21 - Last month, we saw Kara attacked by her own Sanctuary. Supergirl teamed up with her Earth-2 alter-ego Power Girl (also confusingly named Kara) to destroy it. Now we see her flying through space on a galactic bike, which she has apparently stolen from Dr. Veritas. Apparently, Kara is still "sick" from Kryptonite poisoning, although other than the statement that this is true, there is no evidence of it in this issue. Kara finds a planetoid of some sort (from the double-page spread I would guess it is asteroid-sized) that is being attacked by a giant robot. She defends the city and the people thank her. Meanwhile she is being observed by a mysterious guy named "Delacore" who is able to shape-shift. Ultimately Delacore tells her that the whole world is made of a special clay-like material that can change into many other things. To demonstrate, he shape-shifts into a hero of Kryptonian legend. Kara asks if the whole place could re-create Krypton, and Delacore says it's not really possible. But then the creature behind all this appears -- Cyborg Superman -- and asks Kara if she is really willing to do "anything" to make her wish come true.
Overall, I thought this was an interesting issue. The art style is rather different, since it is done by Diogenese Neves instead of Mahmud Asrar. Although I'm not a huge fan of Asrar (his sloppy-looking style has never been one I care for), Neves isn't necessarily an improvement. The art was OK, but I think Asrar is better with facial expressions. The storyline of the actual issue was interesting. However, certain elements of the Kara story are starting to wear thin. For example, the Kryptonite poisoning has been going on since issue 18 now, and it's really enough already. Superman's been exposed to Kryptonite before, and usually gets better fairly quickly. I don't understand why this "poisoning"being drawn out so much -- Supergirl was not exposed to the green K for all that long. Additionally, the whole "Kara trying to restore Krypton" thing is wearing even thinner. Every time it seems like she has finally accepted the fate of her home-world, the writers change their minds hand have her engaged in a hair-brained scheme to bring it back. I had hoped that at least one good thing to come out of the awful H'el story-line was that Kara would finally accept reality, but here she is again 3 issues later, trying to get a world of shapeshifters to pretend to be Kryptonians. At some point, she needs to get some closure and start moving forward.
Because the overall story was good and the art was decent, I give this issue an 8/10. I deducted 2 points for the 2 tired plot elements -- the writers really need to wrap these up and start moving Supergirl forward.
In the mean time, I got an e-mail from my comic-book shop regarding +DC Comics' "Villain Month" - a month-long interregnum in DC's entire line that will see the villains starring in the various super-books. The general idea is that each arch-enemy or major villain who fights a given hero will be the star of that hero's book for one month So, for example, instead of Superman starring in Action Comics, we get Bizzarro or Cyborg Superman or Lex Luthor.
However, this won't be a one-to-one correspondence. DC is still going to put out 52 titles in September during "Villain Month," but not every title will be published. To my knowledge, DC has not publicly admitted the reason for this, which is quite simple -- most of their "B-list" characters don't have an established arch-enemy or rogues' gallery in the New 52 (examples include Batgirl and Supergirl). The A-listers, however, have many, many arch-foes (examples include Superman and Batman). Therefore, DC is giving the A-listers' series more issues in September in exchange for halting publication of many B-list titles for the month. As a simple example, there will be four issues of Justice League in September, but none of Supergirl or Batgirl. Because these are not stories about the starring characters (at least, not directly), DC is copying Marvel's asinine "decimal point" numbering system -- JL 23 comes out in August, and 24 in October. So in September? We get JL 23.1, 23.2, 23.3, and 23.4.
Now that we understand what is going on during "Villain Month," I can return to the e-mail my comic shop sent me. Basically, their e-mail says that for the month of September, all DC comics on the pull list are suspended. They are not, by default, pulling anything for anyone. Presumably the reasons for this are two-fold. First, if you "subscribe" (as they call the pull list) to get Justice League, you are technically subscribing to an issue per month. They can't force you to take four issues in September just because DC decided to change the publication schedule. And second, there's no guarantee that people who signed up to read a monthly comic about Superman, by the Superman creative team, are going to want to buy an issue about Bizzarro, but a totally different creative team.
I was glad to receive this e-mail, because I had already been planning to go down there and ask them to not pull any of the "Villain Month" stuff for me. But those guys know what they are doing, and they must realize a lot of people won't want to just buy their regular titles as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. So I have no pull list in September for DC. I will still, of course, be getting Thor, God of Thunder and Red Sonja, which are not DC titles and therefore are not affected by the pull list changes.
I'll have a lot more to say about "Villain Month" and DC's other events in an upcoming post later this month, but now, on to my mini-review of this month's Supergirl.
Supergirl 21 - Last month, we saw Kara attacked by her own Sanctuary. Supergirl teamed up with her Earth-2 alter-ego Power Girl (also confusingly named Kara) to destroy it. Now we see her flying through space on a galactic bike, which she has apparently stolen from Dr. Veritas. Apparently, Kara is still "sick" from Kryptonite poisoning, although other than the statement that this is true, there is no evidence of it in this issue. Kara finds a planetoid of some sort (from the double-page spread I would guess it is asteroid-sized) that is being attacked by a giant robot. She defends the city and the people thank her. Meanwhile she is being observed by a mysterious guy named "Delacore" who is able to shape-shift. Ultimately Delacore tells her that the whole world is made of a special clay-like material that can change into many other things. To demonstrate, he shape-shifts into a hero of Kryptonian legend. Kara asks if the whole place could re-create Krypton, and Delacore says it's not really possible. But then the creature behind all this appears -- Cyborg Superman -- and asks Kara if she is really willing to do "anything" to make her wish come true.
Overall, I thought this was an interesting issue. The art style is rather different, since it is done by Diogenese Neves instead of Mahmud Asrar. Although I'm not a huge fan of Asrar (his sloppy-looking style has never been one I care for), Neves isn't necessarily an improvement. The art was OK, but I think Asrar is better with facial expressions. The storyline of the actual issue was interesting. However, certain elements of the Kara story are starting to wear thin. For example, the Kryptonite poisoning has been going on since issue 18 now, and it's really enough already. Superman's been exposed to Kryptonite before, and usually gets better fairly quickly. I don't understand why this "poisoning"being drawn out so much -- Supergirl was not exposed to the green K for all that long. Additionally, the whole "Kara trying to restore Krypton" thing is wearing even thinner. Every time it seems like she has finally accepted the fate of her home-world, the writers change their minds hand have her engaged in a hair-brained scheme to bring it back. I had hoped that at least one good thing to come out of the awful H'el story-line was that Kara would finally accept reality, but here she is again 3 issues later, trying to get a world of shapeshifters to pretend to be Kryptonians. At some point, she needs to get some closure and start moving forward.
Because the overall story was good and the art was decent, I give this issue an 8/10. I deducted 2 points for the 2 tired plot elements -- the writers really need to wrap these up and start moving Supergirl forward.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Have DC and Marvel jumped the shark?
In 1977, a famous episode of the popular TV show Happy Days depicted Henry Winkler's character, "Fonzie," jumping over a shark in water skis. For a series that had gotten its start depicting events most adults at the time would remember about their youth in the 1950s, this was a rather severe departure. The stunt was viewed by the show's critics as a shameless attempt to "goose" the ratings, and many people mark that event as the "decline" of Happy Days.
Now, to be fair, Happy Days was a successful enough show that it ran for another seven seasons. But its ratings slowly declined year after year following this event, and many of the original fans felt that the show had lost something. The shark-jumping episode is seen as an "inflection point" in the show, with higher quality, more "true to form" episodes before it, and increasingly hype-oriented, gimmicky shows following it.
Since that time, many TV shows have followed a similar pattern. They start out with a certain thematic emphasis, and the show remains good or even improves each year for several seasons. But then, something happens. Maybe the writers run out of ideas. The episodes become flat, stale. Perhaps people feel they have seen it all before. Ratings begin to decline, and that means the show is not making as much money (from advertisements). The show's producers need to do something to get people to watch. So they start resorting to gimmickry in the hope that people will tune in to see this new change for the show. Common changes to TV shows include events like having a new baby, or pretending (and not ironically) whole entire seasons have been "just a dream."
This descent into gimmickry in the desperate attempt to keep viewers tuning in has been named after that famous Happy Days episode. Whenever a show starts churning out episodes with the express purpose of "getting people to watch," rather than just putting out quality stories, people say it has "jumped the shark."
What does this have to do with +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment? Well... everything.
