New Comic-book Night - 2/19/13

It's been a couple of weeks since New Comic-book Night for me -- mostly because of the weather.  Once again it decided to snow last Wednesday, and this time a veritable blizzard visited my area.  Since comic-books are definitely not worth getting into an accident over, I waited until this week to pick up my haul. And since it had been a couple of weeks, plus many of my pull list titles come out during weeks 2-3 of the month, quite a haul it was indeed.

Among the list are two of the last three New 52 titles I still collect, and the only two I get in print form: Supergirl 28 and Batgirl 28 (the third, Wonder Woman, I get digitally, and I'm a couple of months behind on that).  Also in the mix was Thor, God of Thunder 19, my only Marvel comic.  Rounding out the list of seven were four titles from the smaller "independent" companies -- two regulars on my pull list from Image (Ghosted 7 and Alex + Ada 4), and one regular (Red Sonja 7) and one one-shot (Red Sonja Berserker) from Dynamite.

Issue Review: Supergirl 25

The Oracle watches as parts of the time-stream are being destroyed by H'el, while Superboy, Supergirl, and Superman try to prevent it.  In the distant past H'el attempts to stab Kara with the Kryptonite shard she used on him, but she breaks free.  Meanwhile, in the more recent past, Superman watches his mother tell his father that they are about to have a baby (him).  Superboy and Kara from before she became Supergirl fight against the Eradicator, who Superboy sends to Smallville through a space-time portal.  The H'el of two time periods merges, bringing Superboy and present-day Supergirl back together.  Then Supergirl launches a final attack to destroy H'el.

Statue 6 - Supergirl - New 52 Covergirls series

Yesterday, my comic-book shop left a message for me.  The brand new Supergirl statue from the DC New 52 Covergirls series had come in, and they wanted to know if I was still interested, and if they should put it aside for me. As anyone who has read this blog could predict, I told them of course!  I hadn't planned to head over to the comic shop today, actually. Even though it is New Comic-book Night, only one book on my pull list was due out this week (Lazarus #4), and I figured it would cost me more in gas to drive there and back (now that I live 40 minutes from the shop) than the cover price of $2.99.  Since I had more issues due out next week, I figured to just wait and pick up Lazarus a week late.

However, knowing that the statue was there, I decided it was worth the trip.  This statue was announced about 5 months ago, and I've been dying to get it ever since.  It's only the second statue ever made of Supergirl in her "New 52" costume. And although that's not exactly my favorite version of her costume, given the display I am planning to make, with one shelf devoted to each of Supergirl's four major incarnations, I figured this would spruce up shelf #4 (the current one).  That's not to say I have all the figures I need yet.  So far, I only have one action figure for original Kara (the "Crisis" uniform, as people call it, with the head band and the red shoulder stripes), and one for Matrix Supergirl (it's not explicitly called that, but it is the proper costume for Peter David's version). I don't have any yet for the second Kara (the one with the bare midriff) -- that is my next assignment.  However, the other thing I like about this statue is that it's a full-sized one, not just a bust or waist-up figure.

Issue Review: Wonder Woman 23

Wonder Woman's team faces down the Firstborn in the middle of a ruined Westminster Abbey.  The Firstborn has an army of bipedal wolf-creatures fighting for him, so Ares summons an army of dead soldiers from ages past to battle on Wonder Woman's side.  As the battle progresses, each team member contributes.  Orion takes on the Firstborn in a knock-down drag-out fight, but loses. Wonder Woman takes off her wrist-bands, unleashing her full power, but is unable to defeat the Firstborn and ends up bruised on the ground.  Ares battles the Firstborn with martial arts skills, but loses as well. As the Firsborn prepares to kill Ares and take his powers as the god of war, Wonder Woman takes a spear and runs both of them through, killing Ares. This keeps the powers from the Firstborn and instead transfers them to Wonder Woman.  As the story concludes, the Firsborn lies on the ground defeated, but not dead, and Hades appears to take Ares to the underworld.

New Comic-book night - 8/28

Well, I guess I am going to do another one of these after all.  I will be reviewing many individual issues in the next week, but I wanted to make a comment about my entire haul for the week and why it looks like it does.  This week, as the final week of August, not much new came out, but there were a couple of things I wanted to get my hands on from the previous couple of months, so I got myself down to the shop.  Also, I knew that issue 23 of Justice League was coming out, and that is (for the moment at least) on my pull list.  Below is a picture of the week's haul.

Two of the titles on the left are on my regular pull list (Thor and JL), but the others have not been on it.  I have reviewed the first two issues of Lazarus by Greg Rucka, which I just bought last week, and they were outstanding, so I was very pleased to find issue 3 on the stands already.  This comic is so good that it's already on my pull list (and I haven't even read issue 3 yet).

It's official -- I'm done with JLA

Back in December of last year (2012), I returned to the comic-book reading and collecting hobby after being away from it for 13 years.  As part of the process, I had to decide what to read, and I started with the company that had been my favorite since the 80s -- DC.  In fact, part of the reason I returned was learning about their "New 52" reboot. Although I normally don't like reboots because they erase established continuity, one reason the New 52 attracted me was that I wouldn't have to figure out what had been going on for the last 13 years. I could jump right in with digital copies from just a year ago, easily catch up on my favorite characters like Supergirl, and in a matter of months I'd be "up to speed." Thus, I could shortcut the normal "wading in" process that can, with a long-running continuity, take months, sometimes even years.

