DC Comics move to the West Coast

[PyroTwilight]

Oh yeah there's plenty of artists from all over the globe these days so thanks to faster shipment time and the internet as a whole the location of DC's headquarters hasn't really mattered in a very long while. Sad to see it leave NY though as a New Yorker. XD

[Jim Kelly]

I believe that most of the publishing industry is still headquartered in New York--for the major publishers. So DC leaving New York is a sign that their publishing isn't their top priority anymore and they're about the entertainment industry.

I was sad back when it happened, because I always had this romantic feeling about DC in New York. And, no, not about the artists and writers who worked for the publsher as freelance. There have always been writers and artists in farflung places since at least the 1940s and maybe even earlier than that. Other than people working in production--or someone who was also an editor or publisher, like Robert Kanigher, Carmine Infantino, Paul Levitz or Jim Lee--most rarely ever worked at the actual offices.

So the romance I'm talking about is the editorial and production end of things. That New York business feeling, the big publishing game. Men and women who took the train to work every day--Julie Schwartz with his bean soup, cardgames at noon. That workplace drama--that's what I've always been romantic over. I can't imagine it being the same in California.

Now that I think about it, it's strange that--despite there being many TV shows and movies set in L..A. and its surroundings--I don't carry around this imaginary L.A. in my head. I have no sense of it. Yet I've always had this feeling of New York. It's a very vivid place in my imagination and everything about it is thrilling.

[MajorHoy]

. . . Now that I think about it, it's strange that--despite there being many TV shows and movies set in L..A. and its surroundings--I don't carry around this imaginary L.A. in my head. I have no sense of it. Yet I've always had this feeling of New York. It's a very vivid place in my imagination and everything about it is thrilling.

It's been a little while since I was in New York City (and, more specifically, the borough of Manhattan), but it has always had that air of "specialness" to it.

[Dr Quinch]

And that's why you get so many foreign creators now. You used to have a few, like Claremont on X-Men in the 1970s. But nowadays they're all over the place.

Is Chris Claremont really considered a foreigner in the United States? He's been living there since he was three years old.

[Doctor Bifrost]

So the romance I'm talking about is the editorial and production end of things. That New York business feeling, the big publishing game. Men and women who took the train to work every day--Julie Schwartz with his bean soup, cardgames at noon. That workplace drama--that's what I've always been romantic over. I can't imagine it being the same in California.

I'm not sure it's the same in New York anymore either. To me - and I'm from NY originally, and live in California now - that description has a very 1950's feel to it.

[CaptCleghorn]

I believe that most of the publishing industry is still headquartered in New York--for the major publishers. So DC leaving New York is a sign that their publishing isn't their top priority anymore and they're about the entertainment industry.

I was sad back when it happened, because I always had this romantic feeling about DC in New York. And, no, not about the artists and writers who worked for the publsher as freelance. There have always been writers and artists in farflung places since at least the 1940s and maybe even earlier than that. Other than people working in production--or someone who was also an editor or publisher, like Robert Kanigher, Carmine Infantino, Paul Levitz or Jim Lee--most rarely ever worked at the actual offices.

So the romance I'm talking about is the editorial and production end of things. That New York business feeling, the big publishing game. Men and women who took the train to work every day--Julie Schwartz with his bean soup, cardgames at noon. That workplace drama--that's what I've always been romantic over. I can't imagine it being the same in California.

Now that I think about it, it's strange that--despite there being many TV shows and movies set in L..A. and its surroundings--I don't carry around this imaginary L.A. in my head. I have no sense of it. Yet I've always had this feeling of New York. It's a very vivid place in my imagination and everything about it is thrilling.

Have you read Steranko's History of Comics? there are many stories of the Golden Age days which have that same romantic feel to them.

[Jim Kelly]

Remember when DC and Marvel had their own baseball teams and would compete against each other every year, back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s? They'd report on the results in the columns of their respective comics.

[mrbrklyn]

Um, wrong.

New York dominated the early days of television, but then it moved out here. It was just a natural process, and television didn't crash and burn.

Tech dominates today's world, and it's chiefly a West Coast phenomenon.