Recently, for example, DC announced "Supervillain Month." This will be a month where every single title in their line will star the hero's arch-enemy instead of the hero. Additionally, each comic will sport a "3D effect" cover. As I read the announcement for this "event," I could only shake my head. They're not even trying to cover up the fact that this is pure and utter gimmickry at this point. This event is pure hype -- a bare-knuckled attempt to goose their badly slumping sales figures. Rather than instructing writers to just write really great stories, DC is making its creative teams put out contrived one-shot stories whose only purpose is to sell comics. This is the very essence of shark jumping.
And let us not pretend that Marvel is any better. They have multiple "events" going on over there right now, including one that spans the mutant books, and the "Age of Ultron" crossover. Books that are participating in Age of Ultron have an "AU" after their number (e.g., issue "14 AU") to try and induce readers to buy them for the "crossover content." Here again, we have the companies attempting to attract readers using gimmicks, rather than just telling quality stories and figuring that quality will sell itself.
And let us not forget both companies' recent penchant for canceling and renumbering series back on issue 1 at the drop of a hat. Everyone knows issue 1 sells the best for any series, because thousands of people will pick up a first issue "just to try it." They may not buy any more, but #1 will get them to sample, and some will stay, and even if no one does, that first issue will make the companies a lot of money just because of its number. This is yet another contrivance, designed to induce sales because of a numeral printed in the upper or lower corner of the cover, regardless of what is on the inside.
In the meantime, what is actually on the inside is, in many cases, unreadable sewage. Take the Superman Family's H'el on Earth crossover, for example. Once again, the crossover is pure gimmickry. The villain (H'el) is utterly contrived and given whatever powers they need him to have so that the entire Justice League plus Superboy and Supergirl can't defeat him. The trajectory of stories in the Superman Family of books was utterly ignored by the writers. The story-line was, in a word, awful. DC seems to have figured that people will buy any issue with a gimmick in it -- again, this is what is meant by the term "jumping the shark."
What can be done about this? Well, that's hard to say. Although many TV shows have limped along for years after jumping the shark, I don't think I've ever known one to recover once the tailspin has begun. Instead, typically, the show continues to spiral downward, getting worse and worse over time, until one can't bear to watch it any longer. These shows tend to peter out, with ratings in the toilet during their final season, and everyone sighing with relief when the network finally pulls the plug.
The only other real option seems to be "going out on top." The cast and crew, writers and producers, realize that the show has run its course, that they are out of ideas, and they just stop. The shows that do this tend not to last as long as the ones that jump the shark, but they also tend to be remembered as the greatest series in television. Examples include the Mary Tyler Moore show (which ended after 7 seasons), the Dick Van Dyke Show (which ended after 5 seasons and coincidentally co-starred Mary Tyler Moore), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (which ended after 7 seasons). Each of these series produced some of their best work during the final season or two, and each was purposely ended while things were still good, explicitly because the creators did not want to have the show wither and die, to outlive its popularity.
And perhaps that's the real problem. To keep publishing series long after they have outlived their popularity, there's really no option but to use gimmick after gimmick. I would argue, however, that if the comics companies have been reduced to such contrivances, it's better to just put the series out of their misery, and let the creative teams replace them with something new, and different, and hopefully fresh and interesting. I guess what I'm saying here is that I'd rather see them cancel Superman, than keep resorting to hype-oriented gimmicks to keep it afloat.
Either way, I think there isn't any argument about one thing: DC and Marvel have jumped the shark with nearly every series they currently publish.
Now, to be fair, Happy Days was a successful enough show that it ran for another seven seasons. But its ratings slowly declined year after year following this event, and many of the original fans felt that the show had lost something. The shark-jumping episode is seen as an "inflection point" in the show, with higher quality, more "true to form" episodes before it, and increasingly hype-oriented, gimmicky shows following it.
Since that time, many TV shows have followed a similar pattern. They start out with a certain thematic emphasis, and the show remains good or even improves each year for several seasons. But then, something happens. Maybe the writers run out of ideas. The episodes become flat, stale. Perhaps people feel they have seen it all before. Ratings begin to decline, and that means the show is not making as much money (from advertisements). The show's producers need to do something to get people to watch. So they start resorting to gimmickry in the hope that people will tune in to see this new change for the show. Common changes to TV shows include events like having a new baby, or pretending (and not ironically) whole entire seasons have been "just a dream."
This descent into gimmickry in the desperate attempt to keep viewers tuning in has been named after that famous Happy Days episode. Whenever a show starts churning out episodes with the express purpose of "getting people to watch," rather than just putting out quality stories, people say it has "jumped the shark."
What does this have to do with +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment? Well... everything.
Recently, for example, DC announced "Supervillain Month." This will be a month where every single title in their line will star the hero's arch-enemy instead of the hero. Additionally, each comic will sport a "3D effect" cover. As I read the announcement for this "event," I could only shake my head. They're not even trying to cover up the fact that this is pure and utter gimmickry at this point. This event is pure hype -- a bare-knuckled attempt to goose their badly slumping sales figures. Rather than instructing writers to just write really great stories, DC is making its creative teams put out contrived one-shot stories whose only purpose is to sell comics. This is the very essence of shark jumping.
And let us not pretend that Marvel is any better. They have multiple "events" going on over there right now, including one that spans the mutant books, and the "Age of Ultron" crossover. Books that are participating in Age of Ultron have an "AU" after their number (e.g., issue "14 AU") to try and induce readers to buy them for the "crossover content." Here again, we have the companies attempting to attract readers using gimmicks, rather than just telling quality stories and figuring that quality will sell itself.
And let us not forget both companies' recent penchant for canceling and renumbering series back on issue 1 at the drop of a hat. Everyone knows issue 1 sells the best for any series, because thousands of people will pick up a first issue "just to try it." They may not buy any more, but #1 will get them to sample, and some will stay, and even if no one does, that first issue will make the companies a lot of money just because of its number. This is yet another contrivance, designed to induce sales because of a numeral printed in the upper or lower corner of the cover, regardless of what is on the inside.
In the meantime, what is actually on the inside is, in many cases, unreadable sewage. Take the Superman Family's H'el on Earth crossover, for example. Once again, the crossover is pure gimmickry. The villain (H'el) is utterly contrived and given whatever powers they need him to have so that the entire Justice League plus Superboy and Supergirl can't defeat him. The trajectory of stories in the Superman Family of books was utterly ignored by the writers. The story-line was, in a word, awful. DC seems to have figured that people will buy any issue with a gimmick in it -- again, this is what is meant by the term "jumping the shark."
What can be done about this? Well, that's hard to say. Although many TV shows have limped along for years after jumping the shark, I don't think I've ever known one to recover once the tailspin has begun. Instead, typically, the show continues to spiral downward, getting worse and worse over time, until one can't bear to watch it any longer. These shows tend to peter out, with ratings in the toilet during their final season, and everyone sighing with relief when the network finally pulls the plug.
The only other real option seems to be "going out on top." The cast and crew, writers and producers, realize that the show has run its course, that they are out of ideas, and they just stop. The shows that do this tend not to last as long as the ones that jump the shark, but they also tend to be remembered as the greatest series in television. Examples include the Mary Tyler Moore show (which ended after 7 seasons), the Dick Van Dyke Show (which ended after 5 seasons and coincidentally co-starred Mary Tyler Moore), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (which ended after 7 seasons). Each of these series produced some of their best work during the final season or two, and each was purposely ended while things were still good, explicitly because the creators did not want to have the show wither and die, to outlive its popularity.
And perhaps that's the real problem. To keep publishing series long after they have outlived their popularity, there's really no option but to use gimmick after gimmick. I would argue, however, that if the comics companies have been reduced to such contrivances, it's better to just put the series out of their misery, and let the creative teams replace them with something new, and different, and hopefully fresh and interesting. I guess what I'm saying here is that I'd rather see them cancel Superman, than keep resorting to hype-oriented gimmicks to keep it afloat.
Either way, I think there isn't any argument about one thing: DC and Marvel have jumped the shark with nearly every series they currently publish.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
More on the over-coordination of comic-book universes
A couple of weeks back, I wrote a long article about how much +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment's insistence on putting out a large, multi-title crossover every single year (along with smaller ones in between) disrupts the normal pattern of story-telling in each individual series. In that article, I stated that the companies have a, "foolhardy tradition of producing a universe-spanning crossover every summer."
