The Didio thing...

[Dred]

I was talking primarily about Cass's run. Even if I prefer Steph's, her run had mediocre sales. Though she didn't have a linewide reboot supporting her, either.

The funny thing about Wally is he got axed the first time when his sales were still good. It had nothing to do with sales or Barry would've been axed in the New 52.

[BohemiaDrinker]

The funny thing about Wally is he got axed the first time when his sales were still good. It had nothing to do with sales or Barry would've been axed in the New 52.

Well, that's true for every Flash who isn't Barry.

First time Wally was cancelled, he was one of the most consistently highest selling books DC put out.

When they decided to cancel Bart, his numbers were still strong. Sure, it was a critical failure, and it was hemorrhaging readers, but it was "fixable" with the numbers they were pulling.

Then the second time they canceled, at the moment the cancelling was announced, Numbers were still good. But it ran some good eight or nine issues where sales went down because, well, everyone knew the book was dead by that point.

I was talking primarily about Cass's run. Even if I prefer Steph's, her run had mediocre sales. Though she didn't have a linewide reboot supporting her, either.

Call me crazy, but Ithink Cass' backlash probably came from the fact that she suffered probably the worst case of character assassination ever seen in DC. The cancelling of the book wasn't really the problem.

[The Darknight Detective]

Well look at who tend to be the top book for DC-it's a BATMAN title.

If not him it's Superman, Barry & WW. It's a select group with Aquaman, Catwoman & Harley popping in.

Marvel it's a crap shoot at times. It can be Peter Parker, Steve Rodgers, X-Men pick a color, Carol, Thor, Jane Foster, Tony Stark or Black Panther. It just depends on what Batman related book and event is out at DC.

Marvel stance on variety has allowed them to beat up on DC at times. Even with Batman leading the way.

Yes Dc can say "we got Batman, Superman, Hal, Barry, Ollie, WW, Harley, Babs, Catwoman & crappy versions of Titans" all day long and "we are tops in pull lists." And be happy.
Problem is the variety from Marvel and others is killing everyone beneath those guys.

In others there is a book for SOMEONE at Marvel more than DC. Of course that tends to be a trade more than a floppy.




That would be Jenette Kahn & Paul Levitz

Under her watch we saw-
Teen Titans restart under Wolfman, Wein & Perez
John Stewart pulled out of limbo and took over as GL for a time
Crisis on Earths
Teen Titans grew up

Paul's watch
saw Hal got nuts
Superman killed
Milestone arrived
Catwoman solo run
Kyle, John & Guy held solo books
Batman broke his back
Aquaman had a long run
Young Justice arrived.
DC was in "better" hands from 1976-2009.

But was it sales-wise? Does anybody have a breakdown of each EIC for the past 50 years that highlights the percentage of the marketplace DC had for each one of them? We could all still argue about the quality of this or that era, but at least we could quantitatively point to which DC head was the most successful instead of pretending otherwise.

[BohemiaDrinker]

But was it sales-wise? Does anybody have a breakdown of each EIC for the past 50 years that highlights the percentage of the marketplace DC had for each one of them?

We probably don't have that, no, because there are no pre-Diamond hard sales numbers anywhere on the internet (that I could find, at least) and some of the early diamond reports were pretty slim on details,. being mostly a "best sellers" rank.

On the same vein, I don't think that todays numbers take into account a lot of what DC and Marvel are doing outside of the direct market - digital, all the graphic novels, etc etc.

However, we do have some historical anecdotes that can help us at least situate. We know that DC was on the verge of being sold to Marvel during the end of the pre-Crisis period, and that Crisis and it's fallout was what it turned it into a somewhat healthy company again. We know that DC managed relatively well on the recovery period after the speculator boom of the early 90's, while Marvel went bankrupt, and also know the only meaningful stance of fan backlash was the Jordan/Parallax thing.

And ee know that the Didio years -way more well documented - were somewhat different than the previous era. Commercially, it was a rollercoaster with periods of absurd success and periods of absurd failure. Creatively, it's the same thing, and if we really pay attention, we can see that the periods more likely to fail commercially, creatively or both are the periods where Didio himself is more hands on on the creative side. Whenever he takes a step a back and does what he does best, things grow; then he comes and demolishes it by trying to enforce the ideas in which he really believes, but that have already failed. And again, this is well documented: one needs only a good memory to realize this (or, alternatively, some patience and know how with google-cache results).

So, there sure is a debate if "DC the company" was in better hands before Didio, but i don't think we can argue that "DC, the universe" wasn't.