It was a question about how moving from NYC to LA has affected the product, and in fact, it has.

But as long has you have skipped into the subject of NYC envy, let me just put it to you this way. People in NYC to the most part don't give a damn about LA. It is a little city with a monolithic culture currently being sustained by Chinese tourism who are easily impressed with very little, and the exploitation of sex and violence to the masses. I've spent enough time in LA to see that it is as city that bored me to pieces in my time there. I dread going there every time I go there. It has no soul. It is just a big knotted ball of frustrating traffic, high prices, and gross indifference.

It has lousy food, a rotted theater district, it is overwhelmed with homeless, no live Jazz of any quality, a total lack of Arts (the Getty truly is second rate and sucks), a lack of industry, opera, of symphony. It is segregated, racist, uninspiring, devoid of culture, self-referential and delusional, and without seemingly and heart. What binds it together, only god knows. It is an ugly city who's streets are too wide to formulate any kind of sense of community. It is noisy and ecologically unsound. It doesn't even have a decent movie theater outside the multiplex near the Staples center. But the worst thing is the lack of heart and the people of Los Angeles display. Everyone is always on presentation mode. It is nearly impossible to strike up any conversation.

New York City, on the other hand, is comprised of largely tightly knitted communities, often immigrant communities, tied together by a mass transit system, which acts as a cooking pot of human culture. People come elbow to elbow and interact, causing massive cross cultural pollination which breeds creativity, music, art, food, and supports families. It is also a city that is constantly transforming itself, rebuilding the old on the new. The reason the entertainment business left after being germinated here, is because of cheap real estate and because the movie industry wasn't capable of dominating a city and deep and complex as New York as it dominates Los Angeles...and that is something they just couldn't tolerate. The entire entertainment industry would be a minor player in our vast economy. And it is propped up by petty legal standards that it tries to force on everyone else.

But even with that, New Yorks entertainment business is hardly missing anything. We have the leading live theater venues in the world. To quote Variety Magazine:

Spending on filmed production in New York City has grown a whopping $1.5 billion in the last four years, hitting a total of $8.7 billion on the back of a TV boom that has also helped push the total number of full-time equivalent employments in the filmed production industry to more than 100,000, according to a new study released by the Boston Consulting Group.

That spending represents a rise of more than 20% compared to the most recent previous study, which pegged total spending at $7.2 billion for 2011. The latest report, commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, also noted a rise of 10% in full-time-equivalent work (FTE) opportunities in the city’s entertainment industry, rising to 104,000 from 94,000 in 2011.
https://variety.com/2015/film/news/n...ct-1201617954/

In fact I can't think of anything that New York still leads in. Some folks in New York still think to this day that the outworlders can't get along without them, but somehow we muddle through.

And your AIM account is still working? How did you manage that? I have to admit it was pretty creative.

Well for one thing, NY leads in TV filmings

New York has become the primary site for filming TV drama pilots, supplanting Los Angeles, which saw overall pilot production hit an all-time low according to a survey released Tuesday by FilmLA.

The 2013-14 development cycle saw New York, with 24 drama projects, dethrone Los Angeles, home to 19 drama projects, to become North America’s most attractive location for one-hour TV pilot production according to the non-profit permitting agency’s Television Pilot Production Report. TV dramas are the most desirable for states because they tend to be high-end productions with multiple episodes.

Overall, Los Angeles was home to 90 projects (19 one-hour dramas and 71 half-hour comedies) out of 203 tracked, giving it a 44 percent slice of the pilot production pie. That’s the first time L.A.’s share has dipped below 50 percent. Last year, L.A.’s pilot production share was 52 percent, and six years earlier, a commanding 82 percent.

https://www.thebalance.com/ny-vs-la-...areers-1283472
https://www.broadwayworld.com/articl...onomy-20151015
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...503-story.html

LA is just another feeding ground for NYC cast offs.

[Nick Miller]

Is Chris Claremont really considered a foreigner in the United States? He's been living there since he was three years old.

i'd like to see his papers please!

Go back to Britannia!!!