Two days ago on IGN, the editor of DC's Justice League line, Brian Cunningham, actually admitted that they do this on purpose (I'm not sure I've ever seen it admitted up-front before, but maybe it has). Indeed, he used the same word I did ("tradition") to refer to these idiotic, series-disrupting events, stating, "Summer is traditionally the 'big summer popcorn extravaganza.'" This year's will be DC's Trinity War (which is what the interview is about), but with that one sentence, Cunningham shows exactly what the editorial/managerial thinking is at the DC front office. They are doing exactly what I accused them of doing a couple of weeks ago: they deliberately produce a mega-crossover every summer. It's now become a "tradition."
This one is a bad tradition, Mr. Cunningham. Stories should evolve of their own momentum, and should not be forced into the rigid mold that requires a crossover at the same time every year. It is exactly this foolhardy "every summer is a popcorn extravaganza" mentality that is the problem.
Interestingly, in the interview, IGN asks Cunningham why it's a crossover and not a stand-alone miniseries. Here, Cunningham's answer is either untruthful, or naive. He claims they're doing this story as a crossover because it feels more like it's "part of the fabric of the DC Universe." My guess is, this is a line that DC throws out to avoid admitting the truth, which is that in today's publishing atmosphere, crossovers are produced solely and exclusively for sales-hype purposes, and have nothing to do with the stories themselves. This crossover is not something that evolved, slowly but surely, out of the brilliant minds of several writers. It was imposed upon them from above (i.e., "Next summer you will produce a JL, JLA, JLD crossover").
I simply refuse to believe that Cunningham is ignorant of this fact, but even if we take his words at face value his answer is silly. Tons of one-shots and mini-series are produced every year by both DC and Marvel, and nobody considers them any less a part of each universe's "fabric" than if they appear in ongoing series. Indeed, in an atmosphere were most comics get terminated and re-numbered to issue 1 every few years, one could argue that all series are now mini-series, and that the true, ongoing series no longer exists.
This is just a follow-up of my previous article, so I won't say a lot more about this topic. I just thought it was interesting that Cunningham used the same word I did ("tradition") and that he openly admitted to it. Again, I'm not sure I've ever seen them admit to doing these crossovers every year on purpose -- they usually like to pretend they are "just doing it for the story" and rarely admit to purposely publishing comics just to sell them. Even Cunningham didn't say those words here, and he probably doesn't realize what he openly admitted to doing (or else he probably would not have made the statement).
Two days ago on IGN, the editor of DC's Justice League line, Brian Cunningham, actually admitted that they do this on purpose (I'm not sure I've ever seen it admitted up-front before, but maybe it has). Indeed, he used the same word I did ("tradition") to refer to these idiotic, series-disrupting events, stating, "Summer is traditionally the 'big summer popcorn extravaganza.'" This year's will be DC's Trinity War (which is what the interview is about), but with that one sentence, Cunningham shows exactly what the editorial/managerial thinking is at the DC front office. They are doing exactly what I accused them of doing a couple of weeks ago: they deliberately produce a mega-crossover every summer. It's now become a "tradition."
This one is a bad tradition, Mr. Cunningham. Stories should evolve of their own momentum, and should not be forced into the rigid mold that requires a crossover at the same time every year. It is exactly this foolhardy "every summer is a popcorn extravaganza" mentality that is the problem.
Interestingly, in the interview, IGN asks Cunningham why it's a crossover and not a stand-alone miniseries. Here, Cunningham's answer is either untruthful, or naive. He claims they're doing this story as a crossover because it feels more like it's "part of the fabric of the DC Universe." My guess is, this is a line that DC throws out to avoid admitting the truth, which is that in today's publishing atmosphere, crossovers are produced solely and exclusively for sales-hype purposes, and have nothing to do with the stories themselves. This crossover is not something that evolved, slowly but surely, out of the brilliant minds of several writers. It was imposed upon them from above (i.e., "Next summer you will produce a JL, JLA, JLD crossover").
I simply refuse to believe that Cunningham is ignorant of this fact, but even if we take his words at face value his answer is silly. Tons of one-shots and mini-series are produced every year by both DC and Marvel, and nobody considers them any less a part of each universe's "fabric" than if they appear in ongoing series. Indeed, in an atmosphere were most comics get terminated and re-numbered to issue 1 every few years, one could argue that all series are now mini-series, and that the true, ongoing series no longer exists.
This is just a follow-up of my previous article, so I won't say a lot more about this topic. I just thought it was interesting that Cunningham used the same word I did ("tradition") and that he openly admitted to it. Again, I'm not sure I've ever seen them admit to doing these crossovers every year on purpose -- they usually like to pretend they are "just doing it for the story" and rarely admit to purposely publishing comics just to sell them. Even Cunningham didn't say those words here, and he probably doesn't realize what he openly admitted to doing (or else he probably would not have made the statement).
Saturday, April 13, 2013
How comic-book universes can become too "coordinated"
People who don't read comic-books at all have very little appreciation for how complicated the "continuity" of a comic-book universe can be. For example, one day at lunch I was trying to explain to a co-worker, who has never read a comic-book in her life nor even watched most superhero movies, what the "New 52" is in the +DC Comics universe. As I described some of the difficulties and inconsistencies in the continuity, she stopped me and said, "Wait a minute. You're telling me that Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern... all these characters co-exist in the same universe?"
"Yes," I responded. "That's why they can all be on the Justice League. And then on top of that there are the Teen Titans, and the Birds of Prey, and the Legion of Superheroes. It's all part of one continuity."
"Well, then that's the problem," she answered. "Trying to make them all co-exist would obviously lead to trouble."
Now, the typical comic fan's knee-jerk reaction to this might be to laugh at her, since after all, these characters have co-existed in the same universe for decades. However, it struck me then, and still does today, that she had a good point. The reason there are so many continuity problems in both +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment universes is that there are so many titles, following so many characters, all happening at the same time, that these many threads are impossible to coordinate into a logical and coherent whole.
However, the really severe continuity problems bubbling up to the surface every month in title after title are relatively new to the medium (the last couple of decades). Early on, even though the overall continuity may have been messier if you tried to, say, make a flow chart of it (with all the infinite DC Universes), the average reader could ignore most of the chaos while following a given series, because each series was relatively independent. Writers and artists answered to the editors of individual titles, but those titles could go wherever the creative team and editor wanted them to. There was very little "top down" control of the universes, and they were not all that well coordinated (other than practical concerns, such as making sure that the same villain wasn't appearing at the same time in multiple books). To facilitate this, artificial "barriers" were constructed from book to book. For instance, the major characters tended to operate in their own unique city -- Batman and Robin worked out of Gotham City; Superman worked out of Metropolis; Supergirl worked out of Chicago.
Back before the mid-80s, universe-wide crossovers simply didn't occur (Marvel's Secret Wars limited series was the first one, followed the next year by DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths). Absent that, or the limited "guest star" appearances from time to time, because they took place in different locales, each comic-book operated sort of in its own miniature "universe." The hero had his or her own "rogues' gallery" of rotating enemies, the series had its own supporting cast, and so forth. This setup caused the overall universe to be only loosely connected (Supergirl and Batman theoretically took place on the same planet at the same time, but one almost never saw any of the characters from one book appear in the other). As a result, creative teams had great autonomy and freedom. The focus of all stories and content in those days revolved around the unit of the series.
Today, things are very different. Since the 1980s, comics publishers have become obsessed with producing crossovers. DC, in particular, seems to have fallen victim to the mentality of having a crossover just to have a crossover. With the New 52, for example, there seems to have been a company-wide mandate that each group or "family" of books would have a crossover during the post-zero-month issues (#13-17 in most cases, or thereabouts). For example, the Superman Family of books had H'el on Earth (Supergirl, Superboy, and Superman 14-17 plus additional bits pre and post). The Bat-Family of books had the Death of the Family Crossover (roughly issues 14-17 of most books in the family). The "Justice League" family had a sort-of crossover (Throne of Atlantis, JL and Aquaman 15-17). Other crossovers at the time included Swamp Thing/Animal Man, and the Green Lantern family, among others.
To get all these crossovers to happen on the same months, the front office (the editors and assistant editors and higher-ups like Dan Didio and Jim Lee) had to issue a company-wide fiat that all the post-zero issues will be crossovers. Indeed, they also issued a company-wide mandate that all the 13th issues of New 52, in every single series, would be issue 0 origin stories, and that every issue 0 would have some "shocking" piece that would lead into the second year.
