Jun 4
House To Astonish Episode 61
Posted on Saturday, June 4, 2011 by Al in Podcast
Lots and lots of chat on the DC announcements this time round, as well as a few words on Dark Horse’s digital incentives and Valiant’s return. We’ve also got reviews of Criminal: Last Of The Innocent, Secret Seven and 50 Girls 50 and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is a beautiful and unique snowflake. All this plus the Amazing Flying Buccelato Brothers, a song from the Lion King, Cockney Frank Cho and Alistair (Aged 4).
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
I assume “3 X Chromosomes” = “XXX Chromosomes” = porn stars
bom-chikka-wa-wa
Actually I thought the plan was 13 books a week through four weeks. I can’t see them removing anything from the Superman mythos with a movie in the works unless they make major changes in the movie.
The creative teams for the Green Lantern books look very much like “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” : they’re exactly the same as before the relaunch. (Well, the GLC team goes to “New Guardians” while the “Emerald Warriors” team goes to GLC, but that’s the same difference.)
I’ve never read any Shade, but I’m sticking with Secret Seven because I’m one of the few people that liked Shadowpack and cares about the Enchantress.
Imagine a caveman artist from the caveman days. He paints his comic book stories on the inside wall of his cave and charges his caveman fans admission to come view his latest story.
Years later, he notices a significant drop in his audience. The fans aren’t showing up at his cave anymore in the numbers that they used to.
This is because a new technology called “paper” has been invented, and his rival caveman artists have moved away from painting on cave walls to painting on this new paper substance. The fans love it. They can buy the stories and actually take them home with them and view them again whenever they wish.
The original caveman artist grumbles and refuses to conform. “This “paper” is not an acceptable substitute!” he exclaims. “Comics always have been, and always will be painted on walls!”
This is what I envisioned the other day when I was reading some comments posted by readers who stubbornly maintain that comics will never make the full transition from paper to digital at some point in the future.
Scott Lobdell wrote a Ghostbusters mini a year or two back. It wasn’t particularly good. (I feel I may have mentioned this before – that’s how forgettable the mini was, all mention of it becomes forgettable by extension).
I’m rather hoping that Shade’s Secret Seven turns out to be Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven.
I’m not wild about anything announced by DC post-Flashpoint so far, but I might give Aquaman a go. I’m not especially a Geoff Johns fan, but Aquaman intrigues me and I think he’s a character that might actually benefit from Johns’s revisionist silver age fetish.
Brian, I am not sure that audiences are dropping purely because of the delivery method. Slapping comics on an iPad isn’t going to bring everyone back.
Oh and while I don’t think DC are going to completely overhaul the bits of Superman they might be losing the rights to, I can see them eliminating Superboy (again), especially as they seem to be deaging Superman and Legion of Super-Heroes is (I think) getting rebooted again. I don’t think it would be much of a loss to drop the notion that Clark was practically Superman already while a child.
A few things on going digital:
– If DC really wants to start attracting new readers, they’re going to have to sell digital comics cheaper than $1.99 a download. That’s already twice the cost of an mp3 on Amazon. The people DC wants to sell to have been trained to see digital content as something that’s either free or next to free; I don’t see how you manage to sell digital comics in large numbers for more than 99 cents when songs, apps and games are selling for around that price or not much more, while generally providing more entertainment value.
– As comics start making the transition from paper to digital in earnest, publishers are going to have to start asking themselves why they’re making a product for paper and then selling it digitally. A story that looks and reads great as a twenty-page pamphlet isn’t necessarily going to look that good on an iPad, where readers may have to scroll and zoom and fidget with the material in order to read it properly. In order to sell comics for a digital format, you need to start making comics for a digital format – taking into account what kind of art, layout, size and pacing works best for that. Trying to cram a magazine into an e-reader just makes for an awkward fit.
– Kelvin: a lot of things have contributed to the decline in sales – the increasing impenetrability of the stories, the ingrown and insular nature of the direct market, the fact that video games and movies have largely supplanted comics as the way most people experience superhero stories anyway – but the slow steady death of print isn’t exactly helping, is it? Ten years ago we were having more or less the same conversation, only it was about if and when and how the industry should move from pamphlets to books… and that conversation was taking place at a time when books were already dying! If comics don’t go digital, they’re not going anywhere but into the ground.
