Christmas bliss
Hi Tom,
1. I would purchase every piece of Weekend at Namor’s ever produced. Just sayin’.
2. IMO Secret Wars is way good. Such a solid piece of work.
3. I saw some things you had said about the state of DC and wanted to share my feelings cause i like burning an afternoon pretending I’m talking to you about comics. I’m gonna jump on a bandwagon now and say the plethora of reboots and fresh jumping on points the competition has been in the midst of for the past 30 years has caused huge continuity and character problems. It has lead to them somehow taking comic icons and making them stagnant and unrecognizable at the same time. The constant rebooting means their charactes are almost always in a similar emotional/historical space. Hard to have too much character development there. Although, due to frequent ‘fresh takes’ from writer to writer the character’s motivations change just enough that you have to wonder if it’s the same person in the suit or if they’ve finally become justifiably schizophrenic. I can see ways the new canon over continuity could be utilized to alleviate this situation, but I’m weary of anything that would further subvert continuity.
I really liked some of their new post Convergence efforts. Although those new books were some of the most well produced and entertaining fare I’ve seen from DC in a while they unfortunately could have been called tone deaf. Not to what fans and critics had been interested in but to what the entire line was just a couple months prior. Such a massive turn would require a highly competent lead in, and that did not happen. It was a bad time for a relaunch and that bad time was Convergence.This might seem a little far-fetched but i think the cold reception to their new books can mostly be blamed on what a huge turn off this story was. I know it was just one story. I know fans talk about how much they hate event books anyway, but I also gather that they read them. It’s one thing for a book to feel boring or superfluous. It’s another to be bad. So bad that the fallout has made me certain some significant amount of faith in a comic company’s abilities must exist tied into the quality of these types of books. If they didn’t knock it out for the summer blockbuster then how are readers to expect they’re gonna treat the rest of their line? That’s genuinely how I believe they got to where they are. I’m not trying to go into too many specifics about the book so you will have to trust me as a competent reader. I could detail my complaints, but they’re typical comic complaints. The problem is that there are so many of them and they center around what should have been a creative highlight. It was redundant and a milestone. It was convoluted and under developed. I doubt new or returning readers could readily grasp the storyline or why it was happening at all. The art was underwhelming. The tie-ins were mostly identical to each other. They might have actually been copy pasting different characters into a template. The supposedly biggest story in 35 years and the main characters are the B or even C team. Plus it stood next to Multiversity which was a far more competent attempt at a similar theme. Maybe Multiversity was their initial play and WB wanted it to be more accessible? Management read it and asked why there wasn’t more Superman and punching so they threw this together. Convergence was a potentially good idea with a level of execution that should have been beneath DC. I assume you must read the competition if you hear it’s exceptionally good or maybe bad sometimes. If you haven’t yet, give this book a shot. It’s a clear picture of what not to do.
Let me finish by saying I’m a DC fan. I couldn’t get this worked up if I wasn’t. I like a lot of their work. I loved Multiversity and I’m into JLA right now. Vertigo was incredible for a long time. The list goes on. I really like it when they’re doing well if only because it forces their team and yours to be at their best. I don’t think their predicament’s really even that dire yet. They made a couple bad decisions in close proximity to each other so it appears troubling. I was just throwing my opinion about their situation up for more discussion cause I’m always interested to hear what you think.Happy Holidays
David
