DC 5G: the Replacements

[Ascended]

Possibly but it doesn't exactly solve the problem. Such an imprint would never be canon because near future stories in comics literally can't be (see batman beyond and futures end). What people would like is a wider range of main characters in the definite current timeline. Of course that always goes back to the problems of A)replacing characters causes drama and is temporary B) new characters almost never sell well and C) pushing minor characters is like trying to fit lightning in a bottle.

It seems like of the three hurdles it seems like "A" is the easiest publishers want to deal with. Until it ultimately fails/is reversed and we're back in square one.

Well, the depth of the 5G timeline would allow those "next gen" books to be part of canon. It'd be a different way of approaching continuity but I think it *could* work. Of course, books featuring different people in classic roles isn't likely to be a huge seller either way; the market doesn't want that. But a small imprint of "next gen" books has a chance of getting a modest-yet-respectable consumer base, while replacements across the line won't generate enough revenue to be worthwhile.

As for the larger problems with representation and new characters.....no, this wouldn't solve that problem. I don't think there's any real way to solve that problem in the direct market. There's not enough wiggle room and the audience is too entrenched in their buying habits. It'd take some pretty fantastic business and creative acrobatics to get over those hurdles, and I honestly don't think it's worth the effort when there's other markets out there that are not only accepting of this sort of thing, but hungry for it.

[SiegePerilous02]

Seeing as how Harley Quinn (and to a lesser extent the likes of Renee Montoya and Livewire) began her life in other media, it would be great if they could start creating wholly new characters that have a better chance of catching on in the direct market. At this point, I think the Marvel cinematic brand is so strong that they could start creating completely new diverse heroes and they would be successful as long as the brand was slapped on them and they crossed over and interacted with the already established heroes.

It could also work in cartoons, video games, Scholastic books, anything but the direct market.

[Noodle]

Possibly but it doesn't exactly solve the problem. Such an imprint would never be canon because near future stories in comics literally can't be (see batman beyond and futures end).

That's what the multiverse is for. They can be canon without replacing anything. DC did this pre-Crisis with the annual JLA/JSA team-ups.

DC constantly brings back the multiverse and things like hypertime but then never do anything with it before they eventually kill it off again. It's literally a "have your cake and eat it, too" concept they have at their disposal but instead they just keep screwing up the main DCU instead of doing that stuff on an alternate earth.

[jetengine]

That's what the multiverse is for. They can be canon without replacing anything. DC did this pre-Crisis with the annual JLA/JSA team-ups.

DC constantly brings back the multiverse and things like hypertime but then never do anything with it before they eventually kill it off again. It's literally a "have your cake and eat it, too" concept they have at their disposal but instead they just keep screwing up the main DCU instead of doing that stuff on an alternate earth.

See I dislike this argument because its always the same.

"Man why cant the JSA etc go back to their own earth where continuity was easier"

With the answer being....they can. But dont expect to see ongoings, but do expect them to be canon fodder for events. DC will use "Its not the main earth everyones reading so who cares " as the excuse to kill it first chance

[achilles]

See I dislike this argument because its always the same.

"Man why cant the JSA etc go back to their own earth where continuity was easier"

With the answer being....they can. But dont expect to see ongoings, but do expect them to be canon fodder for events. DC will use "Its not the main earth everyones reading so who cares " as the excuse to kill it first chance

Yes. IMO the JSA---all of them; should be retconned into the main earth, just for survival's sake. Yeah, you'd have to make Power Girl some other relation of Superman, or some other Kryptonian altogether, and do a few other more minor things, but at least they wouldn't be viewed as the expendable cousins.

[Midnight_v]

My point was when it was done many times in the past-nobody cared. Once it started being certain demographics-folks forgot their comic book history.

Suddenly it's time to put a foot down and say no. Is the fear of a Jane Foster or Miles Morales popularity happening that scary for some? Peter nor Odison went way.

This is a pretty heavy lie and Im surprised no one else says anything, maybe they think its uninformed and don't say anything or maybe it's not worth the effort to correct but this is absolutely incorrect.