This is all very true, but moving to digital distribution isn’t — on its own — going to be the magic bullet which saves the US comics industry. There are other factors involved and that’s my only point.
Kelvin, I’m not trying to make the argument that digital distribution is going to save the US comics industry.
But I am convinced that digital downloading is eventually going to become the ONLY means to purchase a new comic book within five to ten years. Not just because the industry is dying and publishers are looking for ways to save it. That’s just incidental.
Even if the US comics industry was just as healthy today as it had been twenty or thirty years ago, it would still be moving in this direction simply because that’s where the technology is leading.
@Brian – the flaw in your analogy is that if I were a caveman, I’d like the paper comics because they’re so convenient — I can carry them around with me and read them whenever I want.
Since I don’t have an iPad, the advantage of paper comics remains that I can carry them around with me and read them whenever I want.
@Daibhid – My point is that paper is phasing out. If publishers stop producing new comics on paper (and I’m convinced that they will. It’s just a question of when.), then unless you shell out for an iPad (or a similar device) then the only comics you’ll be able to carry around with you will be your back issues.
I dunno. Twenty years ago they were telling us that now everyone had video recorders, cinemas would be dead in a decade…
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Grant Morrison was consulted about the relaunch, and it all fits into his Evil Masterplan…
Just being pedantic: I wouldn’t call the iconic Superman the ur-Superman. The ur-Superman is the guy with the triangular logo who leaps an eighth of a mile, surely.
Streamlining Superman’s origin makes sense, but if Lois & Clark get One More Day’ed, I won’t be a happy punter.
To be fair to JMS, WW was presented as an aberation in history, and he’s seeded in plenty suggestions that there’s something wrong with Superman’s current behaviour (which have got steadily less subtle and are now “There’s a woman who’s clearly mind controlling him and appears in every issue”). And as I understand it, he wrote “Sins Past” because Joey Q didn’t like the story he wanted to write and told him to write that one instead.
“Architure & Morality” (which was in Tales of the Unexpected) was brilliant, but it wasn’t remotely a Dr Thirteen story, just a story that happened to star Dr Thirteen. (But then, is anyone interested in a “proper” Dr Thirteen story, which is him wandering around the DCU denying magic exists and being right?)
I’ve read some of Milligan’s Shade (which I enjoyed), but not the original version, so I’m not sure which bits are him riffing off his own work, and which bits are him riffing off Dikto (at a guess, the other members of Shade’s race are Dikto’s; the nature of the M-Vest is Milligan’s).
Vertigo is now being rehabilitated into the DCU, with Death in Action Comics, and Constantine in Brightest Day spinoffs, so maybe Flashpoint-Shade is the first step to returning Vertigo-Shade to continuity.
Simon Magus apparently appeared in a Creature Commandos miniseries; Stiletto turns out to be the name of a Batman villain created by, er, Miligan; and Miss X was a supporting character to Tex Thompson before he became Mr America. (God bless Google and Wikipedia!)
Totally agree with Daibhid Ceannaideach. Also the caveman analogy is just obnoxious. I like comic books, I don’t own an ipad and like to read on the train I also still read paper novels like most people. Also as someone who works in front of a PC all day, I like to not be staring at a screen occasionally.
Aaaaand, Vinyl still hasn’t died, sure the vast majority don’t use it any more, it’s just a select few. Comics are like vinyl, they have an innate charm in their original form.
@Valhallahan – No need to get your back up. Predicting that something will happen isn’t the same thing as wishing for it to happen or trying to force the idea on people. Not once have I said anything like “The digital format is much better, and you should all embrace it.” I simply believe that this is where the industry will go.
In point of fact, I do prefer reading a comic book printed on paper, but if I HAD to make the transition to digital, I could, and so will everyone else if they have to, in spite of what they might say about it now.
The Ipad Screen is just about the same size as a traditional comic, so there really isn’t any zoom in/zoom problem, unless there’s a double page spread and you have turn it 90 degrees to read.
