Monday on The Source, several different DC bigwigs weighed in on why fans should be excited about the really, honestly, almost here launch of The New 52. One of them was John Rood, DC’s Executive VP-Sales, Marketing and Business Development, and in his testimonial he managed to work in a not-too-subtle zing at the competition:
To be clear – DC is not a market-share-chaser. If we were, we would not be creating a quality lasting direction across a controlled number of titles. We would instead be flooding the market with over 200 titles a month, changing your prices with abandon, killing off a character every quarter or so, and/or randomly announcing decimal-pointed event-ish thingies. We haven’t.
Yep, those are clear shots at Marvel, down to the recently announced Fear Itself #7.1, #7.2 and #7.3 books, and/or the year long Point One issue initiative. (Just thinking aloud and not taking sides, but if Marvel — or anyone — were indeed to release more than 200 titles a month, killing a character off every three months would seem proportionately low, no?)
August 30th, 2011 at 7:12 am
DC talking about another company flooding the market and having a lack of quality? Jesus frigging Christ.
52 number ones in a month? That’s flooding the market. 11 Batbooks, 5 of which star Bruce Wayne? That’s flooding the market. 3 Justice League books? You guessed it, flooding the market. Two different books (Blackhawks and Men at War or whatever the other book is called) about military contractors? That’s flooding the market.
And quality? We have artists like Manupal, Finch, Daniel and Van Sciver writing or co-writing books? Bleh. I’ve read Finch’s and Daniel’s writing, and it stinks. Van Sciver and Manupal as writers are unknown, but the track record for artists-turned-writers is pretty dismal.
August 30th, 2011 at 7:42 am
Judon:
That’s actually a lower amount of titles than DC was previously publishing. how is that flooding the market if they were publishing more books last month.
As for Artist turned writers?
Frank Miller, Walt Simonson, Jerry Ordway, Matt Wagner, Jason Pearson, John Byrne, Howard Chaykin, Grant Morrison all say otherwise
August 30th, 2011 at 9:15 am
ben, it’s flooding the market because retailers have to do a lot of guesswork when it comes to #1s and, more importantly, if you’re revamping your whole line to make it new reader friendly, you’re going to scare off the vast majority of new readers when they find out that this is a 52-part publishing initiative.
As for your examples of artists turned writers:
Frank Miller – I’ll give you that one, in his day, but now both his art and writing are pretty bad.
Walt Simonson – I’ll give you that one, he’s good at both.
Matt Wagner – His writing never seemed to be anything more than basic. His various “Batman early in his career” minis are completely by the numbers and simplistic.
Jason Pearson – Has this guy written anything besides 10 issues of Body Bags in the past decade? Not being sarcastic, I’m seriously asking.
John Byrne- again, in his day he was good.
Chaykin – never cared for his art, much less his writing.
Grant Morrison – Outside of a bit of published art early in his career and some design work on Seven Soldiers, I wouldn’t consider him a professional artist.
August 30th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
While it may not be “flooding the market” it is (at least in part) a publicity stunt designed to boost sales, and a lot of that is directed towards the collector or completest market with having a slew of new #1 titles.
I like when the big two take jabs at each other though. Granted I am reading the comments and have no idea of the context but I would hope it was all said in good fun.
August 31st, 2011 at 8:57 am
Lol DC is the last one that should cricize other about killing off it’s characters .
Not when you’ve made a sport of even destroying creating alternates universe everytime someone important needs fixing or to resurrect .
Not to mention leaving some charcters to a fate worse than dying . Being screwed over after being forced to replace batman anyone ?
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