Originally Posted by
OBrianTallent
I dont think it's necessarily "high stakes" that is needed (well maybe for something like Revenge of the Gods it is) but for general stories...they just need depth. High Stakes are life and death, world ending etc. We've actually had high stakes....Hera and Shazam killed Zeus and took the throne of Olympus. That's pretty high stakes, there was just no depth to it. Why did she do it? Reasons. How did Wonder Woman win? Reasons. A fair amount of flash and bang but no boom. Which, to be honest, a fair amount of modern writers do no know how to write depth into their stories...it's all video game story boarding. Granted, comic books have lost a decent amount of pages for exploration and exposition of story. Likewise, when we do get writers who treat monthly books like chapters of an overarching story (as it should be) modern readers complain about the length and time it takes to get the story out. Look at some of the most popular runs in comics history...New Teen Titans by Wolfman and Perez, X-Men by Claremont with Claremont being the master of layering plot and details month after month.
Another problem that has worked against Revenge is the artists used. Not that they are bad at all, but if they do not have the ability or eye to see the layout that best suits and conveys the story, they will miss depicting some of the best possible layouts. While they may make pretty drawings, they dont convey the story well or convey the action or emotions well. This has been a problem with the Wonder Woman books of late as many of the artists used aren't either as seasoned or as talented as they should be to convey the needs of the story (with rare exception.)
None of this is necessarily entirely the fault of the writers and or artists...that's what an editor and assistant editor is supposed to be doing but with as much axing as has gone on at DC are the editors left even able to do an adequate job of that....likewise, they may not even have that ability to do so themselves. Wonder Woman should be considered on the same level a book as Superman, Action, Batman and Detective...but those are books that make money, Wonder Woman doesn't make that kind of money so they dont have the budget to hire those types of creators. The old adage of you have to spend money to make money is important and it seems that someone finally figured it out and as divisive a decision as it has been Tom King and Daniel Sampere are those types of creators. Just my opinion, but I stand by it.