I love having an ipad for comics now, being able to carry a long box worth of books around in my satchel with plenty of room to spare.
I do agree that the price point will likely be a hindrance to the younger generation of people, who are now used to and proficient at getting their electronic media free, legal or gray area.
Surely the problem with Brian caveman analogy is that on one side he has the producer (cave artist) decrying the new format, and on the other side it’s the consumer (comics reader).
Not that I’m saying that digital refusniks will be a large enough section of the readership to sway the decision, which will all come down to economics anyway.
“if I HAD to make the transition to digital, I could, and so will everyone else if they have to, in spite of what they might say about it now”
*Everyone* else? Really? I’m sure I could, but I very likely won’t. I’ve been feeling guilty for years about the amount of money I spend on comics, and if they move to a format that doesn’t interest me, I will in all probability just stop buying them.
*Brian’s*, not Brian. Sorry, my argument would be more coherent if I could actually string a sentence together.
Silly hyperbolic statements like “Paper is phasing out” don’t really need to be discussed.
Splitting hairs over which analogies are or are not most fitting to this scenario is pretty ridiculous. At present, the mainstream comics industry depends on a business model in which twenty to twenty-two page pamphlets are sold at three to four dollars a pop, providing maybe eight minutes of entertainment at best each, out of hard-to-find, far-flung specialty shops which don’t exactly present themselves as warmly welcoming to a casual newcomer. The big two comics companies, in the meantime, have until now largely given up on attracting new readers, instead focusing on a strategy of milking as much as they possibly can out of their existing readership through crossovers and other short-term stunts. Readership was on the decline even before the global economy tanked; now we’re in the midst of the worst economy since the great depression. Does anyone think this model is working?
DC is trying to do something different; at least I’ll give them that. I suspect it’s not going to work, but I suspect that largely because it doesn’t look like they’re too scared to really commit to this. The digital prices are too high (presumably because they’re too nervous to totally cut the cord to the direct market), indications are it’s a soft reboot instead of a hard reboot (where a hard reboot would be a lot more accessible to the new readers this is presumably designed to attract), and beyond that there’s just a bunch of things they’re just getting wrong (52 ongoing titles is insane; the Jim Lee redesigns look laughably dated).
All of that said: if this medium is going to survive, at some point in the very near future it needs to make the transition to digital. Publishers of books, magazines, and newspapers have been wrestling with this for well over a decade; it speaks to the fatally backward insularity of the comic industry that this still seems controversial.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Grant Morrison was consulted about the relaunch, and it all fits into his Evil Masterplan”
Was it also part of his masterplan to have the original ending of Batman RIP derailed by editorial?
From what I can tell, Morrison doesn’t have any real overarching plan – he came up with the idea for Batman Inc. and its two-year-arc relatively recently, toward the tail-end of Batman and Robin/Return of Bruce Wayne. His work on Batman has been fairly middling at best, at any rate, and while I liked All-Star Superman as much as anyone I’m bored at the prospect of seeing him rehash it (especially without Quitely). I’d much rather he finish up Seaguy, and stick to non-DCU projects in general, where he tends to have more to say than just “here’s a superhero, and here’s another version of that superhero for that superhero to interact with.”
But I am convinced that digital downloading is eventually going to become the ONLY means to purchase a new comic book within five to ten years”
Fine. then I don´t have to spend money for american comics anymore 🙂 This is like saying that the music industry will kill the CD production to sell everything just as files. Compared to music comics don´t have the same audience. While I can see people buying an MP3player if you want to listen to music I don´t see buying everyone an IPod to continue reading new comics. But maybe the Big Two will kill the Direct Market, who knows.
I see the going Digital also as an attempt to steer against the piracy where they lose an ungodly amount of revenue each week.
Scott Lobdell writing again? Damn, my bet was on Howard Mackie as the first of Harras´ old friends coming back to more prominent titles. There is no other publishing scene which is as inbred as comics 🙂
i think print publishing is more durable than some people here think. yes, its probably on its way out, but very slowly. technology still isnt that far – looking at a screen is still more taxing for the eyes than looking at paper – and there is tradition, which shouldnt be dismissed as something old and worthless. i think printed comics will last longer than music cd’s.