Want proof? In relation to dc what is H.E.A.T, and how far did Hal's Emerald action team go? I'm not condoning it in fact it was hella bad. But people do care. There are other examples too Erik Masterson, anyone?

Therefore, the narrative that people didn't care about replacement characters or get irritated or furious until the replacements became "certain demographics" its a god damn lie that really needs to die out.

Personally I hate the replacement attempts at diversity. It's lazy, and uninspired...
It's irritating because of its focus, but moreso it exposes that the writers or the editors or the company itself simply aren't willing to do the damn work to build a character up, and support them.

That being said there are a LOT of missed opportunities just left on the table, Blue Beetle (reyes) is a briliant concept and an evolution not a replacement. It never felt cheap or like pandering for a lot or reasons.

The environment NOW sucks because the sillly culture wars raging and outlandish
Declarations like the above LEADS people to reject changes and newness even more.

Seriously thank God this 5g thing is off the table.

Do away with the idea that diversity for diversity sake is a greater good. Its not.
Use talented writers that are motivated about and love the characters they write. Find artists that WANT TO
DRAW MORE THAN 12 ISSUES of a book, and advertise but not "heres a new black,buddist,lgbt,plussized, physically challenged character".
Advertise about the mythos and import, while responding to both sales AND reviews.

I never thought Id be waiting for frikkin Mr.Miracle book to drop anxiously but I was.... Never thought 2x about that guy, but a writer wrote a compelling story and word of mouth brought me to it for the whole run.

Work on making better stories, and better art, and not about pleasing 30 overactive people on Twitter and Ill buy more books and SUGGEST more books.

The legacy thing has started to hurt dc and its fans more than it helps.

Currently Im reading The Question: The Death's of Vic sage. The problem dc faces has basically NOTHING to do with bigoted thinking except focusing on people screaming about the bogeyman too much.

[Sacred Knight]

And what is this mystical "right way to promote diversity" ? In place as crowded as comics, it is proven that replacement of iconic characters is the sole way for it to work. Jane Foster is Valkyrie today because she was Thor. Flacon sold a lot more when he was Captain America because he was out there and people loved it and demoting him cost him sales. Kamala Khan wouldn't have lasted as long as she did if she was called Bendable-girl insted of Miss Marvel.

I didn't say there was only one right way. And I certainly don't claim to have any particularly insightful ideas how. I only pointed out what I see as a clear and present wrong way that would result in a disastrous initiative, and that's getting rid of your still popular characters all at once and dropping these new characters into an already poisoned well. Yes there are examples of replacing that has worked before in individual mythoi at individual times, I'm not unaware of that. This wasn't going to be that.

[Ascended]

Work on making better stories, and better art, and not about pleasing 30 overactive people on Twitter and Ill buy more books and SUGGEST more books.

Do you think it would actually help now? I'm not sure we're at a place where attempts to expand the IP farm in the direct market won't just fall on deaf ears more often than not.

I'd like to think that quality will always win out, in the end. But I'm either too cynical or I've studied business too much to really believe it. And we do see some few signs of life here and there, with books that're built on quality on not established brands readers will just buy with a herd mentality.....but those are damn few and far between.

The legacy thing has started to hurt dc and its fans more than it helps.

You may be right. I dunno if it's legacy as a concept and the DCU is just getting too full of similar characters and too-big brand families, or if DC just hasn't managed to juggle it right.

[iron chimp]

Its been proven time and time again that new work can be broken in comic shop at DC. Alan Moore could do it, Grant Morrison could do it, Garth Ennis could do it, brian k vaughan, brian wood, bill willingham, Peter Milligan etc etc.

Image do it 10 times a month at least with new books.

But thats where the bar is set. If you cant match that standard then youre not breaking anything.

[Ascended]

If the bar for new properties is set at "Alan Moore" then we're all in trouble.

That's part of the problem; if new characters need Moore level of quality while established characters can get away with Scott Lobdell, then we're basically stuck with the characters we have, plus one new character every ten years who manages to reach those lofty Moore-level heights long enough to sustain at Lobdell levels.