Here is the problem with this kind of rigid coordination: it is simply not possible that dozens of different series about dozens of different characters, with creative teams that write stories at different paces, and thematic material that runs at different speeds, could all be in the right place for a zero issue or a crossover all at the same time. Stories take different amounts of time to develop because characters and hero teams are unique, and storytellers delve into character backgrounds unequally. It's simply not the case that the pace of a Batman storyline, which usually involves lots of detective work and crime solving, and the pace of a Superman storyline, which may involve flying into outer space facing universal threats, would be even remotely similar. These stories should (no -- must) take place at different speeds covering a different number of issues by their very nature.
By forcing crossovers to happen all on the same month in every title, DC's front office is ensuring that the crossover story will not fit well into many, perhaps even most, of the participating titles. They are trying to force a highly rigid and inflexible coordinated structure onto what ought to be an inherently organic, dynamic process (the creativity of many different teams each doing its own thing). Thus, DC and Marvel have become, quite literally, too coordinated.
A great example of how the over-coordination does not work is the companies' foolhardy tradition of producing a "universe spanning" crossover every summer. By forcing most of their titles to participate in one of these 3-month affairs each year, they are implicitly forcing what I call a "9+3" structure on every title in the line -- 9 months of series stories, then 3 months of crossover, then 9 months of series, then 3 of crossover. The problem is that stories don't always take the same number of issues to develop. Some stories may take four issues. Others may take eleven. Because of the rigid structure of these highly coordinated universes, however, the writers end up having to squeeze or stretch stories to fit a given number of issues, rather than just letting the stories resolve of their own momentum.
The over-coordination of comics universes is, I think, a huge mistake. Instead of a story taking "as long as it needs to take," we have editors forcing creative teams to wrap things up this month so the crossover can happen next month, or telling them to stretch the story out for two more issues because there's a crossover coming and there's no point starting another arc now when it will just get interrupted.
"Yes," I responded. "That's why they can all be on the Justice League. And then on top of that there are the Teen Titans, and the Birds of Prey, and the Legion of Superheroes. It's all part of one continuity."
"Well, then that's the problem," she answered. "Trying to make them all co-exist would obviously lead to trouble."
Now, the typical comic fan's knee-jerk reaction to this might be to laugh at her, since after all, these characters have co-existed in the same universe for decades. However, it struck me then, and still does today, that she had a good point. The reason there are so many continuity problems in both +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment universes is that there are so many titles, following so many characters, all happening at the same time, that these many threads are impossible to coordinate into a logical and coherent whole.
However, the really severe continuity problems bubbling up to the surface every month in title after title are relatively new to the medium (the last couple of decades). Early on, even though the overall continuity may have been messier if you tried to, say, make a flow chart of it (with all the infinite DC Universes), the average reader could ignore most of the chaos while following a given series, because each series was relatively independent. Writers and artists answered to the editors of individual titles, but those titles could go wherever the creative team and editor wanted them to. There was very little "top down" control of the universes, and they were not all that well coordinated (other than practical concerns, such as making sure that the same villain wasn't appearing at the same time in multiple books). To facilitate this, artificial "barriers" were constructed from book to book. For instance, the major characters tended to operate in their own unique city -- Batman and Robin worked out of Gotham City; Superman worked out of Metropolis; Supergirl worked out of Chicago.
Back before the mid-80s, universe-wide crossovers simply didn't occur (Marvel's Secret Wars limited series was the first one, followed the next year by DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths). Absent that, or the limited "guest star" appearances from time to time, because they took place in different locales, each comic-book operated sort of in its own miniature "universe." The hero had his or her own "rogues' gallery" of rotating enemies, the series had its own supporting cast, and so forth. This setup caused the overall universe to be only loosely connected (Supergirl and Batman theoretically took place on the same planet at the same time, but one almost never saw any of the characters from one book appear in the other). As a result, creative teams had great autonomy and freedom. The focus of all stories and content in those days revolved around the unit of the series.
Today, things are very different. Since the 1980s, comics publishers have become obsessed with producing crossovers. DC, in particular, seems to have fallen victim to the mentality of having a crossover just to have a crossover. With the New 52, for example, there seems to have been a company-wide mandate that each group or "family" of books would have a crossover during the post-zero-month issues (#13-17 in most cases, or thereabouts). For example, the Superman Family of books had H'el on Earth (Supergirl, Superboy, and Superman 14-17 plus additional bits pre and post). The Bat-Family of books had the Death of the Family Crossover (roughly issues 14-17 of most books in the family). The "Justice League" family had a sort-of crossover (Throne of Atlantis, JL and Aquaman 15-17). Other crossovers at the time included Swamp Thing/Animal Man, and the Green Lantern family, among others.
To get all these crossovers to happen on the same months, the front office (the editors and assistant editors and higher-ups like Dan Didio and Jim Lee) had to issue a company-wide fiat that all the post-zero issues will be crossovers. Indeed, they also issued a company-wide mandate that all the 13th issues of New 52, in every single series, would be issue 0 origin stories, and that every issue 0 would have some "shocking" piece that would lead into the second year.
Here is the problem with this kind of rigid coordination: it is simply not possible that dozens of different series about dozens of different characters, with creative teams that write stories at different paces, and thematic material that runs at different speeds, could all be in the right place for a zero issue or a crossover all at the same time. Stories take different amounts of time to develop because characters and hero teams are unique, and storytellers delve into character backgrounds unequally. It's simply not the case that the pace of a Batman storyline, which usually involves lots of detective work and crime solving, and the pace of a Superman storyline, which may involve flying into outer space facing universal threats, would be even remotely similar. These stories should (no -- must) take place at different speeds covering a different number of issues by their very nature.
By forcing crossovers to happen all on the same month in every title, DC's front office is ensuring that the crossover story will not fit well into many, perhaps even most, of the participating titles. They are trying to force a highly rigid and inflexible coordinated structure onto what ought to be an inherently organic, dynamic process (the creativity of many different teams each doing its own thing). Thus, DC and Marvel have become, quite literally, too coordinated.
A great example of how the over-coordination does not work is the companies' foolhardy tradition of producing a "universe spanning" crossover every summer. By forcing most of their titles to participate in one of these 3-month affairs each year, they are implicitly forcing what I call a "9+3" structure on every title in the line -- 9 months of series stories, then 3 months of crossover, then 9 months of series, then 3 of crossover. The problem is that stories don't always take the same number of issues to develop. Some stories may take four issues. Others may take eleven. Because of the rigid structure of these highly coordinated universes, however, the writers end up having to squeeze or stretch stories to fit a given number of issues, rather than just letting the stories resolve of their own momentum.
Now, both +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment would argue that crossovers increase sales. But I think that argument rests on faulty assumptions. For instance, to what are they comparing the sales? Regular sales rely on non-crossover story arcs that are being artificially squeezed and stretched into a rigid, coordinated structure that is dictated by the timing of crossovers. I argue here that this very coordination is making today's story arcs dramatically inferior to the story arcs of the pre-crossover-crazed era. I maintain, in other words, that sales are down across the line compared to years ago because the storylines in each series today are inferior to the stories of the past. And the storylines are inferior because of the interference of the crossovers. Thus, crossovers are needed to boost sales that are lagging because the crossovers are cramping the styles of creative teams and making the storylines of each series inferior in the first place.
I will always believe that quality sells, and great stories will sell comic-books. If the companies are producing quality, such as the Great Darkness Saga, or the Dark Phoenix Saga, then no sales gimmicks (which all a crossover amounts to) are needed. The only reason crossovers are needed now is because the quality isn't there. And I argue that the iron-clad coordination companies need to run crossovers in the first place, is making it impossible for creative teams to produce good content.
If companies are ever going to get back to selling hundreds of thousands, instead of tens of thousands, of copies per title, the only way to do it is with quality, not sales gimmicks. It's time for DC and Marvel to realize that the "crossover every year" model does not work, and that their sales are declining in part because of that model. Yes, it's a sales gimmick, so yes, participating series see a small, temporary sales boost during the crossover. But the series are hurt, not helped, in the long run.
That's why if you look at comichron's sales figures through March, you'll see that H'el on Earth did not boost sales in the Superman Family. For the four months before that crossover, Superman sold an average of 55,000 issues per month. During the crossover, it sold an average of 51,000 per month (a drop in sales during the crossover!). Issue 18 (the first post-crossover story) sold 48,000. Superboy had fallen to 25,000 copies per month right before the crossover, and its sales were (slightly) boosted to 27,300 copies per issue of the crossover. However, sales went right back down again post-H'el, to 24,455 (issue 18).