Interesting reactions. Despite getting my point, mika felt compelled to pick apart my analogy (which, yes, I’m aware wasn’t perfect) anyway and Joe S. Walker has basically said “Oh, just ignore Brian, everyone.” Joe, just to clarify, I didn’t mean that paper would no longer be manufactured, okay?
“I see the going Digital also as an attempt to steer against the piracy where they lose an ungodly amount of revenue each week.”
I agree going digital is partly due to that, but only partly. Mostly it’s about trying to reach the people out there who aren’t reading comics at all.
But I’m thinking on the same lines as moose on this one. DC seems to have the right idea but being overly-cautious might be what ends up tanking it.
Brian, I think the flaw in your analysis is that you’re assuming publishers don’t WANT to go digital. It looks to me like their main concern is that they’re dependent on the direct market and can’t risk doing anything that might wreck it before a replacement channel is available. It’s not a safe assumption that the audience would simply follow comics to digital if left with no other choice. That assumes that everyone has (or can afford) a tablet computer on which to conveniently view them, which simply isn’t the case. It might be in a few years time, but trying to make the transition too early is a potentially disastrous error that could bring the whole industry crashing down, and the publishers are right to be very wary of that risk.
Silly question…..will DC’s new digital effort be exclusively for iThings, or will they be providing apps / content for other tablet lines such as Google Android, Blackberry Playbook, or even a tablet PC? I’ve been considering buying a tablet for a while, and this could be the tipping point for me (unless it’s exclusive to Apple, in which case maybe not).
If they think that going digital is going to help against piracy, they’re mad. It’s going to be far quicker to break whatever rubbish encryption they use than it is to scan twenty-two pages and put them in a .cbr file.
Kelvin, that’s why a lot of this seems like too little, too late to me. The music industry started moving to a digital sales model in the early 00s when it became clear that the RIAA couldn’t simply sue piracy out of existence; by doing so – and by training consumers to think of shopping for digital content as cool – they managed to retain far more of a customer base than they otherwise might have.
With comics, though, we’ve had a decade for a robust community of scanners and uploaders to flourish on torrent sites and file forums, and it’s going to be damn hard to get anyone to switch back to paying for that content – especially if DC is asking people to pay two bucks a pop for it.
But, again, all this really indicates is that the move to digital really should’ve happened a long time ago. I can appreciate Paul’s point that DC and Marvel are stuck balancing between the old market that currently supports them and the new market they want to have, but at some point they have to make the transition and leave the old market behind, because it’s dying, and if they stay where they are they’ll die with it.
I for one welcome our new digital overlords.
One thing I think that will be a by-product of our shift to digital comics is the form itself. In other words, stories are a 24 (or was it 22? 20?) page issue a month. With digital, you aren’t limited to this. I would love to see some exploration of this digitally. I argue that having an 8 page story 4 times a month for 99 cents each gives you nearly the same price point but feels much more palatable for the consumer. Remember how floppies were there just to be collected in a trade? Why not have digital chapters there to be collected in a floppy?
“Brian, I think the flaw in your analysis is that you’re assuming publishers don’t WANT to go digital.”
Actually, I’m not. It’s just that my caveman analogy sucks. I think publishers would love to go there, but it’s like walking a balancing beam from one side to another.
“It’s not a safe assumption that the audience would simply follow comics to digital if left with no other choice. That assumes that everyone has (or can afford) a tablet computer on which to conveniently view them, which simply isn’t the case.”
I don’t own a tablet computer either. It’s not 100% necessary if you already own a PC and comiXology’s digital comic book reader is no longer exclusive to just mobile devices as of one year ago.
Sure, I don’t have the convenience of portability that a tab comp would offer, but I’ve been able to enjoy comics for more than thirty years without lugging my long boxes around town with me. I’m pretty accustomed to reading them at home.
And if a household doesn’t already have at least one PC in the year 2011, it probably means they can’t afford one, which means it’s unlikely that anyone living in that household is collecting comics in the first place.
I just want to say that there was a kids’ TV show on the weekend, you know the type where two hosts waste as much time as possible between showing cartoons, in order to call it local content. Anyway, this one segment involved them eating different types of food or something. But the segment introduction used the same intro music as House to Astonish.