[Noodle]

See I dislike this argument because its always the same.

"Man why cant the JSA etc go back to their own earth where continuity was easier"

With the answer being....they can. But dont expect to see ongoings, but do expect them to be canon fodder for events. DC will use "Its not the main earth everyones reading so who cares " as the excuse to kill it first chance

You're using my argument to disprove my argument.

As I said, they have the multiverse, but they don't use it. Instead they do, as you said, just use those characters as cheap deaths in crossovers that just kill the multiverse again. But they don't have to. There's no cap on how many books they can put out and in what format. They can do a book on a different earth just as easily as they can do a book on the main earth. They just don't. I guess they feel a JSA book would sell less than "Batman Family Book #78246."

And continuity is a problem because they constantly make it a problem by either using only what they want of it or completely ignoring it, and thus needing a re-tooling Crisis-like event every 5-10 years just to fix what they never should have screwed up to start with.

[skyvolt2000]

Do you think it would actually help now? I'm not sure we're at a place where attempts to expand the IP farm in the direct market won't just fall on deaf ears more often than not.

I'd like to think that quality will always win out, in the end. But I'm either too cynical or I've studied business too much to really believe it. And we do see some few signs of life here and there, with books that're built on quality on not established brands readers will just buy with a herd mentality.....but those are damn few and far between.

Quality can not win out when you have a market that can cherry pick who get to be seen.

I can get the top talent to do say a Static book-you know what we would see? "why is (Johns, Morrison or whoever) WASTING his time on (insert racial slur). We need to get that book cancelled." And yes I have seen this mess aimed at certain books including BATMAN.

If quality matters Ric Grayson would have died off a LONG time ago. But because that book is titled NIGHTWING- that keeps its orders where they are.
If quality matters Black Panther would have a new writer back in 2019. But because that book is "feeding" a hungry audience wanting whatever is black-you get inflated trade sale.

A level playing field where bias is removed-quality takes over. Because most of your audience isn't going to look for it.

Marvel tried to expand Deadpool, GOTG, Black Panther & Dr Strange-FITS were thrown.

I think there is more to new Tuesday DC comics than what is shown. I don't think the direct market is going to like it.



You may be right. I dunno if it's legacy as a concept and the DCU is just getting too full of similar characters and too-big brand families, or if DC just hasn't managed to juggle it right.[/QUOTE]

Dc's legacy issue is one set can find writers or the editors are looking for them versus others who can't once the book ends.

The situation is worst when many of those legacies make it to outside comic books. See Aqualad. Now you gotta to toss stuff together because of Young Justice and now a YA book. Or Green Lantern-you got two generations who looked at tv and saw Hal & John. Now toss in Jessica.

[Vampire Savior]

I make comics and people have repeatedly, as recent as this morning, told me not to bother courting DC, Marvel, or direct market fans. The points are always the same. It's insular, shrinking, stuck in its ways, and even if the readers are unhappy, they would rather sit there and be unhappy than try and support anything new. They're essentially backwards. And once a market becomes way backwards where it's difficult to make sense of them, it's really hard to make any headway with them. Someone today invited me over to webtoon, because it's growing and the audience is waaaaaaaaaaay more receptive to things. And yeah, I have encountered more and more people out in the real world who read webtoon. Furthermore, I can confirm from personal experience that DC and Marvel or direct market fans are...ugh!

The point being here is that if what DC needs to do is find new markets then that's what DC needs to do. I believe in addressing the root of a problem and not doing band aid fixes. The root of the problem is that DC needs to find a way to get new characters over. Replacing Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, or whoever with diverse characters will not work. But again, it's not just a market issue, it's a DC issue. They have to try A LOT harder.

[godisawesome]

If the bar for new properties is set at "Alan Moore" then we're all in trouble.

That's part of the problem; if new characters need Moore level of quality while established characters can get away with Scott Lobdell, then we're basically stuck with the characters we have, plus one new character every ten years who manages to reach those lofty Moore-level heights long enough to sustain at Lobdell levels.

