Layoffs at DC?

[cranger]

Meanwhile:
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/jim-...wood-reporter/
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/reme...or-in********/

What can I say? Well...

DC is part of a much bigger organizations, with leaders answering to leaders who answer to leaders a few levels up. That BC article is a great example of why they are part of the problem. Marvel's collapse did not happen the way they try to connect everything, the Avril Lavigne really died hoax was more believable.

[Myskin]

Finger crossed for some Florent Maudoux's take on the DC Universe. I mean, he created a "comics" where one of the important B-list character is actually Sean Connery who was a hero with his Zardoz movie costume. I want to see him do something with the DC heroes, it could be really fun. Utterly irrelevant, but extremely fun. And probably too flirty/sexual for a company scared by a Bat-penis outline sadly...

*Coff*Coff*
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Vartoxdcu0.jpg

[cranger]

Yeah, but it's maybe easier with Asian/African characters (when they bother to choose Asians/Africans creators) because those continents have vast untapped traditions and cultures which are quite different (a Senegalese is not a Masai, for instance) while Europe is a lot closer to the U.S., since the U.S is absically a melting pot of English and Germanic traditions sprinkled with French, Spaniards and etc. Sure customs and sensibilities may differ but they aren't that stark, you know ?

But perhaps I'm really just grumpy and afraid that they'll just give us more of the same far too on the nose named heroes and villains (I fully expect at least one Napoléon something, somewhere) or just femmes fatales, you know ? Nightrunner is probably the one French character who isn't a cliché at DC that I know off... and I can tell that if he was in real France, he'd get a lot of bad rep for using an English nickname but would be trashed even more of he tried it with a French one.

It sounds like the idea is to ask a French creator to come up with something on their own, something they would normally come up with the twist of "what if this story took place in the DCU". The primary goal is to come up with something for the French market, connecting it back to the DCU after that fact is just to make it part of something bigger but not necessarily homogenized.

[Korath]

Yeah America is weird. We're totally cool with our children watching people get ripped apart in movies, but even the hint of a sex organ and we lose our damn minds and freak out about our kids losing their innocence.

I'm not familiar at all with international talent and know little of the comics situation in other countries, other than some basic things like "Japan has manga for everyone" and such. But if DC starts getting international talent on their characters I hope like hell there's an English translation made available Stateside; I've read a few comics from France (that got reprinted in the States) and a few manga, and I am down with fresh vision applied to DC's roster. And I promise not to freak out like a typical American if there are boobs or penises.

Eh. Today I'd say it's more manfra (french manga) which are the growing portion of the drawn production here. Franco-Belgian B.D. are still produced and some great stories too but... I don't know, I feel like people of my generation and slightly older are more into manga, really. That and more hardback comics as a format more so than the rather slim B.D.

You should definitively try to search for Freaks' Squeele by Florent Maudoux or Radiant by Tony Valente if you want to see an example of each (Radiant being a manga, in fact the first French manga adapted in anime in Japan - but the adaptation is... meh? I don't like it because it's far from good compared to the manga but I think it works if you haven't read it).

*Coff*Coff*
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Vartoxdcu0.jpg

I knew that Sean Connery's sosie was up to no good !

It sounds like the idea is to ask a French creator to come up with something on their own, something they would normally come up with the twist of "what if this story took place in the DCU". The primary goal is to come up with something for the French market, connecting it back to the DCU after that fact is just to make it part of something bigger but not necessarily homogenized.

It'll either be glorious, or the worst thing since margarine. There won't be a middle-ground xD !

[ohfellow]

I misstated this:

BTW if you've ever wondered if it was your imagination that at least some Marvel was written for a younger audience, consider that their T rating means:

T – Appropriate for most readers, but parents are advised that they might want to read before or with younger children.

Spider-Gwen / Ghost-Spider is rated T, so if you ever read that title and wondered why it seemed kind of .... young, now you know why!

Actually, Marvel lists its rating system in the back of Marvel Previews.

T = age 9 and up.
T+ = most readers 12 and up, but parents might want to read before or with younger children.
Parental Advisory = same as T+ but more mature or graphic.

Most of the current Marvel offerings are T+, plenty are Parental Advisory, and a few are T including these:

Ghost-Spider
Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four: Antithesis
Spider-Man (the series by J.J. and Henry Abrams)
Miles Morales: Spider-Man
Star Wars books
True Believer reprints

[Digifiend]

Leopard of lime street hasnt been published for 40 years.

Didn't you know? They released it in TPB recently.

[kjn]

I think we might have to re-define a lot of our terminology going forward, if other formats and "trade collections" become a bigger aspect of DC's product line. Will we need to differentiate between a digital trade and a floppy collection, etc? Right now everything is mostly floppy, and the handful of exceptions are obvious and not really worth their own terminology but after this? We might need some new words.

A trade in publishing parlance is a distribution format. Historically, it was dominated by hardcovers, but there were trade paperbacks as well. Likewise, massmarket were distributed on a magazine-like model, and were usually paperbacks, but there were at least one hardback book series published on a massmarket model in Sweden (though admittedly the hardbacks were of rather poor quality).