And the story is not true just for H'el on Earth. Looking at Death of the Family, the Bat-family crossover earlier this year, we see a similar pattern. It's a little less "clean" because, for example, Detective Comics only participated in this story with issues 15-16, whereas Catwoman crossed into it in issues 13-14. The pattern, however, is clear for every title as well as across the family line. Batman averaged about 130,000 copies per month before the crossover, about 151,000 during, and dropped back down to 137,00 after it (even considering that the "post" issue was a crossover into the death of Robin). Batgirl averaged 48,000 copies per month before the crossover, 68,000 during, and is back to 51,000 after. Detective Comics averaged 75,000 copies per month before the crossover, and soared to 99,000 per month during it, but two months later has crashed back down to 76,000 per month. Total sales across the family averaged 421,000 before the crossover, and 482,000 during it (showing that yes, the crossover itself does boost sales in the short term), but has now dropped to 416,000 total for the most recent month -- slightly worse than the pre-crossover numbers.
These numbers suggest that, although crossovers do boost sales for the short term, they do nothing for sales in the long term, and by my argument, they are actually hurting sales long term. Because the crossovers interrupt, screw with, and ultimately worsen the main storylines of the individual series, readers get frustrated and give up little by little, month by month. The short-term sales boost this month, this spring, from a big crossover is paid for in spades during the months down the road, as readership declines due to the overall lack of quality that is caused by forcing story-arc rigidity onto creative teams.
It's time comic book companies stopped looking at the short run, and started thinking long term. And in the long run, it is much better to give creative teams freedom than to restrict them by forcing universe-spanning crossovers onto every series every single year. DC and Marvel need to go back to having the series be the unit of publication, rather than the crossover. That's the only way we're going to get the quality to go back up in our favorite titles.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
The death of the 'series' concept
As I looked over a picture of the upcoming "Trinity War" mega-crossover in DC, and pondered the idea of many books I'm reading having yet another crossover after having already been through one this year, a thought came to me: the traditional concept of the comic-book series is dead, at least in +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment . Truly, with very few exceptions, there is no such thing, anymore, as a comic-book series.
This may sound crazy to you, because series nominally do still exist. They have names, editors, creative teams, logos, sequential numbering, and everything, just like they always did. And yet, my claim today is, that these are series only in name, and not in actual fact.
First of all, let's get our definitions straight. What do I mean by a "series" - how do I define it? I define a comic-book series, to paraphrase the definition of a TV series on Dictionary.com, as an ongoing, regularly published comic-book title with three traits:
Every single comic-book series when I was growing up met this definition.
The reason I argue that hardly any "series" meet this definition today is that almost none of them meet all three criteria, and many only meet the very first. That is, most series do have a consistent cast of characters -- the Batgirl series is pretty much about Batgirl, and a few of her friends/family. But for many titles, that trait (consistent characters) is the only one they can claim. Many series have had rapidly changing creative teams (Superman had three different teams in 13 issues), although some, like Batgirl, have had a relatively stable team.
But the second criterion is where the "series" of today no longer make the cut. They lack a coherent, continuing story that gradually progresses from issue to issue. And the reason why they lack a continuing story is the insistence by +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment to have multi-title crossovers every few months. These crossovers are not self-contained, but spill over into every title, often for many months, and can de-rail or even utterly destroy the thread of continuity in the individual title.
Don't get me wrong: I like a good crossover now and then. But the comic-book companies do it entirely too much these days. To see what I mean, let's use the New 52 Batgirl series (one of my favorites, thanks to the scripting of Gail Simone) as an example. To date, 19 issues (if we include #0) of this title have been released. Out of those 19 issues, 9 (or nearly half) have been part of crossovers, or had their stories strongly impacted by crossovers. Issue 9 was a "Night of the Owls" Bat-family crossover. Issue 11 was a Knightfall Bat-family crossover, and issue 12 was the aftermath of Knightfall. Issues 13-16 were Batgirl's part in the "Death of the Family" crossover, and issue 17 was the aftermath of DOF. Issue 18 was part of the "Requiem" for the death of Robin. In all, as I say, this is nearly half (47%) of all Batgirl issues to date -- meaning that only half of the issues can possibly be part of "a continuing story that gradually progresses from issue to issue."
And now, DC is getting ready to publish the Trinity War, which will probably consume most of the summer, which means even more issues will be crossover tie-ins rather than stories specifically about Batgirl.
Therefore, the concept of the comic-book series has altered. No longer do we have a continuing story about the same set of characters by a relatively stable creative team. What we have instead can be thought of as a container of sorts.... the Batgirl, Batman, and Nightwing comics are a delivery system, a vehicle by which crossovers can be brought to the reader. This seems to be the main purpose for which comics exist. Telling their own story month in, month out, about a small set of characters, no longer seems to be the job of these titles. Instead, the series is used by the comic company to set up and portray crossovers. All titles revolve now, not around their characters, but around whatever crossover is going on at the time (because there's always another one getting ready to come out, another one for which the title has to "prep").
There are happily some exceptions to the rule. Wonder Woman, so far, has remained a series despite what the rest of the DC Universe is doing. And the smaller companies, like Image and Dynamite, seem perfectly happy to produce series -- often completely stand-alone series that have nothing to do with the rest of their "universe." But these are the exceptions, and they are few and far between. By far the bulk of comic-books are simply vehicles whose purpose is to deliver crossover content to the reader.
The other readers out there must like this new formula, the "title as a crossover venue" approach, because otherwise I imagine the companies wouldn't do it. I guess if you don't care all that much about the actual characters, the incessant crossing over would be fine. But for those of us who become attached to, and grow to love and enjoy reading about, specific characters like Batgirl, having her series constantly be interrupted by stories that really have nothing directly (or sometimes even indirectly) to do with her is frustrating in the extreme.
If you're a fan of the true series concept, there really is no remedy at this point, unfortunately. The bigger companies long ago embraced the "crossover after crossover" model of marketing. It's what they do now. The only option is to go for the titles produced by smaller companies. And I'm starting to do just that.
Years ago, I gave up comic-books in part because of this very issue -- because each series I was collecting kept being dragged into one crossover after another, and the storyline of each title suffered as a result. I'm obviously sad, but certainly not surprised, to see this pattern has not changed for +DC Comics or +Marvel Entertainment, but I think the solution isn't to give up comics. Rather, it's to find some titles produced by independent companies, or titles the big companies are willing to allow to stand alone, and follow those. Dynamite's Red Sonja series is an excellent example of the former, and Wonder Woman (so far) of the latter.
As for Trinity War.... like most mega-crossovers since probably the late 1980s (when they first started doing them), I will do my best to ignore it. If there are special issues or a limited series called "Trinity War," I will probably not buy them. When the TW issues of those titles I collect come out, I will buy them, read them, accept that I will be confused since I am only reading a tiny portion of the story, bag them, probably never read them again, and wait until it's over. And if it lasts long enough, some of my pull list titles will probably get dropped, and replaced by independent titles.
This may sound crazy to you, because series nominally do still exist. They have names, editors, creative teams, logos, sequential numbering, and everything, just like they always did. And yet, my claim today is, that these are series only in name, and not in actual fact.
First of all, let's get our definitions straight. What do I mean by a "series" - how do I define it? I define a comic-book series, to paraphrase the definition of a TV series on Dictionary.com, as an ongoing, regularly published comic-book title with three traits:
- it has the same cast of characters
- it has a continuing story that gradually progresses from issue to issue; and
- it has a relatively stable creative team.
Every single comic-book series when I was growing up met this definition.
The reason I argue that hardly any "series" meet this definition today is that almost none of them meet all three criteria, and many only meet the very first. That is, most series do have a consistent cast of characters -- the Batgirl series is pretty much about Batgirl, and a few of her friends/family. But for many titles, that trait (consistent characters) is the only one they can claim. Many series have had rapidly changing creative teams (Superman had three different teams in 13 issues), although some, like Batgirl, have had a relatively stable team.
But the second criterion is where the "series" of today no longer make the cut. They lack a coherent, continuing story that gradually progresses from issue to issue. And the reason why they lack a continuing story is the insistence by +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment to have multi-title crossovers every few months. These crossovers are not self-contained, but spill over into every title, often for many months, and can de-rail or even utterly destroy the thread of continuity in the individual title.