Dc's legacy issue is one set can find writers or the editors are looking for them versus others who can't once the book ends.

The situation is worst when many of those legacies make it to outside comic books. See Aqualad. Now you gotta to toss stuff together because of Young Justice and now a YA book. Or Green Lantern-you got two generations who looked at tv and saw Hal & John. Now toss in Jessica.

I think the BatBooks, as well as different epochs for Green Lantern, Superman, Flash and others, arguably proved that the issue is more one of having a healthy stable of writers and a wise enough editor to administrate the IPs successfully - which when successful, means that the company can exploit mutliple successful if supposedly “redundant” IP’s.

Characters “making it” outside of comics and in other media arguably proves the point - it’s the quality of work featuring the characters that matters. And sufficient quality could lead to something as innocuously unsurprising as Batgirl and Batwoman books selling at the same time (in defiance of the philosophy that lead to Cass’s book being cancelled when Kate was scheduled to arrive) to something as crazy as the Green Lantern renaissance they had (with Hal, Kyle, John, Guy, Sodam Yat, Sinestro, and the entire Corps itself) being successful, to something as counterintuitive and at times almost “undesired” as John Stewart having upset fans angry at Hal getting the movie or the likelihood that far more people now know of Kaldur as Aquaman than they do of Garth.

And you don’t really need Alan Moore level writing today get it done. What you need is an editorial board that can realize when a guy like Chuck Dixon can be a workhorse on multiple books, or that some of the guys Scott Snyder is teaching make good contributors under a strong editorial board (Higgins and Tynion are both more successful than not), or that Geoff Johns’s overarching vision for the franchise can genuinely be harnessed for multiple books, or that if someone like Mark Waid or Peter Alan David are doing their job successfully, you don’t end up igniting some minor feud with them because they don’t conform to your exact editorial vision...

...and it also means being discerning enough to understand when a creator maybe only has one successful property to work with that you feed him repeatedly, whether that’s Karl Kessel having a strong idea for Superboy that deserves to be seen through to the end, or Scott Lobdell being good with Red Hood, but less so with, well, any other Robin.

DC would be better served planning ways to share their best-to-still-blatantly-competent creators across several properties, rather than trying to instead manipulate some kind of perfect formula with the IPs.

[Robotman]

DC does not currently have the freedom Marvel has to replace classic characters. The 2000s saw GL have huge success thanks to Johns’ run and a few mid tier characters also became more popular than they had been in years. The 2010s saw Aquaman outselling Spider-Man for a while. Currently DC’s only character that sells well is Batman. That’s it. It’s the 90s all over again. So you can see why a lot of people would be nervous about replacing Bruce Wayne with an untested commodity.

So what are the new more diverse characters that have found some success in the past 20 years? Let’s start with Ms. Marvel. The name she was inheriting wasn’t going to sell comics by itself. She had a creative team with fresh ideas and good word of mouth spread fast. Miles Morales took over the mantle of Spidey from Peter Parker, but fans still had the option to read Peter’s adventures in the main continuity. Similar situation with Spider-Gwen. An offshoot who wasn’t totally replacing another character. DC has found success with Damian Wayne and Jon Kent but both took over the roles of previous characters. When DC does this it can start some ugly fan civil wars (see any GL thread). Blue Beetle, Ryan Choi, and Jason Rousch were met with a lot of hate from long time fans and only Jaime found moderate success thanks to his many mainstream appearances. So I’m really not a huge fan of straight up replacing a beloved character with another or overcrowding a mantle with a ton of characters with the same name and ability. Naomi has found some success. She’s a totally original character who had a great creative team who was enthusiastic to bring her to life and flesh out her world.

I also don’t think having characters on another earth automatically makes them forgettable. The Earth 2 book was great and had a very diverse cast of characters. Then DC decided to destroy that earth, which of course made James Robinson quit and vow to never work for them again. Would still love to see something done with Val Zod one of these days.