There is terminology for all of these distribution models, physical formats, and types of content, but in times of transition (like now) it's rather important to be aware that a term might come from one domain but has gained associations in another one due to past use, and that those associations might no longer be true anymore.

[Myskin]

While Valérian and Laureline are space opera, space opera and science fiction aren't strictly American genres. A lot of the early development of the genre happened in Europe, with authors like HG Well, Jules Verne, J.-H. Rosny aîné, or Olaf Stapledon. Or TV series like the German "Raumpatrouille".

I re-quote this point - I may have misunderstood what you meant in my previous post, sorry.
Let me correct myself - instead of writing "strictly American genres" I should have written "genres which had a strong development in the context of American pop culture".

[HsssH]

DC is part of a much bigger organizations, with leaders answering to leaders who answer to leaders a few levels up. That BC article is a great example of why they are part of the problem. Marvel's collapse did not happen the way they try to connect everything, the Avril Lavigne really died hoax was more believable.

And in DC's case it looks somewhat obvious that one EiC will focus on kids line, while other one on the rest of the stuff. I can't see much "competition" happening there since both can use any character they want and you probably want different talent on kids books than on mainline ones.

[Ascended]

There is terminology for all of these distribution models, physical formats, and types of content, but in times of transition (like now) it's rather important to be aware that a term might come from one domain but has gained associations in another one due to past use, and that those associations might no longer be true anymore.

Exactly, that's what I'm saying. We might need to re-define our current uses of the terminology.

[Aahz]

But if they do create "Europeans" Comics, i just hope that they'll avoid the pitfalls of : guns everywhere, U.S. vision of vigilantism and all-Europe teams for the sake of teams. We are a very divided continent and in recent years the EU did next to nothing to mend those divisions (I'd say it has exacerbated them even). It needs to be reflected in the comics.

I doubt that that there is really a market for "European DC Heroes" in Europe. On top of that you here hardly anything like a "direct market" and most countries are not big enough to carry a book.
And I don't think that there are many (still active) writers that are known out side of their own countries.

[Powertool]

I'd be hard pressed to see how it'd work in practice with Franco-Belgian B.D really.

But if they do create "Europeans" Comics, i just hope that they'll avoid the pitfalls of : guns everywhere, U.S. vision of vigilantism and all-Europe teams for the sake of teams. We are a very divided continent and in recent years the EU did next to nothing to mend those divisions (I'd say it has exacerbated them even). It needs to be reflected in the comics.

Excuse me?

You realize how ridiculous the claim that the European Union exacerbated the divisions between the European countries when until 1945 the continent was cyclically engulfed by storms of steel and fire which used to end millions upon millions of lives each time, don't you? Or do you really think that Europeans today have it worse than in the centuries when our ancestors were sent to die for the sake of imaginary lines on the ground like it was the most natural thing in the world?

Considering the order of magnitude of the current divisions (hah!) having people working together would be expected, since we live in a community of nations where a Portuguese tech company and a Belgian one can vie with each other for an Italian person with an interesting curriculum who is also considering a job offer in Denmark. Having fictional superheroes being more hamstrung by stupid chauvinism than a lot of skilled professionals in the real world would be tragicomic to say the least.

[Myskin]

And in DC's case it looks somewhat obvious that one EiC will focus on kids line, while other one on the rest of the stuff. I can't see much "competition" happening there since both can use any character they want and you probably want different talent on kids books than on mainline ones.

I just wanted to quote The Office. I haven't he slightest idea whether a collaboration between two EICs would work.

[Korath]

Excuse me?

You realize how ridiculous the claim that the European Union exacerbated the divisions between the European countries when until 1945 the continent was cyclically engulfed by storms of steel and fire which used to end millions upon millions of lives each time, don't you? Or do you really think that Europeans today have it worse than in the centuries when our ancestors were sent to die for the sake of imaginary lines on the ground like it was the most natural thing in the world?

Considering the order of magnitude of the current divisions (hah!) having people working together would be expected, since we live in a community of nations where a Portuguese tech company and a Belgian one can vie with each other for an Italian person with an interesting curriculum who is also considering a job offer in Denmark. Having fictional superheroes being more hamstrung by stupid chauvinism than a lot of skilled professionals in the real world would be tragicomic to say the least.

As a French I consider that the EU, as a Germanic organization is a blight in my country, yes. It promotes austerity, gorce us into debt bondage and does nothing to help us deal with urgent climate crisis, for instance.

And we all know that the whole fucking system is rigged to benefit countries of the North over those of the South - who actually produce more of the wealth and to which the Euro currency has become an unescapable trap leading to the exile of their youths to said Northern countries which accrued wealth by hoarding it like parasites over the years.

So, yeah, the UE is exacerbating the tensions. Its a right-winger neoliberal wet dream but for me who is truly from the left (not like Europeans Socialists) it's a nightmare which never promoted peaxe. It was the Cold War and the risks of it blowing up in Europe, not the EU.

But it's really not here nor there to truly develop it.

[Digifiend]

Yeah, that right there is why we stuck with Pound Sterling and voted for Brexit.