[Ascended]

If anybody's going to fix the situation it's most likely going to need to be the people on top, like in DiDio's position. And yet, the situation persists. It's not the fans' responsibility to find a way to sell DC Comics. So yes, I blame him in particular for the current poor state of the comics industry, along with high ups at Marvel. Mostly all they've done is kept things the way they are without taking large enough steps to repair the industry. I suppose they haven't done much to fix things out of fear of alienating their hobby shop customers. They've even made things worse by playing into certain trends that overall damage the industry, like constant relaunches and reboots. That wasn't even going on back in the 90s, and the interval of time between reboots and relaunches gets shorter and shorter. Then there's the endless variant cover scams.

Sorry but I find this an inaccurate and shallow evaluation of supply-demand dynamics and business principals. Of course fans play a role in this system. We're the "demand" half of that equation and to a large degree we decide how and where a product is sold, or whether it's sold or not. Not to mention that online word of mouth marketing is proven to be the biggest, fastest, most efficient manner of marketing on earth now. In business now, the consumer is a critical aspect of the advertising and marketing. We're stakeholders and doing our small part to keep the industry alive is merely self-interest.

Obviously its not all just on us, and I agree completely that the publishers have not taken the extreme steps necessary to save the industry. I find their behavior these past twenty years to be short sighted and self-destructive, if not outright cowardly. But its not a one-sided paradigm where we can sit back and wait for someone else to do *all* the work for us.

[Vampire Savior]

Sorry but I find this an inaccurate and shallow evaluation of supply-demand dynamics and business principals. Of course fans play a role in this system. We're the "demand" half of that equation and to a large degree we decide how and where a product is sold, or whether it's sold or not. Not to mention that online word of mouth marketing is proven to be the biggest, fastest, most efficient manner of marketing on earth now. In business now, the consumer is a critical aspect of the advertising and marketing. We're stakeholders and doing our small part to keep the industry alive is merely self-interest.

Obviously its not all just on us, and I agree completely that the publishers have not taken the extreme steps necessary to save the industry. I find their behavior these past twenty years to be short sighted and self-destructive, if not outright cowardly. But its not a one-sided paradigm where we can sit back and wait for someone else to do *all* the work for us.

The median age of an American comic book fan is going on 40 years old if it isn't already there or beyond that point by now. For this type of entertainment, that is kind of odd and it's alarming when considering the audience isn't growing. We're at the point now where companies may start phasing out a product because there is no growth, the products sell poorly, and the userbase is stuck in their ways. Part of the issue with the industry rests with fans and their behavior. They are the ones who largely dictate what the companies produce. They keep buying variant covers, relaunches, and overblown events and seem to value those things over good stories.

However, when you get to the core of it, the issue rests with the publishers for not being able to keep their products relevant with younger generations. If this were something like pogs, I may not be so critical, but these are the companies that produce official content for Avengers, Spider-Man, Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and so on. These characters have already proven there is current mass interest in them and demand for them, the publishers just cannot capitalize on it successfully. I have to place that blame primarily on ineffective publishers. I'm aware of their difficulties and know their situation isn't totally easily solved, but there is something drastically broken about the way they do business. If their current fans are holding them back, they need to work desperately at finding new ones. They're out there. It's not like the companies are starting up with a totally fresh company with totally new, untested ideas. People already know about Spider-Man and love him.

[SteveGus]

When DiDio greenlit the Azzarello Wonder Woman run, he managed to destroy 35+ years of DC readership and fandom in the pages of a single title. Since then, the vandalism has mostly been repaired, but he pretty much ruined my trust in the company and my willingness to trust the good faith of the people who run it. I gave up reading DC for the duration, and I still read way fewer DC books than I used to.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

The median age of an American comic book fan is going on 40 years old if it isn't already there or beyond that point by now. For this type of entertainment, that is kind of odd and it's alarming when considering the audience isn't growing. We're at the point now where companies may start phasing out a product because there is no growth, the products sell poorly, and the userbase is stuck in their ways. Part of the issue with the industry rests with fans and their behavior. They are the ones who largely dictate what the companies produce. They keep buying variant covers, relaunches, and overblown events and seem to value those things over good stories.

However, when you get to the core of it, the issue rests with the publishers for not being able to keep their products relevant with younger generations. If this were something like pogs, I may not be so critical, but these are the companies that produce official content for Avengers, Spider-Man, Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and so on. These characters have already proven there is current mass interest in them and demand for them, the publishers just cannot capitalize on it successfully. I have to place that blame primarily on ineffective publishers. I'm aware of their difficulties and know their situation isn't totally easily solved, but there is something drastically broken about the way they do business. If their current fans are holding them back, they need to work desperately at finding new ones. They're out there. It's not like the companies are starting up with a totally fresh company with totally new, untested ideas. People already know about Spider-Man and love him.

I think the whole way comics are produced and distributed are the problem as to why they aren't more widely read.

