"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!
Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010
Pre-CBR Reboot Posts: 4,362
THE CBR COMMUNITY STANDARDS & RULES ~ So... what's your excuse now?
Was gonna say, once upon a time this title was called Batman, or Detective comics. It's been about twenty or so years, and I miss that Batman. Damn.
A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!
Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010
Pre-CBR Reboot Posts: 4,362
THE CBR COMMUNITY STANDARDS & RULES ~ So... what's your excuse now?
"Different" doesn't always mean "profitable".
DC has published plenty of "different" comic books that didn't do all that well on the market side.
And if you're basing your ideas solely on the limited responses of this forum, you're actually getting feedback from what % of overall actual comic book consumers?
Last edited by Trey Strain; 08-02-2018 at 01:10 PM.
But the Major is 100% right about our group here not really reflecting the overall market. You really need scientific polling to be able to form an opinion in regard to any comic-book idea, which none of us have at our finger tips. For better or for worse, nobody in the industry at the top really cares what is said here at this site.
As to your question at the head of this thread, I have absolutely no qualms about having a street-level title. If it were available, I would buy it.
A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!
Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010
Pre-CBR Reboot Posts: 4,362
THE CBR COMMUNITY STANDARDS & RULES ~ So... what's your excuse now?
Of course the people who write, draw and publish comics read the message boards. If you did one of those jobs, you'd read them too. Who else are they going to listen to?
What do you think Rebirth was all about? It was a reaction to to older readers grousing nonstop on the message boards for years about what a "debacle" the New 52 was.
You know that Geoff Johns was a member of HEAT for a long time before he wrote Green Lantern, don't you? How did he find out about HEAT? He went online and looked.
I'm sure though that in general when old timers fight change, or fight against ideas that might earn the companies money, the comics companies take that with a grain of salt.
Last edited by Trey Strain; 08-02-2018 at 01:27 PM.
Well, you're free to believe DC makes their decision based on the message boards, Trey, but they still don't. They care only about sales numbers and their own private polling. Having said that, a self-written letter to the published still has its impact if the numbers are large enough.
A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!
Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010
Pre-CBR Reboot Posts: 4,362
THE CBR COMMUNITY STANDARDS & RULES ~ So... what's your excuse now?
The problem here is, I might be interested in a "street-level team", but it would depend in part on who's writing it and what the overall idea behind the team is.
As for what you suggested,No interest in that mess.
I'd prefer something more like bringing back
Something more specific in terms of a geographical area.
(Maybe in a place like Hub City?)
They don't view the message boards as polls because the boards are too skewed away from casual customers. The customers who interest them the most are the casual ones, because growth in a market occurs at the margins.
But they read the boards, and if they see what they think are good ideas, they use them. That's what you would do too.
Heck, not even scientific polling is likely to that accurate. People are generally rather poor at articulating what they want or prefer, and you're likely to run into all sorts of bias as well.
This is basically why the editors earn their money: their job is not really to edit the stories, it is to select stories out from the slushpiles, choose the writers, and give their guidelines to the writers. But in 90% of the cases, you're unlikely to be able to tell a great story from a clunker with an synopsis or outline alone.
We know some creators read here, because they have posted here, like Gail Simone or Ray Dillon. But comics fandom isn't as egalitarian and porous and open in their creator-audience relations as sf fandom (though many of the old creators had their roots thre) for all sorts of reasons. So I wouldn't be surprised if some editors or writers were regular lurkers, or looked in now and then.
But for their sake, I really hope they don't hang out here too much, because we who post here are not representative of the general market. Writing to us would basically mean writing to an echo chamber, and I've seen that happening to both authors and publishers within the science fiction and fantasy field. It can mean short-term success, but means creative stagnation.
As for Rebirth, your theory might be one part of it, but only part. If New 52 were selling like hotcakes, I doubt they'd look at Rebirth, no matter how much old fen were grousing. Sales numbers was likely the main thing. Another thing might have been the stories they received and communication with their writers. It also seems possible that Rebirth was part of the general plan of New 52, but I wouldn't swear to that. It might also be a case of creative stagnation.
A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!
Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010
Pre-CBR Reboot Posts: 4,362
THE CBR COMMUNITY STANDARDS & RULES ~ So... what's your excuse now?