Obviously, with 52 titles being put out a month, even limiting myself to DC meant I would have to make some pretty quick decisions about what titles to read.  Historically, even when comics only cost 75 cents, I had always limited myself to 10 ongoing titles per month (with some allowance for additional purchases of one-shots, mini-series, and the like), and I figured to do the same thing this time -- especially with over a year of back-issues to buy even with the reboot.  After a bit of "sampling," as my local comic-shop owner calls it, I settled on a handful of titles, one of which was Justice League.

Early on, Justice League, written by Geoff Johns and drawn first by Jim Lee and then Ivan Reis, was an excellent comic-book that reminded me just why I loved them years ago.  The first story arc, which re-tells the origin of the team and how they all met, was funny, dramatic, tense, and interesting (at least until the last issue, which was a huge disappointment).  By the time I'd read a handful of issues, it was on my "pull list."

Then, just a couple of months into my renewed collecting hobby, and before I'd even gotten completely caught up on Justice League (they were putting out issue 16 or so and I was still catching up on 11 or 12), DC announced the release of a new JL-related book, called Justice League of America.  I'll be honest. I wasn't too thrilled about this to begin with.  Although I was happy to commit to an issue of Justice League every month, I wasn't sure I liked the team, or the premise, enough to commit multiple slots of my pull list to them -- and again, I refuse to allow my pull list to just balloon without limit.

The Supergirl Homepage

Earlier this year, I began listening to the Kara Zor-El podcast, which is run by +Danny Saab and Andrew Pinkham.  I really enjoyed their podcasts.  They both love the Supergirl character, and had been doing reviews of her current book, which is part of DC's New 52.  After each podcast, I wrote them a long e-mail to follow-up with their on-air conversation.  I held forth on many of the issues I have discussed here on this blog, including the lack of respect DC Editorial has had for Supergirl ever since her death in 1985, and my disdain for the H'el on Earth crossover (which Danny and Andrew share).  And I reminded them of a few similarities between what has been going on now, and what has been done with Supergirl in the past (such as comparing the air-headed crush Matrix Supergirl had on Lex Luthor, to the similarly vacant-headed love the current Kara had toward H'el).

Danny and Andrew read these e-mails on their subsequent podcasts (which was fun) and discussed them. Apparently they liked what they read, because a couple of weeks ago, they made some changes to their website about Kara, and they asked me to be part of it, along with several of their other listeners.  They changed the Kara Zor-El home page to The Supergirl Homepage, so that they could collect in one place all things related to Supergirl (since, to be perfectly accurate, Matrix Supergirl has no place on a website devoted specifically to Kara Zor-El).  They asked me to be one of their contributing authors, and of course, loving Supergirl the way I do, I could not possibly have refused.

My role on the website will be as a reviewer for comic-books involving Supergirl.  They gave me a choice of which comics I wanted to work on, and I opted for The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl.  I will readily admit that the creative team that worked on this book is not my favorite (that distinction goes to Peter David, Gary Frank, and Cam Smith, who worked on the 1996 Matrix-based Supergirl series). However, this version of Supergirl (the original) is my favorite, and so I wanted to work on something related to her.  Therefore, beginning this Friday, I will be writing a weekly review article for the Supergirl Homepage about the 23 issues of The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl (one issue a week).

In addition to that, since I seem to be the only person on the new staff who has access to all of them, I will be reviewing the Supergirl mini-series from 1994, and also her two appearances in Showcase 95 (issues 1 and 2).  The very first of these reviews can be seen here, and I will be adding more as the week progresses.

In the mean time, I am joined by a team of very dedicated fans of Supergirl, including Danny Saab, Andrew Pinkham, Valerie Cotrill, and Stephen Vaughan.  Each of us has taken custody of a particular time period in the Girl of Steel's history, and reviews will be added almost daily to the website.  Soon it will be a vast repository of knowledge pertaining to the greatest super-heroine of all time.

Although this means I will be doing a lot more "review" writing, it will not have any impact on this blog site.  I will continue to post my thoughts on current and past comic-books here as always.   In between times, if you want to read some good articles about comic-books, and in particular if you're interested in learning more about Supergirl, swing by the Supergirl Homepage and check out what they've got going on over there.

Is everything just a mini-series now?

In the last couple of years, practically every series in +DC Comics and +Marvel Entertainment has been rebooted.

In September of 2011, +DC Comics closed down every one of their ongoing series, and restarted them all on number one.  Fifty-two series in all were begun that month on "issue 1," prompting the company to name its line "the New 52." Since this "relaunch," 16 out of the 52 titles have been canceled -- six after just eight months, six earlier this spring, and four more have been announced for termination as of August.  That's 16 series, or 30% of the line, that lasted less than 24 total issues, and many less than 10. Because DC insists on publishing 52 concurrent titles, this means 16 new series replacing the old, or a total of 68 new series started in two years.

Meanwhile, Marvel has created its own version of a relaunch, with the Marvel NOW! line, which will consist of more than 30 titles by year's end, all starting over on "issue 1" (with the older series generally being canceled).  Although this is certainly not the entire Marvel line, as it was with DC, we can say that a huge chunk of the Marvel titles have been re-started as new series.