DISTRIBUTION: Comics are difficult to find -- especially if you don't live in a big city.

To get comics in more hands, the comics companies need to put more money into marketing digital comics. Not just include digital codes with print editions. That's silly because you're not growing your audience.

If kids are doing everything on their phones and tablets, then advertise to them so they know that comics are another digital entertainment option. I'll bet most non-fans don't even know digital comics exist.

PRODUCTION: Comics are being sold as chapters in a larger serial narrative. That's not a great way to attract an audience and keep them. Both DC and Marvel have been locked into the paradigm of serial storytelling and one event leading to the next ad infinitum, but someone who just wants to check out comics casually is going to feel overwhelmed.

I often see threads in the DC and Marvel forums where a new reader comes in looking for advice on what to collect, and someone posts a list of 100 trade paperbacks. Are you kidding?

Then, there's the fact that in the shared universes of comics, you may have to know stuff about other characters in order to read about the characters you care about. That's like telling a TV viewer he has to watch Blue Bloods in order to understand The Big Bang Theory. At least TV is one set price for everything. For comics, it's ludicrous, and at 4 dollars a comic, it's off-putting and not doable for most people, especially teens and younger readers which the industry desperately needs.

[Vampire Savior]

Well, for starters, what I would do is this...

Take characters people complain about that they feel aren't getting enough attention, such as Wally West, John Stewart, Stephanie Brown...

And I would launch a graphic novel kickstarter or something on some crowdfunding platform and promote it aggressively. If readers back a project successfully, they get a 200 or so page original graphic novel of their character, with a clear beginning, middle, and end in one package. If they don't, I don't waste the money and man power producing it. I would at least experiment with that and then see where it takes me.

[SiegePerilous02]

The median age of an American comic book fan is going on 40 years old if it isn't already there or beyond that point by now. For this type of entertainment, that is kind of odd and it's alarming when considering the audience isn't growing. We're at the point now where companies may start phasing out a product because there is no growth, the products sell poorly, and the userbase is stuck in their ways. Part of the issue with the industry rests with fans and their behavior. They are the ones who largely dictate what the companies produce. They keep buying variant covers, relaunches, and overblown events and seem to value those things over good stories.

However, when you get to the core of it, the issue rests with the publishers for not being able to keep their products relevant with younger generations. If this were something like pogs, I may not be so critical, but these are the companies that produce official content for Avengers, Spider-Man, Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and so on. These characters have already proven there is current mass interest in them and demand for them, the publishers just cannot capitalize on it successfully. I have to place that blame primarily on ineffective publishers. I'm aware of their difficulties and know their situation isn't totally easily solved, but there is something drastically broken about the way they do business. If their current fans are holding them back, they need to work desperately at finding new ones. They're out there. It's not like the companies are starting up with a totally fresh company with totally new, untested ideas. People already know about Spider-Man and love him.

People know and love Spider-Man and he can easily nab a whole new generation of fans. And that's when we're just talking about Peter, never mind the rest of them like Miles. But they have other options to get their fix for him, not just comics. Films, video games and cartoons are going to be more appealing to them than comics. When these characters first started out, comics were the main medium we could find them. That's not the case anymore, and the comics now have to compete against other forms of entertainment that are more accessible and more worth the money being spent on them. Yeah these new fans are out there, but even if they become aware of comics, that's no guarantee they will take the plunge.

These characters may just gradually have less and less of a future in the comics medium. They will live on in other ways, which may honestly not be the worst thing for them.

[kingaliencracker]

You know what? I'm not really big on sidekicks or legacy characters, either. So if that's one of the biggest knocks against Didio (which I gather from reading the posts on this thread is the case), then I'll throw myself into that boat too.

In the history of the medium, legacy characters haven't proven to be sustainable. I think DC has actually done a much better job at developing legacy characters than Marvel, to their credit. But at the end of the day, legacy characters are almost always usurped by the originals, and the originals are generally more successful. The only legacy character I've ever really had any real affinity for is Wally West, and that's just because he's the Flash I grew up with. Had Barry been the Flash 30 years ago when I got into comics and Mark Waid wrote the character, there's an excellent chance I wouldn't care much for Wally, either.

As far as sidekicks, I'm more into teams or groups than a hero traveling around with an adolescent fighting crime. A group like the Gotham Knights, for example, makes more sense to me than Batman & Robin. While I understand the history of sidekicks and appreciate that history, I've just never really clamored for Batman to be teaming up with a teenager. Then again, I also hold the controversial opinion that Batman shouldn't be in the Justice League.

As far as Nightwing, I have to believe if Didio TRULY hated the character as much as some fans claim, he would have found a way to dispose of him in the nearly 20 years he's been in charge at DC. That's not to say that I believe Didio is a big fan of the character, because I don't think that's true either. But I do feel like he has listened to fans and even those within DC and continues to keep him around despite his dislike of character, which seems counter to the arguments I'm hearing from these posts.