Don't get me wrong: I like a good crossover now and then. But the comic-book companies do it entirely too much these days. To see what I mean, let's use the New 52 Batgirl series (one of my favorites, thanks to the scripting of Gail Simone) as an example. To date, 19 issues (if we include #0) of this title have been released. Out of those 19 issues, 9 (or nearly half) have been part of crossovers, or had their stories strongly impacted by crossovers. Issue 9 was a "Night of the Owls" Bat-family crossover. Issue 11 was a Knightfall Bat-family crossover, and issue 12 was the aftermath of Knightfall. Issues 13-16 were Batgirl's part in the "Death of the Family" crossover, and issue 17 was the aftermath of DOF. Issue 18 was part of the "Requiem" for the death of Robin. In all, as I say, this is nearly half (47%) of all Batgirl issues to date -- meaning that only half of the issues can possibly be part of "a continuing story that gradually progresses from issue to issue."
And now, DC is getting ready to publish the Trinity War, which will probably consume most of the summer, which means even more issues will be crossover tie-ins rather than stories specifically about Batgirl.
Therefore, the concept of the comic-book series has altered. No longer do we have a continuing story about the same set of characters by a relatively stable creative team. What we have instead can be thought of as a container of sorts.... the Batgirl, Batman, and Nightwing comics are a delivery system, a vehicle by which crossovers can be brought to the reader. This seems to be the main purpose for which comics exist. Telling their own story month in, month out, about a small set of characters, no longer seems to be the job of these titles. Instead, the series is used by the comic company to set up and portray crossovers. All titles revolve now, not around their characters, but around whatever crossover is going on at the time (because there's always another one getting ready to come out, another one for which the title has to "prep").
There are happily some exceptions to the rule. Wonder Woman, so far, has remained a series despite what the rest of the DC Universe is doing. And the smaller companies, like Image and Dynamite, seem perfectly happy to produce series -- often completely stand-alone series that have nothing to do with the rest of their "universe." But these are the exceptions, and they are few and far between. By far the bulk of comic-books are simply vehicles whose purpose is to deliver crossover content to the reader.
The other readers out there must like this new formula, the "title as a crossover venue" approach, because otherwise I imagine the companies wouldn't do it. I guess if you don't care all that much about the actual characters, the incessant crossing over would be fine. But for those of us who become attached to, and grow to love and enjoy reading about, specific characters like Batgirl, having her series constantly be interrupted by stories that really have nothing directly (or sometimes even indirectly) to do with her is frustrating in the extreme.
If you're a fan of the true series concept, there really is no remedy at this point, unfortunately. The bigger companies long ago embraced the "crossover after crossover" model of marketing. It's what they do now. The only option is to go for the titles produced by smaller companies. And I'm starting to do just that.
Years ago, I gave up comic-books in part because of this very issue -- because each series I was collecting kept being dragged into one crossover after another, and the storyline of each title suffered as a result. I'm obviously sad, but certainly not surprised, to see this pattern has not changed for +DC Comics or +Marvel Entertainment, but I think the solution isn't to give up comics. Rather, it's to find some titles produced by independent companies, or titles the big companies are willing to allow to stand alone, and follow those. Dynamite's Red Sonja series is an excellent example of the former, and Wonder Woman (so far) of the latter.
As for Trinity War.... like most mega-crossovers since probably the late 1980s (when they first started doing them), I will do my best to ignore it. If there are special issues or a limited series called "Trinity War," I will probably not buy them. When the TW issues of those titles I collect come out, I will buy them, read them, accept that I will be confused since I am only reading a tiny portion of the story, bag them, probably never read them again, and wait until it's over. And if it lasts long enough, some of my pull list titles will probably get dropped, and replaced by independent titles.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
The flawed logic of the multi-title mega-crossover
One reason I quit reading comics in 1999 (and something I still despise today having gotten back to the hobby) is DC's and Marvel's tired, old, failed marketing strategy that I call the "Multi-Title Mega-Crossover", or MTMC for short. So what exactly is are MTMCs and why do I hate them so?
A Multi-Title Mega-Crossover (MTMC) is a story-arc in which the various parts of the story are told in more than one series (hence "Multi-title") and have many parts. A recent example is the "Death of the Family" crossover spanning all the "Batman Family" books. This story-line hop-scotched across the Bat-titles, starting (sort of) in Batgirl 13, then moving to Catwoman 13, Batman and Robin 13, Suicide Squad 14, Batman 14, Batgirl 14, Detective Comics 15, Batgirl 15, Batman 15, Batman and Robin 15... and so on until issue 17 of these titles. It's so convoluted, the Superheroes List website has a whole article explaining the order in which to read these books. In all, there were 26 issues to read, spanning 10 different titles over 5 months. The only word I can find for such a story-line is "mess." (Hmm... I seem to use that word frequently in reference to decisions made by the front office of DC Comics.)
Reason #1: Fragmentary story-telling. No matter how good the writers or how good the overall plot of the crossover, the fact that a story crosses into several books with completely different creative teams gives the story a kind of 'multiple personality disorder.' Imagine you read a novel where every chapter was written by a different author. That is exactly what the MTMC is like. This leads to fragmentary stories that do not flow properly from issue to issue. Thus, every single MTMC that I've ever read has been vastly inferior to good story arcs produced within a single series.
Reason #2: I don't like being played. I don't like having my hand forced. I sample titles regularly on my own. I do not need Marvel or DC telling me what comics to try each month. The MTMC is blatant money-grubbing of the worst sort.
Reason #3: It utterly screws up the series that participate. Most (good) series have a long, interesting thread of continuity running through them. The MTMC usually has nothing to do with that thread. That means the MTMC is going to interrupt, often for 3-4 months, a long-running story that has captured my interest. Thus the MTMC forces each participant series to 'break stride' and then resume the longer storyline months later.
Reason #4: Inferior quality of stories. The MTMC issues of a series are never as good as the book's main storyline. Even the most talented writers struggle to make the MTMC fit into the general continuity of the book, and in many cases this simply cannot be done.
Another reason for the MTMC is that most families or groups of books have a "lead" book -- the headliner book for the family -- which is the most popular. Then there will be a bunch of "follower" books with a narrower readership. Again using our example, the "lead" book would be Batman, and the "follower" books would be the ones about the "second tier" Bat-characters (like Catwoman, Nightwing, and Batgirl). Lead books usually have more readers for historical reasons. For instance, Batman is one of the oldest heroes in all of comics, whereas Catwoman is one of his supporting characters. The MTMC's purpose, then, is to try to force people who read the "lead" book, but usually ignore the second tier characters, to sample the the follower books. DC of course hopes that some of these will stick with the follower series for the long term, but even if not, the follower books get a sales boost for a few months.
Finally, the companies hype MTMCs to Kingdom Come, with the apparent belief that crossovers win comic-book series entirely new fans (who hadn't been reading those books before). According to DC's logic, MTMCs will expand readership simply because "crossovers are cool."
The question we will ask and answer in this article is: does the MTMC really accomplish anything in terms of sales? Do MTMCs encourage readers of each book to cross "party lines" and read the other books? Do MTMCs cause readers of the "lead" book to pick up the follower books? And perhaps most importantly, are crossovers really "cool"? That is, do MTMCs boost readership in general for the series involved in the crossover by getting new people to read those books?
Although Superman technically appears in Action Comics, we will not count that as part of the family because it was not involved in the crossover. Thus, for our purposes, the members of this "Family" are Superman, Supergirl, and Superboy. Beginning with a "prelude" issue in Superman 13, the story arc spans 13 regular issues of the three series (plus at least one Annual), occurring in each issue 14, 15, 16, and 17 of the three series. This is a Multi-title Mega-Crossover in the most typical sense -- insanely long (13 parts, hence "mega" crossover), and hop-scotching across multiple titles (three, in this case).
The question we shall ask, now that this MTMC is nearly done, is did it "work?" Did it boost sales? Did it cause readers of the "leader" book (Superman in this case) to partake of the follower books, or vice versa? Did it attract new readers to the Super-family? To find out, let's take a look at the sales of the Superman family of books since the New 52 began (data come from Comichron).
Let's review these numbers a bit more closely.
Immediately apparent, is the fact that the Superman Family is in a tail-spin. Admittedly, the issue #1 circulation is an outlier, but even if one disregards the issue 1-2 decline in readership, Superman has lost roughly 47% of its readership since issue 3. Both Supergirl and Superboy have fared similarly, each experiencing about a 33% decline in circulation since issue 3.
This pattern had been going on for about a year before the H'el crossover, so we can imagine rather safely that the crossover is a ploy to boost sales.