This is something of a new pattern for comic books.  Although reboots are nothing new for the industry, having entire company-wide relaunches on number 1, and cancellations of old, often standby series like Action Comics or Captain America -- reboots done for no other purpose than a re-number -- is definitely virgin soil for DC and Marvel.  In prior decades, companies prided themselves on having the longest-running series.  A series in the 100s or 200s or higher was a sign of success and good editorial management -- high numbers were evidence that the series had sold enough copies, consistently, for many years.  I remember the fanfare with which Action Comics hit #600, and Thor hit #400, and Captain America hit #300.  These comics had been around for decades, and had sold so well and consistently that they had never needed to be halted.

Thus, a series was something that, once begun, was intended to be published indefinitely, and companies did whatever they could to maintain their series line.  When a series started to falter, companies pulled out all the stops to try and keep it alive, because the fact that a title was being published at all meant that the publisher was committed to it.  To save a flagging title, new creative teams would be brought in. Old arch-enemies would be called upon to grace the pages. Former love-interests would make reappearances.

Sure, these gimmicks often failed, and the series was, perhaps, canceled anyway.  Many series made it no further than the New 52 titles have (like the New 52 Legion of Super-Heroes, set to be canceled this August, 1982-4s Daring New Adventures of Supergirl was canceled after 23 issues).  But, back in those days, you had the sense that the companies meant the series they started publishing to run indefinitely, just like Action Comics (which eventually reached past issue 900) was (at least until 2011, when it was canceled for the New 52 reboot).

But today, it seems like comic companies do not begin publishing a series with the intention of it lasting indefinitely.  Today, even high sales and high issue number counts, seem incapable of shielding a comic from cancellation.  Because "number 1" issues sell so well, every series is potentially on the chopping block every single month.  And most series have been canceled and rebooted so many times that they have many different volumes. A few examples:

• The New 52 Supergirl is technically volume 6, if you count the 4-issue mini-series in 1993.
• The New 52 LSH about to be canceled is volume 7, unless you count The Legion (which was about the LSH but under a slightly different title) in which case it's volume 8.  This troubled series has seen four separate issue 1 relaunches in 13 years, and the individual "volumes" have averaged 28 issues per series.
• The new Marvel NOW! Captain America is volume 7, with each of volumes 2-6 averaging 28 issues running length (after volume 1 lasted 354 issues by itself).
• After volume 1 lasted 127 issues from 1999 through 2009, Birds of Prey has been renumbered twice in the last four years, with volume 2 lasting just 15 issues, and volume 3 currently on issue 20.

The story is repeated for a host of titles.  Indeed, most comics, if they have retained their old titles are on at least volume 3 or 4 at this point, and many would be much higher than that if the companies did not (like Justice League) keep slightly changing the title name and calling it a "new" series.

When looking over all the different "volumes" of each series, and all the issue 1 relaunches, followed by cancellations, followed by re-relaunches, combined with the fact that hardly any series left in DC or Marvel's line will be higher than 30 by year's end, it seems to me like the concept of the series that is planned to be published indefinitely has gone the way of the dinosaur. The fans of a particular character need to prepare ourselves for a succession of short-lived series, rather than one long one.

Years ago, when a comic-book title was published with the intention of lasting a short while and then ending, they used to call it a "mini-series" (in DC) or a "limited series" (in Marvel). Mini-series stood as differentiated from regular series by this very fact -- that they were short-lived.  These days, with the rapid fire launch/cancel/relaunch sequence we've been witnessing, it seems like every series is expected to be short-lived.  Thus, every series on the market today can be viewed as a long mini-series, rather than a true, "permanent" series.  The only real difference is that we aren't told ahead of time that the series is of finite length, whereas with a limited series, they used to broadcast it ("issue 1 of 5").

What does this mean for the comic-book industry?  To be honest, I'm not really sure. I suspect it's not a good sign.  I'm sure the companies don't go into it with the plan to cancel these series right away. But I've got the definite sense that they lack commitment to these series, and that as soon as sales flag, they just quickly pull the plug.  It also feels a little like both companies are almost in what one could call panic mode -- that they are pulling any crazy idea for a title out of the hat, using any character they can think of, even ones who never had a series before, and trying to see if the book will sell.  If it does, fine, if not (like Threshold or Sword of Sorcery), pull the plug ASAP.

Whatever the long-term effects of this "musical series" pattern coming out of the comic companies, I'm sure of one thing as a reader and collector: we need to start viewing all series as mini-series. Even mainstays are not immune.  The days of the triple-digit issue number seem to be over.

The new style of first-issue stories

Although I certainly haven't gone and counted, I would bet that if you did, you would find that more "#1" issues of comic-book series have been published during the last five years than, perhaps, in all of comics history combined.  For instance, in 2011, +DC Comics terminated almost their entire line of comics, and rebooted everything back to number 1 (the New 52).  Last fall, +Marvel Entertainment launched the "Marvel NOW!" initiative, which didn't reboot their universe but started a whole bunch of series (Captain America, Thor, etc.) back on issue 1.  In between, many series have been canceled and re-booted (such as the ending of the Amazing Spider-Man series, replaced with Superior Spider-Man, starting of course at issue 1).

Thanks to all these reboots, and to the ready availability of back-issues on +comiXology, I have therefore read an unbelievable quantity of "issue 1" series launches in the last six months, including first issues of Captain America, Avengers Assemble, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Superman, Action Comics, Detective Comics, Batman, Batgirl, Earth 2, Worlds' Finest, The Movement, Red Sonja, Pantha, Justice League, Katana, and Justlice League of America.  What I have noticed, compared to the "old days" (pre-2000), is a dramatic shift in the style, pacing, and content of a typical first-issue series launch.