[Osiris-Rex]

Never been to New York but I did live in LA for four years and everything you say about it is true. Couldn't wait to get out and am now living in a lovely city in Arizona that is rich in heritage and culture.
(No, not Phoenix, that is as bad as LA). LA sucks alone for driving Supergirl out. There is a reason all the CW superhero shows either film in Vancouver, or Atlanta in the case of Black Lightning.

i'd like to see his papers please!

Go back to Britannia!!!

Is he a Dreamer?

[mrbrklyn]

I believe that most of the publishing industry is still headquartered in New York--for the major publishers. So DC leaving New York is a sign that their publishing isn't their top priority anymore and they're about the entertainment industry.

Well, that is it in a nutshell and the comics product seems to show that through. The industry was a child of the city. Artists and writers were pulled from the pool of talent the city produced. They weren't always centered in NYC, obviously Superman was from Clevland, but they inevitably got pulled in and was affected by the city's experience. There was a workmans ethnic to the books and the creative process. Now it is all about blockbuster films, and big panels in the comics.

To put this in prespective, I give you this quote from the bio on Simonson

In August 1972, Simonson traveled to New York with his Star Slammers portfolio, and met with Gerry Boudreau, a friend who worked for DC Comics, where, as Simonson recalls, many young artists had begun working in the 1970s, in contrast to Marvel, which Simonson perceived as more stagnant. Boudreau arranged a meeting between Simonson and editor Archie Goodwin. After meeting with Goodwin, Simonson went to DC's coffee room, where he saw Howard Chaykin, Michael Kaluta, Berni Wrightson and Alan Weiss sitting together. Simonson struck up a conversation with the artists, who looked at his portfolio. Kaluta showed Simonson's work to Assistant Production Manager Jack Adler, who in turn showed it to DC Publisher Carmine Infantino, who after being shown the portfolio, summoned Simonson into his office. After speaking to Simonson for about ten minutes, he had Goodwin and his fellow editors Julius Schwartz and Joe Orlando give Simonson work. Simonson walked out of Infantino's office with jobs from each one of them.[1]

At one point Simonson lived in the same Queens apartment building as artists Allen Milgrom, Howard Chaykin and Bernie Wrightson. Simonson recalls, "We'd get together at 3 a.m. They'd come up and we'd have popcorn and sit around and talk about whatever a 26, 27 and 20-year-old guys talk about. Our art, TV, you name it. I pretty much knew at the time, 'These are the good ole days.'"[6]

I was sad back when it happened, because I always had this romantic feeling about DC in New York. And, no, not about the artists and writers who worked for the publsher as freelance. There have always been writers and artists in farflung places since at least the 1940s and maybe even earlier than that. Other than people working in production--or someone who was also an editor or publisher, like Robert Kanigher, Carmine Infantino, Paul Levitz or Jim Lee--most rarely ever worked at the actual offices.

So the romance I'm talking about is the editorial and production end of things. That New York business feeling, the big publishing game. Men and women who took the train to work every day--Julie Schwartz with his bean soup, cardgames at noon. That workplace drama--that's what I've always been romantic over. I can't imagine it being the same in California.

Now that I think about it, it's strange that--despite there being many TV shows and movies set in L..A. and its surroundings--I don't carry around this imaginary L.A. in my head. I have no sense of it. Yet I've always had this feeling of New York. It's a very vivid place in my imagination and everything about it is thrilling.

It feels at this point that Comics are not the end product at this point. When Disney buys Marvel, Marvel clearly becomes primarily a movie company. The books become promotional art for movies rehashing storyline that are decade old. And it is not that movies etc were ever not central to comics success. Superman's success could largely be contributed to Max Flashier who put the man of steel on the silver screen. But there was always dedication to the comics product, and as Chaykin would say, that product was often informed by the NYC experience.

Likewise, the Comics was a child of the Newspaper industry. That is nearly a dead industry, and perhaps Comic Books, as we grow up to understand them, are likewise, dead man walking, and the movie spin off, and amateur comic product is all that remains.

[mrbrklyn]

I'm not sure it's the same in New York anymore either. To me - and I'm from NY originally, and live in California now - that description has a very 1950's feel to it.

that is actually a good point but not about the 1950's. The post 9-11 NYC is a new breed.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

It was a question about how moving from NYC to LA has affected the product, and in fact, it has.