This leads us to the question: Did the "H'el on Earth" crossover, which spanned issues 14-17 of all three titles, increase sales? There are several ways to look at the numbers, and I will break them all down, but the short answer is: no.
Crossover effect on total readership. First, let's ask whether the H'el on Earth multi-title mega-crossover increased total sales volumes (i.e., acquired new readers) across the family of books during the issues in which the crossover took place relative to the prior issues. We don't have the results of issue 17 yet (and won't for a while, since Superman 17 is being put out in March, and those sales results will not be posted until April). But we can compare the first 3-month period (issues 14-16) to the previous 3-month period. Now, we will not use #13, because for Superman this was a H'el prelude, but not for the other books in the Family. We also shouldn't count #0, which is an obvious outlier (DC's #0 books sold higher across the board, so it would be unfair to compare the sales of the H'el story to the #0s). Thus, we compare the last 3 "normal" months of sales in issues 10-12, with the total sales in issues 14-16. The answer is not good for the crossover mentality: The H'el crossover books sold a sum total of about 329,000, compared with the issue 10-12 books selling a total of 352,000. That's a decline of 7% during the crossover. Thus, there is no indication that the multi-book crossover did anything to boost sales across the family and acquire new readers. On the contrary, sales overall appear to be depressed, which means that the family of books lost readers, not gained them.
Crossover effect on lead-book readers. The "lead" book in the family is, of course, Superman -- he is the original, and also, his book sells more than the others. As the lead book, Superman in most months nearly equals the total sales of Supergirl and Superboy combined. Recently (in the last 8 months or so) Superman has had about 60,000 readers, and the other books about 30,000. The simplest assumption here is that 30,000 people each month read just Superman, and the another 30,000 read all three books. That means 30,000 readers could potentially be attracted to the follower books. Were they?
Here again, the answer is no. Both Supergirl and Superboy sold a few more copies of issue #14, but since then, their sales have gone back to pre-H'el levels (or even dropped a little lower). At best, out of 30,000 possible new readers from the lead book, the follower books picked up a few hundred. Thus, after 9 out of the 12 crossover issues have been published, we can safely assert that no Superman readers have bothered to pick up Supergirl or Superboy "just to get the rest of the crossover." Therefore, not only did the crossover hurt total sales for the family, but it also failed to attract readers of the lead book to the "follower" books.
Enticing cross-family readership. Above, I made the simplifying assumption that all 30,000 readers of Superboy and Supergirl also read Superman. But if we relax that assumption, then the crossover could possibly have attracted people who read just one of the follower books, to start picking up the lead book. This is a tougher row to hoe, because those books have half as many readers as Superman. But it's still possible that Superman's readership could have gone up. Did it?
Once again the answer no -- a resounding, deafening, unambiguous "NO!" this time. If readers of the other books had picked up Superman, his readership would have gone up. But it didn't go up -- in fact, the average readership for Superman dropped from 60,000 during issues 7-12 to just over 51,000 for 13-16. Thus, instead of Superman gaining readers, about 10,000 previously existing readers kissed that series goodbye during the crossover. In other words, Superman actually lost about 16% of its readers over the course of the story arc!
Overall Impact of the Crossover. No matter how you crunch the numbers, the 12-part, 3-series-spanning "family wide" H'el on Earth crossover, which was clearly produced as a pure MTMC marketing ploy, was an utter failure. It failed to gain new readers for the books in the family. It failed to entice readers from the lead book to try reading the follower books. It didn't convince anyone reading the follower books to partake of the lead book. And it caused nearly a sixth of the lead book's readers to walk away. The H'el on Earth story arc was, therefore, an unmitigated disaster for DC.
This analysis shows that the Multi-Title Mega-Crossover is a bad idea all the way around. MTMCs screw up the continuity of the existing books that participate. MTMCs produce inferior, fragmentary stories. MTMCs piss off any readers who do not want to, but feel forced to, read affiliated books. And in exchange for all those ill effects, they do very little to boost sales of the participating series (and indeed, as the H'el numbers indicate, they run the very real risk of pissing readers off so much that the series experiences a net decline in readership).
I really don't know what the people in DC's front office are smoking, but based on these numbers, if I were they, I would hand down a company-wide edict right now banning the MTMC forevermore. MTMCs are at best a huge risk with very little chance of a solid payoff. You might wonder why companies still produce them so much. I confess, I really don't know. The numbers speak for themselves. Maybe some day, one of the people running DC will explain why they keep employing this high-risk gamble in an effort to boost sales, instead of just doing what they did years ago, and producing solid quality month in, month out, in each individual series.
A Multi-Title Mega-Crossover (MTMC) is a story-arc in which the various parts of the story are told in more than one series (hence "Multi-title") and have many parts. A recent example is the "Death of the Family" crossover spanning all the "Batman Family" books. This story-line hop-scotched across the Bat-titles, starting (sort of) in Batgirl 13, then moving to Catwoman 13, Batman and Robin 13, Suicide Squad 14, Batman 14, Batgirl 14, Detective Comics 15, Batgirl 15, Batman 15, Batman and Robin 15... and so on until issue 17 of these titles. It's so convoluted, the Superheroes List website has a whole article explaining the order in which to read these books. In all, there were 26 issues to read, spanning 10 different titles over 5 months. The only word I can find for such a story-line is "mess." (Hmm... I seem to use that word frequently in reference to decisions made by the front office of DC Comics.)
Why I despise MTMCs
I have always hated the multi-title mega-crossover, for a variety of reasons. I will list them here briefly.Reason #1: Fragmentary story-telling. No matter how good the writers or how good the overall plot of the crossover, the fact that a story crosses into several books with completely different creative teams gives the story a kind of 'multiple personality disorder.' Imagine you read a novel where every chapter was written by a different author. That is exactly what the MTMC is like. This leads to fragmentary stories that do not flow properly from issue to issue. Thus, every single MTMC that I've ever read has been vastly inferior to good story arcs produced within a single series.
Reason #2: I don't like being played. I don't like having my hand forced. I sample titles regularly on my own. I do not need Marvel or DC telling me what comics to try each month. The MTMC is blatant money-grubbing of the worst sort.
Reason #3: It utterly screws up the series that participate. Most (good) series have a long, interesting thread of continuity running through them. The MTMC usually has nothing to do with that thread. That means the MTMC is going to interrupt, often for 3-4 months, a long-running story that has captured my interest. Thus the MTMC forces each participant series to 'break stride' and then resume the longer storyline months later.
Reason #4: Inferior quality of stories. The MTMC issues of a series are never as good as the book's main storyline. Even the most talented writers struggle to make the MTMC fit into the general continuity of the book, and in many cases this simply cannot be done.
Why companies publish MTMCs
I've always despised MTMCs, and I have had many fellow comic-book lovers say the same, so why do companies even do them? There's only one reason to have a 10-title, 26-issue crossover story in all the Bat-titles: it's a marketing ploy. DC clearly intends to entice readers who are only buying one title, say Catwoman, to buy all the others so they can follow the story. If the reader doesn't do that, then he ends up reading only, say, parts 3 and 11 of a 26-part story, and winds up confused. The company is trying to force the reader's hand, much like Microsoft tries to force their PC users to browse with Internet Explorer rather than Chrome or Firefox. This is an apt analogy: just as Microsoft doesn't try to win IE users by making it better than Chrome, instead relying on the brute force of their operating system, DC doesn't try to make the stories in Suicide Squad or Batman and Robin any better -- they try to make Catwoman readers buy the other books because that's the only way to finish reading the story.Another reason for the MTMC is that most families or groups of books have a "lead" book -- the headliner book for the family -- which is the most popular. Then there will be a bunch of "follower" books with a narrower readership. Again using our example, the "lead" book would be Batman, and the "follower" books would be the ones about the "second tier" Bat-characters (like Catwoman, Nightwing, and Batgirl). Lead books usually have more readers for historical reasons. For instance, Batman is one of the oldest heroes in all of comics, whereas Catwoman is one of his supporting characters. The MTMC's purpose, then, is to try to force people who read the "lead" book, but usually ignore the second tier characters, to sample the the follower books. DC of course hopes that some of these will stick with the follower series for the long term, but even if not, the follower books get a sales boost for a few months.
Finally, the companies hype MTMCs to Kingdom Come, with the apparent belief that crossovers win comic-book series entirely new fans (who hadn't been reading those books before). According to DC's logic, MTMCs will expand readership simply because "crossovers are cool."