How comics used to launch a series

Years ago, a first-issue series launch was used in a very specific way.  That first issue was seen as a way to introduce the character or the team to the readers, and to establish the basic rules of the series. Let's use the 1979 series Rom: Spaceknight as an example.

In issue #1 of Rom, Rom arrives on earth and for the first few pages, seems almost evil, even attacking and seemingly killing some humans.  By page 8, however, Rom uses his translator to talk with the human woman Brandy Clark, and explains his background and origin.  He is 200 years old. He hails from the planet Galador, a peace-loving place.  The Galadorians entered an uncharted area called the Dark Nebula, and were attacked by Dire Wraiths.  Galador's armada was destroyed and the wraiths moved in on them.  To save the planet, the flower of Galador's youth would be asked to sacrifice humanity, becoming cyborg warriors (Spaceknights). Rom was the first to volunteer.  The Spaceknights prevailed, and drove the wraiths back.  But the wraiths, in defeat, scattered to other worlds. As shape-shifters, they could blend in, as they have done on our world. Rom is here to track them down and send them to the plane of Limbo.  The army, led by some wraiths in disguise, attacks Rom, and he defeats them, dispatches the wraiths, and flies off.  Word of his presence spreads to other wraiths, who now have to decide what to do about it.

This first issue of Rom accomplished everything a classic series-launching number 1 issue used to do. It established the character. It set up the dramatic tensions (in this case, between Rom and the wraiths, and between Rom and the humans who think he is killing them, as well as between wraiths and humans, though humans don't know it).  It established one of the main supporting characters (Brandy Clark, who quickly became a love interest for Rom).  And it told the backstory in enough detail that the reader knew exactly what was going on, and could easily follow the relationships between the major "sides" in the story (Rom, Human, and Wraith).  The ending leaves one in suspense, as a wraith in the local area hears of Rom's arrival and shape-shifts into a bird, flying away to warn her fellow aliens.

Now let's look at what Rom #1 did not do, relative to what #1 launches are like today.  Rom #1 did not confuse the reader.   It didn't leave the reader wondering who the heck this alien was or why he was blasting people.  It didn't leave the reader wondering who the shape-shifting guys were, and whether they were good or bad.  It didn't defer important, foundational explanations about the key elements of the series until later issues.

How series are launched today

If Rom #1 had been written in today's series-launch style, it would have been very different.  For example, no background of Galador and the Spaceknights would have been provided -- this would have been left until the 13th issue, which would have been called Rom #0.  Instead, we'd see an alien who can't speak any English, walking around blasting what appear to be humans. We'd see other seeming-humans suddenly change shapes, or whip out ray-guns, and blast Rom, and him retaliate. But we wouldn't know yet if Rom was an evil murderous robot, or an angel of mercy.  We'd probably see Rom rescue Brandy Clark from something, but there would be some ambiguity -- was he really rescuing her or just trying to kill her?

By the end of 'Marvel Now!" Rom #1, the reader would probably have no idea if Rom was going to be good or bad, or, frankly, what the hell was going on at all.  And this confusion would be purposeful.  The hypothetical "Marvel Now!" Rom writer would deliberately string the reader out, probably waiting until several issues in to reveal what a Dire Wraith was, and perhaps refusing to give Rom a translator, the better to keep things confused and uncertain.

What I've described above is, of course, pure invention -- there is no modern re-telling of the Rom story. However, my description is typical of the first-issue launches of today. Whereas in the old days, the goal of a first issue was explanation and providing a solid foundational base, these days, the goal of a first issue appears to be obfuscation and confusion.  Although I can't say for certain, I believe the probable motivation for this is that the companies believe the confusion will increase sales.  Readers of the fictitious modern Rom #1 would buy the next issue, and the one after that, because they want an explanation -- who is Rom? Where did he come from? And why is he shooting humans with a ray gun?  These questions, which were answered in the 1979 series halfway through the first issue, would probably not be answered in a modern re-telling for at least the first year, maybe more.

A major driver behind this new style is the tendency, in much modern storytelling, not just comics, to start a tale in the middle, rather than the beginning.  In the original Action Comics #1 in 1938, we saw Superman's origin told in a linear fashion - he came to earth in a rocket, and his alien body made him super-strong, able to leap buildings, and so forth.  The tale began at the beginning and worked forward.  Compare with 2011's Action Comics #1 relaunch, which starts with Superman floating in mid-air, with his Super-symbol already on his chest, apparently (somewhat) known but not yet understood by Metropolis, holding a rich white-collar criminal out over a ledge to scare him into confessing his evils.  The back-story of Superman's arrival on earth is not told until much later (issue #5), and even that is incomplete (more pieces are told later on).

But it's not just the "start in the middle" style that leads to confusion, because many movies and novels start in the middle today, but still don't leave the reader confused.  After all, the original Star Wars starts in the middle of a story, but we are given clear explanations of everything that is going on by the end of the first act (indeed, a lot of the explanation happens in the opening sequence, when the scroll of words tells us who Darth Vader is, who Princess Leia is, and that the Empire is evil, setting up the entire story for us in very clear, unambiguous terms).  So in comic-book launch issues today, it's the combination of starting in the middle, and not bothering to explain anything for several issues, that leads to seemingly disjointed, and definitely confusing, stories.

Which way is better?

Clearly, the style of the first-issue launch of a series is dramatically different today from the way it was in 1979.  Which way is better?

