There are things about the comic industry that really bother me these days.
In an excellent post at Big Hollywood, comic writer Bill Willingham decries the current state of superhero comics saying that they are, in fact, "superhero decadence" (using a term coined by Dirk Deppey). I couldn't agree with Willingham more and I have frequently been not only disgusted by the tone of some of today's superhero comics, but downright incensed by them. To quote Willingham:
"The ’super’ is still there, more so than ever, but there seems to be a slow leak in the ‘hero’ part."
The post is here and I recommend everyone read it.
Now, this state of affairs is certainly bad enough. We have characters whose definition of hero seems to be "hitting someone before they hit me". But I have a gnawing suspicion that things behind the scenes at comic companies are far worse.
There is an atmosphere of fear at these companies. They've become places where individuals are afraid to express their own opinions or, even worse, ones that oppose the Managerial dictates. It all has to do with job security and the reins of power being tightly held in the grips of a very small amount of people. People who, it seems, have no problem exercising that power and being very small, petty individuals.
This saddens me. Not only because it is wrong and goes against so MANY of those ideals that America is supposed to uphold (just like superheroes) but because no one should be afraid of losing their livliehood because they speak their mind. This is the problem with the power being centralized to so few people. It is closely resembling a dictatorship, one that I am surprised has not brought about pictures of Didio or Quesada as Hitler or Mussolini. Except that most people who produce political imagery don't usually depend on the targets of their criticism for their jobs.
Willingham suggests that creators refuse to produce work of "superhero decadence" anymore. Which is good assuming he can get wide-spread support of such a ban. After all, if there is one thing that the comic book industry is notorious for it's that there's always another wave of fresh-faced kids willing to do whatever it takes to write or draw Spider-Man or Batman. For the rest of us, I'd suggest we just stop buying this stuff. These are characters with DECADES of rich publishing history behind them. Go buy some back issues and pass up the next "Crisis of Secret Final R.I.P." garbage.
Showing posts with label Didio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Didio. Show all posts
Monday, January 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Teflon Dan Strikes Again!
Dan Didio truly amazes me.
How he can say and do the things he does and still keep his job is an acrobatic act truly worthy of the Flying Wallandas.
Last weekend, at the Fan Expo in Canada, Didio talked about several interesting things including the fact that the reboots of old characters (like Blue Beetle) hadn't really caught on. No surprise there that readers didn't embrace unimaginative rehashes of old concepts.
What caught my eye was a report where Didio talked about the return of Barry Allen to the DCU. In a talk with Comic Book Resources, Didio says how he "loves that Barry Allen is back" and that he "...was a big Barry Allen fan from Day One.”
That's interesting to me because, for years now, Didio has always been the one to say that Barry wasn't coming back, no way, no how. As recently as September 2007 at Baltimore Comic-Con, Didio said, "No Barry Allen plans, he's not coming back. It's the first time I can say that without screwing it up."
So either there were no plans at that time or Didio was simply b.s.ing. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that there were no plans for Barry's return then... but, in the words of my hero, Lewis Black, "I have doubts."
In a 6/9/08 interview with Newsarama, Grant Morrison had this to say about his blockbuster DC series, FINAL CRISIS:
"GM: Well, the way it worked out was that I started writing Final Crisis #1 in early 2006, around the same time as the 52 series was starting to come out, so Final Crisis was more a continuation of plot threads from Seven Soldiers and 52 than anything else. Final Crisis was partly-written and broken down into rough issue-by-issue plots before Countdown was even conceived, let alone written. And J.G. was already working on designs and early layouts by the time Countdown started. There wasn’t really much opportunity, or desire, to modify our content at that stage."
Now, I'm not a math professor or anything. I'm just some dumb nerd that reads comics but, unless I'm mistaken, 2006 was BEFORE 2007! That means that FINAL CRISIS was well under way when Didio said there were no plans to bring Barry back. But bringing Barry back is a MAJOR factor of the plot of FC. So, did no one TELL Didio? Was he left out of the loop so he could have plausible deniability in 2007? Did Morrison have WMD and, if so, when did Didio find out and how much did he know when he found out? What did he know and did he know what he knew when he knew it?
No wonder I have a headache.
Didio is quickly becoming the George W. Bush of comics which means you can't trust a word he says. Unless he "crosses his heart and swears to die" first. Or pinky-swears. That might work.
How he can say and do the things he does and still keep his job is an acrobatic act truly worthy of the Flying Wallandas.
Last weekend, at the Fan Expo in Canada, Didio talked about several interesting things including the fact that the reboots of old characters (like Blue Beetle) hadn't really caught on. No surprise there that readers didn't embrace unimaginative rehashes of old concepts.
What caught my eye was a report where Didio talked about the return of Barry Allen to the DCU. In a talk with Comic Book Resources, Didio says how he "loves that Barry Allen is back" and that he "...was a big Barry Allen fan from Day One.”
That's interesting to me because, for years now, Didio has always been the one to say that Barry wasn't coming back, no way, no how. As recently as September 2007 at Baltimore Comic-Con, Didio said, "No Barry Allen plans, he's not coming back. It's the first time I can say that without screwing it up."
So either there were no plans at that time or Didio was simply b.s.ing. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that there were no plans for Barry's return then... but, in the words of my hero, Lewis Black, "I have doubts."
In a 6/9/08 interview with Newsarama, Grant Morrison had this to say about his blockbuster DC series, FINAL CRISIS:
"GM: Well, the way it worked out was that I started writing Final Crisis #1 in early 2006, around the same time as the 52 series was starting to come out, so Final Crisis was more a continuation of plot threads from Seven Soldiers and 52 than anything else. Final Crisis was partly-written and broken down into rough issue-by-issue plots before Countdown was even conceived, let alone written. And J.G. was already working on designs and early layouts by the time Countdown started. There wasn’t really much opportunity, or desire, to modify our content at that stage."
Now, I'm not a math professor or anything. I'm just some dumb nerd that reads comics but, unless I'm mistaken, 2006 was BEFORE 2007! That means that FINAL CRISIS was well under way when Didio said there were no plans to bring Barry back. But bringing Barry back is a MAJOR factor of the plot of FC. So, did no one TELL Didio? Was he left out of the loop so he could have plausible deniability in 2007? Did Morrison have WMD and, if so, when did Didio find out and how much did he know when he found out? What did he know and did he know what he knew when he knew it?
No wonder I have a headache.
Didio is quickly becoming the George W. Bush of comics which means you can't trust a word he says. Unless he "crosses his heart and swears to die" first. Or pinky-swears. That might work.
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