On JMS and Sins Past, JMS said two relevant things.
The first was that he planned for Peter to be the father of the twins, and Quesada ordered it be changed to Norman.
The second was that he thought the Mephisto deal would remove the kids from continuity, but Quesada said no. The kids would remain in continuity.
What JMS didn’t make clear was whether he knew before creating the kids that there would be a Spider-Man reboot which he believed would wipe them out, or if the reboot plans didn’t come until later (and he thought he’d be able to get rid of a story that he didn’t like.)
Baines, it’s quite clear that the twins storyline changed as it was happening; if you recall the original reveal, the male twin looked just like Peter, something which made no sense at all by the end when it turned out he was Norman’s son.
Unless … Norman Osborn is Peter’s father!
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Grant Morrison was consulted about the relaunch, and it all fits into his Evil Masterplan
Well, he seems to be off the Bat-Books, so I’m not sure what kind of masterplan that is.
DC deserve credit for at least having the balls to go ahead with this mammoth relaunch. They’ve been way behind Marvel for ages now and this may end up giving them the shot in the arm needed. Plus if at least moderately successful, it could end up being far better for readers in general.
Especially ones becoming increasingly disillusioned with Marvel and their disdain towards readers. Tom Brevoort announcing on CBR the other week that the back-ups would be dropping from Amazing Spider-Man & Avengers & New Avengers, yet still remaining at $3.99 but now for only 22 pages is akin to sticking the middle finger up at current buyers of those titles.
I agree that launching all 52 books in the one month would be tempting a disaster. But even if they spread it over say 3 months, you’d still be talking about 4 new #1’s per week and people might be forced between which ones they can afford to buy or try.
Goodness knows how Frank Cho doesn’t have the time to draw a 4-issue mini for a company that doesn’t really have deadlines. Especially since he finally got that Ultimates book done. Not wishing to know exact figures, but curious what, if any, kind of pay Axel Medellin got for this book & how it was worked out given he presumably signed away any creator rights.
Real nice to hear your thoughts and positive words on Criminal. The comic combination of Brubaker/Phillips/Staples usually results in my favourite read that particular week.
Paul Notar: DC is available through Comixology, which is already available on Android, plus their Flash web interface ought to work on a hypothetical Windows tablet or the Blackberry Playbook, although I don’t know that for sure.
More Cockney Frank Cho please!
“I’ve never read any Shade, but I’m sticking with Secret Seven because I’m one of the few people that liked Shadowpack and cares about the Enchantress.”
I love that the one guy who will admit to liking Shadowpact gets the name of the book wrong.
“DC deserve credit for at least having the balls to go ahead with this mammoth relaunch. They’ve been way behind Marvel for ages now and this may end up giving them the shot in the arm needed. Plus if at least moderately successful, it could end up being far better for readers in general.”
The tiny bit of hope I held for that died once I saw that John Constantine would be starring in something called ‘Justice League Dark’. Jesus fucking Christ . . .
“Justice League Dark” sounds as if DC are going into the chocolate business. Coming next: Justice League Truffle.
Justice League Dark made me laugh. Also, nine – NINE! – Bat-books? Oh, DC.
From a Newsarama interview with Milligan on Justice League Dark:-
‘When I was thinking about these characters, the analogy that formed in my head was with cops. The fact that many cops have ruined marriages and drink or have drug problems. Are, in fact, a mess. Our characters are laden with these insane powers – I’m interested how that affects their lives. How do they cope? What about their loved ones? How the hell do they cope?’
Now, I’d be fairly interested in a book like this but not with the roster JLD has. Guys like Green Arrow and Arsenal, Metamorpho, Hawk and Dove, Huntress (maybe) should be on the book Milligan is describing, not the Vertigo squad they are using.
I hope they let Deadman be a bit more like his old self, I hated Brightest Day’s use of Deadman because for years he struck me as a guy in a horrible position who’d nevertheless accepted his fate and was making the best of it. Suddenly he’s torn over it? Bleh.
Which character on Justice League Dark would actually refer to their team as Justice League Dark?