There is no objective way to answer this question, because it's largely a matter of preference.  If you like being informed, and having the overall themes and rules of the series laid out for you right away, so that you know where you stand, then you will obviously prefer the classic way to launch a series.  If you prefer being left in the dark, and don't like to be told why things are happening too quickly (maybe because you like trying to guess or figure them out yourself), then you will obviously lean toward the modern style.

My preference is for the classical style (I know, you're shocked).  Here's why:  The classical style established everything up front, which made it a snap to decide if I was going to like a series or not.  I could easily tell, by the end of the real Rom #1 (the one actually published in 1979, which established all the major rules and players of the series), that I was going to like it.  I knew where I stood relative to the comic.  The classical first issue really set the stage for me.

The modern style doesn't do that. For example, I just read #1 of Gail Simone's new series The Movement.  I have no idea if I'm going to like the series or not based on just this one issue.  The sides and lines of dramatic conflict are murky at best.   The characters are hard to tell apart (some of this is the fault of the artist). I can't tell who the protagonists are, vs. the antagonists. I'm not even sure who the major characters are going to turn out to be.   After an issue, the only thing I can say about whether I'm going to like this series or not is, "We'll see."  Compare with Rom, which after just one issue, I was easily (and correctly, since I stuck with it for 65 issues of its 75-issue run) able to say, "Count me in!"

I've never really enjoyed being confused as a reader.  I don't have to know the answer to every question (I hate mysteries where the killer is revealed to the audience at the beginning, for instance).  But I do like to understand what is going on, and I don't enjoy when seemingly random events occur for no known reason.  Too long of a separation between the event and knowing the reason for that event destroys the reader's sense of cause and effect, leading to the impression that the writer is making things happen for arbitrary reasons (although many events do occur for arbitrary reasons too, and not coincidentally, in many of the same series that are the most obfuscatory).

From what I have seen, the obfuscatory method of confusing the reader and taking many issues to clear things up, does not seem to be working.  For example, the New 52 Superman, which started out with strong sales, had a very confusing first story arc that left the reader unsure of what was going on for six issues.  If we are right in guessing that the confusing nature of the story is purposeful, because the execs at DC think obfuscation will make readers keep coming back to find out what the heck is going on, then we should see strong sales from this arc.  But we don't. Instead, Superman's sales went into free-fall, plummeting from 118,000 copies sold for issue 1, to 70,000 for issue 6 (rounded off to the nearest thousand).  That's a 41% decline, and a loss of almost 50,000 fans in six months.  Thus, 50,000 people who started out reading Superman, did not stick around to find out the explanations for all the confusing events of the first issue.  Does that sound like a win for the "make it confusing" model?  Not to me.

As a second example, Action Comics, written by Grant Morrison, is a prime specimen of a story written for maximal obfuscation.   I stopped reading this series on issue #6, and by then, hardly anything had been cleared up or explained. Morrison adds more and more complications and threads, without explaining any of the old ones, and ends up with a disjointed and very confusing story.  Again we can look at sales figures and ask, was Steve the only one turned off by this? Did the sales ploy, if it is one, of suspending explanations until much later on, work?

Once again, the answer is a resounding "no."  Although I can't say when any story threads were explained or plot elements were resolved, I can say definitively that none had been by issue 6 (when I finally gave up).  Action Comics began as a top-seller, with 183,000 print copies purchased.  Over the first six months, when the vaunted Morrison's patented obfuscation was in top form, sales of Action Comics plummeted by 47% to under 97,000 copies.  By issue 7, which is the earliest the confusing elements could have been cleared up (since they had not been as of issue 6), the series had lost fully half of its original readership.  Now I ask you: does this sound like a marketing ploy that is working?  It seems to me that at a good half of comic readers don't like stories that remain confusing for months at a time, or else these sales numbers would be better.

Now, I have heard it argued that one must read the totality of Morrison's run on Action Comics, which lasted until issue 18, to really "get" it.  Only in toto, the Morrison-apologists assert, can the whole logic of the story he crafted be appreciated.  I have no desire to read any more of Morrison's sewage, but we can look at the numbers and see whether many other fans were willing to wait eighteen months to have the events in this series explained to them.  Once again, the answer is a resounding no.  By issue 10, Action Comics had fallen out of the top 10 (remember, it debuted in the top 3 and stayed there for the first few months after the reboot), having lost another 11,000 readers since issue 7, and by number 15, Action Comics fell out of the top 20, and never recovered for the rest of Morrison's run.  By the time he left, he had lost fully two-thirds of the readers who started out with him at the beginning of the series.  I find it hard to imagine how anyone could argue that this was a successful run. And since one of Morrison's core "strategies"  is to confuse the hell out of the reader, I conclude that a majority of comic-book readers don't like to be confused for long periods of time.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I love being surprised at appropriate times in stories, and I like having explanations revealed slowly to me.  But as the story is going along, I need to understand what the hell is happening.  For example, J.K. Rowling doesn't explain how Voldemort used Horcruxes to prevent death in the first Harry Potter book. But she provides enough (although vague) explanation of how Voldemort had used magic to "cheat death" that the book is entirely comprehensible and stands on its own.  You don't have to wait until book 6 to understand what happened in book 1.  Certainly, you will have a better appreciation for the book 1 events after reading the whole series.  Going back and re-reading the books leads to many "aha!" moments.  But while you are reading book 1 for the first time, you don't feel completely at sea with the story, the way one does in both Superman 1 and Action Comics 1 (and many, many others).