But as long has you have skipped into the subject of NYC envy, let me just put it to you this way. People in NYC to the most part don't give a damn about LA. It is a little city with a monolithic culture currently being sustained by Chinese tourism who are easily impressed with very little, and the exploitation of sex and violence to the masses. I've spent enough time in LA to see that it is as city that bored me to pieces in my time there. I dread going there every time I go there. It has no soul. It is just a big knotted ball of frustrating traffic, high prices, and gross indifference.

It has lousy food, a rotted theater district, it is overwhelmed with homeless, no live Jazz of any quality, a total lack of Arts (the Getty truly is second rate and sucks), a lack of industry, opera, of symphony. It is segregated, racist, uninspiring, devoid of culture, self-referential and delusional, and without seemingly and heart. What binds it together, only god knows. It is an ugly city who's streets are too wide to formulate any kind of sense of community. It is noisy and ecologically unsound. It doesn't even have a decent movie theater outside the multiplex near the Staples center. But the worst thing is the lack of heart and the people of Los Angeles display. Everyone is always on presentation mode. It is nearly impossible to strike up any conversation.

New York City, on the other hand, is comprised of largely tightly knitted communities, often immigrant communities, tied together by a mass transit system, which acts as a cooking pot of human culture. People come elbow to elbow and interact, causing massive cross cultural pollination which breeds creativity, music, art, food, and supports families. It is also a city that is constantly transforming itself, rebuilding the old on the new. The reason the entertainment business left after being germinated here, is because of cheap real estate and because the movie industry wasn't capable of dominating a city and deep and complex as New York as it dominates Los Angeles...and that is something they just couldn't tolerate. The entire entertainment industry would be a minor player in our vast economy. And it is propped up by petty legal standards that it tries to force on everyone else.

But even with that, New Yorks entertainment business is hardly missing anything. We have the leading live theater venues in the world. To quote Variety Magazine:

Spending on filmed production in New York City has grown a whopping $1.5 billion in the last four years, hitting a total of $8.7 billion on the back of a TV boom that has also helped push the total number of full-time equivalent employments in the filmed production industry to more than 100,000, according to a new study released by the Boston Consulting Group.

That spending represents a rise of more than 20% compared to the most recent previous study, which pegged total spending at $7.2 billion for 2011. The latest report, commissioned by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, also noted a rise of 10% in full-time-equivalent work (FTE) opportunities in the city’s entertainment industry, rising to 104,000 from 94,000 in 2011.
https://variety.com/2015/film/news/n...ct-1201617954/

Well for one thing, NY leads in TV filmings

New York has become the primary site for filming TV drama pilots, supplanting Los Angeles, which saw overall pilot production hit an all-time low according to a survey released Tuesday by FilmLA.

The 2013-14 development cycle saw New York, with 24 drama projects, dethrone Los Angeles, home to 19 drama projects, to become North America’s most attractive location for one-hour TV pilot production according to the non-profit permitting agency’s Television Pilot Production Report. TV dramas are the most desirable for states because they tend to be high-end productions with multiple episodes.

Overall, Los Angeles was home to 90 projects (19 one-hour dramas and 71 half-hour comedies) out of 203 tracked, giving it a 44 percent slice of the pilot production pie. That’s the first time L.A.’s share has dipped below 50 percent. Last year, L.A.’s pilot production share was 52 percent, and six years earlier, a commanding 82 percent.

https://www.thebalance.com/ny-vs-la-...areers-1283472
https://www.broadwayworld.com/articl...onomy-20151015
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...503-story.html

LA is just another feeding ground for NYC cast offs.

Does this have to become a NY vs. LA thing? Seriously.

DC moved to LA because WB Studios is headquartered there.

[El_Gato]

Seems like someone has a case of West Coast envy!

Basically what Zee guy said, is the correct answer.

[Trey Strain]

Seems like someone has a case of West Coast envy!

The writing on DC's comics won't get any worse in L.A. That's his thesis. It's actually funny.