Page 1 of 4 1234 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 52
  1. #1
    Fantastic Member Colt Cape's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    359

    Default DC is lacking...

    DC is doing great right now with their comics. But it seems that outside of superhero comics, they don’t have much else going on outside of a few supernatural titles. Is it just me or is DC lacking in genres they used to be abundant in, such as sword & sorcery fantasy, westerns, war stories, and other non-superhero genres?
    DC, please give Jonah Hex a new solo.

  2. #2
    Uncanny Member MajorHoy's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    29,974

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Colt Cape View Post
    DC is doing great right now with their comics. But it seems that outside of superhero comics, they don’t have much else going on outside of a few supernatural titles. Is it just me or is DC lacking in genres they used to be abundant in, such as sword & sorcery fantasy, westerns, war stories, and other non-superhero genres?
    But those other genres may not sell enough to justify DC printing them. They gave Jonah Hex a series during the New52, and they had some other war-related books then. Also had some sword & sorcery stuff in the New52. But it seems sales weren't good enough to justify continuing them.

  3. #3
    Astonishing Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    3,335

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by MajorHoy View Post
    But those other genres may not sell enough to justify DC printing them. They gave Jonah Hex a series during the New52, and they had some other war-related books then. Also had some sword & sorcery stuff in the New52. But it seems sales weren't good enough to justify continuing them.
    yep. that's pretty much it.

  4. #4
    penetrator of things
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    679

    Default

    DC tried all those in the New 52.

    no sell
    hi my name is tako and i like to grow leeks
    @takoleeks

  5. #5
    Ultimate Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    Chicago
    Posts
    19,966

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Colt Cape View Post
    DC is doing great right now with their comics. But it seems that outside of superhero comics, they don’t have much else going on outside of a few supernatural titles. Is it just me or is DC lacking in genres they used to be abundant in, such as sword & sorcery fantasy, westerns, war stories, and other non-superhero genres?
    That's been true for awhile now, but they still have more variety than Marvel. And if you count the Vertigo Line, they aren't doing terribly although there's much room for important.

  6. #6
    Fantastic Member Colt Cape's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    359

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by MajorHoy View Post
    But those other genres may not sell enough to justify DC printing them. They gave Jonah Hex a series during the New52, and they had some other war-related books then. Also had some sword & sorcery stuff in the New52. But it seems sales weren't good enough to justify continuing them.
    True, but a lot of things failed in the New 52. It’s weird that they didn’t try again in Rebirth.
    DC, please give Jonah Hex a new solo.

  7. #7
    Mighty Member LifeIsILL's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    1,657

    Default

    They should do Weird War Stories again......WW2 soldiers fighting dinosaurs, robots, demons.....how can that not sell?

    They're also seriously lacking in cosmic stuff besides GL. I'm sure Legion has a hardcore following.

  8. #8
    Invincible Member Vordan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    26,376

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by LifeIsILL View Post
    They should do Weird War Stories again......WW2 soldiers fighting dinosaurs, robots, demons.....how can that not sell?

    They're also seriously lacking in cosmic stuff besides GL. I'm sure Legion has a hardcore following.
    They did do that. It didn’t sell because people don’t want it. They want Batman, Flash, and maybe Superman/WW. Any time DC tries to bring back genres that have lain dormant they flop.

  9. #9
    Boisterously Confused
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    9,449

    Default

    I wonder if a few such niche offerings would fly as a mini-series?

    I could see a finite story (6-12 issues) following WWII commando teams from each side that discover (to their horror) that the island they're reconning is actually Dinosaur Island (oops!).
    Similarly, depending on what (if anything) DC is going to do with the JSA, I could see a sort of All-Star Squadron without superheroes, tracking The European Theater of WWII through the eyes of several different characters. Having an interconnected story with chapters that separately feature Sgt. Rock and Easy Co., The Losers, The Unknown Soldier, The Grave Digger, The Haunted Tank, etc., could be pretty nifty.