I've said before on this blog, and I will say again today, that I believe the comic-book writers of today need to go back and re-read some of the old classic series, like Rom.  And they don't need to just peruse them casually -- they need to study these books, and understand what made them work, and what made them great.  Like the Harry Potter series, Rom's first issue provided a good, simple, basic explanation for what was going on -- it gave the reader a baseline -- and then slowly, over the next 30 or 40 issues, more details about the explanation evolved.  That is how to write a good series -- not giving the reader absolutely no baseline and then filling in random details in a deliberately confusing way over the course of a year or more.

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.

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.

Statue 4: New 52 Batgirl

Since getting back into the comic-book/superhero scene, one of my most pleasant surprises has been the New 52 Batgirl series.  Whereas most of the New 52 material has been nothing great to write home about (e.g., Supergirl since issue 8), and some has been downright awful (Action Comics, Superman), Batgirl has been absolutely superb since day 1, due primarily to Gail Simone's top-notch writing.  Because of how well this series has been both written and drawn, the Batgirl character has risen rapidly to become one of my favorite superheroes in all of comics.  In fact, although as a general rule I would say that Supergirl is my all-time favorite, I have to admit that, just comparing New 52 incarnations, Batgirl has it all over Supergirl up to this point.

Given my growing esteem for this character, and my plans to create a small display dedicated to her (admittedly much less extensive than what I will be able to do for Supergirl), I thought it was high time to add a Batgirl statue to my collection.  There are a few choices here, but only one that captures the New 52 version of her suit -- the Batgirl Bust put out by the +DC Comics line of collectibles.  And I have to say this for +DC Comics -- their New 52 stories may only be mediocre, but the new line of busts they are putting out for the New 52 characters is absolutely first rate.  Now if only the comics could be this good.

The statue I picked up at the comic shop was the "display" model.  For some people, who never take the item out of the packaging, I suppose this would be unacceptable. But since the thing had been sitting in a glass case for several months, untouched, and was in mint condition, I saw no reason to turn up my nose at the floor model.  The guys at the shop always keep the boxes, so they were able to give me the box and styrofoam packaging to go with it.

I don't have any way to make a real display with this statue yet (first I need to buy a house, then I need to buy or build some kind of display stand or curio for my collectibles), but I pulled out some of Batgirl's biographical literature (including my signed copy of Batgirl #0) to provide an admittedly rudimentary display background for photographing.  The statue stands about 6" tall, the same height as all the other busts, and is not really a bust so much as the upper half of Batgirl's body from just below the waist to the tips of her bat-ears.

This is a really well-posted statue.  Batgirl is clearly in the middle of fighting some villain like the Joker or Riddler. She has her left hand cocked back, holding a bat-a-rang, ready to throw, with her right hand thrust out forward for counter-balance.  She looks to the right, clearly planning to throw toward the right, across her body, with the 'rang, and the flow of her movement has caused her cape and hair to fly to the left.  This really is a wonderful action pose for this character, and her facial expression is wonderful -- determined, but with a slight hint of a smile. You can almost imagine that, as she pulled out that bat-a-rang, she made a classic Batgirl wise-crack to the villains.

The statue is made of porcelain, and is beautifully sculpted and painted.  The colors are outstanding, with a shiny black for the armor and a golden-yellow for the boots, belt, and bat symbol.  Her hair is reddish-brown, and the purple underside of the cape makes a nice contrast with all the black and gold.  She really looks like a superhero.  The base is a dark purple, matching the inside of her cape, and there is a very nice raised gold bat-symbol on the front of the base.  Strangely enough, like the Supergirl statue, the symbol on the base is the old, classic (pre-New-52) version of the symbol, not the current symbol for either character.  I'm not sure why they did that, but it doesn't do anything to detract from the beauty of the piece.

As with the New 52 Supergirl bust, which I reviewed back in January, the Batgirl bust is a very high quality, well-crafted collectible.  It retails for around $67, as most of the busts in this line do, and is well worth the price if you are in the market for a Batgirl statue.  They had two other statues of this character in the comic shop, with the classic/previous costumes, and although they were nice, I felt this was the most attractive Batgirl statue I have seen.  I give this one 10/10.

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.)

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).

New 52 Superman Family sales

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.

New Comic-book Night - 02-27-13

It's "New Comic-book Night" once again (Wednesday). As happens sometimes, nothing on my pull list came out today, so I bought myself a bunch of back-issues. It's the end of the month and I had a little spare money in the budget (spent $50 less on groceries than I thought I would).  I'm still mostly getting my comics digitally, so I didn't need to go to the comic-book shop at all.  Instead, I went to +comiXology and spent about $28 on digital comics.  I pulled in quite a haul for that amount, since most digital comics are only $1.99, compared to $3.99 in most cases (or $2.99 for some books).  I can't snap pictures of online comics the way I can hard copies, but I decided to make a small collage of the ones I bought:

For those needing to squint, the top two rows are Earth-2 #4-6, #0 and Worlds' Finest #4-6, #0.  On the recommendation of my friend, +Stuart Johnson, I have started reading these two series. I read the first three last week, and now I am working on the next four.  These two series are only on issue #9, so if I keep liking them, I will complete these series and add them to my pull list next week.

