The Nuts and the Bolts

Sometimes, I despair of DC Comics.

J. Michael Straczynski is a writer best-known for his five-year television epic Babylon 5, which he created, saw through from start to finish and frequently wrote and directed along the way. For the past eight years, Straczynski has written numerous comic books for Marvel, most prominently Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Last year, he relaunched their Thor series and has been knocking it out of the park commercially. He also wrote the screenplay for Changeling, a film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich that's set to debut at Cannes next week.

You could say, in other words, that Straczynski's career has just reached a new high point. For Marvel, now, that's tragic, in some ways: A contract exclusively securing them the writer's comics-related activities ran out without being renewed in 2007, and there was a bit of a fall-out between Straczynski and Marvel over creative differences concerning "One More Day," the controversially received storyline ending Spider-Man's 20-year marriage that concluded his work on the character. While Straczynski will apparently continue writing for Marvel - notably Thor and a limited series called The Twelve - it's quite clear that he's become a bit disenchanted with the publisher over the last couple of years.

So J. Michael Straczynski, cult TV creator, best-selling comics author and high-profile Hollywood screenwriter, wants to work at DC Comics now. Hey, looks like DC just hit the jackpot, right?

Well, not so fast. People at DC Comics are busy, you understand. They've got their ways of doing things. They've got countdowns and crises of their own, and they're not going to drop everything just because some cult TV creator, best-selling comics author and high-profile Hollywood screenwriter wants to lend his services to their properties. They've got their priorities, you see, and all the Superman and Batman and Justice League projects for the coming ten years are set and shan't be meddled with, anyway.

And so they give Straczynski The Brave and the Bold.

Estimates have it that The Brave and the Bold, a book launched by prominent creators Mark Waid and George Pérez back in 2006 that is set on the fringes of the DC Universe, currently sells around 40,000 units, falling rapidly. Pérez recently left, and once Waid and his successor Marv Wolfman are done with it, DC can be ecstatic if it still moves 30,000 units. The artist Straczynski will be paired with is Jesús Saiz, who does good work but - like many artists who have been working at DC for the last five years - hasn't really been built up by them commercially. If Straczynski's name gives The Brave and the Bold a really good boost, perhaps it goes up to 50,000 - which still wouldn't quite place it in the Top 30.

Decisions like this one are, of course, precisely why DC is being thrashed by the competition month in, month out. Have they totally lost the plot? It certainly looks like the people in charge are unsure how to properly maximize and market their existing resources to an audience younger than 40. If they were Marvel, rest assured that the hell would be marketed out of this. Straczynski would probably be doing the same thing, mind you. But it would be relaunched and called Ultimate Batman Team-Up, drawn by Steve McNiven and set up during Secret Invasion. And anything less than 100,000 units sold of issue #1 would be considered a disappointment.

At DC, though, it's called The Brave and the Bold #20-something, and we're shooting for the Top 50. The announcement is emblematic of the publisher's woes over the last couple of years, really, and, to be frank, it doesn't inspire great confidence in their post-Final Crisis plans.

Selector

New comics recommendation for May 14, 2008:

(Click on image for more information.)

First Contact (III)

Am three quarters through my DC Comics review marathon, stop. Am exhausted and cranky, stop.

Bought copy of Captain Carrot against better judgment, stop. Checked in with "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" arc in Action Comics, stop. Paid return visit to Countdown, stop. Was driven to despair by Salvation Run, stop. Was somewhat pacified by Gail Simone's Wonder Woman, stop. For my sins, threw in the WildStorm Universe title The Authority: Prime as a bonus, stop. Regretted it immediately, stop.

Came looking for comics, found fish in barrel, stop. No fun, stop. Just one more week left now, thankfully, stop. Want it to stop, stop.

Selector

New comics recommendation for May 7, 2008:

(Click on image for more information.)

Messenger, Shot Dead

Well, ouch.

I used to think it didn't matter if people bought a series in monthly issues or in trade, just so long as they were buying it. But now I feel like it's imperative that we get more fans buying the monthly issues right from the get-go, just to get them talking about it, blogging about it, posting about it on message boards, bugging their retailers to order more than one shelf copy, everything. It's just so easy for a new Vertigo series to get written off before it's even really out of the gate. You get these so called "analysts" looking at the sales numbers for the first issue and already saying, well here's another failed Vertigo launch, already dead in the water. You get people already assuming the book won't make it past issue 12. And suddenly it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As writer Jason Aaron explains, it's all been my fault, all the time.

If a Vertigo book debuts with outrageously poor numbers, you see, then it's not the shifting market that's to blame, or the quality of the art or the writing, or the marketability of the work or its given genre, or the publisher's marketing efforts, or the attractiveness of the trade dress, or the prominence of the creators, or the strength of the publishing brand, or the value-for-money perception, or the retail community's willingness to order the product or the readers' decision whether or not to buy the bloody comic.

Nope, none of those silly things matter. The single most relevant factor which has caused average Vertigo periodical sales to decline by an estimated thirty-two point fucking four percent over the last five years is, without a shadow of doubt, something else entirely: It is I, so-called analyst.

With my crooked column, you see, I have wrought nefarious numbers and wretched writings into a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. Indeed, by my contemptible calculations, I thus reckon that I will have single-handedly wiped Vertigo comic books off the face of the earth altogether by the year 2019.

Erm, really?

First Contact (II)

Over at Supercritical, I'm now halfway through my DC Comics review marathon. Last week, I read my first issues of The Flash, Booster Gold and Suicide Squad, and checked in with writer Dwayne McDuffie's debut on Justice League of America and the start of Batman and the Outsiders.

Pulp Fiction

For those of you who mind, the following contains a major spoiler for this week's DC Universe: Zero primer by Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns.

With that out of the way:

"Without Barry Allen, we'd still be reading comic books about cowboys," Geoff Johns, co-writer of the new Flash comics, told the Daily News.

Well, yes. And crooks and detectives and spies, and romance and adventure, and spacemen and pirates and monsters. That stifled sound you just heard was the spontaneous self-combustion of Warren Ellis.

Selector

New comics recommendation for April 30, 2008:

(Click on image for more information.)

First Contact

The first quarter of my DC Comics review marathon is now online: Last week, I dutifully ploughed through Brad Meltzer's Justice League of America, exposed myself to my first ever Shazam comic, was surprised by Matt Wagner's Batman: The Mad Monk, had a look at why The Brave and the Bold sales are in a free-fall and read the beginning of Countdown.

Selector

New comics recommendation for April 23, 2008:

(Click on image for more information.)