I've also read posts that blame Didio for being #2 to Marvel. Come on, people. DC has consistently been #2 to Marvel for about 50 years. It's completely unfair to put that on Didio. I've been a fan for 30 of those years and I can tell you I don't ever foresee DC overtaking Marvel, outside of a month here or there.

The one, true criticism against Didio that I can agree with is that I feel the characters have been portrayed as wildly inconsistent under his reign. I guess some of that could be chalked up to creative freedom provided to certain writers and artists but take Superman for example. How many reboots, retcons, and creative shifts has he endured over the past 20 years? Is there another character in DC or Marvel that really rivals that, especially given his stature? I think that is something that really warrants conversation, not some of this other stuff.

[SiegePerilous02]

You know what? I'm not really big on sidekicks or legacy characters, either. So if that's one of the biggest knocks against Didio (which I gather from reading the posts on this thread is the case), then I'll throw myself into that boat too.

I could actually side with Didio as far as this is concerned since I'm seldom into the legacy or sidekick stuff (except for, like you, Wally and his generation). But he goes about it in a way that is obnoxious.
He can find better ways of writing these characters out than what he frequently doe. Like for example, he could have had Roy just retire from active crime fighting and focus on raising his daughter. Seems more harmless than killing either or both of them off in stupid storylines. And I'm not super into Cass Cain, but even I think the OYL stuff was bullshit. There are better ways to get rid of her without character assassinating her. Write them out in a way that makes it easier for future generations of creators to bring them back if so desired.

I mean, if I was in his position I'd probably eagerly want to get rid of Tim's generation the way he wants to get rid of Dick's, but if he's a professional in the business, he needs to remove that bias. Or at least act on it in less destructive ways than okaying blood baths.

The one, true criticism against Didio that I can agree with is that I feel the characters have been portrayed as wildly inconsistent under his reign. I guess some of that could be chalked up to creative freedom provided to certain writers and artists but take Superman for example. How many reboots, retcons, and creative shifts has he endured over the past 20 years? Is there another character in DC or Marvel that really rivals that, especially given his stature? I think that is something that really warrants conversation, not some of this other stuff.

Wonder Woman tops Superman in that department, though he's not that far behind her.
Both of their problems predated Didio however. COIE for Superman and arguably even earlier for Wonder Woman. It's gotten worse under his reign though.

[kingaliencracker]

I could actually side with Didio as far as this is concerned since I'm seldom into the legacy or sidekick stuff (except for, like you, Wally and his generation). But he goes about it in a way that is obnoxious.
He can find better ways of writing these characters out than what he frequently doe. Like for example, he could have had Roy just retire from active crime fighting and focus on raising his daughter. Seems more harmless than killing either or both of them off in stupid storylines. And I'm not super into Cass Cain, but even I think the OYL stuff was bullshit. There are better ways to get rid of her without character assassinating her. Write them out in a way that makes it easier for future generations of creators to bring them back if so desired.

I mean, if I was in his position I'd probably eagerly want to get rid of Tim's generation the way he wants to get rid of Dick's, but if he's a professional in the business, he needs to remove that bias. Or at least act on it in less destructive ways than okaying blood baths.



Wonder Woman tops Superman in that department, though he's not that far behind her.
Both of their problems predated Didio however. COIE for Superman and arguably even earlier for Wonder Woman. It's gotten worse under his reign though.

Well, Superman post-Crisis was awesome to me. I think the last few years of the Jurgens run lost significant steam but from 1986-1994 still stands as the definitive Superman run for me.

Wonder Woman has gone through one origin change under Didio. Superman has gone through FOUR. And that's just since 2004.

I don't think it's comparable.

[Frontier]

I'm a fan of classics and legacies so I've never been fond of throwing either under the bus.

[Robanker]

I'm a fan of classics and legacies so I've never been fond of throwing either under the bus.

This. There are respectful ways to have the characters retire for a while if you want to focus elsewhere. Wally could have simply taken time off being a superhero to build his life back up one day at a time and acted as a part-time mentor to Wallace. You have them both bond and show fans of each why the other is cool, Wally can rebuild things with Linda or someone else and when the right pitch comes along, he puts the scarlet back on.

You don't need to humiliate him and have his kick sand in the eye of every customer who has supported the IP for twenty years.

And you don't need to condemn the character who did so for the twenty years prior. Granted, I don't like NuBarry because he's some weird amalgam of Wally and Barry and just feels like a cynical cashgrab, but I'm fine with Barry in concept. Just wish they'd stop trying so hard to sell me a character I already liked.