The other issues showing in the image are the covers of Dynamite Entertainment's Red Sonja - She-devil with a Sword issues #7-12, which is the second story arc of that series.  I was a big Red Sonja fan back in the 70s/80s as a youth, so I picked up the first couple of issues on a whim, and it has turned out to be an excellent series. I will do a Year 1 review of it when I complete these issues.

Again this is quite a haul for $28, and I am looking forward to having lots of great weekend reading to do.  I'm also rather optimistic about adding either Earth-2 or Worlds' Finest to my regular pull list, since both are very good so far -- much better than the New 52 series I have dropped recently (Action Comics and Superman).  My "regular monthly pull list" might be starting to shape up, finally.

Lessons comic writers can learn from Barbara and Karl Kesel

As I have mentioned in many other articles, I was away from comic-books from early 1999 until late 2012.  Having just returned to them, I am busy getting re-immersed in the genre. Being a former +DC Comics fan, I have stuck mostly with DC's New 52 line of comics since returning, although I have dabbled in a few other series, such as Dynamite's Pantha (I have all six issues) and Red Sonja (I've read issues 0-2 so far and have 3-6 sitting waiting on my tablet), along with a few others.

I've bought many comic-books, both digitally and in print, since returning to the hobby just a few months ago (and spent several hundred dollars doing it!), and I've read quite a few both older back-issues (like Peter David's Supergirl series) and newer ones (including ones just released last week).  I've greatly enjoyed my time reading these stories and have, in general, been entertained (except for the awful "H'el on Earth" story arc that DC is inflicting on us poor saps who are stupid enough to like Supergirl).  However, despite having fun reading comics again, I've felt like something is missing even from the very best titles like Batgirl and Supergirl.  It took me a while to figure out just what was missing, although I first noticed it in the New 52 Hawk and Dove trade paperback.  What is sorely needed in many of today's comic-books is down time.

By down time, I refer to time away from the action-packed battles that seem to be the main activity our spandex-wearing favorite characters.  And yes, like most other comic-book fans, I do enjoy a good "super-battle" and I like a liberal sampling of them in most comic-book issues.  However, as with anything else, with super-battles, you can have too much of a good thing.  A comic-book can't be all super-battles, all the time, or it loses something.

This brings me to a very important, but little-remembered, pair of series from the late 1980s and early 1990s:  the Hawk and Dove mini-series, and the subsequent Hawk and Dove full series, co-written by Barbara and Karl Kesel.  Although there were tons of action and battle scenes in Hawk and Dove, those scenes are not what made this series stand out as one of the all-time great products in comics history.  Rather, the down time, the in-between-the-fight scenes, made Hawk and Dove such a wonderful series.  Barbara and Karl Kesel understood this fact implicitly, and so if you go back and read the old Hawk and Dove back-issues, you will find a comic with incredible characters and with something the series of today lack almost across the board: depth.

Hawk and Dove began as a mini-series, which re-started the characters after the original Dove, Don Hall, had been killed in the Crisis on Infinite Earths series.  With Don/Original Dove dead, Hawk had worked entirely solo.  In his secret identity as Hank Hall, has just returned to Washington, D.C., after a stint out of the country.  The problem with Hawk, however, is that he can easily get "out of control." Hawk is chaotic, unpredictable, and often violent when battling criminals.  He enjoys combat, and loves smashing perps in the face.  The D.C. cops aren't big fans, because they see him as a vigilante who uses too much force and causes as much trouble as he solves.

Throughout the first issue, however, we see less of Hawk than we do of Hank Hall. We watch as Hank tries to re-assimilate into his old life, after spending so much time out of the country "superheroing" (which, of course, none of his friends or relatives know about).  We witness a painful encounter between Hank and Don's old girlfriend.  We watch as Hank argues with his parents and struggles to find his way in the "normal" world without his brother, starting college classes, trying to join the football team, and meeting new friends on the Georgetown University campus.  These scenes are not super-battles. They are not exciting or pulse-pounding. But they give us a sense of who Hank Hall is, as a person.  They make him human, real.  They give us a reason to cheer for him when he hears a mugging happening and steps in to intervene.

As the mini-series continues, we meet Dawn Granger, also recently transferred to Georgetown from overseas, a foreign relations major. (Gee, notice that? We actually know what her college major is! Compare that with the New 52 version of Hawk and Dove, where we have no idea if she's even in college, let alone what she's majoring in!) Meanwhile, Hawk is followed around and "helped out" by a woman in a Dove costume, calling herself Dove and claiming to be Don's replacement.  Hawk/Hank is violently opposed to any such claim, believing that the woman is defiling his brother's memory.  "Dove is dead! Dove is Dead!" shouts Hawk.  "No Hank," Dove replies, "Don is dead."

Through the rest of the mini-series, we watch as Hank tries to piece together the puzzle, to figure out who, among his college friends, might be Dove.  There are three candidates -- Donna Cabot, tennis sensation and girlfriend of Hank's wrestling partner Kyle; Renata Takamuri (Ren), waitress at the pub called Suds and new girlfriend to Hank; and Dawn Granger, who is friends with Ren and Donna.  There are clues that each one of them could be Dove.  Hank hilariously tries to ask what he thinks are subtle questions to ferret out the truth, but mostly ends up tripping over his own tongue. (Hank: "Donna, is that your real hair?" Donna: "Hank, is that your real brain?")