  10. #10
    The Fastest Post Alive! Buried Alien's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    7,538

    Default

    Mass interest in some of those genres among youth has greatly diminished in the 21st Century. Old West and World War II adventures that do not feature superheroes are a hard sell today.

    Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)
    Buried Alien - THE FASTEST POST ALIVE!

    First CBR Appearance (Historical): November, 1996

    First CBR Appearance (Modern): April, 2014

  11. #11
    Fantastic Member Colt Cape's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    359

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    I wonder if a few such niche offerings would fly as a mini-series?

    I could see a finite story (6-12 issues) following WWII commando teams from each side that discover (to their horror) that the island they're reconning is actually Dinosaur Island (oops!).
    Similarly, depending on what (if anything) DC is going to do with the JSA, I could see a sort of All-Star Squadron without superheroes, tracking The European Theater of WWII through the eyes of several different characters. Having an interconnected story with chapters that separately feature Sgt. Rock and Easy Co., The Losers, The Unknown Soldier, The Grave Digger, The Haunted Tank, etc., could be pretty nifty.
    I could see this working well with a top-tier writer.
    DC, please give Jonah Hex a new solo.

  12. #12
    Retired
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    18,747

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Buried Alien View Post
    Mass interest in some of those genres among youth has greatly diminished in the 21st Century. Old West and World War II adventures that do not feature superheroes are a hard sell today.
    Let's say you're right about WW II and western, you can't say that kids no longer like horror, crime, humour, sci-fi and fantasy. I'd also say they like war/shooter adventures--WW II and the Old West are just periods where those kinds of adventures could be set, but there are other periods for the same sort of thing.

    The problem with DC and Marvel is they've become identified with super-heroes. So when you look for those comics, that's what you're expecting to find. If you want all the other stuff, without super-heroes, you're going to look somewhere else and probably not even in the comic bins.

    DC/Marvel have seemed to lump all those other things into the super-hero comics. So you read a super-hero comic, but there's crime, war, humour, horror, sci-fi and fantasy in the mix. It's like Flintstone vitamins for comics nerds. They're scared to take the regular multi-vitamins but make that multi-vitamin look like Batman and they'll swallow all the required crime, war, humour, horror, sci-fi, fantasy elements that build a strong imagination.

    The one important element that's missing is true to life drama. Boys would never buy romance comics back in the day, but those were where you could get something close to actual life. Super-heroes are not real life, so it's impossible to tell a story that's true to life--the best super-heroes can do is allegory or soap opera.

  13. #13
    Extraordinary Member kjn's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2018
    Posts
    4,875

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Buried Alien View Post
    Mass interest in some of those genres among youth has greatly diminished in the 21st Century. Old West and World War II adventures that do not feature superheroes are a hard sell today.
    Those two genres yes, but to me there seems to be a healthy interest in other genres coming from outside Marvel and DC. Image seems to do a good job with fantasy stories, and manga covers a huge variety of genres.

    I imagine the failure of DC (or Marvel) to do stuff in those genres partly is because they lack the distribution channels to reach those genres (due to being tied to the comic bookshops which have become tied to the demographic of superhero readers) and maybe because they lack the editorial instincts for publishing other type of stories than superhero stories nowadays.

  14. #14
    Fantastic Member Colt Cape's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2018
    Posts
    359

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post
    Let's say you're right about WW II and western, you can't say that kids no longer like horror, crime, humour, sci-fi and fantasy. I'd also say they like war/shooter adventures--WW II and the Old West are just periods where those kinds of adventures could be set, but there are other periods for the same sort of thing.

    The problem with DC and Marvel is they've become identified with super-heroes. So when you look for those comics, that's what you're expecting to find. If you want all the other stuff, without super-heroes, you're going to look somewhere else and probably not even in the comic bins.