The question we will ask and answer in this article is: does the MTMC really accomplish anything in terms of sales? Do MTMCs encourage readers of each book to cross "party lines" and read the other books? Do MTMCs cause readers of the "lead" book to pick up the follower books? And perhaps most importantly, are crossovers really "cool"? That is, do MTMCs boost readership in general for the series involved in the crossover by getting new people to read those books?
Do MTMCs boost sales? A case study
As a "case study," I will use a currently ongoing MTMC from DC's Superman family of comics. Please keep in mind that, because this crossover is not done, the data are preliminary. However, I would be very surprised if, once the final numbers are in this April or May, the conclusions will be any different, based on the pattern so far.Although Superman technically appears in Action Comics, we will not count that as part of the family because it was not involved in the crossover. Thus, for our purposes, the members of this "Family" are Superman, Supergirl, and Superboy. Beginning with a "prelude" issue in Superman 13, the story arc spans 13 regular issues of the three series (plus at least one Annual), occurring in each issue 14, 15, 16, and 17 of the three series. This is a Multi-title Mega-Crossover in the most typical sense -- insanely long (13 parts, hence "mega" crossover), and hop-scotching across multiple titles (three, in this case).
The question we shall ask, now that this MTMC is nearly done, is did it "work?" Did it boost sales? Did it cause readers of the "leader" book (Superman in this case) to partake of the follower books, or vice versa? Did it attract new readers to the Super-family? To find out, let's take a look at the sales of the Superman family of books since the New 52 began (data come from Comichron).
| Issue No |
Total Sales |
Total Sales |
Total Sales |
% change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superman |
Supergirl |
Superboy |
Super-Family |
|
| 1 |
118,376 |
54,052 |
50,000 | --- |
| 2 |
94,000 |
55,249 |
51,682 | -10% |
| 3 |
77,747 |
45,706 |
42,698 | -17% |
| 4 |
68,879 |
39,762 |
36,002 | -13% |
| 5 |
73,719 |
37,301 |
33,975 | +0% |
| 5 |
69,633 |
34,847 |
31,068 | -7% |
| 7 |
66,588 |
33,337 |
29,789 | -4% |
| 8 |
64,486 |
32,438 |
28,830 | -3% |
| 9 |
62,232 |
35,129 |
34,838 | +5% |
| 10 |
59,081 |
33,309 |
31,358 | -6% |
| 11 |
56,066 |
31,879 |
29,677 | -5% |
| 12 |
53,326 |
30,420 |
27,518 | -5% |
| 0 |
60,493 |
34,457 |
31,840 | +14% |
| 13 |
52,155 |
29,450 |
25,726 | -15% |
| 14 |
52,572 |
31,270 |
28,017 | +4% |
| 15 |
51,252 |
30,814 |
27,619 | -2% |
| 16 |
50,621 |
30,350 |
27,110 | -1% |
Let's review these numbers a bit more closely.
Immediately apparent, is the fact that the Superman Family is in a tail-spin. Admittedly, the issue #1 circulation is an outlier, but even if one disregards the issue 1-2 decline in readership, Superman has lost roughly 47% of its readership since issue 3. Both Supergirl and Superboy have fared similarly, each experiencing about a 33% decline in circulation since issue 3.
This pattern had been going on for about a year before the H'el crossover, so we can imagine rather safely that the crossover is a ploy to boost sales.
This leads us to the question: Did the "H'el on Earth" crossover, which spanned issues 14-17 of all three titles, increase sales? There are several ways to look at the numbers, and I will break them all down, but the short answer is: no.
Crossover effect on total readership. First, let's ask whether the H'el on Earth multi-title mega-crossover increased total sales volumes (i.e., acquired new readers) across the family of books during the issues in which the crossover took place relative to the prior issues. We don't have the results of issue 17 yet (and won't for a while, since Superman 17 is being put out in March, and those sales results will not be posted until April). But we can compare the first 3-month period (issues 14-16) to the previous 3-month period. Now, we will not use #13, because for Superman this was a H'el prelude, but not for the other books in the Family. We also shouldn't count #0, which is an obvious outlier (DC's #0 books sold higher across the board, so it would be unfair to compare the sales of the H'el story to the #0s). Thus, we compare the last 3 "normal" months of sales in issues 10-12, with the total sales in issues 14-16. The answer is not good for the crossover mentality: The H'el crossover books sold a sum total of about 329,000, compared with the issue 10-12 books selling a total of 352,000. That's a decline of 7% during the crossover. Thus, there is no indication that the multi-book crossover did anything to boost sales across the family and acquire new readers. On the contrary, sales overall appear to be depressed, which means that the family of books lost readers, not gained them.
Crossover effect on lead-book readers. The "lead" book in the family is, of course, Superman -- he is the original, and also, his book sells more than the others. As the lead book, Superman in most months nearly equals the total sales of Supergirl and Superboy combined. Recently (in the last 8 months or so) Superman has had about 60,000 readers, and the other books about 30,000. The simplest assumption here is that 30,000 people each month read just Superman, and the another 30,000 read all three books. That means 30,000 readers could potentially be attracted to the follower books. Were they?
Here again, the answer is no. Both Supergirl and Superboy sold a few more copies of issue #14, but since then, their sales have gone back to pre-H'el levels (or even dropped a little lower). At best, out of 30,000 possible new readers from the lead book, the follower books picked up a few hundred. Thus, after 9 out of the 12 crossover issues have been published, we can safely assert that no Superman readers have bothered to pick up Supergirl or Superboy "just to get the rest of the crossover." Therefore, not only did the crossover hurt total sales for the family, but it also failed to attract readers of the lead book to the "follower" books.
Enticing cross-family readership. Above, I made the simplifying assumption that all 30,000 readers of Superboy and Supergirl also read Superman. But if we relax that assumption, then the crossover could possibly have attracted people who read just one of the follower books, to start picking up the lead book. This is a tougher row to hoe, because those books have half as many readers as Superman. But it's still possible that Superman's readership could have gone up. Did it?
Once again the answer no -- a resounding, deafening, unambiguous "NO!" this time. If readers of the other books had picked up Superman, his readership would have gone up. But it didn't go up -- in fact, the average readership for Superman dropped from 60,000 during issues 7-12 to just over 51,000 for 13-16. Thus, instead of Superman gaining readers, about 10,000 previously existing readers kissed that series goodbye during the crossover. In other words, Superman actually lost about 16% of its readers over the course of the story arc!
Overall Impact of the Crossover. No matter how you crunch the numbers, the 12-part, 3-series-spanning "family wide" H'el on Earth crossover, which was clearly produced as a pure MTMC marketing ploy, was an utter failure. It failed to gain new readers for the books in the family. It failed to entice readers from the lead book to try reading the follower books. It didn't convince anyone reading the follower books to partake of the lead book. And it caused nearly a sixth of the lead book's readers to walk away. The H'el on Earth story arc was, therefore, an unmitigated disaster for DC.
Conclusion
We can see from the above that, if the companies think the Multi-title Mega-Crossover is going to boost sales, they're sorely mistaken. The lack of any significant boost to sales for MTMCs is not unique to Superman. The numbers are similar for the JL/Aquaman crossover "Throne of Atlantis." There was one issue of Aquaman where sales went up dramatically (by almost 20,000 readers), but the readership crashed back down to the pre-crossover levels on the very next issue (while the crossover was still going on). Justice League's sales remained flat the entire time. Thus, at best the MTMC sold some extra issues for one series on one month. It's hard to argue that this was a tearing success, or that the MTMC is even worth it if that's the best for which DC can hope.This analysis shows that the Multi-Title Mega-Crossover is a bad idea all the way around. MTMCs screw up the continuity of the existing books that participate. MTMCs produce inferior, fragmentary stories. MTMCs piss off any readers who do not want to, but feel forced to, read affiliated books. And in exchange for all those ill effects, they do very little to boost sales of the participating series (and indeed, as the H'el numbers indicate, they run the very real risk of pissing readers off so much that the series experiences a net decline in readership).
I really don't know what the people in DC's front office are smoking, but based on these numbers, if I were they, I would hand down a company-wide edict right now banning the MTMC forevermore. MTMCs are at best a huge risk with very little chance of a solid payoff. You might wonder why companies still produce them so much. I confess, I really don't know. The numbers speak for themselves. Maybe some day, one of the people running DC will explain why they keep employing this high-risk gamble in an effort to boost sales, instead of just doing what they did years ago, and producing solid quality month in, month out, in each individual series.
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