Eventually, of course, Hank discovers that Dawn Granger is Dove (I assume you knew that already, or I'd have said "spoiler alert").   But the whole business about Hank trying to figure out who was turning into Dove leads to a critical point: This very important (and often uproariously funny) element of the story could not have happened without previous down time.  The only reason the Kesels were able to give us three possible Dove "candidates" and give Hank good reasons to believe each one was Dove, is because they laid the groundwork from the start of the first issue, with lots of "Hank time" in between bursts of him superheroing as Hawk.  The "Hank time" led to him meeting and starting to romance Ren; to him meeting Kyle and Donna and befriending them; to him meeting Dawn.  They had drinks together. They hung out with each other.  During the course of conversations Hank revealed things about himself that then could have been known by Dove.  None of these interactions could have occurred while he was wearing the Hawk spandex.

When Hawk and Dove became a full-blown series and the Kesels continued as writers, they continued their brilliant formula of using high proportions of "down time" in each issue.  We see Hank and Dawn interact with their parents (watching Dawn try to cope with having a secret identity is often hilarious and frequently charming).  We smile as Ren helps them cover up their secret, and even bite our fingernails when she gets absorbed in some of their wilder cases and puts herself in danger.  We learn, not just about Hank and Dawn's pasts, but about the private lives and secrets of Kyle and Donna too.

Again, there are plenty of super-fights.  Kyle's past includes a wayward aunt who was once a hippie and has a record from having set bombs.  The aunt is being hunted by Shell-shock, who is a super-villain, so of course, Hawk and Dove end up battling her.  But the point here is that this is not a pure-action battle of hero against villain for the sole purpose of having a battle, the way so many comic-books seem to be written today.  Rather, there is a deeper story here involving the personal lives of Hank and Dawn and their friends.  This gives meaning to the fight. It's not just about action here. Rather, you're moved to pity or sympathy, to regret or anger, by the character interactions from which the fight is derived.

This, then, is the lesson that comic-book writers can learn from Barbara and Karl Kesel: the use of down time to add depth to characters, and soul to the story arcs of their comic-books.  Mindlessly flinging the heroes from one story arc to another, without giving them a chance to recover, breathe, and have any semblance of a "normal life" doesn't make the comic more "exciting" -- rather, it takes away the characters' humanity.  And it's their humanity, not their powers, that make us cheer these characters on. Barbara and Karl's Hawk and Dove, above all else, seemed like real, live human beings.  And so I cheered for them, and loved them, and was very upset when the series ended and I could read no more about them.

By comparison, too many of today's superhero characters are spandex cut-outs.  The New 52 Hawk and Dove are just empty suits -- heroes with no real humanity behind them.  But it's not just these characters.  Superman is the same way (at least since George Perez stopped writing it).  Even Batgirl, as much as I like the series, has had too little down time in the last 6 or 8 issues.  And in 18 issues, Supergirl has had absolutely no down time at all. She's been on earth for 18 months (of our time, not her time, of course), and she still doesn't really know anyone, or have a single real friend (not even Superman). Indeed, in 18 issues of Supergirl, a monthly, regular, main-line coimc series, there is no supporting cast.  Not one regularly-appearing supporting character exists in that series, a year and a half in -- not even Streaky the cat!

Astonishingly, this lack of down time and of a strong supporting cast is not an over-sight, but seems to be deliberate on the parts of today's writers.  How else can you explain solicitations for upcoming comics that say things like "There's no rest for Supergirl after (fill in the name of the story arc that just finished) because she now (fill in what happens to start the next story arc)."  The problem here is that "There's no rest" for a character means there's no down time -- and thus, there's little, or no, interaction with the supporting cast (if the writers have even bothered to include one, which they often don't).

The writers and editors (and the advertisement specialists) seem to think that having all action and no down time is a good thing. They use it to sell titles (or so they think).  But it's not a good thing. Having no supporting cast and no down time hasn't made Supergirl a more exiting series; rather, it has robbed Kara of the most important thing any comic-book character can have -- her humanity.  (Don't bother posting some snarky comment about how Kara isn't human because she's from Krypton -- I'm using humanity in the sense of person-hood, not biology.)  And without that humanity, the character just becomes a bag of powers that fights other individuals with powers month after month.  And again, it's not just Supergirl that has this issue. Lots of other titles do as well.

There are a few rays of light in the darkness, however.  Somehow, Brian Azzarello has managed, for 18 issues of Wonder Woman, to keep that series out of the DC mainstream, and has managed to avoid getting it sucked into series-spanning crossovers.  Wonder Woman has a large, interesting supporting cast and she has  plenty of down time in each issue.  There are still fights. There is still action. But the characters in it are still human (although, yes, they are also gods, frequently enough -- again, I use human in the sense of the characters seeming to be real people rather than cardboard cutouts).  And although the main stories in Justice League are mostly action-action-action, the Shazam side story has had tons of heart and soul.  These stories with large supporting casts and sufficient hero down time are the exception these days, however, and that's sad -- they used to be the rule.

And that's why, although I am enjoying reading today's comics, I don't like them as much as I still like the old stories form decades past.  Because back then, writers like Barbara and Karl Kesel knew how important a supporting cast of characters, and down time for the superheroes, was in building up the humanity of the characters. That humanity made us care about the heroes so that when the action-jaction battle did come, we had someone to cheer.  If I were in charge at DC, my first order of business would be to hand Barbara and Karl's Hawk and Dove series to every writer and editor on staff and make them read it, to learn how important down time is.  Because when it comes to making characters human, no one did it better than Barbara and Karl.