    DC/Marvel have seemed to lump all those other things into the super-hero comics. So you read a super-hero comic, but there's crime, war, humour, horror, sci-fi and fantasy in the mix. It's like Flintstone vitamins for comics nerds. They're scared to take the regular multi-vitamins but make that multi-vitamin look like Batman and they'll swallow all the required crime, war, humour, horror, sci-fi, fantasy elements that build a strong imagination.

    The one important element that's missing is true to life drama. Boys would never buy romance comics back in the day, but those were where you could get something close to actual life. Super-heroes are not real life, so it's impossible to tell a story that's true to life--the best super-heroes can do is allegory or soap opera.
    Quote Originally Posted by kjn View Post
    Those two genres yes, but to me there seems to be a healthy interest in other genres coming from outside Marvel and DC. Image seems to do a good job with fantasy stories, and manga covers a huge variety of genres.

    I imagine the failure of DC (or Marvel) to do stuff in those genres partly is because they lack the distribution channels to reach those genres (due to being tied to the comic bookshops which have become tied to the demographic of superhero readers) and maybe because they lack the editorial instincts for publishing other type of stories than superhero stories nowadays.
    A-friggin-men.
    DC, please give Jonah Hex a new solo.

  15. #15
    Ultimate Member Lee Stone's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Louisiana
    Posts
    12,302

    Default

    Looking back to the '80s...
    Let's take January 1984...

    DC had 36 comics released that month.
    Roughly, about 21 were traditional superhero titles.

    The other 15 were:
    Fantasy - Amethyst, Arion, Warlord
    Western - Arak, Jonah Hex
    War - Blackhawk, G.I. Combat, Sgt. Rock
    Horror - Swamp Thing
    Sci-Fi - Atari Force, Omega Men, Star Trek
    Crime - Nathaniel Dusk
    Anthologies - Best of DC, New Talent Showcase

    I think that the main reason DC doesn't still have the same ratio of superhero:non-superhero today is because with the rise of comic shops as the main (read: sole) distribution of comics in the '90s, indies became more prominent and they mostly focused on non-superhero stuff. And they arguably tend to do genre fiction comics better than DC or Marvel. If only because they're not tied to having to maintain a continuity outside of the comic, itself.

    Then combine that with how DC (and Marvel) learned they can make a lot of money with superhero events (especially crossovers) and variant covers. So superheroes got DC's attention. This began roughly with Death of Superman, but the seeds of it really started with Crisis on Infinite Earths and Dark Knight Returns. With a lot of help from Marvel's X-Men showing that an expansive franchise could test the limits of how many comics a reader would follow for one team or group of characters, leading to more and more multi-title franchises.
    Before New Mutants, Alpha Flight, X-Factor and Excalibur came along, there were only a few multi-title franchises: Batman (Batman, Detective, Brave and the Bold, World's Finest, Batman Family), Superman (Action Comics, Superman, DC Comics Presents, World's Finest, Superman Family), and Spider-Man (Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Tales).

    So, while DC and Marvel are producing almost three times more comics than they were in the '80s, there's less variety because a lot of franchises have expanded into multiple titles and, aside from Vertigo and the occasional tester, they both leave non-superhero titles to Image, Dark Horse and Dynamite.

    I think with the boom that superhero fiction has been enjoying since the MCU and the CW shows began, it's not going to change anytime soon.
    If we do get any genre fiction from DC, it'll be like Justice League Dark: a superhero comic with undertones of another genre. Because they have accepted that their current audience is superhero-specific.
    Otherwise, they'll let Vertigo limp along as a tester or just leave the non-superhero fiction to Image, Dark Horse and Dynamite.
    At least until the current boom runs its course. Which, it eventually will, just like the Reality Show and the Procedural Law/Forensics Drama booms.

    Another way to look at it is that during those times when DC did put out strong non-superhero comics alongside their superhero offerings, those other genres were just hotter than superheroes outside of comics.
    Currently, the superhero genre is hot outside of comics, so DC is simply doubling down on the genre since it's the one that they do best with.
    "There's magic in the sound of analog audio." - CNET.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •